Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 26
upload image problem and licencing
[edit]I'd like to upload an image to the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZGMF-X2000_GOUF_Ignited (right underneath the orange one that's already there) The image I'd like to upload is http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/seed-destiny/zgmf-2000.jpg
I've saved the image in jpg format, and select it in "Source filename", but I don't know what to put in "Destination filename" and "Summary" in order to successfully upload images. So far I always get "the image is corrupt or in incorrect extension"... So if anyone could show me what to do here it'd be much appreciated, since I can just follow the examples to put them in proper places and make captions myself.
- It's a nice picture. Did you draw it, or did the artist give a special license for putting it on Wikipedia? Notinasnaid 21:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
- Sometimes when i save a jpg locally my system assigns it an extension of jpe. Wikipedia does not accept jpe files, but just changing the extension to jpg usually fixes this problem.
- The summery should briefly describe the image and its source, and give a proper copyright status tag.
- I note that the image already on the page you cite is tagged as fair use but has no rationale for fsir use given. If this image is copyrighted and you wnat to claim it under fair use, be sure to specify the source where you obtained it, and why you feel it qualifies for fair use on the image description page, or in the summary. DES (talk) 21:36, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
I see, but what exactly should I put in "Destination filename", can you guys give me an example?
- The destination filename is what it should be called on Wikipedia. This way you can give the image another name than the often non-descriptive ones when they come out of a digital camera for example. - Mgm|(talk) 21:55, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
- By the way, the other picture is probably going to be deleted soon, because it doesn't have valid copyright information. (How do we initiate that?) Please don't ignore this difficult issue, or all your trouble will be wasted because the picture you upload will be deleted too. Do you have a license to put it on wikipedia or not? Notinasnaid 07:48, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- I see a new image has now been uploaded, but without the necessary copyright information. I can't remember where to go to initiate the deletion of this before Wikipedia gets sued...? Notinasnaid 13:00, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
AFL-CIO
[edit]Who is the first African American woman to hold the position of vice-president of the AFL-CIO? I believe her name is Rev. Dr. Addie L. Wyatt of Chicago, IL. She was born in Brookhaven, MS on March 8, 1924, and later became a civil rights leader, working with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She also is the founder of Operation Breadbasket now Operation Push-Rainbow Coalition which is headed by Rev. Jesse Jackson. She was selected by Eleanor Roosevelt to serve on the women's board, and she was selected by Time Magazine as one of the Top 10 Women of the Year (1976). Rev.is the co-pastor emeritus of the Vernon Park Church of God with her husband, Rev. Claude S. Wyatt, Jr. in Chicago.
- This is a factual question. Please direct it to the Reference Desk. --Andy Janata 02:16, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
How do I report abuse?
[edit]Someone is abusing the Wikipedia rules and guidelines to push a biased agenda, and is flaunting and antagonizing. How do I report this abuse?
- Depends on the abuse. Give us a specific example and we can point you in the right direction. -- Essjay · Talk 02:50, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Make Wikipedia my Homepage?
[edit]I was wondering if i could make wikipedia my homepage for my PC? How do i do this?
What browser are you using? Father Howabout1 Talk to me! 01:39, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- On most browsers the homepage is stored under Tools>Options (or somthing of that sort). This link is Broken 02:51, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- You can usually drag the icon next to the URL to your home button to set it up. Elfguy 12:26, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Timing of vote for deletion process and closure
[edit]I introduced the article on "The Great Story" and it has subsequently been re-written and voted on. I was just curious how long the "Vote for Deletion" process typically takes before closure?
02:18, 11 August 2005 (UTC)MBDowd
- Usually five days, unless there is a reason to remove it sooner. A VfD might be closed early because the page meets a criteria for speedy deletion or because the nomination is obviously in bad faith (i.e. nominating the Wikipedia aritcle or NPOV.) Early removal is at the discretion of administrators only, as is the closure of most discussions. (Discussions where the result is an unanimous keep may be closed by any logged in user.) See WP:VFD for more information on VfD. -- Essjay · Talk 02:48, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Albus Dumbledore for a recent example of a bad faith VfD, although rather humorous if you look at the user name of the person who listed it. Dismas 07:39, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
synesthasia
[edit]Where can I learn about how some people see letters, numbers and words in specific colors in their minds?
- Try the article on synaesthesia -- a tricky spelling, that. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- Before anyone else goes to check, the redirect from synesthesia already exists. :) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:57, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Tai Chi Chuan
[edit]I keep adding a link to Taijiworld.com by Erle Montaigue, which has more info on taijiquan than most sites I know, but it keeps being removed. Why does this happen?
- The first thing to check is the history of the page you are editing. When anyone edits they should add a comment saying their reasons. (If you added link without adding a suitable edit summary, your edit is likely to be taken less seriously).
- The second thing is to register and get yourself a user name for Wikipedia to use when editing. People take edits by registered users more seriously, partly because they have a discussion page for talking with them. When you add to a discussion (but not an article) you should sign your contributions so people know who they are talking to. You can do this by just adding ~~~~ (four tildes) at the end.
- The third thing, if the history didn't help, is to ask this question on the talk page of the article, because the people editing that article are just Wikipedia contributors like you: there probably isn't anyone "official" doing it. If your reasons are good and the link doesn't break wikipedia guidelines, the discussion may solve things. Notinasnaid 08:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Examination Centre at Nairobi Kenya
[edit]Dear Sir,
Ref: Horizon Institute of Advanced Management as Examination Centre
This is Horizon Insitute of Advanced Management It is regitered with the government of Kenya to Offer Certificates & Diplomas in Management Courses. Our Students are much interested in enrolling with the University of South Africa especially in Management and Community Development courses. We as the Administration want to process the necessary formalities to facilitate the same. Please advice.
Sincerely,
Betty C.Rono Director of Studies--anon.
- You may have better chance at success if you contact the University of South Africa directly. - Mgm|(talk) 10:57, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- just flabergasted, wuh? *sigh* --Darkfred Talk to me 12:27, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Catholic Church in Holica, Podhajce (Croatia)
[edit]hello
[edit]Hello Wikipedia, how fantastic you exist, thankyou. How is it you exist ? where do you gain your references ? Where did you begin ? Please let me know. cheers Peter Mclennan.
- Hello reader, glad you dropped by. See Wikipedia and Wikipedia:About for answers to your questions -- Ferkelparade π 12:48, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Search Bar
[edit]Is it possible to remove unwanted search items from the bar? And if so, how do I do it?
- If you're talking about the fact the search field remembers your earlier choices, that's a browser feature. I'd have to know what browser you use to help removing it, but it is possible. Still, it would also remove them from fields like the main search field of Google or whatever search engine you normally use. - Mgm|(talk) 14:10, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- With Safari (for Macs) for example I would choose "Reset Safari" thus deleting all prior search items. There is no way to selectively delete any particular search item. hydnjo talk 15:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
For the google tool bar (at least in Firefox) click the g icon at the very left of the bar, and choose "clear search history". Thryduulf 22:34, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Could someone tell me what the Template:AOL is for? A unregistred user has put it on my talk page. CG 14:31, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- It's supposed to go on anonymous talk pages when the IP address is owned by AOL, because they have an open proxy and are thus open to abuse by IP skipping vandals, which if blocked can affect normal users. I don't know why anyone would put it on your webpage unless they were vandalizing.
- Of course, it could be useful to inform people of the fact you use AOL on your user page, but this template is probably not the right thing to use. Feel free to remove it. - Mgm|(talk) 15:27, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- An anonymous vandal using 64.12.*.* (an AOL address range) was adding this template to many pages, seemingly chosen at random, including The Greens (France), AIDS, Fox and others. -- Curps 15:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
User 214.13.4.151
[edit]This person is causing some real headaches. I don't know about banning (that's probably too heavy) but if anyone wants to help me keep on eye on his/her changes, please do: 214.13.4.151's additions. He / she has caused a lot of problems in the past too, see User_talk:214.13.4.151 and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/214.13.4.151. I can only devote so much time to redoing his or her additions to be even close to NPOV. Please help! --Quasipalm 15:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- From what I can see the changes were made to highly controversial topics with many watchers and most have been reverted. Since it's not obvious vandalism, it's probably best to talk about those issues on the articles talk pages. Elfguy 15:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- The pages have been reverted because I took the time to go through and check all of the additions. It took quite some time, time that I don't always have to spend on Wikipedia. Also, several of the completely POV additions had been sitting on pages for days and days, so I'm not sure enough watchers are responding to these edits. My only goal here is to get more people watching this user and some of the pages that s/he has attacked. --Quasipalm 16:23, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
You might consider listing it on Wikipedia:Vandalism in Progress. -- Essjay · Talk 05:15, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
I've fixed up eis last two changes, on Pregnancy and Oral contraceptive. Thanks for watching this. JesseW 20:02, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Hyde Park Los Angeles California
[edit]Where can I find information for Hyde Park Los Angeles California in the same format as, for instance, Crenshaw Los Angeles California on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?
- A quick check on the Hyde Park page seems to indicate we have everything but the Los Angeles park listed. - Mgm|(talk) 19:12, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Favicon
[edit]Why is the favicon different? Was it officially changed? Father Howabout1 Talk to me! 16:48, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Ok. Father Howabout1 Talk to me! 19:22, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Translation help
[edit]hi i am a new user and iam interested in translating and editing pages but i keep getting lost! how do i go about keeping to one project?? Vidushi 17:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- There's many links.
- Wikipedia:Translation into English for article in other languages that are considered good enough to be translated into the english wikipedia.
- Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for articles in the english wikipedia that are written in other language than english
- Wikipedia:Featured articles in other languages (very incomplete) for featured articles in other language that aren't as much extensive or even exist in the english wikipedia
- Check also the Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination.
# of categories
[edit]I was hoping to find the total number of categories; I've already checked Special:Statistics, and it didn't help. Is this info known? Meelar (talk) 18:31, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- You could go to Special:Categories, set view to 500 at a time, and page through. have some time at your disposal before trying this. There are many thousands. DES (talk) 19:15, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- Well, if we've got some idea of the range, better to set view to 500 and do a binary search for the end. They're numbered, so you can tell when you've found the end. (Or, for that matter, set view to 1000 at a time, or 2000, or whatever makes things easiest -- just edit the '500' in the URL to use a different 'limit'. Oops, 1000 appears to be the maximum.)
I'm just seeing unknown unicode symbols for the last three categories, can someone check whether they are broken or not. The last and third last seem to be supercategories of Category:Provinces of Cambodia, and the second last relates to Prey Veng - a province of Cambodia. Now assuming those are valid characters, what do I do to be able to see them? I'm running Firefox on Linux. Thryduulf 22:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Kojo Nnamdi
[edit]Without reading your guidelines I added text to the above subject (Kojo Nnamdi). Can someone please look at it and make sure it is formatted correctly?
I am definitely a newbie and would like to contribute more AFTER I review the materials you so kindly supply.
- Someone has already begin working on it. He'll format it and fix any problems with the style of writing. Style is one of the things most new wikipedians have some problems with - wikipedia has something of a house style that you just have to get used to. I'd recommend you watch the article and see what changes he made (and you'll discover the joys and horrors of collaborative editing - once he's done it won't be "yours" any more, something else that many initially find rather weird). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:03, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
- I went ahead and fixed a few things, put in a couple of changes, etc. Overall, it's not bad for a first article! Looks as good as the article on Fiona Ritchie who is another radio personality. Welcome to the Wikipedia! Dismas 20:04, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- I tweaked it a bit more, and left a request for more info on Talk:Kojo Nnamdi. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:33, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Is there any way to find out when a page was deleted if you think it was done by mistake?
[edit]Hi there. I just noticed that the page Roni Size appears to have been deleted, which doesn't seem to make any sense, as he's an extremely well-known musician and DJ, both in Britain and globally. Is there any way to search the VFD log to see why this got deleted, and hopefully recover some of the text? Thanks illWill 20:00, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- The article was deleted because it was a copyright violation - someone copied the content from Musicmatch. I looked at the version prior to the copyright violation, and it read "Roni Size is a Bristol-based drum and bass producer known for working as part of Reprazent with Krust, DJ Die, Suv and MC Dynamite.". If you believe we should write a new article, please by all means start one (you can use the Musicmatch article for reference, but don't copy or rephrase any of it, lest we get back into the same problem as before). If you do this, remember to say in the article why the person is important (it's called "asserting notability"). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:09, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. I found the content via the wayback machine, and have re-inserted the one sentence that wasn't a copyright violation. In these cases, isn't it better to reduce the article to a stub rather than just remove it completely? I would have been happy to rework it from a stub, but I was a bit surprised to see that it just wasn't there anymore. Thanks again illWill 20:14, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- In general you can go to <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=sample>, replacing "sample" with the name of the page to see the deeltion log, if any, on a page. If a significant part of an article is not a copyright violation, it is better to edit it to remove the copyrighted content. But if all or most of the content is copyrighted, or seems to be, then it will often be simply deleted, rather than have the admin try to figure out what parts are copyrighted. While a page is listed on WP:CP, there is a link to a temporary pageg on which anyone can start a revised version. DES (talk) 20:22, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- If you can't remember that link above, you can go to Special:Log and click "Delete Log". Much simpler, I believe. Hope this helps! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 20:27, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
I undeleted the pre-copyvio revisions. Copyvio inserted into a non-copyvio article should be reverted. An admin can selectively remove them, but it generally isn't done. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:16, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for the help everybody :) illWill 22:40, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
I have a problem in an elevator control panel
[edit]It is an V3F controler using YASKAWA INVERTOR and breaking resistor , now once we give power supply to the controler the breaking resistor is geting heated up extensively. Please help us.
- You might be able to find a solution to your question if you post it at Wikipedia:Reference desk. The Help Desk (this page) is really designed for questions about Wikipedia itself. Best of luck, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:44, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
[edit]I don't see any way to correct the information that is misrepresented on this site. This site lists Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a remake when it is in fact not a remake at all. Aside from the content of the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) has nothing else in common with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). Burton's version is a readaptation of Roald Dahl's book. It is not, in the sense of movie terms, a remake.
- You could change it so it says it's a new adaptation of the book that is more about the children than Willy Wonka himself (as the original was according to my source). - Mgm|(talk) 00:56, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to…) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Dismas 01:54, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Peter Jennings - Section on "Leaving the Chair"
[edit]Some idiot has written absolute rubbish in this section, which most people would be offended by. Please rectify.
- Seems to be gone now. Alex 00:59, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Name of website
[edit]Why is this website named "wikipedia"?
--Becky
It's a wiki and an encyclopedia. Read the link. Father Howabout1 Talk to me! 01:48, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- See the article on Wikipedia also. Dismas 02:10, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Adding Submenu on Navigation bar
[edit]Hi,
I am using MediaWiki 1.3.5 version and I want to add a group of submenu under the "navigation" submenu on the left hand navigation bar. Is this possible to be done with the Wiki version I am using?
Thank you very much for any help on this.
