Meta:Babel/Archives/2004-09

Traditional and Simpified Chinese UI

The new feature of MediaWiki is a great idea to localize wikipedia, however, we are still struggling balancing between traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese user interface. Any experts give any suggestions here?

现在中文维基百科的用户界面已经完全简体中文化了，但是我们仍然要考虑繁体字用户的使用习惯，关于中文版本简繁共存的问题已经讨论了很久了，但是还没有一个彻底的解决方案。不知道这里有没有任何精通这方面的专家？

現在中文維基百科的用戶界面已經完全簡體中文化了，但是我們仍然要考慮繁體字用戶的使用習慣，關於中文版本簡繁共存的問題已經討論了很久了，但是還沒有一個徹底的解決方案。不知道這裡有沒有任何精通這方面的專家？

--Samuel 13:43, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

请参看中文版上的讨论：zh:Wikipedia talk:繁简体问题。谁能帮助我们解决这个问题？--Shizhao 13:59, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My suggestion is to have two locales for Chinese Wikipedia, one for simplified Chinese and one for Traditional Chinese. We shall let users choose between them in their preference. For anonymous users, we can automatically decide which interface by their ip addresses. Brion told me several months ago that this is workable. I think interface is not a big problem, the real problem is how to convert contents between simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese.--Formulax 02:03, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Changing the interface based on IP is a bad idea IMO. Much better to put a language category tag on every page - those pages with Simplified Chinese tags will force the user's interface into Simplified Chinese mode and those with Traditional Chinese tags will force the user interface into Traditional Chinese mode. Logged-in users would be able to over-ride that via a user preference (choosing the language they want for their interface in all cases on zh.wikipedia). --Maveric149 06:54, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I second the idea of two locales. A traditional chinese interface locale will not only benefit the zh.wikipedia.org but also for user who want to install wikipedia software on their own server. If this is easier to implement (compared to the the two script problem of the content) then I would suggest to implement this first. I am personaly interested in helping do the traditional chinese localization. --Pektiong 22:33, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Some browser (eg Mozilla) can let user setup language preference. If a user's browser's locale is set to zh-tw or zh-hk, then one automatically give it traditional chinese interface. If a user's broswer's local is set to zh-cn then one automatically give it simplified chinease interface. I think this is better then based on IP. If there is no preference in browser, one can (1)randomly give trad/simp, (2) give a main page with mixed script, or (3) always give one of them. --Pektiong 22:33, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

We can try to run this perl script on server side to convert between trad/simp by somthing like "b2g.pl -u -p < trad.txt > simp.txt", the script also take care of something like "硬盤"<->"硬碟". --Pektiong 23:05, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

CPAN HanConvert library

Let's worry about the conscipuous interface first. That idea seems clean. --Menchi 03:52, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Pektiong的意见有一个问题。我们现在是在utf-8下，如果进行转换也只能在utf-8下，否则有些其他语言的文字将不能转换。--Shizhao 00:49, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That script provide trad(utf8) <-> to simp(utf8) translation, no gb/big5 is needed. It provides utf8 solution. (I know it is confusing from the name of the program) --Pektiong 02:52, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Some thoughts for comments:

