Camera-wiki.org:Community discussions/Archive01

Old discussions

Please do not edit this page. If you wish to continue any of these discussions, or to argue against any of their conclusions, please restart the discussion at the foot of Camera-wiki.org:Community discussions or in some other appropriate (non-archive) talk page.

Including Images in this Wiki

We need to have a clear statement about what licenses we require and how you're supposed to tag/include images in this wiki. Right now we're primarily hotlinking camera images from Flickr (which is fine to do), but I think we also need to give credit to the photographer in the case of Creative Commons licenses. We might want to see how the big Wikipedia handles all this. --Lbstone 15:02, 31 January 2006 (EST)

I just noticed this Adding Images page. Need to look at it more. We need to make sure we give credit to Creative Commons images. Basically all the CC licenses require attribution. --Lbstone 15:00, 5 February 2006 (EST)

currently, i'm deciding against getting direct images from people, i would like users to the person's page, is this good? --toxpose

Actually it is not allowed by Flickr to insert a direct link to an image they are hosting without providing a link to the corresponding Flickr page too. See Help:Adding images for a full explanation. --Rebollo fr 14:11, 10 June 2006 (EDT)

Templates or Categories

This has been something that I've wondered about for a while... On pages like the Fuji FinePix V10 page we have a {{Fuji}} template at the bottom of the page. This is an idea that I started a while ago, but I wonder if it's a better idea to use categories rather than this kind of template. Any thoughts? --Lbstone 01:57, 21 January 2006 (EST)

I think both are good: categories are useful for some types of listings, and it would probably be good to have a Category for Fuji cameras, Canon cameras, and so on. On the other hand, templates allow you to have links to the most prominent articles on the same theme, for example the {{Olympus classic}} template (see Template:Olympus classic) acts like a menubar. --Rebollo fr 08:06, 21 January 2006 (EST)

Yeah, both seems fine. --Lbstone 13:28, 29 January 2006 (EST)

camera reviews

What about a list with sources of camera reviews?

I can't think of a good reason not to do this. I say give it a try and we'll see if it works. --Lbstone 13:27, 29 January 2006 (EST)

Pages to be deleted

I have created a list of Pages to be deleted, so anybody can put them there, with the reason why it should be deleted. --Rebollo fr 15:41, 30 January 2006 (EST)

Great idea! --Lbstone 15:07, 31 January 2006 (EST)

Standards

Started a page for Standards information/basic guides for article writing.

Skip 02:45, 1 February 2006 (EST)

Good idea. I've also thought about having a standard template for basic camera specs. For example, go to the University of Oxford page in the big Wikipedia... hit the edit tab... then notice the Infobox_University template. This template allows you to just populate certain variables and it will automatically create a formatted "information box" for you. This method could be very helpful for displaying basic camera specs like the ones in your Standards page. --Lbstone 11:07, 1 February 2006 (EST)

I played around with the template a bit, got something basic going, couldn't get the paramaters to not display unless they're used, but a decent start... Camera Template, used it here --Skip 07:10, 2 February 2006 (EST)

That is great! You can get rid of {{{battery}}} by typing |battery=|, for example, but that lets the Battery: line. It would be great if you could switch a line on or off, but I doubt it is possible.

I have made some propositions in the discussion page of the template. --Rebollo fr 11:34, 2 February 2006 (EST)

This is very, very nice! I think we're really onto something here. ;) --Lbstone 09:24, 4 February 2006 (EST)

I added some more stuff to the Template - help me out here if there's too much or too little. Some of the sections I added are for digital cameras only, but of course one can delete the unnecessary sections as one likes according to the camera on the specific article page. -- Simonides 02:12, 5 February 2006 (EST)

I created a Template:Infobox Camera that has changes that I would recommend. I think it's best to have longer more descriptive variable names... that way there's less confusion. I also like prefixing the "infobox" templates with the word Infobox. --Lbstone 16:15, 5 February 2006 (EST)

One page for each camera?