--Khimw 01:42, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Tag for an image question
[edit]After I wrote the article for The Flying Karamazov Brothers, I contacted their manager to get permission for some images. The woman I spoke to was very nice... yes, spoke. I e-mailed expecting them to fire off a return e-mail with some press photo but their manager, Rhonda, asked for my phone number to talk about what I was looking for. She was very nice and sent me several images to use for the article, which I plan on expanding in the next week or two. One image, File:Fkb heartwings straight.jpg, she said was not copywritten, trademarked, anything. I found it hard to believe but that's what she said. So would this be considered public domain? I'm asking because I don't know which tag to put on it and I don't want trouble when another editor sees that there's no tag. Thanks! Dismas 03:20, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- My guess would be that it's in the PD. To make sure other people know where it came from, I suggest you include details about the fact you got it from the manager and that she said it wasn't copywritten etc. - Mgm|(talk) 10:45, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks! I'll do that. Dismas 15:28, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Merge Notice
[edit]There is a merge notice on my article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest_Slang%2C_Acronyms%2C_Lingo .
I do not want this article merged with any other. It is already obvious from the content of this article that the lingo used in EverQuest differs substantially from other MMORPGs.
How do I decline the suggestion to merge?
- First, no article is "your" article. In case you missed it, every edit page has a notice at the top that states very clearly that all edits to Wikipedia are relased under the GFDL. Once you post your content, it is released to the community, and is subject to being revised, merged, deleted, etc. If you do not want your content to be changed, do not post it here.
- You cannot "decline" the suggestion to merge, as the decision is not up to you, it is up to the community. You are welcome to discuss the reasons not to merge the content on the talk page (click the link in the merge tag), but do not remove the tag without discussion. Wikipedia is consensus driven, and if there is consensus to merge the article, that consensus will prevail. Unilateral edits without discussion and article "ownership" are contrary to the mission of Wikipedia and will not be received well by the community. -- Essjay · Talk 05:06, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Drew Rosenhaus Article
[edit]The article on Rosenhaus contains the following line: "This guy is the worlds biggest asshole, what do you expect from a Jew?" I attempted to delete this line, but it does not appear in the edit window. This is obviously beyond my technical expertise, but I think it's fairly self-evident that this line should be removed from any factual, objective article about Rosenhaus.
- The issue was most likley a cache issue. When the edit page loads, the server automatically pulls the most recent version to the edit box. What likely happened was that you saw the vandalism at the same times as another user, but the other user beat you to the reversion. By the time the edit page loaded for you, the other user had already removed the text, so it did not appear in the edit box. You can check the page history to see who it was that added the text, and who removed it. -- Essjay · Talk 05:21, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
How long before a new article or subject shows up in a site search?
[edit]I've created a new article on mathematician James Harris (Jim) Simons. I've tried to do a search using the exact title, and, not surprising, the article does not yet come up in the results.
How long does it generally take for new articles to be indexed?
Thanks,
Paul Klenk
- They show up right away. It may not show up for you for a short time if the local cache server hasn't been updated yet, but if you return to it later it will be there. Elfguy 12:13, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- Note that I've moved the article to James Harris Simons, and created appropriate redirects at James Harris (Jim) Simons, James Simons, and Jim Simons. (Putting brackets in the name of a biographical article can make it more difficult for other people to link to it, unless they already know the article exists.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:56, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Table style width
[edit]What does style="width: 20em;" do? Eg, in comparison to width=???px. It is used in the Template:Infobox_Movie --Commander Keane 11:28, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Em based measurements have the important advantage that they are displayed in a size proportional to the text, not hardware resolution. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 15:17, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Apology...
[edit]Dear Wikipedia,
I am very sorry but I recently landed on one of your pages and editted it (Brian Lara). I didn't realise how wikipedia worked and was just intrigued. I have returned the page back to normal (I hope). Please don't chuck me off for being a vandal, it is a great project!
Cheers Woody
- You're forgiven, but as reparation, you now need to contribute to Wikipedia twice a week for the next year. Get going! ;P Elfguy 12:08, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Edit bug
[edit]I performed a minor edit (one word, or to and) on the Vangelis page, previewed it then saved it. After saving it the rest of the info on Vangelis was gone, only the section I edited was saved. What gives?
Never mind! I figured out how to fix it.
Links
[edit]Hello,
Please could you tell me if there is a way to get a link to my online store placed on this site?
My store is (name deleted), (link deleted), and we sell Console, Handheld and PC Games and Accessories to the UK.
If a link exchange is a better option, then please can you tell me how to go about it?
Many Thanks, Steve (name deleted) steve@(address deleted)
- Sorry, Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia, and does not operate a link exchange, nor carry advertisments. Anyone is free to edit the encyclopedia, but linking to a commercial site would generally not fit the encyclopedia's purpose and would be promptly deleted. Notinasnaid 12:57, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Searching
[edit]i use wiki a lot to revise for exams and spend hours typing in word after word (or phrase), what i have noticed is that you seem to have to search for very specific things, and the search is case sensitive (for example i have just tried to search for ATP hydrolysis, my first attempt i entered atp hydrolysis and it gave no results, when i put atp in caps it got the right page) SURELY there is something you can do to the site that, when you search for something it comes up with a list (google style) of relevant searches, or alternative spellings in case you missed a letter etc? its darn annoying knowing that what you want must be there but trying to figure out the correct phrasing to please the wiki search...! (atp hydrolysis is just one of many examples i have encountered just today while revising), thanks HJMCK
- Out of interest, which level are these exams? Eg, school, uni etc. --Commander Keane 14:53, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- The search function is not very extensive, in part to save server resources and also because it just isn't. You can however use Google to search for articles, with a search like this "atp site:en.wikipedia.org". Elfguy 15:21, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Gaza
[edit]it was mentioned in your article on the most densly populated countries that the Gaza Strip is one of the most densly populated countries in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density) are you aware that Gaza strip is not a country by any deffinition?
- The article title is misleading. Countries are are ranked (eg Monaco:1) and non-counties have just a dash (eg Gaza:-), so it is recognised that Gaza is not a country. I was a little confused the first time I saw the list too.--Commander Keane 14:29, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- By the way, you can link to wikipedia articles within wikipedia by just putting the words (with correct captialisation) after the ".org/wiki/" in two square brackets. Eg: "[[List of countries by population density]]" gives List of countries by population density. --Commander Keane 14:36, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Password Reset requested, not by me
[edit]Hi all--didn't know where else to put this. I just received an email, apparently from wiki@wikimedia.org, saying that someone had requested that my account's password be reset, and including a new password. I did not send in a password reset; I haven't logged in to Wiki in several months. I looked at the headers and it doesn't appear to be spoofed, but I still thought it was suspicious. My old password worked; to be safe, I have changed it to a longer, more secure password. Is there anywhere I should report this in case someone is abusing the system? Thanks! xnera 16:47, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- Don't worry. Yes, someone tried to reset your password, and as you notice the old one still worked. As long as you have your email address set correctly in preferences (which you clearly do) there's no way for someone to abuse the password reset mechanism to steal your password or lock you out. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:49, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- This doesn't have to have a sinister explanation. Someone who forgets their password might also forget or misspell their username, so someone with a similar username might be desperately trying to get their password back. I wonder if they will be along for help soon? Notinasnaid 17:11, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- I wouldn't worry about it. Just the other day I found myself having to register for a message board. The board was hosted by a company that hosts a lot of different boards, so they have one universal login. I tried both my usual screennames but both were rejected since someone was using them already. I thought maybe that I had signed up in the past and forgotten about it. So I put in my normal screename and asked for the password to be emailed to me. When I didn't receive an e-mail, I knew I wasn't the one that had registered that name and therefore used a third name to register. That clear or did I confuse everyone? Dismas 19:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Text size in a table
[edit]What is the code for choosing the text size in a table. I know you can use small, but is there something like "textsize=60%" that I can put in the style section? Also, is there a glossary where I can look this stuff up, the meta help on table isn't extenive enough.--Commander Keane 17:19, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia popularity
[edit]How many hits does Wikipedia get? Where is it based?
- For usage statistics, you can poke around Wikipedia:Statistics#Traffic. Looking in Wikipedia, Wikipedia is sponsored by Wikimedia, which is based in Saint Petersburg, Florida, USA. --Commander Keane 18:48, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Announcements occasionally mentions Alexa rankings and similar ranks. We appear to be in the top 100 sites on the net according to some counters. - Mgm|(talk) 19:01, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Pictures
[edit]You have no article on "Color Organ" (lights that dynamically respond to music.) I have one and am thinking of submitting an article on it. However, it is useless without 5 pictures totaling 85k. I note a "suggested" limit of 32k or so. I find nothing on FAQ's about this, except some indication about "tagging" pictures.
I will need to learn more about submitting an article, but don't want to go through this if the article goes beyond practical limits. The accompying text will be no more than 10k, I imagine.
John P. Jones 380844
- After looking at the article Wikipedia:Article size, it seems that its the page source that needs to be less than 32k. This allows for a really long article, and I'm sure Color organ would be fine. To start the article, just click Color organ, then click "Start the Color organ article". I'm looking forward to reading it soon. --Commander Keane 18:11, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- The 32k limit is in the article text box. The limit is because of certain older browsers that mangle text larger than that. It is now a "suggestion" based on reader concerns as the technical problems have reduced with time. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:30, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
signatures
[edit]How do you do signatures, change it?
- You sign your talk page post using four tildes (like this:~~~~). You can read how to customize them at Wikipedia:Signature, but you'd need to register for that first if you haven't done so already. - Mgm|(talk) 18:55, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Once you register, you can use Special:Preferences and change the field "Nickname". Please see Wikipedia:Signature for more information. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 18:55, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- Remember to always sign all of your posts on talk pages. Typing four tildes after your comment ( ~~~~ ) will insert a signature showing your username and a date/time stamp, which is very helpful. To customize your sig, I suggest you first experiment in the Sandbox. When you have something you like, copy out the markup and paste it into the Nickname box, and check the box Raw signatures. Please give some thought to your sig and don't be unnecessarily cute; my sig is perhaps at the very edge of acceptablity. — Xiong熊talk* 02:34, 2005 August 13 (UTC)
Same Name, Different Person
[edit]There is a famous video game player, Billy Mitchell, who is famous for being the first person to get a perfect Pac Man score.
The problem is that there is already a heading for someone named Billy Mitchell, who served in the army.
Is there a way to differentiate the two?
- Yes. Usually the lesser known person gets brackets after their name, like Billy Mitchell (Pac Man), and then at the top of the Billy Mitchell article (the army person) a disambiguation notice will be put in, somenthing like: For the Pac Man high scorer, see Billy Mitchell (Pac Man). This is called disambiguation, for more info, visit Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). If you want some help doing this, then just say something (here or on my talk page). --Commander Keane 18:19, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Hypnerotomachia
[edit]Info request: pronunciation of Hypnerotomachia You may email to: robertadunn@sbcglobal.net Thank you! Martha Dunn
- The Reference Desk is the place for this question. Try there. --Commander Keane 18:52, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Lost password and "Email new password not working"
[edit]My password doesn't seem to work (Or I recall it incorrectly). When I click on the "E-mail new password button" I don't receive an email (I've waited a couple of days). Either the email functionality isn't working or I did not have the correct email address on my user preferences. My username is: Davidley, and my email address should be "ley (at) cs.dal.ca" . Can anyone help me reset my password? Thanks.
- You can simply register a new account (like User:DavidLey) and redirect your old pages to your new ones. Resetting passwords with externally supplied e-mail addresses is something we generally don't do, for obvious reasons. JRM · Talk 03:13, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- Please post a comment on my talk page from the computer (IP address) you last used to edit as Davidley, which was to the article Heads of State of Ghana on 2005-07-14. The IP address ideally needs to end with 150.4 to properly distinguish you from two other authors in the area. You don't get the emails because the account doesn't have any email address set, so they are never sent. Jamesday 09:54, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Can a stub be used as a 'newsticker' (or: how do insert data into a stub without getting the stub on that page}
[edit]sorry for the dr s kinda title :P but serious
on a site i visit a lot the admins desided to put a mediawiki , and that project is starting to roll a bit. problem is no-one actually knows wiki so were forced to look up everything. there were a few visitors that suggested to include a something of a news ticker so the latest few articles are listed on the main page of the mediawiki.
since i recently discovered stubs and templates and someone suggested this might have features we can use im testing this but it's not going the way i planned, so far i created a template which is based on the wiki shortcut template. a template i spotted that gets dynamic data. and when i use that i do get the article listed in the newsticker , but that way its listed on the page
is there a way that you can call a stub and inject the data but not list it on that page ?
or is there simply a better way to achieve what we're going for :D ? (since after i figured out this there is a new problem on howto list only the latest some) Either way , Thanks a lot for the help --Bverveen 20:45, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- Any chance of a link? You could just put in a link in to recent changes, right? - Mgm|(talk) 21:20, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- omg just wrote a too long reply on my cell! and pushed wr. button .... but that in a infobox for each cat. ( Bverveen in the middle of the night on cellular phone)
- i remembered the correct movie title (doh) and wanted to fix it, and saw your reply. the link to the template , or at least how its going to look like should it be posible. The mediawiki is intended as a extra for a quitte large news/forum/etc site and there are a lot of specific categories on it (ranging from sport to cooking to conspiracy and a lot more) . i was thinking if its posible to add a infobox style "latest few articles within this category" (and all of its subcategorys) [currently the users do link their articles to the category with the [[Category:stuff]] thing] so a bit more specific than the latest changes Bverveen 16:13, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Image galleries
[edit]There is an image gallery at the bottom of Squash (fruit) but only 2 of the 4 images are displayed. What is wrong? Rmhermen 21:21, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- I see four. Maybe a bandwidth issue on your end? Browser timed out or some such thing? Dismas 21:31, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- Maybe on Wikipedia's end. I was using a DSL connection when I couldn't see them but now I'm using a 56K and seeing all four. Rmhermen 01:00, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
Question
[edit]I want to write a new entry about the Paramount Theater (Seattle) there is already a page about a like named place in Oakland. I believe the Seattle venue is significant, and the scene of many live albums that have been recorded there.[1] I want to be able to link some articles to this place. My question; how do I set up a disambiguation page so that a Wikipedia user can see both choices for "Paramont Theater" displayed, with out having to type in the specific location and the brackets? I await your guidance, dear veiwer. Hamster Sandwich 00:52, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Disambiguation Rmhermen 01:07, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- Here's the general idea: If you can positively identify one as the more likely to be searched, you can put that at the main article, and link to the other at the top with a {{otheruses}}, like, for example, heat. If they are both equal, set up a disambiguation page, at Paramount Theater, like at Because (with {{disambig}}) and link to both articles at titles like Paramount Theater (Seattle) and Paramount Theater (Oakland). Perhaps the desrciption at Wikipedia:Disambiguation will be a more full guideline, but that's about it I think. Dmcdevit·t 01:08, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- Well thanks Rmhermen and thank you Dmcdevit. I have another question for you specifically concerning a collaboration on an entry. You can help if your handy-dandy with adding pictures and whatnot. Please respond vis a vis my talk page. Thanks! Hamster Sandwich 01:17, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Clearing my user page of edits
[edit]Since I arrived here I've left my user page clear of text for the sole reason that the resulting red colour of my name makes it easier to spot in a sea of blue username links. Unfortunately someone made an inadvertent edit to my page, then cleared/erased it. Is there some way to clear that edit history so I can regain my red name once again? (I've tried editing my nickname to include <font> tags but that doesn't seem to apply anywhere other than signatures) --Hooperbloob 04:54, 13 August 2005 (UTC) (unhappily blue)
- So basically you just want it deleted I think. I just did it (needs an admin). If you ever have a ever have a userpage or subpage, just add {{db|per user request}} or something along those lines and an admin will come along and delete it for you. Dmcdevit·t 05:09, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- Woohoo! Thanks! --Hooperbloob 05:27, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- You should be aware that many people will take blue edits more seriously than red / IP edits, and assume they are long time editors as opposed to new arrivals. Elfguy 16:05, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- You could just put color coding in your sig if you want, of course. DES (talk) 16:25, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Infrared and Heat
[edit]Can you please tell me, is Infrared and heat the same thing.
