Wikiquote:Village pump archive 5

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Originally posted to Wikiquote:Village pump.

Archive includes discussions from 2005-09 to 2005-12, except those which were continued into 2006.

Village Pump archive 5

Maintenance drive

Once Rmharman (if wrong, forgive me) suggested to categorize all articles, and someday beat the Germans (they categorized then all articles - I don't know the current exact situation). We categorized most of our articles with some exceptions, mainly thanks to MosheZadka. The uncategorized rest is a bit tough to categorize, and we need to consider. WQ:VP#Lists vs. Categories -- vote on requesting a new feature installed is another thought of categorization. Though we have now lists and categories, however we had formerly only lists. Perhaps lists will never die, but mainstream seems to be shifting to the categories.

On that page Moshe shows many thoughtful and interesting ideas. One of them suggests we can improve our internal links. According Erik Zachte based on dump on June 23, we have over 9.8 K internal links for 3500 articles. And we know most of articles of people contains a small number of internal links (to themes, for example), and most of theme articles do so (though they are linked to people's article). Same to TV shows, films, literary works and if we add internal links, it would be helpful for readers to browse the site. For your information, German Wikiquote has 3000 articles but 47K internal links assumingly due to their huge internal links between themes and people or other themes. I think it would be helpful for us to try to make our internal link network thicker. And it would be a fine candidate of our next challange after we complete to categorize all articles. How do you think about it? --Aphaia 10:22, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

If anyone wants to work on categorizing pages, uncategorized pages might be useful. Feel free to remove from the list articles you categorize. Thanks! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:39, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Hoping to draw some popularity, let me note that there are about 15 articles left to categorize, and most of them have some comments in which previous research I did is summarized. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

6 more articles to categorize, plus 6 articles I will nominate for VfD as soon as the backlog clears up somewhat. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:10, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Just looking, and those six would be nice to examine on VfD, I agree with MosheZadka. The left 6 are bit hard, but I think William Booth is a easily solved case; on Wikipedia he is classfied into "Christian leader", and he founded one Christian denomination, therefore he deserve the name of "religious leader" in my opinion. --Aphaia 09:07, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

The list of uncategorized articles still exists, but now only includes some in-mid-transwiki articles. Perhaps there should be a Category:Mid-Transwiki which they can go into until they are deleted. I estimate about 30-40 pages on main namespace are still not categorized, but as Special:Uncategorizedpages does not refresh, it is hard to find them systematically. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Accepting some unavoidable "uncategorized churn" (pages newly created by newbies, pages where categories were removed as inappropriate or by unreverted vandalism), we seem to have mostly categorized all articles. Four articles remain where there does not seem any obvious categorization and are not part of the "churn".

Main Page, Favorites, Quote of the Day archive, Quote of the Day archive 2004

I believe the later three should move into the Wikiquote: namespace, as they are more about wikiquote process than about wikiquote content proper (Favorites is more akin to Wikiquote:Requested entries than to a real theme page). Main Page can either be put in Category:Main page or it can be officially decided that it does not need to be categorized (after all, in a certain sense it is also a process page more than a content page, which lives in the main namespace for mostly technical reasons).

Points of reference: Aphaia mentioned dequote as a project that "categorized all pages". There, the main page is uncategorized, and the archive is indeed under the Project: namespace.

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:19, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I've just moved Favorites to Wikiquote:Favorites, per earlier discussions at WQ:VFDA#Favorites and Talk:Favorites. I had intended to do so back in April, but I forgot about it after some inconclusive discussions about possible alternative names. As this page was voted for deletion after its contents are distributed to appropriate articles, the name itself isn't as important, so it's now out of the way. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:13, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Jeff. Now there's only Main Page, Quote of the Day archive, Quote of the Day archive 2004. I would really like to move the archives inside the wikiquote namespace, and declare the "Main Page" as the only page which is in main namespace and left uncategorized. This would mean that wikiquote is "fully categorized" (as usual, up to "churn") ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The "churn" seems to be growing steadily smaller, too: over the last few weeks, it has been reduced from 20 to 6 (including the 3 above-mentioned non-churners). I consider this to be a great wiki of the "categorize all articles" movement :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:22, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Last steps

I've thought long and hard about this, and here are my suggestions:

• Turn Quote of the Day archive 2004 into a redirect to Wikiquote:Quote of the day/2004 (they have the same content, it seems)
• Put Quote of the Day archive inside WQ namespace.
• (Most controversial): Edit Mediawiki:Mainpage to point to Wikiquote:Main page, and turn Main Page into a redirect to that. As I've said elsewhere, the Main page really belongs inside WQ: namespace, as it deals with process and not content.

If we do these things, we can reach a state of "no uncategorized pages". We are pretty close to "no uncategorized categories" (2 uncat'ed ones are in VfD, and one will be deleted when we finish the great image purge, and the root category Category:Categories should be uncategorized). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I support the first two proposals, but strongly oppose the last; put Main page under Wikiquote namespace. I know some our sibling projects, mainly Wikitionaries put their Main page under another namespace than main one, but they have a reason enough do so - they need to create a page named "Main page" as one of their ordinary entries. But it isn't our case. And for me, "Wikiquote:Main page" seems bizzarre. All other Wikiquote places their Main page on main namespace. And for consistency I prefer to keep it under main namespace. As for categorization, some project have a category named "Main page", if we need to categorize our Main Page, we can put it under 'Fundamental' or simply 'Main Page'. --Aphaia 05:13, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems that your points boil down to one: "(almost) nobody else does that". I fear that this is a left-over from the legacy that MediaWiki (or at least the first things that ran wikipedia) did not have namespaces, and naturally the inertia of not moving the first page is significant. I know that nobody else does that: this doesn't mean nobody else wants to. Many people on Wikipedia want to do that, but things like that move slowly on a project the size of wikipedia. My idea isn't just to solve the categorization issue: it's also to solve such things as Main Page showing up in a list of all pages (whereas all other are quotation collections), it's about the Main Page by definition violating the "no self-reference" rule (we violate it a lot here, but when we'll have time, we'll fix those violations which are accidental, but Main Page should link to WQ:CP), it's about Main Page always being protected (some process pages should be protected, but it's nice to say "no article collection is permanently protected). I ask you, and everyone, to look a bit beyond the "it's bizarre" and "nobody else does it" and actually think if it's a good idea. Maybe it's not -- I am open to hearing reasons why it's inherently a bad idea. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

My argument has two standpoints: 1) personally I don't like it (sorry) and 2) grobal- and projectwide consistency over logical consistency Moshe points on the above. I admit his statement on logical consistency somehow makes a sense. Although I still prefer to keep it as it is for now. In my opinion, if something looks bizzarre or not is not a petty thing, specially for main page, since page view statistics show it has been the most accessed page on each project. So its appearance give the first and large impression to visitors, not only editors (though all visitors are potential editors). I am a bit conservative, but due to our project characteristics, somehow experimental in its core idea like free knowledge and NPOV but as for content, with "notable people and creative works", in short, a traditional approach what should be found here, too much bizzarreness wouldn't affect us in a good way, I'm afraid. And personally I love to keep frequently accessed pages including main page as simple as possible. It is linked from many places as "[[en:Main Page]]". or [[q:en:Main Page]]. For some important pages, consistency can't be ignored in my humble opinion. --Aphaia 06:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Links as "sources"

Please comment on Talk:Abortion#Links. It is a general issue about understanding "what is the source" and formatting rather than a particular theme. It could be moved to VP or Wikiquote talk:Templates, but anyway it began at the place. Thank you for your attention. --Aphaia 06:04, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, each quote should have exactly one visible source. The main reason for this imho is what you said about "easier to introduce inaccurate (and less important) sources". It doesn't follow from the "spare tire" argument that extra sources should be visible in the article - you could either put the extra sources as invisible text next to the primary source in the article (but shouldn't go crazy with this, as it increases the size of the article and is duplicated across revisions, though it's gzipped), or have a repository of sources in the talk page or sub-page. I propose that we add a wikiquote policy guideline that says that each quote should have exactly one source (or attribution, though the less optimal scenario of having zero sources for a quote is also allowed, but of course less preferable). iddo999 07:08, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I think the source should be the citation source where the quotation came from. And I can't agree on spare tire theory of Gordon. From my view then they can't be simply sources - and if the quotation didn't come from the on-line source, the offline source should be written there as source, and any URL should not be included. I assume Gordon confuse two concept, source and reference. Source is the origin of a certain citation, and not "further reading" in my understanding. Such links would be okay if they appear in the "external links" section, but of course there is relevance to the article and the reference on that URL is reliable and have somewhat authorities (Official site or good free collection as Gutenburg Project or database like IMBD are good candidates.) --Aphaia 10:23, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

