Wikiquote:Village pump archive 8

From July 2006 to September 2006, originally posted to Village pump. =Village pump archive 8=

Date pages
Jeff Q has nearly completed extensive work in creating new pages for each date of the year: where a bracketed Month Day format is used in writing the dates on a page, it will provide far more immediate access to suggestion pages for "Quotes of the day" and a more extensive application of each user's settings for date displays (as selected on their preference page). He will be doing the final updating work soon, which should only briefly disrupt access to the "Quote of the day" proposal pages. To keep things simpler it is best that new proposals not be made until after he has completed this process, which he calculates should take him no more than a couple of days for all the pages. ~ Kalki 21:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The new system is now available for June, so get your suggestions and votes in for the last 2 days of the month. July will be ready shortly. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * July is now available, too. I suspect the remaining months will be ready in only a few hours. I'll post again when they're finished. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

All months and month-date articles are now operational. (It turned out to be much easier than I'd expected, even with double-checking links and reviewing page histories.) Everyone, feel free to add suggested quotes and votes to all months and dates. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Amazing. Thank you for your extensive work, your system is really a community asset. --Aphaia 08:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania 2006
@Boston. Is there anyone who will attend? I will. --Aphaia 08:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I work in Cambridge but do not plan to attend. 121a0012 00:15, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to, but I can afford neither the trip nor the conference fees. Sorry. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I plan to be there at least part of all three days, just to pick up what information and ideas I can on how to best contribute to the Wikimedia projects and other worthwhile wikis. ~ Rumour 14:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh you were there? I'm afraid I missed you ... Let us share your experiences at conference with the whole community? --Aphaia 09:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

State of Wikiquote?
Wikibooks have a project to make a survey of their activities to celebrate their anniversary: b:Wikibooks:State of the Project/2006. Our own anniversary is coming soon and I think it nice for us to have a similar one on our project (here or on meta, it could be disputable. Wikiquote will be three years old, but argumentable if English Wikiquote per se can be say so too, due to subdomain creation). --Aphaia 04:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Now, var. ARTICLENUMBER indicates we have 7499 articles as of yet.
 * (diff) (hist) . . N Iron shiek‎; 08:17 . . 68.180.1.141 (Talk | block)
 * seems the 7499. So, the next submitted article is the 7500th milestone? --Aphaia 09:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The third anniversary actually passed without much note on 27 June, but growth continues... ~ Kalki 12:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * 27 June was the date Wikiquote was proposed, or the date a certain Wikipedia was squattered, if I recall correctly. quote.wikipedia.org was after then created ... so I heard ... perhaps we are better to make an agreement which date was the foundation day of our project.
 * As for growth, I've recently known the whole Wikiquote project has over 45,000 articles through languages on Wikiquote. Growth continues, certainly. --Aphaia 18:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Which article is the milestone?
Special:Statistics says just now "Excluding those, there are 7,500 pages that are probably legitimate content pages." According to Special:Newpages, however three articles were post after Iron shiek which I supposed as 7,499th. What do you think as the 7,500th milestone? And I feel need to say "Diege" would disappeared in some weeks ... --Aphaia 18:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * 17:15, 11 July 2006 ‎Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (hist) ‎[1,507 bytes] ‎MisterHand (Talk | contribs | block) (moved from english wikipedia)
 * 16:54, 11 July 2006 ‎Diege (hist) ‎[31 bytes] ‎Vivian H. (Talk | contribs | block) (Diege)
 * 14:20, 11 July 2006 ‎Roberto Clemente (hist) ‎[1,117 bytes] ‎Mareino (Talk | contribs | block) (new page)
 * 08:17, 11 July 2006 ‎Iron shiek (hist) ‎[145 bytes] ‎68.180.1.141 (Talk | block)
 * Since both the Special:Statistics page and the number displayed on the Main page both say 7500 right now, it would seem that "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" is the 7,500th. I don't know if that'll change after Diege is (probably) deleted (assuming it even counts; the Stats page says the count exludes "stub" pages, which might just cut out pages below a certain size). I don't really feel that 7500 pages is that much of a milestone, though; when we hit 10,000, that will be a milestone. &mdash;LrdChaos 18:48, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I was confused, perhaps.
 * Wikimedia news says "Recommended ones are 100, 500, 1k, 2k, 5k increments to 20k, 10k increments to 100k, 25k increments to 250k, 50k increments to 500k, and 100k increments to 1000k.". So 7,500 has been not considered a milestone elsewhere, as you doubted. However some prefer 2.5k and its incremented as milestones too. So the next accepted milestone will be 10K . --Aphaia 20:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't even know that there were "recommended" milestones; it just seemed to me that 7500 was a rather strange number for a milestone. Sure, it's 3/4 of the way to 10k, but it's not something I would have expected as a milestone. (As the "recommended" list goes, I also think that "5k increments to 20k" is a bit excessive, so make of my opinion what you will.) &mdash;LrdChaos 20:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Blocking changes
Announcing this here, since VP seems to get more attention.

Tim Starling, one of the main Wikimedia developers, has made a massive overhaul to the block system. Now, sysops are presented with two new options when blocking users:
 * Block anonymous users only, and
 * Prevent account creation.

By default, the first option is unchecked, and the second is checked; this preserves the status quo, making blocks act just as they previously did. However, sysops may choose to block only anonymous users on a given IP, allowing longer blocks of ISPs like AOL that frequently re-assign their IPs (sometimes as quickly as on every page load) without blocking legitimate contributors. Likewise, sysops may choose to uncheck "prevent account creation", which will allow new users to be created while the IP is blocked. This option is intended to prevent casual vandalism while still allowing those who wish to become regular contributors to do so.

More information can be found at w:Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard as well as on the wikitech-l mailing list. Essjay ( Talk  • Connect  ) 16:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Random quotes that are bold-faced?
Why are random quotes, such as those found on the Wikiquote page re: Oscar Wilde, bold-faced? Is this someone's attempt to highlight their favorites OR is there some other reason beyond that? If it's personal preference, shouldn't the bolding be removed? Thanks in advance! -- Spyneyes


 * There is no more or less randomness to the bolding that is done by most people than there is randomness to the act of quoting itself. This issue has come up a relatively few times over the years, but with more people coming over from the Wikipedia, where such selective bolding of quotes or passages deemed more significant than others would be far more likely to be deemed improper for an encyclopedic article, it is beginning to come up more here, where the primary aim is the gathering and presentation of significant quotations of significant people and works. I have always felt very strongly that bolding should remain an option that is available in these presentations. Though I have gone into more detail at a few other places in previous years, part of one response I just recently made a few weeks ago, on my talk page, is now posted here with a few minor revisions:


 * This is not Wikipedia, where for very good reasons an encyclopedic "Neutral Point of View" is adamantly promoted in the creation of articles, and where most statements originate with the editors and should be carefully framed within NPOV guidelines. Here we are all selecting and posting statements of various points of view that we for some reason find notable. While we share the ideal that the project as a whole should not embrace any definite POV on most issues, as I have emphasized on a few occasions previously, unlike the ideal composing of encyclopedia articles the act of quoting itself is inherently a POV process, and we are all engaged in varying degrees in determining what is included here on the pages, and what is not, and all are to some extent exercising our points of view, and unlike the creation of encyclopedia articles we are not as absolutely compelled to restrain them in the quotes we choose to add, or those we choose to emphasize in some way.


