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Questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of Wikiquote, (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in one of the village pump archives if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.

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RFC: new VfD notification template

Request for comment: I created a draft Template:VFDNote, roughly similar to Template:PRODWarning and Template:PRODNote. Please review, comment on its talkpage, and/or revise as appropriate. Thanks. ~ Ningauble 18:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I like the template, but it prompts me to ask a question about PROD and VfD notifications. It's one thing to notify the creator of a newly created article, but what if the article has been worked on by a good many people? (See, for example, the edit history of the Frankie Boyle page, which is up for VfD.) Should there be a time limit based on how far back the edits go, or do we notify every contributor? - InvisibleSun 00:19, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Over at 'pedia the guidance is to notify "principle contributors" and specifically to refrain from "canvassing." I think two notifications are usually sufficient, and more than four are rarely necessary. In choosing whom to notify, I consider two principles paramount:

• Who evinces the most interest and has done the most work?
• If there is a case to be made, who is most likely able to make it?

Both principles aim to solicit input for a well informed outcome; the first is also a matter of courtesy. Indicators to consider when answering these questions include, but are not limited to:

• Original article creator, if still active in the community.
• Cumulative size and substance of edits. (By substance independent of size, I mean work on sourcing, cleanup, etc.)
• Participation in discussion on the article's talk page. If discussion or edit history are contentious, try to include all sides.
• Recent participation, unless relatively minor.
• As a tie-breaker, favor named accounts who stand behind their work over IP users whose choice limits the right to stand up for it.

This approach is predicated on the assumption that "it's a discussion, not a vote", so the objective is to give fair notice for soliciting input, not for canvass votes. ~ Ningauble 15:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

In the example of Frankie Boyle, where there has been a surge of small additions in recent months (by numerous IPs, and single-contribution accounts), I might pick the three with the most contributions in the last three months, including at least one with edits in the last month. I would probably include the named article creator, who also made the largest single contribution, but would not be surprised if the notice went unnoticed because that was the editor's only contribution to Wikiquote. I would not lose any sleep if nobody noticed due to dynamic IP assignment: anonymity has its price, and this affords a reasonable chance of being noticed. ~ Ningauble 15:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

After several months experience with this, I have changed my thinking about notifying IP users. Such notices rarely produce a response. One reason is that messages sent to a dynamically assigned IP address are often never seen by the intended recipient. Another is that some people decline to create a user account because they simply do not want to be talked to. Therefore, I no longer send courtesy notices to IP addresses unless (1) their last edit is so recent that the session may still be active, or (2) the edit history indicates that it is a static address over an extended period. ~ Ningauble 18:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Searching

How can I search specifically within "films" or "TV shows"?

QOTD selection process

When I devised the current ranking system for ranking QOTD suggestions and began using it a few years ago, I had anticipated that the voting process could conceivably be disrupted and corrupted by the concerted action of a very few people, intent on posting material for the most part embarrassing or entirely unacceptable to the general community of those involved with Wikiquote, and asserted that the final decisions on selections should always be made by a responsible administrator, or perhaps a odd-numbered council of them.

Up to recent weeks I have seldom perceived any need or reason to disregard the indicated votes on the suggestion pages, but this is no longer the case. I believe that at the very least such group disruption as I had anticipated has begun to occur, or, more likely a single treacherously deceitful individual has begun to deliberately pollute the voting process so that rankings by multiple sock puppets could provide a fraudulent means of controlling the results, and an an extremely artificial prominence or dominance of this individual's pernicious preferences and influences could occur.

Specifically, Zarbon (talk · contributions), who has in the past had indefinite blocks on his accounts both here and at Wikipedia under strong suspicions of indulging in improper or deceitful activity, and who was permitted to resume the use of the Zarbon account here after much pleading with admins, after long bypassing of the blocks here and at WIkipedia through the use of IPs and other user acccounts, has now been suspected, by me and others, of having recently resorted to the use of sockpuppets in skewing the QOTD votes toward his preferences.

I am only presenting a case here of what seems to me to very clearly be the situation, although this is not yet something proven, and perhaps not even provable through available means. It is my honest assessment that Zarbon may have become more cleverly deceitful in some ways, but that his general integrity and trustworthiness has not clearly improved with time at all, and that his will and desire to deceive, and to have his desires unjustly dominate over the will of others has become rather blatantly manifest, in far more than his pronouncements which seem to range from the authoritarian to the nihilistic, depending on what best suits his particular inclinations at the time.

As there is as yet no definite proof of what seems to be rather blatant fraudulence, I have deferred to the apparent ranked preferences up to this point, even when I strongly suspected, and indeed retained very little doubt that fraudulent votes were being used.

As an emergency measure, in response to this, and despite having very strong suspicions, and indeed belief of unethical activity on the part of Zarbon, I will at this point still count his votes, but will disregard the recent votes of Waheedone (talk · contributions) and Fossil (talk · contributions), or any other voter who has not had at least a 3 month history of editing on Wikiquote, as such a standard has been used on Wikimedia voting processes in the past and seems entirely appropriate in this situation.

Despite a strong aversion to complicating processes and procedures more than is necessary, the possibility of the continuation of very fraudulent activity in this regard impels me to make a suggestion : if the voting activity on the these pages continues to appear highly suspicious and highly vulnerable to fraudulant voting, I believe it might become necessary that we should abandon the current system I had devised, where all users can rank the suggestions, and move to have a council of and odd number of trusted admins (perhaps only elected for periods of a year at a time) become the official rankers and final selectors of the QOTD, out of the suggestions provided by any users.

I will refrain from officially proposing this, at this time, as a necessary measure, and hope it might not be necessary any time soon, but I think it, or something much like it might eventually be necessary, if problems continue. ~ Kalki 17:44, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Since this is posed at AN rather than VP I hope you will pardon my interjecting, but I must say I endorse the proposed emergency measure and encourage the community to seek a long term solution for the susceptibility to manipulation. In addition to the issue of sockpuppets, meatpuppets, or single purpose account voting blocks, whatever the case may be, I am also extremely annoyed by the gamesmanship of one who nominates disproportionate numbers of suggestions for every day, many of them self-ranked as marginal. I just want to turn off the computer and walk away from what ought to be an enjoyable exercise: reviewing a few of the very best quotes Wikiquote has to offer. ~ Ningauble 18:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I originally posted my comments on the Admin Noticeboard, but agree it is probably more appropriate to post it here, and have now done so. ~ Kalki 19:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Kalki. I'm wondering as to why you would bring something like this up without letting me know. I was also made aware of this accusation by Lyle on the date of Nov 30. And when I checked user Fossil's talk page, I saw a post concerning this. I just want to say that I am a bit offended that you would accuse me. I proved to everyone in the past that I had absolutely no "sockpuppets" and other accusations were all groundless. In fact, I've tried my best to point out suspicious behavior to you and other admins on a constant basis. The users Fossil and Waheedone, to name those two...seem to agree with many of my suggestions for the most part...I can't control their votes. InvisibleSun seems to agree with many of your suggestions, that doesn't make him a sockpuppet I'm certain. I've been wrongfully accused in the past and I'd very much prefer not to be incorporated with any negative behavior. I will convey my feelings to these other users, such as Fossil, as well. I just wanted to let you know that I am not being dishonest and I've proven myself honest in the past as well. Any wrong actions taken against me were done by vandaliser "wiki-star" and I did not take part in any vandalizing or sockpuppeteering. I don't know how else to prove to you that I only operate with my one user name. I guess you can deem the qotd votes cast by other newly joined members as invalid...or not count them at all if that makes any difference...I assume that would solve the initial problem. Zarbon 05:28, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

It is entirely conceivable, and perhaps even possible, that 2 people suddenly discovered Wikiquote who so extensively share your own rather peculiarly perverse tastes, who seem similarly inclined to regularly rank statements more established editors here consider very wise or significant as having little or no worth, and to promote with great zeal what most people consider rather banal or offensive statements as if they were brilliant, and to do very little else. I yet can honestly state that I simply do not believe it, and find little reason to do so, despite your protests of your innocence and honesty.
I recognize that there is a fundamental and important difference between having suspicions, or even strong convictions and being able to prove them, and thus to act in ways which would be entirely unfair and unjust to people truly innocent, but there is also vast difference between not being able to prove some form of guilt and being able to prove innocence. Your innocence in this and other regards is far from "proven."
Frankly, my impression of you has always been of someone very prone to pronounce extremely exaggerated claims of both your victimhood and the worth of your stated views. I am entirely willing to credit you with cleverness enough to find ways to effectively deceive others, or at least to prevent your deceptions from being proven or provable by the means normally available, but I am not willing to credit you with being someone inclined to be very wise in your focus or your aims, nor to credit your activities with being entirely virtuous and honorable.
Though I long held some definite suspicions, I had never at any point been absolutely convinced that you were also your apparent nemesis "Wiki-star", but I have also never been entirely convinced that you were not. The abusive troll-vandal known as Wiki-star, and apparently many other names, had also been clever enough to avoid being absolutely associated with many other identities, but that has not prevented the blocking of that user because of the times where abusive intent was clear. It is certainly not entirely unlikely that some of the most abusive of trolls would set up some "innocent victim" personas as well as more openly aggressive ones, by which to undermine wiki projects in more subtle and less obvious or actionable ways. Your nearly automatic assertions of much activity that has little or no clear reason for such association to being that of Wiki-star has also been very suspicious in itself, as a means of merely causing further confusion and drama and drawing attention to this rather pathetic troll-vandal.
There is clearly not enough evidence to take direct action against you, or any of these very recently created identities, yet because of what I as well as others have perceived to probably be rather pronounced attempts to deceive and achieve undeserved influence over choices made about the QOTD, it might become necessary to eventually constrain the rankings made on user suggestions to trusted admins, so as to prevent such extreme manipulation as could occur when a very deceitful and unprincipled user is willing to use sockpuppets to vote on matters. ~ Kalki 17:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you feel that way, but I still want to continue to participate in the voting process. Is it truly my fault that these people show up...no. What can I do? I can't control other members. And no, I am not wiki-star and the very suggestion of that disgusts me. I hate vandalizers and sockpuppeteers. In fact, I have a hatred for them even moreso than you. That one vandal was following my activity and pretty much deliberately attributing stupidity to my reputation. I have the same user name on wikipedia, and wikimedia commons and it is the only user name I operate under. I proved myself in the past and I will prove myself again. But never ever incorporate me with idiots such as those, you will be disrespecting the honor that I have tried to build. Another thing, just because you don't like some of my suggestions, doesn't mean that they are bad. And I have made many contributions in the past. I have never limited my contributions to the qotd. The best way I can prove to you my sincerity is by my own words. I HOLD YOU IN GREAT RESPECT. And I would like it to stay that way. My suggestion to you is that you do not count the votes made by these other users and only count mine since I have been making suggestions and contributions for a very long time now. Please don't let your own emotion cloud your better judgment. I don't have anything to do with any other users. I love qotd and I genuinely want the best for it, therefore maintaining its original nature. For the most part, InvisibleSun, yourself, and I were the only ones who were doing most of the voting. The very fact that other people would catch on and start voting is inevitable. Maybe you should just tell them all to stop voting. But I sincerely do not want to lose my own privelege for the misconception that you may have, because I have been taking part with you for quite some time now. Zarbon 04:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I seriously think you guys need to cut Zarbon a break. Yes, he's quirky with the QOTD, but to the extent that others may be "following" him, their votes are easily enough discarded under an eminently fair policy of counting only the votes of solid contributors. And, although Zarbon has chosen to focus on a rather unusual set of content, it is certainly material worth having in an holistic collection of important quotes. I can not emphasize enough that Zarbon is a contributor, and we would do well to keep our volunteers feeling welcome absent a well-evidenced reason to do otherwise. BD2412 T 07:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Enough said. I think we can employ a systematic approach to discard two (almost) vote-only accounts, particularly if we would like to keep it as "community vote". The allegation cast on Zarbon as a user is another matter ... I would like to see a stable rule on voting rather than focusing a user (or users') behavior. --Aphaia 09:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for trimming articles: final version

