Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 2

Maybe you want to read the current discussions.

Why???

What the purpose of this wikipedia? I am a native Russian speaker, and I cant say this "simple English" any bit easier for me than the conventional English. I even cant get the difference.--213.141.159.52 06:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the articles were not well-written. One needs more skill to write an an article in simple language.

Some people write in Wikipedia because they want their writing to be seen by other people. But perhaps they forget why the Simple English Wikipedia was started. In the Simple English Wikipedia, style and clarity are the most important things.

Writing here is difficult. But I will try to keep my articles simple and easy-to-read.

Fourohfour 17:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Simple to whom? Do you believe the your anwer above is simple?--213.141.158.52 02:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the problem is not the Simple English Wikipedia, because the articles here are easy to read. Maybe the problem is the people that really don't understand englsih.

I think that we all should just relax and read the wikipedia stuff!

Heya! Newbie questions!

First of all, I archived this. It hasn't been changed in almost a week. I'm new to this wikipedia. I'm from English, and came here to help out, because I think it's a good project. Apparently a lot of people don't think that, and somehow they consider this a constructed language. So, are talk messages supposed to be simple also? --Phroziac 16:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

It would probably help to be, but I don't think that's necessary. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion

How about adding a link to http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random in the navigation box like in http://en.wikipedia.org?

Is there an online Simple English text inspector?

In the (now archived) Talk page someone asked a question in 2004. TPK asked if we could have a Featured Article of the Week. Another person said there were not enough good and simple pages to have that. (There was not enough for a new one every week.)

But there is a problem with this wikipedia. If people read SimpleEnglish to learn English it is hard to find good and simple pages. If people browse or click Show any page they might find unsimple pages. They might find pages that are too short or too long. They might find pages that are not fun to read. They might find pages that just suck. ;)

Maybe we should have a place on the Main Page that says: here are some good and simple articles to read. Then people who are learning English will find them better.

I want to say one more thing. I learned something very good by writing for Simple English. I talk to many people in my job that do not speak good English. I have only been writing for Simple English since May 2005. But now if I talk to people who do not know much English, I do better. I write Simple English, but now I can talk simple too! I think about how I say things. I also see better what words are unsimple. It makes my job much easier. Since I am a doctor, it lets me help people more too. So thanks!

-The public library, and the reference librarians in it, are your friends. You will study a host of Useful Subjects in school, mostly worthwhile. But you may not learn such important but non-academic skills as troubleshooting a running toilet, managing household finances, selecting a profession, getting a well-paying job in that profession, dealing with problematic landlords/roommates/employers, managing your own scarce time, money, and resources, etc. The library (and also now the Internet) have many fine works that can help you navigate such treacherous terrain expertly, and the best news is that it's free, as long as you keep an eye on the calendar. The library also offers some very cheap entertainment, including books, music, movies, and events. In addition, more libraries have started to offer free classes and workshops, Internet connections, and other services.

--Prozac

And I think simple English is better here, Prozac.NickGorton 00:28, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok. But, remember that most encyclopedia articles are about complicated things, which can't be made too much shorter without removing information. I completely agree with your main page suggestion. And, about the people that you work with who do not speak english well, that is neat. --Prozac

Prozac, writing for SimpleEnglish doesn't mean you cannot discuss difficult subjects. It just means that you have to word your articles simply and use a limited set of words found in (preferably) BE 850, but also BE 1500. Alternatively, you can use an unsimple word as long as you define it for your readers. Its important to understand that the simple English readers may be intelligent people who can grasp difficult ideas and who may bring significant prior knowledge to the table when reading Wikipedia. They may be physicians, educators, and engineers. They just don't have an excellent grasp of English, so you need to use simple English so you can be adequately understood. Some readers may not be as knowledgeable, but they can read simple English, and may learn more if you use Simple English.

This requires though that you have to carefully consider how you compose. Its more difficult for me to write in simple English than standard English because I tend to use Big Words and longer sentences. But I have found that if one uses Simple English, it gets less difficult. You learn to say things with less complex sentences and using the limited vocabulary of BE 850.

Or in Simple

Prozac, Simple does not mean short. Simple does not mean you cannot talk about hard things. It just means you must use simple ways to say things. It also means that you cannot use many big words. You should use words in BE 850. You can use some words in BE 1500. Or you can use an unsimple word if you tell people what it means.

This is important to see. People who read Simple English may be doctors, or teachers, or engineers. They can be very clever. So they can understand hard things. They can have much knowledge before they read Wikipedia. But they do not understand English well. You must use Simple English so they understand you. Some people who read may not be clever. They may not have much knowledge. But they can read Simple English. They can learn more if you use Simple English.

So you have to think hard about what you say. It is harder for me to write Simple English than English. (I like to use big words. I like to put many words together.) But if you use Simple English it gets less hard. You learn the words in BE 850 when you use them. You learn how to write less words together. You learn how to use BE 850 to say things.NickGorton 05:14, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, ok. Thanks for the information. That makes sense. :) --Prozac 11:57, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Someone should create a tool that will examine a document for Simple English. The tool would tell you if any words are not in BE 850. --JoeRepublic 23:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Hello, differences between main wiki

I see there are admins. Anyways I was thinking perhaps we could have an article of the week as en uses article of the day. We have less articles so week or maybe month seems better. Redwolf24 12:30, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

It's been mentioned above. I agree. Also, how about an article that mentioned on the main page as an article to help improve (like the Collaborations of the week at English)? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for advice

Templates and policies from English

I hate it when people simply copy things over (with red-linked categories and articles) without simplifying at all. It just create more work for everybody else. I've spent way too much time already removing unsimple versions of templates that we already have but am left with a few. Does any feel that Template:Unreferenced Template:Wikify are needed? At the very least, they are not simplified at all. If so, we need to create categories (with simple names) and proceed from there. Also, I guess that Wikipedia:How to copy-edit, Wikipedia:Guide to layout and Wikipedia:Verifiability need to be simplified. I'm asking here (and not going through the deletion process) because there articles are policies and procedures that I feel should be discussed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:33, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

• I copied them over because just having one template for "cleanup" is not specific enough. Simple has a ton of articles that need links and layout (wikify), sources cited (unreferenced). Admittedly I did not get around to simplifying the stuff I copied over but I think it is necessary to have it. 65.31.115.145 01:32, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Category:Stubs

I know we're sort of discussed this earlier but it seems to have just been Netoholic in disagreement. Does anyone else have an opinion against creating a Category:Stubs, especially since Category:Computer and video game stubs already exists and is in use? Besides, even if I created the category today and changed the template, only newer articles or articles with a stub tag that have been edited would show up there. Older articles would not automatically recall the template. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Opinion for... but I read the earlier discussion and have another question: Do you think yes/no subcategory stubs? I could actually use a category:medical_stub. There are a few other subjects that merit that as well I think. -NickGorton 22:10, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I think we are going to need subcategories stubs. It makes it easier for people to work on improving articles on a specific topic if they want. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Ricky81682 is correct we need stubs so people are work on articles that interest them more easily. I make a few category stub with pretty pictures, for articles of which there are a lot of that particular type, for instance Television. Also created medical stub {{med-stub}} for use by medicine articles. I am not creating stubs yet for categories of which there are few articles. But I will go and put things into the proper stub category as I am doing. 216.56.27.87 19:47, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I am in support of a Category:Stubs but not subcategories. I have discussed use of DynamicPageList with its creator and we agree that it would be a good replacement for the morass of administration for sub-categories. Using DPL, I think we could have all stubs in Category:Stubs and, instead of the stub sub-category pages, use DPL pages of interest (say Category:Music and Category:Stubs) and Users could create their own specialised DPL lists on their user page (say Category:Los Angeles and Category:Death rock and Category:Stubs). All we need to do to start this is create Category:Stubs and have DPL enabled on simple. DoubleBlue (Talk) 14:50, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I'd go for Category:Stubs but not the subcategories. Aurora 04:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, Category:Stubs has been created. Note that only newer stubs (or stub articles which had now been edited) will show up there, so it's a little empty. I also put the only stub cat and moved it there. The question is, what to do with the tv stubs, music stubs and the med stubs? Give them categories so that it's simplier to go through and make those part of the stub system, or remove them completely? I can't imagine keeping them without categories as they will make it difficult to find. Also, Wikipedia:Template messages needs to either link to a single page for stub categories or, if we remove them all, remove them all. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:15, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I want stub categories also, because I would use them. Alot. But it's never going to happen. Whoever creates the categories, you, anyone - even if the entire community wants them - apparently they will be deleted by Netoholic without any dicussion of the matter. BallSack 14:47, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I hate stub-sorting with a passion. Even the Category:Stubs is frankly useless because the vast majority of people just don't edit that way. They instead find an article they are interested in and update it. They click a link, and do it again. They do not drill into obscure categories looking for things to improve. It is a phenomenal waste of editing effort to do any work sorting stubs. I consider that sort of task busy-work by editors who don't seem to be able to expand articles themselves. The real workers here have no use of such a system. Please use a simple, one-line stub message, if needed, but don't make it into a project. -- Netoholic @ 20:29, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