 * There are very many quotes here, that I don't find all that notable, but if someone does, and no one else objects, they remain. The same is true of the works and authors that we include: if they do not pass consensus criteria for notability they are deleted. Somewhat surprisingly with many editors coming here from Wikipedia, bolding practices here have thus far only rarely been an issue of contention.The few occasions it has been an issue it has usually been raised by people who feel nothing should be bolded at all, but that so far has not been a dominant consensus here, and I have occasionally emphasized that, especially on the larger pages, I find the total lack of bolding to be very aesthetically unappealing and bland. I have never attempted to ignore, deny, or equivocate about the fact that to any human being, there are many quotations and statements that are inherently more notable than others, and that this is a place where we are gathering and sifting them in various ways, according to our various interests and inclinations, and I have always asserted that bolding is and should remain an option available for people who are interested in developing the presentations we are engaged in creating here on the various pages. ~ Kalki 01:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Whereas I find that unnecessary boldface use makes text (like that written above) painful to read. 121a0012 02:09, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Surely there is not any actual physical pain involved in reading some text darkened for the purposes of emphasis, any more than someone like me has any actual physical pain in seeing long pages of entirely unaccented text. There can admittedly be a some degree of mental anxiety or even anguish in seeing points emphasized that one might not find entirely appealing, or simply not worthy of much note, as I too have experienced; but there is also mental anguish and weariness at searching through long lists of dull drab, boring, and unaccented text with little or no differentiation for either the eye or mind to anchor upon, to better get clear bearings as one considers the various thoughts and ideas of other minds.


 * Thus, even where bolding is done on a few quotes that I don't find all that notable, as does sometimes occur, I am someone who much prefers that some conscious thought and deliberation be exhibited in the development of the articles. I am not someone who worships at the altars of dull uniformity in any field of human endeavor, and as I have made clear in the past, I certainly am not someone who wishes to be involved in any way in the demanding or mandating of it. ~ Kalki 03:22, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I must respectfully disagree with Kalki's ideas about bolding quotes. I don't have time for a detailed rebuttal, but here are a few brief points: This is by no means exhaustive, and I suspect we could come up with some other ideas about why to keep selective bolding as well. As with most Wikiquote changes, though, some editors would probably have to mount a serious effort to examine this question thoroughly. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Bolding quotes on Wikiquote is akin to emphasizing passages, not including material, in Wikipedia.
 * I also find reading large sections of bolded text unpleasant. Emphasis should be used sparingly, yet it is often used for entire paragraphs here, reducing its effectiveness.
 * Wikimedia projects have guidelines about the use of italics and bolding for emphasis. Personally chosen bolding interferes with these guidelines.
 * Some Wikiquote styles (e.g., TV and film) have specific bolding guidelines that make personal-preference bolding impractical.
 * Bolding from personal choice was, I believe, a decision made when there were only a handful of editors working on a new and undeveloped Wikiquote. Wikiquote is much larger now, and I think we've outgrown this anachronistic use of opinion.


 * In my humble opinion, we can encourage editors to bold the text only in case the original author emphasize that part. Some editors emphasize a word, phrase or a sentence and such information based on the original would be useful. On the contrary it would be disputable if it is good for us to bold a quote because of its notability. I found it useful in some cases - like Abraham Lincorn's Gettisburg address ... to pick up a phrase from a large quote bolding was helpful ... but it would be infringe NPOV policy and perhaps we can make a remark of notability in different ways like a note "this quote is one of his best known blah blah.". --Aphaia 23:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It is certainly my position (being primarily concerned with quotes from books and literature generally) that WQ should represent the text exactly as it was written&mdash;and that includes the author's original emphasis or lack thereof. I have some sympathy for Kalki's position that the most important or notorious quotations tend to get lost in a mass of text, but I don't believe that adding emphasis is the appropriate solution.  (I'm not sure there is an appropriate solution, given the inherently POV nature of selecting some quotations for special treatment.  Yes, WQ editors' choices of which quotations to include at all also have a POV element, but they are fundamentally grounded in the objective fact of the source text, unlike selective highlighting.)  121a0012 02:32, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I have been reminded of this dialog because of a recent reversion of vandalism to this page, and I wish to note that one reason that I have promoted bolding as a means of user emphasis within articles, and would discourage italics for such, is that italics have been commonly used in various ways in the original published documents, whereas bolding is much rarer, and bolding thus more clearly indicates emphasis provided for the article, rather than that existing within the original. On the very rare occasion where this might be otherwise, its presence in the original could be noted in a comment. I also cannot agree with the opinion that the use of opinion is "anachronistic" in the emphasis of quotes, any more than it is in the selection of quote. The use of opinion is intrinsic to the process and there is no way to eliminate it, and I will not make even the slightest pretensions that there are. There can be disputes as to the aesthetics or practicality of various forms of emphasis, but I again vigorously reject the idea that user experimentation with forms of emphasis should be thoroughly eliminated as an option. Many of the established styles and norms in use on various pages have developed through such user experimentation beyond the original basic "bulleted" styles, and I believe it better to preserve options for stylistic experimentation and emphasis rather than to needlessly eliminate them, and generally in making no more "absolute" rules about things than are absolutely necessary. ~ Kalki 06:41, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Russian Wikiquote
They are now in trouble about copyright infringement. It seems we can do nothing for them, but studying troubles on a sister project might be helpful for us to deal with our own. Iceberg tops of their troubles are found at m:user talk:Anthere and m:user talk:MaxSem. A possible moral would be "never copy from a website, even if the quote itself is in PD." --Aphaia 23:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I've made this point before for the folks who like to copy IMDb's quotes for a film or TV show. (It's often easy to spot such copying, even when it's selective and/or rearranged, simply because their quotes have a particular style and are often riddled with distinctive errors.) One good way to avoid this is to start with their quote list, watch the shows in question to get the correct versions of the quotes (and possibly delete a few and/or add a few new ones), then reformat to Wikiquote standards. This uses IMDb just like any other secondary source, which is generally accepted research practice. Of course, it's still not an excuse for including everything IMDb, or any other quote site, has. We still need to keep within the (admittedly imprecise) "fair use" guidelines mentioned in Copyrights. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiQuote
How Can I Submit A Quote??? asked by User:Asidhu
 * If you are quoting yourself or your friends you should limit these to your own user pages (such as User:Asidhu & User talk:Asidhu) but if you have a quote of a notable person or work you may add it in the same way that you edited this page. If there is not a page for the author, work or theme that you have in mind, there are a few ways of creating new pages; one of the most basic is to simply type the name of the desired page in double brackets: Kate Bush and if there is not page for that title the page-link that is thus made will be in red, and if their is, it will be blue: Kate Bush. You should also sign your posts on talk pages with 3 or 4 tildes though some of us use 1 + 3 or 4 : ~ ~ to produce a signature like this... ~ Kalki 07:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Atrocious abuse of the Wikiquote project
I don't know if I want to even direct anything more than minor traffic to it, but just to make a few corrective edits I became the third registered user at this FARCE of a site, "quotes.onlinereference.info" that uses Wikiquote (legally, under the terms of the GFDL) to provide a commercialized haven for advertising and SPAM. It is better than having it here, but it is still revolting. I altered the main page so that it is a bit more truthful, as before I altered it, it proclaimed that it was Wikiquote. One of the most ironical things is the quote they are using for quote of the day from the forking that they began with (apparently from January 6th 2005):


