Wikiquote:Village pump archive 13

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Village pump archive 13

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

Spacing between quotes

moved to Wikiquote talk:Templates

Licensing policy

Wikimedia Foundation issues a new policy about licensing. See Wikimedia:Resolution:Licensing policy.

while I suppose it doesn't affect us now substantially, since we accept now only GFDL and our uploader is already disabled, still I think it good for every editor to be aware of that, since it is applied for every Wikimedia project. --Aphaia 16:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it affects us slightly more than that, given that it also applies to copied text. Certainly we won't have the images problem so much as other wikimedia projects but we are almost entirely made up of copied material - just ones where the amount of material is not substantial enough to infringe copyright. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 17:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You remind me we copy texts from copyrighted materials and justify it with US Fairuse concept. So it is not perfectly correct to say "English Wikiquote stop to use Fairuse materials." We are better to say we stop to use media/image justified by Fairuse but still rely on Fairuse text. I talk now it loosely, and looking for someone knowledgeable of US law who will kindly reword the above :) --Aphaia 03:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

This could be our excuse (and possibly requirement) to settle the question of how we determine that we are following fair use guidelines for our primary content — exact quotes. It could (should?) include setting measurable criteria (so that editors can see if an article is acceptable by some objective measure, even if it's not final or absolute), how we deal with enforcing fair-use limitations, and how we handle requests from putative copyright holders about possible infringement.

But the village pump is not the place for such a huge discussion. Does the Foundation recommend or suggest a place for projects to cite their Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP)? If not, I would suggest creating a placeholder/stub at Wikiquote:Exemption Doctrine Policy (aka WQ:EDP), and holding substantial discussion on this topic on its discussion page. (I cringe at the capitalization, but it follows the Board resolution's use, and legal folks seem to like Significant Noun Phrases displayed in Capitals to emphasize their Importance.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Village Pump can be only the startpoint for a issue in a wide scope. I love your idea, JeffQ. --Aphaia 04:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

As we have Category:Living people, how about categorizing dead people by how long they have died, like more than 25, 30, 50, 60, 70, or 100 years? I suggest this to aid copyright enforcement. Quotes from public domain works have no copyright concern, but the whole works belong to Wikisource. Quotes from copyrighted works are major concerns.--Jusjih 16:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Having "how long they have died" categories means we need to run a bot on every new year? Well, point taken, I suppose however "death year" categories could serve this purpose better. On German Wikiquote, people have birth/death year categories. I don't oppose we have such too. --Aphaia 04:53, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

That would be a lot of bureaucracy, not to mention a lot of work adding categories.--Poetlister 21:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Just for clarification what do you mean with "that", Poetlister? Death year categories? As for EDP, if the Board think we should, we need to make it up. Or they will come to delete all fairuse materials in a year. However there is a room to think they meant only images and sounds, and not text, while I don't agree on this understanding personally. If we really need to make our policy about that, we may ask them more clarification. --Aphaia 07:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant dead for more than 25, 30, 50, 60, 70, or 100 years, not dead for 1, 2, 3, 4, ......, 99, 100, ...... years. As I administer Wikisource, I hereby tell you that users there have not thought of categorizing authors' years of deaths, but I can pass your idea of "death year" categories thereto so we need not have a bot to make updates. As we have 9000+ articles here, categories for dead people are useful.--Jusjih 15:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

As for ongoing category maintenance to make it easy to determine who's been dead for a certain time, like 75 years, can we not have something like Category:People dead for at least 75 years? Its members could be categories like Category:1931 deaths, Category:1930 deaths, etc., whose members would be everyone who died the specified year. That way, all we would need to do is add one "YEAR deaths" category each year to the collective "dead for at least" category. Anyone who died 74 years or less ago would not be in there, and there would only be a year's worth of uncertainly because we couldn't add a whole year's deaths (e.g., 1932) until the current year (e.g., 2007) had finished. If we needed several categories like "People dead for at least X years" to handle different copyright laws, we could have them, and it would still only take one edit per year per category, for presumably only a few categories.

Of course, to do this, we need per-year death categories for all people. It would also be wrong to assume that this would solve the copyright question, as there are people whose copyrights expired or were yielded long before X years, and some, I believe, whose estates have been able to maintain extended copyrights. Just because we can doesn't mean we should. If we do, we should be aware of the limitations (which I frankly don't know). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Copying digitized public domain documents from Google Book Search

Returned Wikiquotian DW has been very busy in the past day, apparently copying — into over 100 theme articles, most of them new — the entire contents of Louis Klopsch's Many Thoughts of Many Minds: A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Land (1896), as digitized into PDF format by Google Book Search. Although one can infer from "About Google Book Search" that this book is in the public domain (especially given its age), I have not yet found any clear statement from Google whether it allows this republishing in a new form to be copied freely. Without a clear license statement from Google, this use of this work, even though the original may be public domain, could actually be a copyright infringement against Google.

I have asked DW to temporarily halt his/her additions while I try to find out more from Google. (Most of their legalese is related to avoiding their own infringement lawsuits from still-copyrighted works, so they don't appear to have made any public notice about their automatic presentation copyright of their PDF versions of public-domain works.) If anyone has more specific official information about Google's licensing of this kind of material, please let me know. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any problem if the book is out of copyright. They don't have any right to stop anyone using the form of the original (i.e. the choice of quotes). Google would only have any copright claim if they had put anything creative into it, e.g. adding extra quotes. If they have presented a faithful copy, then they have added nothing of their own. I notice the quotes have been put into WQ as unsourced. This is surely incorrect, as there is a source, the book. Tyrenius 02:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Your opinion sounds logical, Tyrenius, but I'm not willing to risk Wikiquote on the belief that it's legally accurate. I'd much prefer either a statement from Google (for which I've emailed them) or a position from the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm concerned that the vast amount of Google work that went into creating not only web pages but PDFs for this material might be treated just as any old-world publisher's copyrights on a new publication of a PD work, which one might get sued for photocopying or scanning it in, as it clearly undermines the marketability of the product. As far as the "unsourced" listing goes, I was going to make that point (and a request to cite edition and page numbers) to DW, whose last Wikiquote work was circa 2004 (a much less formal time), but I was more concerned about focusing on the legal issue first. I feel optimistic that this will work out in our favor, but let's be sure about it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Greetings. Friendly neighborhood intellectual property lawyer here. Tyrenius has hit it square on the head. Any book published before 1923 is in the public domain. Period. Any person can use the content of a public domain work for any purpose, without attribution, and without regard to where the work was found. The presence or abscence of a license statement from Google is utterly irrelevant. Google has no more right to claim any legal interest in any scanned public domain book than it has to claim ownership of the Mona Lisa because you can come up with images of that painting through a Google image search. Cheers! BD2412 T 03:35, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

