:Lyrics are usually copyrighted, and so cannot be included in Wikipedia. Please see [[WP:COPY]]. ''[[User:Hersfold|Hersfold]]'' <sup>([[User_Talk:Hersfold|talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/Hersfold|work]])</sup> 19:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
:Lyrics are usually copyrighted, and so cannot be included in Wikipedia. Please see [[WP:COPY]]. ''[[User:Hersfold|Hersfold]]'' <sup>([[User_Talk:Hersfold|talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/Hersfold|work]])</sup> 19:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I have been trying to find some record of my father. He was a WWW 1 vet. I have his regt. # 3187588, his name was Emereth p. Mackay. I have searched the archives and keep coming uo empty handed. Could you please advise me how i cam broaden my search. Thank you. Sanrda MacKay[[User:24.89.236.201|24.89.236.201]] 20:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
I recently installed Vista, everything was going fine for a few days and suddently, out of the blue,
IE can not load any page on Wikipedia. So i shut down IE, reload and scince then no images will appear on Wiki.
Any Suggestions? KoalaMeatPie00:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps images are disabled in IE? (Assuming you're using IE 7 because you said that you installed Vista:) Go to Tools → Internet Options. Then click on the "Advanced" tab. About half way down or so should be a "Show pictures" checkbox. Make sure that it is checked, and press OK twice. If this doesn't solve the problem, try clearing your cache (Ctrl-F5 in IE). If that still doesn't help, feel free to ask again (possibly with more information) here or on my talk page. —METS501 (talk)04:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Type the name of the page you wish to create into the search box in the sidebar at the left of your screen. If it is to be in the article namespace, it doesn't need a prefix. But if it is in another namespace, like the user namespace, it needs to be preceded by the name of the namespace followed by a colon. For example to create a page called "How to create a page" in the Wikipedia namespace, type (without the quotes) "Wikipedia:How to create a page".
If the page doesn't already exist, Wikipedia will give you the option of creating the page. Read the screen carefully, and follow the directions.
Another way to create a page is to click on a red link. For example, if your name is in red at the top of your screen, click on it, and start editing in the edit box provided. (You may have to scroll down a little to see the edit box).
I hope this helps, and if you have any further questions, please feel free to ask away.
It was Norton 360 on Steroids. I asked their help desk after reading the article on here saying it had compatibility issues with IE 7. Half the pages wouldn't load at all and cut off my internet. KoalaMeatPie20:30, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think the best answer to that question would be a matter of expanding. It helps sort articles in terms of the amount of work that still need to be done on them. Just my opinion. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ)02:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Assessment is valuable as an outside party can take a look at an article and identify problematic parts, which helps those who are involved in the article clean it up. Everyone gets a little too close to their work sometimes, so it helps to have an extra set of eyes point out the obvious flaws we may overlook. -- Kesh03:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It also gives me a good thing to look at when I go to a relevant category to work out what article to work on next. I hate looking at articles which are better than what I can improve when I am trying to find something to work on (not that that happens very often).Garrie05:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
People are more likely to work on things if they have a specific rating of how much they've done and how much is left to do in a category; assessment helps that, I think. Plus it helps decide which articles are ready for a CD selection or the like. —Dark•Shikari[T]12:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some people might be able to recognize more problems than they know how to fix, or they can recognize problems faster than they can fix them. They can still help by listing the problems they recognize in a way that allows the (fewer) people who know how to fix the problems to avoid having to look for them. Pointing out problems makes them more obvious, possibly attracting the attention of someone who knows how to fix them, who might have overlooked an unmarked problem. There is also the matter of efficiency. Someone who fixes many instances of the same type of problem by working from a list can get faster at it than someone who fixes one type of problem at a time in the course of random article browsing. To fix a given type of problem, you may have to read a guideline page, look up some appropriate template, play with it until you understand it, and so on. Once you know how to fix that problem, you might as well fix as many instances of it as you can, to get a good return on the overhead effort of learning how to fix it. Plus, some people like to know how Wikipedia is doing. The MediaWiki software can automatically tell us we have 6,870,903 articles and 47,849,598 registered users, but what do those numbers mean? We can see how large Wikipedia is getting, but is it getting better? Is Wikipedia getting closer to its goal of providing a free encyclopedia of the highest quality? Wikipedia's user interface has some influence on the kinds of editing people do. For example, if we decide the article count isn't growing fast enough (which seems highly unlikely), we might be able to increase the new article creation by making it easier and more obvious. On the other hand, if we decide the volume is increasing faster than the quality, we might think of ways to encourage more users to improve the quality of existing articles rather than start so many new ones. For example, we put up the barrier of requiring users to create accounts before they can start new articles. That probably had the effect of slowing the new article creation rate below whatever it would be now if unregistered users could still create new articles. We could raise the hurdle farther in a variety of ways, such as by adding a waiting period to new accounts before they can create new articles, or by requiring them to have a minimum number of edits, etc. I'm not sure how to create additional positive incentives to improve existing articles. I guess we could hand out more barnstars or something. --Teratornis21:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Filmography Listing
I was wondering if you could tell me how to make a filmography on an actor's article? Thank you
Short answer: learn from how others have done it. Try Matt Damon, a well-known American actor. There's an infobox on the right and a Wikitable in the article text. Either presentation is effective. Use the WP:SANDBOX to tinker with these templates until you can make them do what you want. ShalomHello06:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you listed your email address when you created your account, click "E-mail new password" on the login screen, then check your email.
If you did not list your email address, there is no way to recover your password. You will need to start over from a new account (but you can copy your old userpage etc.). ShalomHello06:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect
Following this edit to one of my user sub-pages, I thought I should put {{olddraft}} on it.
That template allows me to specify the "target article" for the draft, but not the target talk page. It automatically pointed to Talk:GarrieIrons/Westfields in Australia/talk, which I turned into a redirect to my own talk page.
Does all this sound about right - that is, is the redirect from the Talk namespace to my own user talk namespace break any rules?
Um, that's a little weird, but don't worry about it. If a similar situation were happening in the main article space, I would bother to retarget the double redirect, but since it's in your userspace, double redirects or misplaced redirects are not harmful. ShalomHello06:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I want to create a new article but I dont how to use php .. please guide me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.227.106.122 (talk • contribs).
this guy has vandalised 2/3 pages so far. i've removed the vandalism. i've no idea how to report him. can someone do it, or show me how? thanks Geeness10:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The page Law of the United States is only in 5 other languages, and I wanted to make one in Slovak. How do I create the page and make it show up under the same title but in the Slovak section? Any help would be appreciated, thanks! Metaalla11:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just go to the Slovak Wikipedia, type the Slovak translation of the title "Law of the United States" into the search box on the left, click go, and then click edit - then just start writing! When you're done, you can easily add interwiki links to versions of the same article in other languages. Just go to the bottom of any existing article on the topic in another language (for example the English version), click edit, add an interwiki link to your new Slovak version, and copy and paste the other interwiki links into your new Slovak article. --Kwekubo11:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify: there is no "Slovak section". The Slovak Wikipedia is a separate encyclopedia (and the same goes for the various other languages). --Tugbug23:42, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Automatic e-mail
How to get automatic e-mail on subjects or topics of interest?
I am quite disturbed, no, no I am PISSED, that someone took it upon themselves to delete the information on American radio 'presenter' George Moore. It did not take a LOT of digging to meticulously enter that information on Mr. Moore, because I am HE!
Would someone explain to me the correct way of inputting, and KEEPING this information available to Wiki-pedia readers. Yes, I DID check the 'relevence' percentage of my information, and it was 17 % . Now, that isn't exactly OVERWHELMING to anyone, but at least that many people MIGHT want to know something about me. So, could that deleted info be re-entered by the mensa who originally deleted, or....? do I have to re-enter it on the condition that it is LEFT THE HELL ALONE??
What do you mean by the relevance percentage? I only know of it in a search result where I think it shows how well an articles matches a search entry, it has nothing to do with how useful or notable an article is. ssepp(talk)21:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While civility is a good idea in general, we do have an ergonomic shortcoming on Wikipedia in that this is often the very first wiki many new users attempt to edit on. Many if not most new users have prior experience with other user-editable Web sites such as Google Groups, MySpace, countless blogs and Internet forum sites, etc. On most of those sites, generally one's edits stay put. For example, post a new message to Google Groups and it will probably remain online until Google goes broke, even if you beg and plead to have it deleted. After years of experience with sites like that, a typical user may have no concept of anything else. On Wikipedia, in contrast, 47,849,598 registered users can potentially mess with your work, along with any number of unregistered users. The user interface of Wikipedia doesn't do enough to warn new users such as the current questioner just how drastically Wikipedia departs from other editable sites they have used before. On Wikipedia, it is evidently very easy for a new user to figure out how to create a new article, but not nearly so easy for a new user to become aware that Wikipedia deletes several pages per minute for violating the various policies and guidelines. For example, I created my first article very early in my editing career; it was easy to get the idea to do that, and easy to figure out how. In contrast, I only gradually became aware of the scale of deletion going on here after months of actively editing. This whole deletion business just doesn't seem to be something new users are likely to grasp as early as they need to. The fact that every day we have several users asking Why was my page deleted? on the Help desk suggests something is ergonomically quite wrong with that. (Further, we can suspect the users who find their way to the Help desk are but a fraction of those we shock.) Perhaps the Main Page should not only show the current article count, but also the current deletion count. Perhaps when a new user goes to create a first new article, they should have to demonstrate some level of understanding to an actual human of how Wikipedia works. Or perhaps for that first article they should have to first propose the article and get it provisionally approved. The current method of just letting novices spend hours editing any article they think should go on Wikiepidia, only to have it deleted leads to unpleasant outcomes often enough to suggest we can find a way to make Wikipedia friendlier to new users. Before we let people wander into the minefield, we should first require them to acknowledge they understand it is a minefield. Another problem is that we just delete articles, generally without offering any advice on how to find another wiki which might accept our rejects. I don't begrudge the questioner for blowing off a bit of steam after basically getting suckered by a site that doesn't do enough to distance itself from the multitude of other more familiar user-editable sites. With thousands of pages getting deleted every day here, it's a wonder we don't have more users screaming at us. One also wonders how many users we unwittingly transform into vandals by unnecessarily angering them. --Teratornis03:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Edit counter
Just wondering, is there a template in which you can put your username so that it automaticaly generates the total number of edits you have made? Or is there a userbox which does this? E.g. "This user has made 2473 edits". - Face13:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And yet at the same time, edit count is the only convenient statistic we have for estimating an editor's experience level, which correlates roughly with an editor's understanding of Wikipedia policies and so on. So while we have reasons to deplore our excessive emphasis on edit count, we go right along excessively emphasizing it. For more about edit count see: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Edi. --Teratornis14:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As for the userboxes, there used to be separate ones to display the increments in edit count as determined by the edit counters, e.g. 1,000+, 2,000+, etc. However now there's one template in use. --BrokenSphere17:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Company entry
I was told to create an entry for our company, so people looking for information we offer can find it on Wikipedia, but I don't see a link to do so. I've looked thru the FAQs, but don't see anything there either. Do I just create a page with the information? Our site is free with a lot of great info., so I want those loooking to be able to find it.
Thanks for your help —Preceding unsigned comment added by JennC72 (talk • contribs)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a message board or classified ad system. If your company is notable, someone would have created an encyclopedia article about it. -- (¿ʇɐɥʍ)ʍɐuıɐʞ14:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Help! I can't get rid of the "You have new messages (last change)." tag! I've clicked both links and it's still there... This isn't a caching problem, cos it's on every new page - 82.16.7.6316:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It probably is a caching problem, but with Wikipedia itself rather than with you. See bugzilla:9213: it's a known problem, but it's not entirely clear what's causing it. There's also Category:Wikipedians who are terribly frustrated about Bug ID 9213; you're not the only person who's annoyed about this. (It's likely to go away eventually of its own accord; I'm not sure what causes it to do this either.) --ais523 16:58, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
i need to know terminologies
study of birds
study of coins
study of insects
study of solar system
study of heart
study of plants
study of weather
study of rays/rotation
study of animals
study of heredity
On two pages (American University Museum and Jack Rasmussen) they are not being listed in the category page for which they have been designated. How do I fix that?
They look fine to me, both are in Category:American University, which I assume is what you were talking about. The server was probably just being slow and not updating the categories properly. If you still can't see them, try purging your cache, that generally fixes most software and browser errors. --tjstrftalk17:18, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
new page
can you please tell me how to find the button to click to create a new page. i have searched and read thoroughly.
Enter the name of the article in the search box and click 'go'. If the page doesn't exist and you are allowed to create it, a link will show up allowing you to create it. -- (¿ʇɐɥʍ)ʍɐuıɐʞ17:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was just wondering what the penalty was on Wikipedia for forging signatures of other users (e.g.: User X gets all the HTML code from the signature of User Y, places it on a talk page, and signs it with ~~~~~, producing the date, in order to pretend to gain support on a consensus from an administrator, for example). Please do not get me wrong. I did not, and do not have any intentions to do so, forge other users' signatures. I just saw an IP address do this, and I was wondering what the penalty (if one exists) was. Also, please be kind enough to respond on my talk page. Thank you. Universe=atomTalk•Contributions17:42, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You should leave them a friendly yet firm comment on their talk page and remove the incorrect comment from the page, explaining this in the edits summary, if they continue then warn them again and if they do it again you can take it to AIV. All the best. The Sunshine Man17:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of course you probably want to make sure the IP in question isn't actually the person whose name they're signing. --VectorPotentialTalk18:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have a question concerning citations tags on a page that I gave major contributions. I know the information to give sufficient answers, but for the life of me, I can not figure out how to edit the page to correct the citations. I have read the procedures on this subject many, many times, but it hasn’t helped me at all. I would appreciate any help. The page in question is "The Diamonds".
min7th18:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Replace each instance of {{fact}} with a citation template (follow the link for a list), wrapped in <ref> tags, so for example,
Are you saying there are errors with the citations that you want to correct? If that is the case, in the list of references, there is a small number at the start of each. If you click it, it will take you to the point in the article where that reference is used. That linked number will appear in brackets, i.e. [[[1]]]. You want to click "edit this page", then go the that point in the article. You'll see ref tags and the cite web template. Cite web templates have the various fields separated for easy editing. Using the link provided by the previous responder may be of help to you in making changes. Let me know if that's not what you are trying to do and/or you need further assistance. LaraLoveT/C19:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies. It did sound as if I wanted to correct errors of the citations. It all sounded very clear as I was writing it. OK, let’s start over. The page in question has citations tags on certain facts. I wanted to give source for the facts and eliminate the citation tags. I have a feeling the first answer to my question was close, but the process of doing so was leading me to other areas of not knowing what I’m doing. I thank you both for your efforts, but I think I’ll just forget the whole thing. By the way, the source to use is listed on the page as “The Official Website Original Diamonds”, under External Links. This is an authorized site.min7th20:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Summary
I have noticed that many people manage to put in a link in the Summary describing the edit they have made.
The same way you'd put it in an article, by typing "[[Desired Wikipedia article link]]" in the edit summary box. (Category links need to be prefixed with ":Category:", not just "Category:", of course, otherwise they won't show up.) --tjstrftalk19:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You will need to register an account, at which point you should read Help:Starting a new page and follow the directions there. (Page creation by unregistered users is disabled due to spam issues.)
I've noticed in many articles that both the UK and US spellings of words like color/colour, center/centre, and so on... get reverted back and forth as "spelling errors". Is there a preferred English to use on Wikipedia? Or does it just depend on the topic and the individual editor's preference? Just curious, I've seen some rather heated and quite amusing edit wars on this.CindyBotalk23:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The official designation in the manual of style is: whichever is more appropriate for the subject. For instance, Doctor Who would more appropriately use UK English, while Stargate SG-1 would use US English. In articles where nationality is not relevant (eg. Horse), then either one is appropriate so long as the spelling choice is consistant. However, it should not be corrected whole-cloth, as you describe. Edit wars over this are quite silly, and editors involved should be reminded to leave it be. -- Kesh23:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Once upon a time I opined that the national variety of English should be localizable in the user's preferences, with only things such as organization titles showing a fixed variety of English (e.g., "Defence Ministry", etc.). It doesn't make sense to fight over something that really should be a user preference setting. Everyone should be able to read Wikipedia in the language/spelling/dialect of his/her choice. I'm surprised to hear that France avoided this problem - have no former French colonies evolved linguistically away from the mother country? One would expect any widely-spoken language to diversify. --Teratornis02:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That has its own issues. It may be a large database hit to substitute the text on the fly; it doesn't account for misspelled words; and someone's bound to be upset if the default language setting is wrong. The current method is crude, but works well enough until people get too nationalistic. -- Kesh02:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I may be delusional, but I like to imagine Great powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom have sufficient resources to present their own national varieties of Wikipedia to their subjects, sooner or later. (I think the importance of Wikipedia as a national resource will come to be widely understood. Imagine where we might be in another five years. Perhaps by then a large fraction of people in a given country will be relying on Wikipedia to tell them what's what, and that's bound to attract attention from influential people in that country who will want to insure their citizens are getting the best service possible.) After all, we have a whole bunch of separate language Wikipedias already. A language primarily spoken in only one country amounts to a de facto national Wikipedia. If a country like Thailand can have its own Wikipedia, why not also countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom? Any localization scheme is bound to have problems, but will they be worse than the problems created by the current system which doesn't even attempt to conform to the user's understanding of English? I wouldn't suggest a fully automated system anyway, as manual tagging of words to be spelled variably would seem necessary, to avoid localizing words that should not be localized, such as in titles of organizations and so on. Determining how best to localize the national variety of English would require some serious thought. --Teratornis04:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is getting way off-topic for the help desk, but I think fracturing Wikipedia as described would lead to further problems. Might be a topic to bring up on the village pump for discussion, though. -- Kesh04:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I the case of articles in which either is appropriate, in addition to being consistent throughout the article, as mentioned above, it is recommended that the spelling used by the original editor be kept. LaraLoveT/C03:17, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
June 27
Changing A Link
I am the "webmaster" of the Henry S. Jacobs Camp wikipedia page. Below is my issue.