- You could just read Infrared and Heat to find out. - Mgm|(talk) 08:52, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- The short answer is 'no'. The best place to ask factual questions is the Reference desk; here at the Help desk we mostly deal with questions about how to do things here on Wikipedia. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:00, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
DOCUMENTARY LETTER OF CREDIT
[edit]- To the poster of this header: Please read the instructions at the top of this page. - Mgm|(talk) 13:08, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
Case sensitive headings lead to duplicate entries
[edit]Yesterday we searched for "Synthetic biology" (actually by clicking a link to it, Synthetic biology), and found nothing; so we created a new entry for it.
Then we discovered that an entry already existed, "Synthetic Biology", with a capital "B".
Worse, the search engine is also case sensitive (that's ok) but gives no link to the heading(s) identical except for case (that's not ok).
This is really bad: it means that (1) every time I search for something, I have to try out all possible cases; and (2) every time I want to link to something, I have to include all possible links with case variations. CLEARLY THIS IS NOT GOOD.
Isn't this a WikiPedia bug? Is there a work-around or fix for this problem?
A good work-around ought to be that searching and clicking a link include on the target page "See also..." links to the headings with identical (or even similar) spellings but different cases. This would be similar to Google's typo suggestions.
Thanks much for any help on this, /r:b:
- The workaround is to create a redirect from one to the other. Elfguy 16:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Naming conventions. There's rules about how to name articles. And the existing article had the wrong capitalization. - Mgm|(talk) 16:50, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- And, I believe, you're incorrect in thinking that "search" is case sensitive. Article name searches (the "go" button) are usually case insensitive, see Wikipedia:Searching#Search_is_case-insensitive_only_for_the_first_word_of_the_entry, and article text searches (the "search" button) are always case insensitive. Links to articles are always case sensitive. I think changing the "creating a new page" page to display the results of a case insensitive search is a great idea. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:24, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Where to reply
[edit]I'm wondering if someone asked me a question on my talk page, where should I reply to him? In my talk page or in his? And if I asked a question to an user in his talk page, should I wait for a response in my talk page or watch his? CG 17:26, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
It depends. Some users reply on your talk, some on their's. Most who reply on their's say so on the top of the page. It is up to you which, but replying on the asker's is more common (and some feel) more polite. Father Howabout1 Talk to me! 17:28, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- Answering on the other user's talk page is more polite, but answering on your own may prevent fragmentation of a discussion. So it's really a question what you value most. - Mgm|(talk) 18:21, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
- There's also the option of putting a copy of your response on both pages. On their page because it's considered polite and they don't have to put your page on their watchlist to see if you've replied. And on yours if you want to be able to have a better record of the conversational flow. Dismas 22:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
hurrican house hotel
[edit]How to 1) rename an article 2) get a bias flag removed
[edit]I, and several others, of diverse political persuasions, have been trying to edit the article North American Conservatism so that the bias flag can be removed. We seem to all agree that the title is bad. I have suggested "The Conservative Movement in the United States in the early Twenty-first Century", but that is rather a mouthful. "Modern American Conservatism" has been suggested, but there are two problems with that, which also raise larger issues. First, "modern" is relative. What is modern today will be ancient someday. Second, the use of "American" for "United Statesian" is prejudicial to other countries in America -- but there is no word to replace it. --209.247.222.103 18:57, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- "Modern conservatism in the United States"; "Modern conservative politics in the United States"? Shimgray 18:59, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- There's a tab to move an article, if you are logged in. You can remove a NPOV tag if you correct the article so it is not NPOV anymore. You should check the talk page for that particular article before doing either, however. Elfguy 20:31, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
User:No space between sentences.Like this.
[edit]I came across this user some time ago but neglected to bookmark him as interesting.Anybody know who I'm talking about?Thanks, hydnjo talk 02:32, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Or should I be asking at WP:RD? hydnjo talk 02:37, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
ogg files
[edit]how do i listen to a .ogg file?
- See Wikipedia:Media help. You can download some good free players if yours doesn't play .ogg. Dmcdevit·t 04:18, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Some pictures do not show
[edit]I am sure that I am doing the right thing because most pictures do show but some don't and I don't know why - they seem to have uploaded successfully but do not appear on the page
Page in question is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Com%C4%83ne%C5%9Fti
indexed at Comanesti
- You have to be careful with the case, as the links are case-sensitive. So even though ".JPG" and ".jpg" mean the same thing, you haave to make sure you link it to the one where the image is saved. In this case, two of them were lowercase, so I fixed them. By the way, I think there are too many images there, and you may want to clean it up. Dmcdevit·t 06:51, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Is there someway of marking something that you think is wrong?
[edit]I've been looking at the articles on reflecting telescopes and some of the pages about the mirrors used in the Schmidt Cassegrains seem to contradict other pages. The Maksutov page says it's hyperbolic while the Schmidt page says its spherical. I'm pretty sure (but not certain) that the Schmidt page is right, but what I'd really like to do is mark it so someone who knows for certain can fix it. Is there anyway of doing that?
- You should probably put a note on the talk pages of the articles involved. If you do some research yourself and are sure of the answer, you can simply make the corerction yourself, with a proper edit summary, and perhaps a comment on the talk page. Notes on talk pages should normally be signed with four tildas, as i am about to do. DES (talk) 07:39, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Generally, the way to get other editor's attention it to leave a comment (just like one you have made here) on the appropriate talk pages (You can get to the talk pages by clicking on the "Discussion" tab, left of the "article tab" at the top of the article. Good luck! --Commander Keane 07:41, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Edit section link jumps around
[edit]In Madeleine Albright, the edit section link for the Personal information section jumps around and even gets overwritten by text in various screen resolutions and browser text sizes. It's probably due to the image on the right. Do we just have to live with this, or is there a work aorund? --Commander Keane 07:35, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
- Things look fine on my end. Could you give us a screenshot? - Mgm|(talk) 09:32, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
- Here you go, the edit section button moves around: here and here --Commander Keane 10:21, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
- That happens a lot to me. I just always figured it was some bug with the way Safari displayed the page. Sometimes I'll have two "edit" links right next to one another. I have noticed that it happens more often when two images are stacked right on top of one another because they're the first two lines of the article. So it'll look like:
- [[:File:foo1.jpg|blah|blah]]
- [[:File:foo2.jpg|blah|blah]]
- '''hello, world''' is a popular....
- I haven't paid that much attention to the when's and why's though. Dismas 21:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- That happens a lot to me. I just always figured it was some bug with the way Safari displayed the page. Sometimes I'll have two "edit" links right next to one another. I have noticed that it happens more often when two images are stacked right on top of one another because they're the first two lines of the article. So it'll look like:
- Here you go, the edit section button moves around: here and here --Commander Keane 10:21, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
psychokinesis reading
[edit]Hi,
I recently had a friend of mine who is gifted with psychokinesis tell me she had seen a stork carrying a baby and a rose opening/flowering. I have no idea what this symbolises and would be very grateful if you could shed some light for me.
Thank you
Emma
- The place for this question is the Reference desk, please place it there. Good luck with your query! --Commander Keane 07:44, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
- Psychokinesis (literally "mind-movement") or PK is the more commonly used term today for what in the past was known as telekinesis (literally "distant-movement"). It refers to the psi ability to influence the behavior of matter by mental intention (or possibly some other aspect of mental activity) alone.
- In other words, psychokinesis moves objects, I doubt such people can do readings. Either you misnamed their gift, or they fooled you. - Mgm|(talk) 09:36, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Either way, put your friend in touch with James Randi and she might share the million dollars with you. alteripse 16:13, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
my article on Fritz Belleville
[edit]Hello,
On August 12 I edited an article on Fritz Belleville for you. I mentioned quite clearly in the text that it was based on an article in [Trotskyana.net]. When I search your website for "Fritz Belleville" I get the following web page at Fritz_Belleville
Fritz Belleville From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
POSSIBLE COPYRIGHT VIOLATION If you have just labeled this page as a possible copyright infringement, please add a link to it on Wikipedia:Copyright problems#August 14.
The previous content of this page appears to infringe on the copyright of the text from the source(s) below: [Trotskyana.net]
This page is now listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Please do not edit this page for the moment. If you hold the copyright to this material, or if you have permission to use this material under the terms of our license, please indicate so on this page's talk page and under the article's listing on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Do not resubmit the material that was here before. It will be removed. This article will be restored if Wikipedia is found to have copyright permission. If you want to work on this article meanwhile, write a new article at the temporary subpage, and indicate that you have done so on this page's talk page. Unless the copyright status of the previous content is clarified, this page will be deleted one week after its listing. If a new article has been written, it will replace this message. Posting copyrighted material without the express permission of the copyright holder is a violation of applicable law and of our policy. Those who repeatedly post copyrighted material may be blocked from further editing. The original posting is still accessible for viewing through the history link on this page.
Raistlin 12:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
This page was last modified 12:05, 12 August 2005. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details). About Wikipedia Disclaimers.
Can you please tell me how to go about clarifying the copyright status?
Thanks,
Avner Falk <avner.falk@usa.net>
- Well, it depends what the copyright status is. You mention that the article was based on a particular web site. But do you own the copyright to that web site? That is, did you write the original site, and are you now releasing that text under license into Wikipedia? Notinasnaid 08:36, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- There's a difference between basing something of a text and copying it. Use the text to write an article but write it in your own words and format it like other wikipedia articles. - Mgm|(talk) 09:40, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
The Bible came from Arabia
[edit]Where/how to get book The Bible came form Arabia". I read this book many years ago. Was from public library in Johannesburg but now is stolen. I would appreciate if someone may help. I was going to write article for the discussion in out club.
Sincerely
Marek mijalnicki
- "The Bible came from Arabia", by Kamal Salibi; 1985 hardcover ISBN 0224028308, 1987 paperback ISBN 0330295195. Try following the ISBN links for book sources. Shimgray 15:59, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Main page, Featured article of the day, flag of India
[edit]I do not get the point of having Indian Flag on 14th of August in the featured article of the. When the featured article of 14th August should be somethign about Pakistan as 14 th August is Independence Day of PAKISTAN!!!
- Yes & no. It certainly would have been more reasonable to feature the Indian flag article on the 15th (India's Independence Day) than on the 14th. On the other hand, I don't think we necessarily need to feature a Pakistan article simply because it is August 14. — Nowhither 12:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- The articles featured on the Main Page do not have any connection implied or intended to the other sections, like anniversiaries and news. The articles are displayed simply because they have good enough quality. You can however try to influence which Featured articles that will be shown on the Main Page in the future at Wikipedia:Today's featured article. — Sverdrup 12:24, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Featuered Article 14th August
[edit]Yes I too agree that featured article of 14th august should be something about Pakistan
- Please use Wikipedia:Featured article candidates for discussions about the featured article. Elfguy 14:32, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Piston engines pictures
[edit]I prepared basic aviation subject to www.tayyareci.com web site for training purposeful.
Now, I am planning introduction of aircraft piston engines for same section at this site.
Therefore, I want to use biplane and radial engine pictures from Wikipedia.
I want permission biplane and radial engine pictures for use.
Sincerely
Ercan ÇETİNERLER
My e-mail address: ercancetinerler@ttnet.net.tr
- If you mean you want to use imges from Wikipedia, then you should click on the image and look at the copyright under each image. Elfguy 16:05, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Content in wikipedia is generally licensed under the GFDL, so anyone can use it if they give proper acknowledgement, which includes linking back to the source, provided that their content is also released under the GDFL.
- However, many images may be present under "fair use" or not have proper copyright tags on them or sorce information. Click on the image to be taken to the image page. there you will find information about the image status. if the image is released under the GFDL, you can use it if you comply with the license provisions. DES (talk) 16:10, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Staying logged in to Wikipedia
[edit]Round about once a month, my computer auto-logs me out of Wikipedia without notifying me, resulting in a few edits being listed under my IP number contribs instead of on my usual contribs (until I notice that this has happened). Is there (1) a way of getting these IP-contribs re-allocated to my usual contribs (I'm fairly sure there is, but I don't know how to do it), and (2) is there any way of stopping my computer from (I presume) auto-deleting the wiki cookies? - Thanks, MPF 18:02, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- No, and the cookie is just timing out because it has a fixed life time. Elfguy 20:07, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Is there any way of changing the life of the cookie? if there isn't that ought to be a preference, within reason. I have several times been logged out without knowing it while doing a long edit. If I have "add to watch list" checked the submission fails and all work is lost because an anon user can't add pages to a watchlist. ARRGH! DES (talk) 20:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- A possible workaround for that particular problem:
- Press the 'back' button on your browser. In my browser (Opera) the text box with all your article changes will still be there. My understanding is that this works for most browsers.
- Open a new browser window or tab. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org and log in as usual. This should reset your identity cookie.
- Go back to your original tab and save your edit. It should be saved under your username, added to your watchlist, and all is well with the world.
- Let me know if that works for you. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:21, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- A possible workaround for that particular problem:
- I tried that. for time-outs and other non-response by the wikipedia servers tha works fine. But when you are not logged in, but have tha "add this page to my watchlist" box checked, wikipedia takes you to a warning msg telling you that anon users are not allowed to add items to a watch lsit, and soemhow this break the chain so that when you use back you are taken to the unedited article, and your editing work is gone, and of course a logout is particualrly likely when you did a long edit with lots of work involved. This is particularly frustrating. DES (talk) 17:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- I agree with DES, there should be some way to handle this; I've been logged off many times, and most of the time I never notice when it happens. This is probably a big cause of edits being attributed with IP numbers instead of user names. TresÁrboles 17:25, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Logout seems to depend on the lenght of time simce you last viewed or refreshed a page, not since log-in, so a long time in mid-edit while checking sources or typing is a particularly likely time for it to happen. DES (talk) 17:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
WINNER OF EURO 450,000
[edit]Dear Sir/Madam
My name is Imran Ahmed who is the winner of EUROS= 450,000/= in your lottery named PREMIER WEB BONUS LOTTERY PROMOTION held by DE LOTTO NETHERLANDS INTERNATIONAL whos address is LANN VAN HOORNWIJCK 503 3589 RIJSWIJK AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS. with Email address is CMDeLotto@netscape.net and the claim manager is Dr. Richmond Berkly phone # 0031- 647988154 Fax # 0031-617424411.