For old cameras, I have intended to write one page for a family of cameras, instead of one page per camera. It is easier to write the story of the family with all the variants, than to have many pages like this: "the blabla II super is the same as the blabla II with the exposure range extended to ISO 1600". For example I have pointed the zillion Canon rangefinder models before the VT to one Canon II/III/IV page only. I am unsure about more modern models. What is your opinion about this? Should we have a general policy? --Rebollo fr 11:34, 2 February 2006 (EST)

This is actually something that will become an issue in the future. I can see how different websites and services will want to interface with the Camerapedia, and much of the time they'll want to interface/reference each camera on an individual basis (not as a group.) Having an overview of several related cameras is fine, but I absolutely do think that we'll need each camera to have it's very own page (and unique URL) as this project grows. --Lbstone 09:48, 4 February 2006 (EST)

Do you think a redirect from each name to the group page would be sufficient? For example Olympus OM-1 redirected to Olympus OM-1/2/3/4. --Rebollo fr 11:00, 4 February 2006 (EST)

I think a redirect is fine for now. Eventually, though, I know we'll need to have the individual pages (even if they're not terribly big.) --Lbstone 15:26, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Maker's name in the page title?

Some pages have the maker's name in the title, others do not. For some cameras, we obviously need the maker's name, for example the Nikon F page could not be simply F. In other cases, the model name is more common than the maker's name: Ihagee Exakta, KW Praktica, OPL Foca, Plaubel Makina. For a direct search in the site, a page named Exakta will be more useful than Ihagee Exakta. -- Rebollo fr 11:01, 4 February 2006 (EST)

I agree that in cases like Nikon F we should use Nikon F rather than F. This is good to avoid any ambiguity that may arise. I also think the page should reflect what most people call the camera. I agree with you about using Exakta rather than Ihagee Exakta. But it would also be helpful to have Ihagee Exakta redirect to Exakta. --Lbstone 16:27, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Also, this relates to the Main Page discussion about camera makers vs. top brands. --Lbstone 16:47, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Photography History and Photographers?

Should this wiki incorporate information on Photography History (Wet Collodion Process, rise of portraiture, birth of colour technology), and famous Photographers like Alfred Eisenstaedt, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Capa and so forth, or stick to it's namesake as mainly a camera repository rather than Photography in general? While the site is still reasonably small at this stage, I don't think it'd hurt to encourage adding information like this.

Skip 02:50, 1 February 2006 (EST)

I can't think of a good reason for not having this information. In fact, it may come in very handy later on if we ever need to reference this information from other articles. I believe that historical context is important. So, yeah... go for it! --Lbstone 10:59, 1 February 2006 (EST)

How should photos of the photographer be handled, as well as the photos taken, for examples Eisenstaedt's V-J day kiss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vj_day_kiss.jpg)? Would we need to scan the images from a published work, similar to taking a photo of our cameras, or is it ok to link to them externally for things like this? --Skip 03:52, 7 February 2006 (EST)

List of templates

I have added a list of templates. -- Rebollo fr 16:10, 3 February 2006 (EST)

Features Template

Hi, I noticed that the camera pages here don't follow the same formatting standards and each has a different look.

I guess most people here are familiar with dpreview.com - besides their reviews, one of the great things about the site is how they organize and present their information. Each page follows a lot of templates which makes both reader comparison and writing/editing easier - for instance, look at the comparison chart between the recently preview Olympus E-330 and the Olympus E-300 here: E-330 PREVIEW

I tried to copy the code here, but it doesn't look quite the same and the code is huge. Besides, it's not really fair to copy their template outright. However, we could all probably do with some sort of similar "Specifications Table" template for all camera pages (at least all the SLR cameras) and also outline the basic headers and their order for a typical page - for ex. : Introduction (ie salient features, with date of release etc), Specifications, Historical Notes (if any - just an idea), Tips (also an idea), External Reviews, Sample Image Galleries (links to pbase.com or some such site with a database of images that can be sorted by camera).

Thoughts/comments welcome. -- Simonides 00:42, 4 February 2006 (EST)

Indeed. We're actually talking about this in the Standards section of this page. :) Check out the Canon_EOS_Rebel_T2 page for an example of the template. --Lbstone 09:36, 4 February 2006 (EST)

Thanks, I'll try editing that template to include other stuff! -- Simonides 01:44, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Is Camerapedia affiliated with Wikipedia?