If you go the Ginnefer Goodwin page, it mentions that she attended our camp. The link on that page goes to the Union of Reform Judaism page. How can we switch to go to our wikipedia page?
Thanks.
First, you might want to check out WP:OWN. No one is the 'webmaster' of any Wikipedia page. As to the link, I'll take a look at that. -- Kesh01:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Kesh beat me to it, no-one owns anything here. its a wiki. As for Ginnefer Goodwin, that page doesn't exist... but if you were to change a link to direct it somewhere simply type [[the article you want to link to|and here goes the text that will appear on the page]]. Hope this helps. ~ peaceful dreams01:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Part of being a Help desk helper is knowing how to de-garble the questions people ask. The first step is to convert sloppy page references into actual links. For example, this page exists: Union for Reform Judaism. Clicking toolbox | What links here shows its backlinks. One of them is: Ginnifer Goodwin. That's probably what the questioner meant by "Ginnefer Goodwin". Tiny spelling errors like that are usually inconsequential in real life, but on Wikipedia we depend on exact spellings to look pages up. One very good reason to refer to pages as links is to catch such spelling errors, which will show up as red links. --Teratornis02:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nice catch! Ginnifer is an unusal enough spelling I'd have never come across it, and didn't think to check the What Links Here bit. -- Kesh02:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
New accounts and old histories...
Hi there. I've decided that i really should edit from an account rather than my IP number, as I'm a bit worried that the other users of my particular IP number may choose to start editing Wikipedia too and this could cause problems. There's also a privacy issue here. My question is - If I get an account, can the contribution history of my IP number be merged with that of my new account to prevent confusion? My talk page? If not, is there any way of deleting or hiding or otherwise dealing appropriately with my IP contributions? I have not created the account yet, but it would seem a pity to loose my IP contributions. What should I do? Advice would be very much appreciated. Best regards, 195.137.96.7901:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think IP contributions can be merged into an account, I'm afraid, but the talk page can, just copy over the comments. - Zeibura(Talk)01:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the circumstances) your IP edits will not carry over to your new account. Consider it a fresh start. -- Kesh02:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am referring to the user TJ_Spyke and the article List of Virtual Console games (North America). The article has been fully protected for months because of an edit war. The debate is whether or not to include the point values in the table wit hall the games. Recently, I started a discussion on the talk page of how we could remove the points listing from the tables (since there are over 100 titles in the tables, all following the same general form for points cost, except 2 games), and everyone except TJ_Spyke agreed, and offered suggestions. So, I took into account all of the suggestions, and created a new table listing just the points and placed it at the bottom of the article, and removed the points from the larger tables. Without even discussing his thoughts, then, TJ_Spyke reverted my edit. This article should not be fully protected, since new games come out each and every week, and it takes forever to have it edited by a moderator every single week... but no changes can be made to it with this guy around; he has been doing this for months, and will not even consider a minor change to how he envisions the article. Is there a way to prevent a certain user from editing a certain article, and who should I contact to help solve the problem? Thanks for your help! Miles Blues02:25, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I assume you want to know how to make that funky infobox at the top of the article. I am copying the source code here (with "nowiki" tags), and you can edit it on the WP:SANDBOX to replace each data field as appropriate.
While I have your attention, you should make sure the magazine fulfills the notability criteria for articles. Otherwise, it might be deleted, and I don't want your work to fall in vain.
Here's the source code:
{{Infobox_Magazine|
title = Rue Morgue |
image = [[Image:Ruemorgue2.jpg|thumb|225px|center]] ''Issue 62 of Rue Morgue |
editor = Jovanka Vuckovic |
frequency = Monthly (exception of February) |
category = Horror |
company = Marrs Media Inc. |
firstdate = October 1997 |
country = [[Canada]] |
website = [http://www.rue-morgue.com/ Official Site] |}}
I'm quite confused. I changed the image in the Chayanne article from Image:Chayanne.JPG (a copyvio) to Image:Chayanne.jpg, which I just uploaded at Commons. Now some headshot of the guy (not the free picture I uploaded) is showing up in the article. I checked the history of that filename, and there was a file uploaded there, but it was deleted in December and looks different from the one that's showing up. Anyone know what's happening? ShadowHalo03:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The link is picking up a file that's been locally uploaded to en.wikipedia.org, rather than the commons. Images uploaded to the English Wikipedia itself take precidence over Commons links when they share the same name. You'll need to rename your file on the commons and link to the new name. -- Kesh03:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware that images on English Wikipedia override ones from the Commons. But the image appearing in the article does not appear to ever have been uploaded here. ShadowHalo05:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, something odd is going on. If you look at this diff, you get the image linked above. At this diff, you added the link which gives us a totally different image, one which is also totally different from yours on Commons. My suspicion is either a) there's a cached image on Wikipedia somewhere that is overriding your Commons image, or b) something on Commons is pointing to the wrong image file. Beyond that, I don't know what's going on. -- Kesh05:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
dears,
i belongs to kashmiri family (mir) but i can understand that mir family is really a kashmiri family or a other if any body know about this family plz solve my this problem i trully thankfill to him or her knowl. because i have not any proof of my family so that i disturbe . and make sure that the information u provide me is that true .plz
yours
ammar aslam mir
bye .
I'm afraid this is a help page about how to use wikipedia, we don't really answer those sorts of questions (and to be honest, I'm not even sure what you are asking). --Fredrick day09:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I added a logo o a page European Computer Driving Licence and I don't know how to protect the copyrights for this logo.
could yoy please help with this and let me know what to do?
I would like to add citations and more content to the page on flatulence, but I can't. I am a registered user. How can I add more content to this page?
Flatulence has been semi-protected, and so unregistered users and users whose accounts relatively new (roughly four days old is the limit, I believe) can't edit the page. Until you can, you're welcome to go to the article's talk page (the "discussion" tab up the top) and make your suggestions there. Confusing Manifestation11:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
watchlist
How can I add articles to my watchlist? Im having a blonde day and cant seem to figure it out.
Jayflips —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jayflips (talk • contribs)
Abdalle Isse Yusuf Mohamed (C/laahi Ciise Yuusuf Maxamad) is a somali politician and stragist, he was born in Dhaadaar near Qandala district of Bari region on Somalia, he studied Ashafi'i primary and Intermidaiate School, and gratuated from Bosaso Public Secondary school of Bosaso,he studied the University of Azaim Alazhari in Sudan the foculty of Political Science and Strategic Studies.
Abdalle is the last son born and he is the brother of two boys ( Dr. Mahdi Isse and Cap. Mohamed Isse) and brother of seven sisters ( Maryan, Saido, Khadro, Salado, Warsan, Fadumo and Caways)his mother is Mumino Isse Roble Abdi, the sister of Dr. Ismail Isse Roble(pediatrician).
account problem
I opened an account yesterday (June 26) with the username Tabithajohnson. Today when I attempt to log on, I get a message saying that there's no such username. What has happened? Why can't I access my account and how can I edit the text I submitted under that username?
I'm afraid the name 'Tabithajohnson' does not appear on our list of users. It is possible you made a typo when creating the name. You said you made some edits under that name; can you remember the pages you edited? Those edits will be recorded in the history of each page, so if you can remember a page you edited you can look there and find out the name of your account. Raven4x4x13:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can I take a sentence/paragraph from somewhere, changed most of it, but the information is still there, and put it in an article? And cite it as a source? -Zacharycrimsonwolf13:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When citing another source, it's a good idea to use your own words to convey meaning and let your citation provide reference to the origina. "Changing most of it" isn't quite right, as most of the time the sentence will read poorly or not make as much sense. Just summarize the source in your own words, or quote it directly. -- Kesh16:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can I copy a few or more (the entire thing?) paragraphs from the source? And I meant, litrally copy. Obviously, its a violation of the copyright, but I'm checking. Or should I change it first? -Zacharycrimsonwolf13:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Exporting Wiki content
How do I export wiki pages?
I'm not sure quite what you're asking. Try looking at Wikipedia:Database dump. In general, if you wish to copy pages, by hand, you must cite Wikipedia as the original source of the page, based on the licensing requirements of the GFDL. ShalomHello14:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you may find something you can use at User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Exp. Your question is vague because you did not specify what you want to export to, and it's not even clear what wiki you want to export from. The easiest form of exporting is from one MediaWikiwiki to another one. For example, lots of people who start their own MediaWiki wikis copy various templates and pages from well-developed wikis such as Wikipedia. As both the source and destination systems run the same software, no file conversion is necessary. However, if you want to export pages from a wiki to a different type of software, such as a word processing program, then you must convert wikitext into a file format the destination system can read. And then the adventure begins. --Teratornis15:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimedia Commons is a separate project than Wikipedia, but we can still answer your question. It is not all public domain, nor all GFDL. Wikipedia has an article that covers roughly the inclusion policy of the Commons: Wikimedia_Commons#Policies_and_usage. Sancho15:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Both. Quoting from the Wikipedia article on Wikimedia Commons:
I created the page "Whitney Young Birthplace and Museum" a few weeks ago, but when I search for that page it doesn't come up. The only way I can get to that page is through the link I made on the "Whitney Young" page. Please help!
Hello,
As a user, am I allowed to edit an entry. If not, I would like to suggest revision of one.
Thanks for your help,
LoriBooBoo 15:22, 27 June 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by LoriBooBoo (talk • contribs)
Yes, you are allowed to edit nearly any page, except for a few that may be semi-protected from editing by IPs and new users due to vandalism (you'll be able to edit those once your account is 5 days old), and an even smaller set that are protected from editing by anyone but administrators, like the Main page and a few other ones where editing them incorrectly might break the entire website. --tjstrftalk15:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See Help:Editing to learn how to edit. While you are still new, you may wish to suggest changes rather than make them yourself, particularly if you want to remove existing content. On Wikipedia, every article has an associated talk page where we can discuss changes to articles before we actually make them. This is useful for finding consensus and avoiding edit wars, and also to act as a sanity check on any one person's thinking. If something looks wrong to you, it's good to ask other people what they think. On Wikipedia we have plenty of time to make sure we get things right (see WP:CHILL and WP:TIND). --Teratornis15:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Starting a new page
Martha Stewart Flowers was hoping to have their own Wikipedia page and I was wondering what the best way was to start a page. We are listed on the Martha Stewart Omnimedia page and would like to have a separate page that goes further into detail about the business. If someone could assist me I would greatly appreciate it.
My name is Sy Holsinger and I work on the EGEE project. I was searching EGEE and after reading and skimming to the bottom, I saw the external link to the EGEE website. It is incorrectly liked as it currently stands "http://eu-egee.org" it should be "http://www.eu-egee.org". I would appreciate you rectifying this on behalf of the entire project.
Sincerely,
Sy Holsinger
Fixed. You can always help out and make changes to an article by editing it the same way you did this page. --Hetar16:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you just type in the first few letters of a username into the search box, it should work. I'm not sure why it's not working for you. ShalomHello02:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Changing the name of a page to one already used - ReGenesis
The page for the UK Genesis tribute band ReGenesis is named Re-Genesis. The dash is incorrect, and probably stems from the original author taking it from the band website www.re-genesis.net, which is only like that because someone else got to www.regenesis.net first.
If I move the page from Re-Genesis to ReGenesis (band) will a disambiguation page be created automatically to distinguish it from Regenesis the TV show?
Are their any other complications / things I need to be aware of if I move this?
When you move a page it will automaticaly be redirected to the page after the move. It seems acceptable given the titles to leave it like that. -Icewedge16:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am trying to change the name of the Museum from Miami Museum of Science & Planetarium to Miami Science Museum. The text in the body is editable but I need to change the title/Museum name. Is this possible?
I've noticed a PNG image that I want to convert to a SVG version. The PNG version is licensed as GFDL. Am I correct in assuming that since this is a derivative work, I also have to make it GFDL? I'm asking because someone else made a worse quality SVG version (text saved as paths and so small as to be hard to read) on Commons and marked it as PD (which is also my preferred license). --Pekaje20:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it needs to be GFDL since it's a derivative. (Aren't images usually GFDL/CC though?) That doesn't prevent you from trying to contact the original uploader to modify his license though. --tjstrftalk20:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Supposedly I could also re-tag the image as GFDL (which is also a perfectly acceptable license for me) after I upload the updated version, right? I mean, I'm not actually basing my version on the PD SVG (since it's in poor quality), but rather making a new version with the same name (so I don't have to change it in many different wikis). --Pekaje20:37, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see no reason you couldn't do that, it seems reasonable enough. That's really a question for the guys over at commons though, since they might want to delete the previous revisions after you update it. --tjstrftalk20:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You have uploaded the image (Image:Davidbottoms.jpg), however simply uploading it will not automatically place it in the correct article. You must manually put it in the article with a code like this: [[Image:Davidbottoms.jpg|right|David Bottoms at blah in blah, blah]].
yeah, but you don't know that. I want no trace of this left
Accounts with contributions cannot be deleted since this would allow another user to create the account, and claim authorship of those edits. It is not possible for your edits to be removed entirely; for this reason, removing the account would potentially violate copyrights by allowing for such authorship claims. You can, of course, delete your own user pages. For more information, check out Wikipedia:User page#How do I delete my user and user talk pages?. --Hetar21:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can also get yourself renamed and have all your old stuff deleted and also, don't leave any trails for anyone to follow. --70.233.167.8321:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to figure out if there's an easier way to search the Help namespace, (not for me, I know where most things are by now) but for the noobs. It'd be great if there was an easy/obvious way to search just the Help namespace. The closest I can come is linking to something like this. But even this only works if the person knows to use the search field below the tick boxes. Is there some easier way to search just the Help namespace, without having to run a different search first? --JayHenry22:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. You can use Google Search, specifically a custom Google Search. Here are some examples:
That's a good non-wikipedia solution. Does anyone know if there's a way to link to a Help:Namespace search within Wikipedia? --JayHenry03:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You would think so. But if you actually try to search in that box, you'll see that all the results are main space. --JayHenry13:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Where do people come from moving into Frankfort, Illinois67.167.250.59 22:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
I am looking to find if there is any report of people who move into Frankfort, Illinois. I am looking to see if there a specific place most new residences come from. For instance lets say 20% of all residents come from Mokena, Il. I do not know it such a thing exsits, but if does I sure would like to know where and how to find it. Thanks
I know adminship is no big deal and all, but being an admin is about the same as being a normal member, only with special abilities right? You don't have to pay anything or something? Cheers, JetLover00:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The only money wikipedia takes in from editors are voluntary contributions. Admins are normal editors who have gone through a vetting process called Wikipedia:Requests for adminship where it is determined if the community is able to trust the candidate with the admin rights. --rogerd00:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can see more about their abilities at Wikipedia:Administrators which says they don't get paid. Your question is the first mention I have ever seen of the possibility that they might have to pay. It's possible for anybody to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia, but it's voluntary and doesn't give any special rights. PrimeHunter00:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Question about Becoming an Admin
Based on my observations at WP:RFA, I know there is more to be considered when applying for adminship than just editcounts, but how many edits would you recommend before applying to avoid being completely shot down by, "Oppose. Too few edits" and "Oppose. Not enough experience."? Useight00:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A couple thousand is enough to stop the opposes due to too few edits, but if you want to actually pass (rather than get a no consensus defaulting to fail) you'll want more like four thousand. Three might work if a lot of them were in the Wikipedia namespace though. Sort of ridiculous, I agree. --tjstrftalk00:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Beleive it or not, I was reccomended to run for an admin recently. I declined and all, but I'd say I few thousand edits. Like 5000+. Cheers, JetLover00:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You also need to have a reasonable amount of edits in the Wikipedia: and Talk: namespaces. If all of your edits are to articles, some people in the RfA discussions think you're not contributing enough to discussions. Corvus cornix18:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The article 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die has some big-time formatting issues. What would be the best way to handle 2-column text that flows and balances? Just leave it be or is there a better template? How about the numbered lists? The numbering should be continuous throughout. I'm guessing that at the least, we need to re-start numbering at each section... how would that be done?
Remove all the multi column code in place and add <div style="column-count:2; -moz-column-count:2;"> above the list and </div> below it. That will do it. Prodegotalk01:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do you add coordinates?