REFERENCE # 35149 /337 - 5247 / LNI BATCH # 26371545 - LNI / 2004 TICKET # 54866235 CATEGORY " C "
The Claim manager Mr.Berkly have sent me the all WINNER CERTIFCATE and PAYMENT SLIP by email. now they sent again a STOP PAYMENT SLIP and asked me the send the Tex amount which is EURO 2500/= then my winning amount which is EURO 450,000/= will release by the instituation bank.
please let me know why they are not deducting the tax amount againt my winning amount. please reply as soon as possible my email address is info@qawwalgmn.com and oblige. thanks and best regards.
Imran Ahmed
- OK firstly we are an encyclopedia not a lottery. Having said that I can answer your question. The reason they are asking for the tax from you rather than deducting it from your winnings is almost certainly because they are trying to scam you. Do not send them any money! (See [2] and [3] (Sent by email as well)Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 19:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- In case you don't know the work "scam": they are trying to trick you, to steal the money. There is no prize, no lottery. They send the same winning e-mail to millions of people, to try to trick them all. I have been sent many such messages. Apparently I have won $1.5 million dollars in the British Lottery, for example. Several times over (each of my e-mail addresses won the same prize). Notinasnaid 20:51, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- By the way, the phone number you've listed is a mobile phone number and quite likely untraceable. Never send any money to receive a prize. I'm from the Netherlands and I can tell you right now that this lottery is not officially approved in the Netherlands and a scam as Therese noted already. - Mgm|(talk) 21:10, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
- I've emailed the poster at the given address to make them aware we've responded to their query and offered any additional help they may need. - Mgm|(talk) 21:19, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
- I already did that. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 21:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Oldest trick on the internet and works the same as the old "i will give you $50 if i may break two eggs on your head" . resulting in a mess on your head, the floor (the other egg) and without getting $50, since you only had one on the head. or in this case , you pay them and they wont pay you. Of course a legitimate lottery will either give the prize , or the prize with extra so you end up winning the prize once you payed tax. one other thing tax is payed by the winner to the state and by or to not the lottery. and finally if i estimate it right their talking about 0.5% tax , well i can asure you there is no country in the world that charges 0.5% tax on lottery winnings . by head its 50% in the netherlands on lottery winnings (thats why they give extra). also note there are only one (state owned) legitimate lottery in the Netherlands. .. of course the scam wouldn't work if they asked people to send them $225.000 , roflol .. there are zillions of these scams also quitte infamous the old "i am a rich man from xxx and i want to use your bank account to and send millions and you will get 10%. please send me so-and-so much so i can get things started" but less compressed :D Bverveen 21:29, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- there was a wave of this begin july , i think 5.5 million didnt get cought in my spam filter :D Bverveen 23:01, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- According to all the mail I receive, I win several lotteries every week, and have my eBay and PayPal accounts suspended several times per day. I also get fraud reports from accounts I never had in the first place. The best part was a mail alarming me that my PayPal account has been used from Europe! Duh. I live in Europe. — JIP | Talk 07:40, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
background image
[edit]is it posible to use the background image css tag either in a table or on a article ? Bverveen 22:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- I don't think so, but please link to the page that you wanted to do that on. JesseW 07:01, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Ok thanks , well i'd put the link on but its not on wikipedia but for a mediawiki . i searched a while and did found this interesting page http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/Cookbook/BackgroundImages which is a modified version of wiki. that does support it Bverveen 11:28, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Redirection
[edit]Why are some topics redirected, such as 20th century music which is redirected to 20th century classical music?. 20th centruy music includes many many other artists and classical is just one genre..this seem a little unfair. Anon
- I agree. Presumably, when it was done there was a good reason. But I can't think what it was. It's easy to edit though. I'd do it for you only I want to encorage you to contribute so here is what you need to do.
- Click on 20th century music
- Click on "redirected from 20th century music"
- You can now edit the redirect. You might wabt to change it to redirect to History of music. Or you might want to create a disambiguation page
Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 21:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- I decided to do the redirect, as it offended my common sense also. It now redirects to Timeline of trends in music (1990-1999). Hope that's better. JesseW 07:08, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
How to Redirect a Misspelling?
[edit]Sorry, your redirect page is hard to understand. The article, Chaim Halbertsam, is misspelled in the article heading but spelling correctly throughout the article. The correct spelling is: Chaim Halberstam. Thank you. Yoninah 21:48, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- I've moved the page to Chaim Halberstam for you, rather than creating a redirect. You might find Help:Renaming (moving) a page helpful in future. Shimgray 21:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Wanted: template for an arXiv citation
[edit]Hi, I and no doubt other editors of the math/physics pages would find it very helpful to have a citation template which is well suited for citing eprints on the arXiv. Right now I am using
*{{Web reference_author | Author= Burinskii, A.; and Kerr, R. P. | Title=Nonstationary Kerr Congruences | Work=arXiv eprint server | URL=http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9501012 | Date=January 13 | Year=1995}}
which comes out like
- Burinskii, A.; and Kerr, R. P. (January 13), "Nonstationary Kerr Congruences", arXiv eprint server
I'd prefer to give the date of the eprint itself (this information is easily obtained from the abstract page, the one in the URL above) rather than the date on which I downloaded the paper. So instead of "accessed on January 13, 1995" I'd prefer to see "version dated January 13, 1995".
TIA---CH (talk) 22:02, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Help fixing formatting
[edit]I recently created the article rolling hitch but have been unable to make it lay itself out nicely. Could someone more skilled at Wiki-markup have a look at it? Cheers. PeteVerdon 22:29, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Hm... a tough one that; I added
<br style="clear:both;" />
to stop the pitcures bumping into each other's sections, but it still looks rather awkward, because the text is so much shorter than the pictures it goes with. Perhaps the images could be re-arranged to show the steps horizontally, rather than vertically? In fact, I think I'll do that (you can always revert the images from their description pages). - IMSoP 22:49, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- Well, it's still not great, but I think it's a bit better... - IMSoP 23:34, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Difficulty in reverting a vandalized page?
[edit]The main page of Wikipedia in Afar Wikipedia in Afar has been vandalized, and whenever I try to find a non-vandalized version in the history, I am unable to do so. How would I go about solving this problem? Thank you.
--anon
It because the vandal vandalised the templates rather than the main page itself. It looks like the problem has been sorted. Although you might want to suggest that the main page and the templates that are on it are protected. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 22:56, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- I've mentioned this to Wikipedia-l; hopefully someone there should be able to have a look. (There seems to be pretty much no content on the wiki anywhere, that I can find... someone mass-deleted most of it recently) Shimgray 22:59, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
- There appear to be no active users on that wiki: http://aa.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&limit=500&days=2000 , so it's just a haven for vandals. There should be a rule that wikis which aren't properly utilised and maintained in a fairly timely manner should be closed (and if some Afar speakers want to restart it, they'd go through the usual process). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:02, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Unrealistic breast image
[edit]Dear Wikipedia,
I would like to address the issue of the image of 'a pair of breasts' found under the heading 'breast' in the Wikidpedia. It is just not realistic! It is an image of surgically altered breasts, and any woman and indeed any man who had been near a woman would tell u so. The shape and the way they sit is wrong - ask anybody and they will confirm this, should there be any doubt to you.
Therefore, to claim this as simply 'a pair of breasts' is to inaccurately portray what breasts actually look like, without silicone implants, and misinform anyone who needs to use the image as a reference. Women and young girls are already under huge pressure to change their body shape ; to include this image is to add to this pressure and the feelings of abnormality they have about their perfectly normal shape.
Please take this into account and change the picture for a one of natural breasts, in the name of accuracy if not of fairness.
Thank you for your consideration,
Louise
- When I read your concern I imagined that I'd see some monstrously large breasts that you might see in porn but I don't. It may be that you saw the page while it was vandalized. What I see now is no larger than maybe a C cup and I don't see any evidence of surgery. Vandals are just something we have to put up with on an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Dismas 00:05, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- My concern about the image is that it is tagged as GFDL, but I can't find an original source. I've tracked it back as far as fr:, but the actual creator isn't credited on the image page there: fr:File:Poitrine.jpg. If someone whose French isn't as rusty as mine could follow that up, it would be appreciated. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:29, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- My French is most likely worse than yours, but I beleive the comment on that image gives the source as the German Wikipedia (De:), however the current image on de:Weibliche Brüste is very different. The image was uploaded to fr on 13 November 2004, the version of the German article current on that date was the 19:30, 8. Nov 2004 version. That page has a different image on it, but it has unfortunately been deleted since that date, I can't find out any more than that as I don't have admin status on de (I'm not even a registered user, so this isn't suprising!).
- Ah, good catch! I was reading the de on the fr: image page as a preposition (of in English) rather than a reference to another wiki. That makes more sense. I fear we'll never find the missing breasts, then. I do wish that people would be more careful about attribution when they upload images.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:24, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- I've just looked at all the other language articles, the ones that currently have the image in question are cs: fr: and zh:. fr: cites de: as the source, cs: cites en: and zh: cites fr:...
- I've found the German log page, its only entry is that it was deleted on 8 March. The comment is beyond my German, but I think the second part is saying it was a candidate for deletion since 1 March. The German equivalent of WP:IFD de:Wikipedia:Löschkandidaten/Bilder entry is here. Most of this is beyond my knowledge of German, but I think the last comment about it is saying the liscence information is false. If this is the case, then we should probably delete the copy of the image on en and alert the other wikipedias that have local copies.
- When looking at the comments on that deletion listing that one of the users involved was Pjacobi - a name I recognise from the English WP. That being the case, I've put a note on User talk:Pjacobi bringing this to his attention - hopefully he can help with what happened to the image on de. Thryduulf 07:59, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Hard to decide. I can't even remember or check, whether it is actually the same image discussed here and at here, but I guess it is. It was uploaded by de:Benutzer:Roughneck who left in January (and in bad mood) and didn't gave an email. He himself wanted the image deleted. I also noted in the recent weeks, that it gets uploaded ever and ever again to different projects by newly created accounts and under different names. In summary I'd suggest avoiding to use it and evntually IFD it for unknown source. --Pjacobi 09:01, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- I've nominated it for deletion now. See WP:IFD#August 15. Thryduulf 22:48, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Hard to decide. I can't even remember or check, whether it is actually the same image discussed here and at here, but I guess it is. It was uploaded by de:Benutzer:Roughneck who left in January (and in bad mood) and didn't gave an email. He himself wanted the image deleted. I also noted in the recent weeks, that it gets uploaded ever and ever again to different projects by newly created accounts and under different names. In summary I'd suggest avoiding to use it and evntually IFD it for unknown source. --Pjacobi 09:01, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- Ah, good catch! I was reading the de on the fr: image page as a preposition (of in English) rather than a reference to another wiki. That makes more sense. I fear we'll never find the missing breasts, then. I do wish that people would be more careful about attribution when they upload images.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:24, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- To try and bypass this apparent dead-end, I found File:Breasts4.jpg in Category:Breasts on the commons and will change the article to use that image. It doesn't look to me like the breasts in that image are anything but natural, but I am a single bloke and so am not the best person to judge. Also, the image isn't quite as good as the one the original correspondent complained about, as that had one breast in profile with one viewed from the front, this one only has a frontal view. Thryduulf 01:08, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Good work. JesseW 07:13, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- My French is most likely worse than yours, but I beleive the comment on that image gives the source as the German Wikipedia (De:), however the current image on de:Weibliche Brüste is very different. The image was uploaded to fr on 13 November 2004, the version of the German article current on that date was the 19:30, 8. Nov 2004 version. That page has a different image on it, but it has unfortunately been deleted since that date, I can't find out any more than that as I don't have admin status on de (I'm not even a registered user, so this isn't suprising!).
Stub
[edit]What do I need to do to bring the Donabate page up from being a stub? Bolak77 01:22, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Looks like someone has already removed the stub tag. Dismas 05:00, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Article naming?
[edit]Hey all.
Being bored this evening, I wrote an article on Stars named after people. It's not in list format, as such - one section sort of is, the other isn't - and has quite a lot of discursive text. However, on poking around, it looks like for naming consistency with other articles this would best be at List of stars named after people. Any suggestions on what to do? The name does seem a little clumsy as it stands. Thanks... Shimgray 02:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
I'd go with the List of... one. Howabout1 Talk to me! 02:12, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- I agree, it should be "List of..." Dismas 04:51, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Hmm, that's interesting - someone moved it, and whilst I have the moved page on my watchlist, neither the new one nor the old one are showing up. Thanks for the advice. Shimgray 13:42, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
CSS code
[edit]How do I look at CSS code? For example, many of the templates use:
- class="Talk-Notice"
How can I see the contents of Talk-Notice? I've looked here and at Meta...
Thanks! -- Reinyday
- Found it after some searching. The relevant CSS block is at Common.css, referenced from (in the monobook skin) MediaWiki:Monobook.css. By the way, that file seems to be the collection of all such customized css. — Sverdrup 10:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- That's great! Thanks... -- Reinyday
Transferring Attributions?
[edit]I recently registered, but I've anonymously added to Wikipedia before. Is there any way to get my previous anonymous contributions attributed to my registered identity?
- There is a page for this, but it is not currently updated. See: Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit -- Reinyday, 15 August 2005
Auto selct search field
[edit]Why do we not when entering wikipedia main page, automatically get the marker in the search field? Now we have to click with the mouse in the search field before entering search phrase. Google has i.e. this feature.
- See Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts for a quicker way to get the cursor in the search box. Dismas 10:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
correction of a sentence
[edit]duty of the members
to see that all the students are participating in all the events
- I'm afraid I'm not able to help. You didn't give enough information for me to correct the sentence. Please write in full sentences and explain what the problem is. And don't forget to mention the article you want corrected (using correct capitalization). - Mgm|(talk) 09:35, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
Transwiki-ing
[edit]Hiya. I've been told on the peer review for the shoe polish page that there's a section in there (about how to make home made shoe polish) that should be transwikied to wikibooks. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to do that. I can't find a page that will tell me how to do it, either. Can anyone help out, or failing that, point me in the direction of instructions on how to do it. Thanks. Proto t c 11:50, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Transwiki. Copy the section in question there and leave a copy of the contribution history of the original aricle on the talk page and mention it originally came from the Wikipedia shoe polish article. - Mgm|(talk) 12:26, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- Copy the section I want moving? To the Wikipedia:Transwiki page? That doesn't seem right. It's just a list of articles. The problem is here that the whole article does not need moving, just this section. I tihnk I'm missing something. Proto t c 12:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- No, copy it to b:Transwiki:How to make home-made shoepolish. And make a note on the incoming books/modules section of the local (wikibooks) transwiki log. - Mgm|(talk) 13:08, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- OK, I just cut and pasted the section, and started a page on wikibooks called b:shoe polish with it. Uh ... was that wrong? Proto t c 14:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Nah, as long as you copied the wikipedia edit history to the talk page (did you?). I'm unfamiliar with the wikibooks naming conventions, but I do know the "Home-made shoe polish" header is superfluous. Like wikipedia, article titles are automatically generated. - Mgm|(talk) 15:57, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
WHAT IS THE FIRST STEP
[edit]- First step of what? You'll have to ask a more specific question to get a useful answer. - Mgm|(talk) 12:28, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- Admitting you have a problem? Dismas 12:35, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- You have already taken the first step: to edit a page. Now find the next. — Sverdrup 13:13, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
about olympics
[edit]when is the next olympic game going to be held and where is it goin to held in??