I am about to post an article entitled Wikiquote:Limits on quotations, which will be the consensus result of discussions about the trimming of pages. The talk page of the article can be used for suggestions and corrections, with votes to be cast after an agreed-upon period and after consensus changes have been made. In the section above entitled Wikiquote:Village pump#Template, we can post our suggestions for messages to be used in relation to the guidelines. - InvisibleSun 03:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Handy new template

I just copied over {{lowercase-title}} from enwiki; this will let us display the "proper" name for lower-case articles (such as iPod instead of IPod). Enjoy. EVula // talk // 23:54, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

sea dog

I need to know what a sea dog is from the past. My son is doing a report and we do not know what it is or what they did. All we know they had something to do with pirates and tribes and trails. Someone please help me by letting me know what cite to go to where I can get the information. We have to print it out. Please help me. Thank you.

You want to look at Wikipedia, not Wikiquote. Sorry. EVula // talk // 06:55, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Fundraiser banner gadget

I've just created a gadget (our first) that allows users to suppress the fundraiser banner. This is handy for those of us that agree it's important, but are tired of seeing it (either because it's obnoxious or because we've already donated and don't need to be beaten over the head).

I've wanted to do this for a while, but had to wait for that pesky RfA to finish first. ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Most popular pages?

I'm looking for "popular" quotes, and was wondering if anyplace lists pages by how often they are viewed, or just provides the 100 most read pages? If not, I think it would be a useful addition to the navigation section on the left sidebar. —This unsigned comment is by 209.128.143.66 (talk • contribs) .

Well, there's Special:MostLinked, though that includes a lot of non-quote pages, such as Wikiquote:What Wikiquote is not and Help:Edit summary. You could also check out Special:MostRevisions, though that's just the pages on Wikiquote with the most edits. Both of those pages can be found in the "Special pages" link in the sidebar. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Chapters and chapter titles

I've noticed that there are several different ways that chapters and chapter titles are noted after literary quotes. Is there a preferred way? Psyche825 05:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

There is no one-size-fits-all approach, as there is a variety of styles in the works themselves. I am currently preparing an article on a work organized by Book/Chapter/Section where books are numbered and named, chapters are numbered but unnamed, and sections are named but unnumbered, except the first section of each chapter is unnamed; and another work with interleaved narrative lines, each having its own numbering sequence. What to do? My two cents: do whatever will (1) make it useful for readers to find the passage, and (2) make the article self-consistent and attractive. ~ Ningauble 15:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! I knew it would be hard to have a preferred way, since books and other works are all different, but I thought it would be better to check just in case. Psyche825 00:16, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Metal Gear

Pursuant to the discussion in Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, I have merged all Metal Gear pages into a single page, trimmed that drastically, and redirected all the previous separate pages to that one. This is kind of a big action, so I'd like the community to review the outcome and let me know if I've taken too much off the top. Cheers! BD2412 T 12:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Good job! ~ UDScott 14:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Good save. ~ Ningauble 19:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Recent BNP quotes

Has anyone made a page with the recent BNP (British National Party) quotes I just heard on the BBC 1 news. You know, possibly hyppocritical (depending on your opinion) things like;

• "Its like we're living in a facist society"

and

• "It breaches our human rights"

After some of their members' detail were posted on the internet. Thanks, Wikisaver62 18:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Just my opinion, but I hope not. I prefer to see Wikiquote used for preserving statements that are particularly pithy, witty, wise, eloquent, or poignant, rather than for documenting a recent political kerfuffle or building a case for a point of view. This is not to say they are uninteresting, just that this may not be the most appropriate venue. ~ Ningauble 16:38, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Am I doing okay?

Hello. I am working on cleaning up the page "Crime", and standardizing it and making sure everything is sourced. I moved unsourced and dubious source stuff to the talk page, and then added in a bunch of sourced stuff. How am I doing so far? Hopefully if all goes well I would like to do this to clean up some other general theme topic pages as well. Cirt (talk) 07:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

• We've discussed the fate of unsourced quotes before, and I think the consensus we came to was that it's better to move them to a subpage (i.e. Crime/unsourced). That way, whatever is left unsourced or unsourceable will be wiped out for good when the subpage is deleted. BD2412 T 09:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
  • That's a great idea. I just moved them to the talk page temporarily just in case someone objected and wanted to discuss them there, or work on sourcing them. How does the page "Crime" itself look so far, after the work I did to it? Cirt (talk) 10:00, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Category suppression

Those who monitor such things may have noticed Category:Candidates for speedy deletion no longer lists pages that display samples of {{db}} but are not actually candidates for deletion, such as Wikiquote:Template messages. This is because they are now using the |categories=no parameter to avoid spurious entries in maintenance categories, as described at Category:Templates that support category suppression. I plan to do this for a few more maintenance tags, and encourage others to the same. There is a simple^[verify?] how-to guide at Category talk:Templates that support category suppression. On the other hand, if you think this is the wrong thing to do then stop me before I kill again. ~ Ningauble 20:57, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit section 0 gadget now installed

I just added a gadget that adds an "[edit]" link to edit just the lead section. Go to Special:Preferences to test it out. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for doing that. I have found this to be a useful tool on other projects. Cirt (talk) 00:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

As have I; as soon as I'm done installing a few more gadgets, I'll be adding it over at Wikisource too. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Sweeeeeeeeeeet. Cirt (talk) 04:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism from IP 194.187.32.1

The 194.187.32.1 IP vandalized, today, several pages on this project. I'll be fine to block it before new vandalismes.--Bertrand GRONDIN 12:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Y Blocked. Thanks for the cleanup work. (The standard place to report these is at WQ:VIP.) ~ Ningauble 12:46, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank's for the link. I'm bureaucrat in french Wikiquote :-). You'll be welcome there.--Bertrand GRONDIN 14:31, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Rush Limbaugh Edit War

I am having an edit war with someone on the Rush Limbaugh page, and I have no idea how to resolve it. There are two particular quotes that come from a single book, that have been attributed to Rush Limbaugh. However, no other source for those quotes has been found, and the book itself does not cite exactly when those quotes were made. I have attempted to remove them, but the other user (under several different IPs) keeps restoring them. Can someone tell me how you resolve this? I tried posting something on the Administrator’s Noticeboard, but have gotten no response. Help! The Vidiot 20:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of stating the obvious, it seems that the administrators are, for the most part, not particularly interested in that article. There is a bit of a quandary in that, while an article on a prominent polemicist is certainly appropriate, including controversial statements and argumentation for the sake of documenting controversy lies, in the minds of some, outside of the core mission of compiling our common legacy of wise, witty, pithy, eloquent, and poignant insights. It is no surprise that attempting to document controversy introduces controversy into the process.
On the matter of attributions in general, it may be a small step toward compromise to follow our standard practice: all statements lacking identification of the author's work or speech, if they be included at all, belong in a section at the end of the article under an "Attributed" heading. Hearsay, when admissible at all, must be presented as such, and not otherwise. This is acutely and consequentially the case when the subject is a living person. This does not resolve the dispute, but at least sets it in the correct context.
Should these statements be included at all? I have a definite opinion, but it may not be definitive: documenting controversy is not what I am here for, and I consider such material a greater embarrassment to Wikiquote than to the subject. ~ Ningauble 23:21, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

The quotes in question are sourced to Rush Limbaugh by at least one published book. Over 95% of the quotes on the page would have to be placed into the "attributed" section, were this recommendation to be followed. Unless that standard is enforced for all living radio commentators on WQ, I see no need to make a special exception for Limbaugh. --69.64.213.146 02:50, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

That other articles also need cleanup is irrelevant. It is a never-ending task. ~ Ningauble 15:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

If the quotes aren't properly sourced, they should be relegated to the "Attributed" section if not removed entirely. Anyone can publish a book; what reason is there to believe that the purported quotations are legitimate, in the absence of a primary-source citation? The kind of secondary source at issue here is not one that editors should necessarily take at face value; if their credibility has been questioned, and the authors of these books have given no evidence to the contrary, my inclination would be to delete them entirely. 121a0012 03:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

That standard should be enforced for all living radio commentators on WQ; the fact that it is not currently enforced depends on the time and efforts of the editors, not the validity of the standard. I agree that over 95% of the quotes should be placed in the "Attributed" section, if not deleted entirely.