The question of using offline vs. online source can be tricky sometimes, I think. Let's take for example a scenario where a book doesn't have an online version, but there's a website(s) that contains an excerpt from the book, in which the quote used in wikiquote appears. I think that there can be two reason why using the online link as a source can be better. One reason is easy verifiability, meaning that if this website is considered trustworthy, then using it as a source is a good indication that the quote is real. And the other reason is context, meaning that if the excerpt contains more than just that particular quote, then it might be useful for the reader. Still, such online link is not the book itself, so there'd be 3 options on how to present the source: either as the name of the book as raw text with this online link (as [1] or other such small form) next to it, or as the (exact) name of the book as a clickable link that leads to this website, or as the title from this website as a link. The 3rd option is the worst, and the 1st is best imho. If such "further reading" links aren't useful for verifiability or context etc. then there's no reason to use them - for example if it's from some detractor website, which usually means that it's both an unreliable source and that the context that it provides can be misleading. Anyway, that was my opinion. Perhaps others would comment here too, and then we might also set a policy on online links? For policy guidelines we might prefer to use a language that isn't very restrictive, e.g. on having not more than one source per quote, we might say that this the general guideline, but uncommon exceptions in which it might be useful to use more than one source can be considered individually. iddo999 13:42, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you all for reviewing my concerns. (I am the Gordon to whom you refer.) First, let me clarify that in most or all cases in which I posted several links, it is my best recollection that ALL of the links for the quotation showed the quotation exactly as it was listed on the Wikiquote website, that is, exactly the same, word-for-word, verbatim. Also, since you squeezed in three examples, please let me make sure I understand you. Do you mean that these are the three methods to which you refer?

• (quoting you) "so there'd be 3 options on how to present the source:"
• Example one, (quoting you) "either as the name of the book as raw text with this online link (as [1] or other such small form) next to it" You mean this? The Gordon Watts online book/website [1]
• Example two, (quoting you) "or as the (exact) name of the book as a clickable link that leads to this website" You mean this? The Gordon Watts online book/website
• Example three, (quoting you) "or as the title from this website as a link." The Gordon Watts online book/website http://GordonWatts.com

You say the 3rd is the worst and the 1st the best. If I understand you correctly, I agree. Also, let me comment on all your concerns:

(quoting Aphaia from the talk page) "it could make it easier to introduce not accurate (and less important) sources" I think that it could introduce accurate sources, so long as that is a strict requirement; Any editor who is careless with "extra" sources would be careless with "primary" sources, but I think that the source should be an exact quote, not a paraphrase, unless it is a "special circumstance," and them, I accept the suggestion to make a note or a comment about the source (since some sources are less reliable than others, as Aphaia correctly points out).

(Quoting Aphaia) "Sources mean "the sources from where the citator citated" in my understanidng. Not "where you can see it also, so it is really sourced" evidence." Correct; If we require ALL sources to be exact quotes, then this problem will disappear.

(quoting Aphaia) "And yes, in my feeling it is not beautiful. Specially if you want to print it." She provided a link to a printable version; I have printed out the Abortion quotes page, and I saw the long lines of text where the links were shown, not hidden in a clickable number. I agree that it reduces appearance, but remember: Appearance is already compromised by the introduction of one link.

This brings up the point that you make, Iddo999, "though the less optimal scenario of having zero sources for a quote is also allowed, but of course less preferable" Correct. You also say "or have a repository of sources in the talk page or sub-page." This is less preferred by me because as long as you have sources, it is best to have them in the "right place," that is next to the quotes that the sources verify. An exception to this would be if one web page has many quotations on one particular subject or person. That would be a "good resource." Besides, you all may not like my spare tire theory, but if you are driving and have a flat tire, you will soon change your mind! ;-o :-) (quoting Aphaia) "I assume Gordon confuse two concept, source and reference. Source is..." I know what a reference is, but I had decided to not add references, because we had not discussed this or reached any consensus. It was my intention that all the links I provided were "exact sources," not merely "references for further reading," but having references may be helpful. Also, again, I wish to thank you all for discussing these concerns. Whether or not my ideas are all accepted, I don't know, but I am sure that having a few additional links might be beneficial in some circumstances, so good luck on crafting policy. I have cast my votes, and expressed my opinion.--GordonWattsDotCom 23:39, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Here's an example of a book excerpt source (used for verifiability, not context). Again, even if we agree that your 'spare tire' idea is a good thing, you still haven't provided any reason why the 'spare tire' should be visible in the article, as opposed to repository in talk page for example, i.e. you didn't say why having it in the article is better. Usually the spare tire for a car is not kept in a visible place... I should also say that I think that your 'spare tire' argument is weak in the first place, because anyone can run a search for the exact quote, and get the websites that are currently available in the indexes of search engines, so you're not really providing any useful function, as opposed to picking a source that seems best, which does provide a useful function. Also, I stand by Aphaia's original observation that allowing multiple links would generally lead to lower quality sources, due to the nature of editors who are indecisive or lazy to review the sources and decide on what's best. iddo999 00:52, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

(Quoting you) "...you still haven't provided any reason why the 'spare tire' should be visible...Usually the spare tire for a car is not kept in a visible place." In the car analogy, the car belongs to the owners, who know where the spare tire is. Not all visitors to "Wiki" know the web site is wiki. (Thus, many visitors would not even know of the existance of "hidden comments.") For example, I am very smart (I think), but I did not know that Wikipedia (for example) could be edited by a visitor to the web page until I hit a red link, and then got curious and looked closer. "I should also say that I think that your 'spare tire' argument is weak in the first place, because anyone can run a search for the exact quote, and get the websites that are currently available..." False: You think that because you and I can use web search engines well, everyone else must be able to also, but many people probably don't know that you can search for an exact phrase by putting it in quote marks; Therefore, finding an exact phrase would be hard, and the search engines usually default to a Boolean "and" for an operator. That is, if you put in the phrase "Reagan did not like abortions," only web pages with that exact phrase would appear, but without putting it in quote marks, many web pages would appear that merely had all the words on them. For example, you might get a website that said: "That commentator said that conservatives like Reagan because of his stance on abortions....Other commentators did not address..." Then you say "...as opposed to picking a source that seems best, which does provide a useful function." What if the only link visible to the reader becomes a bad link. Then, how is it "useful?" Lastly, your argument about lazy editors does have merit: We are not paid, so "laziness" does tend to creep in and invade our brains. However, lazy editors would not even bother to put in several sources, usually, so why worry? However, if your argument about others' abilities to look up quotes is true, then why even provide any information about the quote? They can look it up. One thing is undisputed concessus: We need more feedback from other editors.--GordonWattsDotCom 03:48, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Let's see if I got it right... Because you're very smart and know how to search for phrases, it would be a good idea if you got paid (by whom? perhaps donations from those who appreciate your links?) for giving readers the benefit of having multiple links as a 'spare tire', in case some links go down?:) iddo999 07:41, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

One thing is undisputed concessus: We need more feedback from other editors.

How did you get there? On the one hand, there is your opinion. You're a contributor here, but your edits have been, by and large, confined to Abortion and trails thereof (various conversations regarding Abortion). One the other hand, there are two people who worked on many pages here who are firmly opposed to the idea of "spare tires". If anything, I would say that the "rough consensus" is that nobody needs these spare tires -- one link to a source is enough. Considering Jeff will probably abide by his words and not get dragged into the Abortion debate, and that I am pretty much sick of it to the point where I do not get involved so I will not say anything I will regret later, if Aphaia and Iddo agree on something here, it is quite likely that you will not get any closer to a consensus than their opinions. It is certainly not "undisputed" *anything* that more people have to weigh in -- WQ is a small community, and one regular contributor, much less two, weighing in on an issue of standard formatting is as close to consensus as one is likely to get. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

After almost a half month discussion, can we conclude no one supports Gordon's spare tire theory and we are better to get rid of those links (except one, if this is a legitimate and authorized source)? --Aphaia 19:30, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I think so. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 19:47, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Vote on literary works template

Wikiquote talk:Templates/Literary works has a vote about using quote marks in the templates. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:38, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Note that this is a very important vote — we are proposing to overturn Wikiquote:Quotation marks, a policy decided 2 years ago (almost to the day) by an earlier Wikiquote community, which mandated placing quotation marks around quotes. Although this vote is for literary works, it will likely have an serious impact on all of Wikiquote. Please take a look and register your opinion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I have put a prominent notice at the top of Wikiquote:Quotation marks to the effect that a vote is in progress to overturn it. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:44, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Pursuant to the unanimous vote, I've updated Wikiquote:Quotation marks and Wikiquote:Manual of style to reflect the consensus. 121a0012 01:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Should Wikiquote:Guide to layout#Introductory material be updated too? The fourth para says double quotes. -- Kevin, 10 Oct 05

I did so. But there is much more work to be done — explaining re:TV/Film formatting, for example. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:52, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Two pages on starting new pages

See Wikiquote talk:How to start a page. I proposed redirecting Wikiquote:How to start a page to Help:Starting a new page. I see no information that is currently better presented in the former rather than the latter. Anyone who has an opinion on the matter is welcome to voice it! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

There have been no comments on this. I am going to go ahead and do this, as the consensus seems pro doing it, and it is an easy change for any editor to reverse, sometime this weekend. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:02, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Much later than intended (~a month), I've done so. Please revert if you think the pages shouldn't be merged, and add a note on the talk page. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Voting

I invite all editors to review comment on Wikiquote:Voting and Wikiquote:Bots. An editor would like the community to have a vote if his bot (mainly creating interlang links) could be granted bot status. Your comments on each their talk will be appreciated.