I would suggest treating traditional and simplified chinese as two languages at the frontend so that the user can make the choice. The webpages of the Hong Kong Government are all constructed this way [1]. Simplified and traditional pages links to the respective locale and can be done transparently (i.e. no double entry / redirection needed / simplified link in traditional artcles) At the backend, conceptually there is only one representation, such that editings in one locale is reflected in the other (this is the whole point of discussion?). Three complications: Conversion between trad - simp is many to many. Differences in terms such as 硬盤(CN) 硬碟(TW/HK), 布殊(HK), 布希(TW), 布什(CN) Differences in contents. (e.g. in simplified version, there may be a note of: 台譯“布希”, 港譯“布殊”, but in traditional version, the note would be different.) For contents of an article, the first two may be solved by translation software (transparent to editor), while the third by some sort of meta tags to be entered by editors. (e.g. for the entry on bush, 註: <lang nodisplay=tw>台譯“布希”;</lang> <lang nodisplay=cn>大陸譯“布什”;</lang>, etc.) As for encoding, (ideological debates aside) UTF8 traditional chinese may make more sense in the backend as it is less ambiguous. Problems: The automatic translation in an existing software may not be able to cover all terms and contexts that would arise. (e.g. new terms, or terms where the simplified term should be retained in traditional context (e.g. dictionary?), or different simplified forms for one traditional forms) Clashes when the term appears in title/links - scenarios: two traditional terms map to one simplified terms due to code conversion (should be rare? and the reverse shouldn't even exist?) one to many / many to one mappings due to usage difference. (still can't think of an example) Round trip translation problem. (To ensure in trad -> simp (edit) -> trad, the second step would not cause information loss to the original article) I suppose the first problem can be solved partially in the wiki way - Dictionary maintained on wiki pages that is machine readable by a translator: e.g. <lang locale=cn>布什</lang></lang local=tw>布希</lang>. Context information or even rule for specific entry can be added. In some cases explicit meta tag to avoid conversion may be more appropriate. If two titles clash (due to code or usage translation) - this arise when "t1" maps to "s1", and then either (a) title/link "t2" which also maps to "s1" is created, or (b) a rule to map existing "t2" to "s1" is created. In such case a rule may be added (or the rule modified) translating "t2" to "s1(t2)", with some sort of notice such that a disamb. page can be considered. Special processing would be needed after editing to deal with the round trip problem - by using diff-like algorithm and reverting the rules used.

-- Hlaw 09:48, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC) (Sorry, using table for better readability)

Conversion between trad - simp is many to many.

Not really, traditional to simplified is many-to-one, so it's easy enough to convert stuff from traditional to simplified. The other way is a bit harder (and sometimes even people mess it up [2]). NJWin apparently has some sort of artificial intelligence feature which can translate simplified to traditional based on context; I don't know how accurate this is though. So things might have been easier if everything was written in traditional to begin with. ;-)

The user should definitely be able to choose whether the interface is in Simplified or Traditional though. -- Xiaopo 14:49, 10 Jan 2003 (PST)

Nope. Trad/Simp translation is indeed a many-to-many mapping, because even the "Traditional" script has merged several character into one for code space saving. For example, "著" in Big5 represents for "著" and "着" in Simplified Chinese; and "嚼" in Big5 represents for "嚼" and "噍" in Simplified Chinese. "著" is even a very frequently used characters. -- Tomchiukc 14:20, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Simp to trad is many to many and trad to simp is also many to many, so this conversion is just mission impossible. When Chinese communists took over China, in Taiwan they said 淪陷, however, in China they said 解放. How do you convert this? You have to know the context. Please put back zh-tw. -- Zhanghuaren

Hello,I've complete the equivalent relationship table between trad chinese and simp chinese in general. It's over here:zh:Wikipedia 中文繁简体对照表. If we take use of this, after updating the program so that Wikipedia can handle post data and generate two versions of post data:one for TCH and one for SCH, we can right now carry out the plan of translation.

For examle,there are two strings on that page "zh:Wikipedia 中文繁简体对照表" : "業 => 业" and "絲 => 丝". My suggestion is, in programing, parse these two strings so as to put "業" and "絲" to an array,as well as another array of "业" and "丝". Wilie submitting, generate two variables according to the original post data. Each variable will be translated into TCH or SCH no matter what the original language is. At last, save them in the same time, so we can get two versions of page conveniently at one time without difficulty.

Can Wikipedia's program worker help us to do so?

I'm just another user from zh.wikipedia.org. Just wanted to know is there any update on this issue? --Cylauj 18:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of a preference to switch between the two, but for anonymous users, I don't know which should be the default. What I'd like to see is some middle-of-the-road compromise: say the content is repeated twice by a script (once for simplified, once for traditional), then you can use CSS to position them side by side, like in those multilingual magazines where one side of the page is in one language and the other side of the page is in another language. (Personally, I'd pick traditional over simplified, but I seem to be in the minority here) --kelvSYC

New WikiMedia Feature for Multi-lingual

In order to make WikiPedia more multi-lingual, I would like to suggest:

Add a new table to link all page titles of different languages:

 linguage = lingual = ... ...