So 121a0012, if the user keeps restoring the above quotes to "Sourced," even though they do not include a primary-source citation, what can be done to enforce their removal? The Vidiot 06:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

No one, besides one or two ardent Limbaugh fans here, have questioned the book's reliablity. Anyone with an agenda can "question" a book's legitimacy via a posting on a WQ page. This does not, in any way, detract from the source in question. Show a real-world source that legitimately questions the vetted book. Otherwise, stop trying to scrub sourced quotes you wish Limbaugh hadn't said. --98.14.221.68 16:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

It does not matter who or how many people have questioned the book’s reliability; if it does not cite a specific work where those quotes were given, it is not a reliable source. Read all the other discussions about quotes without a primary source. Just saying the name of the speaker is NOT sufficient sourcing! The Vidiot 17:18, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Repeat: The book cites Limbaugh as a primary source, for over thirty quotes. The book is not a collection of time-stamped radio transcripts. --69.64.213.146 00:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Again, according to Wikiquote guidelines, a source should be SPECIFIC, which means “identifying a publication with enough information to readily find the quote.” Simply providing the NAME of the speaker is not specific enough, and does not meet Wikiquote guidelines. Such a quote falls under the category of “Attributed.” The Vidiot 17:14, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Two points to make at first:

Placing the quotes in the "Attributed" section will not be an answer, as it is now the policy here at Wikiquote to allow sourced quotes only (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations). In keeping with this policy, all unsourced/attributed quotes on the Limbaugh page should be transferred to the talk page, with a heading entitled "Unsourced." It's possible to have a "Misattributed" or "Disputed" section on a Wikiquote page; but before deciding whether these edit-war quotes are to be classified as disputed, here is the second point:

Has anyone tried contacting the author, Jack Huberman, online to resolve this problem? He has a blog page. If he can source the quotes to particular shows, it would put an end to the controversy. - InvisibleSun 02:41, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for contacting Huberman, however I couldn't find an email address on the blog page. If there is one, please post here, and I'll be happy to contact him. But I doubt Hubermaan producing transcripts will do anything to stop "Vidiot"'s campaign to scrub the sourced quotes. He's been at this for over a year. When the quotes had an air date, but no linked source, he scrubbed them (and was reverted, several times, by Moby). When a linked source was added, he scrubbed them, now stating the "source" was unacceptable (even though it's an undisputed primary, published source.) He then began to fill the VP page with straw men arguments, trying (and failing) to build consensus for scrubbing the quotes based on his invented premise that the book is, somehow, "unreliable." His nonsense has been tolerated for far too long, and his edit warring, and attempts to game the system, warrant admin intervention, at the very least. --69.64.213.146 05:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

You need to carefully observe the distinction between primary and secondary sources. Any book that wasn't written by person X is, by definition, not a primary source for X's words. It may be an appropriate secondary source or it may not; this is a judgment call that must depend on the nature of the source and whether it provides sufficient information to prove that it is in fact a secondary source and not just repeating unverified (and unverifiable) hearsay. It's OK to quote from a secondary source, particularly if the primary source is not generally available (as in the case of a radio broadcast); it's not OK to quote a rumor. Now, in this case, I would consider a specific air date to be sufficient citation for the primary source (particularly in the case of multi-hour programs like Limbaugh's, which affiliates slice and dice to fit their schedules), but if you got the quotation from a book, then you need to cite the book as well, as the source of the transcription. 121a0012 06:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The book in question is cited, and linked, on the page in question. --98.14.221.68 13:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

But the book does not include the citation of the primary source (the specific speech, not just the name of the speaker), which is required for it to be sourced. The Vidiot 01:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

You are misstating, once again, WQ sourcing guidelines. --69.64.213.146 02:00, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

InvisibleSun: "Attributed" does not necessarily mean the same thing as "Unsourced" (although you wouldn't know it from most WQ pages, it's true). Something in the sort of intermediate state we're discussing here is legitimately sourced, but not primary-sourced, and the dispute is over the veracity of the quotations. I can easily foresee situations arising in which we can identify an attribution, in a source we might otherwise consider reliable, of a quotation to a particular person, but still be uncertain about its validity because the source we have doesn't specify where it got the quote. "Attributed", properly applied, should mean that the attribution is sourced, but the quotation is not. (I expect this to apply in particular to premodern literature, where in many cases the primary source may be lost to history, but commentaries on it have survived.) 121a0012 06:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I’m sorry, but 69.64.213.146 is misrepresenting my actions in this matter. First of all, I do not recall the quotes in question ever having a listed air date. Secondly, the book is (as others have pointed out) a secondary source, not a primary source, and the book specifically does NOT cite a specific work or speech from which the quotes were taken, which makes it unreliable as a primary source. And finally, while you claim I attempting to “game the system,” I have repeatedly initiated discussions on the Talk page, VP, and others, trying to resolve this issue. On the other hand, 69.64.213.146 generally just reverts the quotes in question, but has rarely made any effort (until recently) to discuss the subject. I am interested in making sure that the included quotes are reliable, and most of the people who have participated in the discussion agree with me that the two quotes in question do not have a sufficient primary source. The Vidiot 07:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, if we agree that Huberman should be contacted for air dates for the above quotes, can we agree that they should be moved to “Unsourced” until an air date is provided? Otherwise, they will just remain where they are while 69.64.213.146 delays initiating any contact. At least moving them to “Unsourced” (and keeping them there) will provide 69.64.213.146 with some incentive to track down that email address. The Vidiot 07:22, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

No. Feel free to contact Huberman yourself; it has not become my sole responsibility. As a matter of fact, since you're the only one disputing his book, I would think it behooves you to contact him. Something tells me, though, that you won't. The sourced quotes should remain right where they were/are before your scrubbing campaign began. I'm going to treat your continued scrubbing of them as vandalism. --98.14.221.68 13:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Since you are the one claiming that the books have a valid primary source, you should take responsibility for tracking it down. I am not going to spend my time searching for something that I believe does not exist, because you can’t prove a negative. The burden of proof is on YOU, not me. Since the quotes do not have a primary source, they should be moved to “Attributed,” or removed completely. If you want to change that, then find a primary source. The Vidiot 17:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

See above comments. --69.64.213.146 23:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I see your comments: You want the quote to be listed as Sourced, but you do not want to do any research to find the primary source. You want ME to do the research for you, but refuse to remove the quote even if I can not find a primary source. You want to have your cake and eat it too, but that is not valid in this case. The Vidiot 01:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

See above comments. [Vidiot: feel free to copy and paste this after your next 3,000 stonewalls] --69.64.213.146 01:51, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I have just created a "Disputed" section for the quotes in question — please refrain from indulging in further infantile disputes on this matter, until the quotes are either more fully sourced or proven fallacious. ~ Kalki 02:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

• On the bookshelf at my left elbow as I write this, I have a copy of the second printing of the first edition of Mencken's Minority Report (1956), which I'd picked up in a used bookstore in Baltimore a couple of decades ago. I used it to correctly source the quotations from that work which were (and remain) posted on that writer's Wikiquote page.
  Mencken is one of those writers who "recycled" tremendous amounts of his original work, in many cases preparing for submission to his book publishers paste-up collections of newspaper and magazine clippings he'd taken from his personal archives in his Hollins Street home.
  He's also been collected and quoted by a great many other writers, most notably by Alistair Cooke in The Vintage Mencken (1955). All of this means that when attributing a quotation to Mencken, it is difficult - perhaps insuperably so - to accurately source the original appearance of those words. The best a modern reader might reasonably be expected to do is to cite the published text from which he got what he'd contributed to Mencken's Wikiquote page.
  Now, it strikes me that much the same seems to be happening with Rush Limbaugh's quotations, particularly as the volume of his verbal utterances is approaching Saganesque numbers and the controversies in which he revels are bound to make him a polarizing but nonetheless attention-getting figure.
  Gathering quotations attributed to Mr. Limbaugh - whether sourced, unsourced, or explicitly disputed - strikes me as useful in the extreme, particularly as on Wikiquote the proverbial "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" error-checking function can operate as nowhere else on the Web. Here we see an opportunity for Wikiquote to remedy errors that compound and canker on other Web sites, great and small. If this is not a value proposition, what is?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.73.205.230 (talk • contribs) 07:29, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Entertonement

I've been encountering a couple of editors adding links to Entertonement, which is (in essence) a repository for audio clips from films. My thinking in removing the links was, first and foremost, that it was spam (the first editor I caught doing that was doing nothing else), but a second editor has come across my radar, confused as to why we wouldn't allow the links.