- 2006 Turin see Olympic Games#Locations of Modern Olympic Games. Alf 14:12, 15 August 2005 (UTC) (coorected - originally read wrong cloumn). Alf 14:15, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Actually 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy Elfguy 14:15, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- The next summer Olympics will be in Beijing, in 2008.
- After which is the unmentionable sporting event, in the hot part of the year between 2011 and 2013 [4]... Ojw 18:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Having Multi-Wiki-Citizenship.
[edit]Is there a way to link your multiple wiki accounts, for example wikipedia, wikebooks, wiki commons etc. Having multiple account for the same person in the same family of sites seems excessive. If that's what you want fine but can you link them? --dirtyliberal 15:30, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- You could use interwiki links to show people to your main userpage. Other then that, no. --Phroziac (talk) 15:32, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- This is an extremely common request/suggestion, but not as easy as it might sound. See meta:Single login and pages linked from there for a large muddle of previous discussion. - IMSoP 19:50, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
My entry was moved to my user page. Why?
[edit]How can I switch my entry that was moved to my userpage back to a normal entry?
- Might help to tell us what entry.. Elfguy 15:51, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Based on your userpage, User:Djgrothe, I think it was moved there because you wrote about yourself which is frowned about outside your userspace. If you think the article should remain, please take some time to read WP:BIO and make sure you source all evidence of your notability (why you belong in an encyclopedia). The best policy is to wait for someone else to write an article about you. - Mgm|(talk) 15:54, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks! User:Djgrothe
Conditional in template
[edit]I want to create a template for inclusion in a /* See also */ list. This will contain a list of all related articles and will be included in each of these articles.
I do not want to include the article in which the list is included.
How can I specifiy an article to exclude - is there an if-endif logic? (I know how the C preprocessor is used - I am a programmer).
Can I get the title of the current article or does this have to be specified in the exclusion item(s) passed to the template expander.
Thanks - Leonard G.(talk)16:06, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- I've never made a template before but you could look at the template used for the members of Pink Floyd as an example. The pages for the members have what you describe: David Gilmour, Roger Waters, etc. Dismas 00:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- The template syntax is described at m:Help:Template and there is no if-else ability (at least not yet). The Pink Floyd member pages generate the same wikicode for each member, but the link for the current page is inhibited (any wikilink on a page to the same page is not displayed as a link). I've seen some templates that basically do what you're asking (conditional output depending on parameters) but the techniques to do this are so obscure I'd recommend not doing it. It sounds like you're intending to create a navigational template. There are lots and lots of these, and I'm not aware of any that try to avoid listing the current article. If you'd like some help creating one, let me know on my talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:16, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- I'll go with a simple case for now, thanks, both answers have been helpful - Leonard G. 04:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Browser Problem? Virus?
[edit]Whenever I put my cursor over the bar containing my preferences at the top, it literally runs away from my cursor. How do I stop this?
- It’s a bug in Internet Explorer. Your choices are to live with it or to find another browser. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
subst:
[edit]What is the point in using the syntax {{subst:Template name}}? Couldn't we just use the forumla {{Template name}}? CG 16:28, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
- Usually, we do use {{Template name}}. Subst: expands the template in its current form and freezes it. It is also useful if the template doesn’t fit and needs to be customised, but then leaves the overhead of updating by hand if you ever change in the future. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:37, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Don't forget to "subst" templates when you use them on talk pages - it reduces server load, and prevents accidental blanking of the template (and yes, that is a "subst" version of Template:Subst). Zzyzx11 (Talk) 16:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Generally, we also use Subst on templates that are used on thousands of pages like Template:vfd. Because the template and each page are treated as seperate data, the server generates a cache of any pages which use that template. And so one change to the template will increase the server load because it will have to modify the entire cache again. Pages with "subst" templates are not stored in the cache because the code text already stored on the page. If you are interested in the technical details, please read m:Help:Template. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 16:57, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- In short: without subst, the template will be loaded every time you load the page. If you use subst: the text will from the template will be included. Changing the template after inclusion won't change the text on an article when using subst:.
- I migrated this conversation to Template talk:Subst. I'm so glad someone asked this, because I've been wondering the same thing. -- Reinyday, 05:34, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- For those wondering what "subst" means (as I was for quite a while) it is an abbreviation of "substitute". Thryduulf 19:05, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Incorrect Wikipedia Logo
[edit]The logo on the wikipedia encyclopedia entry page and the standard one on the top-left of every page are not the same. The Omega symbol (the first one below the missing jigsaw piece) on the top-left of every page has a little apostrophe before it (or it does on mine). The logo shown on the wikipedia encyclopedia entry page (here ) does not.
I'm also saving this question to the discussion page of the main wikipedia entry.
Thanks Mat 86.129.229.1 20:42, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Changing what fonts display on Wikipedia
[edit]How do I change what fonts Wikipedia pages appear in? For example, currently I think it's in Arial, but I would rather it be in a serif font so I can tell the difference between capital I's and lowercase L's. Hermione1980 22:02, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
- Change the setting in your skin. (see m:User style). - Mgm|(talk) 04:47, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- You can set a new skin in your preferences, changing all of wikipedia's layout and (perhaps) get a font you like. However, if you want to keep the layout and just change the fonts, you have to proceed via the link Mgm gave. — Sverdrup 21:07, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
PAL TV Standard
[edit]Can a TV set designed to work in PAL-M work in Spain that is PAL-B & G ?????? Lupis
- This is a factual question; please direct it to the reference desk. --Andy Janata 03:23, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Image tag for a photo I have taken
[edit]I am not clear on exactly how to tag a photo I have taken? I don't want to claim any copyright - just make it public domain. How do I make it public domain? I uploaded the image "Table Cape by dusk.jpg" (or maybe its Table cape at dusk) and I want to be able to link it to the article on "Wynyard." I understand the syntax but I presume its the tag issue that's preventing me from properly linking it (or even finding it when I punch it into the search bar)? Steve
- The tag wouldn't keep you from linking to it but spelling will. And the tag that you want is {{PD}} which will expand to:
{{PD}} Dismas 00:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
To tag an image as PD just type {{PD}} on the image desription page (I've done it for you. The image is File:Table Cape by dusk.JPG to add it to a page type [[File:Table Cape by dusk.JPG]] on the page. BTW to sign your username type ~~~~ Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 00:44, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- The image you uploaded is at "File:Table Cape by dusk.JPG". The JPG was in all caps, that's why you couldn't link it, capitalization is key. To put it in the article you want something like [[File:Table Cape by dusk.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Table Cape as seen at dusk]] which will expand to this:
Dismas 00:48, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- I think there is a better tag for pictures you took yourself. That is {{pd-self|date=May 2004}} , which expands to
![]() | I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. If this is not legally possible: |
|date=August 2005}} (Please note that this statement is an example and is not intended in this case to apply to any image on this page)
Notinasnaid 07:44, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
about set
[edit]how to prove that null set is a set of universal set?
- This is a factual question; please direct it to the reference desk. --Andy Janata 03:25, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
How to sign an article when the comp logs you out
[edit]I just wrote a new entry - Komagata Maru - while logged in, but by the time I saved the entry, the computer I was on had logged me out. I wanted the new entry to be recorded under my user name, but it only put up my IP number, although on the talk page for the IP address, I referred it to my user name. How can I fix this? Bruxism 03:08, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- This question is related to the Transferring Attributions? question asked above. --Andy Janata 03:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Using the wikipedia articles
[edit]Hi,
I've found some articles on wikipedia and I'd like to use them on my website.
Question
1. Are all the articles public domain or do I have to request for permission for every article I want to use?
2. I plan to use the original articles without any modification but do I have to maintain the original links as per the wikipedia website?
3. Do I have to link back to wikipedia?
4. What other resource boxes / disclamer do I have to put on my webpage having the article?
5. Anything else I should be aware of?
6. Any fast and efficient way to dowload a whole bunch of articles?
Johnson johnson.tee@gmail.com
- The place to start would be at Wikipedia:Copyrights. That page gives information about the GFDL (the licence under which all Wikipedia content is released) and how to reproduce and redistribute Wikipedia content. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:42, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- To answer 3:Yes, you have to link back to wikipedia and it's best to not use javascript in case the reader doesn't have it switched on. - Mgm|(talk) 04:50, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- 1. None of the articles are in the public domain. All are under the GNU Free Documentation License. Specific permission is not required, because permission is given by the license. As stated by TenOfAllTrades, see Wikipedia:Copyrights.
- 2. Removing links entails changing the articles, which creates derivative works. This is acceptable as long as you follow the terms of the GFDL for derivative works.
- 3. You have to follow the terms of the GFDL. Some have successfully fulfilled parts of the GFDL by using links. However, that is not the only way to follow the GFDL.
- 4. Again, no resource boxes or disclaimers are required. Follow the terms of the GFDL. These include showing the original copyright notice and indicating that the article is licensed under the GFDL. You must also include the text of the GFDL on your site, and link to it from each page that has GFDL content.
- 5. See Wikipedia:Copyrights.
- 6. Yes. See Wikipedia:Database dump. Superm401 | Talk 05:06, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- "None of the articles are in the public domain." Actually that is likely not quite true. An article is in the public domain if all copyright owners have placed it there. And surely somewhere, among the 600,000+ articles on here, is a single-editor article written by someone with a {{PD}} template on their user page. But I admit I'm mostly just being pedantic here; the fraction of Wikipedia articles that are public domain must be vanishingly small. — Nowhither 12:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Multi-Wiki-Citizenship
[edit]Is there a way to link your multiple wiki accounts, for example wikipedia, wikebooks, wiki commons etc. Having multiple account for the same person in the same family of sites seems excessive. If that's what you want fine but can you link them? --dirtyliberal 03:37, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- You already asked this above... --Andy Janata 03:43, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Sorry I didn't realize, when I first asked the question my quest wikipedia return with an error, I didn't realize it still went through. Basically the same error mentions 2 questions down. --dirtyliberal 04:08, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Pronunciation Fonts
[edit]Some of the pronunciation fonts are not showing up. is there some way to fix this.
Bobby --Captainrablack 04:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Download whatever font you're missing for your browser? - 131.211.210.17 07:33, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Why do I get an error if the edits in fact went through?
[edit]I get the following error both at work and at home:
Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request. To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia. An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts.
Even though I get that error, if I open another browser window and check my watchlist, the edits will have gone through. So why is this happening? It's happened at least 2-3 times tonight and has happened mulitiple times in the past. Thanks, Dismas 05:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- It seems to be a persistent server problem. It seems to save your edits immediately but hangs when it tries to reload the page. For me, it seems to happen more when I make an edit on a long article. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- So it's not just me then! Well that's good. Want to know something funny, I got the very same error when I posted the question about the error! Argh!! Dismas 05:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- So what I have been doing now is to have at least two browser windows open. Now when I make an edit on a page as big as this one, I click "Save page", then switch to the other browser window and click on the "my contributions" link to see if it was actually saved. If that edit appears at the top of that list, then I switch back to the first browser window and click "Stop". Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:20, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- It happens because the squid gives up waiting and displays an error message even though the apache is still executing the request. The obvious solution is to make saves faster, a software optimisation task which is ongoing. -- Tim Starling 05:42, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- I've had that happen to me lots of times. The worst was five or six times in a row. — JIP | Talk 08:09, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- There really needs to be another error message. On Livejournal, when you've submitted something, it's not possible to click the "submit" button again. It happens sometimes I get "no response from server" or some kinda message. Anyway, the message got posted (still talking about LJ) - and most important - I wasn't moved to another page. {Seas 17:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)}
- "MOST EDITS WILL FAIL - However, most edits pass through, so make sure you check the page before you try resubmitting" [5] "Read Speed SLOW (response time 11~20 secs). Write Speed REALLY SLOW (46~90)"
suggestion for a firefox extension
[edit]i wasn't sure where to post this...so i am starting here at the help desk.
there's a firefox extension called linky. it allows you to open all the links on a page (or selected area of a page) into new firefox tabs. what i'd like is to go to my watchlist and run something like that, but only open up URLs labeled as "Diff" - all the "Diff"s would open up into their own tabs. wouldn't it be nice to just open up all your watchlist Diffs into tabs, and then review them like that?
i don't know how to make such firefox extensions. i was hoping someone out there could make one for me.
it will probably help if you took a look at the linky extension: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/linky
thanks for your time, Kingturtle 05:17, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- I've written some scripts to do this. Look on Wikipedia:Tools and in my User:JesseW/monobook.js. Let me know if they don't make sense. JesseW 05:56, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- i'm not sure your tool does exactly what i want - which is taking linky and allowing me to limit it only to "Diff" links in my watchlist. i don't have the know-how to edit linky to do it, but i am positive it is possible to do. Kingturtle 04:21, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- One thing to watch out for: the watchlist only lists the most recent edit to each watched page. Thus, while it can be used as a comprehensive list of all watched pages that have been edited recently, it is not a comprehensive list of all recent edits to those pages. It seems to me that this makes your (otherwise good) idea a bit less worthwhile. Get your information from somewhere other than the watchlist, though, and it might become a very powerful and useful tool. — Nowhither 13:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
User page that is blatant advertising
[edit]User:Bala and User_talk:Bala are purely advertising. The user has not contributed anythitg usefull. I'd list it on votes for deletion, but it is a user page. What should be done?JeffAMcGee 06:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- List them for deletion anyway. Userpages need to have at the very least a tangent relation to wikipedia editing or the user themself as a person. Blatant advertising is neither of those. - 131.211.210.17 07:30, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
When was Wikipedia's first article created?