In my expectation, we would be able to use those two documents as tentative policies in one or two weeks, if there will be no major changes and/or opposition. --Aphaia 03:56, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Since there is no opposition about vote, I opened a vote and invite all of editors to participate in. See Wikiquote:Bots#Requests for bot flag. Thank you. --Aphaia 18:25, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

How to write stubs

I've edited the wikipedia article on stubs to apply to wikiquote. There's a draft in User:MosheZadka/stub. Any comments are appreciated. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:55, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

This has gotten no comments, so I wish to stress the importance: Template:Stub and friends link to w:Wikipedia:Stub about wikipedia stubs. Wikiquote stubs are quite different (in particular, an article without a quote is considered the wikiquote equivalent of substub), and I am interested in changing the link to an explanation about stubs in the 'quote context. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Still no comments on the issue, or edits on the page from someone other than me. If nobody objects within two weeks (that is, until 22 Sep 2005), I will take it as implicit agreement that the current stub guideline is "ok" and move it into place (in the Wikiquote: namespace), wikilinking the word "stub" in all stub templates to this article. If anyone has *any* hesitation (even something as vague as "we need more time to consider this" or "at least someone else should review it before putting it up as half-way official wikiquote policy"), please comment (of course, more thoughtful comments identifying specific problems would also be welcome). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:25, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Some MediaWiki templates need fix up

Some of the Mediawiki Template, the one listed at Special:Allmessages, need to fix up, by an administrator. There should be no html tag in this template, but just use wiki sysntax. The problem of the arrow in diff came from this. Also it is needed that MediaWiki:Nogomatch be reverted gto their default. 82.54.128.217 13:02, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Secret identity

I am working a bit on our comics pages, and I was wondering if anyone has any good idea what to do re: secret identity. I can attribute, for example, a quote to "peter parker" or "spider-man": which should it be? In Spider-Girl universe (MC2), Peter Parker has stopped being spider-man altogether, except when she travels into the past, when she sees Peter Parker, and later meets him as Spider-Girl. Should I just go with customed/uncostumed? Should I just attribute everything to the SH identity? In Astonishing X-Men I chose the latter route, since many identities aren't secret per-se. As much as I love the new Marvel trend of "unmasking heroes", it is causing havoc with the quotage :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

When I updated Superman II, I used "Superman" or "Clark Kent" depending on how he was speaking. That usually meant "costumed or not", but for those cases where the identity blurs, I favor the attitude over the attire. (One can always add a context line mentioning the costume confusion if it seems necessary for the quote.) I'm not sure how much use that is to other characters. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried following something like that convention on Spider-Girl. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:53, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

"Verified" heading cleanup

I've launched a new cleanup project, changing articles with the old, ambiguous "Verified" heading so their quotes are either "Sourced" or "Attributed". They're marked by the {{cleanup-verified}} tag, and they can be found in Category:Verified heading cleanup. Most of these older articles also need to have their intros revised to remove the redundant subject heading, so this classification is a good excuse to do additional cleanup. I've put a couple dozen articles in there already (after updating their intros), but it's time-consuming finding them because, with Wikiquote Search disabled, I've got to use Google to find the articles. I invite everyone who would like to do some basic cleanup to take a look. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:06, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Update: there's now 72 articles in that category. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:45, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Kristian Wilson

Just thought I'd alert you admin folks that Kristian Wilson needs to be deleted. It contains one quote, and he didn't even say it- it's actually a Marcus Brigstocke joke, often attributed to 'Kristian Wilson' (does he even exist?). 62.255.64.7 16:24, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Please see discussion on its talk page. --Zandperl 19:45, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

forgot to log in...

My apologies for this question, I should have known better since I've been on Wikipedia for a while... I forgot to log in and made an edit on Margaret Atwood under the IP address 134.241.39.254. How do I get it attributed to me? Thanks! --Zandperl 19:37, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe we have any means to do that here. In fact, last time I checked, en:Wikipedia itself had explicitly asked folks there to stop requesting such attribution changes because it was too much effort to process all the requests. Sorry 'bout that. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Massive stub tagging

I've tagged about 60 pages which had 1-2 quotations as stubs. It seems that these are mostly fairly old pages, which nobody took notice of, possibly because they were not in the stub lists. I have no doubts that this is a relatively small effort -- there are still gobs of short articles with no stub notice. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:26, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

A related issue -- over at he.wq, they're having a discussion about how many quotes raise an article above the "stub" limit (the terminology there is different, and also in Hebrew, but that is the point). I don't know if there is clear consensus if there is a guideline here (in general, I've added it to 3 quotes and below, and removed it at 10 quotes so far). Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:16, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

My bad -- they actually ended up agreeing on "20" as the magic number. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:02, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

A public notice: a list of articles which are short and untagged as stubs appears in User:MosheZadka/shortunstub. Feel free to go over the list and mark those pages you think should be marked with the appropriate stub category. Move articles which you looked at, and decided not to mark to "Looked at" (please do not remove anything from the lists without tagging it -- if you think it should not be a stub, move it to Looked at please). The goal is for all the obviously-stubby articles to be tagged, and to have a clear list of "maybes" which can then be discussed in order to come to a consensus of what constitutes a stub. So far I have attempted to be conservative and not tag anything with over 3 quotes as stub. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Another public notice: I've finished going over the list, tagging as anything with 3 or less quotes as a stub, and then I manually tagged some more articles from the list of short pages as stubs. This led to a few hundred more articles being marked as stubs. Hopefully this will be of assistance to people wanting to clean up stubs. If anyone thinks 800 pages in "People stubs" category is a lot, please feel free to create subcategories (I would recommend "Authors", "Political leaders" and "Actors" as three popular subcategories). Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikiquote copyright policy

The only thing I could find on here about copyright policy was Wikiquote:Copyrights, which says that it uses Wikipedia's copyright policy. But I think this is not very helpful — Wikipedia's copyright policy in regards to text is "quote a little, transform a lot", to put it one way (quote a few things when important/necessary, rewrite text yourself as much as you can). This obviously can't apply to Wikiquote, whose entire purpose is to reproduce quotes verbatim. I bring this up only because I noticed on this site I noticed this particular bit of copyright case law:

"Not a fair use. A company published a book entitled Welcome to Twin Peaks: A Complete Guide to Who's Who and What's What, containing direct quotations and paraphrases from the television show "Twin Peaks" as well as detailed descriptions of plot, character and setting. Important factors: The amount of the material taken was substantial and the publication adversely affected the potential market for authorized books about the program. (Twin Peaks v. Publications Int'l, Ltd. 996 F.2d 1366 (2d Cir. 1993).)"