Wow, I just noticed that the Camerapedia articles have no relation to the Wikipedia camera articles - and yet I came here through the latter and was making suggestions for those articles. What is going on, shouldn't they all be unified? -- Simonides 02:33, 5 February 2006 (EST)

This Camerapedia isn't affiliated with the big Wikipedia at all. I created the Camerapedia, because I read some discussions on Wikipedia where people had complained that the Wikipedia is supposed to be a general encyclopedia and that it shouldn't contain articles on every single camera. The goal of Camerapedia on the other hand is to actually contain articles on every single manufactured camera.

If there's any confusion that exists, I'd like to figure out how to address it. How did you get sent here from Wikipedia? I don't want people to mistakenly think that Camerapedia is affiliated with Wikipedia. If you have any suggestions, let me know. --Lbstone 10:15, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Wikipedia has articles on every single Pokemon character and every Star Trek episode. Why not every camera? -- Mav

Check out the List of Products section of Wikipedia's Nikon Corporation Talk page. Egil says, "In terms of listing products, I believe we should be careful. Only products that are very significant and noteworthy should be listed. I guess that would probably amount to a couple or a few of products, over the history. Maintaing a list of current products is totally outside the scope of Wikipedia." I remember seeing similar sentiment in other places too, but I forget where. My understanding is that Wikipedia articles should be kept "encyclopedic" and I don't want to have those constraints here. In particular, we also have various definitions and glossary terms that aren't supposed to be in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia is not a Dictionary.

In addition I plan to eventually create an API based off of the Camerapedia's MySQL database that will allow any website to interface directly with our data... This will allow programmers to have access to a comprehensive camera database for use in tons of applications. To my knowledge, this wouldn't really be possible with Wikipedia.

In any event, if you have any other thoughts, feel free to share. I'm really just trying to help create something that I've personally wanted to see exist. Besides, in the end Wikipedia and Camerapedia can certainly share information (just as long as there is proper attribution), so I think we're all more-or-less on the same team... even though these are separate projects. --Lbstone 12:38, 6 February 2006 (EST)

Helpful Wiki Syntax

I created a section in the Help:Editing page with some useful tips. This is the page that is linked next to the "save page" button on every edit screen. Add more tips as you see fit. --Lbstone 16:17, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Camera by country categories

Why are we using categories like Japan instead of Japanese cameras? (Actually, to make things even more confusing, both sets of category exist.)

Rebollo, I noticed you moved some cameras from the latter into the former. Don't you think it would make more sense for the cateogories to be named "xxxx cameras", rather than just the name of the country? or is there something about the categorization scheme used here I don't know about? --ILike2BeAnonymous 21:39, 5 March 2006 (EST)

When I setup the category organization some months ago, I created many categories with the word "cameras", because it seemed logical. After some times of use, I think the category names were too complicated. It was eating space at the bottom of the pages, and when you told me that "A cameras", "B cameras", etc. appearing on each page was not convenient, I decided to rework the category naming scheme.

The new scheme is explained here: Indexing a page. For example "6x6 TLR" replaces "6x6cm TLR cameras", because it is shorter, visually better and is self-explaining. "Japan" replaces "Japanese cameras" for the same reasons: less space, with no loss of understanding. In fact, I moved all the cameras from the old categories to the new ones.

Today the older categories are still there, because only an administrator can move or delete a category. Of course you can disagree with the new names, and all that has been done can be reverted, but please thoroughly visit the new category tree before deciding. --Rebollo fr 06:41, 6 March 2006 (EST)

When designing a schema it's usually best to avoid redundancies. I think the names should be as short and simple as possible while still being understandable. Therefore, I'd just go with "Japan" rather than "Japanese Cameras". Also, remember that we can add notes and content to the category pages themselves to help with additional explanation. --Lbstone 12:31, 6 March 2006 (EST)

Aha, now I see this discussion. I disagreed with the conclusions without actually seeing them, and stated my objections here. And now that I read the argument above, I still disagree.

The first thing to realize is that (unless I totally misunderstand how they work), Mediawiki categories are not, and cannot be used as, attributes. For example, while you may wonder about German screwmount SLR cameras, there's no way you can get a list from the intersection of the sets (categories) of German cameras, screwmount-lens cameras, and SLR cameras. Yes, having separate categories does indeed allow one to see what a camera is, but it's of little or no help in finding other cameras that are like it.