What the hell?!? Just because you don't like stubs, you go against everyone else opinion and delete all stubs and also delete all categories? I was putting into stubs to be expanded on, and then expanding the articles, because it is easy that way to keep track of articled need expanding! I am not only person who likes stub categories to help edit articles that need to be longer. I know you are administrator but that does not mean you do not have to listen to what other people want and that does not mean you can just go delete whatever you want without discussion. Maybe all us other editors should just leave and let you run your wiki-kingdom in peace. What are you going to do, ban me now for make my opinion known? 216.56.27.87 22:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Net, I have to agree with this user. You can't simply respond with a "I think it's wrong and no one else here is allowed to disagree with me" attitude around here. Frankly, in English, I do look at stub categories once in a while and try to add to it. You at least have to admit that you are frankly the only one here who doesn't believe in a stub category (I agree in regards to sub-categories). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:38, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd rather see us delete stubs than have people waste a bunch of time sorting them. I also see no value in the Stub main category as one can more easily set their own personal threshold for stub display in their settings. The category simply adds server overhead for no value. Mark stubs with a simple message asking for readers to help, but change your own settings if you need help finding stubs to work on. There is also Special:Shortpages and Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub if you need more. -- Netoholic @ 18:39, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I guess we're in agreement that we will not allow stub categories here. That's not a concern. A separate issue is whether there is a need for a category to store all stub pages (one reason may be to get some sort of count going). Actually, the same could be said for disambiguations. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:18, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sharedupload

May I suggest MediaWiki:Sharedupload be updated, perhaps similiar to that on en:MediaWiki:Sharedupload? It looks a lot clearer.

BCE v BC

Do we have a policy on eras? My personal preference is for BCE. On en Wiki a duel policy is the only workable one but I think we need to decide on one and stick to it even if that should be BC.82.44.21.216 01:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC) I forgot to log in when I signed.Dejvid 00:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that BCE and CE are better terms, because they are more general and not tied to Christianity (the guy who made BC/AD didn't even have the right year, since we now know that Jesus was born about 4 BC!). I think we should use them, and I agree that whichever we use, one standard format should be enough. --Cromwellt|talk 21:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I think BCE and CE are even more pov terms, because they assume that dating years from Christ is or should be "Common Era" to all countries, even the ones that have different dating systems. At least, BC is honest about what it means. Blockinblox 23:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Good point, Blockinblox. I never thought of it that way. However, using (for example) the Chinese calendar on articles regarding China, while being more consistent and in a way logical, would be very confusing and not very helpful to the majority of users, I would think, especially those who are not familiar with the Chinese calendar system. I think here, also, we should stick by the rule of least astonishment. Maybe listing both the Chinese calendar year and the BCE/CE year (or BC/AD, if that's what we decide) is the best solution. What do you think?

BTW, I understood that the terms "Common Era" and "Before Common Era" were created by Jews to avoid references to Jesus/Christianity. Because of that history, I assumed that it was a term that could be more generally used without offending anyone or pushing a particular POV. It seems I was wrong. --Cromwellt|talk 20:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Localized date formats need to be verified

Dear Wikipedians,

I need your help to look at date formats for your language. I created a large list of formats here. Please take a look and fix any mistakes or add any new formats. This will help interwiki bot to match en:April 1, fr:1 avril, ru:1 апреля, zh:4月1日, and all other sites together.

What's needed: Look here at every format for your language, fix any mistakes, note any exceptions (some languages have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc naming schemas, or year 1 is written as '1 (year)' unlike all other years).

Also, I would like to receive a bot status on your site for my bot User:YurikBot. It will be mostly involved in interwikies.

Thank you!!!

You can contact me at en:Yurik (--70.192.56.68 22:28, 24 September 2005 (UTC))

Wikijunior

On October 3, b:Wikijunior:Solar System is supposed to be fact-checked and proofread so it can be published. More importantly, it has to be readable by 8-12 year olds. The only problem is, we're far from being finished. If there's anyone here interested in helping out, please jump in. We could really use the help! --70.49.184.219 00:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC) (b:User:Shanel)

simple forum

can u please give me a simple forum about animal-'chicken'?

Template for articles

I am new to Simple English. I wrote the page Aramaic language in the Full English Wikipedia. It became a featured article some time ago. I am writing the Aramaic page for this Wikipedia now (please check the simplicity of my English). I think it will be useful for people who find Full English difficult and who want to write pages in the Wikipedias of other languages. They will translate Simple English more easily. I think it would be a good idea if we put a template at the top of the talk pages in the Full English Wikipedia to draw translators to our articles for this reason. I suggest something like this:

Simple talk/Archive 2 has a page in Simple English on the Simple English Wikipedia. If you want to translate this page into another language, you will find the [[:simple:{{{1}}}|Simple English version]] more easy to translate.

What do you think? --Garzo 13:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

First, this question really belongs at the full English wikipedia. I think they will simply throw it out. It seems to imply that Simple is somehow more important than other languages. What I would prefer is that we create good solid articles here and interwiki link them there and at other languages so that people come here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Can I use "This time........"

Hello,

I ate egg in this morning. Therefore I do not want to eat egg in the afternoon. Can I say "This time I would like to eat toast"?

I wonder if "This time" can be used in English.

Thanks and best regards

Alex

Yes, you can, as far as I know. However, it's simpler and more 'elegant' if you just say 'Now I would like to eat toast.' ManicParrot 02:14, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Lower case "i" in "pages i worked on"

It looks like the "i" in "pages i worked on" at the top of the screen is lower case. If possible, this should be changed to a capital "I". As this wikipedia is here to help people learn English, we shouldn't have incorrect grammar. Does anyone know how this can be changed? —Jwanders 07:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jwanders. -- aflm 00:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software automatically makes that heading section lowercase. To resolve, I need a phrase that doesn't use the word "I". -- Netoholic @ 04:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

"my changed pages," maybe? Heroismic 21:47, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Why not modify MediaWiki:Monobook.css to turn off the automatic decapitalization completely, like the German Wikipedia did? – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) 04:07, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Non-simple English on Edit Page

The edit page (the page where you can make changes) has a some non-simple text at the bottom. It talks about the legal aspects of wikipedia, and warns not to add writing which is owned by someone else. Is there a way of changing this to simpler language? —Jwanders 07:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Any administrator can change those system messages. Find the one you want to change on Special:Allmessages, then porpose your change/rewording on the talk page of the specific message. -- Netoholic @ 04:43, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Countering Systemic Bias

Can this article from the main English Wikipedia be made prominent to all contributors of the Simple English version ? Then (wishful thinking) less clean up will be needed later on.--Jrleighton 01:47, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that is important. But I think the best way is for people to look at it in themselves. I know what some of my biases are. I am a doctor in the USA. I am a gay transgender man. So I write about what I know about. But I also try to write things I know about that are important to other people. I have only seen malaria a few times. Doctors in Africa have seen it many many times. Malaria, Cholera, AIDS, and Ebola are important to doctors and people in Africa. But they are less important to me. Hypercholesterolemia, Diabetes, and Peptic ulcers are very important to me. But they are less important to other people.