If this is true, then how can modern publications of Shakespearean plays or the annals of Sherlock Holmes cite a copyright? I think I know at least two reasons, but I'd like to hear a legal opinion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The only reason why such works could assert a copyright is if the presentation adds something that is subject to copyright protection. A book of quotations is an excellent example - the quotes themselves are not owned by the publisher of the book, and in fact are in the public domain (or else the publisher would not be able to use them absent authorization from the persons quoted). But the selection and arrangement of quotes can be protected for the regular term of a copyright. The presentation of Shakespeare's plays (pagination, font, indent styles) may potentially effect the reading of the play enough to allow that particular arrangement to be protected, but that provides no protection whatsoever to the text, which can still be used by anyone for any purpose. There's a fairly famous case, West Publishing v. Mead Data Center, 799 F.2d 1219 (8th Cir.), in which the court found copyright infringement where Lexis provided copies of cases complete with citations to page numbers for those cases in West's law reporters. The cases themselves are eminently in the public domain. But all of this is moot if we're talking about a collection of quotes published before 1923 (in the same sense, West's copyright interest in its page numbers will expire 95 years after the date of publication, because West is a corporate entity). Hope this helps. Cheers! BD2412 T 04:43, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation and cited example. My concern would be that Google Book Search, having produced a new publication of material that itself is in the public domain, retains a copyright on its presentation. I see two elements. First is the question of standard styling. In this, Google should have no rights, as it is merely presenting the original styling of the now-public-domain work.

The second is more worrisome: that of electronic formatting, which vastly simplies wholesale copying of material. Even if we adapt the material to our formatting (voiding any standard presentation copyright concerns), it is undeniable that 95+% of the work is getting the material into electronic form, which Google appears to have done in this case, not Wikiquote or its editors. Were I producing such a work and wanted to make money from it, I would want to make the argument that electronic text reproduction is substantially more significant than mere pagination and numbering in terms of providing a unique, usable, saleable work to my customers/clients.

Fortunately, Google seems to be taking the opposite approach — that its work should be freely available. My concern is that they spend so much effort avoiding copyright lawsuits, they don't include any formal statement of what their own licensing policy is. Wikimedia, which has similar stated goals of making information freely available, still makes their licensing explicit; Google doesn't. I can see four ways for the problem to be arguably resolved:

1. We can find a specific statement in the U.S. legal code (at least) that electronic reproduction is not in itself a form of presentation that is copyrightable.
2. Someone can state a legal case where someone tried to sue for copyright infringement of an electronic publication of a public-domain work, and lost.
3. Google cites a specific free license compatible with Wikimedia's needs.
4. The Wikimedia Foundation states that it believes electronically produced public-domain documents are still fully in the public domain.

If I can get any one of the four (or an equivalent formal position), I'll shut up about this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:50, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

As to your points: (1.), production in an electronic format is, in fact copyrightable (see Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994)), so that won't help us here; however there is (2.), certainly precedent for public domain work staying in the public domain. In the widely lauded case of Hearn v. Meyer, 664 F. Supp. 832, 847 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), a lithographer tried to assert copyright to lithographic reproductions of images from the original (by then in the public domain) Wizard of Oz books. The Court said there is no copyright protection for "slavish copying" of the original, even if the colors were more vibrant. Converting the printed page into an electronic copy of the printed page is about as slavish as you can get, so it is highly, highly doubtful that Google could assert copyright protection as to these scans.

By the way, (3.), I could find no citation by Google to a free license (or any other license); and (4.), as for hearing from the Wikimedia Foundation, please note that Wikimedia Foundation general counsel Brad Patrick has "announced [his] resignation March 22, 2007, effective March 31, 2007." So it's going to be a while before we get any legal opinions from the Foundation. Cheers! BD2412 T 16:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

That's bad news about Brad Patrick. I imagine a reply from Google will take at least a few days. As far as "slavish" copying, I understand the content aspect, but I believe it would be disingenuous (not of you, but legally) to argue that converting typeset images to computer-searchable text is "slavish". It's pretty obvious that few advances in technology have more of an impact on the marketability of even the oldest texts. Digital text is a phenomenally powerful publication method, literally transforming the publishing industry as we know it. I can't believe no one will try (or even has tried) to make a point of this in the courts. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, the cases I have seen have been concerned with the opposite argument - in the Napster cases, defendants argued that no copying was involved at all because downloaders were simply legitimately exchanging their analog recordings for digital recordings in the same way that someone videotaping a TV program is changing the broadcast signal to a recording. That argument didn't fly with the courts. Also, in New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001), freelance writers sued the paper for providing access to their work through a searchable electronic database. This was deemed an unauthorized derivative work, as the writers had only licensed the paper to publish their works in print. Google has never asserted ownership over any of the works it has scanned, but has consistently argued in court that it's use is a fair use (although this argument need not be made for public domain works). There is a case, Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp., in which source code was held to be protected by copyright, but the source code was itself an original work of authorship, and not a means of reproducing work already in the public domain. BD2412 T 19:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Google hasn't — and can't — assert ownership of any works they've scanned, but what they present at Google Book Search has an implicit presentation copyright. As I understand copyrights, they automatically have one for any value-added derivative elements unless (A) they explicitly release them into the public domain; or (B) those elements are specifically not copyrightable. They have not done (A), and I'm concerned that there is no presentation element in history more value-added than digitized, searchable text. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:46, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

A lot of their digitized, searchable text is crap which is need of heavy editing to correct its flaws and scannos. More importantly, they haven't done anything which anyone else with a scanner and the right software couldn't do (although they've done quite a lot of it). Bear in mind, if Google actually owned a copyright in a scanned, digitized version of, say, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, then Google would have the legal right to prevent any other person from making his own scanned, digitized version of the same work. Cheers! BD2412 T 22:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Regardless of the outcome of the copyright issue, these quotations present another problem: they are all unsourced, often by last name only. A great many red-linked names have been created; some of these surnames leave more than one possibility for the identity of the person being quoted. Even when last names create an internal link, it is not a guarantee that a correct link has been made. There has been a tendency among editors, especially in the last several months, to create redirects out of surnames only. Some of these redirects have had to be deleted on the grounds that the surnames (Chamberlain, Pitt, etc.) could be linked to more than one person.