Now I'm not a lawyer, but a ruling like this would seriously affect some of Wikiquote's articles relating to movies and television shows. For example, look at Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In another bit of fair use case law on that page, a book of Seinfeld trivia was called "not fair use" because it used a mere 41 quotes from the TV show. Clearly some guidelines should be set up for Wikiquote users and placed in an easy-to-find location. While Wikiquote seems to share some copyright issues with Wikipedia, it has a number of its own, specific issues which should be addressed on here somewhere, lest we expose the Wikimedia Foundation to a powerful legal vulnerability. --Fastfission 00:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

A potential hazard

It is not far from us; see m:Closure of French Wikiquote carefully and input your opinion; we know some persons who would like to put (possibly their own) "quote sites" materials and the issue is not so far from our situation. Also the conclusion of discussion on that page could affect the entire Wikiquote project. --Aphaia 15:50, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I asked around on #wikimedia. It seems the problem, as it stands, is limited to frquote. If there is ever a letter regarding enquote, I hope our community is active enough to immediately respond (with something like "please identify specific pages") and to remove any copyvios. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:59, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup templates

Should the specific cleanup templates point to the standard template? I have edited Template:Tv-cleanup to do this, being bold. I plan to do the rest soon. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Each type of article has both common and unique characteristics, so there should probably be links to both a general style page and the specific template. I haven't reviewed the general style pages recently, so offhand I'm not sure how that would best be done. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikiquote:Replies to common objections

An anon added this page, which had somewhat incoherent prose. I've rewritten it to be somewhat informative, but of course, more editing could make it better. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:48, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

New copyright page

Since nobody seemed interested in my comments on the copyright page above, I simply was "bold" and wrote a copyright policy from scratch at Wikiquote:Copyrights. Input, editing, etc. is appreciated. If someone could forward this on to whatever mailing list there is for Wikiquote, I'd appreciate it. I am not a lawyer, I should probably add. --Fastfission 23:54, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for stepping up to the plate on this issue, Fastfission. I've added a {{policydraft}} tag to the article to make it clear that it's a draft, and hopefully to encourage discussion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:45, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikiversity Vote

Voting has started for a new Wikimedia sister project proposal called Wikiversity. This is a request for anybody that is interested to cast a vote either in support or opposition to this new project proposal. The results of this vote will determine if this project will be started on its own seperate group of wikis as a Wikimedia sister project, together with approval from the Wikimedia Foundation Board. Discussion about this proposal should take place on the Wikiversity discussion page.

Bots

Please give a look on Wikiquote:Bots. There is a draft of bot policy on Wikiquote - how the community grants whom the bot flag. It was written in the last month and no objection has occured. I modified it slightly and added a new material - how we make a consensus about particular requests (similar to RfA). If there is no further modification or discussion within a week, I would like to start an examination of a bot flag request from an editor following that procedure. --Aphaia 21:01, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

User:JarlaxleArtemis blocking

Anthere blocked User:JarlaxleArtemis and left a note he is banned from all English projects. And she put a note on block log "to see his Wikipedia page". On belaf of which she did so is curently unclear. I asked her to give us information.

I haven't reviewed his Wikipedia editing yet, but he caused no trouble on our project as far as I know. And I have no reason one language project can enforce their decision to other projects in the same language without its consent. Since he hasn't been impolite on this project nor caused trouble, I think we needn't ban him from editing.

I told Anthere if she won't provide us with further information, I'm going to unblock him. But I don't want to make an action without consensus, and if the community support her for banning, I have no reason to make an contrary as a sysop (my opinion is stated on the above). As another possibility, if it was based on the Board decision, I have less interest to argue it.

Your comment will be appreciated. --Aphaia 09:25, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Aphaia. Not only has he not been rude here, he has done some useful editing. I see no reason to block him here until and unless he disrupts wikiquote. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:24, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I answered here User talk:Anthere. You may unblock him here if you feel so. If you do so, please be kind enough to remove any insult he may leave here, in particular in my talk page. I will block him on the spot here if he calls me again a fucking bitch for trying to do what I consider is my job. Aphaia, please also be aware that you can not at the same time expect from the board to resolve your issues with editors, and deny others editors to receive help from us. At a certain point, I think a bit of trust could exist for what board members do. But if you really feel this person is a good editor worth supporting, please do so. Anthere 11:14, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArtemis_2.

Link2 : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JarlaxleArtemis&oldid=23451756

Link3 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/JarlaxleArtemis

I've reviewed the two Arbs on JA and their copious evidence, and I have to agree that he's been a phenomenally bad boy on Wikipedia. But he's been quite constructive here so far. I concur with Aphaia about removing the block on JarlaxleArtemis here. However, I acknowledge Anthere's point that he might use WQ to continue ban-worthy activities against her and others across projects, as he demonstrated quite a variety of tactics to annoy and disrupt there. Anthere pointed out, in one of her postings to JA's WP talk page (which he seems to delete without archiving — not a good sign), that other WikiMedia projects do not have the resources and processes to laboriously review users as Wikipedia does, and implied that they may ban misbehaving users at the first sign of the kind of behavior that got them banned on WP. I think this is a reasonable compromise. As long as JA does well here, follows our policies (which are largely the same as Wikipedia's), and doesn't launch any attacks on WP folks from WQ, it would be a shame not to make use of his contributions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:48, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but be particularly careful of his respect for copyright, which seem to be fluttery. Anthere 12:05, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Most copyright problems seem to hinge around images, and we have disabled image uploading precisely because we could not handle that task. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all your input, folks. Anthere refers a good point; he is a trouble maker on English Wikipedia not only because of his wording, but copyvio images. And as far as I know some images uploaed by him on the other project (I think here Japanese Wikipedia) were also deleted for violation of project copyright policy. Besides the current problem, it would be not a bad idea to check his contributions on main namespace and former uploading, if exists. Aphaia 12:45, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

---

The images used on his user page, Image:Jarlaxle2.JPG is sated as fair use. But I suspect it is within the terms of fair use; it doesn't relate to the work itself. Aphaia 15:30, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Fair use usely requires that the work be discussed, and that it's source be clearly noted, neither of which was done in this matter. Anyway, JA made many helpful contributions to Wikipedia. If he hadn't been so extremely unpleasant in dealing with criticism then he might still be a valued member of Wikipedia. But he essentially ignored the outcome of the first Arbitration case, and has repeatedly violated the injunction of his second ArbCom case, and since then has gone on a major campaign of insults against various Wikipedia users. I wish you all the best of luck. Cheers, -Willmcw 03:23, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

VFDA

Discussion of changes to Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive, including the use of subpages to archive entries, has been moved to Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion archive#Need to restructure VFDA again. Please feel free to comment and make suggestions there. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:48, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Film/TV dialog separation

I believe I've come up with a simple solution to the ongoing controversy of delimiting dialog segments in film and television show articles. I invite everyone who has found this a frequent irritation to participate in the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Templates#Dialog separation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:11, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Vote notice

I have started a vote at Wikiquote talk:Stub regarding linking stub notices to the wikiquote page about stubs rather than to the wikipedia one. Your contribution will be appreciated. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:21, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Note: announced at the stub templates' talk pages too. Please let me know if you think it should be announced elsewhere. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:21, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Defamatory or privacy-invading articles about non-notables

We just received a concerted effort on a anonymous user's part to defame two acquaintances by creating "quote" articles about them. I speedy-deleted them (based on a Wikipedia SD case that we haven't implemented here yet) because I was concerned about how quickly these articles might be Google-archived and used for private vendettas, exposing Wikiquote to legal problems less controversial even than copyright violations. I concede I may have overreacted, but I think this is a more serious problem than vanity pages, in which anyone can get their kicks for two weeks while we verify that they're non-notable and purge such material. I've raised this issue for discussion at Wikiquote talk:Speedy deletions#Defamatory & personal contact cases. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:44, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the idea that pages obviously created as just a place to post invectives against acquaintances should be speedily deleted. ~ Kalki 23:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. And it was a right decision to delete those pages speedily. --Aphaia 12:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Another policy/help page in editing -- Marking problematic pages

After the additions of several ways to mark problems with pages (no-intro, cleanup-verified), I grew concerned that nobody will be able to keep track of all these. I started Wikiquote:Marking problematic pages as an overview. Please edit and/or comment ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

google qotd

The new "Personalized Home" google option has by default a 'quote of the day' section. When customizing, currently there're 4 options in the 'fun' section, and the qotd option is the only one among them that is on by default. Of course, google's traffic is tremendous (#3 on alexa when I looked now - btw, wikipedia is #49) - so if wikiquote's qotd was there it would have led to huge exposure. When I randomly looked at some entries of the website that google uses for its quotes, and compared them to the wikiquote entries, in every case the wikiquote entry was much bigger. Perhaps we could think of ways to improve our qotd archive aspects and try to get them used by google, leading to a lot of exposure? As google already uses wikipedia via answers.com (when searching for a keyword clicking on the 'definition' link). iddo999 11:43, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't customize my google search, so haven't been aware of that new feature, but it sounds interesting. iddo999, your proposals too. I have no idea what kind of technical solution can be found on our side, but it would be a nice idea to offer Google to utilize our collections, benefical for both side hopefully. --Aphaia 23:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

In terms of raw data, it seems to me that wikiquote is much better than the quotationspage.com site that google uses. You're right that some technical solution would be required for this idea, because our pages are just generic text pages, as opposed to atomized lists of quotes. I assume that we should try to sort things out among ourselves and see whether there're improvements that we could try, before contacting google. Or perhaps instead of contacting google, we should try to contact a smaller website like answers.com, that serves as google's buffer and doesn't allow wiki-editing. Perhaps we should consult the wikimedia people about which options might be good to try? I assume that they're the ones who dealt with answers.com and google. iddo999 07:47, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Posting obvious notability expectation

NOTE: This is a copy of a posting at Talk:Main Page#Posting obvious notability expectation. Please post discussion relating to updating the Main Page text there.