So I write about what I know. But I try to think about what is important to other people. I just wish I knew what was most important to other people. (But I agree. There is too much about Tool (band), IPod, Nintendo, and Pokemon here!) -NickGorton 03:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

The bias issue isn't so much about the nature of peoples articles (after all, as said above, people write about whatever they feel confident to contribute about), but more that when such articles are written, they are written with bias. This is what the countering systemic bias issue is. For example, if I think I know a lot about the issue of the "fire station equipment" and write up an article from new on it, if I write only about equipment as known in the USA (assuming that I am American, which I am not), then I ignore other variations of equipment in the developed world, and also the issue of what equipment may be used in less developed countries; and this also ignores the equipment that might be in fire stations in other areas of the world where the duties of the personnel are different to those that I am familiar with. This is solely one example of the bias.--Jrleighton 01:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Importance of History

I have recently joined wikipedia simple English and there is one thing i noticed which is really lacking. History! I am currently a high school student in Advanced European History. I am also currently learning German and i am finding the best way to learn German is by reading history. I think That if people trying to learn English saw their history and knew their history, it would be easier for them to understand the article and to learn some more English. I am a very avid reader of history and would love to see some more. Does anyone in the community here think this is a good idea? - Redfalcon

More history articles is a very good idea. You are the one to do it. More articles and more good information is what Wikipedia is about in all languages. --Cromwell|Talk 04:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I think more history articles is a great idea! Unfortunately I'm not an expert in history, but I certainly hope someone who knows a lot about history comes and writes some great history articles for us! ~unregistered newbie

'No source' images

What is Simple English's policy on 'no source' images? Michael 06:24, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Simple Wikipedia should use images from the Commons: whenever possible. Only things like logos belong on Simple itself. All images therefore must have source information. If a suitable replacement from Commons, change the article and nominate the no-source image for deletion. -- Netoholic @ 04:39, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Underlining links

I come from the English Wikipedia. On the English version, the links weren't underlined, but you could change this by going to 'my preferences' ('my settings'). The option doesn't seem to be here in Simple English Wikipedia.

It's under My settings --> Misc. Aurora

Suggestion

I want to say something about the fragment "From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading", which is on the every page of Simple English Wikipedia. I think that "for easy reading" should be omitted.

Reasons:

 1) It is clear for everyone without saying.
 2) Simple English Wikipedia can be used not only for easy reading. Some other examples of 
    using of Simple English Wikipedia: 
        a) for translation;
        b) for creating of better complex articles, as Simple Wikipedia issues are brief and
           represent general outline;
        c) as material for teaching children or people with limited knowledge of English;
        d) for studying of difficult subjects (e.g. Mathematics, Physics), even if you
           do not have any problems with English;
        e) for learning in general and for learning of English (while studying or researching
           something, especially complex subjects, it is useful for better understanding and
           absorbing to write the outline of the information down in simple words by our own).

--Khaimakhan 14:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

"Simple English uses fewer words and easier grammar than the original English Wikipedia. This is not its only difference. It is focused on readers who tend to be quite different people with different needs: students, children, adults with learning difficulties, and translators." Private Butcher 15:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Out of interest, why should translators need to use Simple English? The quote above gives the impression that translators, like children and people with learning difficulties, may need to have articles simplified. (See Leo if you speak German.) Has a poll been conducted to see if translators actually use Simple Wiki any more than others? I'm a translator and I can't imagine how it would be any help to me in my work. Saintswithin

No create article liks

Hello. The create article links do not work. When this gets back working I will write an article on Formula One. Duke toaster 21:30, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

Disambiguation is a very complex word for use on the Simple Wikipedia (e.g. Orlando (disambiguation), New York (disambiguation)). There was a small discussion about changing things roughly a year ago at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation, but nothing much came of that discussion. I think that the word should not be used at all on the Simple Wikipedia, either in article titles, or in the disambiguation template.

For some words or phrases, a single usage is so predominate that it makes sense to have that usage as the direct link for that word or phrase (New York, possibly). In most cases, however, I think that it would be much better for the Simple Wikipedia to have the primary link go to the disambiguation page (like the Mercury page), with each separate use getting a more specific identification (e.g. Mercury (planet)). That should keep the number of pages that require a disambiguation tag to a minimum. Those pages that do require a disambiguation tag should be called something like [New York (other meanings)] or [New York (other pages)], instead of New York (disambiguation).

The template:disambig also needs to be rewritten and simplified. I may try to do that within the next week. ^BlankVerse 19:00, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, 'other meanings' (or 'other uses') seems much better than 'disambiguation'. 24.17.48.241 23:01, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Search bug

Hi, I think that there is some problem with the Special:Search page (:

When I'm searching some word, I got this text over the results:

You can <a href=":xxxx" class="new">create an article with this title</a> or <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested articles">ask for someone to write it</a>.

(xxxx is a remplacement of the subject of my research, not any fantasy)

Good luck & greetings for your project fr:Utilisateur:Tvpm15:16, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

What is the purpose?

I am a native Russian speaker and your "Simple English" does not seem any bit easier for me. I even cant get the difference. And what the purpose of these stupid comments on the main page for such international words as biology, geography, architecture and so on? These words are understandable for anybody. I think if a person can understand this wikipedia, he of course will understand the conventional English one. Most difficulty in learning English is not international words, but English-specific ones and grammar. For example, understanding the word people is more difficult than anthropology. If you learn Russian, what would be more easy for you - antropologia or nauka o ludiakh? --213.141.159.52 23:53, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Simple isn't really intended to teach English, but to be readable by people with a limited English vocabulary (1-2,000 words), versus 30-50,000 (or more) word vocabularies. Since the Latin roots are used in science in so many languages, even ones not otherwise related to Latin, those words are indeed recognizable from many other languages. The difference is more in things like "J.K. Rowling is an author of juvenile novels" versus "J.K. Rowling is a writer of fictional children's books." Or "The museum has more than 20 planes and helicopters on display, most of which are in airworthy condition." versus "The museum has more than 20 planes and helicopters to see, most of which can still fly."

And which of the versions is more simple? I have no idea. --213.141.159.52 00:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

People just learning English are much more likely to know (independently, at least, not counting other languages they may know), "can fly" than they are "airworthy", "book" before "novel", "children" before "juvenile", and "see" long before "display". 24.17.48.241 01:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

So, English-speaking children? But if children - then what the difference for them, which the words to learn? Or maybe children with Down's syndrome?--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Here's an actual sentence from en:Wikipedia:Articles for creation that uses WAY too advanced (and idiomatic) a vocabulary for Simple: "Although there was never a dull moment during his formative years, his stay in Eluru turned out to be seminal as it provided him a vantage point from which he could look at things in order to draw a plan for his career." Because English has so many synonyms, homonyms, and borrowed words, the Latin roots can also sometimes be misleading. For example, in "Sharing a rofom with two people whose interests also gravitated towards acting (Shoban Babu and Murali Mohan),..." the meaning of 'gravitated' is pretty far removed from the basic scientific concept of gravity (also compare that Simple article to en:gravity).

It is transparent for anybody withiout a menthal illness. In Russian also there is a word for gravity, and we can use it in different meanings (including the above). One should be mad or a robot to understand all things literally.--213.141.159.52 00:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

But some languages don't use the Latin roots for scientific terms, so those similarities wouldn't do those people any good.

Yes, in Russian it is not a Latin-derived word, though the usage the same. One shell be a robot or mad to understand all the things literally.--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Simple is also intended for people with little or no formal education in ANY language;

And you suppose, they should understand your English????? :-))))) To understand you "simple English" not native English speaker shell spend many years of hard studiing in a school, then in a university etc.--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

those 'international words' are generally learned in a school, and would be unfamiliar to anyone who had no formal education, or are from a strictly agrarian or hunter/gatherer society. 24.17.48.241 22:59, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I feel, I'm getting it. It is for stupid cowboys from the Wild West?--213.141.159.52 00:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and no. There are people all over the world who never get the opportunity to get a formal education.