This table will allow a user to search in one language for a term and then get the definition of this term in any language where available in Wikipedia.

The table contains all page titles found in all Wikis of various languaguages. Editors can connect them by linking the different titles in various languages with this table: if they can be identified as expressing the exact same idea, then they are equivalence, or they can be related (see also?), or they can be sup/sub relations.

If the sup/sub is too complex to implement, just implement the equivalence and related relationships is fine.

People can act as translators: they find in the term database (page titles) and link up the different languages.

In the table, all page titles should be marked by their language like en/US, en/UK, zh/TW zh/CN, etc.

This also allow to solve the localize problem where some terms are different in various country : color colour.

If the software is good, it can subsitite all occurrence of the links [color] according to the locale ([colour].).

I make this up because of the Chinese : Chinese have been fall apart into various sub-languages which their different were not to be unified easily. This proposal is also put to the chinese wikipedia meta.

There are some interesting readings in Meatball PageAlias : http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?PageAlias

Creating a discussion board!?!

I my name is Randy Bullerwell and I am very interested in persuing the idea of setting up a discussion forum for my work. I am a consultant working with youth (teens) and I would like to have discussions on Today's Youth Culture available so I can post a question and receive input, ideas, and assess the needs or get a pulse of the teen culture.

How would I go about setting up a discussion forum? What are the costs? What do I require in terms of website domain, etc? and What about predators? How would I be able to screen them?

Hope you can help here thanks.

Sincerely,

Randy Bullerwell R.L.Bullerwell Consulting www.healtheduc.ca

Lost Changes

I spent about 2 hours typing in several corrections and about 30 Confederate Generals, state and rank and there was no way to save it . Before this I had made several additions and there was a way to save it. As you might suspect I am very up-set! I have the comprehensive works on the Civil War(The Confederate Soldier in The Civil War. I was trying to give back to the internet information that I have access to so that new inquries would have good information. Oh, well!

Open a simple text editor and save the wiki text you have been working on periodically. Then delete the text after you have saved the wiki page. I have a text file on my computer called Temp.txt that I use for this. --mav 06:35, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Goings-on

Opening of Goings-on. Please, reflect on your own wikis

Anthere

Separation of Wikisource and Wikibooks

I have observed a sort of tangled-mess problem is arising at Wikibooks and Wikisource in that the titles of articles in different languages are conflicting with each other, causing irregular titling systems to be devised ad hoc, and generally making things look messy. The only way that seems obvious to me to rectify the problem is to split the language versions into different domains, in the same way as is now being done with French and Polish Wiktionaries; however, whenever I've proposed the idea before [3] [4] (perhaps not as balanced as I should have been), people have been against it. Does anyone have any other ideas or opinions on the matter? -- Kwekubo 01:12, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Still very much against it for the same reasons. Instead of a title like Latin books should have descriptive titles such as Latin for English speakers. --mav 06:32, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That proposal is, I suppose, the most logical for the time being, but I don't think we can just dive in and change all the names of pages immediately. Some sort of general consensus should be reached - do most others agree? -- Kwekubo 20:31, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since no-one seems to oppose the idea greatly, I'm moving this topic out to Wikibooks, Wikisource and Renaming Wikisource and Wikibooks modules, and have tentatively suggested a date of 20th April for making a decision. What does everyone think? -- Kwekubo 00:18, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikiformula

I think it would be great if there was a wiki which contains all kinds of formulas from mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. I often need to use formulas whose exact form I can't remember. Does anyone know if such a wikiformula already exists? -- Georg Muntingh, 9 April 2004

Wikipedia articles on these formulas usually exist, containing the formula itself. -- Kwekubo 23:58, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

wikibooks.org, the free textbook project, is a good place for formulas. Perl 13:07, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Administrators