 * "I know the biggest crime is just to throw up your hands and say 'This has nothing to do with me, I just want to live as comfortably as I can.'" ~ Ani DiFranco.

One of the biggest outrages is that our user names and user pages have been retained, in ways that could make it seem to the casual user that we are involved in creating this commercialiazed abomination, and some of these are even already being used as platforms for SPAM. ~ Rumour 09:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I just became the fourth registered user there, simply to better maintain control of my user page and to at least occasionally do what I can to prevent the clone of my user page from becoming a base for commercial advertising.


 * There is probably little or nothing we can do to prevent such legal abuses of work released under the GFDL, but we perhaps can at least attempt to protect our own user pages, and perhaps make it plain on a few of the major pages that it is NOT Wikiquote. ~ Kalki 10:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Kalki on that such user page copying won't be prevented. If they say we *are* maintaining their site, or worse we are employed by them, then it will be the time we should complain (either with the Foundation or not). Is the situation so bad?
 * Perhaps we now need to use widely, avoiding misunderstanding as far as possible. For instance, only blanking and deletion requests will be our ways in my impression. --Aphaia 12:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * But they are saying that we worked on their site. The discussion pages show that users Kalki, Rumour, Aphaia, Jeffq, etc., etc., have done quite a bit of work, and if anyone wants to discuss this work, they can post to their user pages. Of course, at the moment, only Rumour, Achilles, Kalki, and Jeffq are registered (and secured by password) to the actual authors cited by the edit histories and discussion pages. I've posted a note about this to m:Talk:Wikimedia trademarks and w:Wikipedia:Village pump (news). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

By the way, there are three Wikimedia projects copied at onlinereference.info: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote. All contain apparently complete but old copies of the database, including the user pages. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:38, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your additional information. My suggestion is, request for deletions all talk and discussion pages, and also user pages from their website. It would be worthy to consider who will issue such requests. Or just blanking those pages. There have been many websites which did similar things ....... even non-profit like mozilla.org. And unless they lie intentionally, we need to have a patience.
 * I would like to know if they say explicitly or state they are employing us or have us work for them. Your information sounds a bit different for me; retaining discussion pages is, not welcome though, different from such wrong statement. I think they can legally retain those pages both our user pages and discussions because those pages are under GFDL. --Aphaia 13:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Btw, test there is I. Just for your information. --Aphaia 14:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Adding Images
I want to add an image to a person page but im not sure if it is copyrighted. How do I go about knowing if it is or not? And also how do I upload an image? Thank you (Unsigned question by User:Paranoid1)


 * We have disabled the uploading of images onto this wiki, but images that would be usable here can be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, where extensive guidelines and editors more experienced and familiar with the issues involved can be consulted. ~ Kalki 11:17, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * So would I be allowed to add an image if it goes ok on Wikimedia Commons? I added an image to Wikimedia Commons but Im not sure if it is copyrighted or anything. Iam very new to all this image stuff and I want make sure I follow everything correctly. So let me know thanks. User:Paranoid1 4:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I just checked your upload there, but unless you actually created the image "Image:Sq-yorn-shadows-03xclu-dell.jpg", or know it to be released under a free license like the GFDL or a similar Creative Commons license it is very likely that it will be removed. ~ Kalki 22:29, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * How do I find out if it is free licensed? I did find that pic in the google image search. User: Paranoid1


 * The availability of images on the web, by whatever means they might be found or accessed does not in any way imply that they are legally "free" to use; many images appear on many websites that are clear violation of copyright protections. Doing a bit of tracking this image down and then doing a Google image search of "Pete Yorn" shows that this image is used by MTV, as a "file" photo apparently taken by Gregg Delman, and thus is almost certainly not released under the GFDL or other "Free" license. If MTV actually does hold the copyright for this image, as a commercial enterprise it very probably reserves the rights of use of it so much as it can. If any image or other work is released under the GFDL or Creative Commons there are usually very clear and often prominent statements that this is the case. ~ Kalki 12:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh thank you very much for the help. ~ Paranoid1 18 July 2006

indiana history
why was the year 1959 called the lincoln year


 * This is a question better asked at w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. If you haven't read Wikipedia articles on Indiana or Abraham Lincoln yet, you should probably do that before posing the question there. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Request
Hi, I am user meta:user:Walter. I respectfully request this community to consider my following request; I write a newsletter about what is going on in the Wikimedia projects in all languages. It is my hope that every community, like this one, has some people who read Wikizine. Then I can maybe receive some news from those readers about your project and in the other direction the can inform there community in your own language about the Wikimedia news possibly. I would like to ask this community to include on this page on the top and/or a relevant page a small banner for Wikizine.

If a banner is placed here on the correct page the change that someone here will think about Wikizine and report some local news will increase highly I suspect. Or that people will take a look and read the Wikimedia news. And maybe even share it locally. Here are the banners; Wikizine/banners

If there are questions please ask it here. I will be watching this page for two weeks from now on frequently. Greetings, --Walter 15:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I found nothing wrong in his request. We could put a banner at the top of VP, or elsewhere. Thoughts? --Aphaia 10:22, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, can my request be granted or rejected please? --Walter 22:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * We are not ignoring you, Walter. It's just that basic maintenance issues occupy the full attention of everyone who might be in a position to implement this, and it is uncommon to get input here from anyone who isn't. (We are still a fairly small community, in terms of regular editors.) It could easily take a couple of months for someone to get to this. Furthermore, we've just lost about a quarter of our active sysop staff to temporary real-world distractions &#9786;, so the rest will be awfully busy for the next few weeks. Personally, I don't like to make changes like this without thoroughly investigating the request, and I'm severely backlogged at the moment. Sorry for the delay. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:45, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

using a set of proverbs from wikiquote for commercial purposes
Hello There

I am a very confused newbie here and so I am seeking your guidance on what restrictions, requests etal there are around my using the proverbs listed in Wikiquote for commercial purposes.

