Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 8

Re-directing years: yes or no?

I've been doing some work on categorizing older years (like BC old) and I had a thought. Many of the individual years don't have pages. I was wondering what the community thinks about redirecting individual year pages to the decade in which they occur (for example, redirect the year 44 BC to the decade 40s BC). If someone eventually wants to do the page for that specific year, they could. In the meantime, it might encourage people to help add info to the decades pages. Someone who's discouraged from creating the 44 BC page to say "Julius Caesar died in this year", may decide to add that comment to the 40s BC page simply because '44 BC' is a blue link instead of a red one. Tygartl1 22:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

This reminded me of another issue concerning years. I know that when talking about history and archaeology, terms like "BCE" (Before Common Era) and "CE" (Common Era) are sometimes used instead of BC and AD. Is there some sort of guideline about this? Thanks. Oh, and I don't know yet about the parent question. I have to think about it. --Kyoko 03:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

A 1993 Guideline says don’t use B.C.E., C.E., or A.C.E. to replace B.C. and A.D. without translating the new terms for the very large number of readers who will not understand them. As this is simple English wikipedia, and AD and BC are, so much I dare say, much more widely understood, AD and BC should be used. For AD, the discussion is moot anyway, as the year 500 AD is linked under 500, similar to all common era years. On enWP, BCE redirects to BC, I don't think this is really necessary here (yet). It would certainly, however, be a neutral way of resolving the issue.

So much for the simplicity argument, here is why I don't really like BCE and CE: They are meant as a political correct way of stating years. They try to achieve this by avoiding the term "Christ". They still, however, are built upon the year Christ was born. Therefore, I don't see substantial improvement over AD and BC. Also, Common Era refers to the Christian common era. What about the common era of the Jews? of the Buddhist? of the Hindu? If anything, I find defining the Common Era to be the Christian common era to be less politically correct than stating directly that the Christian base of calculation is used. --Rimshot 10:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

AD belongs before the number,not after, since it is an abbreviation of the latin Anno Domini, meaning "In the Year of Our Lord", which makes no grammatical sense after the date. Whilst I recognise that this is the Simple English Wikipedia, nonetheless the correct use of grammar is as important, if not more so since many users are likely to be those learning English. For the benefit of htese people, it seems wise to ensure that the rules of the language are properly applied, both to help understand what is a somewhat awkward language, and reducing the chance of users becomming confused over the correct syntax of sentences . Furthermore, mistakes of this sort merely make the poster look as if he is either ignorant, foolish, or merely lazy. I understand that people who do not speak fluent English may desire to post on this site, and meaning no disrespect to them, I would suggest taht they post thier contributions to the English rather thann Simplified English Wikipedia, on the basis that the readers of the English Wikipedia are more likely to be those who are more capable of muddling out he nonsense which gets posted there by idiots, so understanding a bit of bad translation, and improving it to a suitable standard for inclusion in the article, is far easier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.102.188 (talk • contribs) 15:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to offend, I just remembered that I have some ancient works where the editor uses BCE instead of BC, so I thought I'd ask. --Kyoko 16:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't think you wanted to offend - I don't think using BCE is particularly offensive either. I just think it's not needed. --Rimshot 17:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Redirecting red-linked years sounds like a good idea. I wonder, though, whether that would discourage creating the corresponding year article, once there is enough content. Year article stubs, I think, would help more. They could provide a link to the decade, as well. Creating such a stub would be simple if there was a suitable template (is there one?). If a year isn't linked to, there is no need to create the corresponding article. --Rimshot 10:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, perhaps we could do individual years up to a certain point going back in history. What I had sort of envisioned was, as you continue travelling backwards along the timeline, going from having pages for individual years, to summarizing by decade, to perhaps eventually summarizing by century. Obviously, the further back in time you go, the more gaps there are going to be in between events (also, the gaps will get larger as well). It just doesn't make sense to me to have a page for a year where history only recognizes a handful of events. It makes more sense to me to have a summary on a decade page. The only thing I don't know exactly is to where to make the cutoff. Starting in 1st century BC seems like a logical place to begin the decade summary.

As far as a template, we have something (as seen on 40s BC) but I'm not sure if there's a simpler template that exists. What's there is kind of confusing and seems like it might take a lot of work to change for each page. Tygartl1 15:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as redirecting non-existent article years to the decade, that has already been done on and off for quite some time, and it doesn't bother me. It gives some information on the timeframe, while we are waiting for a year article to be made. Blockinblox - talk 15:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention another argument I had for doing a decade summary. The further back in time you go, the more likely it is that historians are unsure of the exact year of a person's birth or death. An example of this is Cleopatra VII. Tygartl1 15:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Silly question

I'm sorry for the somewhat silly question. I want to know how to write my future changes. Is this the (Simple English) Wikipedia or the Simple (English Wikipedia). I had thought that the ideas we write about should be explained with simple words and sentences that are not complex. Many articles seem to have simple content as well. Should we simplify topics? Or should we explain the complex nature of topics with simple wording? --Selket 17:14, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Both. Simple was intended for people whom English is not a first language, as well as for students, children, and people with learning disabilities.--TBCΦtalk? 17:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the focus should lie on explaining in simple words. With short sentences. Preferable 5 words or less. :) --Eptalon 23:01, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Succession Box Template

Template:Succession box now works, different from the enWP one, alone. That means, no {{start box}} .... {{end box}} is needed. The problem with this setup is that stacking succession boxes over each other does not work (exhibit 1). Another problem is that succession boxes which got copied over from enWP also don't work nicely - they get a little additional box on top (exhibit 2). Therefore, I want to change the template back to its original version, and adapt all needy pages accordingly. Because this is a rather substantial change to a widely used template I wanted to ask for objections first. So -- does anyone object? --rimshot^talk 10:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I will change it this weekend. Last chance for objections. --rimshot^talk 10:10, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. For good measure, the template is now documented. --rimshot^talk 13:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Attention Optimum Online users