There is no need to have any formal education to understand such word as "biology", "architecture" and so on (or their cognates in other language).--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

But, yes, Simple aims for the 'lowest common denominator', which is someone that not only doesn't know English, but may not be literate at all in ANY language, let alone have any sort of schooling.

So you think such a person should understand English?--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

A friend of mine that is also a native Russian wouldn't use Simple (even if it had many more articles), because a) Like you (at least from the sound of it), she went to university in Russia and is familiar enough with the Latin roots, etc.,

If you go to deep taiga in Siberia and ask somebody there (in Russian, of course) what is "arkhitektura" or "biologia" - you will face no misunderstanding.--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

and can pick up context, that she can guess the general meaning of many English words even if she has never seen them before,

And how to guess the general meaning of non-international words? Do you know any secret?--213.135.64.212 22:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

and b) she wants to learn more/better English, so she would rather use something like EN: that is targeted at a much more advanced reader, even if she has to look up an occasional word, because her English vocabulary, grammar, and spelling will advance faster than if she were to stick with reference materials that were aimed well below her comprehension level. 24.17.48.241 01:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

This is pointless: You seem to believe the literacy rate around the world is MUCH higher than I believe it is, and that the so-called 'international words' are similar in ALL the world's languages, while I know they are not. If Wikipedia:How to write Simple English articles and the articles linked under 'see also' don't help you understand the goal here, I don't know what will--apparently not me. 24.17.48.241 08:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Why do you believe non-literate people from other countries, which even do not know their own language, shell understand English? Why do you think English-specific words are "simplier" than Latin and Greek-derived?--213.141.158.52 16:49, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Not to be overly negative, but I think the whole idea behind this is pretty futile, and I wonder how it got greenlit. I can understand the idea behind creating this wiki, but it seems like a mostly pointless endeavour. en Wikipedia itself has a lot of worthwhile contributors, but even with the amount of people working day and night on that project, it still can never come close to be completely thorough. What makes you guys think that enough people who are intelligent, concise, and clear will devote their knowledge and expertise for essentially dumbing down the language of the content of the regular English wikipedia? I can't really imagine this "translation" becoming comprehensive enough on any subject to really be of any use to anybody. But, if you're dedicated to this project, I'm not going to try to dissuade you... I just recently heard of it and I was wondering exactly what was going on.--69.113.219.173 10:49, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Then here's a simple (heh) solution: go edit EN, and the people who want to use this one can. You seem to think that just because you don't like it, other people won't either. No one's forcing you to use this wiki; why do you care if we continue? --71.113.155.175 04:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with the "translation" concept, and believe a lot of articles would be better served rewritten from scratch. In addition, taking relatively unchanged EN articles and moving them to SIMPLE (as has happened) with the intention of fixing them later is just going to frighten people off. It will force them to wade through lots of articles to find those which are truly 'simple'.

For this reason, I consider overly detailed non-simple articles worse than nothing. (If someone wants an EN article, they can read EN; this is the SIMPLE English Wikipedia). Where I come across articles that are either unsuitable 'dumps' of EN articles or have simply not been written in SIMPLE English, I will likely replace them with a properly-written stub for this reason. EN would not consider quarter-translated Chinese articles acceptable; mixing simple and non-simple English is worse than this because the boundary is less obvious.

Remember; half-done "top-down" translations are bad, unlikely to be fixed in a hurry and are often a flawed approach. Either write a proper SIMPLE article from scratch, translate properly with the target audience in mind, or don't do it at all. Less is more. EN should remember that sometimes, but it applies twentyfold here.

Fourohfour 11:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

One of the first things I saw after finding this wikipedia was a debate over what was being called "the condescending factor", and that has stuck in my mind ever since, because a lot of the articles here do suffer from that, it's perhaps the number one biggest black mark on this wiki that draws the most complaints, and I am doing what I can to fix it. Remember, Simple equals "concise" and "clear" - but it does not equal "condescending". Don't write stuff like you think the reader is a total idiot. It should be an easy thing to apply a form of "the Golden Rule" here - Don't write anything that you wouldn't want to read yourself. Blockinblox 13:08, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure; I should have been clearer. The audience I have in mind are neither idiots, nor (specifically) children. One of the articles I worked on shortly *before* I wrote the comment above was Fermat's last theorem. I'd planned writing this myself, and found it had already been done. Unfortunately, this was an import from EN, and had only received minor modifications. So I have rewritten it from scratch.

Yes, it's short, and I could have included more whilst sticking mostly to BE 1500. Why didn't I? Because writing in S.E. is hard work and takes time. Also, I wanted feedback and help from another user (who had also expressed interest in working on it). You'll note from User_talk:Flcelloguy that my concern was to produce something that was *interesting* to read.

My point is that this was not an obvious or "condescending" article choice like "my first reading book". I assumed that the audience had a good level of intelligence and a diverse range of interests, and that the only difference between them and me was that they had less English. Not everyone will like the Fermat article, but I hope that has nothing to do with the writing quality.

I agree with you totally though; it's all too easy to be condescending. Trying not to be is something that we should all strive for (myself included). Fourohfour 22:53, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

This Wiki is a nice idea, however, I would encourage anyone who would like to learn English to challenge themselves by exploring the EN Wiki. The best way to handle the issue of teaching someone English is to create a Wiki called "Wikipedia for those who want to learn English" or something like that, and developing a series of lessons that teach English. Additionally, the place can serve as a resource for people willing to learn, and wishing to discuss and understand topics that already exist on the EN Wiki. The creators of the Simple English Wiki may be solving a problem that does not exist. --Anonymous (2/9/06)

"World news" is in left nav, but not updated

As long as Current events isn't getting updated, it seems like it shouldn't be in the left nav column of every page. Can someone remove it? 24.17.48.241 17:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm doing my best to keep it updated daily. Adam Newbold 13:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Capital letters

I noticed that

• my talk
• my settings
• my watched pages
• pages i worked on

all used small letters.

Since this Wikipedia is made for people with poor English, I think it would be better if these used the correct capital letters (for example, "Pages I worked on").

Fourohfour 17:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I think this has been asked before, the software doesn't allow us to use capital letters on the tabs! Archer7 16:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Nogomatch

When you type in an article name that doesn't exist it seems to give back bad html code. I think someone needs to fix MediaWiki:Nogomatch. BrokenSegue 22:48, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

"Unsimple"

"Unsimple" isn't English and sets a bad example. Are we trying to write Newspeak or something? I am going to fix the places where it occurs. Ashibaka 03:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Doubleplusgood, comrade!

new language needed?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Real_BASIC_English Oui 20:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

are the statistics correct?

"There have been a total of 92 page views, and 81,340 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 5.95 average edits per page, and 0.00 views per edit." Special:Statistics Saintswithin

I'm not surprised there's no answer to my question - according to the statistics, no-one ever reads this page anyway.... Saintswithin

Circular references

(i.e. category within category with same name) are found in Category:1468 and Category:Lessons. Needs fixing. 82.156.237.68 09:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

"[edit]"

Anyone want/able to make the "[edit]" action simply "[change]"? "[edit]" makes the page unlike the "change this page" seen on top.

Cut&paste move cleanup needed (admin assisted)

C&p was used to move the content of the incorrectly titled Golden Retriver to the correct Golden Retriever, so the histories should be merged, but it will require admin intervention to do it. Freshstart 01:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for noticing. -- Netoholic @ 21:49, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Need administrator to delete page

Need an administer to delete this page Anglo-Spanish War only content on page is poop.--71.28.248.218 21:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Done. Next time you can mark it with as told on Wikipedia:Requests for deletion. -- Netoholic @ 21:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Page moves/merges needing admin intervention

The content of Hungarian was c&p moved to Hungarian language, then edited, so needs a history merge at the new location. The redir at Cleveland, Ohio has been edited, so Cleveland can't be moved there without deleting the redir. I think I've noticed one other, but can't remember what it was at the moment. Freshstart 17:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Found it: Josef Beuys is more often spelled Joseph Beuys and should be moved there. Freshstart 18:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

All completed. -- Netoholic @ 07:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

user renaming not showing up in log?