[edit]Does anyone know the creation date of Wikipedia's first article, according to the official Wikipedia database server's time, in UTC, with an accuracy of one minute? — JIP | Talk 07:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- No, it's been lost to the depths of time. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles -- Tim Starling 08:59, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for your help. I would like to know the date (in official server time, down to one minute) of the creation of an article, and the number of articles existing at that date, from as early as possible. — JIP | Talk 09:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Your best bet is probably the nostalgia Wikipedia - http://www.nostalgia.wikipedia.org Thryduulf 14:09, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- That's http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org without the www, it turns out. I found out from [6] that by March 30 2001, 1:37 PM PST, there were 3577 articles. That's the earliest reference I could find that has an article accuracy of one and a time accuracy of one minute. I guess I'll have to go with that. Thanks. — JIP | Talk 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Your best bet is probably the nostalgia Wikipedia - http://www.nostalgia.wikipedia.org Thryduulf 14:09, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for your help. I would like to know the date (in official server time, down to one minute) of the creation of an article, and the number of articles existing at that date, from as early as possible. — JIP | Talk 09:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Could someone check my monobook skin and tell me why the "changes since I last edited" and "purge tab" aren't showing up when the "edit section 0" does? Also, clicking my vfd tab tags the article, but fails to open additional screens for the nomination process and I'm not made aware of any popup blocks. Last time I checked, block tabs had no problem, so popups should be fine anyway. Can anyone enlighten me as to why things aren't working properly? I'm currently working with IE and unfortunately, that the browser I have most access to (so using Firefox would not be a solution to the problem). Thanks in advance. - Mgm|(talk) 09:15, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- I'd also like to know on what type of pages the tabs should show up. - Mgm|(talk) 09:47, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- The addPurgeTab() and addSinceTab() functions use a different version of addlilink() than do_blockip_stuff() and add_blocktab() do. (I'm not sure if they both use the same version, since I'm too lazy to look at the referenced user scripts.) You need to copy the other version of addlilink() in, and rename one or the other (both in the function declaration and where it's called).
I don't know why autovfd doesn't work in IE, but User talk:Korath/autovfd.js does warn you about it right at the top. —Cryptic (talk) 14:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- The addPurgeTab() and addSinceTab() functions use a different version of addlilink() than do_blockip_stuff() and add_blocktab() do. (I'm not sure if they both use the same version, since I'm too lazy to look at the referenced user scripts.) You need to copy the other version of addlilink() in, and rename one or the other (both in the function declaration and where it's called).
- Thanks, that was a lot of help to me. - Mgm|(talk) 10:47, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Change User name
[edit]Is there any way of changing your user name without having to create a new account.
Forbsey 18:32, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- You'll have to ask a developer to do it for you. — JIP | Talk 18:34, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Changing usernames. If you have less than 5,000 edits, a bureaucrat can do it for you. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:13, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
How do I apply a "stub" label to a short article?
[edit]I have written an initial treatment for Pidgin Signed English, but I know that it needs to be improved and/or expanded. However, I couldn't figure out how to label the article as a "stub".
Specifically, it should be a linguistic- or language-stub, but again, I can't figure out how to use those categories.
Thanks in advance, The Bearded One 18:42, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Write {{stub}} at the end of the article, before the categories. You can add a more descriptive label with, for example {{ling-stub}}. — JIP | Talk 18:53, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- I fixed the stub label. Thanks very much for your prompt aid. The Bearded One 18:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- In general, it is best not to use the generic {{stub}}. The list of approved stub types is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. Pick the most closely fitting type you can find. At the bottom of the article, add {{Foo-stub}} (replacing "Foo-stub" with the proper tempalte name from the list. In this case {{Ling-stub}}. DES (talk) 19:51, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Erroneous information about SanDisk Corp
[edit]It has come to our attention that information on your site about SanDisk is unfounded. I quote from the copyrighted information at the top "Sandisk produces some of the cheapest memory cards on the market, but this is not without a downside. The low-cost cards by SanDisk are physically flimsy, enough that they are notorious in the PDA community for breaking without reason." SanDisk is the market leader and have been producing quality cards for longer than anyone else. We offer tech support for all our products and there are countless stories and reports about the ruggedness and durability of our cards, due to the fact that we test every single one before shipment. We are requesting that this portion of the account about who we are be removed as it is slanted and opinionated, which can be misleading to our potential and current customers.
Thank you,
Ngosa Chungu nchungu@sandisk.com
- If you have corrections or a discussion about a particular article, please post a message on the discussion page for the article. The people who worked on the article aren't likely to read this Help Desk page. Notinasnaid 20:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Keep in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a vehicle for your advertising purposes. Having said that, if you can cite a reliable source that verifies your point of view, then you are welcome to change it yourself. I'm sure you can understand why we would be wary taking a company representative's word on his own product. Dmcdevit·t 20:03, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- You can edit the article or talk about it on the talk page. However, this isn't an ads site, and anyone can post on any article, so if someone wants to write that your product is crap, there's nothing preventing them to do so. Elfguy 20:58, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- ...Or at least has a cited source. And that cuts both ways. If a product is truly "notorious" for its failings, then it should be easy to cite a credible external source which says so; Wikipedia can legitimately report on that. By the same token, if Consumer Reports has described the product in glowing terms then it might be appropriate to mention that. Unsupported opinion should be excised from our articles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Stub tag removal
[edit]I was wondering what the proceedure is to remove the stub tag from an article that has been rewritten or expanded? I have expanded several articles that were marked with stub tags but I'm not sure if I should leave them there and let an admin do it, or take them off myself. Please see Krait for an example. Hamster Sandwich 19:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- If you think it's no longer a stub, then feel free to remove it - there's no "review process" in place. The article you've linked to certainly doesn't look like one any more. Shimgray 20:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- If you are reasonably confident that the article is no longer a stub, particularly because you just expanded it, simnply remove the tag yourself as part of the expanded edit, or as a later separate edit. No need for an admin. See WP:STUB if you are unsure what constitutes a stub. If the article is complete enough that a superficial google search is unlikely to help expand it, and if it has more than the 3 paragraphs / 10 sentances rule of thumb, just remove the stub. I have removed a number when doing stubsorting. DES (talk) 20:23, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks and thanks again! See you 'round! Hamster Sandwich 20:28, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
non-underlined links?
[edit]Hey all,
All I wanted to ask was: if it is possible to have wikipedia links non-underlined IE in articles and every other places. It might improve readibility. Because this resource is so large that there are alot of links here. That's why it decreases the readibility when reading big articles. Just try it please, I am sure you will like it!
Thanks, -anon
- If you register you can set this as a preference. Dismas 22:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Saw attach of the show screen fix
[edit]One of your people went on attach of the show and fixed a computer screen using magnets and a drill, when that segment ended they said there would be more information on the site for that show I went there and found nothing then enterd your site and I was wondering If I could get better instructions for that and if that would also work with a tv screen that needs to be magnetised. Thank you very much for this informaition.
- Thank you for your question. Please could you let us know which show, and a bit more about how you came to our web site? Notinasnaid 11:50, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
SAP
[edit]What does SAP stand for?
Creating an account
[edit]What are the advantages of registering and creating an account as opposed to remaining anon? Anon 99
Name Titles
[edit]Hello, We are having some problems with a database we use it is asking us for the abbreviations for some name titles. I have had a look on the internet but im still unsure on the answer. Below are the ones i have found and cannot answer.Hopefully you will be able to help TITLE- ABBREVIATION Baron- Baron Captain- Capt Chief- CEO/CMO Colonel-? Count-? Earl-? Honouree-? Major-? Marshall-? Mayor? Professor-Prof??
I hope you can help my email address is tash@goodform.info
Cheers Natasha
Systems Development
[edit]how can one prepare a brief paper describing how SSADM could be used in a company like the car company?
- You would start by becoming an expert on SSADM implementation and trends. You would then spend at least a few weeks, preferably a few months learning the business processes and industry trends of the car company. You would make yourself familiar with their current IT strategy, and the business direction. You should focus in particular on their current software methodology and its relation to SSADM. Do not come with a closed mind; you might find that their current methodologies are superior, or adequate, or that costs of change are not worthwhile. A car company must already have methodologies for creating critical, life supporting, software systems; be sure you understand this area and the special needs of software systems that can kill if they are wrong. If you really do establish that you can do better, establish outline costings and savings. Try very hard not to alienate the staff. Then you would be ready to produce such a paper. Experience in how to present consultancy at board level would be a must if your paper is to be taken seriously. Hope this helps. In future, please post factual questions on the Reference Desk; this page is really for questions about working with Wikipedia. Notinasnaid 13:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Transfering an entire article from an existing Website or creating a link in Wikipedia to the original article
[edit]I intend to post a biography of a relative into Wikipedia. A comprehensive article about my relative already exists on the Melbourne University Website.
I have obtained written (email) permission from the University to transfer the entire article from the University Website into Wikipedia and/or create a link from Wikipedia to the original article as long as acknowledgements to the source are made.
I am a new user. How do I start?
Help Please!!
--Max.Oliver 13:37, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- Is your relative a well known public figure? If not, we're not interested. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a personal web space. Elfguy 16:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- Read WP:BIO and see if this person fits the criteria. if not, don't bother.
- if yes, start a new article at the person's full name or most commonly known name.
- does the email specifically relase the content under the GFDL. If not, don't copy the info into the article. Insted write a new article in your own words, using facts from the webn site and any other reliable sources. You can include a link to the web site, to document your facts and provide further info.
- If the university has specifically released the info under the GFDL you can copy it into the article. Then put a source note on the talk page. Then edit the articel to conform to wikipedia style.
- Note that a GFDL release means that anyone is free to use the content, and anyone is free to edit the content. When the original source must be preserved as part of the history, there is no promise that the link will be retained, nor that the original source will be obvious without digging into the history of the page, or the history of the talk page. Be surte that the university understands all this.
- Be sure the final article follows Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)
- Good luck DES (talk) 16:52, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Astro Profile pages
[edit]Hello,
I would like to present an astrological profile for some of the famous people featuring on Wikipedia. It's my belief that it will be of great public interest.
Let's take Al Gore as an example.
I thought of adding a page called "Al Gore Astro Profile" for the interepretation of his natal chart. It will be done in plane English with little or no astrological jargon.
My questions are: 1. Is it ok with you? 2. Can I place a copyright message by which making use of the information requires my written approval? 3. Can I place a link to that page from Al Gore's primary page?
I'm an Astrology resercher and the inceptor of www.topsynergy.com.
Positively yours, --Midas touch 14:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- I think you might find objections to "3". There has been some controversy over astrological additions to subjects, and it would be as well to read some discussion pages about it. For question 2, absolutely not. You must sign over all rights to all text you contribute under a specific license, to Wikipedia. Notinasnaid 15:09, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- I'm sorry, this is not okay with some of the most important policies and even cornerstones of wikipedia.
- Read Wikipedia:Copyright: All material posted here must be free, in the sense that the user can use it in a multitude of ways, including copying, editing, printing and even selling the information.
- Also, No original research applies. You can't put your own thoughts and work into wikipedia; Every article consists of a collection of information, cited from works on the subject.
- What would be okay in Wikipedia would be an article about the various astrological profiles on a person, citing and discussing them. I'm not sure that deletionists and others would like to keep it in Wikipedia, though. (The debate of what is Encyclopedic and what is not).
- Regards, — Sverdrup 15:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- (Edit conflict) In short:
- No. See Wikipedia:No original research.
- No. See Wikipedia:Copyrights.
- is a moot point by then.
- Lupo 15:17, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
- (Edit conflict) In short:
- Until I'm allowed to make pages on everyone predicting their future based on the number of times I cough (which is just as valid as astrology) then no. Elfguy 16:13, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
what is wikipedia's relation to www.encyclopedia-online.info
[edit]http://www.encyclopedia-online.info/Main_Page looks like wikipedia and says
- Welcome to Wikipedia! We are building an open-content encyclopedia in many languages.