Hungary has made cameras. Japan "makes" (or has China, etc, make) cameras. But there's a huge difference between a subcategory-free category titled Hungary and another titled Japan. The former would be wieldy; the latter an immensely long list that might serve to impress but can do little else.

For this reason, I strongly disagree with the opinions above of Rebollo fr, and advocate "Japanese 35mm SLRs" and the rest. Actually I've already started doing this, and, while he isn't always enthusiastic, he also doesn't seem to disagree. (Perhaps he has changed his mind a little since March.) -- Hoary 02:13, 10 June 2006 (EDT)

Yes I have changed my mind somewhat. The first set of categories I created had unnecessary long names, most of them including the word "cameras", and I changed that at the beginning of March (by hand, a tiresome process!). I switched "Hungarian cameras" to "Hungary", and so on. I did the same for Japan, and that was not a very clever idea, but the "Japanese cameras" category was not much better.

Today I am not really satisfied by the Mediawiki category system (that is why I began making navigational templates). I will illustrate my insatisfaction by an example. Currently there is a page called Gokoku / Ricohl because there is no point separating the two cameras. But there is absolutely no way to have Gokoku and Ricohl appear separately in a category. At the beginning I thought that inserting [[Category:3x4 viewfinder|Gokoku]] and [[Category:3x4 viewfinder|Ricohl]] would do the trick, but it just inserts the full page title at two places in the alphabetical order. Other example: the page titled Daido Six and Semi appears with its full title in both the Category:6x6 folding and Category:4.5x6 folding. This is because the category system is intended to classify pages only defined by their title, mainly because it was developed with the wikipedia encyclopedy in mind. This is not so well adapted to classify models.

The changes you are currently making to the category tree are good, but you are facing the other major problem of the category system: any change in the categories implies to spend a very long time applying hundreds of minor changes. This is why I do not participate too much in the recent changes: any divergence of opinion would create conflicting or redundant categories, and this would result in yet more painful work. --Rebollo fr 07:39, 10 June 2006 (EDT)

Sloppy cats

Take a look at Category talk:Japan and, if interested, reply there please. Thanks. -- Hoary 08:18, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

Deletion, please

Hello, anyone there? This (above) suggests to me that Takane Mine Six and Takane Sisley 55 are better retitled Mine Six and Sisley 55 respectively. I can move Takane Sisley 55 to Sisley 55 but a move from Takane Mine Six to Mine Six I think would first need deletion of the latter (which is now a redirect to the former). If some admin kindly deleted Mine Six I'd then move both pages (which of course is easy) and fix all the relevant links.

(I expect to add more links to these articles later -- and of course others may do so too -- and therefore page moves would require less work earlier than later.)

Thanks Hoary 00:03, 14 May 2006 (EDT)

You can move Takane Mine Six to Mine Six by copying its content to the current Mine Six redirect page, and replacing the content of Takane Mine Six by the corresponding redirect. It just needs to be explained in the change summary if someone ever wants to trace back the history of the article. --Rebollo fr 07:03, 14 May 2006 (EDT)

Thanks for the suggestion. I've just done it -- but both because I'm sleepy and because I'm connected via modem, I've just done a quick job: I haven't yet checked all the links. I'll do that within 24 hours. (Somehow I don't imagine that Camerapedia will be inundated with searches for Takane and its products within that time ... or indeed within any other 24-hour period.) -- Hoary 11:09, 14 May 2006 (EDT)

All done, I hope. -- Hoary 06:52, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

Good pages?

Clearly, an enormous amount of work has already gone into Camerapedia, but the average page is pretty uninspiring: this, for example. I imagine that one reason is the tiny number of people who are editing these days. I'd like to attract a few more people, but of course a sure way not to do this is to point out how crappy the pages are. Rather than "'Nikon' is horrible; I know you know something about Nikon so couldn't you come along and write something" it would be better to say "While the article on 'X' isn't bad, I know it could be a lot better -- look at the article on 'Y' for example."