Many Many Thanks for attempting to clarify this in a simple way for me!

BradMeyer@collaboration.co.uk


 * Wikiquote editors are not in a position to provide legal advice, but there are some resources that can get you started in investigating the use of Wikiquote (actually, any MediaWiki project) material for commercial purposes. Please read w:Wikipedia:Copyrights, especially the section on "Users' rights and obligations", and the text of the GNU Free Documentation License. Wikiquote operates under the same licenses and practices as Wikipedia. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well said, I think. Can we including thie dialogue to our FAQ? I suppose we will receive this kind of question more and more. --Aphaia 09:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea, Aphaia! I've just added a generalized "Copying Wikiquote material" question and answer to FAQ. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up
Hi there - I'm new here and added a page on Thich Nhat Hanh and it was marked as needing clean-up. I'll be happy to do that, but I need more specifics about what is considered out of compliance with it. Thanks! Nightngle 17:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * A good place to start is with one of the links included with the cleanup message, Templates/People, which outlines the form for people articles. For this particular case, it seems the biggest thing is removing the quotation marks from around the quotes; I'd also trim down the letter from MLK, as it's significantly larger than the "usual" quote size, and looks to be the complete text of the letter. &mdash;LrdChaos 17:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the suggestions! I appreciate it! I believe that I've made the changes to article suggested. I took off the "clean up needed" tag, but if my newbie eyes are missing something, I'm happy to fix it if I'm pointed in a specific direction. Nightngle 20:45, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Getting Some Quotes Back
I did some The_Boondocks_%28TV_series%29 quotes a while back for the episode Grandad's fight and I just went on it now and noticed some of the beginning quotes I had added are gone. I remember adding them and saving them at one point but now they are gone. Is there any way to get them back? Paranoid1 7:02 PM CST July 22, 2006


 * Edit histories preserve all the old versions of articles. To examine them, click on the "history" tab at the top of the Wikiquote page, just above the title. You'll see a list of date/times, editors, and edit summaries. You can find your edits by looking for your username (or IP address, for anon editors). You can also read the edit summaries to look for section titles or words that may reflect the edits done (which is why it's so important to use meaningful edit summaries, everybody! &#9786;). You can also click on a left-column button for an old page and a right-column button on a newer page, then click on "Compare selected versions" to get a "diff", a display of all the changes made between the two versions. For long histories, you can use the links at the top and bottom of the history to examine up to 500 edits at a time, and to page back through the complete history. To recover old information, you can display a version that contains it, then "edit" the page and copy out the desired text (perhaps into a text editor) for examination and possible pasting into the current article. (Be sure to cancel the edit of the old page, or you will replace the current version with the old page.) More information on this incredibly useful tool can be found at Help:Page history. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Media coverage
Wikiquote is mentioned at New Yorker. It is a mere mention as one of sister projects of Wikipedia, so not much favorable for us, nor negative. Their article itself is not so much inacurate, trying to be fair (that is, both positive and negative sides are focused, both our supporters and our critics are quoted), shortly fun to read. URL is http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact

I wonder whether it is the first occasion that major media mentioned us. If you know other references for us, please share your knowledge with the community ;-) --Aphaia 13:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it may have only been a passing remark, but it was somewhat flattering. I took the parenthetical "bye-bye Bartlett's" as a compliment, however premature. &#9786; Thanks for pointing this out, Aphaia. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:39, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

new article not appearing on searches?
I created the article Madame de Pompadour: here

it shows up using the exacty spelling and the Go button but does not show up using search at all. Neither does the quote I listed under her name. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.145.216.239 (talk • contribs) 01:11, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It can take a little time for the Search mechanism to include new articles and/or text. I just tried "Madame de Pompadour" (with or without the quotes) and got the article, but I noticed that "madame de pompadour" (quoted or quoteless) and even just "pompadour" could not yet find the new article. The full, correctly capitalized name will immediately "Go" directly to the article, whereas any variation brings in the search engine, which may have a delay. Please be patient. You might want to read w:Wikipedia:Searching for more information. Also, the proper way to link to an article is like so:
 * Madame de Pompadour
 * which results in the following text:
 * Madame de Pompadour
 * It's much simpler than the URL you gave above, and provides other benefits (like showing up red if the article doesn't exist, and blue if it does). Thank you for starting this article! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

merging Omar Khayyám and Omar Khayyam
Hi all, I'm a newbie to Wikiquote. Anyway, I don't know what the template for merging is here, but Omar Khayyam needs to be merged into Omar Khayyám. --Samael775 15:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * We've used the merge tag up to now, but since there is a clear direction to merge here (from "Khayyam" to "Khayyám", to match the WP article), I took this opportunity to adapt the Wikipedia tags mergeto and mergefrom for Wikiquote use, and added them to the articles. Thanks for calling attention to this! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

new wikiquote in Kashmiri
I would like to start a new Wikiquote in Kashmiri. A starter page already exists: Kashmiri Proverbs.

Any input on how we can I can go about it would be helpful. ~ 66.28.244.137 22:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)suhail


 * Hello, Suhail? Welcome to the project. I recommend you to visit meta where we discuss about new projects.
 * You can request for Kashmiri Wikiquote at request for new languages. It would be helpful for you to read carefully its first three sections; procedure, FAQ and template (you may want to use it to submit your request). Its URL will be ks.wikiquote.org, since there is already Wikipedia with this language code. Your request should be supported by other Kashmiri speakers, so you may want to find supporters in Kashmiri speaking communities, including KS WP.
 * Good luck, and happy quoting! --Aphaia 09:49, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Weird thing going on with the Main Page
I've been going on the main page, and it seems that it likes to pretend that I'm still not logged in, even when I am. Later, it says I'm logged on when I'm on pages that aren't the main page. Is this happening to anyone else? Update: It's fixed. --Alexie 05:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The Legend of Zelda series articles
A month ago, I discovered that The Legend of Zelda series article had been split up by User:Jaeden into multiple articles, one for each game in the series. However, the page was left blank on June 18. Because I knew that the each game in the series has quite a bit of dialogue and could safely fill its own article (though it was also due in part to my unwillingness to merge all the page histories together, since some of the new articles had already been edited by the time I had discovered them), I decided to change the series page into a disambiguation page and deal with deleting the empty articles later. However, I just checked up on the page again and found that my edit had been reverted and since then the page has been edited by other users, despite the fact that the seperate game articles still exist (i.e. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, etc.)