It's been our aim, although not our consistent practice, to avoid treating quotations as sourced because they have been found in collections (books of quotations, online quotation lists, calendars, etc.) which do not reference primary sources for what they cite. These quotations, if accepted, will be merely attributed, i.e. unsourced and will create a good deal of work to make them otherwise. However helpful the intentions of those who would add such quotations, I wouldn't like to think this is setting an example for other contributors to use. - InvisibleSun 06:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to agree on the necessary distinction between "sourced original" and "sourced attribution". I haven't noticed a significant push to use "Attributed" for "sourced attribution", but if we are making a concerted effort to do this, I applaud it. One of the reasons I at least have been dragging my feet on working on Wikiquote:Sourcing is that I haven't yet assembled an argument on how to make such distinctions. Somewhere in my offline notes I have a pyramid of sourcing that lays out five levels (I think) of sourcing. Between these levels and the evolving connotations here of "Sourced", "Attributed", and "Unsourced", we have some work ahead to select relatively straightfoward terminology that can be easily understood (or looked up), nicely organized to make this distinction in each article, and presented in a way that encourages the missing information to be readily added by others. Meanwhile, while sourcing with a professionally published quote book is better than no source (unlike sourcing with other quote websites, which aren't reliable sources), we still greatly prefer original works whenever possible. As InvisibleSun suggests, many quote books don't do any better in sourcing than the websites! An added benefit to citing the original source is that a obtaining such a well-sourced quote isn't a copyvio if we cite the source in a Wikiquote form to avoid the presentation copyright issue. (There's the small issue of intentional errors introduced by some works to identify material copied from them, but we would expect our verifiers to fix those errors over time, anyway.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:13, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Two points: if someone had an original hard copy of this book, or a self-made photocopy, there would be no copyright issue so I can't see tha tthere's one because Google has photocopied it. Secondly, I don't think that finding any old printed source is sufficient to make something a sourced quote. If someone writes a book, even if it is published by a reputable publisher, and makes an aside that "I think Smith said ...", I would not accept that as a source.--Poetlister 09:35, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

There is a world of difference between an imperfect personal copy of something and a globally published digital copy of something. This is exactly the same thing that allows individuals to have home tapes of broadcast shows but prevents an organization from legally screening the same show for an audience without copyright-holder permission. And even that personal-copying right has been severely undermined by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and is being actively, legally thwarted by recording-company imposed restrictions on modern recording devices. It shouldn't be hard to see the parallel between the industry-transforming impacts of digital recording for audiovisual materials and perfectly copied, searchable books. Google is not just making photocopies; it has produced an entirely new means to use these works by downloading them and searching them, something of which no pre-computer copying mechanism had any comparable capability. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Not quite my point. What's the difference between copying an original, and copying a perfect copy? In neither case are we producing a facsimile on Wikiquote, just transcribing selected words into a different format. And many modern photocopiers work by producing digital copies and printing them.--Poetlister 10:35, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue that started this topic was that someone was copying, not "selected words", but "the entire contents" of a book, made possible by Google's substantial derivative work — "this republishing in a new form", i.e., a copy-and-pasteable version of the book. It is not merely a "facsimile" or photocopy, and our pretending not to recognize the fundamental difference between the an image and C&P text won't fool anyone. This entire discussion is beginning to feel like the furious disagreements over a publisher's rights to non-original material in m:Wikiquote FR/Closure of French Wikiquote — just before the project was shut down. The only material difference I see is that Google hasn't made its position clear. I do not think it is unreasonable to insist we get some clarification before we do exactly the same thing that fr:WQ did — copy an entire "database" (in the form of a PDF document). The original may be public-domain, but the only reason our editors can easily and swiftly add this entire work to Wikiquote is because of Google's automatically presentation-copyrighted work, which is not credited in any way. We are not transcribing material out of digital images of pages; we are copying it out of Google's copy-and-pasteable text. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The French WQ situation is not comparable, because (it seems) a company had compiled a particular selection of quotes. This precise selection is copyright as an original work (but not the individual quotes within the selection). Google have not made an original selection, so the selection as such is not copyright. Jeffq, you are arguing that google have come up with an innovative technology, which you are concerned may be copyright, but we are not copying their technology - only the material which it has made available. It doesn't matter what technology they have used to make it available, they still can't claim any copyright whatsoever on the original selection. If they have modified the original content, then they would have some claim. The fact they state that it is an accurate copy (I understand) is an admission that they have not added any content. Tyrenius 01:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Have the courts been able to draw a distinct line between technology (patentable) and style (copyrightable) when it comes to electronic media? My impression is that most judicial systems are so ignorant of technology that they can't see through some of the most obviously disingenous arguments (well, obvious to computer-industry people) made by opposing parties, and wind up effectively ceding their judgment to duelling "experts". I make these arguments precisely because government really doesn't know what to make of this brave new world, especially when the people creating it don't really know where they're headed, either. But I'll stop fighting this point in this forum, and concede that we probably have enough arguable wiggle room to use these Google documents in their entirety in the total absence of official statements from any of the parties. There's still the issue of primary sources (original works) vs. tertiary sources (quote books), but that's a different argument. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

10K milestone

Soon (or later) we'll reach 10,000th articles. Do you think it is a good idea - to issue idea to issue a press release about our reaching the 10K milestone? - to have a contest of predicting "when we reach the milestone"?