So what's "Y"? Or in other words: Which are some of the very best articles here? And how about the notion of choosing a smaller number among even these for further improvement, so that the resulting first-rate articles can be, well, advertised here and there? -- Hoary 01:41, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

Why not? What are you thinking for the voting procedure? Of course it would not be acceptable if it is only a small number of regular contributors who tag their own pages. --Rebollo fr 11:58, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

I put in the ToDo list a table of unsatisfying popular pages. I do not think it will discourage the contributors, because someone that is visiting the ToDo list is already willing to help. If you want you can add some "good popular pages", as a counterweight to the bad image given by this list of "bad pages". --Rebollo fr 12:13, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

But can you name two or three pages that -- regardless of their popularity (as measured by hits) -- you think are really good? The pages might for example be about specific cameras, so if I'm not tipped off to their existence I'd probably never come across them. Once we've identified these pages, we can polish them further, then present them as evidence of what Camerapedia can be like. -- Hoary 23:17, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

A good place to find "good pages" is the Special:Longpages page. In the first 100 pages or so, there is a minority of "bad pages" containing only a long list, most of the other are sound starting points. --Rebollo fr 05:17, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

Another place where you are likely to find some "good pages" is the Camera-wiki.org:List of templates. If someone took the time to setup a navigational template, he was probably thinking that at least some of the pages linked were good. --Rebollo fr 05:41, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

Right then, I nominate [fanfare]: Olympus folders. I don't have an Olympus folder, and come to think of it I don't know anybody who does have one. I've never examined one and I don't expect to do so any time soon. But the article looks very conscientious, it's about cameras of some interest to me, and I think that somewhere I have reliable materials (in Japanese) about these cameras that have not been cited. So, time permitting, I hope to do some more work on it. If I think something written in the existing page is wrong, then before correcting (?) it I'll bring up the matter on the article's talk page. -- Hoary 19:29, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

This was a really clever idea. Much work has been done on the page, and the quality and accuracy is hopefully much better. Incidentally, it has become the longest page of Camerapedia, and in less than fifteen days it has jumped from rank 80 to rank 60 in the hit ranking (not bad considering the subject). The working procedure has been very motivating, concentrating on one specific page to mutually review it in detail. Perhaps we could nominate another candidate while we are polishing the first one, I will think about it. --Rebollo fr 14:15, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

I am adding potential candidates to the todo list discussion page. --Rebollo fr 14:24, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

Link fixing

I tried fixing a few links. Boredom overtook me, but I kept on going all the same. When tertiary boredom overtook me, I gave up. A couple of points:

1. A problem that I couldn't be bothered to fix is the recent migration of Matt Denton's many and wonderful pages to this new place.
2. An irritation I can't fix is that every Camerapedia page references this favicon, which isn't there. Of course this doesn't really matter, but any recursive search for dead links finds lots of links to this; ignoring them can be tedious work. I suggest either providing the favicon or altering the pages so they don't reference it.

Hoary 05:16, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

Could you please explain what is a favicon? And how do you do a recursive search for dead links in camerapedia? --Rebollo fr 07:53, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

A favicon is . . . well, it's a little file that's designed to display in your browser, and how it displays (or whether it displays at all) depends on your particular browser. Take a look at Wikipedia:Okaya Optical, for example: if you see a little white square with a black "W" on it in for example the field where the URL appears, that's the favicon. That's because that page says <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" /> and this black-on-"W" graphic, favicon.ico, is indeed at the root directory. You do the recursive search for dead links here for example; there's also good software for the same job that you can install on your own computer. -- Hoary 10:38, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

Thank you for the answers. I think that the camerapedia logo that is on the top left of each page would be a good candidate for such an icon. I do not know how to install it. It is very possible that the only person habilitated to do it is Brandon Stone. --Rebollo fr 13:28, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

Yes, I'm sure of that. Paging the boss! Hoary 08:16, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

I just created the favicon.ico file. I hope that helps. --Lbstone 00:42, 2 July 2006 (EDT)

Present tense? Past tense?

Clearly cameras of the 1950s (etc.) were distributed and were priced in such-and-such a way. But do they or did they have shutters having such-and-such a top speed?

I've just now looked at Amiflex (much of which was written by me). The description was fairly consistently in the present tense; I edited it so it's now consistently in the present tense.

I then looked at Sintax (much of which was written by me). It's consistently in the past tense.