Obviously, seperate articles shouldn't need to exist if the quotes are all compiled on one main page, but I'm at a loss as to what to do next. I'm not sure whether I should try the disambiguation solution again (as I mentioned before, most, if not all of the games can each make a moderately sized article) or merge the histories of the individual articles into the main series one (I believe that simply deleting the non-empty ones would be a violation of the GFDL, but correct me if I'm wrong). The best solution I could think of was to model the page after the Final Fantasy page, which has links to articles with a good amount of quotes while games with a lesser amount are listed on the page itself (in which case games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask would retain their own articles while the shorter ones would be merged back into the main series page). However, I figured I would be better off soliciting the help of the Wikiquote community at large, so here I am. Any comments or suggestions regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated. -- Robert 20:26, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

VFDA transclusions broken
We've finally outgrown our current deletion-archive system at Votes for deletion archive. We now have so many archived entries that the page no longer renders completely. I invite the community to review and discuss alternatives at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion archive. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Stub sorting
I noticed a large number of authors in the people stubs, and created the structure to sort them out into their own category, and then did a dozen or so articles. Probably the same should be done for musicians and politicians. We have so many people stubs now that the category is quite unweildy. 121a0012 03:53, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for helping out here! We can surely use a good bit of categorizing cleanup. If anyone else is interested in assisting in this, just take a look at how 121a0012 has done this for folks like musician Anton Webern or actor Alyson Hannigan . I'd be happy to answer any questions about this, too. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I've now gone through about 200 articles, which is about as much as I can reasonably do, so it's up to everyone else to pitch in. If someone can figure out why only two of the new categories show up as subcategories in Category:People stubs I'd appreciate it.  (I've seen this happen before and didn't understand it then, either.)  121a0012 03:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The other subcategories do show up there, it's just that the Wiki software doesn't list them unless it's also showing the part of the list alphabetically around it (e.g., Category:Musician stubs shows up only once you're looking at the Ms of the category. It's one behavior I've never understood about Mediawiki, because it seems much more useful for large categories to have all the subcategories appear in the first pages of the category, not "mixed in" with the sorting of the category's items. &mdash;LrdChaos 11:49, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * BTW, I think the major categories we are still missing for people stubs and should add are: military figures, sports figures, and academics/scientists. (I'm not sure at this point that we need to distinguish between scholars and scientists, so this should probably just be one category with a generic name similar to how I handled Category:Political figure stubs.)  It would be nice if someone would steal the icons from WP:WSS to use for our templates as well.  121a0012 03:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The WP icons raise an interesting issue: since they're copyrighted by the Wikimedia Foundation and not licensed under GFDL, they can't be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, so we can't use them, even though we're a Wikimedia Foundation project! We may need to make a provision here to allow uploads of WMF-copyrighted images, or ditch the whole no-image-uploading practice. But that's another topic, I suppose. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Appropriate new home for Guy Goma interview?
Would this be an appropriate home for the interview transcript of Guy Goma, mistaken interview subject, or would Wikisource be? I'd like to get it out of Wikipedia. -- Zanimum 14:29, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that either here or Wikisource is the place for it; the interview is still copyrighted, and so it probably shouldn't be reproduced in its entirety on any of the various Wikis. &mdash;LrdChaos 14:39, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I see the need to move the transcript from Wikipedia. It's not very long, and is obviously illustrative of the article's point — that Goma's 15 minutes of fame came from being mistaken for someone else for the interview. Even though it might seem reasonable to have an interview segment quoted here, it might stand out more as a potential copyright violation here because its only purpose would be to display the entire (brief) interview. But I am not a lawyer, of course. Unless there's other material worth quoting from Goma, I'd suggest just keeping it in the WP article. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Formatting issues
I have been looking at Judaism, and noticed it is neatly divided between separating quotes using bullets, and using lines. Wikiquote:Layout says nothing about lines, yet QI divides its quotes entirely using them. Which is correct/what is the correct usage of both? Dev920 01:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Depending on what the page is about, there are different ways of formatting. In the case of Judaism, it should follow Templates/Themes (though it doesn't, hence the cleanup tag); QI, on the other hand, is a television show, and so follows Templates/TV shows. Films (which follow Templates/Films) have yet another format, which combines both bullets and "lines". &mdash;LrdChaos 01:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Thankyou. Might I suggest links to the from Guide to layout?Dev920 11:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

New theme
Can I propose a new theme? Inspirational. Is there something already like that? Dev920 14:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * "Inspirational" is rather broad if it is meant as a type of quote meant to be inspirational, and quotes for such a page might better go onto many other theme pages, such as Optimism, Religion, Patriotism, Hope, and such; but a page for quotes simply dealing with the subject of "Inspiration" — purely of itself — would probably be a good idea. ~ Kalki 23:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * People can also post quotes that they find inspirational to their user pages and user talk pages, as well as finding out enough about them to make suggestions for the Quote of the Day for specific dates such as their author's birthday. ~ Kalki 23:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Kalki that any article titled "Inspiration" should be about inspiration itself (preferably including the word, so as not to allow all manner of interpretation to encroach), and not for quotes that are inspirational. "Inspirational" is impossibly broad a topic. Entire sections of bookstores are devoted to it, so how could we hope to maintain a single article on this subject? It would be as unwieldy as the "Jokes" article we nixed. Furthermore, what you and I consider inspiration may be violently in disagreement. Just one example: imagine the conflict between the editors who find inspiration in (A) a lifelong commitment to converting heathens to Jesus Christ; (B) the reward of 72 virgins for sacrificing yourself for Islam; and (C) an aethist's dream of replacing such primitive superstitions with simple awe of the natural world. (Have I failed to offend anyone with this single sentence? I apologize for all the non-universal sources of inspiration I left out.) Bloody wars are fought over such diverse and often incompatible ideas; let's not create a new battleground without damn good reason. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point. Maybe a category:inspirational for all those types of pages? This would deal with the issue raised by JeffQ but still bring them all to one place for efficient quote adding. Dev920 13:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Userpage problem
Sorry to post again, but could someone explain why my userpage box won't allow me to link to the Latin Wikiquote? Depending on what I do, all it does is either turn up as a redlink or, bizarrely, not show up at all. I'm sure what happening. Everything else is working fine. Dev920 21:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Don't worry about posting your questions; that's what the village pump is for. I see from your user page that you fixed your problem on your own, but in case others wonder about how to link to other projects, let me point out 2 tips:
 * Add a w: prefix to the page name to jump to a Wikipedia page. From other projects, add a q: prefix to jump to a page here.
 * If you're crossing languages, like English (en:) to Latin (la:), put the language prefix after the project and before the page name, like w:la:Vicipaedia:Taberna for Latin Wikpedia's village pump.
 * Your mistake was using the prefix "Wikiquote:", which doesn't work when jumping from a Wikiquote project (that's our project namespace). Using the short prefix is less likely to get you into trouble. A large (but not necessarily complete) table of these prefixes is available at Special:SiteMatrix. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Harnessing RSS feeds from quotationsbook.com to expand WQ
I maintain quotationsbook.com, a highly comprehensive and usable resource of quotations. It's also the only one with freely available | RSS feeds of all its content. Seeing that all this content is public, I thought of asking appropriate people at Wikiquote if WikiQuote collections can be extended to include quotes from my site. There are subsets of data available at quotationsbook that don't exist at Wikiquote, especially in stubs. Data can, of course, be formatted in any way WQ wishes, since it's delivered as XML.