As for the latter, if we have a such, I would like to award the winner (the editor who predicts the nearest date) something neat in Japan (perhaps artifact or postcard set). Thought? --Aphaia 17:04, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that there would be much press interest in our 10,000th article - it's not like Wikipedia's 1,000,000th article. As for the date, that is too easily manipulated - a fast-working editor could create dozens of articles to speed things up.--Poetlister 19:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

A really fast working editor could create dozens - even hundreds - of really crappy articles in a few hours. BD2412 T 21:36, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there's not really much point in a press release; Wikiquote hardly has the appeal, or the attention, of Wikipedia. I also think that a contest isn't really necessary or wise; as has already been said, it's far too easy to game the system. Some unofficial guessing might be fun, but an official or semi-official thing, especially with a prize, is probably a bad idea. —LrdChaos (talk) 21:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not big on milestones, except as an excuse to party. As far as gaming the system, it'd be a piece of cake to do this with a single decent article — and (currently) 266 more year placeholder pages, which could be mass-created to allow the editor to time creation of the the 10,0000th article perfectly. Not very sporting, but the pages would all be useful. (I'm just an all-around spoilsport these days, eh?) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I feel very differently from most of the other users here, Aphaia. I believe that we should have a press release (they are just there for the press if they would wish and are just like an extra article on Meta or WMF). Even though I think we should aim for quality, not quantity, a contest would also be pretty interesting as well, it may just be hard to determine who exactly created it. Basically, I am in support of everything you proposed. Cbrown1023 talk 22:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, so, the majority don't think the contest as a fun, for several reasons?

And it is thought the milestone itself as no interest worthy to issue a press release, a mail sent to the press or a webpage on the project? (In Wikimedia project, both types are called in the same name). I don't think it would be an interest for the press (most of press releases which the Foundation issued were not interests of the media, honestly) though, it would be a good occasion we try to touch them. But if the majority wouldn't like this kind of approach, I am not stick to the idea strongly.

Does anyone oppose the coverage on the website News section? Commons people issued a press release their RSS feed of picture of the day and asked us/Communications Committee to cover it on the Foundation website. The news section has covered some major milestones, and the first 10K at Wikiquote could be within its scope in my opinion. --Aphaia 12:44, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I support that proposal. Cbrown1023 talk 22:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about being a sourpuss. Don't let my reservations stop either a contest or a press release. Just because I'm not into that stuff doesn't mean Wikiquotians shouldn't have some fun and celebrate! And it's certainly worthy of reporting within Wikidom. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, you are always nice :) Well for good public relation, it is worthy to consider to keep our line appropriate; if it doesn't fit our reality, it would be more over-balanced from the outsider view. A special page in Wikiquote namespace with other information about the whole project could remain within the line, I suppose, but at this point I would also like how you fellow Wikiquotians feel. --Aphaia 04:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

---

As for number of articles, please join the discussion at #Quote of the Day/Year. Cheers. --Aphaia 13:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquote:Press releases/May 2007 - rather for the record, but I think it is worthy to take down a note. Feel free to expand it! --Aphaia 16:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Ibid and other formatting problems

moved to Wikiquote talk:Templates

Macrons, circumflexs, etc.

I don't get on here that much, but I realized that the macrons I use for Japanese-related articles (mainly anime and manga-related articles, like Bleach) have disappeared. They used to be located underneath the save button, but they're not there anymore. Can someone please explain where they went? Thanks in advance. // DecaimientoPoético 21:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

You mean "Insert" buttons beneath the edit window? I have letters with macron between letters accent circumflex and esszett (German letter) ... --Aphaia 09:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the insert keys. I don't have a keyboard like your's, and not many people I know have one like that either, so it would be useful to editors like me to have them put back up. Now that I think about it, why were they taken down anyway? // DecaimientoPoético 21:25, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid you mistook my saying. I meant clickable insert buttons beneath the edit window, not insert bottons on my keyboard. The buttons should look as the below:

Insert: Á á É é Í í Ó ó Ú ú À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü ß Ã ã Ñ ñ Õ õ Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ Ć ć Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ý ý Ź ź Đ đ Ů ů Č č Ď ď Ľ ľ Ň ň Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ž ž Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ Ă ă Ğ ğ Ŭ ŭ Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ų ų Ł ł Ő ő Ű ű Ŀ ŀ Ħ ħ Ð ð Þ þ Œ œ Æ æ Ø ø Å å – — … [] [[]] {{}} ~ | ° → ± − × ¹ ² ³ ‘ “ ’ ” €

--Aphaia 06:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry. Heh, I guess I wasn't paying much attention. Still, I don't have those either. Do you think it's just a computer thing, or something else? // DecaimientoPoético 18:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Could you try to access with another PC? I would recommend you to file a bug. --Aphaia 22:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Edward de Vere

Hello, I'm a newbie here but I'm an experienced editor (User:AndyJones) at Wikipedia. I was considering suggesting that the "Sample Poems" at Wkipedia's Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford should be transwiki'd to Wikiquote. My questions are, would you want them? If yes, what's the actual process? Anything else I need to know?

There's a bit of an acrimonious edit war between a couple of other users on that page at Wikipedia at the moment, so I'd proably annoy people if I made this suggestion without knowing my ground. 88.105.44.93 19:24, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Several points to consider when transferring these and other poems from Wikipedia articles:

• de Vere died in 1604 and wrote in English (I guess; I'm afraid I'm not very informed here), so unless the poems are translated from an old version of English, there should be no copyright issue.
• Wikisource is the place to transfer entire works like poems. We typically only want select phrases from works. However, it's hard to establish a threshhold for poems, as they are often quite short. If they aren't copyvios and they're short, you might try adding them in their entirety, but don't be surprised if they're winnowed down for excerpts. (Do please add them to Wikisource in any case.)
• Definitely include the sources! You could transfer the ref/references footnoting used by the WP article for these poems, but per the "Ibid" discussion above, it might be better just to include a 2-bullet source line below the poem or excerpt.
• Our current standard formatting for poems is to single-bullet a single line of text with the lines separated by HTML breaks (<br/>). (This allows the standard 2-bullet source line to work properly, while preserving the basic poetry formatting.) We're looking into better ways to format these, both for readers and editors, but we're probably quite a ways from any consensus. If you'd like to join our discussion and work on this issue, you might try using the new <poem> markup, or use the {{cquote}} template (currently also used by the WP poems, but only used for 1 current article here). But if you're just going to "drop them off", I'd use our standard format.
• If you don't use the formal Transwiki system, you should at least provide an explicit link in the edit summary to the WP article; e.g., "transferred sample poems from w:Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford". (Don't use a (piped) link label, which would obscure the origin which might later be deleted. Even though it's not likely to happen here, it's good practice to make the text of the wiki link visible in the summary.)