According to this edit, it appears that the user with the offensive name was renamed to Nobody12464. However, nothing shows up in the log. This happened after the MediaWiki software was upgraded to show user renamings. How is that possible? Did someone edit the database directly, as opposed to using Special:renameuser? --70.231.248.78 19:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Spoken Articles

Maybe as an Aid a Spoken Article Project should be started for the Simple English Wikipedia, since the articles are shorter and easier to read, it might be possible to produce more spoken articles and with a wider scope than in the English Wikipedia -- KaiAdin 11:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thinking about it know, a good start would be the Knowledge Group Pages listed in the Simple English Wikipedia Main Page -- KaiAdin 11:38, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I quite like the idea, I think Simple English should be more than just a bridge between Wikipedias, but also be helpful to pupils in schools, which is apparently what this project was set up for. Archer7 21:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Another great idea. I think spoken articles, which are useful and worthwhile on English Wikipedia, would be even more useful and worthwhile here. Students are one of the target audiences for this project, but learners of English (the other main audience) might find it even more helpful. Go for it! --Cromwellt|talk 02:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the guy's left, Cromwellt, the dates have been screwed up. We can still do it though Archer7 17:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

IRC

Is Simple IRC ever used? Archer7 15:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The channel was moved to #wikipedia-simple. -- aflm 23:04, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been hanging out there the last couple of days, but I've been entirely alone. Adam Newbold 14:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

...and I've been alone there every weekend since 12 February. -- aflm ^Talk 18:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Images

I think that there are not enough images on this Wikipedia. If our aim is to help people learning English or other people that may have difficulties understanding certain parts of English, we should have a lot more images here to help people understand the meanings of what's written. Perhaps a WikiProject should be set up? Archer7 20:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

There are few images on here for a good reason. Simple Wikipedia can be used as a bridge between other Wikipedias, but providing text which is easier to translate than from the en: Wikipedia. Because we want editors to have easy access to theis, as many images as possible should come from the Wikimedia Commons. -- Netoholic @ 06:38, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with both comments: It would be great if a higher percentage of articles contained images. AND to the greatest extent possible, those images should be hosted on Commons. Freshstart 10:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

As for the fair use images, will they be gone soon (because of the new policy)? --Slgrandson 23:26, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

GNU/gnu

The whole situation has been complicated completely unnecessarily, with server-wasting redirs involved. GNU (disambiguation) has been created, but it will never be reached unless the exact term is searched for (highly unlikely), or the new dab header at wildebeest is clicked, and since the OS is the only other choice at the dab page, the newly disambig'd title GNU (acronym) is also unnecessary (and would be better as GNU (operating system) or somesuch if it was necessary), so it would be better/faster/more efficient if the dab header there just offered a direct link to the OS. Can an admin please move things back to the nice, simple, efficient GNU/gnu (sans all parentheticals) structure that it was (and that EN uses)? Someone typing "GNU" or "gnu" in the Search box will get to the exact same articles as this new setup, but without the extra server hits. Freshstart 20:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the unnecessary pages and fixed the others. -- aflm 23:22, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

List of people by name

_ _ I'm an editor & admin on en:, and the predominant contributor to the structure of en:'s "List of people by name". In that role i also do a lot of editing of the descriptions at the end of each entry, largely to effect what i have lately been calling "low-resolution" causes of notability. (To take some extreme cases, people are sometimes described using "judoka" or "Taoiseach", which IMO are sometimes sources of worry, to those seeking adjacent entries, that they are slipping over the bio they seek, and almost always pointless visual and mental distractions, since the people they are used to describe can be distinguished from the similar names with a few familiar words. At present,i would replace the former by "martial-arts practitioner" and the latter by "Irish politician" -- unless two people of the same name meet the respective description.) What brought me here is the thot that paralleling some vocabulary list here (it turns out to be BE 1500) might be a useful standard or discipline in that effort.
_ _ More interestingly, i note that the List of people by name here is seriously "under-stocked" and under-structured. E.g.:

• The first page i looked at (don't know how typical) was List of people by name: N, whose content is the essentially that of a section of an en: page, "List of people by name: No#Nov"; the only spot of blue on it is a non-bio lk used to describe a musician (one i haven't gotten around to stripping out of the en: version, namely Nirvana (band)).
• The "List of people by name: J" page, on the other hand, does not seem limited to a short range; with the inter-page index at the top discarded, it bulks 2.5 kB. Combining all the pages subordinate to the en: List of people by name: J shows that it bulks 64 kB. The overhead in the en: version from section headings is surely under 10% and probably more like 2%, so we can infer that there are over 20 times the names on the en: J portion.
• I don't see a high red-lk rate on simple: as a problem; to me they are a sign of intended work for the future, and, if nothing else, would serve as simple-vocab guide to what is probably available on en: and might be worth laborious inspection, or a request for someone to reword it for use on simple.

This suggests to me porting the en: list, and its infrastructure templates, onto simple. As i've already suggested, and "2." below will flesh out some, i have an interest in simplifying the descriptions anyway, so this would not be a straight dump job that the existing editors here would have to clean up or tolerate. It would also give simple: the benefit of the extensive LoPbN structural innovations over about the last 3 years, which make the entries much more accessible and IMO more likely to be used. Offhand, i would suggest that each existing en: entry should be copied into its natural place in the en: list, for a side-by-side comparison, and the redundant line discarded, or the two merged, before making any change on simple:. (Where an en: description is unsuitable for simple:, it may make sense to build both descriptions into a single template transclusion, that would display the one appropriate to whichever of these two Wikipedia sub-sites it appears on; i won't describe now how to accomplish that. Suffice it to say that it would simplify joint maintenance between simple: and en:.)
_ _ I'd appreciate two kinds of response:

1. Would it be an improvement, as it seems to me, for simple: to have an LoPbN with the same number of entries and the same structure (of pages, sections, and bullet headings) as the en: one?
2. I am inclined in any case to come up with a restricted list of sources of notability for en: LoPbN, but i haven't yet studied the BE 1500 list. Are the concepts there, in your experience, likely to be suitable for distinguishing why subjects of bio articles rate them; i emphasize concepts rather than words, bcz for en: i would expect to continue using "politician" rather than "political policy maker", or whatever is worked up for simple:.

--Jerzy 09:26, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need such list here. Simple: is dedicated to providing simplified versions of very widely-sought articles... we leave "cruft" (minor subjects) to the main language Wikipedias. -- Netoholic @ 19:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

_ _ Thanks. I'm not sure either. I see that there are only a handful of bios on the Requested articles page, and the LoPbN pages i checked certainly seem to be dump-jobs that no one has seen any significant need to improve. One could argue that a heavily red list of names is still valuable by showing which, among the small number of bios, a user is having trouble finding bcz of misspelling, and which are truly missing, whether regretably or bcz they are not needed. But at this point, beating LoPbN into shape would be a big effort compared to the likely utility even if that arguement were a good one.

_ _ I do think a less disfunctional letter-A section speaks better for simple: as a whole, so the effort doesn't feel wasted. But i shan't carry that work further unless the interest in bios picks up.
--Jerzy•t 08:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

While it is true that there is currently not much emphasis on biographies here, please note that the above version of Simple English Wikipedia's mission is Netoholic's own version, which he/she has propagated on as many pages as possible, including policy pages (see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not for an example). The general consensus on what are now termed "non-core" articles seems to be that while we are officially encouraging an emphasis on core articles for now, we are not restricting editors from working on non-core articles, as long as that work is valid (i.e. not original research, propaganda, etc.), nor should those articles be deleted. For more info, see the project direction section further down this page. The ultimate goal here, as on any other Wikipedia, is to include the full sum of human knowledge, including minor subjects, but in simple English. --Cromwellt|talk 09:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

List of translations

Is there a list of articles that have been d i r e c t l y translated from the Simple English Wikipedia into other languages or vice versa? I teach a translation class and know that this would be very helpful for my students. I am particularly interested in translations of/from articles from the German Wikipedia.