I recently wanted to add the coordinates (degrees-minutes-seconds system) to four articles (Buena High School, Ventura High School, Foothill Technology High School, and Ventura College; I am a resident of Ventura, California) but I did not know what to do on the edit page. If it helps, I am not a member of Wikimedia. How do I do this (or can I)? 69.230.221.2601:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Adding coordinates helps people who browse Wikipedia from Google Earth. Eventually when everybody has a mobile computing device with a built-in GPS, it will be nice if every article that is about a geographic location has coordinates, so you can ask your mobile computing device to display a map with links to all the Wikipedia articles about things around you. Hopefully this computing model will extend to other wikis which accept articles about less notable topics than Wikipedia does. That way, you will be able to browse a very dense geographic database of wiki pages that will probably tell you useful things about just about every object, building, road, park, natural feature, etc., around you. Topics that aren't notable enough for Wikipedia may be notable enough for a few hundred local residents of a particular locale, or even a few dozen. People might as well document everything about their environment which is useful for other residents and visitors to know. Much of that information is scattered around the World Wide Web anyway, but not in a structured way for geographic browsing. To learn more about coordinates in Wikipedia, see: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Map. --Teratornis01:47, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The phrase "every location for which there is a Wikipedia article" sounds pretty clear to me. A fixed object's location is one of its characterizing features, similar to other characterizing features such as the birth and death dates of a person. We do not specify certain classes of people to have their birth and death dates censored. That's a characterizing feature you want to know about every object (in that case, a person) who has a Wikipedia article. You could, for example, pick a date range and look up all the Wikipedia articles about people born during that time. You would want such a list to be complete. It should not be missing classes of people whose birth dates we decided to censor from the list. That wouldn't stop anyone from constructing such a list by other means.
I'm wondering what would be the point of constructing a geographic wiki if it's going to have arbitrary gaps in the data, i.e., what sort of argument could be made to cripple its usefulness by partially censoring geographic data. (We can't really censor location data, because it's mostly already available, even more available than birth records actually, because it's as easy for Wikipedians to record locations of accessible fixed objects with their GPS receivers as it is easy for them to photograph the objects with their cameras.) The idea is to have another way to sort articles - by location. When we look at Special:Allpages now, we expect to see all articles sorted by title. We don't need specific reasons to include this or that type of article on Special:Allpages; instead, we would need an overwhelming reason to consider excluding some articles. Similarly, on a geographic wiki, we expect to see all the articles that can be arranged by location to be arranged by location. There are many obvious and not-so-obvious uses for articles arranged on maps. We can quickly see which parts of the world have the most article coverage; that could be another way to allocate our editing efforts (for example, if we see that a particular populated region currently has few articles, or few articles of high quality). We can see where things are in relation to our locations, and in relation to each other. Someone might want to compare the geographic distribution of schools to prisons, or chemical plants, or flood zones, or residential areas, or all sorts of things people currently do with GIS software. Trying to impose artificial limits on the potential uses of an encyclopedia is like trying to impose artificial limits on the uses of a mathematical formula. It doesn't fit with Wikipedia's position against censorship. Besides, people will find ways around the limitations. As more computing devices gain GPS features, more people will expect their data to be geographically-enabled. Wikipedia can either lead the way, or wait for Google or someone else to do it. Of course this is only my opinion. If the cabal or the Great Leader says we must try to censor some location data, then we will try to censor it. --Teratornis07:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it's considered good to add coordinates to everything with a fixed position then I think it should get more attention than minor mention in a goal in a Wikiproject which is much more about how-to than when-to. Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools#Sections of the article says "Give the full official name of the school and detail about its location (town/municipality, county/state/province, country)." Coordinates are not mentioned, and as said above they are not an option in {{High School Infobox}}. My original thoughts included that high schools are only of local interest, the locals know where they are, and they are in towns which should have an article with coordinates, but you have some good points about uses for the data. Is there any limit to what should get coordinates? Both White House and Oval Office have them, but currently not West Wing which contains the Oval Office. What about fixed statues in buildings which have articles with coordinates? But the help desk is probably not the place to discuss all this. If you feel for it then you could join Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates and discuss spreading the word. PrimeHunter13:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To align anything to the right, you can use the following formatting:
<div style="float:right">
whatever you want to align to the right
</div>
(like this, for instance; border added for clarity).
If you want to 'float' multiple userboxes to the right, putting them all inside one div and separating them with the {{-}} template is likely to produce the best results. Hope that helps! --ais523 09:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
speedily deletion
who is warthog & immediately after creating my account I am flagged for speedily deletion. Comparing other users i think I should have the time to understand wikipedias regulations, so to speak.
LASERDOGTHEBIGDOG. aTTEMPING TO EXPLAIN THE TERM LASERDOG AND IT'S RELATED "DOGS"
Article-only watchlisting
There are some articles I'm interested in that have very noisy Talk pages, and I'd rather just watchlist the article than all the bickering. Is it possible to do such a thing, or do we always have to watch the article's Talk too? Thanks. Raymond Arritt05:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to exclude all talk pages from your watchlist you can go to the bottom of this line
Below are the last 20 changes, as of 06:38, 28 June 2007.
Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 days all
Hide bot edits | Hide my edits | Hide minor edits
Namespace: [all] [Go]
where there is a droplist that automatically says all and a button that says Go next to it. Select (main) to hide talk pages. Tim Q. Wells06:46, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
speedy deletion
If you google my trade name wiki shows a listing but it is not there. I am attempting to inform people of the world the origin of the term and it's other conotations. So I should not be flagged BY WARTHOG for speedy deletion until my page is fully explained and worded. LASERDOGTHEBIGDOG
Wikipedia account in several languages
I have an account with wikipedia which I registered for by en.wikipedia.org .
Why can't I log in on the Dutch wikipedia with the same login? Are there seperate databases for the seperate languages? Do I have to make a new account on the Dutch page? I can my account be easily copied?
Wild Wizard06:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You have to create a new account for each wiki. They are seperate databases- this is why we provide interwiki links to other projects. Also keep in mind that admins on one language's wikipedia are powerless on another, which also applies to dispute resolution processes. --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ06:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then I do receive a confirmation e-mail with a clickable link, but when I click it I get the message
Invalid confirmation code. The code may have expired.
While I click it immediately after receiving the mail.
Help? :(
This is a bug that has been reported to developers (see bugzilla:10388). They're presumably trying to fix it at the moment. --ais523 08:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Cite Errors
how do I use a journal reference several times in a text, without having to type it all over again and get a new reference number? Yes I have given it a <ref name="etc", but what do I put in the edit to refer again to the same ref?Jagra07:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they can. Anything that is deleted on Wikipedia can be restored (only a few exceptions), and so admins can preview what they are restoring before actually restoring it. +spebi~ 08:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could someone take a look at User Talk:Feba and straighten out my archiving system into something more logical for me? I'm not quite sure how to do it, I'd prefer is someone else could just set it up for me. Thanks, --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ08:33, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I want to use same login account to edit/ publish articles in two different languages
Dear Friends,
I want to use same login account to edit/ publish articles in two different languages i.e. in Sinhala and English. I have already an account for edit sinhala pages. But I cant edit english pages using the same account. If I have to use two different accounts, it will be little bit difficult to handle things.
Also I want to upload or publish or place video files. How can I do it?
Prabath.
My E_mail: (email removed for security purposes)
You've just made the most requested feature request in the history of Wikipedia: see bugzilla:57 (it's proving quite hard to implement). In the meantime, you'll have to create separate accounts; if and when that bug is ever fixed, it'll help if you use the same username and email address on each account. --ais523 09:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
As for your followup question; see the file upload wizard. If you want to upload media under a free use licence, you may want to upload it to Wikipedia's sister project Wikimedia Commons, where all the different language versions of Wikipedia can include images from. --ais523 09:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I have tried to make account in English with same user name "Prabath" but unfortunately there seems another user with that name.
If another user's using exactly the same name, you'll have to choose a different one. User:Prabath has no edits, so there's also the possibility of asking for the username to be usurped, but this is a slow process that's normally rejected for new contributors, and you'd have to have a different username meanwhile anyway. (If you want a name that's similar but not quite the same as an existing username, see WP:ACC.) --ais523 10:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Wanna Page Hit counter ...
Dear Wikipedia Group,
I request you ("if possible") to please add a page hit counter.
Hi Vicky and welcome to Wikipedia. Unfortunately, hit counters on Wikipedia have been disabled, due to them affecting server performance. However, there is a list on the the Top 10 most visited Wikipedia articles, but I cannot track down the exact URL. +spebi~ 10:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC) someone help me out here?[reply]
Usually, yes, unless there has already been a number of discussions on the past over it, WP:CONSENSUS does change over time, and if nobody objects, it's safe to change something. See the image on the right side of this section for a good example of how to proceed when you're not sure what the community wants. --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ11:33, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've restored the image. The anon removed it because they felt it showed her as she looks today. So? Wikipedia is not censored, his apparent disgust with her "haggard and old" is ageist. The image is available for use, there's nothing wrong with it, they didn't replace it with a different image. Corvus cornix17:15, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can I delete the search history
How can I delete the search history? Everything I ever typed appears in a list underneath the search bar, even though I have cleared the explorer tools files. 84.64.223.9114:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is something that would be specific to whatever browser you are using. You could try clearing your cache, but also you can hover over the things you want to delete, and just hit the delete key. I know this trick works in Firefox, but I'm not sure if it will work on your browser. tiZom(2¢)15:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Mukwonago
I am writing only to let you know that I believe the River in Mukwonago, Wisconsin is a part of the Fox River. I lived in Mukwonago for 30 years and I do not remember it being called the Mukwonago River. Could someone check this please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monroek (talk • contribs)
Well, this is a wiki, so you could certainly edit it yourself if you feel something is wrong. To be honest, none of us here are more qualified than any other editor to do such fact checks. In fact, having lived there, you've probably got access to more resources than we do.
If you don't want to edit the article yourself, then just ask your question on the article's talk page, and someone who is interested/knowledgeable of that subject will eventually be by to take care of it. tiZom(2¢)15:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
However, except in some cases such as copyright violation and personal attacks, you can request to see a deleted article at WP:DRV. --ais523 15:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Trapped in glitchy skin
I'm trapped in Chick and I can't get out. This is a seriously irritating skin, and I don't seem to be able to select or click some things, including the option to change the skin back! Using tab I can get to the 'change skin' page, but nothing I do will let me select the circle for anything other than Chick! Help! Skittle15:58, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you sooooo much :-D Is that link available because this is a common problem, or do you just have a technique for making such things? Skittle16:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the skin override is most likely to have been implemented for seeing what pages look like in various skins (it's how the preview links work on the preferences), but I don't know this for sure and it's certainly handy for changing back from skins. I do know that that particular link (or possibly a slight variation on it that does the same thing) is in the FAQ at the top of the technical Village Pump, although I'm not sure if it's in the main FAQ, so presumably it's a common problem but people normally go there rather than to the Help Desk to seek a solution. --ais523 16:14, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see. The FAQ didn't appear to be working, somehow, when I looked, and the preview links don't stick if you navigate away from the main page! But it's good to know there are measures in place. I thought I remembered hearing about a similar problem a while ago. That's one link that'll end up on my user page for future use! Thanks ais. Skittle16:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
23 September 2012
What is expected to happen on September 23, 2012? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.76.64.93 (talk)
There seems to be no relevant information in the relevant article 2012. You might want to try asking at the reference desk; this help desk is for questions about Wikipedia, not general knowledge questions. --ais523 16:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Try Google.[1] One of the hits says Xu Zerong is due to be released from Guangzhou Prison on September 23, 2012.[2] Maybe he is notable enough for an article which should then discuss his case [3] and expected early release [4] (but I'm not going to write it). PrimeHunter23:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do I report a user?
User Yankees10 continues to change the team colors for Dave Winfield when the wikipedia community had already agreed that he should be shown as a San Diego Padre based on the body of his career and his Hall of Fame cap. How do we get this user to stop making these changes?
If he is actually breaking policy, you can report it one of two ways. If it's simple and obvious WP:VANDALism, then take it to WP:AIV and let them deal with it. If it's a disagreement, or something more complex, which is what this seems to be, bring it up at WP:ANI, which will let experienced users and admins comment on it and warn/block the user if needed --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ16:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The community never voted on what color to use for his infobox, that was only Reggie Jackson, and Jeff Nelson, he is making it only his decision on what color to use, and it is the same situation with Gary Carter, he has a Expos cap on his Hall of fame plaque, and has Mets colors on his Infobox. Hee clearly doesnt know what hes doing because he doesnt sign his name at the end.--Yankees1016:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)Yankees10[reply]
This guy clearly doesnt like the Yankees, because he changed all the infoboxes that had Yankee colors to other colors, even when they spent most of there time with the Yankees, If theres anyone that needs to be blocked its him--Yankees1016:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)Yankees10[reply]
I would like to create an article about a lighting company called "Zero 88". However when I search loads of results come back with the term "zero" in so I can't just click create a page and can't see a link to the non existant page yet.
There's a box to create an article at the top of Help:Creating a new page if you really need it, but a better method is by introducing a link to the nonexistent article in some article it would be relevant from and then clicking on it. (If there is no such article to link from, then creating the article in the first place may be a bad idea.) --ais523 17:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I looked up the USA Volleyball Logo this morning. The logo was designed by Nonie Beal and myself in 1981 prior to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles when the men's team took the gold under the amazing coaching of Doug Beal (the current Executive Director). Is there any way we can both be credited on Wikapedia for the design of the logomark?
Lois Harrington (12:14, June 28, 2007)
If you're talking about this logo, then an appropriate contribution could be added to the USA Volleyball article. However, a reliable source would have to be provided and cited properly. The information couldn't be added just on your say-so (not questioning your veracity or intentions, that's just WP policy). You may also want to review COI before proceeding. If it looks like this info can be appropriately added, the information will be appreciated. I tried to do the adding myself, but was unable to find a reliable source that supports your statement; hope you have better luck. Jim Dunning | talk17:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some editing of the attacked article Red army crimes in Lithuania like the whole category Red army crimes articles is needed
ATTENTION - Some slavians -Mikkalaj, Alex Bakharev, IgorSF, Pavel... and not only they started real attack against the article Red army crimes in Lithuania. (in 1945 March Red Army officer killed my grandmother)
I don't see anything there that requires the assistance of the Help desk - we deal with problems in using wikipedia - we don't take sides in context disputes. --Fredrick day23:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note - For editor's awareness, Ttturbo has just edited this section header to include the whole category Red army crimes articles, which is a category he just created. It is disengenuous to claim that Category:Red Army crimes is under attack, when he did not even create it until after the AfD on this article had begun, and smacks of WP:POINT. -- Kesh01:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I claim that only the article red Army crimes is under attck, not the whole category. You made mistake at a midnight. But why do You started attack against the whole cattegory?Ttturbo02:27, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
By using the word "like" you imply that the category is also being attacked. I get the impression English is not your native language, so that may be the source of your confusion. And I did not attack the category. All I've done is point out you created it after the AfD began, and made the people here and in AfD aware of that. -- Kesh02:30, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ukrainian language searches not using cyrillic alphabet
I know Ukrainian, but am typing froman American PC. How can I download the cyrillic alphabet to coordinate with my english language keys to be able to do search queries on the Ukrainian Wickipedia website?
I used List of gas stations as a humorous example of an "indiscriminate list" in an AFD and was shocked to find it was not a redlink. In fact it redirects to List of automotive fuel brands. A "gas station" is a building with pumps out front which dispense fuel, with a building where the attendant collects money and sells soda and snacks, with grubby restrooms, and perhaps with a service bay where mechanics work on cars. It is NOT an "automotive fuel brand." How would I go about removing the redirect? Is it an editing process anyone can do, do I request an admin to do it, or do I somehow propose the redirect for deletion? Was there once actually a List of gas stations which went through AFD and was replaced by this inappropriate redirect? Thanks. Edison18:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that it was the result of a cut and paste pagemove some time in 2003. It's pretty nonsensical as a redirect, so I've gone ahead and tagged it for speedy deletion. --VectorPotentialTalk19:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But if your goal is to create a software manual as a wiki (cool idea!), then you wouldn't be creating it on Wikipedia, since it'll get deleted as not being an encyclopedia article. Instead, you'd want to set up a separate wiki for it... see MediaWiki for detailed instructions and software for how to do that. -FisherQueen (Talk) 20:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to use MediaWiki as your personal editor, see mw:Manual:Wiki on a stick. It's fairly simple to install MediaWiki on your own computer, accessible locally from your Web browser. However, to publish your manual so other people can see it, you would need to copy your manual's wiki pages to a public wiki. Setting up and administering your own public wiki is a big job. If you can find an existing wiki which will accept your content, editing on an existing wiki is much easier than setting up a new one. You can search for wikis on WikiIndex. If you are writing a manual for an open-source software project, there are several wikis you can probably use, for example: Free and Open Source Software Wiki. If you are writing a manual for a commercial software project, your company should (probably) set up its own wiki. --Teratornis23:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
article completed but not found on the site
I was logged in and created an article. The article is complete and I'm trying to google search it on wikipedia and search within the wikipedia site and it's not identified/coming up. Has the article been published and if not how do I complete that process?
Kathleen baldwin19:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Kathleen baldwin[reply]
A recent entry was deleted to which was flagged as purely advertising a product/company. To my understanding the entry (SnapVillage) can be 'fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic.'
I read that it was a good idea not to just post again and to ask to be able to repost. Please let me know if this would be ok to rewrite my entry so that it is not promotional and just factual.
Before you try, you should carefully read both WP:ORG and WP:COI. If the company meets the notability criteria, and if you are not personally associated with the company, then you can explain your reasoning at Deletion Review and request that the article be undeleted so you can rewrite it. -FisherQueen (Talk) 20:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My wikipedia page is being continuously misrepresented and vandalised. I would like to remove my page from the site as I beleive I am being staulked. Can you help me with this?