One way of thinking might be that while the Amiflex earns its own page on the Monaghan's medium-format "megasite" as a purchasable and usable device with which a (fairly) normal person might want to take photos even in 2006, surviving examples (if any) of the obscure Sintax would be mere curiosities.

Let's skip the Amiflex and move to, say, the Nikon FM2. Nikon doesn't sell it; it's in Nikon's past. But yet few if any would be "shelf queens": they would all be working cameras.

One could use the present tense for cameras still being sold and the past tense for those that have been discontinued. That strikes me as a terrible idea, not only because it exaggerates the importance of commercial availability but also because editors here would have to look nervously at the companies' publicity. ("Nikon has discontinued the F100 and FM3a? Into the past tense they go!" / "Hang on, Mamiya hasn't discontinued the 7II after all? We should put it back into the present tense then.")

I don't think the distinction between "present-tense camera" and "past-tense" camera is a useful one. Suggestion: Descriptions of cameras, no matter how old or obscure, should be in the present tense.

Comments? -- Hoary 20:12, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

It is a good question. What about a sentence like: "The next model, released in 1957, has / had an f:2.8 lens." Is it a description? Or does the mention of the 1957 date make the past tense necessary? The description is often mingled with historical details, so we would jump from past to present from one sentence to the other. I agree with the descriptions in the present tense when there is a whole paragraph with the description of the camera. When some describing sentence is inserted in a paragraph that is essentially historical, I am not sure. --Rebollo fr 06:50, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

It's a description. Either "has" or "had" would be idiomatic; again, I'm suggesting "has".

I don't deny that my recommendation would create its own oddities and difficulties. But without a general rule, there are already a lot of oddities and difficulties. -- Hoary 07:17, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

I have applied your recommandations in the new version of the Olympus Standard page, trying to distinguish more clearly what the description from the history. --Rebollo fr 11:16, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

"The next model, released in 1957, has / had an f:2.8 lens." -> "The next model was released in 1957 with an f:2.8 lens"? Agricola 21:00, 20 September 2006 (EDT)

Sources and bibliography

I have played with some tools to cite the sources and insert a bibliography. I made experiments with various templates, and used the Zeitax and Zeitax/Test pages as guinea-pigs. Even if the <ref> extension is added one day there are tools to automatically change the ref template to the <ref> tag.

Right now I am a little tired by these experiments. The current state of these two pages is not very satisfactory, but it gives a hint of the two main directions that we can follow:

1. each reference to a particular source directly goes to the place where the source is described
2. each reference has its own footnote, that more or less duplicates the description of the source, maybe adding some more information (for example a page number)

The second approach is more rigorous, but there is much duplicate info. Of course this question gets coupled with the discussion between a template of a page for the sources that are often cited. --Rebollo fr 11:16, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

I much prefer (2): Zeitax (as it is now) rather than Zeitax/Test (as it is now). The duplicate info won't get in the way (and of course it's only text, so it won't add much ballast to the pages). And I'm not afraid of having to be rigorous about these matters. -- Hoary 11:28, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

Thinking about it, the rigour difference is tiny. Feel free to experiment with one of these two versions, I need fresh ideas to advance on that matter. --Rebollo fr 12:20, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

I now agree that the Zeitax version is better than the other one, and I have made some improvements (hopefully). I have also created a Sources:English page for the English language sources and a Sources:Japanese page for the Japanese language ones, where we can insert a description of the sources that are often cited. We can use these links when we are naming these sources inside the text, but I think that a full reference at the bottom of each page is useful. So I will create a small set of templates to facilitate the insertion of this full reference. There is already Template:McKeown12 for the 12th edition of McKeown's Guide and Template:Showa10 for the book full of Japanese ads. In each of this template is a link to the corresponding "Sources:" page. I also created a Template:Gochamaze to cite the advertisements hosted by the Japanese website of the same name.