It is clearly NOT wikipedia. What is it? -- Chris Q 15:30, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
- This is exceedinly weird. The contents seem to be a 1:1 copy of Wikipedia, but when I tried to make a test edit to their Robert Fulton article, I got sent to [7], which is clearly a proprietary site for some commercial company, and has nothing to do with Robert Fulton. This "encyclopedia-online" seems to be some kind of hoax. — JIP | Talk 15:41, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- Many web sites mirror Wikipedia content, as listed here. This one however does a very bad job at it, and might be in trademark violation. Elfguy 15:58, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- It is a mirror of Wikipedia. There is an incomplete list of such sites at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. Anyone can make a copy of Wikipedia for personal or commercial use, as long as they follow the terms of our licence: the GFDL. This one doesn't seem to be complying fully with the GFDL, however, as the article histories and authorship info haven't been retained. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:01, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- The biggest problem I see with it is not having identical contents with Wikipedia, which I understand is allowed, but instead outright pretending to be Wikipedia. Not only is its appearance and layout an identical copy of Wikipedia, it outright says in plain English text that it is Wikipedia. IANAL, but this can't be legal, can it? — JIP | Talk 16:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- About half of the mirrors are in violation of our copyright in some way. For instance, many take the about, FAQ, etc. pages from the Wikipedia namespace and find and replace the word Wikipedia with their name, ending up garbled messages like "X is a trademark of Wikimedia and was founded by Jimmy Wales". Other than that though, ideally, a mirror should link to the Wikipedia main page, the Wikipedia source article (or the history revision it comes from) and the full text of the GFDL on each copied article. It must also release the content under GFDL again. There is a Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter that can be sent to mirrors to request compliance, though often it is impossible to find contact information, even through Alexa. This has never seemed to get much traction because (a) most Wikipedians have better things to do (ie, that encyclopedia thing) and (b) the Wikimedia Foundation andboard seems to regard this as very low priority, despite the copyright info. There doesn't seem to be much in it for us, we're already #1. Dmcdevit·t 18:16, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
- It surprises me how bad this problem is. After all, they're not just grabbing some text here & there; they are mirroring all of Wikipedia. That is a huge job, and, whil e they're doing it, I would think they might check to make sure they are doing it right. In any case, I would generally agree with the apparent WF stance that this is a minor thing. We're trying to get information out here; they are helping us. Now, if they DRM'ed the text, or pulled an SCO and started suing people, then we should get upset. One thing though: the trademark violations might be a problem. Typically, trademarks that are not defended are lost. I believe that is true in U.S. law, anyway. — Nowhither 21:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- I don't believe such a total a huge job at all; quite the contrary in fact. The database dump contains the entire article space, templaces, user and user talk, wikipedia etc. So if you install the database on your local mediawiki install you get all of that, even down to the main page. And, unless you change it, it all says "wikipedia" in a bunch of places. So it actually takes work to produce a mirror that doesn't look suspiciously like wikipedia. And as the static dump stuff is new (and I don't think it's finished) to host that content it's generally easiest (but clearly not wisest) to run mediawiki. Perhaps we should produce an additional cut-down database dump, which doesn't have the wikipedia, wikipedia talk, user, user talk and maybe some other namespaces, and which replaces the front page (which, as this mirror demonstrates, is mostly useless on a static page anyway, as it's full of time-sensitive template expansions) with a basic "this is a mirror of wikipedia" intro page. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:47, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
- Yes, I suppose you're right. I think the cut-down database is a good idea. Mirrors will be put up, and, hey, we're using the GFDL, so it's not like we can complain. Why not give people some help and make it easier to put up a mirror that is both correct (not saying "this is Wikipedia") and legal. — Nowhither 14:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- I don't believe such a total a huge job at all; quite the contrary in fact. The database dump contains the entire article space, templaces, user and user talk, wikipedia etc. So if you install the database on your local mediawiki install you get all of that, even down to the main page. And, unless you change it, it all says "wikipedia" in a bunch of places. So it actually takes work to produce a mirror that doesn't look suspiciously like wikipedia. And as the static dump stuff is new (and I don't think it's finished) to host that content it's generally easiest (but clearly not wisest) to run mediawiki. Perhaps we should produce an additional cut-down database dump, which doesn't have the wikipedia, wikipedia talk, user, user talk and maybe some other namespaces, and which replaces the front page (which, as this mirror demonstrates, is mostly useless on a static page anyway, as it's full of time-sensitive template expansions) with a basic "this is a mirror of wikipedia" intro page. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:47, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
- It surprises me how bad this problem is. After all, they're not just grabbing some text here & there; they are mirroring all of Wikipedia. That is a huge job, and, whil e they're doing it, I would think they might check to make sure they are doing it right. In any case, I would generally agree with the apparent WF stance that this is a minor thing. We're trying to get information out here; they are helping us. Now, if they DRM'ed the text, or pulled an SCO and started suing people, then we should get upset. One thing though: the trademark violations might be a problem. Typically, trademarks that are not defended are lost. I believe that is true in U.S. law, anyway. — Nowhither 21:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- About half of the mirrors are in violation of our copyright in some way. For instance, many take the about, FAQ, etc. pages from the Wikipedia namespace and find and replace the word Wikipedia with their name, ending up garbled messages like "X is a trademark of Wikimedia and was founded by Jimmy Wales". Other than that though, ideally, a mirror should link to the Wikipedia main page, the Wikipedia source article (or the history revision it comes from) and the full text of the GFDL on each copied article. It must also release the content under GFDL again. There is a Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter that can be sent to mirrors to request compliance, though often it is impossible to find contact information, even through Alexa. This has never seemed to get much traction because (a) most Wikipedians have better things to do (ie, that encyclopedia thing) and (b) the Wikimedia Foundation andboard seems to regard this as very low priority, despite the copyright info. There doesn't seem to be much in it for us, we're already #1. Dmcdevit·t 18:16, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
- The biggest problem I see with it is not having identical contents with Wikipedia, which I understand is allowed, but instead outright pretending to be Wikipedia. Not only is its appearance and layout an identical copy of Wikipedia, it outright says in plain English text that it is Wikipedia. IANAL, but this can't be legal, can it? — JIP | Talk 16:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
My main concern about this site is that it looks like Wikipedia but the article quality is much lower. For example http://www.encyclopedia-online.info/Theism has a matrix that would clearly not go undisputed on Wikipedia, as it seems to be a combination of POV and original research. -- Chris Q 10:08, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
- It's a copy of this version of the Theism article, by User:Sabbut. The "encyclopedia-online" site does a pretty shabby job of duplicating Wikipedia - there are the normal edit links in the proper places, but editing is not actually possible, as trying to save changes sends one to the [8] page. As noted above, history is not preserved - only the version they copied it from is mentioned. The search function is broken, as the search box doesn't do anything. Interwiki links are treated like normal article links, obviously becoming redlinks. Apparently they haven't grasped the concept of multiple language wikis. My impression of all this seems to be the first-ever pirate copy of Wikipedia. — JIP | Talk 14:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Editing of the articles is possible. I've changed a couple of the articles to read "Why not go to the real Wikipedia?" After getting redirected to the advertisement I'll go back and reload the page and my edits will have gone through. Dismas 15:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- OK, I stand corrected. I thought the advertising page meant that the HTTP POST requests were going there, not to the MediaWiki engine. Let's all now write "Newsflash! User:JIP wrong! Film at 11!" everywhere we can. We seem to be off to a good start already. — JIP | Talk 15:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Editing of the articles is possible. I've changed a couple of the articles to read "Why not go to the real Wikipedia?" After getting redirected to the advertisement I'll go back and reload the page and my edits will have gone through. Dismas 15:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
How to contact an article author?
[edit]I am trying to contact an author on behalf of an academic who is writing a book. He has found a particular image which he would like to use in his book but the image on Wikipedia is in the wrong resolution. He needs at least 300 dpi. The article is on the Chinese Empress Cixi and the author is Hardouin who has no email listed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cixi3.jpg How can we reach this person?
Thanks, George ces@fas.harvard.edu
- Try leaving a message on his talk page with contact information. He's certainly still active on the project, so should get it quickly. Shimgray 18:41, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
disambiguation link for redirected page
[edit]Hello, I wrote the article Theophano (Byzantine Empress). There is also article Theophano which is different person. This article redirects to Theophanu. I would like to add disambiguation link. However adding ((otheruses)) template add disambiguation link for Theophanu, not Theophano. I tried something like ((otheruses|Theophano (disambiguation))) but no difference. The brackets needs to be replaced. How can this be resolved?--Cigor 19:49, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- Off the top of my head, I would suggest just borrowing the raw wikicode from Template:Otheruses and pasting it in. Edit the link target to point to the correct disambiguation page, and you're done. Does anybody know if we have an actual template for this specific situation? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- I would just use {{for|the Byzantine ruler|Theophano (Byzantine Empress)}} which expands to this:
- I think that would work fine and you wouldn't have to create a seperate disambig page for just two people. Dismas 20:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- Thank you all for the advises!--Cigor 21:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- I think that would work fine and you wouldn't have to create a seperate disambig page for just two people. Dismas 20:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Database error
[edit]I have got this error message twice this evening when trying to access sulfur dioxide from links and once when I tried to acces the History page of the sulfur dioxide. How should I report it? Physchim62 19:58, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "File::loadFromDB". MySQL returned error "1146: Table 'commonswiki.image' doesn't exist (10.0.0.1)". Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide"
- General lag and edit errors are well known and occur frequently since the upgrade. Elfguy 20:49, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- Usually, just wait a couple of minutes and try again. It should clear up. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 20:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
search fails to disambiguate...
[edit]I was searching for an actor, Scott Patterson, and the search took me directly to an article about someone else with the same name. Then I looked at the page for Gilmore Girls, which the actor is in, and it had a link to a page for the actor. So if two different pages already exist, why does the search take you directly to a page for just one of them? Well, I put a link to the actor's page on the other guy's page, and then I started a disambiguation page, but search still takes you directly to the other guy's page. Is this just a matter of waiting for some kind of random reindexing of the site to take place, or what? How often does that happen? Or is there some other reason search isn't working right?
- Search is working fine - but, at a guess, you didn't actually search; this is a little confusing, but bear with me.
- There's two buttons there, "go" and "search"; if there's an article called Scott Patterson, "go" takes you directly to it; if there isn't, it redirects you to the search page. However, the way the page is set up, if you put the text in the search box and press enter, it treats this as you having pressed "go" not "search". (I keep getting caught out by this). I hope that makes some sense... Shimgray 22:04, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
- (edit conflict caught me, sorry for the double answer) It's not a bug, it's a feature. :) Seriously, if you want to search for Scott Patterson you can type it in the search box, on the left hand side of every page, and hit "search" instead of "go". That way it will actually search for the person you're looking for instead of going to the article named after them. What you did will work just fine. If we have 3 or more Scott Patterson articles, a disambiguation page will probably become necessary. Dismas 22:08, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
oh, duh... that makes perfect sense. thank you kindly, i'll try to remember in the future, if I can only train my pinky not to hit enter autonomically... Teknomage 01:53, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
repairs in space
[edit]how are repairs made in space without loosing the hand tools ?
- Sorry, this is a factual question which should be asked at the Reference desk. Thanks — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
HELP
[edit]--210.54.53.14 00:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)For school i have to find out about the spanish moving to the u.s.a. / England so i would like to either interveiw someone or get the answers off of you so could you point me to someone i can interview via the internet
- This page is for help with the site. Try here. Reference desk. -Goldom 話 貢献 00:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Another great resource is your teacher. Ask your teacher for resources. :) Kingturtle 00:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- This page is for help with the site. Try here. Reference desk. -Goldom 話 貢献 00:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Someone help fix a bit of a mess
[edit]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderdome
1) There used to be an article called Thunderdome about a communal house
2) Eventually, this text was replaced with information about the Thuderdome arena at UC Santa Barbara.
3) I moved Thunderdome to Thunderdome (arena)
4) I created a new Thunderdome page
5) I created Thunderdome (communal) where I copied the info from the history of the now Thunderdome (arena) page.
6) I'm not sure if this is the correct process, because now Thunderdome (communal) only has the most recent edit, and not the edit history, which can be found in the Thunderdome (arena) page.
7) I probably shouldn't have moved Thunderdome to Thunderdome (arena), but instead created a new page called Thunderdome (arena) and then copied the information about the arena from the Thunderdome page. However, this method would prevent the history of the Thunderdome arena from showing up in the Thunderdome (arena) page.
SOMEONE HELP FIX THIS! :) --Rc251 05:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- I think you just have to wait, and the new "communal" page will be deleted again, as it was the first time... I think the replacement followed a vote for deletion, and recreating something that was voted for deletion isn't encouraged. At least, that's what it says. I can't find an entry in a deletion log, so you might try contacting the user who marked it for deletion. I suspect, though I don't know, that a house with six people living there is not considered to be notable enough. The article should make it clear why it is more notable than any other communal house in the world. Notinasnaid 07:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Can a version of Wikipedia s/ware be downloaded for private use?
[edit]Hello,
I have a project in mind for my workmates involving microcontent and linking data together - a Knowledge database of faults and thier solutions. Is there a downloadable version of wikipedia ? Your software is absolutely fantastic, AND just what I need.
Is wikipedia similar to Tiddlywiki, developed independantly?
Thanks - Nick D
- You probably want the MediaWiki software Wikipedia is run with. - 131.211.210.12 10:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- MediaWiki is as far from Tiddlywiki you can get in terms of wiki software. MediaWiki runs large websites (like this one), and handles thousands of edits per minute. It uses a database and a frontend etc, but it's said that it's very easy to install and setup. (Wikipedia wouldn't run as a tiddlywiki -- you'd have to load in all of the website (hundreds of megabytes of text) as one file in one go.) — Sverdrup 14:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
submission question
[edit]I've noticed that television personalities such as Kevin Rose and Patrick Norton have Wiki's. I am an author and radio talk show co-host and was curious if I could submit a wiki about myself similar in format to the others I just mentioned and if there are volunteers that could help or if there is a template...
Thank you, --Carey934
- Articles in Wikipedia must be of encyclopedic value, so if you are a well known personality then writing a non-biased article is fine, if not then be ready to have your article mercilessly deleted. Elfguy 12:04, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Although there is no explicit policy against contributing an article about yourself, it is generally best to let someone else write it. If a person a genuinely notable and encyclopedia-worthy, then someone else will usually–eventually–notice and write an article for us. I would urge you to read the pages at Wikipedia:Autobiography and Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies for further guidance. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
User page crash
[edit]My user page seems to have crashed on my last edit - I now can't edit it to revert. Any suggestions? --Doc (?) 09:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC) OK - managed to revert it now - still no idea what happed though --Doc (?) 09:43, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Finding out why an article is in Cleanup
[edit]Hello
I am a newcomer and have just written an article on Jimmy Quinn, a famous Celtic footballer. I was prompted to do so by someone who pointed out that there was a reference to Quinn in an article on Celtic F.C. footballers but no corresponding article.
When I saved the article, it appeared almost at once in the cleanup section, but there was no indication what needed improving. (I can say with confidence that it is at least grammatically sound) I would be more than happy to edit the article to make it acceptable, but it is difficult to do so with no indication of where it falls short.
I did add some changes, including an internal link to the category "Celtic F.C. footballers" but this comes up red in the article, even though I copied it from a Wikipedia page with that heading, one that contained other links which do work.
As I say, I am a complete newcomer, and I may well be overlooking some basic convention - but how do I find out what it is?
yours,
John F Ward 10:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi, John. The 'cleanup' tag is nothing personal. But Wikipedia has a certain style that articles should conform to. The clean-up tag invites other users to contribute to the article you created and help it conform to that style. I suggest you look at the style guide WP:MOS - or take a close look at other articles (featured ones from the main page will provide particularly good examples). You'll soon pick up how to format things. Hoep that helps. --Doc (?) 10:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Just to get you started... look at other articles. They don't have a separate paragraph for the title. They start with an introductory paragraph. Normally the entry name is defined in the first sentence, and would be in bold. It's a nice piece of writing, but probably not completely encyclopedic in that it should reflect a neutral point of view. This is likely to soften or remove some of the value judgements, for example, and focus on achievements and notability. But don't think you're being picked on, or expected to produce a perfect article first time: Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. Notinasnaid 12:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- I'm sure the placement of the cleanup tag was done manually by some just right after you saved it. You can click on the history tab in the article to trace down their username and leave a note for them and ask them personally why they placed the tag. - Mgm|(talk) 16:20, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
Vandalism?
[edit]Hello, can someone look at T. Fox, Launch Magazine, ANL Systemand Wiener's. I'm pretty sure they're all nonsense, but can I speedy the lot, and if so with what template? Or, if it should be Vfd, how do I list them all together? Thanks - PubLife 12:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Never mind, someone else found it and sent it where it belongs. PubLife 13:21, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
trying to find the author of the article on mercury, element
[edit]Hello there! I'm trying to find the name of the main author of the aricle on mercury, the element. I could not find a name of one author. Anybody know what to do? I you do, I would be eternally greatfull if somebody dropped me a line at mariug@bio.uio.no
Respectfully Marius Gudbrandsen
- Wikipedia articles are written collaboratively, by many authors--there isn't one single one. You can find out who wrote what by going to Mercury (element) and clicking the tab that says "history". If you're interested in citing the article, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Best wishes, Meelar (talk) 14:08, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
- Marius, we get this question quite a bit so we put the answer at the top of the page. We're trying to figure out a way for people to see this easier and therefore not ask it again and again. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything, but if you would explain why you asked it would help us out greatly. Thanks, Dismas 14:21, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
what is mimo
[edit]advanced toc editing
[edit]I saw somewhere a command to make the toc not displace text (so that text would flow around it) but cannot find it again - where can I find a comprehensive list of toc commands? Thanks, Trollderella 16:35, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Maybe this is what you were looking for: Wikipedia:TOC ? --Dismas 16:39, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Thank you! That's it! Trollderella 16:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
I planned to do an article on 'incongruent counterparts', which was noted on the Philosophy project as an unwritten article. Now I've noticed that there is a disambiguation page on chirals (one of a number of names for incongruent counterparts), pointing to: Chirality (mathematics),Chirality (physics), and Chirality (chemistry).
I had two plans:
- A general account of incongruent counterparts.
- The role incongruent counterparts have played in philosophy of space.
The second one is fine: a new article on Chirality (philosophy). However, I'm not sure the first is redundant. First, none of the articles on chirality describe incongruent counterparts in a discipline-neutral way. Second, 'Chirality (mathematics)' is the only one that goes into any depth about what they are (rather than how they are used/relevant), but this is written for the mathematician and not very useful to, for example, the philosophy reader.
