Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2003 archive 6
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I've discovered quite an annoying problem recently, concerning edits that include special characters and I'm wondering whether this is known more generally? The examples I've encountered has transcribed characters such as "Å" into "AA" and "ü" into "u:". This is thoroughly annoying, and what's worse it has also broken established links to other articles. At first I suspected merely carelessness by the individual editors, but now I'm more inclined to believe that it's some form of configuration problem on their systems. Examples include:
All these changes broke established links, but the changes has been reverted. Does anyone have more information on this, and has there been any action taken to stifle the effects of this malice? -- Mic 08:12 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- Grepping some logs.... Aha! Links (0.97pre3; Linux 2.4.18-6mdk i586) IIRC Links has some problems with editing text with non-ASCII chars, particularly if running in console mode. At least it's trying to convert the characters to an ASCII representation instead of random binary garbage, but it's still a problem. --Brion 08:31 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- Coincidentally, this is usually closely related to something I just added a note about on Wikipedia:Special characters. It seems to happen mostly when people copy the text of the page into a word processor kind of application, do something there they can't do in the browser itself, like a search & replace or whatever, then copy & paste that back into the edit window. Often, it seems, even though the browser itself might be able to deal with the special characters, either the WP program or the clipboard itself doesn't, and you end up with "u:" instead of "ü", etc. My own particular rant on the page was about how this can mangle HTML markup, because some programs will automatically "help" by replacing all the quotes with "smart quotes", including in HTML tags, which is where the real damage is done. However, despite its strong connection with certain products related to Bill Gates, I don't think any actual malice is usually intended. ;) -- John Owens 08:34 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- In light of Brion's comment added during edit conflict, I'll footnote the above by saying OK, that probably wasn't the case in these particular instances, though. -- John Owens 08:34 19 May 2003 (UTC)
On my work, where I suspect the Windows NT-version run is rather old, due to a policy of not doing unneccessary updates, I have noticed a similar phenomenon. If I, in a www-interface for e-mail similar to the wiki-interface with text-boxes, open a received letter, intending to forward it, then non-danish characters are conversed to their "&something;" equivalents on save. I.e. I don't notice it unless I make a temporary save. It's even more irritating when less usual characters (as English quotation marks or em-dashes) are converted to "&digits;". I suspect I've seen traces of the same behavior here. Is it, beside the more serious problem User:Mic addresses, also a problem if <<Åland>> is converted to <<Åland>>?
-- Ruhrjung 09:01 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- I'll step up to the plate here and admit that the guilty party in the cases mentioned by 'mic' is me: 'cimon avaro'. No malice was intended however. The problem seems to have stemmed from not always remembering to set the character-set to ISO 8859-1 (the default is 7 bit ASCII). I twiddled it so that it is set automatically on launch of the program. So far so good, knock on wood. Do let me know if the problem persists with edits I make. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 06:21 21 May 2003 (UTC)
Anyone feel like writing Chelsea Flower Show, since it's in the news? -- Tarquin 19:22 20 May 2003 (UTC)
- It's not normally my cup of tea, but I have a spare half hour. I'll take it up. Where do I go when I have something decent to submit it for the front page as a "in the news" item? CGS 19:28 20 May 2003 (UTC).
- Here: Current events. --Menchi 22:21 20 May 2003 (UTC)
- I've written more than a stub (dates, short history, external links... well, have a look), but is this enough for a current events article? CGS 22:23 20 May 2003 (UTC).
- The article's got everything I can think of: history, nowadays, awards... But the intro seems so short. But since I never attended a flower show, I'm not sure what should be added. You're now a quasi-expert on this show, maybe you can think of something? --Menchi 23:16 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Move Article & Redirect
Is it true that we cannot move an article if there is an existing redirect by the desired title, even if after we deleted the redirect's content?