Can Wikiquote: 1) Make use of these feeds to fill out stubs and append content to existing collections, etc.? 2) Who would be in charge of thinking this through and deciding to use the feeds?

I think it would contribute very significantly to Wikiquote content, and reveal many more left-out quotations (many times the reason people visit WQ). My feeds are traffic-ready and being used at answers.com. Sorry my wikiquote markup is new - still playing in the sandbox! ;-)

Thoughts? Amit --80.47.6.109 16:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry to take so long to respond to your query, Amit, but we've been a bit busy here lately. First, there is no one "in charge" of such work. Any Wikiquotian could work with you on such a project, or you could do it yourself as a Wikiquotian, registered or anonymous. However, there are two basic issues:
 * Wikiquote has no importing facility for material, so any kind of automation would require someone with Wikimedia bot-operating skills, a very rare situation here.
 * More important is the problem of sourcing quotes. I checked out your site with a few telling searches for quotes, and found that while your non-"fortune" quotes seem to be more accurate than other quote sites, you don't appear to have sources for quotes. (What we mean by "source" is a specific publication, whether print, web, or audiovisual, presented by a reliable organization, that allows editors to verify the accuracy of the quote.) My admittedly casual inspection suggests that your site focuses on the quote, the quotee, and a brief bio about the person, but does not make a verifiable source for the quote itself a priority.
 * Since sourcing is the hardest part of quote collection, I myself am reluctant to work on this. But that doesn't stop anyone else from working with you on this. Thanks for the offer! Perhaps someone will take advantage of it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Jeff, I'm working on adding context and citation information for a large proportion of the quotes. The entire site is being re-designed at present, and the new one will be ad-free and wonderful. We plan to contextualise the viewing of classic quotations using the e-texts of Project Gutenberg (so you can see the surrounding text of a famous quote from a book on gutenberg). If you or anyone else is excited about this, I'd be happy to talk - please contact me through quotationsbook.com. I'll keep you posted, Amit. 80.47.19.192 13:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Edit Summary?
What's an "edit summary"? Please answer back on my talk page. -  ~ ☺ ♥ * Cute 1 4 u  |talk to me!  * ♥ ☺  ~  02:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll post a note on your talk page, Cute, but when you ask a question in the village pump, it's better for it to be answered here because other editors may benefit from the information. An edit summary is a brief comment about what changes you are making to a wiki page whenever you edit. The box in which you enter the comment is just above the buttons and checkboxes for saving your edit, and is marked "Summary". (If you're posting a new topic to a talk page, the box will be right above the edit field (window) and will be labelled "Subject/headline", because it will be added as a heading to the talk page.) These summaries show up when you look at the "history" tab of a wiki page, and are invaluable for quickly finding many specific changes to articles. That's a major reason they are strongly recommended for every edit, even minor ones, and why the consistent use of edit summaries is a practice that many look for when evaluating an administrator candidate. More information can be found at Help:Edit summary. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks so much. I've been tryin' to find that out for weeks. I guess I was trying ro find out myself. ~  ~ ☺ ♥ * Cute 1 4 u  |talk to me!  * ♥ ☺  ~  06:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Quote of the Day?
Where do I request a quote for the "quote of the day" ? -  ~ ☺ ♥ * Cute 1 4 u  |talk to me!  * ♥ ☺  ~  02:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * On the Main Page, at the bottom of the pink "Quote of the Day" section, the small text includes three links of use for learning more about the QotD process:
 * Quote of the day (link: "Read more"). Explains the use of QotD.
 * The month page (currently Quote of the day/August) (link: "a page for each month"). Where to start when nominating quotes or voting on quotes.
 * Quotes of the Year (link: "Quote of the Day archives"). Lists former quotes of the day.
 * The basic process is to go to the current month (or other months via links from the current month) and follow the instructions there for adding or voting on quotes. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Bolded quotes
Why are some quotes bolded on say the Rodney Dangerfield page? --hydnjo talk 03:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Please see the lengthy discussion "Random quotes that are bold-faced?" above. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I can't believe I missed that after poring through all the FAQs and stuff. :-(  --hydnjo talk 14:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

WQ:VFD list and decrease of review period
There is discussion at VFD talk about the size of the list and a suggestion that a reduction of the time on VFD would help. I'm kind-of new around here and don't know much about the WQ culture so my comments should viewed as those of an outsider. I agree that the time at VFD should be reduced. From what I see, there is virtually no meaningful contribution after the first couple of days (by the usual and sometimes only voters) so one week should be ample. Also, there are several articles at VFD which to me seem to be candidates for speedy deletion, articles that meet the criteria for. Does WQ tend to be speedy averse? --hydnjo talk 12:32, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for bringing this up here, hydnjo. We really need to advertise this kind of proposed policy change here anyway. (I hope you don't mind my changing the heading to reflect the exact situation.) Some background:
 * We adopted a 14-day review period (for all nominations) mid-last year, when it was observed that (A) it often took a while for editors to notice that articles had been nominated for deletion, and (B) there were some salvageable articles that took more than a week to address cited problems. Wikipedia currently has a "lag time" of only 5 days for articles, longer for other pages.
 * Our speedy-deletion policy is very out-of-date and doesn't allow us to speedy-delete many kinds of articles that would be speedied on WP. There is a draft updated policy, but we haven't yet focused enough attention on it to finalize it.
 * My personal observation is that, unlike last year, there are rarely any articles that benefit from the extra review time. The "usual suspect" nominators and voters will, typically within 24 hours, assemble sufficient information on the subject to see if the article can be salvaged, and give suggestions on how to fix the ones that are salvageable. The article creators and editors (usually new folks who don't know Wikiquote practices) nearly always ignore this advice, but the few who pay attention tend to respond within a day or two, making the direction of the vote clear.
 * I make these points here because the folks who usually participate on VfD know most of this, but the entire community is welcomed and even encouraged to get involved in these policy issues. Everyone is invited to join the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:26, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As you suggest, I'll continue this discussion at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion.  hydnjo talk 20:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ooh, I forgot, I like your re-title of this section just fine. :-)  --hydnjo talk 20:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

delete a page
i created a page by mistake, how can i delete it?