Is the following advisable? - Creating a new 'Chirality' page that is not a disambiguation page but rather an article that describes incongruent counterparts in a discipline-neutral way (there is indeed an article worth of material on this alone) and includes a short paragraph, or sentence, on there use in physics, mathematics, chemistry, and philosophy, with a link to the main article in each area. Secondly, is there, or where can I find, any conventions governing the style of such a page (i.e. a page that is not a disambuiguation page, but is nonetheless the only way to find, for example, 'Chirality (physics)')? --Dast 17:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Chirality is already a disambiguation page. I have no idea what "incongruent counterparts" are or if they should be related or simply treated separately. Rmhermen 20:40, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
You seem to have misread what I wrote: chirals is another name for incongruent counterparts and I'm proposing a page that is not a disambiguation page to replace the existing 'Chirality' page, which is a disambiguation page. I am in a genuine quandrary; I'm not ready to go ahead with my proposal until I have some advice or discussion on it. Is there somewhere else where I should ask this question? --Dast 00:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- The chirality page needs to serve the purpose of a disambiguation page. That does not mean that it cannot contain small amounts of text identifying each item. Perhaps you should start by adding an article on incongruent counterparts and linking it from the chirality page. Rmhermen 03:32, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. Thanks. --Dast 10:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Man Made Beach
[edit]Can you tell me about the Man Made Beach there? Seen Pictures on Internet-would love to Visit.
- First of all, this page is for questions about the Wikipedia. Please use the Wikipedia:Reference desk for factual questions. Secondly, you'll have to be more specific about which beach you're referring to. There are many man made beaches throughout the world. Dismas 18:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Addis
[edit]On Addis Ababa there is a box at the bottom pointing to other divisions of Ethiopia - editing the page does not allow me to edit this box - how do I get to it? Thanks, Trollderella 18:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- You'll have to edit the template. Click on the edit link at the top of the page, don't edit anything, look below the "Save page, show preview, show changes" buttons and you'll see the templates listed, choose the template you want to edit and you'll be taken to the template's page. Dismas 18:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Thank you! Trollderella 18:53, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Hybrid offense
[edit]When I read articles, Many times I saw 'hybrid offense'. Unfortunately I don't know what 'hybrid offense' is. Could you explain what 'hybrid offense' is?
- I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's when someone posts a message twice by accident. The second, redundant message is the hybrid. This isn't a big offense; only an annoying one. Not to worry. Paul Klenk 20:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Dude, don't bite the newbies.... see Hybrid offence. Dismas 20:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
air conditioner accidents
[edit]I would appreciate learning of statistics that show (a) how many poorly secured air conditioners fall out of windows and injure or kill passersby each year in the U.S.
I would also like an estimate of the insurance costs.
Finally, I estimate that one-piece units -- unsleeved with accordian-type wings on each side -- have a higher accident rate than sleeve type air conditioners.
Mark Leeds
Finding some actuarial tables concerning accidental deaths might be a place to start. Hamster Sandwich 21:06, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Please go to the reference desk. Thanks very much! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 22:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Are technical articles appropriate?
[edit]I am a grad student and when I am researching, if there is a question to which I do not find an article on wikipedia, I like to try to figure out the answer and create an article. However, this usually results in poorly worded and incomplete articles about obscure subjects (MV-Algebra). Is this appropriate? Do I then need to make redirect pages for alternate spellings and capitalizations? Also, if I am told to expand the article, and I do so, is that enough, and may I remove their tag, or should I let it be removed by another party?Smmurphy 22:28, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- You are encouraged to create articles on factual topics. A notice that an article is a stub doesn't mean that you are required to expand it, it's just a notice that anyone who feels like it should contribute to it. Elfguy 23:01, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Another point is that you can remove the stub tag if you have expanded the article beyond certain boundries. I had the same question in the past few days, and the advice I was given was, to wit "if the article encompasses more than ten sentences or three paragraphs, it is probably ok to remove the tag". There is hard and fast rule that applies here, but I'm sorry I can't direct you to it. See you'round! Hamster Sandwich 23:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Let me ask a bit differently. If I create an article about a random professor, it may be deleted if he isn't quite worthy of an article. However, if I write an article about some sort of mathematicle object of theory he made or contributed to, it wouldn't be a fan page, but would it belong? If the article's audiance (mathematicians) would almost never come to wikipedia to learn about that topic, is the article then unnecessary? Smmurphy 23:13, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- The main criterion is "is it verifyable?". So as long as it's published somewhere, (where we can check) it can and should go in. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 23:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Articles on technical subjects of all kinds are quite welcome, but please note Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. In particular, it should not be assumed that articles will be read only by a very limited audience. While articles containing only very technical information are okay, they should be expanded to be comprehensible to a general audience as soon as possible. ‣ᓛᖁ
ᑐ 23:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
- Articles on technical subjects of all kinds are quite welcome, but please note Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. In particular, it should not be assumed that articles will be read only by a very limited audience. While articles containing only very technical information are okay, they should be expanded to be comprehensible to a general audience as soon as possible. ‣ᓛᖁ
- You are encouraged to contribute articles on just about any topic that you know something about and lots of other people might want to learn about. You said, "... this usually results in poorly worded and incomplete articles ...." The most important quality of a good article is accuracy. Poorly written articles can be improved by others. You said, "Do I then need to make redirect pages for alternate spellings and capitalizations?" That is a good idea. But you are not required to so this. You said, "Also, if I am told to expand the article ...." You should not be told to do anything. If someone thinks an article needs expansion, then you could do it, or someone else could do it. Concerning what sorts of mathematics articles should be written and how they should be written, I suggest you go look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics. The talk page for this project is a good place to discuss any issues relating to mathematics articles. — Nowhither 00:04, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- Please do understand the difference between a stub and a substub though. If you decide to write an article make sure there's at least 3 or 4 lines or a paragraph of text to go with it. Otherwise it might be better to include said info into a bigger article that already exists. - Mgm|(talk) 04:58, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia Musicians
[edit]Hello, i was interested in whether or not there is a Wikipedian Musician community/list. if 1) yes, how may i find/contribute it? 2) if not, how would i possibly create a directory of Wikipedia musicians, and 3) would this be allowed? --Raddicks 00:22, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- Isn't there a page on Wikipedia:Wikipedians sorted by their interests? I'm sure musicians are among those interests listed. - Mgm|(talk) 05:00, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
- There is the Meta:Wikipedians_by_musical_instruments, which has a rather disappointing number of entries (one) -- Chris Q 09:24, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
- Take a look at Category:User sax and Category:User piano, users who play intruments. --Commander Keane 09:46, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Music will also have some names of users with music interests. Rmhermen 13:00, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
Why does my watchlist fail to show articles that were edited 1 month before current date?
[edit]When I select 'Show all', my watchlist only lists articles that were edited within the last month.
On 16 Aug, it only showed articles edited between 18 Jul and 16 Aug. When I select 'display and edit the complete list', the complete list included articles edited before 18 July. The list only had 174 pages.
Today (19 Aug), it only shows articles edited between 22 Jul and 19 Aug. When I select 'display and edit the complete list', the complete list includes articles edited before 19 Aug. The list only has 81 pages.
Am I the only one experiencing this problem? How do I fix it? Bobblewik 13:02, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
daily articles
[edit]I can lose track of what comes in each day if I am not carefully watching. However,it seems that I have not received your daily article in days. Are you having problems. I just checked my spam, but not wiki in there.
- The featured article director, User:Raul654, will probably know more about this if there is a problem. I suggest you leave a note on his talk page. If that doesn't help you should contact whoever is sending the emails at the moment. - Mgm|(talk) 18:13, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
building a open pit mine.
[edit]I need too build an open pit mine .its for a school project can u please tell me how i can build one and the materials i need to build it w
- Lets see, big trucks, tons of people, millions of dollars? Or maybe ask on Wikipedia:Reference desk they may know. Elfguy 17:03, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
vandalism and other unpleasantries
[edit]This is my first time here. The link I clicked brought me to a page stating I have new messages. These seem to mostly consist of allegations of vandalism on your site, as well other heated topics. I don't share my laptop with anyone, and am not part of any network. Does this mean someone else is using my internet account? How do I fix this? Thank you for your help. Sincerely, Mrs. D.Beville
- Depending on your ISP, your ISP may use a shared proxy for all of its cutomers (if you have a dynamic IP or something likewise). Some of these may be AOL, NTL, Comcast (residential), etc. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- The writer was 207.200.116.11, which is an AOL proxy server... Shimgray 18:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- Although you don't share your computer, IP addresses are shared (this doesn't mean anyone is using your account, it's just how the internet works). The best way to avoid getting other people's messages is to create a wikipedia account :) MyNameIsClare talk 16:46, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Geting a line below a 2nd level headline
[edit]Hi there,
I'd like to have fonts in a article like this:
/removed
But, I'd like to have a line below a 2rd level headline, like this:
/removed
(removed parts that messed up the rest of the page... --Dijxtra 07:43, 20 August 2005 (UTC))
Is that possible? :-)
--Dijxtra 16:57, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- It's possible by using ----- but its NOT recommended so the articles stay consistant. Elfguy 17:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- How does the line damage consistency? --Dijxtra 17:26, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- Because all of the other articles on Wikipedia do not use that style. Therefore an article that did would be inconsistent with the rest. Uniformity of style makes Wikipedia look like a single encyclopedia instead of a collection of webpages. — mendel ☎ 17:35, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
- On the other hand, if what you're asking is for all level-2 headings to display a line, but only for you, you can put
h2 { border-bottom: 1px solid #aaa; }
into User:Dijxtra/Monobook.css. —Cryptic (talk) 17:39, 19 August 2005 (UTC)- You seem to have missed a </code> tag. It was breaking the rest of the page; I fixed it. --Andy Janata 19:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- On the other hand, if what you're asking is for all level-2 headings to display a line, but only for you, you can put
- Because all of the other articles on Wikipedia do not use that style. Therefore an article that did would be inconsistent with the rest. Uniformity of style makes Wikipedia look like a single encyclopedia instead of a collection of webpages. — mendel ☎ 17:35, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
- How does the line damage consistency? --Dijxtra 17:26, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Linking
[edit]I am insterested in link the Wikipedia pages related to spyware on my employers web site. What are the rules/guidelines for this?
I have tried to find the information on the site but have been unsucessful.
Thanks in advance for your help.
- Could you describe more specifically what would link to what, and explain the purpose for doing this? Thanks. Paul Klenk 17:47, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- No description is necessary. Feel free to link to any page on Wikipedia, in any way you wish. Copying our material is a different issue that is explained at Wikipedia:Copyright.--Superm401 | Talk 23:15, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
Using GFDL photos in non-WP material
[edit]I just got this question about a photo that I posted here under GFDL:
- I want to use your picture of San Jose Downtown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SanJoseDowntownIMG016elf_wb.jpg for a project about the history of micro-electronics in Germany. How can I handle it.
I've looked at the FAQ and at the GFDL page and at Citing Wikipedia and a few other pages, but everything is really geared towards text, not towards images. Anyone know of any useful/helpful info on how someone would go about doing this properly? Or have suggestions? Also--I believe that under GFDL I also still retain the rights to the image on my own, so I could just give independent approval, right? Although I'd prefer to give credit via Wikipedia. Thanks. Elf | Talk 18:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- When you uploaded it, you licensed it under the GFDL, so tell him he can use it any way he wants as long has the complies with the terms stated in the GFDL? The GFDL applies to basically anything, not just text. GregAsche 06:01, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
- Copyright about other compatible licenses some images are released under is usually found on their image description page. - Mgm|(talk) 06:24, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
How to track how many hits/day an article gets
[edit]For the articles I have edited, I am curious to know how many hits they get per day. Is there a way to do this? --Levittating 18:51, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- I would love to see stats on most-hit pages. Paul Klenk 19:20, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
- The database does keep some very, very limited hit records, but these are prone to intermittent wiping, and I'm not sure how complete they are or exactly what they measure. The current "most popular" are at User:Dcoetzee/List of Wikipedia articles with at least 1000 hits. Shimgray 19:55, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
articles that cannot be edited
[edit]How do you request changes to a page you cannot edit? I see a page that contains information that is not in the "neutral" spirit of the Wikipedia. I clicked the edit button, but I only have access to the references section of the page. I looked through the FAQ and didn't find anything that addresses this specifically: its more about having problems with other users, not about having issues with the opinions expressed in source material (in this case a book). I couldn't figure out how to search past questions - sorry.
- Try going to the edit button at the top of the page ("edit this page") which will allow youtoedit the entire page. It is likely you were clicking on the bracketted "[edit]" links in each section, which anly allow you to edit that particualr section. Dmcdevit·t 06:25, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
disambiguation
[edit]If you are trying to get to the film 'Madagascar', 2005 and you search for madagascar, you are taken to a page about the country Madagascar. Should there be a disambiguation page, and, if so, how are they set up? Thelb4 08:17, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
- There is already a link at the top of Madagascar (country) to disabiguate. The main article is kept for the country because that is the overwhelmingly more common meaning of the title. Dmcdevit·t 08:32, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
- If you are interested in disambiguation pages, even though one is not needed in the Madagascar case, you could look at Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). --Commander Keane 14:09, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
didn't see that last time Thelb4 19:04, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
homepage
[edit]Please read the top of the page and be detailed in asking a question. Using full sentences would be a good start in getting help. - Mgm|(talk) 14:12, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
Linking to image
[edit]I have uploaded an image (Platypus_spur.jpg) and wanted to link it to the section on Platypus venom. I am unsure if I have done this correctly can you advise?
- No prob, the image you had, had .JPG instead of .jpg as it's ending, the link you put to it was right except for that, I've made it into a 'thumb' and given it a name "Platypus venom", but you may wish to smarten that up to something more descriptive, as I am by no means any expert on the Platypus. Alf 12:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
the equi-marginal utility
[edit]Whoa, man. Pretty heavy stuff, there. Chill out. — JIP | Talk 15:18, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
1. what did you think of the solution to the mystery?
Links at the Bottom of Pages
[edit]Just browsing through some of the health links I can find links to either public domain content or licensed content. They don't seem appropriate - shouldn't the original be linked to instead?
One example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_depression
The link to Mental Health Matters.
- Not really. We'll link to anything that's accessible and useful to readers. Superm401 | Talk 00:08, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
- The only thing we need to worry about with external links is that they don't break copyright law. But since we're not hosting the material ourselves it doesn't need to be GFDL or PD licensed. That's only needed for stuff ON Wikipedia. - Mgm|(talk) 07:07, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
Wikisoloution?
[edit]Hello,
I was wondeing if Wiki will start a new project which will be similar to Google Answers.
It could have endless amount of problems with the solutions.
IE. How do you find the square root of something?
Then someone could answer it.
Is there any furtue for this type of project?
- Erm, try the Reference Desk? Bovlb 19:59:28, 2005-08-20 (UTC)
I don't know what you think this is, but you are at an internet encyclopedia. We are not related to a phone company in any way. Howabout1 Talk to me! 21:35, August 20, 2005 (UTC)