If not, are there any public resources online that address this need?
The preceding unsigned message is by User:84.145.201.26, 16:54, January 25, 2006

_ _ If you find a source, leave another message on this page, under this heading (click on the "[edit]" link to the right of the heading, and we'll figure out a good place to put the list. (The answer may not be any place on this Wikipedia, but I'd bet that the Wikimedia Foundation would want to support the concept. I picture starting with a Wiki called, say WikiGerman, if your largest group of students are native German- or English speaking ones, studying the other language; it would provide them both with exemplars of translating simple English into simple German. The simple: article and the German translation might be in parallel columns, and footnotes might be added discussing non-obvious translations. Or three views of each article: English-only and German-only, for translating from, and parallel for comparing your result with the currently best translation. Would it work well to tune both the German and English version until they also work as examplars of translating in the opposite direction? If it turns out to, the logical step would be to take the German and Spanish translations of the same article, and tune them until they become exemplars for teaching Austrians and Argentinians each the others group's language. (Let's worry about what to name that wiki when it's needed. [wink])

_ _ IMO, the 2 biggest stumbling blocks to making the server a Wiki would be the relative rarity of bilingual editors, and the difficulty of self-evaluating 2nd-language competence. On the other hand, Wikis give up from the start on any thought of optimizing efficiency, and enough translators of various competence levels get involved we might be surprised at the validation procedures they'd work up.

_ _ In a sense that is what leads me to my next question for you: is there a pedagogical model where this gets built by the students with their instructors' help? Beginning students study existing exemplars, and choose articles that interest them to translate. Advanced students help the instructors monitor the beginners' recent work, and take on improving suites of related articles and tuning the English articles so they are better translations of good German ones, classes discuss results and problems, and the stock and quality of translations grows steadily. At some point, it becomes useful to compare the original simple: text and the tuned English translation, and see why a good-back translation of a good translation won't always match the original.
--Jerzy•t 03:00, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Template messages reformatting

The template messages page badly needs reformatting. The templates are all randomly thrown together, making them hard to find. This project is growing rapidly, and things that are used so often need to be easy to find.

I've quickly put together a page with categories at User:Archer7/Template_messages. Let me know what you think. Archer7 18:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Seems fine. One request... could you instead place the Wikimedia projects templates onto Wikipedia:Sister projects, in the similar way to en:Wikipedia:Sister projects? -- Netoholic @ 19:53, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

"English Wikipedia" is not equal to "the main English Wikipedia"

I think that it is important that Simple English Wikipedians (people who work on the Simple English Wikipedia) do not call the English Wikipedia "the main English Wikipedia" or "the main Wikipedia in English." It is true that the English Wikipedia is much larger than this one. It is also more complex and more famous. That does not mean it is better or more "main" than this one. It is only a different Wikipedia. Call it English Wikipedia and call this one Simple English Wikipedia. Do not give it more credit than it deserves. Do not give Simple English Wikipedia less credit than it deserves. We are also important. I want to make it clear that I am also on the English Wikipedia. Happy editing! --Cromwell|Talk 09:49, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. And 'normal' isn't a good moniker either. When I found it I changed it to 'other'[1]. Freshstart 21:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Community portal redesign

I think that the community portal is a bit too basic, lacking many useful pages and not looking very good for new users. So, once again I've done my own version at User:Archer7/Community_portal. Please let me know what you think on the talk page. Thanks, Archer7 20:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

7000 pages

There are 7000 articles in this Wikipedia. Now it's time to expand the stubs. -- aflm 21:52, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ongoing spamming

This is probably not the right place to put it, but the ip 85.12.68.94 has used the article Neuron as a platofrm of exchange with other users from the same IP (basically spamming it). I think it would be a good idea to:

• Lock the respective article
• Ban the respective IP Address for 24 hrs.

For contributions look here

Eptalon 12:27, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Simple is pretty often confronted with this sort of thing. The address is for a school in the U.K. Because we are in Simple English, teachers may be referring students in a class to our website. Please be tolerant and understanding of this. If messages on the user talk page don't work, post a notice at the top of whatever article is being edited by them. Remember, we can always put the article back after school is out. -- Netoholic @ 18:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Possible cleanups

I've noticed several sets of articles that seem to be referring to the same thing, so they should probably be merged, and in some cases moved. I don't have much familiarity with these subjects, so before I start slapping {move} and {merge} notes based on my guesses, I thot I'd check here to see if others have a better idea of how these things should actually me taken care of (since I started this list, I've also added some issues that don't involve duplication):

• Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholic Church seem to be describing the same thing (ie, their EN iw links are to the same target). Is there any reason why they shouldn't be merged, and, if so, is there any reason to not match EN by merging them to Roman Catholic Church?

• Three articles (Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, and Canterbury, England) appear to actually be referring to two places, which EN refers to as Canterbury and City of Canterbury. Anybody have any good ideas about whether we should match EN titles, and which ones of the three should be merged, and to which title(s) they should be moved to?

• Are Football World Cup and FIFA World Cup different, or should they be merged? On EN the former redirs to the latter.

• Template:West Indies (which I think would be better named Template:Caribbean), Template:North America, and Template:Caricom seem heavily overlapped. Is there any reason we couldn't cut them down to two, or maybe even one, template that is more multipurpose (without getting obscenely huge, of course)?

• Category:Language and Category:Linguistics seem to serve a duplicate purpose and should probably be merged. The question, of course, is which direction. Unless Simple has some policy to use 'simplified' Cat names, it seems like everything from Cat:Lang should be moved to Cat:Ling., as being more 'accurate' (and consistent with EN). Otherwise, vice versa.

• On a related subject, should it be Category:Kings and Queens or Category:Monarchs. The former is more 'simple', but the latter has advantages as well (more easily includes other royalty titles such as 'prince' and 'princess', etc., among other things). Which I guess suggests Category:Royalty should be considered as an option. K&Q is the current usage, and has been used a lot, but that shouldn't really effect our choice, as that could easily be fixed by a bot.

• Seems like it would be more consistent with other US titles/cats/templates/etc. if Category:Actors from American was changed to Category:Actors from the United States (EG Category:Presidents of the United States). Since those seem to be the only two 'US people' Cats so far, it seems better to decide now before we end up with bunches mixed half US and half Amer.

• Since Category:Lists of people by nationality is being used for all articles, not just lists, it seems like it should be renamed Category:People by nationality.

• capital city seems easier/natural to use than capital (city) to me, but maybe I just am not thinking of advantages of the latter.

Capital (money), Captial (human) come to my thwarted mind. Eptalon 22:47, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• Anyone have suggestions on where Apparatus commonly used when study mechanics should be moved to?

• Many lists were copied from EN in May-July 2004[2]. I haven't reviewed them all, but some were in pretty sorry shape on EN at the time (EG List of coins--not only has much been added, even the grouping/page structure has changed). Now, I do believe that current, accurate lists can be very beneficial in providing people an easy way to determine what articles are missing. But List of coins hardly meets that threshold, and I'd probably lean towards just deleting it. And if someone wants to port more current equivalent lists here, fine (using the new naming/grouping structure). World currency seems like a core topic to me, even if not one of the highest priority, but certainly ahead of pop culture and fictional chars/places/things. The lists that ARE worth keeping probably need more visibility: such as, at least a Cat for 'Lists', and having the lists added as 'see also's to more articles, and put in more cats. I think putting more encyclopedic redlinks in front of people really helped jumpstart EN 5 years ago, and think it could help Simple, but we need to make them more visible. On the other hand, things like List of supermarkets do NOT strike me as core topics, and I wouldn't mind seeing fluff like that deleted or minimalized. List of the world's tallest structures seems iffy to me, too. Maybe if limited to buildings (ie not antennae). Kept ones also need some review, as the copy of List of tectonic plates that was copied here had some BS that was later removed on EN, but given the lower traffic here stayed until I found it just recently.