 * As the Speedy deletions page indicates:


 * Non-sysops can alert sysops to such pages by adding a speedy deletion tag to the page. To tag such an article, edit the page and add one of the following tags to the top of the page:


 * These notices will allow an admin to make a quick deletion, without further need of discussion, if it is plainly appropriate. ~ Kalki 18:49, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

RSS?
Does wikiquote have an RSS feed for Quote Of The Day, and if not does it plan to?


 * This question periodically comes up, so we probably should add it to FAQ. There have been some experiments in the past (e.g., RSS feed for QOTD), but not a lot of interest shown by folks who might be in a position to make it work well. (There are some technical issues involved that will require some attention from MediaWiki and RSS-savvy folks, and I think the likely candidates for such work are preoccupied with more basic Wikiquote issues at the moment.) I wouldn't mind using this as an excuse to come up to speed on syndication myself, so if it isn't otherwise addressed in the next 3 months (after I reduce my own backlog of critical tasks), I may take a look at it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Major deletion revision
I plan to implement, starting on Sunday, 10 September, some major revisions to deletion policy and practices that have been discussed at various times in the past year, including the following:


 * Update Speedy deletions with the text of Speedy deletions/Draft for a 1-month trial period.


 * Update Votes for deletion (WQ:VFD) to reflect the new archive process and a 7-day "lag time". The lag time will be phased in starting 14 September.


 * Create a Deletion review page for filing objections to closed discussions from WQ:VFD.


 * Update Deletion policy to reflect all the changes.

More information on these imminent changes is given at Wikiquote talk:Deletion policy, where the entire community is, as always, invited to participate in fine-tuning these policies and practices and dealing with other related issues. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Policy page for sourcing standards needed
There is currently no policy or guideline page talking about what it means for a quotation to be considered "sourced". The Manual of Style talks about this only briefly, and doesn't do a good job of explaining how to deal with multiple sources for the same quotation. There's also no page that I can find that explains how and why the citation and source-quality standards for a quotation compendium are different from an encyclopedia's (viz., WP:CITE and WP:RS). I don't think we need to replicate the elaborate structure of WP articles on this subject; with our narrower focus and smaller community, a single article should suffice. If other people think this is worth doing, I'll try putting together a draft Sourcing guideline this week. (And please suggest better names!) 121a0012 05:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, 121a0012. The lack of clear policy on this has been a sore point for me for the past year, and it's been a to-do that I keep putting off month after month with so much else going on. I'd definitely like to work on this with you and any other interested editors. However, this week may not be the best timing, as we have just started a major update to deletion policies that are being phased in over the next two weeks.


 * There are many scattered pieces to this issue, including some pages that many don't even know exist. For instance, I just ran across Sourced and Attributed sections a few minutes ago and haven't even had a chance to read it yet. There's also Citing sources, which I believe is a virtual copy of WP:CITE, so it may not even be very Wikiquote-ified. Then there are literally a hundred talk page postings from many different editors on the subject strewn across the project, reflecting not only individual opinions but evolution of thought even for each person. That's what happens when you have only a few editors boldly attempting to create order out of chaos.


 * Feel free to work on this, however, and tag it as a draft policy. Essjay's WikiProject Policy Revision, which I'm afraid no one is really working on, has some helpful ideas and templates that you might want to look at. If you get a draft source policy going, I'm sure everyone will catch up to you eventually. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:23, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I've put my first attempt up at Sourcing. I'm going to be offwiki for most of the rest of this month, so editors should feel free to hack away at it.  I've left a few notes in the text where additional details need to be fleshed out.  I'm not sure whether this can or should grow into a replacement for Citing sources, although I'm leaning in that direction at present.  If we go that route, than the tag at the top should be changed from Proposed to Revision draft.  121a0012 06:44, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Main Page WQ:CP link
I've just started feeling my way around WQ and frequently launch from the Main Page links but didn't realize that there was a Community Portal until I noticed it in the shortcuts page. After checking and finding a MP "What links here" I went back and then realized that the link was the "Community" header itself. I an effort to blame "you folks" rather than myself for my oversight I'm suggesting that additionally, an explicit CP link should be included as the second or third link in the "About the project" section. --hydnjo talk 15:51, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * addendum: It's unusual for the headline to also be a link so if redundancy is an issue then I would prefer an explicit link but if redundancy is not an issue then have both. --hydnjo talk 19:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Like so many other wikiproject elements here, Community portal is a "good idea" that hasn't really received much activity. (Each page like this requires the attention of one or more regular editors, and as of July, there were only 8-12 Wikiquotians who make more than 100 edits a month over the whole project.) WQ:CP has typically only been maintained infrequently by only a single Wikiquotian at a time (Aphaia in early 2005, MosheZadka in late 2005, and not really anybody this year). I'm sure that's why no one thought to add a link to the Main Page. I've just done so; perhaps we'll get more interest. Thanks for calling attention to this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:41, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well I'm impressed - less than an hour! Thank you very much for your timely response to my suggestion even if it were to be declined (which it wasn't) and BTW, the CP is just fine. I'm not nearly as literate as I imagine most here are but I'll help as best as I can. --hydnjo talk 22:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Trial update of WQ:SD now live
The long-delayed overhaul of Speedy deletions is now live, for a 1-month trial period. Please read the new policy page before nominating any pages for either speedy or standard deletion, and discuss the new policy at Wikiquote talk:Speedy deletions. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:01, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Page move from Useful shortcuts to Useful links
copied from Wikiquote talk:Useful shortcuts:
 * I'm considering moving this page to Useful links (if the link is blue then it already happened). My reason is that the pagename is too much like Shortcuts and is potentially confusing. Users who are used to the original pagename will not be inconvenienced as there will be a redirect from the original. I don't see a lot of activity here (talk:Useful shortcuts) so I don't know if this is on anyone's watchlist. I'm posting this at the VP in case there is opposition. --hydnjo talk 00:34, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that page looks strangely familiar. &#9786; This move sounds logical to me, although there may be other, better-known community pages that might be the place to put these links. Unless someone comes up with a more appropriate page name, I have no objection. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ahh, found it. Since you seem to be this page's daddy and you have no ideas for a new pagename (?) I'll go ahead after a another day or so. How do you feel about doing your upgrades in the WQ namespace rather than your user namespace (or both if you prefer the separation)? I think it's a useful page for all.  --hydnjo talk 00:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That makes some sense, but I'm reluctant to maintain a page like this for the community. (My leaden footprint is already on far too many things here.) However, I wouldn't mind being a participant if others were actively maintaining it. As far as other places for this page, I was thinking that there may have been a Help: or Wikiquote: page that would be a logical one to include these, but I'm thinking now that such a concentrated (and undocumented!) list of shortcuts doesn't have a logical location in existing "Welcome to Wikiquote"-type pages. Perhaps a link to this page might be added in some places, although where eludes me for the moment. Concerning docs, I seem to recall discussing this with someone a while ago, suggesting that a community version should have some explanation of what these things do and who can do them, to make up for the compressed layout. Two ideas were info on a talk page and "hover" notes for each shortcut. Another that just occured to me would be a help icon that would jump to a talk page explanation. (This is the kind of stuff I think about that makes me reluctant to take on a new task. I'm not very good at eventualism.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I'm not inclined to worry about the best fit location right now but I do think that it is important to move the page for the reason that I've stated. My comment about maintenance came about because I noticed that you are active in your user space version and I thought that the public version would benefit from your edits. I'm not trying to sign you up for anything new, I see how much you are already contributing to this project (and I don't see leadfoot). I'll put your user version on my watchlist and edit the WQ version as appropriate. It was not my intention to put any burden on you - I know how that feels. --hydnjo talk 01:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and moved the page per your suggestion, hydnjo, as I wanted to refer to it in an updated Deletion policy that I'm working on. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Chris Redding, a living genius
Here is famous quote from Chris Redding: 'A fat man once complained about his weight, and I just replied - it's good to be fat.'