This IP has tried to completely blank Katherine Hadford several times today. No idea why, or what on the article is a problem for her, or whether she really is Katherine Hadford or not. There seems to be some dispute about whether she is Hungarian or Hungarian-American, and when she started competing internationally, and this IP's contribution to the discussion on the talk page is less than fully civil. -FisherQueen (Talk) 22:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
68.33.118.103, we have no way of knowing who you really are. To fix the page, please present sources (such as newspaper articles, press releases, etc) which back up your claims. Please do this in a civil fashion on Talk:Katherine Hadford, and they will be included. You may alternatively email Wikipedia, but it is a lot faster to fix stuff using the talk page. --h2g2bob (talk) 02:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Server replication lag caused it. (If you want to know what that means, please ask someone else as I am not that technically apt. :-) .) —«ANIMUM»21:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Add details
Pls inform me how to add details on a famous law corporation in your web
How does one get rid of the porno on the History page. When the lines of porno are removed it just shows up again as a revision. I want the porno no where on my site, not in history, no anywhere. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Samgallo (talk • contribs).
I am trying to create a new page, and the tutorial says I need to click on the "Create Page" button. However, I cannot find it. Where is it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mehubb (talk • contribs) 21:45, 28 June 2007.
Except that the creation of new pages is disabled for very new editors. I see you created your account today. You'll have to wait a few days, I'm afraid. In the meantime, feel free to improve existing pages. Happy editing. ElinorD(talk)21:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The auto-confirmed flag has nothing to do with page creation, any registered user can create a page, however new users will have to fill out a CAPTCHA if their article contains any external links.--VectorPotentialTalk22:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Deleted article with no paper trail
I submitted a short article entitled "Boom Event" and also recommended (because of automated recommendations) that the phrase be put on the Wiktionary, and it appears to have been deleted without a paper trail, audit trail, log, or any reason whatsoever. Please be assured that as an automation industry security expert, industry spokesperson, standards committee(s) voting member, and author of various security white papers and manuals, that this is not a matter that should be taken lightly. I would appreciate an explanation of why the entry disappeared and the rationale for doing so. Richardhclark22:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that it was a definition of the word rather than a real article. It might meet the standards of inclusion on Wiktionary, I'm not sure. ssepp(talk)22:33, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not seeing how to add a request for editing a page that has been blocked from editing.
I don't see where to make a request how to edit the "Animal Farm," page. It has been restricted from editing, and I did not see how to do this in the FAQ or general instructions. I am sure it is in there somewhere, so it will be perfectly fine if you can direct me to the section for further instruction.
Although if you'd rather not register an account, you can always use {{editprotected}} on the talk page of the article, and someone else will come along to make the edit for you, although seeing as how you already have an account, you could just wait 4 days and then you'll be able to edit them yourself--VectorPotentialTalk22:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am Luther Lassiter's niece. I read the article you have here, and there are some things that were left out regarding his later years that I think need to be rewritten. If there is anything I can do to help you address this, please let me know. I have read several articles recently that are completely incorrect, and I just want to get it all corrected. Thank you for your help.
Tracy Lassiter Polk
The best thing to do is to point out those errors on the article's Talk page, along with links/references to publications where we can see the facts for ourselves. Unfortunately, we can't simply take your word for it. We need verifiable sources of information. If there is unsourced information in the article you feel is incorrect, please bring it up on the Talk page and folks will help from there. -- Kesh00:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Potentially. You need a computer to run it from, which can be as simple as your own home computer. If you want to share it with others, then you have to pay for an internet connection and (usually) hosting fees. Most ISPs frown on home users setting up their own servers without paying additional fees. Or, you could use a service that hosts wikis like Wikia. It all depends on how you want to run it. -- Kesh01:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This question suggests the questioner is very early in what is typically a long learning process to become a wiki administrator. It is possible to start your own wiki on a stick for zero incremental monetary cost (since you probably already have a computer if you can read this, and the software is free), and I recommend that you start by doing that to learn the technology, but if you want other people to see your wiki, somebody will have to pay to host it on the Internet (either you, or some kind of hosting service like Wikia which tries to generate ad revenue). But first, decide whether you really need to start your own wiki. What do you want to write about that isn't already being handled by at least one existing wiki? Search WikiIndex first to see if another wiki is already out there. Many smaller wikis tend to be underused as it is. That is, they need more enthusiasts in their subject areas to contribute. In the meantime, Wikipedia deletes thousands of pages per day. Go figure. --Teratornis19:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
potential vandalism?
The user User:12.218.62.240 seems to be a member of the Muller family of Estherville, Iowa, based on his edits. I suspect that his edit on Norman Lear is not based on fact, but I don't want to revert it. Someone want to go through and make some decisions on the notablilty/veracity of his edits? I removed the most recent one, but I'm a bit new here, and I'm not sure if I'm justified in systematically removing all the contributions of a single user.
(sorry, forgot to sign) Noliver00:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On Wikipedia? Usually it means a disagreement between editors that isn't quickly resolved by a brief discussion. (I suppose it technically applies to the ones that are resolved by a brief discussion as well, but nobody really talks about those to other people and they're usually more like misunderstandings.) You may be wanting the link to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution here. --tjstrftalk01:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I want to use the same reference several times in a text, how do I write the edit to acheive this without having to repeat all the data and end up with two identical references with seperate numbers? Yes I have given them a ref name="pmidxxxxx" show me what to type in edit for the second refJagra02:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a new user, I've just edited the article about the "Sanhedrin".
I didn't know how to insert references and I feel the way I've done it, although correct in facts, is inadequate in appearance.
Could you give me a reference to show me where to improve it with hyperlinks etc?
When I access any of the Wiki family of sire they come up in an italic font that is very difficult to read. When I finall decipher and find something I wish to copy by highlighting, copying and pasting the result is alsways in TNR font. Is there a way I can get this font to come up on screen?
I'VE UPLOADED AN IMAGE A FEW DAYS AGO WHILE EDITING Dhoom 2. I THOUGHT THAT MY UPLOADED IMAGE WOULD BE PLACED IN THAT PAGE, BUT AFTER COMPLETION OF THE UPLOADING FILE MY IMAGE HAS NOT BEEN ADDED TO THAT PAGE. NOW WHERE CAN I FIND THE IMAGA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.7.123.130 (talk • contribs)
Please log in and show us your account so that we can put the image in the article for you. We can't find it if you don't log in. Also the image was probably deleted if you did not give a description of its copyright status. Tim Q. Wells06:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Pownetwork.com deletion
Hello,
I read that the reason behind the pownetwork.org page deletion was that it was a subject that wasn't of significance or something like that. I still quite don't understand the terminology of what you are using. I felt it was inportant to put up. The Stolen Valor Act of 2005 makes it a federal offense for a person to claim military prestige that they did not earn to self promote themselves. The site isn't a slam site, the people do look up to verify that 1.) The person is making extravagant military claims and 2.) The claims they make are simply not true through records or a lack thereof. People need to recognize there are phonies up there that will take advantage of them. I am a servicemember and have family members and many friends whom are veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and it makes them unhappy to outright mad when they see or hear about them. There are also countless amounts of non-servicemembers who have been scammed financially, emotionally, and a few times physically by these people. People should ought to know.
Also, it's primarily a memorial site for the POW/MIA of all the wars the U.S. have been in. I think that's a plus too. I would like a quick response back. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Guardiangirl777
Wikipedia is a large site and has room for many articles, but this is an encyclopedia, not a directory of everything ever made. It is very important to us that the content is verifiable. In general, this means that there need to be independent third party sources and articles must have references. For web sites, you can read more details about the inclusion criteria here. Best of luck! Henrik05:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
References: do not send to footnote
Please help check Opus Dei article's reference notes 76 onwards. They do not send to any footnote. In fact there are more than 75 footnotes but footnotes 76 up to 100 do not appear at the foot of the article. Please help. Thanks. Walter Ching05:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I've been trying to fix something User:Cstephen did to the info box in the Welsh people article, which messed up the references at the end of the article, but without total success. The refs are okay now, but the info box contains an error message. It might have been fixed by now, but could someone take a look please?--Shantavira|feed me07:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm about to do a mass translation from the French Wikipedia on communes. I just want to clarify if all towns are notable by right? Sr1307:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote quite a long article in the summer of 2005 on an English school called Beaumont College. I spent a long time on it, adding bits and pieces as I found them, and didn't keep a copy myself, thinking that the Wiki material would always be available.
One day I found a community website containing a fair amount of useful information on local history in the area. I took some material from it, rephrasing what I was using to make sure, in my judgement, that I was staying within the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. One day my article was suddenly blocked by an administrator on copyright grounds. I complained that he should be prepared to discuss the nature of his complaints, that I was happy to amend the material I had used further if what I had written did not comply with US copyright law (my knowledge is of the law in the UK), and that it was very unfair to destroy all the work I had done when it was only a very small part of it, which could easily be removed, that he was objecting to. I had no reply. Then the article was deleted altogether.
I have now found that there are supposed to be ways of challenging this kind of action. But although there is now again an article called "Beaumont College", it is very short and there is no trace of my earlier article. Can I find it somewhere, and try and resurrect the 95% of it that did not offend the administrator?
I want to create a Filmography like this one Editing Template:Ursula Andress Films but when I try to create one, I get a blank article page . How do I get a blank Template page ?
Not really, no, especially since anons can't see their warnings, so it would be a little silly to block them for blanking the sandbox header when they probably don't even know they're doing something wrong--VectorPotentialTalk11:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can't remember my login name.
I am trying to log in. but can't remember my account name. As to get you to email me my password. What do i do? I don't want to create a new account.
There is one possibility. Can you remember any pages you edited with your account? If so your account name will be listed in the page history. Raven4x4x13:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
INCLUSION OFOUR GROUP INFO
I am representative of The Dawood Group , Pakistan [www.dawoodgroup.com]. we want to include our information in wikipedia so that our group also becomes part of all the info u providing to all internet users.
Hello!
I'm using wiki markup to make a template on a wiki site and I haven't managed to figure this out: can I link to an external page with an image? Or does the image always link to its own page? Thanks for your reply, --Missmarple12:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can't find the "get help from an expert editor" page
Hello.
I'm really sorry to bother you, but the other day I ran into a Wiki page about getting assistance from a veteran editor. I thought it was a great idea, so I went and got all my info together, so I could make the edit I wanted. I went back to try to get that assistance, and now I can't find it anywhere :(
It's in reference to the page Otherkin, which is being shredded by editors currently. It even has a reference to clinical lycanthropy, which #1. Has nothing to do with otherkin and #2. Inherently attacks otherkin as a spiritual belief by making up some connection to a psychological disorder. Because of the attack on the belief system, I feel it's rather urgent to update it as soon as possible.
There are several options available. For one, you can just post your question right here and somebody should be able to help you. If it's more urgent or more detailed, you can add the {{helpme}} template onto your user talk page, and somebody will show up to help you out. Or if you'd like more long-term guidance, you can join Wikipedia:Adopt-a-User. Or feel free to just go to my talk page and ask there, and I'll be happy to help you out. ;-) --Maelwys13:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please change "Evergreen House" to "Evergreen Museum & Library" as we have officially changed our name. Verification may be found on our website at http://www.museums.jhu.edu.
It's in reference to the Wikipedia page, Otherkin, which has been a battlefield for a few years now, namely because there were no actual books published about Otherkin. Just recently a book was published, it's called A Field Guide to Otherkin, by Lupa. Just Lupa. The 1st 30 pages of the book are viewable online at http://www.thegreenwolf.com/preview.pdf. The ISBN number is 978-1-905713-07-3 Copyright 2007
Currently, there's a reference in the page to something called Clinical Lycanthropy. I'd like to edit that to clarify that it's in reference to the belief that someone is Physically other than human, namely, a wolf. It says so right in the link on "clinical lycanthropy." It just says "belief that one is other than human" currently, which indicates a connection to Otherkin that isn't valid. Otherkin is the belief that one is Spiritually other than human. That or completely remove the reference to Clinical Lycanthropy, since it has nothing to do with Otherkin.
I'd like to remove the "Common creatures to which Otherkin claim some connection include angels, demons, elves, fairies, lycanthropes, and even extra-terrestrials.[1][2]" and replace it with more detailed information, from the book:
"Otherkin can be broken down into several categories: Elves and Fey, therianthropes, mythological animals (the most common of which being dragon), vampires, angelkin and demonkin, Kitsune (an unique fox spirit otherkin, primarily from China and Japan), Multiples and Walkins, and Otakukin and Mediakin. This last group is highly controversial within the otherkin community, opinions vary as to whether they are actually a part of Otherkin, or an entirely seperate phenomenon."
This is paraphrased from the book's section on "types of otherkin." I'd like to break down the categories below.
And right next to the Clinical Lycanthropy line (again, edited to clarify it's the belief one is Physically other than human) I'd like to add a line saying, "An Otherkin is one who believes that "through either a nonphysical or (much more rarely) physical means, s/he is not entirely human" (- direct quote). The most common belief is that one was once non human, then reincarnated into human form." with the little {#} thing showing that it's referenced to the A Field Guide to Otherkin book.
And to add the book as reference. Don't know how to do any of those things.
I'm not too savvy on wikipedia's rules. Can you have a bunch of information from a single book? There's only one book in existance about otherkin, virtually all information on the community exists as online resources, like www.otherkin.net, which the editors say are invalid since they're not published.
I'd like to basically write the article based on the otherkin book, but there's a few problems. I don't know how to do HTML stuff, don't know how to make the category stuff, don't know how to make links, zip nadda. And, I'm not sure if writing the article based on primarily 1 source is ok by wikipedia. The book is pretty neutral, for the most part. The author is otherkin, however, she's just detailing the facts about otherkin, the community, from a pretty matter-of-fact point of view, from surveys and researsuch. So, I think it's a very good source for the article.
This should be on the Talk page for Otherkin. The Help desk isn't for resolving editing disputes. If you feel that you are at an impasse with editors on that article, you might go through dispute resolution. -- Kesh23:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone to know the DFD of help desk application?
Anyone to know the DFD of help desk application?
I want sample Data Flow Diagram for help desk application, which is using in maximum BPO's.
Please send me the DFD for simple help desk application.
Email_Id : (email address removed)
Your chances of getting a useful answer improve if you link all the jargon and three letter acronyms in your question to pages that define them. BPO is ambiguous, thus it has a disambiguation page. The only entry that might have something to do with the rest of your question seems to be the first one. But we don't know if the list of entries in BPO is exhaustive, so you will have to explain what you mean. --Teratornis15:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
AWB for linux
WP:AWB makes it rather clear that it will only run on Microsoft software, are there any clients similar to AWB for linux though? Something more than just popups would be nice --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ14:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone know why exactly the "Ceramite" page redirects to Weapons of the Imperium, when the latter page has zero mention of Ceramite? Furthermore, Google seems to indicate ceramite is used in real life in various construction and electronics applications, so it should probably have its own page rather than redirecting to one of a fictional universe. 24.65.61.16615:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Further research shows that Ceramite is a trademarked (and therefore a proprietary) product of Elkem Materials. It may not necessarily be a well-known material and therefore not notable enough for inclusion in WP. On the other hand, it might be as notable as Corian and someone could start a page on it. If you're interested in doing so, then contact an admin about deleting the redirect and create a disambiguation page along with the article on Ceramite. Jim Dunning | talk16:26, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguation pages are used to disambiguate between Wikipedia articles and we don't appear to have an article mentioning a real material at the moment. Ceramite was mentioned in Weapons of the Imperium when the redirect was pointed there but not now, so I have changed the target to Equipment of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000). The redirect does not have to be deleted in order to create a disambiguation page or article. When the redirect target is reached after clicking Ceramite, just click the Ceramite link in "(Redirected from Ceramite)" and then edit the page normally. PrimeHunter16:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The same way as you create an article. Coding for a template can be complex, though, so it's advisable to look at other similar templates for guidance if you've never create one before. See also Wikipedia:Template namespace. --ais523 17:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Carried Interest definition was deleted -- How do I protest and get it reinstated?
On June 22, a tag was placed on an entry I made about "Carried Interest." The objection from the tag/bot was that the term was a copyright infringement. Carried Interest is NOT a copyrighted term, it is a term used within the investment fund world to describe a fund manager's share of distribution from a private equity fund or hedge fund. Additionally, this term, and now issue, has been all over the US press lately as the US Congress is seriously looking at increasing significantly the taxes paid on this distribution.
Can you please advise me and/or help me on the best way to get this definition reinstated? This is my first Wikipedia experience and entry.
It's not the subject of the article that causes copyright concerns, it's the content. You can't just cut n paste from some website. Wikipedia is free content. Try writing about this topic in your own words. Friday(talk)18:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also keep in mind that the article was tagged and deleted by humans, not by bots. The bot just left the note on your talk page. Often times, people don't through new articles or recent changes do not leave comments on page, because it takes too much time, effort, or they just forget, so there are bots to take care of the stuff that humans don't want to --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ18:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What kind of comments? We don't appear to have an article about it. This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. The Reference Desk is for general knowledge questions. But if you are looking for comments about the Australian Citizenship Test then Wikipedia is probably not a good place. You could try a Google search [5]. PrimeHunter19:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
German Porcelain Trademarks
I am attempting to find who a trademark belongs to on a porcelain figurine that is stamped Germany
and had a mark on it I am not familar with. Where can I find a list of trademarks before 1940?…19:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)72.188.227.70Tinkersmom
Back around January, this year, an account called Smuggler was created along with Smuggler inc, Those accounts have been inactive and do not have pages up. I am looking to create a page that gives a list of neutral facts about a production company. Companies such as 40anceres and a mule are listed with hardly any facts or information about their productions. There is also a list of directors along with the company founders that I would like to document in this page. The Smuggler and Smuggler inc accounts are inactive and merely reserving those names. I would like to have either name because the company is called smuggler. It would be incorrect and inconvenient to put this listing under any other name. I just would like to document facts about smuggler and the directors involved.