Since there is some relevance there with the links, I figured it'd be best to get some feedback from the community first. Personally, I think it's a major copyvio issue, but I don't know the exact balance between fair use and copyvio. Thoughts? EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I just removed a few of these links myself, because their addition did seem to be a major spamming effort on the part of someone, probably using various names to avoid attracting attention, and this should probably not be encouraged, but I can see that the links might perhaps be useful to some, even as the IMDb links are. I really don't have any strong feelings either way at this point, but I am irritated by what does seem to be primarily a concerted spamming effort. ~ Kalki 23:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

These links continue to accrete, albeit at a more moderate pace. I take a dim view of them myself, considering them to be on a par with YouTube links: nearly useless as citations; mostly superfluous for "see also;" but occasionally, very occasionally, potentially helpful for material that is hard to find in other media.
I see no value in linking to sound bites from films in current release or available on DVD. Having reviewed the site's meta pages, I think it is fair to assume anything posted within the terms of use (a hypothetical assumption, to be sure), unless it is already in the public domain, is either self-published original content or promotional material for a publication. ~ Ningauble 18:56, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

They're still coming. I'm removing them from everywhere I can, since after a few weeks, nobody's argued for them to be kept; they're spreading pretty insidiously everywhere... EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Delete them all. On the other hand, we do have the technical capacity to host our own audiovisual media, so if there are snippets of speeches that are in the public domain (such as quotes from inaugural addresses) or would clearly be fair use (such as a few seconds of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, or even a short quote from a movie) why not have those ourselves? BD2412 T 18:33, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for adding audio (or even video) clips, where relevant. Such files would be best served on Commons if they are freely available. If we're looking to test this out, we could try to incorporate File:En-ELEC08-ObamaNewYorker.ogg into Barack Obama's article.
I'd be interested in investigating our Fair Use to very special audio clips, such as the aforementioned "I have a dream" speech. But we have enough things to work on right now, I don't feel like adding to our workload. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It's an aspirational goal. I have no doubt whatsoever that an isolated 15-20 second clip of any feature film ever screened would constitute fair use. BD2412 T 17:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

As CEO of Entertonement, I'm happy to contribute to the discussion. We are seeing a small but consistent amount of traffic coming from WQ, and when I first saw it, I went over some of the examples. We're pleased that someone finds the value enough to post us here, and we definitely do not want to encourage spammers. I'm happy to work with the WQ community to ensure these are valid links (or to block it out entirely if that's what the community would like). Or course, I may be biased, but I think the embedded sound bites do provide some additional value - instead of just reading the quote, one can actually hear the sound bite. However, I do not under any circumstances want to encourage behavior that the WQ community disagrees with. Sites like WQ only thrive when the users rule, I don't want to be part of diluting that power in any way.

As far as fair-use is concerned, we are a fully DMCA-compliant site.

If you have any questions, comments, etc, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at aronchick@entertonement.com. User:aronchick 23:51, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Quotes about not by

I wonder if there are quotes not just by certain persons but about persons. Of course these quotes may be positive (pro) or negative (con). I am thinking about what someone may have said about an author, e.g. Ayn Rand - whether they think they are good, erudite or perhaps not so good - or a actor (same thing). Such quotes might also be about a particular book, e.g. War and Peace, or a movie e.g. Twilight or Gone With the Wind. It might also be about an actor (an actor's ability). These quotes would be by someone else of course and would be cross-linked somehow.

If this is practical or has already been done but I somehow missed it please so indicate.

—This unsigned comment is by Sir Arthur (talk • contribs) .

There are standard sections at the bottom of many pages for " == Quotes about [AUTHOR or WORK] ==" ~ Kalki 00:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Another new gadget: Enhanced Interwikis

I just added a gadget that I shamelessly swiped from the Simple English Wikipedia. It's called Enhanced Interwikis (which you may have figured out from the title of this post), and it allows you to toggle between the native name for each language, the ISO code, and the English name. (for example, Deutsch / de / German, or Esperanto / es / Spanish)

The best example of this in action would be the interwiki list on Main Page. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:20, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

This does not seem to work for me. How about using w:User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js instead? Cirt (talk) 05:55, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why, but the first click doesn't do much of anything; try clicking "in other languages" at least twice. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:00, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Ooh! Really really neat! Thank you. Cirt (talk) 06:08, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

External link templates

I noticed that the template Template:Imdb had been deleted back in 2006. I think that these sorts of templates are extremely helpful in the external links section of articles (some of these offsite bio pages have additional places to look for research in finding sourced quotes) and I would like to go ahead and create them for usage. What do people think?

• w:Template:imdb
• w:Template:ibdb
• w:Template:TV.com person

Thanks for your time, Cirt (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think we need an "External links" section a lot less here than we do on Wikipedia, due primarily to our much more limited scope. However, to address IMDb, I'd like to point out that we do have {{imdb title}}, which links directly to the Quotes aspect of each IMDb entry (which is more relevant than the full entry). EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah many thanks for that. What of the other links proposed? Cirt (talk) 21:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted that {{imdb title}} only works for Production (movies/films/television programs) pages, not People. :( Cirt (talk) 21:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

See Category:External link templates — we already have {{Imdb name}}, {{Imdb title}}, {{Tv.com person}}, and {{Tv.com show}}, among others. ~ Ningauble 21:41, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Will use those. :) Cirt (talk) 22:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Are there quote pages for individuals on IMDb? I just did a cursory glance, and didn't find any; if that's the case, I don't think we need to bother linking to it. Any site that isn't an official site of the article's topic should involve just quotes about said subject; anything else and I think it's just a waste of space. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh just last one would it be okay to create w:Template:ibdb ? Cirt (talk) 22:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why not. If you copy or adapt Wikipedia's w:Template:Ibdb title or w:Template:Ibdb name be sure to give 'em credit under the GFDL. ~ Ningauble 22:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Whenever I copy stuff from another wiki, I try to link to it in the initial edit summary.[1] That ensures permanent attribution. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Again, if there aren't any quotes there, I don't see the point in having the template (that includes the tv.com templates). EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

EVula has a point. I was just going with the historical consensus (or precedent anyway) on IMDB. The links are rather superfluous when there a 'pedia link available. I have been known to link source material (e.g. Wikisource, Project Gutenberg) and bibliographies myself, but that's about it. I am not that keen on link farming ~ Ningauble 22:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

IMDB has quotes for most films (although poorly done in my opinion). I often link to external references listing the works of an author. BD2412 T 09:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

IMDb does have quotes for people. Unlike for works (which have separate pages), people's quotes are found in a "Personal Quotes" section of the Biography page ("www.imdb.com/name/nm{PERSON_ID}/bio"). Of course, just as with works, these links are a convenient place to start to collect quotes. Even though IMDb does have some editorial oversight of this user-added material, IMDb quotes have (in the past at least) been notoriously inaccurate and are rarely adequately sourced. People quotes should be reliably sourced elsewhere. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Jeff is correct. Websites such as thinkexist.com, brainyquote, etc., including IMDB are great places to start looking for quotes, but quotes need a specific source to be "sourced". Those sites don't give a specific source of where the quote was... well... quoted. Examples of sources are newspapers and news articles such as The New York Times, ESPN, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph, etc. There are many other good sources also, and it doesn't just have to be news articles. (I work on mostly baseball-related articles, and sources for baseball players are usually news articles, so that's just me) RyanCross @ 21:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

www.wikiquote.org portal update

See talk, please. Thanks, Nemo 11:38, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

A proposal

As it is the pages is the sources of the quotations and lists the quotations.

I would prefer it to be the other way around, eg. the pages should be the quotations, and list the sources that used it.

The reason,

Currently the wiki answer questions like;

Who said what in Pirates Of The Caribbean?

And can provide quotes from specific sources. This has a substitutionary property and as such scirts copyright violation. To help provide sources on a specific topic we need Theme pages.

My way we could the wiki would answer the following question;

Where is "Not rules as such, more like guidelines" from?

Which does not have the same degree of a substitutionary property. And we could adapt the category system to help provide sources on a specific topic.

85.166.72.37 14:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

• Ideally, our search bar should do that job - something for the programmers to tackle. BD2412 T 15:20, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Never going to happen. 85.166.72.37 10:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
    • The wiki architecture does not lend itself to using quotes as titles, nor does it make sense, given the structure of most quote compendiums, to collect quotes by the words in them rather than the subject and/or source. But it really doesn't matter because search engines are a far better mechanism for finding quotes by key words than the reverse-lookup indices found in many a printed quote collection. Either the Wikiquote search button or Google will find a quote that contains the words "not rules more like guidelines" much more rapidly and reliably than a printed index search of far fewer collected quotes. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
      • Not only that, but a lot of times, the quote that someone has in their mind is wrong. Plugging it into Google will give you a fairly high chance of finding out the right quote, whereas we wouldn't be able to approach that level of accuracy. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
• We have Theme pages. We can always use more theme pages. Themes are a Good Thing™. But manual indexing can never achieve the comprehensiveness of a search engine. "The Code is more what you'd call guidelines, than actual rules" appears in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (found using Wikiquote's built-in search tool on the exact phrase "than actual rules") but the general idea likely has older provenance. ~ Ningauble 18:26, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Unlisted names

I've made a list at User:BD2412/Unlisted names of more than 4,000 names of people for whom we have articles, but who do not appear on the List of people by name - for anyone who wants to work on plugging them in to the lists. Also a good opportunity to glance through those entries and pick out the ones that we should get rid of. Cheers! BD2412 T 21:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll probably try to work on this (might take me a while though...). Thanks for letting us know, BD2412. RyanCross @ 22:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

OMG, that's like 1/4 of all the articles in the wiki! Isn't there an "automagical" way to browse a flattened index of Category:People? ~ Ningauble 23:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I did it with the AWB list-comparer, hence the list. BD2412 T 00:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I think there is an automagical way of generating a flattened list of every page in a single category and its subcategories, but I don't remember the syntax. I was reminded of it recently while perusing MediaWiki (Wikipedia and Beyond) by Daniel J. Barrett (ISBN 978-0596519797), but I haven't bought that book yet, so I can't look it up right now, nor can I recall where I was experimenting with it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, an automated way is much better than manually... it took me nearly five minutes to add two names to the list... RyanCross @ 03:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

That should not be the case. Cut and paste! BD2412 T 15:44, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

There are still well over 4,000 names on this list, even after hundreds of fixes. Can somebody get a bot to do the heavy lifting here? BD2412 T 00:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Simple new gadget

There's now a gadget that, when active, causes all external links to open in new windows.