Due to the extensive vandalism recently by accounts from certain Optimum Online (Cablevision Systems) users, Optimum Online has been blocked from editing Simple Wikipedia for two weeks. This block applies to all users from that ISP who do not already have an account here. If you have an account, you should be able to edit normally. -- Creol(talk) 13:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Tagline

Please see this discussion, which, at the moment, is pretty dead. J Di 12:27, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguating place names

At en: we disambiguate Australian place names as [[Town, State]] regardless of the need for disambiguation. Is there a need to do so here? —Moondyne 08:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

While it is not so much a need here, using Town, State is usually the best idea with or without shared names. It helps when linking other pages when consistancy is used naming pages in this way. Unfortunately, it can get screwy at times. Many English cities (and likely some Australian ones as well as other countries) tend to either be listed just as city name or as City, Country. Redirects for more unique cities without the ", State" are a good idea to use as well, but the city realy should be listed in the manner you listed just to keep things consistant. -- Creol(talk) 13:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Transcluding deleted pages

Is there a protected page where non-existent pages can be transcluded so they are protected from recreation? J Di 18:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:SALT -- Creol(talk) 19:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. J Di 19:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

thank a lot

I am thai people my english noy quite good so I use simple english. It very useful thank every body Thales.net 09:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

That is why we are here :) --rimshot^talk 12:48, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Question

Hey, just have a little question I wanted to throw out there to see if anyone can provide some guidance. In articles regarding specific animals (see firefly as an example), I would assume that Simple Wikipedia should still have taxoboxes similar to English Wikipedia, but I was wondering if Simple Wiki has any guidelines on taxoboxes, as the form that they take in English Wiki is far from "simple". I would imagine that the beginning English speaker would just look at taxoboxes as they are and dismiss them as a bunch of complex mumbojumbo. Jhml 18:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Taxonomy is actually fairly universal (for languages that use the same or similar alphabets atleast). Look at the firefly taxobox here, then look at the French, Italian and Spanish ones. While the names of the categories differ in each language, the classification of the animal or plants covered stay pretty much the same. Certain languages (Dutch for example) have their own names, but still list the commonly accepted names and just note what the Dutch version is. Taxonomy itself is certainly not a simple subject, but the language used to deal with taxonomy in English is in many cases the same as it is in many other languages so for non-English speakers it is little different than learning it in their own language. So basically? copy/pasting taxoboxes is pretty much a fairly well accepted practice. Most people will trim the subspecies varieties at the bottom of the box, but this is more a case of that information being just too much detail (and a whole lot of red-links that will never get created) for Simple wiki at this point. -- Creol(talk) 18:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Jhml 20:54, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Small Request

I really do feel kind of silly for asking this, but I'm kind of obsessive compulsive, and there's an error on the editing page for creating a new page. It says "If a page use to be here", when it should say "If a page used to be here". If someone higher up could fix it, that would be great! Thanks. —This unsigned comment was added by 71.114.55.133 (talk • contribs) 05:19, March 18, 2007 (UTC)

Errors are bad, no matter how minor. I've corrected it, thanks for pointing it out. J Di 09:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, this is not as cut-and-dried as you probably think it is. I thought it was too, but it turns out that there is disagreement among grammarians regarding which is correct. "Used to" is considered more correct by some (such as A Dictionary of Modern Usage (1998) by Bryan A. Garner), but others disagree. I don't know where I read that, but it surprised me, too, which is why I remember it now. --Cromwellt|talk 17:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC) (login problems)

synonyms

stories are of more recent origin than saga. — This unsigned comment was added by Bertha (talk • contribs) 16:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC).

And what does that tell us? --rimshot^talk 10:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Quality not Quantity

We really should be focusing on the quality of our articles. They really are not to great no offense. If you are new to wikipedia simple english and you see this I suggest that you edit a already existing article instead of making a new one. Peace:) --Sir James Paul ,La gloria è a dio 18:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

There are over 200 articles that need to be cleaned up, not counting those in the second person (you), or those classified as dictionary definitions. There are certainly things to do for those who do not want to make new articles. I have not even looked at the articles needing simplification yet. --Eptalon 10:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Missing Wikipedia Logo

The Wikipedia logo is missing from its original place at the top left corner. Sysops, please look into the matter. Chenzw 10:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

It isn't for me. Problem with your browser settings maybe? Archer7 - talk 11:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Simplification of MediaWiki messages

Long story short: I try to simplify a MediaWiki page (diff 1), and edit is reverted (diff 2). I revert to revision I think is more simple (diff 3) and attempt to simplify another message (diff 4), and both edits are reverted, one with slightly uncivil comment (diff 5, diff 6). Discussion is started (link 1) and continued (link 2), and decision to allow more people to comment is made. I assume that Blockinblox, the user reverting my edits, will start the discussion, but he doesn't, so I do, and here we are now. So, please, comment. J Di 17:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

We are discussing the newest changes to the History page interface at MediaWiki talk:Histlegend, please comment on it or give suggestions at that page. Thanks, Blockinblox - talk 18:25, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

15K articles

We now have our 15,000th article (Eptalon's creation of Giant tube worm). Keep up the great work everyone. -- Creol(talk) 21:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think an announcement somewhere at Meta is in order. Woohoo! PTO 21:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Licensefalia

hi yes my baby brother was diagnost with Licensefalia at two months of age. I want to know more about this syndrome that he has. I go online but nothing comeup to explain why or what proves this syndrome. — This unsigned comment was added by 65.9.63.105 (talk • contribs) .

Look here: Lissencephaly -- Creol(talk) 04:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)