 * While your enthusiasm for this unidentified person is fine, it does not appear to be supported either by a Google search or by some poking around for the name "Chris Redding", a somewhat common name that does not appear to have an obviously famous possessor. It is useful to note, too, that nearly every subject claimed by its editor as "genius" has proven to be a non-famous person, quoted by someone creating what the Wikimedia projects call a "vanity" article, and not an appropriate subject for Wikiquote. You might want to praise his or her virtues instead on a personal MySpace page. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:53, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

New page James Wood
I have tried to create a wikiquote page for the British literary critic James Wood, but have managed to spoil the top bit and failed to provide a link to wikipedia - I can't get in to edit it.

At the bottom the link goes to another James Wood and I can't work out how to disambiguate.

Thanks for your help.


 * The links have now been provided. - InvisibleSun 23:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Name=Wikiquote Name?
If you are contributing to both Wikipedia and Wikiquote, does your Wikiquote username have to be identical to your Wikipedia username? Toonmon 05:27, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
 * No, but the developers are in the final stages of a new system which will provide a single username across all the wikis. The transition period is expected to be a bit complicated, and the simplest situations exist where a user already has a single username across several of the wikis, and no one else has that same username. ~ Kalki 07:53, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Major update to deletion policy
I have just done a major update to Deletion policy to accomodate the accumulated changes of the past 17 months. It is still marked as a policy under revision, so I invite everyone to discuss these changes at Wikiquote talk:Deletion policy. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:47, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Draft for a revised NPOV policy
Just a heads up/call for attention, I have started a draft for a revisions neutral point of view policy at Neutral point of view/Draft. I would appreciate any and all feedback, comments, suggestions, and help. Thanks. —LrdChaos (talk) 19:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it's a good improvement on the policy. Quotations being used out of context or added in order to promote a point of view is a real problem on some articles. Catamorphism 15:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Considering a change to cleanup tags
Something I've been thinking about doing with the cleanup tags is to add an (optional) parameter to them that can be used to indicate (on a rough basis) how much cleanup would be required. For example, a page that looks like a large number quotes just exploded onto a page without any real formatting or organization could be tagged cleanup|severe, while a page that comes much closer to meeting formatting styles, but has some minor things wrong (e.g., full-width hrs instead of 50%, quotes surrounded by quotation marks, etc.) could be tagged cleanup|minor, with a cleanup|medium (or something) for the middle cases.

The reason I bring this up is because I often find myself in a state where I'd like to improve articles, but have no interest in spending an hour or more toiling over the same page. On the flip side, sometimes I can devote myself to turning a large mess into a nice page, but this is almost exclusively something I do only to pages for things/people/etc. I already have some interest in. What I find myself doing is refreshing for random pages, and cleaning up those that don't seem like they would be better started from scratch.

I imagine that there are probably at least a few people who would be willing to do simple cleanups, if there was some way to easily get to the pages that only needed simple or intermediate cleanups, without having to wade through some spectatularly long and messy ones. The downside would be that someone who might be doing general cleanup might miss the severe pages, since they'd be a separate category. However, I don't think that there are any editors here who indiscriminately do cleanup of articles, regardless of their interest in the subject and the starting state of the article. —LrdChaos (talk) 16:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Subsections for Unsourced Quotes
There are people pages on Wikiquote in which the Unsourced/Attributed sections have been subdivided into sections based on theme or subject matter. This practice has taken different forms. There are pages, for example, such as Dane Cook or Simon Conway Morris, which are organized by theme or subject without an Unsourced section heading. In other cases, such as H.L. Mencken, a Sourced section is followed by an Unsourced/Attributed section with themes. On pages such as Anthony Burgess and Mohandas Gandhi, there are sections combining both sourced and unsourced quotes according to subject.

Doesn't all of this go against the point of unsourced quotes: namely, that they are not yet known to belong to the people to whom they have been consigned? If quotes only allegedly belong to a particular person, then it gives them a kind of unearned legitimacy to subdivide them, as if they were being taken for granted. Do editors and readers find these subdivisions useful? Do they like how it organizes a page, or do they think that large numbers of unsourced quotes should somehow be broken up? If the Dane Cook page, for instance, had been organized differently, making it one long list of unsourced quotes, it would have already raised the important question of a possible copyright violation. As it is, the way the page is broken up hides the fact that this is a very large collection of quotes, not one of which is sourced; who knows whether they might be from one source or many?

On theme pages it's almost the rule and not the exception to simply omit the sourcing of quotes. Should we really be taking this for granted as well?

Perhaps we need to have a policy on all of this, as it seems merely a way of encouraging contributors not to bother with including sources for quotes. That's been enough of a problem on Wikiquote as it is. - InvisibleSun 04:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Disraeli Quote Source
Maybe this question is already answered somewhere, so I'm sorry if I missed it. I found the source for a Benjamin Disraeli quote that's currently listed in the "Attributed" section of his page; how can I submit the source so the page can be updated? Thanks! --anon
 * 1) Add the quote to the Sourced section, placing it in chronological order and including the source info. 2) Remove the same quote from the Attributed section. You can do both of these actions in the same post by editing the entire page rather than editing by section. You can press the "Show Preview" tab to see the results of your edit. In this way you can make as any corrections as you need to before you actually post your edit by pressing "Save Page." - InvisibleSun 05:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)