I find it helpful, which is generally the first thing I consider when I think about bringing a gadget over here. ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

New Recent Changes gadget

I just installed a gadget that creates a Recent Changes box on the sidebar. It displays the last ten articles and provides diffs. Enjoy! EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

That's going to be pretty useful. It's useful at Simple English Wikipedia, and I'm sure it can be of good use here. Thank you for installing it. :) RyanCross @ 21:58, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been using it on the SE Wikiquote for a while, and thought it was good enough to stealborrow. :) I'm still looking around for more gadgets to swipe... in fact, I may have just found one more... EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now I've added a New Pages gadget, swiped from the Simple English Wikipedia. You can use them both, but that makes the left-hand side area really, really long. *shrug* Still, it's helpful. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy to hear of another gadget installment! (e/c) Well, it's good that en.wikiquote has more gadgets to use now with some installments from other projects. When I first came here several months ago, I was surprised to see not even one gadget! It seemed that en.wikiquote was the only English project not using any gadgets back then. At least we have our own share of gadgets for editors to use now, which is good and always useful to have on any project. RyanCross @ 22:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Merging two completely different accounts

Hello, I recently converted my old Wikipedia account into a general Wikimedia Foundation account. However, I seem to have a problem. I had an old Wikiquote account with a similar name (but not quite the same), and a different email address. I would like to merge that old account with this one. I've searched the help sections but cannot seem to find a solution. Is it possible to have this done, and if so, whom should I ask? —MarsJenkar 05:47, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

This is similar to another user's recent problem, in which I stated that I didn't believe the slightly different names can presently be merged unless a steward temporarily removed the general SUL account, renamed your account here, and then allowed recreation of the SUL account, and that I had not dealt with such renaming issues in quite a while and am not actually sure of all the present procedures available. I don't know of any other alternatives to this rather tedious option at present. ~ Kalki 07:07, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, if this is the best solution, I don't really have a major problem with it unless it screws up the edits I made on the other account (which, from what I can tell, is doubtful). I've barely used this account here, and I've used the other one a lot more. I would like to see if anyone else has any input, though. —MarsJenkar 13:22, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, this is the "old" account, the one that I want to keep. —Mars Jenkar 21:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

The actual merging of two accounts' edits isn't possible. However, any local bureaucrat can rename the account you actually used here; there's a "this name is reserved" warning, but it's possible to ignore it and do it anyway. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

(Un-indent for new, related question) All right. My next question is related, but I suspect it may need to go up on Meta or the main Wikipedia site....Would it be possible to or switch this account for the one currently part of my unified account, or at least temporarily "de-unify" my unified account so that I could finish the switch myself? (I successfully changed the email address on this account to be the same as on the unified account.) —Mars Jenkar 21:21, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I think what you mean is to rename "Mars Jenkar" to "Mars Jenkar (old)", then rename "MarsJenkar" to "Mars Jenkar", which would put all the edits you've made as "Mars Jenkar" into your SUL. Correct? :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe so. I would like my "old" edit history, not the relatively brief one under this username, to be the one associated with my permanent account. —MarsJenkar 20:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Forgive my seeming impatience, but I've not seen a response to this "thread" in several days. Is there a problem? —Mars Jenkar 20:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, if you can wait for my RfB to pass, I'd be more than willing to do it myself. ;)
All kidding aside, if you head over to Wikiquote:Changing username, it'll probably get seen more readily. Just reference this thread and someone can take care of you. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much. 'Tis done. —Mars Jenkar 19:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking for a challenge?

The Politics theme page is huge, and virtually none of the quotations have a remotely adequate citation. I've done a very few, but doing it right can take half an hour or more to locate the best available sources. This article needs lots of help, but if every Wikiquotian kicked in three or four citations, it would greatly improve the page. Many other theme pages are in a similar condition; I just noticed this one because it's on my watchlist and other people have been editing it recently. 121a0012 06:53, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

The page is also excessively long, and should be divided into smaller bits. Many of the quotes are only tertiarily related to politics, as well. BD2412 T 14:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

This is one of those topics on which one could fill an entire library and still leave important things out. It definitely need to be divided into narrower topics. I thought about doing so once, but the prospect of dealing with so much unsourced and poorly sourced material made my eyes cross. I will try to kick in three or four citations, and if several others do the same we may arrive at a sound basis on which to start a dozen manageable themes. ~ Ningauble 17:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of the headings (and the quotes beneath them) have very little to do with politics anyway - Art? Education? BD2412 T 00:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I've removed a couple big wodges of quotes -- many of them excellent if only they were sourced and on-topic -- to the talk page. 121a0012 03:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

It might make things easier if we remove all of the quotes that are attributed to an individual, but with zero source information given to verify this (or move all those unsourced quotes to the talk page or a temporary subpage). Cirt (talk) 01:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

A few of these are being sourced each day or two. I suggest holding off on expunging the relevant ones until the sourcing effort looses momentum. ~ Ningauble 14:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. Cirt (talk) 22:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

edit fight

there is an edit fight in Macedonia.
User:Local_hero keeps on deleting the word w:fYROM from the intro even though many people know this country with that name as you can see in the Wikipedia article. please help. 150.140.225.146 23:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I have rewritten the introduction, basing it on the intro in the Wikipedia article Macedonia (region). I also renamed the Wikiquote page as Macedonia (region) to match the WP article. - InvisibleSun 00:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

amen brother. thanx. --CuteHappyBrute 01:37, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Quotes by you and I - after all we are intelligent too!

Hi folks:

This is a place for the ordinary folks with unproven credentials in articulation have a chance to create our own quotes:

Here are some of my own:

---

"We inherited a planet with no lines and managed to draw quite a few of them with human blood"

---

"Is the glass half empty, or half full - well that would depend on what is in the glass and how thirsty I am"

---

"Why do we human beings enjoy watching other people's realities instead of living our own"

---

"Circle the Walmart parking lot for 10 minutes to find a parking spot 10 feet closer and then go in and buy a tread mill - exercise in futility?"

---

Ravi Kallianpur Hope to add more. —This unsigned comment is by Ravikallianpur (talk • contribs) .

• Making up your own quotes is not within the mission of Wikiquote. You are welcome to post these on a user page, if you are otherwise a contributing member of the project. BD2412 T 15:55, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Indeed, I have no problem with users having a list of their own quotes on their userpages, as long as that isn't the sole extent of their contributions to Wikiquote. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Adding the Armenian interwiki link to Main Page

I was wondering how I can add the interwiki link to the Armenian Main Page to the English Main Page. You can find the link to it here. Thanks in advance for the suggestions. Chaojoker 11:54, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Projects are considered Active Wikiquotes when they reach a threshold of 100 articles. According to the Table of Wikimedia Projects by Size at Meta (current as of January 15), hy.wikiquote has 74 articles. At the rate it is growing, it will reach 100 any day now, at which time it should be listed at Wikiquote:Other language Wikiquotes#Active Wikiquotes. It looks like only three projects listed there are not also on the main page—probably an oversight, as there is room to list them all. Just remind us again when there are 100 articles. (Only a suggestion, but you may want to recruit more than one administrator when taking it global.) ~ Ningauble 14:35, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, hy:Special:Statistics says that they have 108 content pages. I just compared the stats for the Basque, Latin, and Azeri Wikiquotes with the numbers listed at m:Wikiquote#List of Wikiquotes and found that the others are accurate. As a result, we can go ahead and add the Armenian link. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Ningauble, I don't think that is the actual policy, as some of the languages that are actually listed on the Main Page have less than 100 articles. But yes, hy.wikiquote has 110 articles now, so please go ahead. Thanks for the help :) Chaojoker 16:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Just another note: It takes a while for the statistics on Table of Wikimedia Projects by Size to get updated, hence the inconsistencies. Chaojoker 16:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Հայերեն has now been added to both the navigation pane and the Community box. May you have many new visitors! ~ Ningauble 17:10, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, my mistake in not adding it there, too. Sorry. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you :) Chaojoker 18:02, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Root Category

I have a couple suggestions regarding Category:Categories, the "root" category under which all other categories are organized:

1. The navigation pane has a standard link to Special:Categories. Due to the large size of the list, I don't think an un-indexed alphabetical listing of all categories is a useful navigation tool. I suggest replacing it with a link to Category:Categories. It would also be helpful to add a link to Category:Categories in the text of Special:Categories and vice versa.
2. Noticing that the Main Page does not have a link to Category:Categories, an editor recently removed the category from Category:Main page. This makes it the only uncategorized category we have. There is a certain logic in not listing the root category under any categories, for it creates a circular reference. However, reducing accessibility of the root, even marginally, makes the tree less discoverable. I suggest adding a link to Category:Categories somewhere on the Main Page and/or, if we adopt suggestion (1) above, redefining Category:Main page to include categories that have links on the main page or on the navigation pane.

I raise these here to get community input on whether they are good ideas, and also because I do not know where to find the MediaWiki pages for implementing them. (And I am too lazy to look it up because I am confident somebody here knows off the top of their head.) ~ Ningauble 16:46, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I think Category:Wikiquote maintenance is appropriate in this case. Cirt (talk) 16:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

While the category tree is relevant to maintenance, it is primarily a navigation tool. Not all users navigate that way but, for those who do, a navigation tree is an important front-end interface. ~ Ningauble 17:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

What do you suggest? Cirt (talk) 17:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry that was incoherent. Outdenting to re-express myself... <:-) Ningauble 19:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I have edited Special:Categories and Category:Categories to link to each other. I would also like to: (a) replace Special:Categories with Category:Categories in the navigation pane; (b) add Category:Categories to the Main Page browse bar; and (c) add Category:Categories back to Category:Main page. If no one objects, I will go ahead and do these three things. ~ Ningauble 19:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense to me - no objection here. ~ UDScott 19:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with that. How about keeping it in Category:Wikiquote maintenance, as well? Cirt (talk) 19:53, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Done. ~ Ningauble 21:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Great! Thank you for taking care of that. Cirt (talk) 05:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Article names

There is an article on Wikipedia called Greek genocide. The Greek genocide is not one which has a large body of scholarly historical analysis, and although the majority of scholars who work in this area consider that a genocide took place this is not a near universal view. It is also complicated because it is an active area of political tension between the Greek and Turkish governments and their peoples (so there is a lot of unreliable web sources presenting different points of view).

Some editors who edit Wikipedia created articles to support their point of view:

• List of eyewitness accounts related to the Pontic Greek Genocide
• Academic quotes on the Pontic Greek Genocide
• List of press headlines relevant to the Pontic Greek Genocide

The first two have been moved internally in Wikipedia to talk pages. The last one has been moved to a more neutral title Contemporary press headlines on atrocities affecting the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)

When an editor suggested putting in a number of these quotes into the article (as the other article had been moved to a talk page), it was pointed out that Wikipedia is not a quote farm (w:Talk:Greek_genocide#Wikipedia is not). So the quotes article has been copied here.