The main problem that subsists is that it is not very easy to add a new reference: that needs to change all the following numbers by hand. Apparently there are templates in en:WP that automatically number the references, but I have not managed to make them work here. Maybe our version of Mediawiki is too old, or I have not experimented enough. I will try again in the Sandbox and report here. --Rebollo fr 15:58, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

Yes. I don't like to say it, but the system you're using now is grotesque. Consider these excerpts:

The '''Zeitax''' (ザイタックス{{ref|1}}) is a 4.5×6 Japanese folder, made in the early 1940s. The sources disagree about the maker's name. [[Sources:English#McKeown's Guide|McKeown]] lists the Zeitax under the Motoshima entry{{ref|2}}, others say that it was made by Zeitax Camera Works (ザイタックスカメラワークス){{ref|3}}, while 1942 and 1943 advertisements{{ref|4}} give [[Tokiwa Kōgaku|Tokiwa Kōgaku Kōgyō]] as the company name. [and some way below that:] * {{note|2}}A company unheard of elsewhere.

I don't like note 2: it's so uninformative that I'd resent having taken that link merely in order to read it. So I want to change the relevant part of the text to: under the entry for Motoshima (a company that is otherwise unknown). However, I'd have to renumber the notes, and I can't be bothered.

You may not like the example. Fair enough, but I'm sure you can easily imagine being dissatisfied with, or wanting to add something to, something I'd written. Are you going to bother renumbering the notes? (Remember, you have to renumber them twice, in the text and for the notes themselves.)

There are other problems as well. I'm slowly doing much of the work (others are welcome to join!) of creating what I hope will be a good article on Fujica G690. Knowing that numbering and renumbering (and rerenumbering, and rererenumbering) notes is a drag, I'm tempted to add no notes at all until I think I've finished. Will I then add them carefully? If I have the bright idea of adding quasi-notes in SGML comments, maybe; otherwise, I doubt it.

Please can we have <ref> functionality? (Mediawiki.org tells me it needs cite.php, whatever that might be.)

Thank you. Hoary 04:41, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

I've understood at last what was the trick in wikipedia's ref template to automatically generate numbers. It simply makes of every note an external link, and they become numbered as external links. I don't like this at all...

After the n-th complete renumbering of the refs and notes just because I wanted to move a sentence from one place to another, I'm about to abandon this system. Consequently I've become a strong supporter of your demand.

As for the use of notes, this is a stylistic matter and here is my reasoning. I think that notes are meant not to be read except by someone who wants to check a specific content or who becomes fanatically interested in the subject. To take the example you mentioned, to insert that Motoshima is otherwise unknown interrupts the text flow without being of enormous interest, except for someone who would like to check McKeown's probably erroneous attribution. This is why it becomes the note #2.

Conversely, I would insert no really important information in a note, because I am sure nobody will attempt to read each and every of them. Anyway, the ones who'd be tempted would probably stop after the third note looking like this: "Advertisement for the Acme Camera, published in the 32 Feb 2512 issue of Le Chasseur Français, reproduced in Kokusan kamera no rekishi, item 23507."

--Rebollo fr 09:19, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

I've seen that Cite.php needs to have Mediawiki 1.6 installed, and we are currently under 1.5.8 (Special:Version). This probably means that the change is less trivial than expected, with an upgrade of the wiki software. Speaking of this, I hope that we are currently running with a proper backup system! I think I'll save some of the pages that are most important for me on my own harddisk. --Rebollo fr 11:02, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

I've experimented with the Template:ref and Template:note and the result is less awful to maintain than previously (no need to reorder everything everytime). It is not satisfactory either. I've also experimented with another citing scheme in Zeitax/Test. It slightly slims down the article, and is some sort of Harvard citing system for the poor guy. Its big drawback is that you'll always come back from the reference cited to the first citing occurence, but I think this can be circumvented. --Rebollo fr 17:24, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

6×4.5? 4.5×6?

We're using both. Even if we decided on one, I would not rush to convert all the instances of the other. Still, shouldn't we at least try to standardize? Incidentally, I prefer the former, but I can't get very worked up about it. -- Hoary 20:03, 1 July 2006 (EDT)

I strongly advocate 4.5×6 because all the other formats are given in the "small dimension × large dimension" order, like 24×36, 18×24 or 3×4, not the reverse. I understand that the logic behind "6×4.5" is to unify with 6×7, 6×9 etc. I think this was introduced recently, after the disappearing of half-frame (that would be called 24×18) and 3×4cm on 127 film (that would be called 4×3). --Rebollo fr 06:03, 2 July 2006 (EDT)

OK then. -- Hoary 09:45, 2 July 2006 (EDT)