I guess I should put my opinion out there: If there is a compelling reason to use an article title that doesn't match EN, I don't think we should be constricted by their choices. On the other hand, if the possible titles have more or less equal arguments, I do think it is worth matching EN, as it makes the interwiki links easier, and is more convenient for people that work on both projects. Freshstart 22:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

My musings on howb ot make things bettter

1. the unsimple template should be extended to alow to specify a reason.
2. We should start to point at good to very good articles in simple.
3. We should start to specilise ur maths. Categoy Mathematics is growing large (so is category: health)

Eptalon 22:47, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll give unsimple a go. My idea for a community portal includes a 'featured topic' for the week if that would be OK. I'm just having trouble at the moment with formatting it, the orange box I want around it always has a grey one inside it so I've had to remove the orange bit until I can fix it. Archer7 10:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I think sometimes it would be hard to give a reason and the problems would be obvious, so I've created a template with a reason section under the name Template:Unsimple-r. Archer7 10:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Wait, my community portal doesn't have a 'featured topic', but a topic that needs to be improved. A good article thing would be nice though. Archer7 20:40, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Created Category:Very good articles and Template:vgood. Peer reviewers can add the template to the top of a page to show off articles in the category. Let me know what the rest of you think before I start adding articles. Archer7 10:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

More ideas from Archer7

How about a Schools portal? I know they're normally for specific topics, but I personally think that helping school pupils is more important than being simple for translators. Archer7 19:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Can you describe more about what you mean by 'schools portal'? If it's intent is to encourage articles about every specific/individual school building around the world (like has happened on EN), I think that's the last thing Simple needs (well, one of the last). If it has more to do with helping students access info RE the subjects they're studying, etc., then it sounds intriguing (even if potentially thorny to try and implement in a way that serves students around the globe). Freshstart 09:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

It isn't for writing articles on schools, it would be a place teachers can direct their students to if they are using it in classes. The page would help pupils find out about Wikipedia and how to use it and give them easier access to whatever they are studying. Teachers would just be able to bookmark simple.wikipedia.org/Portal:Schools. I'd also write a teacher's guide. Archer7 09:56, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the "Portal:" namespace isn't active here (and "portal" isn't SimpEng). Take a look at en:Wikipedia:Schools' FAQ for other info to possibly include. -- Netoholic @ 16:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

That sounds promising. I seem to remember dicussions on EN about how best to guide 'student projects'. It seems that ones where the instructor gave very clear guidelines, and made sure that attention to Wikipedia style and policy were part of the grading, were the most productive. One where students were told to 'just write an article' tended to produce large numbers of articles about student orgs on campus, dorms, etc., and most of them landed on AfD (then it was VfD). Providing instructors and students clear guidelines on contributing productively sounds like a very laudable project. Freshstart 08:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking of creating a quick 5 minute introduction which students could go through when they went on. This project could also cut down on schoolboy vandalism, if they've had a good intro and learned how to contribute and done some work, they most likely aren't going to vandalise it. Archer7 16:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to stick strictly to the en: guidelines because there's a notice on saying it would be extremely complicated to copy over and correctly configure all of the necessary templates. And now it will be a normal page because of the Portal: namespace. I'll work something out! Archer7 16:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

New schools 'gateway' created at Wikipedia:Schools, teachers' guide at Wikipedia:Schools/Teachers' Guide and 7-page student tutorial at Wikipedia:Student tutorial. The tutorial is made up of short pages with colourful icons, to make Wikipedia policies and other stuff slightly more interesting. Everything could still be improved, so please take a look!

Also, my community portal needs reviewing again to check whether it's OK if anyone's got time. Archer7 18:29, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Another thing: I know the Schools gateway needs to be improved, it's a starting point! Archer7 18:45, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

New article question

Hello. I have started a new article under the word Minister, which I would like to ask if someone who has been on here longer than me, can read this page and see if you think it uses easy enough words for people to understand. I usually write for the main English Wikipedia and as this is the first time I have written here, i just need a reviewer to make sure it's ok. Thank you for your help. Tmalmjursson 01:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the 'make headers a question' style (I'd be more inclined to go with something like 'Special types of ministers') (and I have issues with "Prime Minister" being an 'easter egg' link to Tony Blair despite the article implying it is talking about non-country-specific usage of the term), but as far as your specific question about the simplicity of the prose, it looks quite suitable to me. I guess what I'm saying is that I think you've got a good handle on how to put things in 'simple English', but you might want to focus on using more global references--ie, will it make as much sense to someone with an n thousand-word English vocabulary in Somalia as it does to a person with the same vocabulary in Britain. (And I personnaly would be adverse to giving post addresses for more info--I'd go with either a weblink, or assume the stub tag will fill in the rest.) Freshstart 09:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

want to be an admin

how do i become one?

Simply post your name on Wikipedia:Administrators. Most people are refused if they have less than 1000 edits here though and they have to have been here a few months. Archer7 18:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

news

Why can`t I installate a {world news} template? It goes even in Latin (see my page in Latin and in the other languages).User:Alopex

Special 'nice-to-have' features like that depend on people willing to update it every day. Apparently no one here has decided it is a high enough priority to commit to that level of maintenance. I think the most active editors here see Simple's mission as being not focused as much on the pop culture and 'hot topic of the day' mentality that the other Wikipedias lean towards. Instead, committing our limited editing resources to the core topics of the sciences, great thinkers, world history, world geography, the arts, the most lasting or impactful of literature and entertainment, etc. 24.17.48.241 19:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC) (User:Freshstart--had to switch to a browser I'm not logged into because my other one is acting up.)

Reloading cached special pages

Is there any way to reload cached special pages like Special:Dead-end pages and Special:Orphan articles? When I'm fixing them it would be useful to see which ones I have left. Archer7 11:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Since you haven't gotten an answer yet, i assume it's done a schedule to conserve resources. In lieu of waiting i would make a copy of the special page in a file on your hard drive. (If you want go to the trouble, you could edit-in wiki bullet-markup to format it, so you can save this editable version on a subpage like User:Archer7/Dead-end to do, so it is accessible to other editors.) They're probably in alpha order, or you could sort them. Call up your My contributions. Ignore the ones that don't say (Top) at the end of the line, since the ones that have been edited since since then are probably the ones you edited twice, with the most recent time being higher up on the page. Presumably your comments say what you did, and you know to look up each one that you finished in alpha order on your list, and remove it (or mark it if that makes more sense for the way you work).
--Jerzy•t 03:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

bottom line

On every page were at the bottom is written "This page was last changed ... for details." the following three links aren't in a row as on other pages. -- 141.30.212.78 11:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

_ _ I think you are saying

On every page, at the bottom where it starts by saying

This page was last changed

and ends with

for details.

it ends with three links. On most pages those links are rendered on the same line. I'm concerned about a page where they aren't on the same line.

But maybe i just don't understand, because i don't know what page you're talking about.

_ _ I see your IP number was used in editing Image talk:Human-woman.png, but it renders normally for me. I assume you realize that lines from MediaWiki servers render differently depending on how you size your browser windows, for most browsers.

_ _ Sounds like you should tell us more, or say the same thing in other words.
--Jerzy•t 03:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

F.e. First Nations: the 3 links Privacy policy, About Wikipedia, Disclaimers aren't in a line in contrast to the 3 at the bottom of any page when you are editing that one. -- 141.30.66.137 15:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Page move requiring admin intervention: Frankfurt

Can an admin delete the move-created redir at Frankfurt and move Frankfurt/Main to Frankfurt? I've already started the associated cleanup, and will finish it after it gets moved. Freshstart 00:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

All done. -- Netoholic @ 07:00, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks. Freshstart 07:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Is 'external' simple?