The original Wikipedia article was originally "Pontic Greek Genocide" which was moved to "Pontic Greek genocide" (Lowercase "g" indicates a descriptive name) and then to "Greek genocide". The name here has been moved in a similar fashion.

As I am just an infrequent visitor to Wikiquotes, I would like some experienced Wikiquotes editors to consider if the name "Greek Genocide" is a neutral name, or if it would be better to move the article to another name like "Selective quotes from Greek genocide scholars" or some such title. --Philip Baird Shearer

Cleaning out Advertising slogans

This seems to be a fair place to give notice that in 72 hours, I will delete all quotes in Advertising slogans which are not properly sourced to a printed publication other than one produced by the advertiser itself. Cheers! BD2412 T 19:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You may also want to take a look at MTV slogans which, despite being more focused, exhibits the same problems. ~ Ningauble 16:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've nominated MTV slogans for deletion. If only the junk was cleaned out, there wouldn't be enough left to justify an entry. BD2412 T 01:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, all unsourced slogans have been deleted. Cheers! BD2412 T 20:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Monster Allergy and Monster Allergy (TV series)

These pages seem to be basically the same thing, not sure which one should be deleted/redirected to the other one... Cirt (talk) 11:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

An editor has now deleted all the quotes from Monster Allergy. Looking over the page as it had previously been, it would appear that the quotes were the same as the ones from the show. Since Monster Allergy, a comic book series, isn't the same thing as the TV series, a redirect wouldn't be advisable. For now, Monster Allergy could be given a PROD for no quotes. - InvisibleSun 23:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this assessment and added a PROD to Monster Allergy. Cirt (talk) 02:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikimania 2009

Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, posters, open space discussions, and artistic works related to the Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. The conference will be held from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For more information, check the official Call for Participation. Cbrown1023 talk 18:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikiquote:Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers

Just wanted to bring this to the community's attention. There are supposed to be about 3,000 quotes there copied over from a public domain source linked on the page, some of which I have already moved into theme articles or author articles. Anyone who wants to jump in and format, correct scannos, and pop these into our entries, please have at it! Cheers! BD2412 T 21:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Completing the Wikiquote:Neutral point of view policy

See talk, please. --Nemo 09:33, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

AbuseFilter

The mw:Extension:AbuseFilter has been in testing for a good while and will most likely soon be rolled out on Wikisource (see s:Wikisource:Scriptorium#AbuseFilter). We have been having chronic issues with vandals lately and I think this would be an excellent way to help our project. We have a few admins who are quite familiar with various cross-wiki issues and I think in addition to Wikisource this will be a good wiki to implement this useful new feature. If you like, you can also take a look at it on Testwiki. Thoughts? Cirt (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support - I think this should be implemented soon, it will be a net-positive for the project and (hopefully) cut down on the chronic vandalism, especially during those times where vandals are active and there are no admins around, and the vandals get away with 100+ contribs before being blocked. Cirt (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support - it appears to be a useful tool that would certainly help this site as well. ~ UDScott 13:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
• Wait - This looks like a promising idea, but still appears to be in an experimental stage of development. Its author indicated yesterday at Wikisource that it is not quite ready to be activated in a live environment. When it does become ready for beta-testing, we should consider whether we have the expertise+manpower to be one of the first guinea pigs. Maybe we do, but I wouldn't want to just assume so. ~ Ningauble 14:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  @Ningauble (talk · contributions) - have you tried it out on Testwiki? It works really well for set specific scenarios, I don't think that there is much chance of error or accidental problems. Cirt (talk) 15:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  No, I have not tested it. I did look for user documentation, but what I found was thin. I am not sure I want to get involved in the developer site, as my professional activities amply fulfill my interest in such matters. ~ Ningauble 16:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  Okay, fair enough - but it only takes a few seconds to try out Abuse Filter at Testwiki. Perhaps after it is turned on at Wikisource, Werdnum can give us some more feedback/explanation here as well (Though I still think it would be fine to turn it on here too, there aren't really any drawbacks). Cirt (talk) 16:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  If you have experimented with writing filter conditions yourself, what is your assessment of the learning curve for designing robust triggers? One of the potential downsides is that unexpected false positives, whether due to software malfunction or to mistaken filter design, could degrade the user experience. While nobody's life or fortune hangs on the outcome (been there), if I were managing the rollout (done that) I would spend more than "a few seconds" designing the protocol first.

  I don't mean to be a naysayer, the extension is a good idea. I just don't have a solid sense of readiness (its or ours). ~ Ningauble 18:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  I will ask Werdnum for some specific input and clarity for us here. Cirt (talk) 18:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support sure, it's enabled on plenty of other live Wikimedia projects and Wikiquote could use it to combat vandalism. Cbrown1023 talk 21:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  I wasn't aware it was widely used, or even live yet. Please identify some projects that use it. I would like to learn about their experiences. ~ Ningauble 22:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  ruwiki, nowiki, dewiki, metawiki (all very large projects) Cbrown1023 talk 22:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  I see that live testing has begun yesterday at Meta.[2] I will be looking in periodically to see how it goes and to learn by example. ~ Ningauble 21:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, all. Just a few comments/clarifications from what's been said above:

• Addressing concerns of false positives, the filters can be set to merely flag which edits match them. This is intended and encouraged prior to a filter's full deployment. You can leave a filter in 'flag' mode for a week or so, and tweak it to limit false positives. When it's ready to deploy, it can be put into 'disallow' or 'block' mode.
• I am aware that the user documentation is a bit thin, I'm going to be working on this in the near future.

If there are any other questions, please ask me here or directly. :-) Werdna 12:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: Please see Special:Contributions/Cinderblox and the deleted contribs. This is like the hundredth time this has happened. Often admins are not around and the vandal gets away with over 100+ vandal edits. Implementing AbuseFilter would help prevent this sort of thing. Cirt (talk) 08:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support — We've been getting tons of vandalism recently, and I think the AbuseFilter would be able to help prevent all this vandalism from happening when administrators are not around when vandals are. — RyanCross (talk) 08:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support – This wiki gets enough vandalism to warrant it. TheAE talk 19:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
• Update: Special:AbuseFilter is being rolled out on en.wikipedia, see Announcing the Abuse Filter. Cirt (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
• Lots more useful info at w:Wikipedia:Abuse filter. Cirt (talk) 06:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: Looks like it is working pretty well already at en.wikipedia. Cirt (talk) 11:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I will be checking it out over the next day or three. I am already thinking about filter designs, and about what we may need by way of a policy page. ~ Ningauble 16:30, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Great! Thank you so much, any help/input/proactive actions on this would of course be most appreciated. Cirt (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

It has been enabled at Special:AbuseFilter. Cirt (talk) 07:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Webcomic Quote Pages

I'm having trouble deciding the proper layout for quotes from webcomics. I have edited a few, and the layout I have seen and gone with is each major character has their own section, another section for "other characters" and one for "dialogues". Is this appropriate, or should they be laid out by date or year or some other layout? I found layout requirements for television show, movies, literature and people, but not comics or webcomics. Any help? Xeginy 18:39, 05 March 2009

You raise a good point that we do not have a good template for these, but my opinion is that these should not be arranged by character, but rather by date - see Dinosaur Comics for an example of what I mean. ~ UDScott 15:19, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that chronological order is best. Cirt (talk) 15:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I also agree—chronological order is best for serial productions. Another example using a simpler layout is The Order of the Stick (though it would be better if it included dates). Actually, I am a little dissatisfied with the way character groupings are sometimes used for movies: it makes sense for a particularly famous line or a major speech, but I think it tends to be overused. But that's another topic, and it's no big deal. ~ Ningauble 15:57, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, much better organized in chronological order for more user-friendly navigation. — RyanCross (talk) 23:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:Cite book problems

Our version of Template:Cite book has long needed an update from developments on Wikipedia, but the biggest obstacle has been the increasingly layered complexity of such a critical WP template. It requires a mix of porting complex WP features and styling not yet available to Wikiquote; simplifying other elements that we either don't need or can't easily port; and the relatively simple change of WP-specific terms, examples, and links to appropriate WQ ones. At least that's why I hadn't done it in the past.

Cirt has recently brought over a nearly-exact copy of w:Template:Cite book. This template replaces many logical parser functions with fancier functional notation that apparently doesn't completely work yet on WQ. (For instance, the "url" parameter correctly creates an external link for the book title, but also adds an ugly duplicate link at the end of the citation.) Unless someone gives a compelling reason not to, I plan to revert this template back to its antiquated but functional version until we can figure out how to make the new version work. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:23, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I changed it primarily because it actually increases utility/usability, with many added important features. For example, parameters for page=, or pages=, instead of just the default to pp.. We should figure out how to improve it, without reverting, IMO. Cirt (talk) 23:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for restoring the ported version after we address any and all issues, but given that this template is being used in over 200 pages, I feel that we need to revert it unless and until we're sure that it works with all of those uses. I'm not yet sure where I'm going to start on the larger effort to clean up critical templates, but if I start by examining current {{cite book}} uses and find no significant problems, I'd be okay with leaving the current version in place. But with any template changes, we must be sure we either don't break usages or we fix any problems the changes cause. At the moment, I expect to find a number of instances where URLs mess up the citations. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:42, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Where are the specific problems with the new version? Perhaps we can work together to fix them? Cirt (talk) 14:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe the problem is that in {{Citation/core}} span class="printonly" is not working as intended, probably because Wikiquote's css is not in synch with Wikipedia's. As a quick-and-dirty fix, I propose to comment out the scope of that span in the template, disabling the nonfunctional functionality.

• Pro: No "ugly URL" will be displayed on-screen.
• Con: No "useful URL" will be printed in hardcopy. (Note the discussion at w:Template talk:Cite news#URLs printing where it is argued this is a Pro.)