Could anyone comment on Talk:Administrator (change of policy to have people become admin on meta) Anthere

the discussion there seems reasonable. Sj 21:52, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

wikibooks

When I try to block a username, I get the error "No user exists by that name". I checked the name and the user does exist. I tried putting user: in front of the name and using different capitalisations but I still get the error. Perl 13:40, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Questions about the wiki servers

I have been contributing quite a lot lately on Wikipedia and naturally I would like to know what type of guarantee I have as a Wikipedia contributor when it comes to the storage of the information. Could someone in the Wikimedia board or someone who actually knows how this projects works (the nformation storage part) please answer these question:

1. How often do you make backups?

   About once a week. Get them from http://download.wikimedia.org

2. Where are the servers located?

   Somewhere in Florida, USA

3. On how many servers are the wiki projects stored?

   This seems to vary from day to day as some get taken out of rotation, and others get put in. The situation has not been stabilized, but let's say around 9 or 10 total. For more see Wikimedia servers

4. Are the servers located at the same location, (same building)?

   Most of the servers are in one building (the colocation facility in Florida), but I think there is also one server in Germany that helps with the German Wikipedia.

5. Is the information safe, foolproof, unlooseable or whatever you call it?

   Pretty much...as long as someone has a dump, yes :)

Well, these are some questions I have been thinking about lately, please answer them, thank you.

I am just an editor, so the info above is just what I've gathered so far so take it as you will. Dori | Talk 15:58, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Memorials et al

What's the status on wikimemorial, sept11.wikipedia, etc? I want to have one memorial wiki project I can put on the main page as a sister project, for people interested in that kind of contribution. similarly, meta: should link appropriately to an overall memorial site... I know someone (mav?) posted on Feb 20, 2004 that he was going to propose moving the sept11 database to memorial.wikipedia.org pending discussion of what the toplevel project-name should be, but there's just a stub front page there now.

I also think there should be a wikiancestry geneaology/family-tree wiki tangentially related, which we can seed with all the people on our List of People by alpha list, and then post to a big geneaology site like roots about. One of the top 5 uses of the internet by addicts, these days... or something. Sj 22:54, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Great ideas. See Wikimorial. --mav 02:36, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Uses of meta

Are there guidelines for what kind of content belongs here, what kid belongs on wikimediafoundation.org, what kind on Wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:, etc?

1. I'd like to see a small kernel of important, formal pages here that link deeply into the Wikipedia: namespaces of various language wikis to connect with their local policies, procedures, structures.
2. I'd like for there to be a multilingual "About us" page for an institutional contact-page that can be linked prominently from the sidebars of the individual projects; including among other things the kind of front- and end-matter that would be found on the inside cover of a book -- where, who, when; some organization-names, some individual names, some contact information; a collective dedication and server/infrastructure/software/layout details.
   • Where should this reside? I'd like it to be here, translated into every language, rather than independently-built on each WP as they get around to it (note the difference between creating a page on en: and encouraging people to set up a similar page on their WPs, and having a single page here, where people are encouraged to translate it into their WP's language).

Sj 23:24, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The only guidelines I know are on "about"... I mostly support very loose guidelines :-) I support what you say...but it will be slow. I would like soon that a general multilingual page is set, to make it even more obvious that all languages are welcome here. I am open to any suggestion and idea :-) Anthere

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New software project to read Wikipedia offline

Hi, we'd like to make an offline wikipedia reader, as to be able to browse the encyclopedia offline and why not make CDs with its contents. First of all, has any of you already started such a project?

Here are random ideas we got.

• seperation between a platform independant library, which will does most of the job or parsing and maintaining articles content, and a user interface that could be platform dependant (gtk, qt, aqua, win32, etc)
• library written in C++, using wxWidgets (but not the graphical part of course, just regexps & stuff like that)
• the data would be saved in a local database using sqlite
• powerful search engine
• the pages produced by the library would be valid XHTML 1.1 (hopefully)
• produce sqlite update files users could download to update the encyclopedia
• update on the fly from real Wikipedia using XML export function (when it's be able to sustain this kind of abuse ^.^)

This would also let us to make autonomous readers on specific topics (like the Germans' Wikireader, but which could be updated), stuff like that.