If so, so what do we do in this case? Often redirect actually contains a more suitable title. --Menchi 01:37 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- List the redirect on Votes for Deletion, and if it's justified someone will come along and delete it for you (taking care to preserve the history) so you can recreate it. Tannin
At absolute value, I linked the inequalities to inequality; however, doing so underlines the inequality and essentially changes the meaning of the inequality. Pizza Puzzle
- So don't link them. Didn't we whip up a page of standard math symbology for this kind of thing? -- John Owens 12:33 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- Try: (see also: inequality). --Menchi 12:37 21 May 2003 (UTC)
Why are links underlined? Pizza Puzzle
- See Special:Preferences. -- John Owens 12:48 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- You mean hyperlinks in general? Well, I suppose it's to distinguish from regular text. --Menchi 12:59 21 May 2003 (UTC)
I know this is slightly offtopic, but can someone explain what "modulus" means? I know two conflicting mathematical definitions:
- The same as the absolute value
- To divide and take the remainder (in C, "%" is the modulus operator, in BASIC it's "MOD")
I can't believe there are two seperate mathmatical definitions of the same word - are they related in some way? CGS 14:43 21 May 2003 (UTC).
- I've never heard of modulus used in the first sense. Google is always a good resource though. MB 16:01 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- both. Though in maths, the second is called "modulo" or just "mod", as in "3 = 8 modulo 5". Example of the first: "the modulus of -5 is 5" -- Tarquin 16:11 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- The term modulus generally refers to the size of something. The modulus of some object is always a non-negative real number. The modulus of a vector, using the usual i, j, k notation is basically the length of the vector given by |ai+bj+ck|=(a2+b2+c2)1/2. A special case of this would be the complex numbers, |a+bi|=(a2+b2)1/2 which, when b=0, i.e. for a real number, gives |a|=(a2+02)1/2=(a2)1/2, the absolute value.
- The modulus of the congruence a=b(mod m) is the number m. It tells you the number of distinct elements, i.e. every number is congruent to one of m elements. So I suppose this use is also a measure of size. I don't know anything about the origin of the use of the word in these two siuations I'm afraid, mathematicians seem quite fond of using the same word to describe different things though and usually rely on context to expalin the meaning. -- Ams80 16:40 21 May 2003 (UTC)
I hate to be picky, but shouldn't the article titled Linux be housed at GNU/Linux since Linux =/= GNU/Linux? I would like to make the current Linux page a disambiguation page that points to the Linux kernel article, and GNU/Linux. It would be something like this:
Linux is commonly used when refering to GNU/Linux whose distributions include Redhat Linux, SuSe Linux, and other commmon distributions. It can also be used to refer to the Linux Kernel. MB 18:44 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- This is a source of much contention. I think the operating system can be called Linux because the name of an operating system is not the place for a list of credits. And who said everyone who uses Linux also uses all the GNU tools with it? If I install MinSys and MinGW on my Windows box am I running GNU/Windows? However, I think a disambiguation page would be sensible. If you look at the article, it is already broken down into Linux kernel and Linux operating system. CGS 18:54 21 May 2003 (UTC).
- GNU/Linux is used by a minority for the OS, Linux is used by the majority, article should therefore be under Linux but explain naming controversy, end of story. --Eloquence 19:04 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- I am not sure what point you are trying to prove with your link's to google. I don't know anyone that uses Linux without GNU tools. If you think you don't use GNU tools, then maybe you don't know you are using GNU tools. But that really doesn't matter. It appears that at some point GNU/Linux and Linux were merged. Although they are very closely related, they are not the same thing. Just b/c Linux is used as short term to refer to GNU/Linux, doesn't mean that Linux is the proper place for it in an encyclopedia. I will try and work out a total solution to this article problem, since these articles have become very tangled together, and I will post it to temp pages for review before commiting the changes. MB 19:09 21 May 2003 (UTC)
It is not a fact that the name of the operating system is GNU\Linux, but you are presenting it as such. It's the POV of the GNU project. Why do they have the authority to dictate the offical name for this software? I think there should be a page Linux refering to the Linux operating system, and a page Linux Kernel talking just about the kernel. CGS 19:35 21 May 2003 (UTC).
- We already have very useful policies for cases like these in place. Please read Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). There's no point arguing about which version is more or less "correct" from a scholarly point of view, the simple fact is that many very intelligent people consider it correct to use "Linux" to refer to the operating system, not just the Kernel, and a much smaller minority of also very intelligent people considers it important to refer to the operating system as "GNU/Linux". According to our existing policy, the more common name should be preferred, and the different treatment should be explained under that label.
- Cgs: Inflammatory language is not helping. --Eloquence 19:38 21 May 2003 (UTC)
- Well then it should probably stay as it is then. CGS 19:42 21 May 2003 (UTC).
- Thanks for clairifying Eloquence. Makes sense. MB 19:45 21 May 2003 (UTC)