Many new editors create "vanity" articles (quote articles for themselves) in the main article space of Wikiquote, contrary to official policy and long-standing practice. However, some of them have raised the point that our introduction says nothing about quotes from notable people and creative works, and that they have to dig for such policy statements. The opening sentence of the main page currently says:

Welcome to Wikiquote, a free online compendium of quotations in every language, including sources (where known), translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information!

I propose that we make the notability requirement obvious by changing this to:

Welcome to Wikiquote, a free online compendium of quotations from notable persons and creative works in every language, including sources (where known), translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information!

I invite comments, questions, alternative sugggestions, and general discussion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Personally I am reluctant; because it is beyond my common sense - it seems to dull we need to tell people "almost no one wants to read your own quotes". But if this can improve current flood of vanity, I don't oppose. On my preference, the notability remark could be put as a second sentence "You find here quotations of notable people and creative works". Another possibe solotion is modification of the message at the top of new article. --Aphaia 23:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I've copied Aphaia's comment above to Talk:Main Page#Posting obvious notability expectation as per Jeff's suggestion to hold the discussion there. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 03:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

grace, as in prayer before a meal.

To-morrow, October 7th is when Canadians will celebrate their Thanksgiving.

We would like to see some general and unique examples of how peoples in other parts of the world might manifest their appreciation for their good fortune by giving thanks before their evening meal.

Thank you

Avril & Bob Aiken

bob_aiken@sympatico.ca

Pages for people vs their works

Is there a guideline hiding somewhere about when to have a page for each book by an author, as opposed to all on the page of that author? --- Kevin, 11 Oct 05

It's largely a matter of taste. However, if you have only a small number of quotations, it might be better to put them on the author's page, hoping that more quotations will eventually emerge from other works. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:49, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

As Moshe indicated, no established guidelines exist as yet, but I generally prefer keeping things consolidated as much as possible. Other editors have different preferences, and talk pages can be used for various proposals. ~ Kalki 22:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Agreed mostly with the above. Follow the Principle of Least Astonishment: if a new visitor was looking for a particular quotation, would she likely think of the title first, or the author? Often, the author is more famous than the work. (This is particularly true with longer titles: anyone looking for quotations from Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal probably already has a copy; the vast majority of users will be looking for Antoine Lavoisier or Benjamin Franklin.) Wikiquote generally prefers articles on notable subjects, and that usually means authors rather than books. BTW, please use ~~~~ to sign your posts on talk pages. 121a0012 02:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Syndicating an unlimited amount of RSS feeds

I have a quotations website, one of the most usable and comprehensive of its kind, which offers RSS feeds of all its content. That includes authors, subjects and the search engine too. Kat Walsh (of Wikipedia) asked me to redirect this query over to the Village Pump for a fruitful discussion, it is copied below. My essential request is that wikiquote or interested parties could use this content by syndicating it, presenting it in any format, and therefore building up a third party source of quotations by author/subject. Comments, ideas and first approaches would be appreciated in this thread.

> Hi
>
> I have recently launched RSS feeds of all my famous quotations
> collections, which produce feeds by author and subject:
> http://www.quotationsbook.com/page/21/Feeds
>
> Mine is the first quotations website to do so, providing applications,
> wikis and many other consumers the ability to freely use contextual
> quotations from a database with high integrity. There are fixed feeds
> as well as a feed that can accept any phrase or word as a search
> query. I would like to propose the usage of my feeds and data across
> the wikimedia network, specifically to create data that compliments
> existing content on many wikipedia sites.
>
> Kind regards
> --
> Amit Kothari
> www.QuotationsBook.com 

Thank you for your suggestion. I think the best place for you to suggest this
is on the "village pump" at Wikiquote, which is a community forum for ideas
and issues on Wikiquote; you may find someone there who would like to work
with you:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Village_pump

Thanks for your interest; I hope this is of help.

Yours sincerely,
Kat Walsh

--
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org

Personally, I'm not sure at all what you're suggesting. Are you willing to license the quotation collection in quotationbook under the GFDL or a compatible license? If not, then I'm afraid we're not legally able to make use of it. If you are, a clear note on the site itself will be much appreciated, to clarify any doubts. If that is indeed the case, I think I can manage a robot which will build prototype pages (using intro from the wp article, the quotes from the database and an unknown categorization) and will upload them into some kind of "staging area", where humans can move the quotes into the main article space (perhaps [[Wikiquote::From quotationbook/Article Name]] or some such). Of course, none of the quotations in quotationbook have sources, but I suppose an article with all-attributed quotations is better than none at all, and at least gives us something to start from. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:28, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks MosheZadka. My GFDL license notice has now been posted on the feeds page. Your idea to create a staging area of some kind for interim content would reduce a vast amount of stubs (authors and subjects), and the way to proceed sounds like the way you have it laid out. It then remains open for humans to move items into the main articles. The Wikiquote addressing notation also sounds very convenient. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you achieve this - my direct email is on the quotationsbook.com website.

Monobook lost underlines

Has anyone else seen the loss of underlined links in the past few days using the default Monobook.css skin (page style)? I find this quite annoying. I haven't changed my own preferences or any other style-related information, and en:Wikipedia still looks the same to me, so I'm thinking it's a Wikiquote thing, unless it's just me. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I believe I've seen this phenomena, but not with any clear, repeatable, observation. Then again, my Firefox/Linux combination sometimes has one-pixel rendering issues, so I attributed it to that. Speaking of which, it is probably a good idea to mention the platform/browser combination you're using. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, silly of me. I'm using Firefox 1.0.7 over Win2k Pro SP4. But as you suggested, the problem has gone away for me again. Oh, well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Just as an FYI ... I am using FireFox 1.0.4 over Win98-SE and see suppression of underlines dropping from time to time (i.e. my styling says "no underlining please" but sometimes all links appear underlined); this affects all Wikimedia resources to the best of my knowledge. Ceyockey 16:38, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

More on copyrights

There are a number of rulings in previous caselaw which indicate that large numbers of quotations from copyrighted sources is often found to not be "fair use". (see especially the Seinfeld and Twin Peaks cases discussed on this page). At the moment Wikiquote seems to have no coherent copyright policy or consensus on how things should be run, but in the meantime I created a small template which can be used to flag potential copyright problems. If you add {{checkcopyright}} to an article's talk page, it will add it to Category:Pages which need their copyright status checked. The advantage of this is not only to allow action once a policy has been decided upon, but also to allow people thinking about copyright issues to have some examples of potentially problematic pages. --Fastfission 16:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Please note that the Wikiquote:Copyrights policy cited in the template mentioned above is a draft policy; i.e., is not official practice at this time. Fastfission is correct in that we don't current have a Wikiquote-specific copyright policy, although we do have a coherent one — we use Wikipedia's policies. But there are some unique concerns for Wikiquote that may not be adequately addressed there, so it behooves us to adopt our own explicit policies. Discussion about this ongoing issue is taking place at Wikiquote talk:Copyrights. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Quotes for Wikipedia references

We seem to be short on controversial topics at the moment (ha-ha), so I thought I'd raise another one that I keep running into. Wikiquote has always been a compendium of pithy quotes; i.e., quotes that stand alone as interesting statements. But Wikipedia now regularly refers quoted material (which is often used in its articles) to Wikiquote. This makes Wikiquote a valuable reference for Wikipedia itself. Consequently, some quotes may be added to Wikiquote whose pithiness may not be apparent, but whose inclusion makes sense when a Wikipedia article cites them and includes a link to the relevant Wikiquote article. Have other people noticed this "mission creep"? Should we broaden Wikiquote's purpose to collect Wikipedia article quotes, so they can be verified by Wikiquote researchers who have the time and resources to review the WQ topic's sources? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:21, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't view it as mission creep. Wikiquote's purpose has always (in my mind) been to collect notable quotations. A quotation might be notable because it is pithy: but it might also be notable because it proves something. As an extreme example, what if we found a quote from an early work by Adolph Hitler saying something like "Jews are good people"? Certainly, the pithiness is near 0, but I doubt anyone would disagree that this would be an important quotation to add. As a disclaimer, I've already done such things as a wikipedia editor, using (perhaps abusing?) the fact that I'm a regular wikiquote editor. In a wikipedia article about the number of cemeteries in Sunnydale, I pointed to a Buffy episode quotations, then added a quote where Giles gives the exact number of cemeteries. Sure, the quote was a bit funny, but I mostly added it as a stable reference for a number. Also, I would like to point out that as few as we are, we are better at dealing with quotations than the wikipedia people: see for example the incomplete work done by the Wikipedia people verifying the quotation of "kill them all". As a last point, this might be the best way to recruit more editors :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm genenrally welcome those proposals ... a quote which is fun even if it is read alone from a notable person could be notable ... but a quote not interesting nor witty per se but proves something would be useful and hence notable in another way in my humble opinion. --Aphaia 15:37, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Rename/Move pages