I know everyone's going to hate me for saying this because it's in 607 of our articles, but is the word 'external' Simple English? Can it be replaced with something like 'outside'? Archer7 22:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

It's certainly a fair question (and I wouldn't worry too much about the quantity--Netoholic could probably do it in minutes with Netbot). I think the short answer is 'no'--neither it, nor variants/related (EG exterior) seem to be on the BE 850, BE 1500, or VOA lists. On the otherhand, since we're talking about uses in that header, and not content, and in that context it is arguably somewhat self-evident (especially with the little 'external link' icon next to each link), I'm not sure how critical it is to avoid using it there. If we do want to change it, I'd prefer 'other websites'--I think 'other' is a more concrete distinction, while 'outside' is a bit metaphorical. And, while website isn't exactly simple, site isn't either, and I would imagine website is more likely to be added to the VOA word list soon, as 'site' is so much more ambiguous. Freshstart 03:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Just to throw this out... keep in mind that we need not even keep the idea of an "External links" special section. I think information sources used should be in a "References" section, and mention in the article any official websites for the subject. That leaves things like fan sites or general information, which are debateably non-needed. I think the idea of the "External links" section was born in the fact that Wikipedia is part of the Internet, and linking is a key concept. But think of it this way... would you want to see "External links" in a print version of Wikipedia? -- Netoholic @ 06:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Freshstart, bear in mind that if people don't know what 'website' means, they probably won't be here unless there's a printed version flying around like Netoholic said. Netoholic, I see what you're saying, but I think outside links are extremely helpful when researching a topic, I'm sure you've found them helpful at some point in your usage of Wikipedia. They give people access to information that perhaps would be a little out of place in an encyclopedia article. It's a little hard to explain, I hope you can see what I mean. 'Other websites' sounds a great replacement. Archer7 11:16, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

What about Other places to look? (for external links/references, etc)? - Eptalon 12:04, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm OK with "External links", but "Other websites" is my first choice if we change to something else--I was just acknowledging that it doesn't actually pass the typical 'simple' tests, before someone else said it. FWIW 'reference' is BE1500[3], so we don't need to avoid that.

As for whether we can get rid of the section entirely, I don't really think so, although Neto raises a good point. I DON'T think we should be adding them wholesale from EN--the quality and necessity of the ext links there is often pretty iffy. The two biggest reasons I can think of to have selected ext links here are: on stubs to facilitate expansion by future editors, and for 'official' links, especially to things like governmental entities. Maybe I'm just not getting exactly how the official links would be worked into the body content, but the typical [1] format I don't think is sufficient. I suppose for the stub growth purpose, they could be left on the Talk pages.Freshstart 07:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Shall we change to 'Other websites' then? A lot of these conversations seem to end up with no decisions. Archer7 16:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

No objection from me; especially if it helps get this issue/discussion resolved. Freshstart 21:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd say we should boldly change it to "other websites" (preferably with a bot), and if someone has a good reason for wanting it a different way, they can boldly change it back or to something else. Wikis are great. Go for it!

Yes, a lot of conversations here seem to end up with no decisions, like the Project direction section above. Let's change that, shall we? --Cromwellt|talk 22:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Remove the Penis, please.

There's a rather large picture of a penis on the front page. If we could remove that, it'd be perfect. Thank you. Capitán Obvio 22:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Reverted (by someone else). Thanks for helping us keep the main page penis-free. I wish these vandals would realize that their attacks are neither amusing, nor frustrating (just ho-hum reactions are the norm), nor original. Someone else did the same thing (and it was a penis picture then, too) a long time ago. Admittedly, there was more reaction then (such as "Ew!", see the archive for the reactions), but it really does get old after a while. That was one of the reasons that Netoholic protected the Main page (wisely, I think), but this vandal was a bit more persistent than most, actually modifying the template that determines a section of the main page. Either way, the pic is gone now, and I'm guessing that vandal will be blocked any moment. Most of us have zero tolerance for that sort of thing. --Cromwellt|talk 23:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Why isn't it decorated with children's designs?

You'd think that when this wiki is made for children, this part of Wikipedia would be decorated with children's colors, designs, and you know the rest. Like, why isn't the globe-logo colored with rainbow colors, and why aren't the fonts Comic Sans, or any other child-like fonts?

SE Wikipedia looks like it's still for adults. Can the design be changed? (After all, the Arabic Wikipedia at http://ar.wikipedia.org has a different, latticework background than the other Wikipedias do.) --Shultz III 08:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

PS: And please don't forget to leave me a message at en:User Talk:Shultz III on the English Wikipedia. Thanks.

The audience of Simple is not limited to children. It is intended for people of any age that have limited knowledge of the English language.

I don't see any difference on the main page of the Arabic Wikipedia compared to other language Wikipedias, except that all the text is in Arabic script, which I suppose could be described as appearing lattice-like. Freshstart 20:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Freshstart is right. Even though children are welcome to visit Simple English Wikipedia, and are currently considered part of the target audience, they are not our only audience, and therefore changing the design to be more child-focused would be inappropriate. But as regards Arabic Wikipedia, I see what Shultz III is saying. He is saying that the background picture on that Wikipedia is not the same as the one here, with a sort of arabesque-style pattern visible. I'll post this on his talk page at English Wikipedia, too. --Cromwellt|talk 21:45, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Look at The French Wikipedia. Surely not all of them are children, or have difficulties grasping the language. Adding a few icons to touch up the interface has nothing to do with being simple of mind, growing up, or learning a langauage. Such designs (Didn"t User:Archer7 propose some?) are worth considering. -- Eptalon 18:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I used Nuvola on the Community Portal, but there's plenty more in commons category Icons. Archer7 19:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the icons on the community portal. I don't think we should go for a children-focused design, but I don't at all mind the idea of adding icons and things like that. --Cromwellt|talk 23:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Image uploads?

At some point in time I thought image uploads were disabled. Are they enabled again? - If so, why? -- Eptalon 12:17, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Image uploads have been stopped on this wiki permanently, with anything uploaded being deleted. This makes things a lot easier for translators (they can use the same images) and also there's no need to worry about copyright violations. All images must now come from Wikimedia Commons, see our image use policy. Archer7 17:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons

Why are the image pages here (for images on the Wikimedia Commons) not displaying a link to the Commons page? --Thorpe | talk 16:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a place you didn't see it? Image:Edmund-Hillary.web.jpg, for example, has links to both the commons main page, and to the image page itself there. Freshstart 03:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

On the search results page

When you search for something, at the top of the results page there is text reading "For more information about searching Wikipedia, see $1." Could someone please fix this?  :) Adam Newbold 02:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Captcha not working—can't create new accounts

I'm trying to create an account, but the Captcha image isn't displaying. If I cut and paste the URL for the image itself, I get the following page:

Internal Error

Requested bogus captcha image

Anyone else having this problem? Can a technician please look into this? —en:User:Psychonaut 12:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Shows up fine for me. Are you still having problems? 24.18.215.132 04:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

User:Freshstart--I'd logged out to test, duh. :( 24.18.215.132 04:17, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• • It's still not working in Mozilla, but I just tried opening the page in Konqueror, and the image displayed just fine. Perhaps the adblock plugin is mistaking the Captcha for an ad and refusing to display it. But even if so, it's odd that it would be omitting only the Captcha from simple; I just created accounts on a bunch of other foreign-language Wikipedias and didn't have any problems. —en:User:Psychonaut 05:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I found the problem—I had cookies disabled. Enabling cookies allows the image to be displayed. Can someone else please try this to see if the problem is reproducible? If it is, then it is very important that the Captcha software be fixed to work without cookies, or alternatively that a message be displayed on the account creation page indicating that your browser must accept cookies for the page to work. —Psychonaut 05:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, I tried it and it's definitely the cookies. I don't know if we would be able to make one that would work without cookies, but I'll try and edit the message to say about cookies. Archer7 20:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Edited both the image explanation and the captcha help page. Take a look. Archer7 20:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Archiving some content

Hello, I just saw that this page is over 100k in size. could we perhaps archive some of the older discussions? -- Eptalon 12:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)