Thanks. The user has done additional editing and I'm no longer certain it qualifies for speedy deletion, so I think I'll warn them without re-tagging the page. Does that sound okay?--Evil1987
I'd say so. The way I'd do it would be to make use of the additional text parameter of the warning template - so {{subst:uw-speedy1|Article name|However, in this case you seem to have also added sufficient information to the article to disqualify it from speedy deletion, so I will not be re-adding the tag. Thank you.|subst=subst:}} would give
Welcome to Wikipedia. Please do not remove speedy deletion tags from articles that you have created yourself, as you did with Article name. If you do not believe the article should be deleted, then please place {{hangon}} on the page (please do not remove any existing speedy deletion tag) and make your case on the article's talk page. Administrators will look at your reasoning before deciding what to do with the article. However, in this case you seem to have also added sufficient information to the article to disqualify it from speedy deletion, so I will not be re-adding the tag. Thank you.
I've been asked to completely update, change, overhaul an article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tarrant. It needs sources and, as a biography, isn't very accurate. I've been working with the person who the article is about (John Tarrant) to come up with the new text. Is it okay to just eliminate the old article and replace it? The original author is also in favor of updating the article and adding references.
Second question. About references: Some of the information in the article is also referenced in author bio's from the books the subject has written and there is one other book that has some material we probably use, but in general it's just material given by the subject of the article. What's the best way to do the references in this case?
It should be alright to remove/rewrite content, as long as you use descriptive edit summaries you should be fine, otherwise people might think you're blanking the article, and might try to revert you--VectorPotentialTalk20:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a problem, provided you leave a notice explaining your changes on the article talk page. However, we ask people to be careful when editing articles they are closely associated with. Take a look through our conflict of interest guidelines. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on the context, could mean it's been tagged for cleanup, or it could mean it's been tagged for deletion (WP:CSD or WP:AfD) and any number of things in between. As I said, context is everything--VectorPotentialTalk20:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you saw this message on an article in a box saying "This article has been tagged since (month and year)", then it should mean the box has been there since the given time. The box should also say what the box is for. PrimeHunter22:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
using International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
I have reached the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) page. But nothing there shows me how to use it. It is supposed to have scores for various works, such as Bach's 3rd Orchestral Suite in D, but I don't see how to find any scores.
The website for that project is here. I think you were on the wikipedia article for that project instead of its website. Wikipedia (this website) is an encyclopedia. IMSLP is not related to Wikipedia. If you have further question about IMSLP please ask at their site, not here. ssepp(talk)21:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Vacation template
I'm going to be away for a while, so I wanted to create a vacation template for myself. I can write any text, but I'm having an issue with the default color of the {{vacation}} template, which is orange. How can I make an identical template with the first set of dark blue colors featured at WP:COLOR? - AMP'd21:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First, you need to type {{subst:Holiday}} on your talk page and save. Then, after that, go edit the code so that the first line reads
Actually, it isn't written down. I just spliced those directions together based on {{wikibreak}}, which accepts a background colour input field, and told you how to replace the revelant code from {{holiday}} so that it also accepted background colour. It would actually be pretty easy to merge the code into the template directly, now that you mention it. --tjstrftalk21:51, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Britney Spears
hey guys, i have news about Britney Spears, but as im a new user i cant add it ...so here is the link for the whizz that can lol...
Yes, I'd like to ask a question.
In the Iraqi war going on right now, are there concentration camps for middle eastern's like the Japanese in WWII? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.49.164.37 (talk)
For example, the term “concentration camp,” to describe camps used to house civilian prisoners, was used by the British during the Second Boer War, primarily because it sounded bland and inoffensive. However, after the Third Reich used the expression to describe its death camps, the term gained enormous negative connotation. Since then, new terms have been invented as euphemisms for them, such as internment camps, resettlement camps, etc.
(diff) (hist) . . Jennifer Tilly; 08:18 . . (+14) . . SatyrTN (Talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 69.156.23.19 to version 140161588 by 71.229.183.112)
Where does the figure 140161588 come from ?
I'm looking at the Jennifer Tilly history right now and I don't see it.
Where does it come from ? What does it represent ?
You know on diff links, how it will have a part of the address bar saying "&oldid=" and then a number? Well, if you paste the number of a given revision in, in this case 140161588, instead of the one that's there by default, it will show you that revision. So you want http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jennifer_Tilly&oldid=140161588
But for guidelines, please check WP:N and specifically WP:CORP. If you are associated with the company, please check WP:COI and WP:AB. Basically any user who has been registered for five days can create an article, but any other user can question the notability of the article's subject, and a consensus that the subject is non-notable will cause the article to be deleted. When in doubt, ask before wasting a lot of your time. -70.177.166.20003:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And think very carefully about whether this is what you really want to do. Remember, it's the encyclopedia that anyone can edit -- that includes your competitors, disgruntled customers, and all their friends and relatives. 03:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
June 30
Links
How do I create a link to another page in Wikipedia, like when its blue and underlined and takes you somewhere else. Anna F C00:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can often see how something is done by clicking edit (or view source for protected pages) on a page that does it. For example, the source for your above signature says [[User:Anna F C|Anna F C]] which creates a piped link called "Anna F C", but linking to User:Anna F C. PrimeHunter01:14, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Requesting article topic without writing it
Can I request Wikipedia to create an article, though I don't want to be the one to write it? Can I do this without registering?
For example, I'd like to see Arthur Sulzberger's article expanded or a new article that addresses his role in fighting Zionism and his apathy towards the Holocaust.
Theoretical Work On Absolute Maximum Temperature Possible
This question relates to the subject of "temperature."
It is my understanding that "Absolute Zero Kelvin" is the lowest temperature that matter could possibly attain. When I read articles about cosmetology and astronomy I see temperatures mentioned of tens and even hundreds of millions of degrees.
My question is this: Has there ever been any theoretical (mathematical, etc.) work done to try and find out (establish) what, if any, is the absolute maximum temperature that is possible for "matter" and/or plasma to attain?
I created a page (Mark Wilkinson Music) my user ID is nman3912. However when i try to search for it using wikipedia search engine it doesnt come up. I think that i may have saved it as a JPG instead of an actualy Page. Im really lost. Help — Preceding unsigned comment added by nman3912 (talk • contribs)
Did you click search instead of go? Try clicking go if you've been using search. No, you didn't save it as JPG or anything like that. Tim Q. Wells06:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, you did a good job! If I remember correctly, the search function doesn't update immediately, but you can access the page by naming it exactly and clicking "Go".
Regarding the content - Wikipedia gets tons of new musicians every day. To have an article, a musician has to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I think you've done a good job here, but you may want to review the rules here, just to make sure.
I'm planning to do an article on the sternwheeler Moyie this weekend, and as you can see, that title is available. However there is a Moyie Lake, Moyie River, Moyie Springs and an unwritten (but undoubtedly forthcoming) Moyie, British Columbia. In light of these other "Moyie" titled articles and articles to be, is now the time to think about making a disambiguation page? And should the simple title Moyie be saved for the unwritten town article? Because I could use Moyie (sternwheeler) instead.CindyBotalk07:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that makes sense. I do try and make the term sternwheeler clear in the articles, and link to paddle steamer right off the bat. Because you're right, it's hardly an everyday word. Thanks again for your help.CindyBotalk08:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sir me from Pakistan. i am very good player of football "i dare say" that's way i wanna join your academy. sir please tell me how i join your acadmemy.
thanks
Name----Waseem
E-mail--- <e-mail address removed for privacy reasons>
Mobile no--- <phone number removed for privacy reasons>
You are in the wrong place; this is the help desk for Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia. We are not a football academy. If you wish to ask about joining a football academy you might want to use the Reference Desk. I have also removed your e-mail address and phone number to prevent spam. Raven4x4x09:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I created a page called Princess Marcella Borghese on Thursday, June 28, 2007 at approximately 20:30 EST. I do not have an account, and created the page anonymously.
I wrote an article entitled "Elvis Presleys favorite books" which was deleted because the people in charge said it was "bollocks", not well researched (there were 33 references), irrelevant etc.
One critic even went so far as to say, "Why not have a page on my favorite books?" Strange. I don't think they really understand what a cultural phenomon Elvis was and how much his fans want to know about him. Just for the record I didn't like his movies either.
The article titled 'Doncaster Lakers' needs to be changed because the club is now called 'Doncaster RLFC' how do I change this or can someone do this for me?
I changed the name for you. To change an article name, you need to move the page by clicking the move button. Once an account is more than 4 days old, you can move pages using your account. --Hdt83Chat16:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a bug/glitch/problem with the MediaWiki program for anonymous users. Try purging your cache (Ctrl Shift R from Firefox, Ctrl F5 for Explorer), or quitting your browser and opening it again. Evilclown93(talk)17:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You could also create an account, and then have the message page only for messages specifically targeted to you, instead of to anyone using the anonymous address. Corvus cornix18:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can I use photos that appear in the pages of wikepedia on my website for free?
I'm so confused by Wikipedia! I'm trying so hard to figure this out. For starters, why can't I upload images that I own? Why am I being told I'm doing something wrong with photos I have permission to use? What do I need to include in the HTML to make this all better???
Do you contact me via this, or via my e-mail- <email removed for privacy>
A public domain image of a Russian stamp You should check the licensing information on that image's page. If the image is in the public domain or under a free license, it'll be ok to use (just check the terms of the license if you want to make any changes to the image). Some pictures are under copyright, however, so you should check with the holder of the copyright (who should be named on the image page) before you use them. For example, the image below is in the public domain, but this image is held under copyright (which is why I can't show it on this page).
Wikipedia itself holds no copyright on any information or images on this site. All material is licensed under the GFDL, unless otherwise stated as on the image pages.
If a particular item has been tagged with the "citation needed" tag since Februrary, can we delete that uncited item? What is the acceptable length of time to allow something uncited to remain in an article?
Primarily, one should try to find a source. If you can't find it, and no one else has been able to add one since February, I don't think it would be unreasonable to remove the item. It's something that have to be decided on a case by case basis though. Happy editing! Henrik20:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See also Wikipedia:Citing sources#Dealing with citation problems. If it's harmful, it should have been deleted long ago. If it's harmless then there is no fixed time limit. If it sounds dubious, it would probably be OK to delete it now. If it doesn't sound dubious and it's on a page with low edit frequency then I suggest you either search for a source (e.g. with Google) and remove it if you fail, or leave it if you don't want to spend time searching. What is the article? Then we can help better. PrimeHunter21:06, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
added photo
hi
I uploaded a photo and added to a wiki article. The only probelm is that i there is a box around the image. How do i fix that--Gustyfalcon21:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is about Jason Derek Brown I assume. It seems it has been fixed. You get that box if you add spaces before text
How do I get the userboxes on my user page to sit nice and not go all over the place? I am one of these people who communicates using the boxes and right now they are all over my user page.--Brianna Goldberg21:09, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is some info about this at Wp:userboxes#Grouping_userboxes but that might be a bit confusing (at least I thought so when I grouped my userboxes). I used the table method on my userpage, you could use the structure of that as an example if you choose to use a table (by clicking edit on my userpage and viewing the code). Each pair of boxes shows next to each other, and the |- creates a newline. ssepp(talk)21:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
SPA (meatpuppet?) flood
Is there any particularly-efficacious way to contend with the flood of SPA's in this straw poll and the not-quite-3RR-violating insistence on change in violation of consensus? Permanent semi-protection of the page seems ridiculously extreme, and would just mean that all those SPA's would be creating throwaway accounts, instead of posting anonymously. Is this just destined to become a slow-burning WP:LEW? While we're at it, can anyone Goggle up any obvious WP:MEAT recruitment, such as blog or forum posts, for example? Jouster (whisper) 21:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If they signed the message, there should be a link back to the sender's talk page. If there isn't, you can always check the page history and see who sent it there. Then, once on the sender's talk page you can click the small "+" at the top of the page, which will allow you to create a new thread on the page. (spebi · talk) 22:09, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You need to go their talk page, either by clicking on their name (which normally leads to their user page) and then clicking discussion, or by entering User talk:(username) into the search box. The click the "+" at the top. ssepp(talk)22:14, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it is not uploaded yet, need to upload it through Wikipedia:Upload (make sure to read the instructions well). Then you can include it in an article using the markup explained in Wikipedia:Images. Note that images that are not freely licensed can normally not be used in Wikipedia. ssepp(talk)22:17, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to upload an image from your computer onto Wikipedia, you must know what license is the image licensed under. You can't just upload any photo that you found off the Internet. I recommend reading the Wikipedia's image use policy before uploading the image. If you do know what license the image is under, you can upload it now by going to Special:Upload. If you upload an image under a false license, you will be blocked indefinitely.
On the other hand, if you want to add a picture that is already on Wikipedia to an article, you need to place [[Image:Image name.png|150px|thumb|right|Caption here]] to the article.
replace Image name.png with the exact filename of the picture
replace 150px with the size in pixels you want the picture to appear
replace thumb with frame, or you can leave it as it is.
replace right with either right, left, center or none; and
Many of the Town articles use the Geobox Settlement template, which contains a Mayor field. However, in many towns (e.g.-those in New York State), the town leader has the title Town Supervisor, not Mayor. Could someone please explain how to use the Geobox so that it says "Supervisor" when needed? Thanks. Truthanado22:45, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Login problem - "Remember me" seems to have forgotten
When I set up my account some months ago (User:Struway) I clicked the Remember me button, so it would log in automatically. Came back from holiday a couple of days ago, login working fine, suddenly today it wants me to log in explicitly i.e. to enter user name and password. So I enter what I'm pretty sure is my password, but apparently it isn't, and (stupid, I know) I didn't supply an email address so can't request a password to be sent.
I know I can create a new account (though it's a pity, as I was quite happy with the one I had), but was wondering if anyone knew why this might suddenly happen? 86.131.13.22222:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC) (who used to edit as Struway)[reply]
I may have - but other sites supposed to "remember me" still do, and that wouldn't explain my password not being what I know sincerely believe it to be. Thanks for replying, anyway; I've now created a new account, and supplied an email address, so if it happens again at least it'll be recoverable ;-) Struway2 | Talk08:06, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Questions about Wikipedia's survivability
Hello.
I posted a question up here most recently, and I'm wondering about something.
Wiki trolls are shredding wikipedia. Not just my soap box, the Otherkin page, but tons of them. People who go crazy on the small technicalities of Wikipedia's rules. Otherkin went from a 4 page article, very well written, neutral, and an excellent reference... even though I didn't completely agree with it... and because it used online references, it was ripped to shreds, now a tiny article that even includes a references to Clinical Lycanthropy, which has nothing to do with the belief, and uses a reference from a website maintained by a skeptical teacher who's admittedly biased, but say that the recently published book about otherkin isn't valid, because she wrote books about things they don't find valid, like animal magick and alchemy. Even though those are published, too.
Sometimes common sense is thrown into the wind in favor of obsessive technicality, ruining the greatest thing about wikipedia: it's the online source of information about obscure topics. Yeah, you can read about the Holocaust, for instance, in any random encyclopedia. But you want to read about Otherkin, or some other obscure, fringe topic, and it's available on wikipedia... at least, up until a few years ago. Tons of pages are getting shredded to bits. Some of it's valid, but they're not using common sense in a number of cases, but an obsession with technicality instead.
I can't really do editing stuff, because I don't understand HTML and related things. But even if the 3 year long battle to the death on the Otherkin article is finally resolved, it doesn't fix the problem that caused it.
How can we fix wikipedia's current, inherent flaw: wiki trolls? How can a movement be made, to change and fix wikipedia back to it's original beauty? There has to be something that can be done. It pains me to see obscure, but accurate articles disappear into oblivion because the information about them only exists online. The internet is such a massive tool for data sharing, a lot of information about some subjects can only be found online. Why should those subjects be entirely discarded? Why is a website dedicated to the study and publishing of it's findings, made by a passionate user, less valid than a random reporter, putting in some comment in the news?
Wikipedia needs a makeover. Maybe this place isn't the best place to ask this, but where is? What can be done? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RubyCona (talk • contribs)
Wikipediais not for everyone, but that is not immediately apparent to a number of new users. Only after gaining some experience on Wikipedia can people see how well it fits with their particular agendas. As you are probably aware, the world is full of many sharp disagreements; in some cases, people are even willing to die or kill over differences in belief. Given that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that (almost) anyone can edit, that raises questions about how Wikipedia can avoid descending into endless edit warring. (Actually since the edit warring around here is endless, the real question is how to keep a lid on it.) The answers are in Wikipedia's policies of WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:RS. Those documents do a better job of explaining themselves than I can here, so read them as many times as you need to understand them.