Are you interested by this kind of project, and would you agree to help? Ryo and Med 21:02, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Sanction, contre-sanction, humeur

Je poste ce petit billet ici avant de partir parce que c'est le bon lieu pour exprimer ma consternation à propos de l'ambiance générale du site francophone Wikipédia en ce moment. Combien y-a-t-il de personnes actives dans le cadre communautaire, participant aux votes, nourrissant les échanges, etc ? Une trentaine, quarante au plus. Mais des individualités tellement marquées, que pour l'instant les choses vont en se dégradant, les clivages se durcissent et rien de tout ça ne ressemble à ce que l'on pourrait attendre d'émules de Diderot et d'Alembert. Alors qu'il est question de structurer et fédérer Wikipédia au plan européen dans un cadre associatif, il n'est pas très encourageant de vérifier encore une fois la vieille idée qui veut que le sport favori des français soit de se déchirer entre eux. Cheers, Aurevilly 08:04, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lire w:fr:Wikipédia:Politique expérimentale

Tu as malheureusement raison a propos de l'ambiance, mais je te pris de croire que certains ne s'y complaisent pas et qu'ils cherchent des solutions pour sortir de la crise. Ton aide nous serait précieuse. A☮ineko 09:13, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Je pars mais en vacances seulement :-). Et je crois avoir au moins essayé de donner un coup de significatif : on verra bien ce que devient le projet de régulation. Dès demain, je chaufferai ma peau plus si jeune au soleil du printemps et au retour, hop ! - je termine l'histoire du Pakistan, nom de d'Zeus ! Aurevilly 09:57, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Un lien à explorer : Wikipedia as a community

a question about piped links

How does one make that vertical line that's so helpful in making a link user friendly?

I don't see a vertical line on my keyboard! Slashes in both directions, and lots of horizontal lines, also near-vertical letters like small l. But I'm sure none of them is what is wanted there.

--68.9.149.17 12:45, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

it's not above your backslash? Sj 15:22, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Note that it's sometimes drawn with a gap in the middle, like two apostophes ( ' ) on top of each other (this may show what I mean, depending how it gets stored and displayed: ¦ ) - I'm not sure why, but certainly my keyboard labels these two the wrong way round. - IMSoP 12:29, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Main Page news alert

I was looking around various WPs and noting how few of them have even a single mention of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz or the yearly festival, or the international Bruckner music festival that spawned this electronica progeny 25 years ago... We have gaps in a hundred areas, but this seems like a timely gap to plug. I took a first stab on en: and briefly on pl:, hopefully others can flesh out the other top-15 WPs so that our press releases will make more sense without external links once translated into these languages! Sj 15:22, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh, right -- so I don't know the right place to advertise such multilingual efforts; I hope the meta: main page is appropriate and public enough, but perhaps there's a multilingual mailing list that should get a note as well? Sj

Foundation-l is the mailing list for cross-project efforts. The Goings-on page can also be used to advertise this. Angela 19:10, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Goings on seem to be the right direction. ant

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Official position, please comment :-) Anthere

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Benvenite - Benvenuti - Benvidos - Benvinguts - Bienvenidos - Bienvenue - Boa vinda - Bonvenied - Bonvenon - Bun venit - Croeso - Dobrodošli - Fáilte - Hoan-gêng - Hoşgeldiniz - Mirësevini - Räxim itegez! - Salve - Selamat datang - Sveicinti jaunum - Tere tulemast - Tervetuloa - Üdvözlet - Välkommen - Veköm - Velkommen - Welcome - Welkom - Willkommen - Witajcie - Wolkom - Xin chào - Добро пожаловать - Добро дошли - ברוכים הבאים - സ്വാഗതം - ようこそ - 잘 오셨습니다 - 欢迎- 歡迎

Post a comment

• Le lieu de discussion pour tout ce qui a un rapport avec Wikimedia se trouve ici. Utilisez la ou les langues que vous connaissez pour discuter, et traduisez les textes écrits par d'autres.

• Dies ist der Diskussionsort von allem, was Wikimedia betrifft. Verwende die dir bekannten Sprachen und übersetze auch Diskussionsbeiträge von anderen.