I looked at Wikipedia's page on how to rename and move pages but it is too complicated. I created two categories and forgot to lowercase the second word of their title. Could someone please rename Category:Anime Series to Category:Anime series and Category:Nickelodeon Animated TV shows to have "animated" lowercased? Also, is there an easier explanation on how to move/rename pages? Thanks --Eeee 22:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Categories cannot be moved. You will need to create a correct capitalized category, then edit each article to direct to it. Then ask an admin, or ask here, to have the original and now de-populated, category deleted. I moved the two entries in Anime Series to Anime and deleted that category. Since Anime only has 12 entries it probably doesn't need subcategories yet. Rmhermen 16:32, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Nstab-main (again)

I talked to MosheZadka on IRC, and we've agreed among ourselves that the word "collection" is better than "article" for the button on top (next to "discussion","edit",...). If there is an agreement that the word "article" is not the best one for wikiquote, then MediaWiki:Nstab-main is where it needs to be changed. Last time I brought it up, only JeffQ responded, and he said that he prefers the word "article" (to "entry"). So right now, I guess it's 2 vs. 1 in favor of the word "collection". Please respond with your opinions about which word is the most appropriate for wikiquote. Thanks. iddo999 16:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

And just to convince Jeff, I would like to point to his helpful edit :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:05, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I prefer "article" but "collection" could be a candidate for this discussion admittedly, as well as 'content'; for me collection sounds better than 'content'. My other suggestion is just "quote(s)" (either quotes or quote - though it doesn't make a sense on Main Page). --Aphaia 17:54, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

The word "quotes" is actually a good idea. The word "content" was suggested before, but it sounds too generic to me, like the word "page". I personally still like the word "entry" best, but I prefer the words "collection" or "quotes" (or "quotations") to the word "article". More opinions, please? iddo999 18:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but perhaps the word "quotes" can be useful also for the purpose of keyword searches. Right now, when you google for 'name quotes' (where 'name' is the title of some wikiquote page), in some cases you don't get wikiquote returned as one of the results. But it's also possible to add the 'quotes'/'quotations' words in other places so that it would lead to search results, such as an invisible comment in the lynx template, changing the "/wiki/" part in the link address to "/quotes/", or somewhere else in the navigation/toolbox etc. iddo999 20:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

This seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem. Has anyone who isn't a wiki veteran complained or in any way been confused about the "article" tab? "Collection" is certainly more specific, but I see no compelling reason to break from MediaWiki's standard nomenclature without a compelling reason, based on evidence that novices are confused and that the cause is this tab. (I can also imagine potential confusion — might someone wonder if pressing this tab would perform a "collection" operation, whatever that might be? Hark back to your first days of wiki use to recall the bewildering array of links and buttons on each page, and how intimidating it was to realize you could mess up things by pressing the wrong one. "Article" can't be construed as an action.) "Quotes" is also accurate, but is a heavily overloaded term, referring to individual entry sets, articles, the general concept, the punctuation marks, etc. I'd be worried that our nascent help pages will have even more trouble disambiguating the term. ("Articles", in the MW context, unambiguously refers to main namespace pages which represent the project's primary content.) "Entry" is very misleading — in a quote collection, an "entry" is a single quotation. All pages have "content", so using this term loses the specificity of "article" for quotation vs. discussion and administrative content. In summary, I respectfully suggest we spend our efforts on fixing the myriad problems that folks have complained about — WP-directed help, missing policy info, unsourced quotations, etc. — before we start fixing things that aren't exactly broken. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I didn't say that there's a "problem", or that anything needs to be fixed. I just said that the word "article" isn't best imho, and that it'd be better if we find another word. I agree that it's a minor issue, if that's what you meant. I think that you're wrong regarding "entry", as encyclopedic and dictionary entries is common usage, and a dictionary entry may contain several definitions. I think that the word "quotes" may be that best idea. Any comments regarding the issue of keyword searches that don't lead to wikiquote because the keyword "quotes" doesn't appear in the wikiquote page? Thanks. iddo999 10:11, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I have never noticed any problem getting a Wikiquote citation from a Google search without a page-describing keyword like "quotes". I'm not sure I see any advantage in Google-searching anyway with renaming the tab, as I wouldn't expect Google to index this information, but I admit I'm not sure. A quick Google on "And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal" prominently revealed WQ's The Seventh Seal, with or without either "article" or "quotes" added to the search terms. (Note that any WQ article with a {{wikipedia}} link will include the text "article", so this remains a possible Google distinguishment even if we change the tab name.) Since that article includes a "Quotes" heading, I tried "i dream for a living" to find Steven Spielberg, but only saw WQ's link on the 1st Google page when I added "article" to the search. Neither the phrase alone, nor the phrase plus "quotes", presented WQ highly enough for a quick search. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we're engaging in SEO. I voted for "collection" (or possibly "quotations") because I thought it was a good header for someone browsing the site. If we wanted to SEO, surely we could make a more intense effort for WP pages to link to WQ? WP is very big on search engines, the linking text would say "wikiquote has quotations ..." and no issue of nstab-main would be relevant. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 13:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that there're many other ways to do SEO, and mentioned a few in my above comment. I raised it here because it seemed to me that changing Nstab-main is good both for SEO and as a header, but of course, if we decide that the best word to use is one that doesn't help with SEO, then it still should be used, because SEO can be done in other ways. Are you sure that wikipedia would help us with regard to SEO? I think that because the link to wikiquote doesn't appear as a <a href="http...> link in the wikipedia html source (because it's a template), it won't help with the seach engine indexing:( iddo999 14:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that google will index the word "quotes" if used as Nstab-main, because you can see it in the html source of a wiki page (it's selectable text and not a picture), and google searches do lead to pages where the keyword appear in the html source but not visible. If there's agreement, we could try to change Nstab-main as a test, and see how google behaves. I mentioned above that I meant searching for the title, not a particular quote. For example, if you google for 'thomas-jefferson quotes' you won't get wikiquote because the word 'quotes' doesn't appear in the wikiquote page, but when I google for 'mark-twain quotes' I get wikiquote as the 4th link, because the word 'quotes' does appear in the wikiquote page (in the external links). Regarding what you said above, I doubt that anyone searching for quotes would use the word 'article' as a search keyword, but searching for stuff like 'thomas-jefferson quotes' should be quite common, I assume? iddo999 13:41, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force you will see <div style="margin-left: 10px;"><i><b><a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force" class='extiw' title="wikiquote:Aqua Teen Hunger Force">Aqua Teen Hunger Force</a></b></i></div> in the HTML source. I have no idea what you're talking about anymore, sorry :( ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:05, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, my mistake... Apologies. Seems like almost all other wikipedia pages are also good in this regard, but there's some new template in w:George W. Bush that has <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:Search/George_W._Bush", so I'm not sure what the future holds. Also, if google just counts <a href> links, without giving them weights, then it might not help much for SEO. As 'thomas-jefferson quotations' doesn't lead to wikiquote, perhaps we should change wikipedia's template so that the word "quotations" appear inside the <a href> link to the specific wikiquote page, and not inside the <a href> link to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote ? iddo999 14:53, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's a stupid template...see my rant against this kind of crap. Naturally, I'm not going to touch a controversial page like GWB with a ten-foot pole, but I would modify it for any other page :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Seems like w:Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Sisterlinks lists all pages that use this lame template, and w:Template_talk:Sisterlinks mentions w:Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/Not_deleted/July_2005#Template:Sisterlinks where it was voted to be kept:( Perhaps we should think of ways to stop it or modify it, before it spreads further. iddo999 15:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Administrators

Hey Guys, How is it possible to become an administrator --Cornell35 15:43, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

It usually takes a history of responsible editing over a period of a few months to be a good candidate to be an administrator and then one can submit one's own name, or become nominated by someone else at the Wikiquote:Requests for adminship page. ~ Kalki 17:03, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

thanks--Cornell35 07:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Secondary source citations (looking for a guideline)

In my opinion, it would be useful in some cases to add information on secondary citations for quotes. For instance, the Donald Rumsfeld quote beginning "Reports that say that something hasn't happened..." has been cited in the Sept. 2005 issue of Scientific American, which also mentions other uses of the quote (at the World Summit on Evolution, interestingly enough). The type of addition I'm thinking about would involve a non-heading subtopic which might appear as