I hope this helps you and anyone else who might be considering such transfers. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

• Excellent, thanks. 88.105.44.93 22:00, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

mail contact

moved to Wikiquote talk:Contact us

User:PatPeter

Just wanted to alert everyone to this user, who has been blocked for a year on Wikipedia. He was making trouble and ended up on the Administrators' Noticeboard for messing around with categories, making homophobic userboxes, starting Wikiprojects in his own userspace, repeatedly trying to make edits to other people's userpages, making personal attacks and basically being unpleasant, but he managed to distract everyone from that by announcing he was going to commit suicide. I'm not saying he's going to do any of the same thing here, but it might be wise to keep an eye on him. Dev920 08:43, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey Dev, did you get my email? You got me banned for a year by telling everyone I said I wasn't going to commit suicide. What gave you that idea? What permission or proof do you have of this? Your lies about me are what got me banned from Wikipedia. I am still suicidal, and your lies aren't helping. Do you know why I resorted to insulting those users? They attacked me first. They assumed that I was seeking attention and leaked this lie into the administrator's message board. I do not know what your take on that is but in my opinion that is an insult, they did not ponder weather I was seeking attention, but boldly said This user is seeking attention the IP even put me in a vulgar category. They insulted me first is the message I am trying to get across on this post. PatPeter 22:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

1. For your first accusation I was only trying to help sort the categories.
2. I did not understand why my userboxes were being deleted on the spot so I remade them. The first was deleted by a homosexual Wikipedian so I thougth that was (what is the word for when someone does something because it pertains to them, like giving a job to your family member over someone else?). If I wasn't banned from Wikipedia I would have taken the link off as I tried, but was banned.
3. I put the Wikiprojects in my userspace because they were prototypes, and I did not know where to petition them, I asked repeatitivly but no one told me, just ignoured me.
4. The reason I made edits to other's userpages was because they put their userpages in categories such as Category:User templates, Category:Language user templates, etc. In the case they were trying to make their own userboxes and wanted to put that userbox in that category, so instead of taking the userbox and userpage out of the category I put it in a subpage.
5. Unpleasant. Really? And you are perfect? Spreading rumors about me thoughout Wikipedia just like the others. Do you talk behind my back? Post where I posted once and expect me to reply when there is no reason I might return to that spot? PatPeter 22:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Reviewing his contributions, he seems not to have been much of a problem here yet, except for unilaterally and without discussion replacing the standard episode numbering system for Red vs. Blue with TV.com-style single numbers, claiming in the edit summary "There is absolutely no reason to put [2.4], it only confuses the reader, instead put episode names." This does not bode well for his activity here, as his WP history suggests the most frequent accusations against him (other then the suicide situation) involve inability or unwillingness to see other points of view, which is pretty much a decisive failing in a wiki editor. However, we usually try to give editors blocked on other projects some leeway to see if they can work with the community. I guess we'll see how things develop. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

1. Thanks for telling me about this on my talk page, unlike those on Wikipedia, who did things behind my back.
2. What do you mean standard episode numbering system? TV.com? RvB is not even on TV. It does confuse the reader, what TV.com says matters not it is RvB.com that is and should be the primary source for the article. PatPeter 22:53, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
3. I can see others points of view fine when they are portrayed the correct way.

Actually, I was going to post tings to him that I was upset about but decided against it. So, he is not really completely innocent (as you can see by his contributions). Cbrown1023 talk 20:52, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

What? PatPeter 22:53, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Based upon actions on Wikipedia and a confirmation that the user is still suicidal, I have placed a preventative 1 year block on PatPeter. I hope he comes back when he is feeling better and less-stressed after the block expires. I suggest we cut off all comunication so as not to cause anymore suicidal thoughts or problems. Cbrown1023 talk 00:15, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

How has Wikimedia Changed your Life?

This message is being crossposted around village pumps and mailing lists - apologies if you receive it more than once!
Have any of the Wikimedia projects had an effect on you in real life, or do you know of someone, or some group of people, who use our projects in real life? If so, we want to hear from you at m:Success Stories - How has Wikimedia Changed your Life?. The hope is that this page can become somewhere to which we can point members of the press so that they can immediately get an idea of the usefulness of our projects. Please, take a look, and add your stories! Martinp23 16:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist

Another new MediaWiki feature: the Username blacklist. It looks a bit like giberish when you look at it, but I can assure you it works. :) Basically, the username blacklist disallows the creation of usernames that contain the regexes given and other items that are explained in the coding. We have to be very careful when adding items to it. For example, if we add "ass", it would disallow innocent usernames like "Embrassed Poetry Collector". The page should probably be a mirror of Wikipedia's because they have a lot more technology savvy than we do (probably because of their larger community). :) If you wish, you can test it by trying to create an account such as "Wikipedia admin" (or using one of the other words on that page). Cbrown1023 talk 01:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I assume you mean "Embarassed" :-) --Cato 19:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am sorry, it was late when I wrote that. :) Cbrown1023 talk 20:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

WQ:VFD

I'm posting this here because more people check it. I'm just wondering what's going on with the new VFD procedure. I, for one, think it is going well. I'm wondering about how you all feel so that we can get the new one approved and get substitue all the other templates with a bot. Cbrown1023 talk 01:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Seconded (though I haven't helped archiving yet on the current system ...). --Aphaia 02:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

It's fine, you do lots of other stuff. :) Cbrown1023 talk 02:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've probably been the big hold-up here, as I postponed the discussion closure and haven't yet posted the problems I found. I will try to do that sometime today so that everyone can see if any of them are worth delaying the official switch until they're resolved. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:59, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy with the new system.--Poetlister 09:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I also like the new system, and have been using it for a while. Assuming we are going to officially adopt it, I would like to again ask for the instructions for archiving completed vfds to be posted (as the instructions for nominating are). ~ UDScott 13:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just created User:LrdChaos/Closing a deletion discussion, which has instructions for closing and archiving VFD discussions. I think everything is in there, but if I missed something or I'm unclear, feel free to fix it or let me know. —LrdChaos (talk) 14:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, LrdChaos! This looks good - with one minor comment: in the second step (you might want to check the numbering), where you write "...and copy the whole line for the closed discussion", you might want to be more explicit about what you mean - when I look at the log, I can figure out what you are referring to, but it might be better to spell it out a little more (or even post an example). Thanks. ~ UDScott 14:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've edited it to reflect both your and my qualms. Cbrown1023 talk 20:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I just posted an outrageously long set of issues at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion#Concerns as we prepare to make the new system official. I'm not sure that any of them, at this point, are worth holding up the official change any more, but some at least should be addressed in the near future. I invite everyone to look over the list, either to contemplate how to deal with them, or at least to use list as a non-chemical sleeping aid. ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:50, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Unless there are any objections (there doesn't appear to be any), I will substitute all the {{vt}}s and {{vb}}s using User:BrownBot (with a bot flag, again without any objections). Cbrown1023 talk 02:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