If you have content you want to edit on a wiki, but Wikipedia deletes it, then go find another wiki with different content policies that favor your point of view. There are thousands of public wikis; see: List of wikis for a very incomplete list, and search WikiIndex for a lot more. You might, for example, prefer to edit on WikInfo because it rejects the neutral point of view in favor of the sympathetic point of view, and welcomes original research. You might also think about starting your own wiki if you can't find an existing wiki you like. --Teratornis00:09, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I should also point out that Wikipedia's survivability is not in question at the moment, with 47,849,598 registered user accounts and 6,870,903 articles, both numbers continuing to burgeon. That is why Wikipedia has the luxury of deleting up to several pages per minute. Wikipedia has no problem getting vast amounts of content which complies with its policies. But for some odd reason, it seems many contributors of noncompliant content are unaware of the existence of other wikis which might welcome their content. Wikipedia is not the "only game in town" (or, more specifically the only wiki), yet it seems to be the only wiki many people have heard of. Wikipedia was, for example, the first wiki I looked seriously at. When a new user creates a new article, there is no obvious mention of the fact that other wikis exist, and the new user should first determine the most appropriate wiki for the article he or she wants to create. I think if that message could be gotten across to new users clearly somehow, it might save everyone a lot of grief. --Teratornis00:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To the original poster, your use of "my soap box" indicates that you have not read WP:SOAP. To boil down all the Wikipedia rules into a single sentence: Wikipedia is focused on organizing online (and sometimes print) references, not specifically truth or fact. In other words, there are many things on Wikipedia that are not true, but they are referenced. So, they stay. There are many things on Wikipedia that are completely true, but not referenced. So, they get removed. -- Kainaw(what?)00:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was just about to post the same thing. The fact that you refer to a Wikipedia article as "my soap box" is disturbing. Do you really understand the purpose of Wikipedia? Corvus cornix18:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
By typing the following code: [[:Image:Image file name.png]] – replace Image file name.png with the actual filename. This same method can be used to display text-only links for Categories, and transclude pages in the article namespace (e.g. {{:Main Page}} transcludes the main page). (spebi · talk) 23:13, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I presume there is some kind of name for this (link pimping?), but I suspect someone of littering their website through a bunch of wikipedia pages to improve their Google ranking. Is there some way to search for a domain name through wikipedia articles? (searching for "example.com site:wikipedia.org" only finds specific "example.com" listings, not a full stem search (ie. "*.example.com/.*"). Also, is there a wikipedia policy on this? ie. where does the line fall between adding relevant content and self-promotion? Thanks! Natebailey00:32, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is a policy against it, which is called linkspam. It is at WP:SPAM. Sorry, but I don't think you can search for a specific name to fight. Reywas92Talk01:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could someone please get me a link to the voting at the meta board of trustees election? When I click the link there, it stops me because I don't have 400 edits at meta, but I do here. The link was previously on the watchlist header, but now I can't find that. Thanks! Reywas92Talk01:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After the establishment of the joke Conservpedia, I just want to say Thank you to Wikipedia for being the information network without prejudice! You give information, not judgement as they do, and that is important!
If you like Wikipedia, then you should be thankful for the spin-off wikis such as Conservapedia, CreationWiki, Wookiepedia, Strategy Wiki, etc. Spin-off wikis tend to siphon off the decidedly non-neutral topic enthusiasts and promoters of particular points of view, leaving Wikipedia freer to pursue its stance of neutrality. If those other wikis did not exist, more non-neutral types would probably stay on Wikipedia and fight. Most people who harbor strong beliefs not conclusively supported by the facts experience the following two types of emotion:
They feel distress when confronted with facts which contradict their beliefs (see: Cognitive dissonance).
They feel positive emotions when surrounded by people who agree with their beliefs while systematically ignoring any disturbing facts (see: Groupthink).
Therefore, almost anyone who harbors a strong belief not conclusively supported by the facts is likely to feel less comfortable (possibly much less comfortable) on Wikipedia (where many if not most belief systems are represented) than they will feel on a wiki catering to their particular beliefs. Since most people prefer feeling comfortable to feeling uncomfortable, over time this has the effect of encouraging authors who value their beliefs more than they value the facts to leave Wikipedia and edit elsewhere. That makes it easier for the remaining Wikipedia editors to keep Wikipedia focused on the facts.
While one might deplore the existence of obviously biased wikis, their very existence represents a kind of concession on the part of people whose beliefs turned out to be insufficiently supported by facts to be generally convincing to the diverse community of Wikipedians. Since the facts are the only things the vast majority of people can generally agree on (for example, almost everybody accepts the fact that cutting one's own arm off is a bad idea, unless the situation is such that the alternative would be even worse - we can all agree on that sort of thing), a site like Wikipedia which tries hard to limit itself to facts will have the widest possible appeal. The various axe-grinding sites are unlikely to become as popular as Wikipedia, and they are unlikely to be as generally useful - because centuries of human experience have shown that beliefs based directly on facts (e.g., science) are more useful than beliefs not based directly on facts (e.g., religion, politics, etc.). As an example, we no longer sacrifice virgins to propitiate the rain gods, because careful analysis by meteorologists found no evidence that sacrificing virgins has any effect on rainfall (and the virgins themselves probably complained). Instead the biased wikis will tend to exist primarily for the entertainment and emotional reinforcement of people who already agree with them. --Teratornis15:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You placed a pipe | in the wrong place. It's {{db-reason|reason goes here}}. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kesh (talk • contribs).
{{db}} redirects to {{db-reason}}. The real problem is that your symbol ¦ above and in your test [6] is not a pipe which should be |. Depending on your keyboard, you may get a pipe by holding Alt Gr down and pressing a key near backspace. Or you can click the symbol a little to the right of "Wiki markup" in the box you probably have below the "Save page" button when you edit. PrimeHunter04:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Internal Links
I am working on an article. When I use a referance like (1), I want to link the refarance I have on the page. I am familiar with programming, so feel free to just give me code. I understand that using [[article#section will link to a section, but I want to link to a specific refarance. The article is Job costing. Thank You!
MRME404:24, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The code for what you want is <sup>[[ARTICLENAME#referencename|1]]</sup>, but that's not an efficient method since it will require you manually specify anchors, and there are several better standardized formats. Have you read Wikipedia:Footnotes? You can create a fully formatted reference section using <ref> tags by following its directions. --tjstrftalk04:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! Thank you for your help. I am new to Wikipedia and impressed by how robust and powerful it is. Thanks!
Not a problem, I'm glad to help. The software isn't perfect, but it has a lot of neat features, with more being added all the time and. That's the benefit of open sourcing our software and debug processes. The downside is that difficult but not vital problems and requests take forever, since the devs would usually rather work on their favorite project rather than do drudge work. If you're really interested in programming, you might want to take a look at Wikipedia's Bugzilla database. --tjstrftalk04:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki#Release history summarizes some of the more important feature additions. I too was highly impressed by MediaWiki the first time I looked at it enough to grasp some of what it can do. More than a year later, I'm even more impressed (although I'm not impressed with everything; see for example some admitted shortcomings in Help:Search). It's getting hard for me to tolerate many non-wikiWeb sites any more, where they don't even let visitors fix typos and so on. However, be aware that on Wikipedia you are seeing not only the MediaWiki software, but also (probably) the most highly-developed and best-maintained implementation of it. If you try to start your own wiki by downloading and installing MediaWiki, you will quickly discover how much of the value of Wikipedia is in its large and dedicated community of users (called "Wikipedians"). Without a whole bunch of people to add content, write manuals, enforce the policies and guidelines, and combat vandalism, a wiki readily withers into disuse or turns into a mess no matter how sophisticated its software may be. The genius of the MediaWiki software is in how efficiently it enables the Wikipedia community to function. Accordingly, the key to replicating some of Wikipedia's success on another wiki is in recruiting a community to build and maintain it. Wikipedia has the key advantage of being an encyclopedia about everything which is verifiable, and that's a lot. Because Wikipedia covers so many topics, it attracts a very large number of contributors, and fortunately the very smart people who started the project figured out the right mix of policies and guidelines to allow the project to grow without becoming entirely deadlocked in Edit warring. Although it may still be a bit early to judge, I suspect Wikipedia may eventually be recognized as one of the most significant technological innovations in history, perhaps on par with the World Wide Web itself. --Teratornis19:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do I change my user name?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulbat (talk • contribs) 04:57, July 1, 2007 (UTC)
You've only got two edits besides this one, so I would suggest simply creating a new account and putting a redirect on your current User page to point to your new account. -- Kesh05:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The inconveniently named Wikipedia:Changing username page provides that function. It has to be done manually though, by a bureaucrat, so it's probably easier for you to just make a new account. (Bureaucrats are like admins, only with additional powers such as promoting admins, changing usernames, and a few other things. We only have like 10 of them or something.) --tjstrftalk05:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the help. I've created a new user. How do I create and add a "redirect"????— Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulbat (talk • contribs) 05:08, July 1, 2007 (UTC)
Ok Kesh.... sorry I have no information re: tight muscles.... However.. re: redirect I'm really stupid here, where on what page do I put it???? It's ok to LYAO.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPs.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk"
If you are Paulbat, then your user page would be at: User:Paulbat. However, you can see that is, at the moment, a red link which means you did not yet make a user page for your "Paulbat" account. Kesh was telling you to put the redirect there. You would do that by clicking this red link: User:Paulbat and editing it to contain the wikitext Kesh gave you above, except of course that you would replace "Newusernamehere" with your new user name. Since you did not tell us your new user name, we cannot tell you exactly what to type. --Teratornis15:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Muscles
I need to know if you have any information about muscels being so tight that they rasie your hip upward— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.127.85.221 (talk • contribs) 05:11, July 1, 2007 (UTC)
Ok Kesh.... sorry I have no information re: tight muscles.... However.. re: redirect I'm really stupid here, where on what page do I put it???? It's ok to LYAO.
I tried to figure out how to update an article but I am lucky if I get this thing turned on.
Your article on Granite Oregon is outdated. As Mayor You have Pat Fielding. The presemt mayor was elected on Nov 7 2004 and took office on Jan 1 2005. and was reelected on Nov 7 2006
His Name Is Fred Neal Corbin.
Thank you
Fred
You did pretty well at editting this page. I changed the facts for you. I couldn't find any facts as you as mayor, but you were the fire chief and elections were held. Don't shy away from editting, Be Bold and just click on the "Edit this page" tab at the top, remember that any changes can be reverted, so don't be scared. Tdmg05:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Use/Mention
I tried to find the FAQ on this question, but I couldn't find it. I was editting the Castle Ashby article, and it started off "Castle Ashby is the name of a civil parish ..." However, I think they meant "Castle Ashby is a civil parish ..." Is this something that deserves editting? I know philosophers care a lot about this, but I don't know about encyclopedias. I'm going to change it, but I'd like some guidance. Tdmg05:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is there an API for searching content? I found the MediaWIKI API and Query API but those seem to only deal with titles, not with content at all. I was curious if there was a programmatic way to search article content? pw06:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:DUMP. Probably the most flexible programmatic way to search Wikipedia's article content is to download a dump of Wikipedia's database and run your own MySQL queries on it. (It is better for your own search speed, and everyone else's server response, if you run programmatic searches against your own local mirror rather than burdening Wikipedia's servers. See: mw:Manual:Wiki on a stick for a relatively easy method to set up your own local workstation mirror of Wikipedia.) I suspect but do not know for certain that many if not most of the serious Wikipedia researchers need such powerful search methods. However, before you go to that much trouble, investigate the options for searching Wikipedia with external search engines. Also see semantic wiki and structured wiki for other approaches to organizing wiki information for flexible retrieval. --Teratornis15:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, if you give some specific examples of searches you want to run, we may be able to recommend specific methods. When you ask a question on the Help desk (or on any Internet help forum), it's advisable to state your ultimate goal as clearly as possible, rather than asking about something which is merely one means to an unstated goal (the means may then become a red herring for people who respond to the question). An API approach to searching Wikipedia may or may not be the best means to whatever goal you have in mind, but that's hard to know when we don't know what your real goal is. --Teratornis16:28, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Filing stubs
¬¬¬¬I have written a stub in the category 'Trinidad and Tobago People Stubs'. Whereas other articles in this category appear in the alphabetical listing by the name of the person, my article appears under 'T' - 'Trinidad and Tobago People Stubs',and NOT under the name of the person, in this case 'Peter Boyd'. Can you please explain how to get it listed properly? I have searched everywhere for this information and cannot find any instructions to this effect. Thank you.
First, Template:Trinidad-bio-stub needs to be restored. (Apparently you moved it by mistake.) Then transclude the template onto your article - i.e., add {{trinidad-bio-stub}}. If the name still appears out of order, add {{DEFAULTSORT:Whatever}}, where Whatever is the name for sorting purposes. ShalomHello09:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia editors not eligible to vote in Board Elections?
Although I have 24,000+ edits on the English Wikipedia, when I go to the vote page I am told I am ineligible because I do not have enough edits. I am registered on Wiki Commons but have no edits there as I cannot figure out how Wiki Commons works. Does this mean that voting for board members is ruled out for editors on Wikipedia only? (I am probably asking this in the wrong place, but it is so hard to know where correct places to ask are. Please forgive me.) Sincerely, Mattisse10:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, you need to have registered before March 2007 and have at least 400 edits, those are the only requirements I'm aware of, and you've clearly met both of them. Are you following the link from meta, or another project, perhaps? If so, you'll need to go to a project where you do meet the requirements, and visit Special:Boardvote. – Luna Santin (talk)10:28, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Voting is possible from all Wikimedia projects, incl. Commons and Meta, however you need to fulfill the rules Luna Santin outlined on the project you vote from. --Mbimmler10:32, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I a so very sorry but I do not understand what you are saying. I registered in May of 2006 and have 24,000+ edits. I am following the link at the top of my Watchlist on the English Wikipedia to get to the voting. When I do that I am immediately switched to Wiki Commons. If I do not sign in at Wiki Commons, I clearly cannot vote. If I do sign in, I am ineligible. The Special:Boardvote leads me to the same situation. Perhaps people like me are not supposed to vote? Sincerely, Mattisse10:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You definately should be able to vote. Just click on Special:Boardvote at the english Wikipedia and you should be redirected to a page on Meta. This page should say "Welcome Mattisse@enwiki!" at the top. It will then have instructions on voting etc. Does this happen for you? Raven4x4x13:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually it isn't meta, it is an external site. There is a security warning you will need to click to open the page. Log in here, go to Special:Boardvote, wait 20 seconds, click to accept the security certificate, and then click vote. I believe you may also need an email set, but that shouldn't be a problem. Prodegotalk18:35, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I am misunderstanding your instructions, but I have done as you say above. I wait the 20 seconds, accept the security certification, and the click to vote. (I don't know what you mean by email set, but and email is entered for my Wikipedia account.) When I click to vote, I get the message that I am ineligible because of too few edits. Am I missing something here? (I'm not very technical). Sincerely, Mattisse19:02, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Does the page you come to say "Welcome Mattisse@enwiki!" on the top? If it does you should definately be able to vote. Raven4x4x02:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
¡¡Still Having Trouble with Images !!
I already know how to upload a file, but ¿¿how do tell its uploaded??
And how do i create my own signiture and templtes?
user:naj da man
Creating your own signature can be done by going into Special:Preferences and adding HTML coding into the Raw signature filed and checking the below it, if the tags are incorrect it will tell you this, if its suitable it wil save them for you once you click save. When uploading images via Special:Upload it will appear on screen when successfully uploaded so you can click the watch tab by the edit this page icon or you can see it at or Special:Log/upload. Hope this helps. The Sunshine Man is now Qst12:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If people are spamming articles with inappropriate external links then you can warn them using the correct user warning templates and if they spam after there fourth and final warning they can be reported to AIV but the warnings have to be within a close period of each other. Regards --The Sunshine Man is now Qst12:28, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am a designer and builder of a few medical type components that connect to a PC via USB. there are many terms used on my sites that are not comonly used by the average individual. i was wondering if i have rights to use your link pages on my site? or what i have to do in order to add your links legally
If you merely link a jargon term to its Wikipedia article, I don't think you have to do anything special. That is, I don't think Wikipedia exerts any control over who may merely link to articles here. (Can any site exert such control? That is, does copyright protection extend to URLs themselves, apart from the pages they link to? If so, that would be news to me.) However, if you want to mirror Wikipedia content on your site, see WP:MIRROR and the pages it links to. If you want to cite Wikipedia as a reference, for example in your scholarly works, then Citing Wikipedia applies. I'm not an attorney, so consult one if you want to be sure. Also see meta:James explains law. --Teratornis14:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes you are, but only images which are under a free license (eg. GFDL) or public domain. Fair use copyrighted images cannot be used on your talk page. Will (aka Wimt) 13:26, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I sighted references that I sourced the facts from but it still says no sources or references sighted. do i need to do something else to cite sources? I even provided direct links. How does this get updated and wickified? How do I insert a table of contents?
I removed the template. Look over WP:MOS for guidelines on style. A table of contents will appear automatically when your article has a list of contents to display. Currently, you have no headings, thus no need for a TOC. Wikification is the linking of words to other articles, as I did above with WP:MOS. See WP:MOS#Wikilinking for more details. Also, the templates on the page automatically add the article to a list of articles needing each of those things stated in the templates. So if you don't make the necessary changes, someone else may come along and do it. However, those lists have huge backlogs so it may be a while. LaraLoveT/C13:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:RS, WP:CITE, WP:CITET, WP:WIKIFY, and Help:Section#Table of contents (TOC). Almost everything you need to know about Wikipedia is somewhere in the manuals. However, Wikipedia is an enormously complicated project; the manuals are therefore long and you have to spend much time reading them if you want to contribute productively here. This is actually much better than in many areas of real life, where most of the necessary instructions aren't written down anywhere that we can find. You only have to spend a few months being confused on Wikipedia, whereas real life is confusing for up to 80 years or so. --Teratornis14:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, with limitations. You can't participate in the Support, Oppose, Neutral, but anons are encouraged to participate in the discuission section. --Evilclown93(talk)14:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Protecting a deleted page
How can one protect a deleted page to prevent recreation? I tried to do this on my personal wiki, but the protect button disappeared after I deleted the page. SalaSkan14:45, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that Wikipedia:Creating a new article is a copy of the generic MediaWiki help page: m:Help:Starting a new page; it focuses more on how to create a new article, and less on whether you should create whatever new article you may have in mind. Experience shows that many new users come to Wikipedia with incorrect assumptions of what belongs here. The result is that Wikipedia deletes up to several pages per minute. Be aware that many new articles by new users end up getting deleted. Articles which "stick" are subject to heavy editing by others. Therefore, before you spend hours editing a new article here, be sure you can write the kind of article Wikipedia wants, and you are comfortable with the idea that large numbers of people you will never meet can edit your work in ways you cannot control. If you aren't sure about your idea, ask us. --Teratornis17:32, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I made an article for healthcare '08 then decided it would be better if I actually spelled it right so made the same thing for health care '08...so I would like someone to delete the first one.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenziejoy (talk • contribs)
Actually the proper way to rename articles is to follow the procedure in WP:MOVE. The idea is that we need to preserve the history of pages we rename. Hopefully an administrator will see this question and clean things up. --Teratornis19:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
ethnicity of Jane Mago with the federal government
Who is Jane Mago with the Federal Government, and what is the origin of the name Mago?