{{{quote}}} {{{citation}}}
Uses: {{{citation of source that uses the quote}}}

This is distinct from the notion of mentioning cases where Wikiquote itself is cited. There is a major drawback I see to this proposal, though: first, some quotes appear in thousands of places and this would open the floodgates to vast expansion of Wikiquote pages. On the other hand, the positives include: first, providing secondary sources to verify the text of the quote; second, providing some contextual information for persons wishing to see how the quote has been used by others (quite important for persons who are looking for a quote to include in a public presentation). There are likely more pros and cons, but I'll stop there and ask for input from the community. Thanks, Ceyockey 16:57, 27 October 2005 (UTC) (see also Wikipedia:User:Ceyockey)

I'm not quite sure what you are referring to. Other uses of the same quote? In general, unless exceedingly notable, person A quoting person B, should appear in person B's "Attributed" with a note that the attribution is by A. If multiple people use a variant of the same quote, that is usually because it's a saying with many versions. If you feel the saying itself is interesting enough, you can open a theme page for the saying (see the Proverb: A bird in the hand page). You could also wikilink the phrase to the 'canonical' version: that was what Jeffq did for "Kill them all, let God sort them out." ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 19:02, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I do understand the question, but no, I don't think it's a good idea. We might cite one or more secondary sources if that's all there is, but given a primary source, there's no reason to include any other citations. Given a primary source, no quantity of secondary sources can "verify the text of the quote". (I'm also dubious of the premise in the absence of primary sources; that's how urban legends are propagated. See also Gould's numerous diatribes on textbook development by copy-and-paste.) I can think of a few exceptions to this rule:

1. If the secondary source is the primary source for a particular misquotation or misattribution, it should be cited in the article where the error is discussed.
2. If the context in the secondary source is criticism or correction of the primary source, and that criticism is sufficiently succinct to be quoted, it should be included in the "Criticism" section with an appropriate citation.

I would also point out that a secondary source with a citation should be considered "sourced" and not "attributed", albeit one which can be improved. See Antoine Lavoisier or Charles Otis Whitman for examples; Gould claimed to be working from the primary sources in preparing his essays, so it should be possible for a motivated Wikiquotian to verify the quote in the original text and remove the "quoted in" from the citation. 121a0012 05:02, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Wondering if Wikiquote should include works that are already included in WikiSource

John Keats collection of "quotes" are actually works by him The article of quotes by some authors, such as John Keats are already in a link given in the article to WikiSource, which has most of his works. Isn't this redundant and unnecessary? --209.7.171.66 20:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Against the general policy of Wikiquote, someone posted all of "When I have fears that I may cease to be" there, but other than that I see no complete poem. There is no copyright issue involved here, but that one could be edited down. Yet, just because an entire work is on Wikisource doesn't mean we shouldn't bother to quote from it here. Quotations generally are meant to be excerpts of works that people find particularly interesting, and they are presented in quotation compilations so they don't have to search entire works to find the more famous or notable statements. We allow much dross here, but gradually I expect the most notable statements of many works will be collected and presented in interesting manner. ~ Achilles 21:53, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Unless very short work like Greek epitaphs, or haiku (just 31 syllables in Japanese) it doens't make a sense so much to quote an entire work. You can start to try trimming them. But on the other hand, I am not bothered to see a full line of four line poems, sometimes eight lines here in general. --Aphaia 17:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Guide to layout rewrite

The Guide to layout was horribly out of date (it mostly centered on people pages, it contained guidelines which we have long rejected [the infamous "person's name as title"], it contained no dialogue guidelines at all and so on). I've attempted a rewrite, at Wikiquote:Guide to layout/Draft. I am planning to move this over the guide to layout in two weeks, barring any objections. In the mean time, feel free to edit and improve the new guideline, or raise issues on its talk page. After this is finished, I plan to update all cleanup templates to point to this guide, which is my real motivation. It happened a few times, lately, that I slapped a "cleanup" template on a page, only to have people ask me what is wrong with the page, and I want to automate this process.

Note about the tone: the Guide's tone is fairly no-nonsense "you must do this, these are the only valid alternatives". This is based, to the best of my ability, on how I judge the consensus of our community to be pretty rigid about formatting. The implied message is "any violation of the guide is enough of an excuse to slap on a cleanup template, which should only be removed after all issues have been worked out."

Any comments would be appreciated (I suggest comments go on the talk page for the draft, so it will always be available to people editing the draft. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:57, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Checkuser policy draft

Many big projects are bothered by vandalism and sockpuppetry, hence need to investigate some IPs. For them, checkuser features are available and now a policy draft about Checkuser priviledges are being reviewed on meta. Hopefully we have no urgent necessity for requesting for this function for our daily operations, but it would affect us in some day and some of editors may want to comment that. Draft is available on meta:Proposed CheckUser Policy. It was announced tbe review will continue for a week. --Aphaia 18:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think we only had a significant sock-puppet problem once or twice, and in any case admins are used to taking the opinions of established users over those with little history, so they were not acute in any case. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Happy birthday to us

Happy birthday to us! Happy 5000th article wikiquote! Happy birthday to us!

We have recently passed the 5K mark. Great job, everyone! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:56, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, our "birthday"s might be in June or July. But of course 5,000 milestone is worthy to mention here. And also congrats for its contributor! --Aphaia 05:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Adding quotes

Is there an easy, simple way to submit quotes to Wikiquote? If there is, I haven't found it.

You don't submit: you just go ahead and edit the page (just like you edited this page), add the quote, and save. If you are really unsure, you could press the "discussion" link, and edit that and ask whether you should add the quote. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Upload disabled message

I have started a discussion in MediaWiki talk:Uploaddisabled about improving our "upload disabled" message. Any and all opinions would be welcome there. (The current thesis I am advancing is encourage uploading to commons) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 20:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

What you and Jeff discussed there looks very good imho. iddo999 18:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Imminent move of VFDA entries to subpages

I am proposing an imminent, significant change in the deletion close process — changing all the entries in the current Votes for deletion archive into transclusion links — so please review the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion archive#Imminent move of VFDA entries to subpages and comment as soon as possible. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Need help in admin things

Hi! I've just become administrator on hungarian wikiquote and I'd like to ask u a few questions. If I search for an article and it doesn't exist, hun wikiquote doesn't offer to write this article. How can I fix it? I started to translate all mediawiki pages, and I cant find the answer. Second: how can I put iw-s into special pages? How can I edit these. I hope somebody can help me. Thanks u! NCurse 22:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi, welcome to English Wikiquote!

Invitation to create an article

try to edit MediaWiki:Noarticletext. You may also want to edit MediaWiki:Nogomatch, the message you would get as a result of search query, if no such item exists.

About iw-s

I couldn't guess what iw-s. I hope somebody else can help you. Happy quoting ;-) --Aphaia 05:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I've translated these aricles, so it works :) Iw=interwikis. I'd like to edit Special:Recent changes, put iws into it. Thanks NCurse 05:57, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Special pages cannot be directly edited, but they often use text from stuff in the Mediawiki ns: in this case, Mediawiki:Recentchangestext. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Image quest

As those monitoring VfD might have noticed, I've started my quest to delete all images on Wikiquote. It is likely to take some time, but I believe it will all be for the better when it ends. As part of this quest, I've asked for protection for the WQ logo on Commons, and my request was granted. My next planned steps are to ask for consensus to delete "fair use" images (a euphemism we stole from wikipedia for "copyrighted unlicensed images"). With the policy we're formulating on VFD for SDing pictures which have identical copies in Commons, hopefully most files will be dealt with in one fell swoop, and we can than think what to do about the stragglers (potential problem: pictures which claim to be GFDL, have permission but the permission is not verifiable enough that I'll be comfortable uploading to commons). Together with the policy we've formulated of "no allowed image uploads", this should help make Wikiquote a place free of the burden of images, using Commons' services exclusively. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:57, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Excellent... Thank you. iddo999 18:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

No-intro statistics

Over the past couple of days, I've cleared out much of Category:Wikiquote no intro -- roughly 80 pages. Of these 80 pages, about 10 were nominated by me to VfD, 1 was speedied (under the non-official but consensus rule of "personal attack") and the rest got some sort of introduction or wikipedia link. This gives the no-intro tag a 1/8 chance of being a deletion candidate. Just thought it might be interesting to point it out. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:53, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Please comment on Category talk:Fundamental

Jeff and I discussed there some pretty deep changes to pretty prominent Wikiquote pages. Please go there and see if you like the ideas, and voice your opinion. I intend to take action on the basis of the agreement Jeff and I have arrived at, unless there are objections. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Soap operatic quotes

The classical TV pages were built by editors interested in drama/sci-fi series (Buffy and Angel being the first ones, and joined by similar prime-time shows) while day-time TV received little mention. There is a discussion between me and another editor about the applicability of the standards for prime-time TV quotation formatting to day-time TV. Your participation and opinions will be appreciated on Talk:Passions, as the discussion there could easily determine precedents for the GtL and relevant boilerplate. Thanks! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Notability

What does it mean notability? What objective criteria have you got to decide it? Please answer quickly, if you have time. Thx vm. 80.99.117.213

Poll: Majority of Americans Reject Evolution. Accept 'The Flintstones.'" - Ironictimes.com

For example, why ironictimes is notable? because it has got a web page? and why My Own Page, www.fascistsnotdead.org and www.bolsheviksliving.com are not notable? So what are that basic criteria that regulate you votes, when you decide a quote to stay or to be deleted from a page? Gubbubu 12:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I haven't found it in FAQ's or in policies. Gubbubu 13:01, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

There are not (and perhaps cannot be) any rigid, objective criteria for notability. We tend to favor books and well-known print publications and news organizations, along with their supporting websites. Other websites may be considered notable, but since anyone can throw a website together these days, there's a lot of skepticism about using them as original sources.