• Questo è lo spazio per le discussioni su Wikimedia. Utilizzate la lingua o le lingue che conoscete e traducete ciò che vi è piaciuto dei post altrui.

• This is the place to discuss Wikimedia-wide topics. Write in the language(s) you know, and translate what you can.

• Tämä on keskeinen paikka jossa keskustella asioista jotka liittyvät itseensä Wikimediaan. Käytä mitä kieltä/kieliä osaat ja halutessasi käännä toisten viestejä toisille kielille.

• Este es el lugar para discutir los temas que traten de Wikimedia. Use los idiomas que conozca, y traduzca lo que desee que otros lean.

• Acesta este locul central unde să discutaţi în afaceri despre Wikimedia şi rolul ei ca. Folosiţi limbile care le cunoaşteţi, şi traduceţi ce vreţi.

• Đây là chỗ chính cho nói chỉ vấn đề chính xác của Wikimedia. Dùng những tiếng mà bạn biết, với dịch lúc nào bạn muốn cái gì bạn thích mà người khác làm.

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• 这个地方可以用不同的语言进行讨论，您可以使用您熟悉的语言，还可以把它们翻译成您所知道的其他语言。

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|}

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FileTypes Uploads

Is there an easy way to change the types of files users can upload?
I'd like to store .tar.gz, etc.

24.248.74.254 14:29, 10 May 2004 (UTC)~

Add $wgFileExtensions = array("ext", "ext1"); to LocalSettings.php

Safari tries to download Image:something.tar.gz when you view the description, but linking as [[media:]] should work fine after you get stuff uploaded.

Feature requests

Offensive content please comment :-) Anthere

Chinese mailing list

Could anyone help us to set up a Chinese mailing list wikizh-l please? Many of our contributors do not visit Wikipedia everyday and mailing list will allow more people to participage in our discussion.--Formulax 09:35, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Brion Vibber is generally in charge of the mailing lists. You should ask him to set you a new one. Anthere

Multilinguists unite!

Please add yourself to the list at Translators. Sj 22:08, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

יותר Meertaligheid

1. Please visit Wikipedia language overviews (feel free to add other Wikimedia projects and rename the page accordingly) and add details of your favorite WP languages.
2. Visit Press Corps and add any lists of photographers on your favorite WPs, or users you know are interested in taking new images for WP
3. Add multilingual projects in various languages to the top of the list of WM-wide projects at Project map.
4. Please make your user and talk pages here as multilingual as you are. Do not hesitate to write on discussion pages in your native language.
5. When you translate a page on meta, please put the translated page on meta as well (rather than on an individual-language WP). See Meta:Interlanguage links for a simple way to do this.
   • If you see a page you wish were translated, but don't have time to translate it fully, try to write a one-sentence description of what the page is about, and translate that in a sidebar (like the one on this page).

Sj 22:50, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Handling of non-existing virtual servers.

As I unintentionally typed in the main page URL for a non-existing language, I received an error-page, offering me an error-message plus a link to the root of the non-existing server, in other words, the exact same URL. On top of that it appeared to redirect itself quite regularly trying to get out of there. Probably not the intended way of handling general Wikipedia errrors. Aliter 22:26, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

On no interwiki pages

I remarked Articles on fr with no interwiki link to en. It's a very cool idea. I'd like to know if there are such sorts of pages

• Articles on ja.wiki with no interwiki link to de
• Articles on ja.wiki with no interwiki link to en
• Articles on ja.wiki with no interwiki link to fr
• Articles on fr.wiki with no interwiki link to ja
• Articles on la.wiki with no interwiki link to ja
• Articles on zh.wiki with no interwiki link to ja,

if not, also their availabilities (On la.wiki, it comes from my purely favor:-) ). (I have no skill of hacking). Aphaia 11:56, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Wow, i guess these are a lot of articles on zh WP have no interwiki to ja due to the laziness.... :P --Samuel 18:05, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Currently, there are not such pages. Med, a user from fr:, made the list for en-fr, thanks to a dump (new dumps are generally available every Saturday afternoon, GMT) and sql query. If I have some time, I will ask Med on irc this weekend. --Youssefsan 22:17, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Thank you Youssefsan. No interwiki between ja-zh dues to the laziness, before linking we must make articles, even stubs ... 8-X Aphaia 11:22, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki link titles