i.e. I will be setting a bot to run and substitute the Template:Vfd tops and the Template:Vfd bottoms on all of the Vfd nominations. These templates were previously not substituted just in case we had to change something. The bot already has a flag, it just needs an approval that this task is okay. Cbrown1023 talk 16:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The proposed operation is fine to me ... however for the future operations, you would like to assure the flag as permanent? Just curious. --Aphaia 16:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The flag would be kept unless the community requests it be removed. However, the bot would not be run on a new task unless it was first approved by the community. Cbrown1023 talk 17:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I will be enacting the bot then. Cbrown1023 talk 18:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point out that a day and a half is not really enough time on Wikiquote to assume a consensus on anything. If one simply must act with this kind of haste (like for emergency fixes and such), I would highly recommend that one post, in these "if there are no objections" messages, a specific time by which one will make the decision to act. This way, folks who only have time to scan new posts and handle urgent issues can see exactly how urgent responses must be.

That said, I also have no objections to bot-executed subst'ing of existing vt/vb uses. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it was really a "no-brainer". The templates are supposed to be substituted, they only weren't just in case we needed to change something. You had previously stated that their was nothing in those templates that needed to be changed and Aphaia stated that it was okay as well. Your opinions both probably count twice as much as regular users (no offense to anyone else :)). So, I thought of that as good enough. Cbrown1023 talk 23:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:British Jews

moved to to Wikiquote talk:Category schemes

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

moved to Project talk:Quotes of living persons

Stub templates

Earlier discussion took place at Wikiquote talk:Stub

I find these all over the place in articles, often at the top, where they are an unnecessary intrusion. I suggest the best place is, as on WP, above categories, where they are perfectly visible, but associated with the more logistical stuff, rather than having a major place in the article. Tyrenius 03:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Our stubs tend to be rather different. Wikipedia stubs tend to be 1-3 brief paragraphs, maybe with a few links, which means the stub message usually shows up on the display, even for smaller displays. The primary material in Wikiquote stubs, the quotes, are often shown beneath an intro paragraph and cleanup tags, and just before a set of external links. This often pushes the stub message below the initially displayed page for all but the largest displays. Furthermore, 2-3 sections of dialog, which would still leave the article as a stub, will sometimes fill the rest of the display.

Because of this, we discussed long ago where we should put stub tags. (I can't recall the location(s) of the discussions right now.) It bounced around from bottom to top to just under the intro paragraph, often based on the strong opinions of the editors at the time. Since then, I think folks have just been going with what they know. It probably is a reasonable time to review this situation.

I would agree that they should not be at the top, as messages there should only be for urgent maintenance problems like {{vfd}}, {{no-intro}}, {{cleanup}}, {{merge}}, etc. The post-intro position provides a logical and less obtrusive place, since the intro paragraph itself is there merely to identify the subject and is not the meat of the article. The WP-standard bottom position is obviously unobtrusive, but unlike WP, we can't count on a horde of editors reviewing the stub categories to expand articles. I believe we need to catch the eye of casual readers if we're going to get help, and we won't with bottom-placed tags. But if unobtrusiveness and/or Wikipedia practice are more important to the community now, the categories do give us a means to call attention to this particular maintenance issue. I'm not invested in any position except keeping it out of the top. (That's my 2¢, which I'll remind everyone is a very tiny bit of currency. Feel free to ignore it.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the standard position is between the intro and the quotes; Jeffq makes an eloquent argument for keeping it there.--Cato 22:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't like visually or for reader comfort, technical matter interfering with content, so for my money either at the top of the page, informing the reader at least that it's not up to the required size, or at the bottom out of immediate impact, but in the middle of the material to be read is just ugly. Tyrenius 01:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Much as I hate to disagree with Tyrenius, I tend to agree with Jeffq. See J. J. Thomson for an example.--Poetlister 19:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Poetlister, much as I hate to undermine my own argument, I'm afraid my display (with about a 1030-pixel wide and 615-pixel high Wikiquote window) makes it possible for the Thomson article's stub tag to be visible in the intial page rendering, regardless of where it was placed. (You must have a smaller window than I.) However, Jurassic Park (novel) shows the problem for me. The current 7th Heaven should show it for anybody's display. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a desire for the template to be highly visible at the top of the article. I suggest doing it properly as with other such formal notices by putting it in a box, which clearly separates it from article content, and is much neater than just stray text floating around. Here is an example.[1] Click back through the previous 2 diffs for different colours. Choice of colours may be found here.[2] (I haven't altered the stub template, by the way - the box only exists in these specific edits for now.) Tyrenius 01:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Page malformatting due to sloppy HTML

In the past few days, I've had to fix one user's signature for having failed to include a closing </font> tag, and another user's post for missing a closing </small> tag. In both cases, these missing tags rendered the entire remaining talk page in tiny print (the font tag used a "size=2" parameter, the equivalent of "small"). Each of these posts either formed the end of a section or had material following it that started a new HTML block element. (For non-HTML folks, this means, roughly, that the browser assumes a break in the flow of the text.) The odd thing was that this shrinking of everything following the unclosed tags appeared only a week or so ago. One of the problems with with a post from November 2004, and I know from frequenting that page that the problem only recently arose.

I deduce from this that the Mediawiki software was recently updated, and it no longer automatically assumes the end of an inline (non-breaking) element when encountering a new block element. This is more like proper HTML, and is required (as are all closing elements) for XHTML. If I'm right, I would expect that quite a few talk pages and a number of articles and policy pages (especially old ones) suddenly have similar problems that need fixing.

This kind of problem will become more and more noticeable as software evolves and the world moves away from deprecated HTML toward fully-compliant XHTML. Editors using only wiki markup (apostrophes/single quotes, colons, asterisks/stars, link brackets, etc.) don't have to worry about this, because it's the Mediawiki developers' job to ensure all our wiki markup works properly. But anyone using (X)HTML in their posts, signatures, or other edits should be careful not to forget closing tags, or they will leave a good bit of cleanup for others to do whenever Wikiquote takes another (usually invisible) step toward more compliant software. (We can start by always including the slash in <br/>, whether or not we include the space before the slash. This is probably our most common failure to follow XHTML.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

de.wikiquote.org

Hi, can someone tell me, if Wikiquote is a Wikipedia project or a seperate project?