Please note that just because a quote and/or source has been added to Wikiquote doesn't mean that it's been given any "official" approval. Wikiquote doesn't use an editorial board to pre-approve content, but rather expects its readers and editors to discuss questionable additions. If you have a concern about a quote or its source, please bring it up on the talk page of the article that you find it in. If you are engaged in a debate on a talk page that you feel requires greater attention from the Wikiquote community, you can mention it here in the village pump, but you should provide article titles (preferably with links) to direct readers to the article(s) in question. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that wikipedia can be pretty much irrelevant in relation to wikiquote in this regard, but still, just as pointers, have you looked at stuff in w:Category:Wikipedia notability criteria? Anyway, these aren't necessarily easy questions, and judgement might be needed in specific cases. iddo999 13:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanx very much (in huwikiquotes, we just shatter each other's head in a quarrel about notability). Gubbubu 13:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

One note, generalising Jeff's remarks above: When there is a page for quotes from a site, we almost always pass it through VfD, since sites are not quotable. However, theme pages are littered with unnotable quotations: this has been a problem we've been aware of for some time, and trying to deal with. Luckily, since removing quotations is a reversible act, voting is not needed in these cases: a short discussion on a talk page is enough. I've often gone through theme pages and moved questionable quotations to Talk pages. Lastly, remember that like Wikipedia, Wikiquote is not consistent. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

for example, in phisycs article, can I quote a brilliant quote from a coursebook, despite of that its author is not too famous, simply a teacher? Gubbubu 18:03, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

You've brought up an interesting grey area. A coursebook published by a mainstream publisher (typically not a university or "vanity" press), provides some verifiability, but doesn't necessarily convey notability. Frequently a non-famous book's notability rests upon its author, and teachers are rarely considered notable unless their publications have appealed to an audience wider than their students. If you want to give it a try anyway, you should cite at least the author, the book title, and its ISBN. (You can also add the bibliography-standard publication date, city of publication, and publisher, but these days the ISBN alone typically provides the kind of information needed for researchers and other interested parties to identify a work.)

Wikipedia, which Wikiquote uses for policy when it doesn't have explicitly stated policies on a subject, has a good set of references for the issue of notability in Wikimedia projects. Start with Wikipedia:Notability and its related articles, especially Wikipedia:Notability/Essay. Although some of the material and the examples are geared more toward encyclopedia articles, many of the practices apply to Wikiquote as well. I hope this helps. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

To generalize, the question is about the "notability" of a quote vs. the notability of the author of the quote. In one direction, it's obvious that if the author is notable but the quote isn't, then it shouldn't be included (for example, a boring quote by a notable person about what he had for breakfast). In the other direction (which is the question that you asked), IMHO in principle it should be allowed to include interesting quotes from unnotable authors, in cases where the quote itself is indeed quite notable for certain reasons - but again, judgement should be used in specific cases, in order to prevent abuse. iddo999 20:38, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree with iddo999 on this point. If "interesting" were an adequate requirement for quotes, then Wikiquote would be awash with unsourced "attributed" vanity quotes. In fact, it already is, except that we are trying to weed them out and encourage unnotable-quote contributors to place such quotes on the user pages instead, if they desire. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:15, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Referring to the above paragraph, "You've brought up an interesting grey area…"

OK: But how do you decide the book's author is notable, when you are voting? It is unnotable if you don't know him? I think this is paradox a bit. For example, there is an unknown theme (Extraterrestrial neutrino-biology). there are 10 quotes in the theme . No one is notable (but all have resources). Authors are all the doctors of extraterrestrial neutrino-biology, but noone knows him. so they are notable? or not notable? What a hard question, my god!! And if the book has ten authors, one is notable and 9 is very unnotable, but you don't know who is the quote from? Gubbubu 20:53, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Gubbubu, someone is not "unnotable" just because an editor doesn't know them. w:Wikipedia:Notability#Definition advises readers not to assume this improper use of the concept of notability, but also says that editors claiming non-notability should be specific about their reasons to avoid such misunderstandings. Again, I encourage you to read the articles mentioned above by both myself and iddo999. Also, because notability is a necessarily subjective characteristic, it is hard to discuss hypotheticals. I could say that not every scientific professional is notable, but that's not really helpful as a rule of thumb. The example you give about "Extraterrestrial neutrino-biology" doesn't really help. As I write this, there is no Wikiquote article on Extraterrestrial neutrino-biology, nor is there a category with this title. I again ask that you include links to the things you're discussing, so specific cases can be discussed (and not just by admins, but by the community at large, which has the ultimate responsibility for making these decisions). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:52, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Please note that we possess the skills necessary to research notability: not only that, but specific research for notability has been done by several WQ regulars, so the community has practical experience. We use web searches, wikipedia (especially evidence in WP AfDs), libraries and similar resources to verify notability. None of this says we are perfect: see the archives for many votes which were hard, and which may or may not have reached a good conclusion. However, on the whole, I believe we had had a good record. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 02:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Proverbs

OK, as I've warned on Talk:List of proverbs, I redirected the List to the Category. If anyone has any objections, revert and explain them on the talk page (and a message on my user talk pointing there would be helpful too). Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:08, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Web comics formatting

Only recently has WQ really started to pay attention to formatting of web comics. Several articles have been edited, mostly by me but with some (more or less enthusiastic) support of other editors on the pages, to comply with some sort of rough guidelines: Ctrl Alt Del (webcomic), Dinosaur Comics, Sluggy Freelance and The Order of the Stick. They use a variant on the TV guidelines, since these guidelines have been optimized by a long time to present quotations which are based on dialogue, and which often need comments for visual cues. I used much of the same format for the non-web comics I've edited, such as Spider-Girl, Astonishing X-Men, Avengers Forever, The Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and Runaways. However, I am hesitant to codify it in templates/GtL, since I've never seen anyone else convert to this format (see Supreme Power or El Goonish Shive for sadder stories). I would dearly love people to give their opinions regarding this somewhat contentious issue. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Problem with search

This came up when I did a search:
No page with <a href=":Slayers">this exact title</a> exists, trying full text search.
Please contact me if you have questions, I won't be monitoring this page! w:User:Gmcfoley 06:05, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Please see MediaWiki talk:Nogomatch for further discussion. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Dealing with catch phrases?

Hello there!

I've been doing a lot of work on the Family Guy page and have almost all of the quotes moved to their respective episodes. I was curious if there are any standards in dealing with catch phrases.

As some of you may know, a select few Family Guy characters have several catch phrases, and instead of placing them in each episode, I was thinking it would be best to make another section, but I wanted to check here first before I went ahead.

Thanks in advance! -- Chupon 06:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I like to make a section "Catch phrases", which is formatted like the "Unknown episode" section", but on top. Each quotation should have at least two episode/season references, unless it is really in every single episode (which is another way of saying "remove it if you see one episode without it". ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Change how wikiquote works

I'm sure this has cropped up before but I couldn't find any discussion about it. This wiki software is designed to work well with projects like wikipedia, but it just doesn't seem suitable for a projects like wikiquote. Doesn't it make more sense to make a single entry for each quote, then give it categories like author, date, TV program etc. Then interesting pages could be created on the fly by combining a few categories. It would be so much more useful. Tpower 10:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

There are advantages and disadvantages to using Wiki software for a quotation collection. We find that the numerous advantages are hard to give up :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

How about changing how the software is used. Each quote should have it's own entry. Maybe the full quote should be the title. Then each entry would just consist of a list of categories. The entries might not be that nice to read nut the category pages would be great, an automatically generated list of quotes. A small change to the software would allow you to combine categories for very interesting and much more useful pages. Tpower 11:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Might I suggest getting more experience with the way Wikiquote works before advising changes? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)