I'm trying to fix Image:Types_of_Carbon_Nanotubes.png which appears to have been corrupted in March 2007. I have the fixed image on my disk, but I have no idea how to upload it so that it replaces the old one -- neither on Wikipedia nor on Wikimedia Commons... The upload link seems to be missing on both sites, so perhaps the image is protected somehow? How could I request unprotection? --Ma Baker19:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, the image looks perfectly fine to me. But if I'm not seeing what you're seeing, you should leave a note at the administrators' noticeboard requesting an admin to move an image to make way for uploading a new image. Someone whould be able to help you or to indicate that it's not necessary. ShalomHello20:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply; the issue is that the lower 20% or so of the image is completely black so the lower tubes are truncated and their legends are missing. --Ma Baker20:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The image was hosted on commons, that's probably the reason why you couldn't upload it. I did the upload for you (and credited you in the licensing part, I didn't know how to do it) -- lucasbfrtalk22:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reproducing parts of text
How do I go about reproducing images for use in a book I am writing? Is there a special form which needs to be filed?
This is the Wikipedia Help Desk, intended for help on using Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not hold copyright on any information or images on its site. If you would like to use an image, you should contact the source of that image. If the image is in the public domain, you are free to use it however you like. Many images here are under free licenses - you should consult the terms of those licenses to determine how they can be used elsewhere and who to give credit to. Hersfold(talk/work)01:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How to ask for editing RED ARMY CRIMES category articles help?
My English is not fluent enough. I would like to ask for editing help for the whole category articles, but my entry to help desk becouse of unknown reasons was blocked.
Ttturbo22:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but when I've marked my page by {help} it was removed soon threatening to ban me if I ask again. Is it possible to ask for editing help for all category?
The help template is always removed when someone comes to help you. That's standard practice on Wikipedia. You were warned, not for asking for help, but for trying to push your own opinions and accusing other editors of crimes. -- Kesh23:37, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This was not true. I've asked for some editing help and information about redirecting, but help mark was removed without any explanations and threatening -please don't disrupt ant don't attack me accusing in not telling the truth!. Remeber please general warning about responsibility.
(reduce indent) This user has made some uncivil remarks in the past (example here). His article is currently under deletion, and he needs help editing with the article so that the article will survive deletion. In my opinion, this is a point of view related help. Miranda02:21, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One of the accusations in the voting debate for deleting was poor language, and Miranda says -don't edit the article for deleting. So, Miranda continues disruptive personal attack against me - the author of category Red Army crimes articles.Ttturbo09:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The other way involves a colon and another indent:
item
item
item
item
item
item
item
It does basically the same thing as your working example does - it puts a newline character into a list item. Your code is easier, and I think, is better HTML. -- zzuuzz(talk) 02:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
-- zzuuzz(talk)02:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Positions vacant deepartment
We are a foreign company based in China Foshan City and wish to employ students recently graduated from your electronic marketing classes
Can you direct me where to look on any of your web sites
Thanking you
Bill Dryburgh
This is the wikipedia help desk, we help users understand how to use wikipedia and it's functions. We don't have any electronic marketing classes as we are not a college or a university - therefore we don't have any pages that contain that information or any students. --Fredrick day23:14, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The questioner may have been reading a Wikipedia article about a trade school of some sort, possibly mistaking Wikipedia's Help desk as the contact point for that school. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that (almost) anyone can edit. Wikipedia has many articles about schools (among other things). Most school articles here should have one or more links that you can follow to find contact information for the school. Unfortunately I know of no way to determine which article the questioner might have been viewing, so unless he tells us the name of the school we cannot give him more clues about how to contact them. --Teratornis06:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
July 2
book as a source
I recently started a page on a character from a book series known as the Dresden Files. The character's name is Thomas Raith. It is not complete, but already there are messages saying I haven't cited my sources. My sources are the books themselves, and I am not sure what the exact format is for citing the books. Could someone tell me what the format is?
Thanks for that, that will help for the actual citation. Something else I was wondering, though. Do I create a footnote, and then post the citation at the bottom with a footnote attached? I am pretty sure I don't just post the citation in the middle of the text...
Yes, you should enclose the citation with the <ref> and </ref> tags. This will create one of those little superscript numbers, which will link you to the actual citation at the bottom of the article, where you should place the <references/> code. See WP:CITE or WP:FOOT for more information. Hersfold(talk/work)01:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
picture of the day
how do I submit a photo to be considered for the picture of the day?
The picture of the day (POTD) is chosen among a list of featured pictures. To try to get a picture to be featured, it absolutely must be a free picture (as in, it is either Public Domain, GFDL, Creative Commons, etc.). If it is licensed freely, then check out the featured picture criteria to make sure it meets the standards. If you feel that it does, then follow the directions to nominate it. Fellow editors will vote on it, and if consensus rules in its favor, it will become a Featured picture, and will soon be Picture of the Day.
We are looking for a copy of the Father Mark Mary's Homily on Concupicence. This was presented at Mass on EWTN.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.97.150.34 (talk • contribs).
Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit02:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
canada law for information for Freedom of information
pl what is status canadian law for freedom of information for canda law for information to citizens and what are key persons to cotact.220.224.41.9802:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
anil
anil_1949@hotmail.com[reply]
Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit02:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
administration
I saw somewhere about administrators. How does one become one? Does one apply for the job at the Wikipedia offices? Does one have to have some previous work experience as either a writer or in management? Polounit02:54, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, you don't need any outside experience or anything. And no, you don't have to go to the offices. Experienced users (usually at least 4 months at 4,000 edits) run at Requests for adminship, and other users decide whether or not they should become an admin. It's not a job, and you don't get paid :). I would suggest you don't apply now, as you're not that experienced. You're welcome to voice your opinion on other requests though. --(Review Me) Ryou talking to me?Contribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 02:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The rule of thumb is that you have to have been here long enough and done enough to display that you are trustworthy and knowledgeable about policy. How you do that may differ from editor to editor. LeeboT/C03:36, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the first requirement for being an administrator is to know one's way around the manuals well enough not to have to ask how to become an administrator. Not to be rude about it, but Wikipedia is very much a document-driven project, so learning the manuals in depth would be an essential first step toward becoming an administrator, and one of the manuals one would come across in the course of reading all that material would be Wikipedia:Administrators. For (lots) more information see the Administrators: entry just below User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Adm. --Teratornis06:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's actually a difference between those two illustrations? Anyways, just re-upload each image, but save it under the correct name. You will be prompted to overwrite the existing image, which is what you want, so go ahead. Jim Dunning | talk05:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes there is a difference; look at the relative positions of the blue corners at top and bottom. The middle layer is triangular prisms, and the outer layers are octahedra (blue) alternating with tetrahedra (red). In "elongated alternated cubic", each prism meets one tetrahedron and one octahedron; in "gyroelongated alternated cubic", each prism meets the same shape at both ends. (User:Tomruen has made the correction.) —Tamfang07:05, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
cladistics
The top portion of the 1st page can't be edited but contains 2 factual errors. Cladistics does indee use morphological similarities, i.e., in those analyses based on phenotypic(classical, nonmolecular) evidence. Also, DNA sequencing is not "so-called", Molecular data, it is, indeed, molecular data. Futher on it does not mention that many cladists consider paraphyly as polyphyly which it is. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.156.205.19 (talk)
For the past weeks, I've been trying to improve the fictional character article of Shego, trying to rise it to a Good Article and maybe to a Featured Article someday. Now, while the other users and me have managed to improve the article, there's a dispute I'm not sure how to handle.
Among all the sections of the article, I decided to put Personality, Appearance and Powers and abilities as subsections of a Characteristic section. My reasons for doing so is that, by doing it that way, it's possible to archive everything about the character's usual and present characteristics into one section, while I believe that the less Main Sections, the better. But there is another user that claims that that doesn't really contribute to the article, and so is the dispute.
I tried to research about how should this be done in the Manual of Style, but it didn't help. Does someone knows how should it be done? Or can at least give me an opinion?
The Help Desk really isn't the place for editorial dispute resolution, but here are some suggestions. It certainly appears that the editors working on this article have had a productive set of discussions going, so consider following that route further. You've only been addressing the issue for a couple days, so give it more time and see if other editors weigh in to help gain Consensus. You might try contacting some other editors who have worked on the article before and ask them for input; make sure you do so neutrally without pushing a POV too strongly (solicit objective assessments). Along the same line, use the resources at WikiProject Films or WikiProject Television and ask for ideas on the Talk pages there. If you haven't done so already, check out similar articles and evaluate their formats in light of your goals. I hope these ideas are helpful. Good luck. Jim Dunning | talk04:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't actually asking for how to solve this dispute, but about what should be done with the heading sections, as if there is any style that should be followed about that, and/or if I'm right with my opinion of "The less main section, the better". --Alexlayer04:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The beauty of WP is that there usually are no set format requirements. Did I mention that's often cited as the irritating part of WP, too? How you handle the headings and sections is really up to you and the other editors (and thus falling outside the realm of "how to use WP"). Often times the Project pages will provide guidelines, but I don't see anything there that can help you on this one. I still suggest reviewing as many similar-topic articles as you can and build consensus that way. I hope I'm addressing your question. Jim Dunning | talk04:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:LAYOUT describes standard Wikipedia article sections. That may or may not help you here. To find a good layout for a certain type of article, look at other well-edited articles of similar type. To find such articles, look at the relevant categories and WikiProjects. Hopefully the article is already categorized into the relevant categories, and the relevant WikiProjects should be listed on the article's talk page. Given that Shego is a cartoon character, there should be many similar articles to use as models. Obviously it is more productive for editors to agree on one basic structure for all articles of a given type, than to argue over the details of every one of them individually (without reference to all the others which have been argued about). --Teratornis06:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
lost password for an account made long time ago, without providing email
Hello
Is any chance to recover a password for an account I made long time ago and for wich I did not provide an email address? How can I prove that I made it? Of course, I cand make another account, but I use this nickname on almost every site.
Thank you
Catalin
Create another account. If you still love your old user name so much, make a request at WP:CHU/U to change your new acc username to the old one (in case you old acc has no contributions). Best wishes. AW04:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, it looks like there were a couple edits if this is your account. This will preclude you from "usurping" the account. Also, you'd have to establish yourself as a regular user before making the request. Best suggestion at this point is try logging in using favorite passwords from four years ago (or go for a whole new persona — change is good). Good luck. Jim Dunning | talk04:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is not my account. Mne is cat23. I'll try to make a new one and then change the new account to the old name. 10x all
When i use the Wikipedia recently, the page expands larger into the right. When i go look into the right there is just blank white. I just changed to Internet Explorer 7 so does that affect that. Maybe your site doesnt support IE 7! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.28.149.205 (talk • contribs) 05:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK Wikipedia is compatible with all major internet browsers, new and old. Some particular pages, such as page widening, are formatted in ways that require left to right scrolling. ShalomHello06:36, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
loading, sharing & editing PowerPoint or Impress files
Our organization has an internal xxxipedia running for knowledge management and collaboration. Unfortunately PowerPoint (alternate:Impress) has a firm foothold within the organization and we would like to be able to load / share / edit PowerPoint files/slides. Any thoughts on how this could be achieved using the existing MediaWiki engine ?
The Wikipedia help desk is for questions on using Wikipedia, the encyclopedia, it is not meant for general MediaWiki questions, so you might not get an answer here. Also, you probably mean your organisation has a wiki, not an xxxipedia, which is a name that would be more appropriate for an encyclopedia running on an undefined platform. ssepp(talk)12:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(If I saw the word: xxxipedia with no other explanation, I'd suspect it involved some sort of adult content, although I'd probably go with the undefined platform thing to avoid self-incrimination.) A more specific name for a wiki used internally by an organization is corporate wiki. The place to ask questions about administering the MediaWiki software is: mw:Project:Support desk. Sometimes you can find useful pointers by searching the two wikis where MediaWiki administrators participate: search Meta-Wiki for: powerpoint, search mediawiki.org for: powerpoint. Both searches find some hits. Have fun. --Teratornis14:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
standard English/common dictionary
I recently edited the two instances of the word 'underwhelming' out of the article on Major League Soccer. The first I replaced with disappointing, the second was just removed. I did a quick google search 'define: underwhelm' which returned no results--this confirmed my suspicion that 'underwhelm' is a creative, but non-standard word. I left an edit summary to that effect. An editor then left a note on my talk page which subtly accused me of prescriptive language-mongering, pointing me to the fact that the word is included in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary.
This inspired me to look a bit deeper: I found the word listed in dictionary.com as well, along with a note declaring the word 'informal.'
Before I respond to the particular editor, I want to find out more about standard wording. Is there a dictionary that wikipedia considers authoritative? It seems clear to me that words like 'underwhelm' are perhaps akin to plenty of other neologisms that would be perfectly acceptable in the wikipedia of the future (once these words have become standardized), but I don't know the best way to take this up with the other editor, nor am I aware of wikipedia's policy concerning dictionary differences.
There do seem to be reliable sources for the word (see wikt:underwhelming for some that Wikipedia's sister project Wiktionary found, for instance). I suppose whether a word should be used or not comes down to the same issues as any other content in an article; if it's disputed what the word means, or whether it's genuine English, sources can be useful, but of course even if a word is a real word that doesn't mean it has to be used, especially if it's unclear or there's a replacement word that would be clearer to readers. There don't seem to be any Manual of Style pages or other appropriate pages on the subject (which I've tried to determine through the new improved search feature). --ais523 11:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I get a million hits on google:underwhelming. This seems sufficient as evidence of the word to me, but the word is often used in a disparaging POV way, so another word would probably be better for Wikipedia in most cases. PrimeHunter12:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disputed article
I was wondering what the recommended way is for dealing with uncommented "disputes". I sometimes run across "The neutrality of this section/article is disputed -- see discussion on the talk-page", but then find a talk-page *completely* void of any mention of any dispute.
Is it in such cases (example: Stavanger) acceptable to remove the dispute-marker ? It's sorta hard to try to clear up a claimed "dispute" when the person adding the tag can't even be bothered to mention what exactly the dispute is supposed to be about...
In those situations, I generally remove the tag and leave a note on the talkpage of the person who has added the tag saying if they wish to re-add it, they need to start a conversation on the talkpage explaining what the issue is. --Fredrick day10:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rails UIC-60
Dear Sir,
We would like to inform you that we have one Tender for the Syrian Railways at hand for /24000/ Rails UIC-60 If in your line , could you please inform us so we can provide you all the details ASAP. If not in your line, please send us addresses or website of the firms concerned.
Waiting your reply soonest.
Thanks, Best Regards
(personal information removed)
This is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia. We don't sell rails. Maybe you have the wrong website? --ais523 11:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
This is the wikipedia helpdesk - we help people with problems related to editing content on wikipedia and other related functions. As such, I am afraid that we are not interested in bidding for a tender to build a railway. We could however offer a nice article on it once it is finished. --Fredrick day11:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect we get these strange questions because people read an article about something on Wikipedia and suppose Wikipedia is directly involved in whatever that thing is. That is understandable, because many people are still unfamiliar with wikis in general and with Wikipedia in particular, and if they browse directly to a Wikipedia article from, say, a search engine, they may think they are viewing an ordinary Web site. Many if not most Web sites that provide detailed information about a corporation are probably corporate sites. Even though Wikipedia has plenty of clues to indicate it is not a typical corporate site, the human brain is a funny thing - a person who forms an incorrect belief will often tend to ignore evidence that contradicts the belief, as if they just don't see it. This is one reason why software, to be truly usable, must do more than merely present information passively. Software must also detect and model the user's current level of understanding, and then change its presentation as necessary to correct misconceptions. This is, of course, exactly what a human expert does when advising a client. The human expert does not merely recite facts, but asks the client questions to infer which facts the client is missing or getting wrong. --Teratornis14:57, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How to change the default login page to a portal?
I'd like my wikipedia login to always be the energy portal - is this possible??? Thanks a lot!
It would be possible to write a user script to do this; here's an example bit of code that would cause you to be redirected to Portal:Energy immediately after logging in. --ais523 13:01, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
(Note that I haven't tested this.) To use it, copy the code into Special:Mypage/monobook.js, and then bypass your cache (Control-F5 on Internet Explorer and Firefox for Windows). You can then test it by logging out and logging back in again. --ais523 13:01, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Toolbar?