I wanted to add some islamcritical quotes to the german wikiquote, but the admin deleted it, because he said, it could offend muslims.

Is there a possibilty to fight against this censorship?

thx

b.kant -- B.kant 12:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Wikiquote and Wikipedia are separate projects. German Wikiquote and English Wikiquote are separate and autonomous projects. It means we are not in the position to speak about German Wikiquote incident. But for your information in general, while Wikimedia Foundation owned projects are not under censorship, defamatory will be removed.

I recommend you to talk with the admin you mentioned, ask the reason politely why your submission should be deleted. Again, it is an issue of you on German project, and not suitable for here, another language project.

For more information, see Wikiquote:About. Thank you. --Aphaia 08:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquote:Contact us

moved to Wikiquote talk:Contact us

Quote of the Day/Year

revived from the archive 2007/03

Shouldn't the Quote of the Day and Quotes of the Year be in the Wikiquote: namespace? Maybe move to Wikiquote:Quotes of the Day and Wikiquote:Quotes of the Year, or something like that. Koweja 02:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally I would love to. --Aphaia 07:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

No objection? --Aphaia 19:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I would love to move those two pages as well all other their subpages .... I think we can ask a bot operator for help, if we reach the consensus. In my opinion, those pages are not articles in the rigid sense, rather vote & project pages. I would therefore like to move them to project namespace (ns:4). How do you think about this move? --Aphaia 13:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I very much so support it (strongly). Cbrown1023 talk 20:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed.--Cato 22:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any subpages of the articles cited above. I found only the following relevant pages in article space:

• Articles
  • Quote of the Day
  • Quote of the Day archive 2004
  • Quotes of the Year
• Redirects
  • Quote of the Day July 2003
  • Quote of the Day archive
  • Quote of the Day archive 2003
  • Quote of the Day proposals

(Theme article Quotations and its redirects Quotation and Quotes are also in that alphabetical range, but are not part of this issue.) I would agree that all of these should be moved to Wikiquote: space. Since many related pages are already there, like Wikiquote:Quote of the day and its subpages, I think this may just be a legacy that hasn't been brought into line with our current practices. Since Kalki manages our Quote of the Day system, I would like to get his view on any potential problems here before taking action. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't much mind where these pages are located, but I'd always tended to prefer the simpler titles and had never been inclined to move them. I have just deleted some of the mentioned pages that were obsolete (and removed them from Jeff Q's listing). Though I have never been very concerned about it, I was inclined to believe that web searches were more likely to record hits for Wikiquote if these pages are kept in the article space, but that is of no major importance, and since everyone else seems to agree they should be moved, I have no objections. ~ Kalki 05:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I confess I just misunderstood where pages were located. Quotes by day/year are always in the project namespace, it is not of great importance for us where we put those two files regarding the count of article number (I think 2 to 10K could be ignorable). And since we have already the similar name pages on that namespace, we need to solve name collision/confusion issues now. So now I am rather neutral for moving, enlightened for its benefit thanks to Kalki, still basically I cannot think them articles though. --Aphaia 06:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

A note: I have restored the deleted article titles and crossed them out instead, as it is not generally a good idea to delete references (especially in someone else's post) to something under discussion, since it changes the meaning and/or scope of the post. As far as the importance of the locations, we have in the past moved individual pages to make the distinction between articles and support pages clearer, so this is a logical if not critical change. If there are no technical problems, we should do it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah! Now I found where I was confused ... there are 365 quotes of day pages e.g. April 19. I was confused about them, and wonder if they are in the right namespace logically. The relevance between date and quotes are bit looser than other theme pages. --Aphaia 18:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking about mentioning that, as I suspected you might have been thinking of these, Aphaia, but refrained because I didn't want to reopen that can of worms. The problem with the month-day pages is that they exist largely to allow us to use Mediawiki's ability to automatically reformat dates according to user preferences, like Wikipedia does. We struggled with what to actually put into the pages/articles for a while before settling on using them for the Quote of the Day system, which seemed to be the most logical use for Wikiquote. (I'm afraid this was one of those things that was ultimately executed by a very small group of people — Kalki and myself, to be precise.)

The problem is that, unlike normal articles, these QotD pages include not just reasonable article material (i.e., quotes previously selected for QotD, which is just another form of theme), but also the list of suggestions and votes from users. I've been uncomfortable with that from the start, but I felt it was an acceptable compromise between the needs of preference support, QotD, and article content. I recall coming up with an alternative, where the voting portions would be relegated to the talk page or a subpage, but implementation and conversion was complicated enough that Kalki and I went ahead with the current system.

Just moving these pages to WQ: space would break the formatting we've been trying to establish for quite a long time, and only just in the past few months have begun to fill out. Anything more sophisticated would take a lot of work. We might very well revisit this sometime to make a cleaner separation, but I respectfully suggest that we're already quite overloaded with much more important policy issues. (I know that I, at least, don't have the kind of bandwidth I had last summer to do another non-automatible mass conversion.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your consideration, all. So how about the below?

• We will move these page from main namespace to Wikiquote namespace:

• • Quote of the Day
  • Quotes of the Year

• These redirects will be fixed to their new destination (redirects over namespaces)

• Redirects
  • Quote of the Day archive
  • Quote of the Day proposals

• Date pages however remain still in the main namespace for a while, unless in a short term someone covers the expected fixing which occur after massive moving.

It is a transition rather than a final conclusion. If appropriate, we could however keep all pages as they are until we are ready to move those pages completely. --Aphaia 08:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Regarding This IP

I'm a student from Holy Trinity Catholic High School who is notifying all admins regarding possible vandalism from this IP. It is shared among many computers across the Ottawa Carleton Catholic School Board and therefore may be prone to acts of vandalism. I recognize the effort admins put towards making all kinds of Wikis safe havens, and I'd therefore like to point this out to admins.

Please take the necessary precautions.

Many thanks,
"Arrow" —This unsigned comment is by 72.1.205.79 (talk • contribs) .