Who controls what the Interwiki link titles are (the ones at the top and bottom of articles saying "Deutsch" and "Nederlands" and "Español"), or where is there discussion for it? The one for Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch) is spelled wrong, and the ones that aren't in the Roman alphabet have lost the transliterations, which were really helpful in alphabetizing them. -Branddobbe 18:10, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

TeX-like diagrams?

Is there a way to create (electrical, hydraulic, mechanical, etc.) diagrams with a TeX-like language? They are adding musical notation, hieroglyphs, etc. to the mediawiki. I don't understand all the details involved with these but here is something similar: [5]. - Omegatron 21:06, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

NUMBEROFARTICLES

On some wikipedias, {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} seems to produce odd results. For instance, there are ~20 glossary-like articles on the quechua WP, but the above wiki returns 0. See qu:Allpages and http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sj (where I'm executing the above wikiscript). Sj 04:39, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

articles must have wiki links to be counted; all the pages without links are ignored. Srtxg 04:57, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Czech Wiki: How to ban?

At cs: Wikipedia, recently we got a disruptive (registered) user. There was a consensus, and the need, to ban him temporarily, but no way to do it.

According to en:Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#How_to_block, you're just supposed to go to Special:Blockip, or cs:Speciální:Blockip, and put the username into the IP address field. However, this resulted in the MediaWiki:Badipaddress error message.

I don't understand PHP, but the respective script in CVS[6] seems to require also tests the variable $wgSysopUserBans, which apparently [7] is false by default:

# User rights 
(...)
$wgSysopUserBans        = false; # Allow sysops to ban logged-in users

and at least Google finds no other instance of the variable anywhere, so no way to set it either. On the other hand, there must be some way to do it - there are bannings going on at en: all the time. So, what do I miss, or whom should I ask?

P. S. It might be also a good idea to change the SpecialBlockip script to give another, more appropriate error message in such cases.

--Maly ctenar 16:17, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Best thing to do for you is to come to the developer channel #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net. There are people who can change the settings. --Elian

I asked at the Wikitech-l. It turned out I was right in my hypothesis above and a developer set the rights manually. --Maly ctenar 09:54, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Redirection Limit Error

Has anyone ever gotten this error when using MediaWiki ?

• Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load the requested page. This may be cause by cookies that are blocked.

-- Yes, I'm getting the same error but I have no idea how to fix it. I'm using IIS on XP, PHP 5, mySQL 4.1.

My very own branch

I would really like to create my own CVS branch of MediaWiki 1.3.x This way I can develop off this branch and then synch MediaWiki code base with my own as new bits are established stable. Could someone give me some pointers or direct me to some resources on this topic? Suggestions? Thanks.. Aaron This question is also posed on the talk page here

Changing the Site Title Slogan

I installed MediaWiki with a certain SiteTitle, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to change the SiteTitle so that it shows in the Title bar, About pages, etc... ?? -- 20:31, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) Aaron 19:15, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC) Yah, just go into your LocalSettings.php file and change the $wgSitename var to whatever you want it to be. E.G.-

$wgSitename = "My Old Site";

changed to:

$wgSitename = "My New Site";

That simple.

• That simple - execept it doesn't change all instances. Disclaimer page, for example, still carries an old version... ?
• I'm guessing this is a database hunt-and-change?

Firstly, I can't see any instances of the wrong sitename there - perhaps you have some cached versions of pages in your browser (try holding down shift, ctrl, etc while reloading, to flush it). However, if there really are any, you may need to look into the MediaWiki namespace, where most of the messages that appear in the UI are stored; I know that some of those used to default to "Wikipedia" or something, rather than using {{SITENAME}} to generate the right version based on settings - maybe some have still slipped through. - IMSoP 01:46, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)