I don't see anything else in the template malfunctioning, but there could very easily be problems I missed. ~ Ningauble 14:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Y Patched. Having slept on this, and hearing no alternatives or objections, I disabled URL printing in {{Citation/core}}. It wasn't working and we didn't have this feature before the recent changes anyway. If any more problems come to light we can reconsider reverting to the older version. ~ Ningauble 17:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! :) Cirt (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

IW Denmark on main page

The main page of Wikiquote lacks the iw for the Danish Wikiquote. Would someone kindly add it(seems to be protected)? --Saddhiyama 22:12, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I just got back from a short trip in time to notice your request, and this is now done. ~ Kalki 22:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Sangh

"Sangh will do nothing but create swayamsevaks. Swayamsevaks will respond to all needs of the society" Dr. Keshav Baliram Hegewar, founder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the largest voluntary organisation in the world with head quarters in Nagpur, Bharat.

In Hindi "sangh kuch nahi karega. swayamsevaks sabh kuch karenge"

Vandalism IP apology

If you've seen vandalism from IP 84.45.219.185 (talk · contributions) well, it was an open proxy; now however, it's not, and is used by an Internet cafe. There was open proxy software installed on it, and general spyware, so if you blocked it, thanks for doing so.

The IP will behave now, and if any checkusers here are reading this, please be aware the IP range it's in is a shared dynamic one, so be careful... and don't mention users in your block summaries for the IP (in case people are unfamiliar with them - particularly as the IPs are shared. Best to use summaries like "spamming", "Internet cafe spam" etc.) --83.170.97.191 17:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Taking a fortnight off.

I'm taking a break for a few weeks to attend to family and academic obligations. I would really appreciate if the rest of you would buckle down and finish the Wikiquote by the time I get back. Cheers! BD2412 T 23:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope everything is alright with you IRL. Cirt (talk) 00:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

We could leave a little finishing work for your return from spring break—I wouldn't want you to feel left out. ~ Ningauble 12:34, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Tools

Are there any tools here,such as friendly we have on wikipedia.--Yousaf465 10:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

What are the guidelines/best use policies for adding pictures to a Wikiquote page? Which licenses are OK to use?

I was wondering what guidelines/considerations/best use policies apply when adding picture callouts to a Wikiquote page? The ones used on Kurt Vonnegut's Wikiquote page seem to have been done well. If pictures (from Wikimedia Commons) are added, which licenses are OK to use? So far I have only used images in the public domain. Are Shared Attribution licenses OK to link to from Wikiquote pages, as the authors are not listed on the Wikiquote page itself? Spoon at a Spork Fight 18:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Spoon at a Spork Fight

Anything available at the commons is usable here. Although images directly related to the page's subject are often scarce, I find that there are many interesting images which can relate to points made by the quotes, and thus far there are no definite rules to follow, and image use is constrained only by your familiarity with what is available at the commons, and your imaginative capacities in linking that to such ideas as are expressed in the quotes. I just noted the selections I had made in working on the Vonnegut page, and am glad you liked them, and though I remain busy with many other projects, I hope to have time to be doing more image and quote work on many pages here in the months to come, than I've been able to do in the last year. ~ Kalki 20:26, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimania 2009: Scholarships

Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is now accepting applications for scholarships to the conference. This year's conference will be handled from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The scholarship can be used to help offset the costs of travel and registration. For more information, check the official information page. Please remember that the Call for Participation is still open, please submit your papers! Without submissions, Wikimania would not be nearly as fun! - Rjd0060 02:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Please delete page "Roy & HG"

Hi,
I'm really sorry but I mistakenly created a page called "Roy & HG" (when I should've called it "Roy and HG" so it can link with the 'pedia article). Could you please delete it?
Thanks very much!--Tyranny Sue 08:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I ended up making two of the page ("Roy & HG" and "Roy and HG") as redirects to the radio show's page - which has been renamed as This Sporting Life (radio program). Hope this works for you. ~ UDScott 13:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Request for original voice quotes

Whenever possible, verbal quotations should be in the person's own voice. In researching U.S. President Ronald Reagan, sadly I found that his quotes were not in his own voice. Obviously, many, if not all of these quotes are available.

User:Oliversbio

As an admin on en:Wikipedia I have blocked this user indefinitely for copyright violations. He has followed me here and it may well be thought that he is unlikely to contribute effectively. Rodhullandemu 01:08, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Whom to credit with movie quotes?

It occurred to me that many times movie quotations are credited to the character or actor that spoke them in the film, when in reality they should be credited to the script writer who originated them for the sake of academic correctness. After all, anything worth remembering that was said came originally from the writer's brain. What is the wider practice on this in the world of language, and what do Wikiquotians feel should be done? All opinions welcome. Ictionary 17:59, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Movie quotes should be listed in an article about the movie, not the actor or character. Movie articles should credit the directors and writers, using the format of Wikiquote:Templates/Films. When a movie quote is included in a theme article (Wikiquote:Templates/Themes) the movie should be cited, preferably with a link, and the character can be identified (not the actor). ~ Ningauble 18:16, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Does Wikiquote not follow the NPOV guidelines?

When looking at the article about Khalil Gibran I am shocked at the amount of pictures put in, combined with quotes. Not only does this looks extremely unprofessional, in some cases it is a clear violation of NPOV (as opposed to putting the pictures there in the first place, which in my opinion MIGHT be POV). Take for example the picture of Jesus, combined with the quote "Am I less man because I believe in a greater man?". I mean come on!

Please do something about this as soon as possible. Images does not belong in quote pages to begin with if they aren't of the author IMO. Notwist 13:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

This is fine by me. We commonly use images to illustrate quotes, and in the case you have cited, the author happens to have written a lengthy poem about Jesus, so pictures of Jesus are entirely appropriate to illustrate lines of the poem. BD2412 T 23:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia (region)

Per the recent deletion debate, I've just cleaned about 30k worth of material out of this article, almost entirely premised on the length of the passages removed exceeding our limitations. I expect some resistance to this by people with an interest in the article, so I'd appreciate community review of my actions. Cheers! BD2412 T 22:45, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Question concerning copyright protected material

The Wikiquote page for Thomas Mann has “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” in the Unsourced section. This quote appears in Ch. 6 of The Magic Mountain, near the end of the chapter, in the section(?) titled "A Good Soldier". I was going to cite, as my source, the appropriate page (p. 506) of the (1996) John E. Woods translation, but I realized that this translation is copyright protected. A further problem is that, while "Ch. 6" is vague enough to use without creating a problem, this chapter is nearly 100 pages in length, which renders it fairly useless as a citation insofar as its usefulness for checking my accuracy. The title "A Good Soldier", the name of the section(?) of the chapter in which the quote appears, is also a translation by Mr. Woods; the section is shorter than the whole chapter, but still fairly lengthy. I have no prior experience editing Wikiquote and am not certain whether this is even an issue, or whether it raises an issue to even cite the Woods translation in this question(!): I would be grateful for guidance from someone more knowledgeable. Archimedes 23:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This falls well within Wikiquote's policy for fair use at Wikiquote:Copyrights and the quantitative guidelines at Wikiquote:Limits on quotations. Citing the page number in a specifically identified edition with due credit to the translator is a Good Thing™. Additionally identifying the chapter/section is helpful for locating the passage in other editions. ~ Ningauble 16:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

New toy: "Highlight Administrators" gadget

I just copied over a gadget from the Simple English Wikipedia. Once you turn it on, links to any admin's talk page has a bright cyan background. This can be helpful for newbies that need to be able to find an admin pretty quickly, but also when checking the RC pages, as you can more easily tell what edits are done by a sysop (and therefore could probably be ignored, if you're watching for vandalism).

The list needs to be updated manually when we promote new admins, but I don't think that'll be much of a problem. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:56, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Always count on EVula (talk · contributions) for the helpful new gadgets. ;) Cirt (talk) 17:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a fine new installment, EVula. — RyanCross (talk) 18:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

An Unresolved Issue : at the Winston Churchill page

On the Talk page for the Winston Churchill entry, I have placed a section titled An Unresolved Issue, which documents a question that was raised about one of the Churchill quotes back in August of 2005, and which is still unresolved. I believe that correct sourcing info for this quote is included in this section, & feel that the Churchill page should be updated accordingly. I would like to request that anyone who is interested read this material and record any objection they might have to this update. Archimedes (talk) 17:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, update has been made. Archimedes (talk) 19:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Complete Cleanup

This Wiki needs more users and needs a complete big overhaul.(Dennys 17:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC))

Feel free to help us out with research and sourcing. :) Cirt (talk) 19:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you retype the quotes from another website?

Hey,I've just found some quotes from Sam Houston on [3]]. Must the quotes be retyped and the brief note?Globalearth 15:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The answers.com page does not identify where the quotes came from. You will need to find a reliable and precise source for the quotes in order to contribute them to Wikiquote. Thanks. ~ Ningauble 16:24, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

To some extent one can cut and paste quotes, but not entire groups of them as presented elsewhere, without significant additions of information or quotation. The quotes I see on that page seem to be unsourced, and we currently require new additions to the pages be sourced, so to add these to the articles some search-engine use looking for the original sources, or if these cannot be found, some published secondary sources. Merely indicating a quotes presence on the internet, if not from a primary source or reliable educational or news establishment of some sort is not considered sufficient sourcing. ~ Kalki 16:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Kalki, for expanding on my short answer. I looked for the quotes in question and found attribution for only one of them: "The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government." This is attributed to Sam Huston by the University of Texas, and printed as an epigraph on all university publications (example) but the attribution is unverified according to Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations by Suzy Platt, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1989; reprint: Barnes & Noble, 1992, ISBN 0880297689, p. 97. ~ Ningauble 20:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Using Quote on Wikipedia?