Wikiquote talk:WikiProject Policy Revision

Last month we or at least some of us made reviews on policy drafts. Now the discussion seems to be in an end, I would therefore invite you to that page to make a conclusion of our review. Your comment will be appreciated. --Aphaia 16:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Cbrown1023 gave comments (thanks!). The core issue we are going to agree on is in my opinion if three policy drafts on the below are ready to be adopted to the community,

• Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Log
• Wikiquote:Image use policy
• Wikiquote:Blocking policy

since those drafts are endorsed by several experienced editors and hasn't suffer any opposition.

If haven't been involved, please don't hesitate to jump in the discussion :) --Aphaia 05:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Since April 21, there has been one clear support, no objection, so I tagged them as {{Official policy}}. If you think I acted too boldly, please revert it and make a comment. If there is no objection within three days, I'd take it your approval :) --Aphaia 22:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Anons

Based on the surprising statistics provided by Aphaia about our anonymous contributors and an IRC conversation with her, I think we should make some changes to our anon site notice and our anon edit warning (currently just the default message) to suggest that anons sign up and create an account. I think the anon edit warning (shown when an anon edits a page... so that they know their IP will be recording in the history) should be more like en.pedia's, where it is more obtrusive and suggests they create an account. I believe the Anon notice should also suggest they create a "free account" and link to the benefits. Cbrown1023 talk 16:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree we are better to utilize those messages more effectively to motivate our anonymous friends to register themselves.

I agree on that Anoneditwarning on English Wikipedia is more informative than ours, and am happy to borrow it from them. As for anonnotice, another possible message will be "you can help us today with donation". I have no preference to the latter at this moment. --Aphaia 16:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that that could be added. I also agree that it should definitely be added during fundraising. Cbrown1023 talk 16:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

As for fundraising, it would be better to blank it, so anons will get the same content with Sitenotice, and they cannot suppress it without registering <g> --Aphaia 16:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

---

"anonwarning" was imported, since no objection has come. If you find it later and don't like the change, please revert it. Your improvement will be appreciated as well feedback. --Aphaia 21:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good... I have also updated our MediaWiki:Anonnotice to include a notice about an account... I had had the donation part there, but the two ran together so I have hidden it for now... When we are less "account creation-minded" we can switch to the fundraising-only notice. Please critique the notice as you see fit! Cbrown1023 talk 22:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Images

We currently have 18 images hosted on Wikiquote. Uploads were disabled some time ago. Would it make for an easy solution if it was declared policy that all images should be sourced from Wikimedia Commons? Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 09:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest an amendment: "unless that image has a historical interest for the project" (considering some logo images; we can move images, but not history at this time). --Aphaia 17:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Fys, we are already working on that (at least I am). :) We have our Wikiquote:Image use policy worked out and will hopefully enforce it. Many of the images left are just assumed fair use and aren't really needed. Cbrown1023 talk 21:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree our Image use policy. I can think of no good reason to have "fair" use images here.--Jusjih 01:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Debates around formatting

Former "Talk:Simon Conway Morris"

Anyone else care to weigh in on the discussion here about the way that people pages should be laid out. I feel that I've exhausted my arguments. ~ UDScott 21:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I made my comment on that talk. UDScott, your argument looks me powerful and well explained the thought which is laid beneath our current formatting. --Aphaia 00:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Now a similar discussion has arisen at User talk:UDScott. Besides our boilerplates, have we had yet a document which explans the idea behind our current way of quote sorting (sectioning, preference toward chronological/alphabetical order to by-theme-sorting)? --Aphaia 18:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Practical joke on the user page - just funny or need to surpress?

I would invite you to give a look to this user page. It would be a surprise to some extent if you are careful enough find it a hoax ...

On the other project (Japanese Wikipedia, so the trend of the community may differ from us) some people have complained this type of usage of "div class="usermessage". So I would like to learn how we the Wikiquote editor feel it. If it is okay for all, we can leave it and let him or her put it on his user page. If not, we need to ask him to consider some modifications, and also need to revise our userpage policy.

Thought? --Aphaia 01:23, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with it. If you look at it carefully you can see that it can't be a real message because it is located below the page title. Besides, it doesn't actually take you anywhere, insult you, or do anything to your account or computer. Koweja 16:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I've often wondered why a small but noticeable number of wikians post these things on their user and/or user talk pages. I haven't seen any reason to do so other than confuse or annoy other users. However, as Koweja points out, it is distinguishale from the real thing — although it's very unfriendly to new users who wouldn't necessarily realize this. To date, I've not thought it enough of a problem to discuss with such users, although I would certainly understand it if others did want to bring it up.

A more important consideration in this case is that User:Saikano is apparently the same user as w:User:Saikano, who has actually been blocked from Wikipedia for unproductive edits, attempts to use WP for social networking, rants about child abuse, and pestering everyone to allow him to edit despite his unrelenting refusal to follow community rules and practices. His current user page, on which he just added another rant, appears to indicate he has come to Wikiquote solely to pester us now that he can't edit on Wikipedia. I suggest that he be asked to cooperate or be blocked. Wikiquote user pages have liberal allowances on what they can contain, but they must still serve the project and cannot be used simply as a soapbox. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for giving us the background ... now I think I understand its connotation. Since now, his edits are limited on his user page, and it doesn't looks productive (one confusing trick already brought up here, one of colleciton of his "quotes"). I am for JeffQ's suggestion, "be asked to cooperate or be blocked". Wikiquote should be a collection of quotation, not the place to play with our sister projects and their communities. --Aphaia 00:35, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Since the user made new edits (only on his user page), I put a message on his talk. I am afraid it sounds bit harsh, so your gentle follow-up will be very appreciated. --Aphaia

Estonian Wikiquote

Hello! Estonian wikiquote needs bureucrat or sysop, IP-s have started some bad work there and as i can see, noone has rights to delete the articles. It seems to me, i check the estonian vikiquote most often. So, i need either help or sysop rights.et:User:Avjoska

Hello, it is sorry to hear you are bothered by those vandals. But we cannot make you a sysop/bureaucrat. Please go ahead to meta:Requests for permission to request for sysopship either temporal or permanent. I'll also tell stewards Estonian Wikiquote needs help. --Aphaia 10:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion criteria - no quote

Please see Wikiquote talk:Speedy deletions#Addition of "no quotes" clause. I think this proposal reflects well our situation and worthy to consider. The discussion began in the early of this year but now seems to be suspended. --Aphaia 02:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)