Hi guys, Is there any way to get the quote of the day to display on my Wikipedia userpage, perhaps an auto updated template or something? Cheers. Dottydotdot 17:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

It is easy enough to display it on your Wikiquote page, like this:

• {{Wikiquote:Quote of the day/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}|color=#fff5f5}}

But I don't think you can automatically display the QotD on a Wikipedia page because transcluding (i.e. expanding templates) between projects has not been enabled for Wikimedia projects. There is an open request to make this possible at Bug#4547, so it might be possible someday... ~ Ningauble 18:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

We might be able to create some sort of bot, similar to w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot... Cirt (talk) 21:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yep, I'm going to have a go over the next few weeks. Dottydotdot 19:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You may wish to inquire with the creator of w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot, over at w:User talk:Misza13. Cirt (talk) 22:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I made one-currently requesting approval here. Dottydotdot 21:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Update: Link to actual thread itself is here: w:Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DottyQuoteBot. Cirt (talk) 21:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

US presence in Afghanistan

What do you think of my edits? Any tips?

What do you think of my edits? Any tips? Did I edit correctly?--Emmette Hernandez Coleman 16:16, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like you've gotten some tips from Ningauble (talk · contributions). Cirt (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Where to put real-estate quotations?

I have a number of quotations related to the recent housing bubble. Where would they fit? My thought is to create a new theme page for 'Real Estate'; 'Housing Bubble' or 'Subprime Crisis' both seem too specific to me. Akuchling 20:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Real estate, or an equivalent name at en.wikipedia for an existing article for ease of linking back and forth, such as w:Late-2000s recession or one of its sub-articles. Cirt (talk) 11:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

McKean's Law

McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error. —VERBATIM, 2001

Erin McKean

--Pol7416 11:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Outlived its usefulness?

Wikiquote:Requested entries. Is it really that useful? It's currently a medley of unsourced quotes, outdated items, vague requests, and posted items that, really, don't need to be on the site in the first place. This is in addition to my recent dealings with someone insisting that, because a page was listed there, it needs to exist; that's certainly not the case.

So, I just thought I'd toss it out there before up and nominating it for deletion. ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. We have lots of spontaneous creation from new users and IPs anyways. Cirt (talk) 05:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree it is mostly useless. The barrier to just boldly creating an entry is about as low as can be. Constructive uses of this page that could not be handled elsewhere (e.g. Reference desk & Anonymous) have been so few and far between that it hardly merits any effort to keep it cleaned up enough for holding discussions.

On the other hand, it seems mostly harmless. It can hardly be the page's fault if only one contributor made an idée fixe of it. Mea culpa: I directed the aforementioned insistent person's attention to that page in an attempt to mitigate spamming talk pages with requests. Had I reflected a bit, frustration was the only plausible outcome. ~ Ningauble 18:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Add a Quote to Wikiquote

How do you Add a quote to Wikiquote? I have a quote I would like to submit, but can't figure out how? Jeffreybay 18:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC) 6/17/09

A good place to start is Wikiquote:How to edit a page. I hope that helps. ~ Ningauble 18:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Links in section headings

It has been a long established practice to link section headings to Wikipedia articles (e.g. for literary works). However, as WFinch points out at Talk:Nero Wolfe, the Manual of Style says:

Avoid links within headings. Depending on their browser settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence after the heading.

This advice appears to be based on concerns about some older accessibility tools, as discussed at Wikipedia:Accessibility#Links. We should consider doing one of the following:

1. Update the Manual of Style to reflect current practice, possibly at the risk of disenfranchising potential readers and contributors who use assistive technologies that cannot handle the markup.
2. Update a few thousand articles to reposition links below the headers or in the external links sections at the bottom of the page.

Does anyone know whether this is still an issue with common contemporary assistive technologies? ~ Ningauble 19:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Manual of Style discourages links in section headings, too: "Section names should not normally contain links, especially ones that link only part of the heading; they will cause accessibility problems." I customarily undo section heading links when I come across them. It's not forbidden, by any means, just not "normally" done. I didn't realize it was a long established practice at Wikiquote. If the consensus is to have them, I'll restore them to the headings at Nero Wolfe. — WFinch 13:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The MOS wording was originally copied from Wikipedia in 2003. At Wikipedia this bit was removed years ago. It was intermittently re-added as a matter of style without reference to browser issues, apparently because current versions of ordinary browsers don't have a problem with these links. The accessibility issue was introduced last year (dif), but the accessibility guideline was updated this January (dif) to indicate this is a glitch in obsolete versions of an assistive technology.

I don't want to be disaccommodating, but if it does not appear to be a problem for current browser and accessibility software then I recommend option #1 above: Remove this recommendation from our Manual of Style. ~ Ningauble 16:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The sentence in the Accessibility article — "Avoid putting links in section headings, unless the link text is the only text in the title" — is definitive enough for me. I'll restore the links to the headings but leave the parenthetical publication dates out; those can go as easily in an introductory sentence. Since I'm quoting Wikipedia's current Manual of Style in my previous reply (maybe it was removed years ago but it's there now), maybe there should be an policy amendment there, too. — WFinch 23:40, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Limits and Editnotices

I'm wondering, would it perhaps be beneficial for us to have stock Editnotice pages for some of our Fair Use-heavy articles (such as films and TV shows) that clearly outline what the limitations are?

For those that don't know, an Editnotice is code that appears whenever you actually edit a page; for example, when you edit w:en:Wikipedia:Changing username, you're presented with instructions for placing a request.

Do we think that would help us keep some pages under control, content-wise? EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea - perhaps it would help educate users on the limits that exist. ~ UDScott 14:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Before undertaking to install the software mods and all the templates, CSS, & etc. involved in w:Wikipedia:Editnotice, I would suggest trying a simple tagging approach first. We could tag the talk pages of trimmed articles with a message box and, if an article continues to be problematic, discretely tag the bottom of the article itself. I think the tagging approach would be more transparent and much easier to implement and manage. There was some discussion last year about a whole suite of related templates, but it never got off the ground. ~ Ningauble 15:29, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem with templates would be that they eat up real estate on the screen for readers, whereas an editnotice wouldn't appear until someone went to edit the page, so we could have a lot more detail in it. Installing the software mods wouldn't take much; we can just copy stuff like w:Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Changing username and make tweaks to the CSS as needed.
Implementing this in Editnotice will be just as much of a pain in the ass as implementing it in Template form, so that's a wash. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal, this is a good idea by EVula (talk · contributions). Cirt (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to favor EVula's suggestion. There is, I would argue, no reason to think that most editors look at talk pages or history summaries before editing. This means that many of them do not know about the need for copyright trimming or simply choose to ignore it. If they do not know about it, EVula's device would make them aware; if they overlook it, they wouldn't be able to claim ignorance. The templates we had discussed, as Ningauble has mentioned, never caught on. Perhaps it was felt that their presence would be intrusive. If so, an editnotice would be an improvement, as it would not appear in the articles themselves. - InvisibleSun 23:56, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdenting for a lengthy post) Ningauble

I completely agree that we need to do a better job of affording editors information they need to know about articles that push the limits of fair use. However, I oppose using the editnotice method for this purpose. Let me explain my perspective on transparency and manageability —

1. Reader experience: First, there is indeed a tradeoff here. I agree with the principle that "notes to the editor" within articles should be kept to a minimum, and that a message in an acceptable article with a history or a potential for problems is not quite the same as a maintenance template in an article needing work. However, I think it is justified in this situation given the frequency of excessive additions, and that the drawbacks of editnotices are significant.
   The drawbacks of tagging can be mitigated by keeping the notice unobtrusive: one short line with a link to the talk page, placed at the bottom of the article just above the category box. It might even be formatted like the category box to signal metadata distinct from the article, and to make it harmonious with the overall page layout.
2. Editor experience: The best time to point out that an article has reached its limit is not after a user has already formed an intention to add more and acted on it. Their action at this point is more than just clicking the Edit tab, for they will have already collected material to contribute and may have invested considerable time and effort transcribing it. Like, "Now you @#$%& tell me!" It would be better to give them a clue up-front.
3. Reviewer experience: For people who do strange things like watching recent changes and surveying groups of articles for maintenance, it is very useful to have a visible indication when an article has already been identified as needing attention. Hiding this where it is only visible in edit mode would fail to afford useful information to such people, for whatever it's worth.
4. Manageability: The link between an article and its editnotice exists entirely behind the scenes, being implemented by MediaWiki software recognizing a cross-namespace naming convention. This presents multiple challenges for maintenance. E.g., if a page is moved the link breaks without warning. E.g., editnotices cannot automatically put articles in maintenance categories the way tags can. (Manual categorization is very much a hit-or-miss affair.) E.g., item (3) above is itself a species of maintenance challenge. While this sort of loose coupling may be workable in the project namespace, I think that in article space it would become a maintenance nightmare in the long run.

Yes, unnecessary clutter is a bad thing, but I believe the drawbacks of this approach predominate. For what it's worth, my professional experience has taught me that items (2) and (4) are quite a bit more important than they might appear at first glance. I hope something like my suggestions in item (1) can make the tagging approach more palatable. ~ Ningauble 19:01, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Election Notice

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you may be aware, there is concern that the sitenotices regarding submission of candidacy for the Board of Trustees election were not seen anywhere but Meta after the 11th of this month. Because of the potentially massive consequence of this, and to encourage a full and active election, the election committee has determined that:

- Candidacies will be accepted through July 27th at 23:59 (UTC)

- The period for questioning candidates begins immediately. Candidates that are "late to the party" will, no doubt, be scrutinized by the community. The Committee hopes that the community will work to actively ensure that all candidates receive equivalent questioning.

- The dates of election will not change. The election will begin on 28 July and end on 10 August.

Please know that we recognize the radical nature of altering the schedule in the midst of the election and would not do it if we did not absolutely believe that there was a possibility that others may be interested and qualified and may not have known about the key dates.

For the committee, Philippe 09:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Sysop detector gadget

I've installed a new gadget that allows for a user's flags to be displayed when you view their userpage. Nifty little script, so I figured I'd make it more widely available. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Matt Sanchez incivility, libelous editing by Allstarecho. Could we get a mediator, editors are inserting quotes that are not agreed upon, are unsourced and court libel. Bluemarine 20:04, 25 July 2009 (UTC)