Is there a Wikipedia toolbar that you can download for your webbrowser (a la google or yahoo tooolbars)? I think it would be a great tool to have b/c I always have things I want to "quick check."
205.217.105.214:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Both Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7's built-in search facilities can easily be instructed to search Wikipedia (to set this up, visit any Wikipedia page, then click on the down arrow next to your current search provider on Firefox or the magnifying glass icon next to the search box on Internet Explorer, then choose to add Wikipedia (it will either be directly on the menu or via one of the submenus). For other browsers and for other toolbars, you might want to see Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools for tools available for your browser. --ais523 14:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
almimuoni ahmed k s a
[removed]
I have removed the above as it makes no sense and contains personal information. The Sunshine Man is now Qst14:40, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
money paid out from lawsuit
My father's dead, but before he died he had received money from a lawsuit there in his hometown. The money was taken and has never been found.The detectives never pursued the issue, saying there was no proof that he ever had the money.
I'm sorry to hear about your father, however the help desk is for Wikipedia related problems only, sorry... The Sunshine Man is now Qst14:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, we at Wikipedia cannot give out Legal advice. Please consider another source for your information.
See Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer. Also note that even if Wikipedia did give legal advice, laws vary around the world, so any request for legal advice should identify the relevant jurisdiction(s). Advice on how to proceed would obviously vary by the country, or even by the state or province within a country. --Teratornis19:41, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Author
How do I find the author, editor of an Article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.214.186.129 (talk • contribs) 15:16, July 2, 2007 UTC (UTC)
(edit conflict) Articles are edited by multiple people (Wikipedia is a wiki, and anyone can edit any article at any time, more or less); you can find out their usernames by clicking on the 'history' tab at the top of the screen, to the right of 'edit this page'. If you want this information to cite Wikipedia, you may find the 'cite this article' link in the toolbox in the left sidebar more useful, though. --ais523 15:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Because Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, there will likely be multiple authors/editors for most articles. You can see who they are by reviewing the article's History. Just click on the "history" link at the top of the article's page. You can also review the article's discussion or Talk page to see comments from some of the editors, providing some insight into the article's development. Jim Dunning | talk15:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Image Links
This was brought up a few questions back, but I'd like to clarify it further. The [[image:filename]] wiki code automatically wraps the image in a link to the image's page. That makes it impossible to do something rather simple, such as link an image of a question mark to the help page. For example, I cannot do: [http://mediawiki.org/somehelppage [[image:question]]]. My initial response is to use HTML's <img ... > tag. But, when you do that, the tag is parsed out and becomes <img src='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=image:question' /> - the full text, not the image. I understand this - it keeps people from linking images in from other sites. But, it forces the use of the wiki image code that forces a link to the image's page - meaning that you cannot link an image. So, is there any workaround? -- Kainaw(what?)15:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The other reason it's like that is that clicking on an image shows its copyright information, so if the image has a copyright that means attribution is required, it would be a copyright violation to do this without a description link. There is a (somewhat obscure, probably deliberately) syntax to do what you're asking, though:
<imagemap>
Image:Example.svg|100px|an example image
default [[Wikipedia:Help desk]]
</imagemap>
an example image
If, like this image, the image is public domain, you can get rid of the information icon by adding desc none as an extra line inside the imagemap tags. One other thing: this use of imagemap is inadvisable in articles (userpages, project pages and help pages seem to use it most). Hope that helps! --ais523 15:24, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Helpme
How do you make your own wiki because there are other wiki sites like wookipedia and relic have one so how do you actual
Make one for a certian topic?
Comander Cumi
Are you referring to starting just an article in Wikipedia? If so, review Your first article. Or are you asking about starting a complete wiki? If that's the case, keep in mind that administering your own wiki is a major undertaking. You might consider finding an existing wiki willing to accept your content; search for wikis on WikiIndex. You can search for open source software for wikis here: Free and Open Source Software Wiki. Jim Dunning | talk15:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Byrd Alzheimer's Institute Wikipedia Page
Hello-
I am writing to inquire about an email sent by my associate from the Johnnie B. Byrd Sr., Alzheimer's Center and Research Institute last week. I have been unable to find a contact phone number for the questions that we have concerning the copy on the page. Also, my email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org has bounced back.
Jennifer Whelihan, the communications liaison for the Institute is trying to set up its Wikipedia page.
Please let me know if you have received her email (attached) and what steps there are in order for this process to move forward.
The Byrd Institute is a not for profit organization with a mission to prevent and cure Alzheimer's disease. They are connected to world-class scientists and researchers across the globe who all share the same vision.
Thank you for your time, I appreciate your help.
Jessica Duncan
I work for the Byrd Alzheimer's Institute and just set up an account to add our information to your site. I went through the process and added content under the following two names.
- Byrd Alzheimer's Institute
- Johnnie B. Byrd, Sr. Alzheimer's Center & Research Institute
I received a message that said I needed to send an e-mail to this address letting you know I have copyright permission to add this information on the Institute. I do. I wrote the content and it is also posted on our web site. This information comes directly from us at the Institute. Please let me know if there is anything further I need to do.
Thank you for your assistance,
Jennifer
Creating an article for a website of which the article author is a founder...
Hello,
I've overlooked the Wikipedia guidelines for posting articles and noted that articles of self promotion are frowned upon or even disallowed, and that this stretches to include websites as well.
However several years ago I co-founded a fan based website for a computer game series (FreeSpace) and, as it is the last major site of its type, I feel it would greatly benefit internet users who're looking to access content on the game(s) as Wikipedia is a major informational resource and pointing them in the right direction by placing an article here would be mutually beneficial. I realize that self promotion is frowned upon as I say, however would an *objective* article on the website be permitted?
If you can ascertain the notability of Freespace (according to WP:NN), then the article is a reasonable candidate for creation. Instead of creating it yourself, I would recommend putting it up at WP:AfC (Articles for Creation). An objective editor will create it if seen as notable.Kevinwong913Speak out loud!15:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am obviously a novice on Wikipedia so pardon the basicness of my questions. I have tried to add a description about HealthString so that it appears under H on the health care company page, but it keeps adding to the top of the page. I assure you, this is not intentional! Please tell me how to correct this error and I will promptly do so. Thanks so much. User:Lizwillock 16:04, July 2, 2007
Hi, Ms. Willock. Which article are you specifically trying to edit? That may help in figuring out a solution to your dilemma. Also, based on your contribution to Personal health record, you should review Wikipedia's guidelines on conflict of interest. The addition of your company's website in the list of reference sources looks more like an advertisement than a link for additional information. As it stands now someone may remove your contribution thinking it is spamlinking. You may want to take another look at it and consider reformatting and/or relocating the information. Jim Dunning | talk16:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I guess you are referring to Category:Health care companies where IP numbers have added information about HealthString.[7] I have removed it because it doesn't belong there. An article about HealthString should be created at HealthString. If you then want it to be listed in Category:Health care companies then add [[Category:Health care companies]] to the end of the article. If you consider creating the article, please read WP:CORP and provide Wikipedia:Reliable sources to demonstrate notability. If you are associated with HealthString then also read WP:COI. And read WP:EL before adding more links to other articles. We have a lot of guidelines. PrimeHunter16:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your editing confusion was due to the fact that category pages behave differently than most other pages. The MediaWiki software generates the entries under the alphabetic headings on a category page from other pages which contain the type of category links PrimeHunter illustrated above. Experience shows that many new users find categories confusing. Read Help:Category if you want to learn about them. Also see additional guidelines for business-related articles: Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. Wikipedia is very complicated, so don't expect all this to make sense immediately. Be aware that starting new articles can be one of the more difficult editing challenges for a new user; Wikipedia deletes up to several new pages per minute for not following our site policies and guidelines. --Teratornis17:06, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Help me
What exactly is a template and how do i make a completely new wiki but with a whole new look and subjects and not so big and so that i can edit every thing andchange every thing
Part of your question's been answered a few sections above. As for templates, see Wikipedia:Template namespace; they're bits of text and/or markup (often quite complicated markup!) that can be substituted or transcluded onto multiple pages. --ais523 16:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
To further respond, a template is a page which can be inserted into another page via a process called transclusion. Refer to Help:Template for detailed information on creating them. Templates can be very complex, so you may want to review the code for some existing templates before attempting to create them on your own. For example, this is an example of a navigation box template; you can actually see the wiki markup used to create it here].
Advice re dealing with another editor who deletes my text from an article
If you will go to the article Blood Done Sign My Name at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Done_Sign_My_Name and click on "My Talk," you will see (near the bottom) a letter asking for advice in which I state in great detail what the situation is. However, someone named Miranda responds in a way that seems to indicate that he/she is unable to read my letter.
I can't understand why Miranda is unable to read my letter. I am hoping that someone else will be able to read it and get back to me.
Also, I note on your talk page you refer to my reference to my review of the book (and to excerpts from an e-mail from the author to me). Please be sure to read WP:COI, as trying to insert references to your own work is a conflict of interest. Further, even emails are copyrighted, so posting excerpts from them could potentially be a copyright violation. I would suggest discussing it further on the article's Talk page. -- Kesh17:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this discussion should be closed as resolved. There are half a dozen editors who have independently taken the time to explain in detail the relevant policies in this case. 18:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
How do you create a wikipedia page of your own
This is my first time on wikipedia and i have just regestered, How do i create a page that other people can search for and find??? --Hellosophkitty17:35, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since you have not placed any information on either your userpage or Talk page, and your lone contribution to WP contains no identifying information about you, then you can just stop using the account (as Friday suggests) and disappear. Jim Dunning | talk18:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
References relating to songs
If a song article states that said song reached number one (or any other chart number), should a reference be added?
If so, what sources would be appropriate to cite? Would, for example, the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles be acceptable?
When viewing my watchlist, all edits are listed like this "Planet; 03:29 . . (+53)...". What is the significance (+53)? Thanks! Vsst19:43, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's the number of characters added or removed in the last edit. Useful so that you can tell if someone just deleted the entire page or something. --tjstrftalk19:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
1. Why does Wikipedia not automatically log you out if you briefly exited Wikipedia? If possible, how can I set this feature up?
2. Also, why does Wikipedia not automatically log you out if you have idled for a certain amount of time? Again, if possible, how can I set this feature up, too?
Thank you. --Mayfare19:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Log-in page has a "Remember me" box. If that is checked, Wikipedia will keep you logged in. If it is not checked, you will be logged out after a certain length of time (how long, I don't know, but it seems to be less than an hour). Corvus cornix20:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Renaming Community media
Hi, I am a new user of Wikipedia and I think it is important to change the title for the "Community media" page to a capitalized one: "Community Media". This should be done because it is a title and more importantly because the title "Community Media" has a redirect on it that takes the user to "public Access", which is a form of "Community Media". Please advise. Fred Johnson [user name Parisjohnson]
I moved one of the "noinclude" tags down a line, and that seems to have fixed it. Not sure why it was displaying that in the first place, though... Hersfold(talk/work)21:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The extra text appeared because you removed the <noinclude> tag which prevented that text from appearing. h is the same template as g with a heading at the top, so the current setup means that the current version of g is used when you use h. I have reverted back to the original usage and it appears to work fine now. Hope that explains, mattbr21:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The template should always be subst'ed, as are all the welcome templates, which will result in the desired behaviour. mattbr21:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Translating an article
I have written an article in English and I would like to write the same one in French. I will translate it myself How do I proceed?JLR-mapman21:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fairly new here, but I think you first translate the title, then the text, then go to the French Wikipedia to write the article there. But they may have slightly different policies and guidelines there though. Also, add a [[fr:PAGE_NAME_IN_FRENCH]] to the bottom of the article. SmileToday☺(talk to me , My edits) 21:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you smile for the prompt answer, I did not kow how to get to the French Wikipedia nor how to indicate a translated page. I will try manage from here. thanks again
On my userpage, how do I make my the expanding boxes which hold my userboxes to be the same color as the TOC? Also, how do I make the expanding boxes which hold my userboses to default expanded, so you don't have to click 'show'? Thanks a lot. —Christopher Mann McKayuser talk21:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merging Crossrail articles (histories)
How are histories merged in this case? Crossrail Glasgow was originally Glasgow Crossrail until the name changed. However, instead of moving Glasgow Crossrail to Crossrail Glasgow, instead the former was redirected to the latter when the latter was created. Simply south22:35, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi I was a regular visitor and contributor to a page that has since been deleted. Please tell me who to approach about reposting the page.
For reference it was "New Zealand Words" with a growing list of great endemic and shared words and terms from New Zealand. It was not a swear-word page or any kind of advertisement. I guess I noticed it to be missing about two or three months ago.
What is the legality (particularly under the GFDL) of using the text of one Wikipedia article as the basis for another article? Does it matter how heavily the article is modified? My own [very] casual reading of the GFDL would seem to indicate it's okay since the new document would also be issued under the GFDL, and in some senses it's no different than substing a template. Does it make a difference if I'm the original author for a majority of the text? For the entire text? (The specific case I'm curious about regards SAT Subject tests if it matters, but I'm interested in the question in general.) --YbborTalk01:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It shouldn't be a problem, although I'd suggest that in the first edit you make, you include a link to the old article for attribution purposes. Of course you can't use the Wikipedia article as a reliable source, though. Confusing Manifestation01:21, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure it applies if you wrote all the used text, but why not make the link anyway? You could add that it was written by you if you want credit in the new article. If somebody else made contributions, even minor ones, then definitely make the link. PrimeHunter02:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My page was deleted, and i can not find it in the deletion log
i created a page called "class of 77" which was found here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_of_77
and it is no longer there. i had received permission from all parties that i was allowed to publish their material.
The creator of the show contacted me today and asked why it had been removed. can you please tell me why this is so?
I was also not contacted about this site being removed or told of it being a problem before it was removed. is that also normal?
You could have found the link by clicking "deletion log" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_of_77, or by going to Class of 77. See WP:N and WP:RS for some of the mentioned concerns. The article had a big box for 5 days saying that it was debated for deletion (assuming things went as they should). See Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Article creators are often but not always told on their talk page that an article is up for deletion. You can watch articles if you want to discover edits to them (proposing deletion is an edit). PrimeHunter01:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How to discuss the subst:nn-warn message
Hello there,
I recently listed and article for speedy deletion (db group) and placed the subst:nn-warn template on the talk page of the article creator. The message seems a little harsh to me - especially to someone who is obviously new and trying to help. I think it could be phrased in a much better way that doesn't sound as if it's a "telling-off". My question is - How and where can I propose a rephrased version? Thanks Tree Kittens02:52, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot to both of you for your answers. It seems there are lots of issues here to do with user warning standardisation and so on, so I think I'll take a look at the existing discussions and have a look at other warnings before diving in. Thanks a lot for your help. Tree Kittens03:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Pokepoll
Sorry for the lame title, as I ment to say I am starting a poll in which people can vote for their favorite Pokemon on my userpage, are others allowed to edit it to place their "votes" on my userpage? Or should I just get rid of it? (LatiRider03:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]
Yes, they can edit your page, and yes, you should get rid of it. (Playing games, taking polls on unrelated matters, etc. are not proper uses of your userpage.) --tjstrftalk03:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but could you be a bit more specific? It's easier to answer your question that way. I'll assume that you're talking about one of two things:
WikiProjects: Simply add your name to the list, usually using "#~~~~"
Categories: Add "[[Category:(name of category here)|{{PAGENAME}}]]"
Ok let me explain it. Like add those bada** templates to my channel. I added one but that was by accident. Luckily I joined that. (I PWN U ALL03:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]
Article gone, what happened? Also disappeared under "my contributions"
A few weeks ago, I wrote something, quite a bit, in an article. Now it's gone. I also looked under "my contributions" and it's also disappeared. What happened? The disappeared material wasn't anything secret, wasn't related to national security, and wasn't vandalism. Ok, the subject was a little obscure. Fineday05:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I assume you mean the title of the page. To change it you move the page to a new name which will change the title. Note that only accounts older than 4 days can move pages. --Hdt83Chat05:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
one less reason page
i created a page on the band One Less Reason from Jackson, Tn but for some reason between the hours of 1pm and 12am on july 2nd it was deleted. i was just wondering why it was deleted. they are a band that i am in talks with of creating this page to give information to those who know about them, but want to know more.
Here's my problem: I had all my userboxes in my infobox, but they were causing issues with my awards (overlapping), so I decided to condense into show/hide tables. When I add the code to the infobox, it causes the text (the lead of my userpage) to start below the bottom of the infobox. When I place it in the body (currently at the very bottom of my page), it messes us the div code I have set up to set my background and border to pink, and I can't adjust the alignment. As it currently is, there are two tables (Personal & Wikipedia) aligned to the left (having more caused issues with alignment and order), and the border/background are messed up.
I had more than the two tables previous to this, and would prefer to have more, but I want them all lined up one below the other or in even rows that fill the width of the page. Does anyone know how to fix this? LaraLoveT/C06:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. That looks better, but it's not what I wanted. I mean, I prefer that than what I had, but ultimately I would prefer they be in the info box without causing the lead text to start below the infobox. Or, if that isn't possible, I would like the blue border on white background, which has appeared inside my pink border with pale pink background, to go away. Neither of those may be possible. I don't understand coding so much. Two different "div"s may be forced to clash like this. LaraLoveT/C06:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Password problem
I am trying to log in uhe password you sent me and it still gives me the error —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.183.20.171 (talk • contribs).
Remember that user names are also case sensitive. So if your username has capitol letters in it, make sure to type them that way. -CamT|C07:52, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do I delete an artical
How does someone delete an artical. I have got a home wiki and I cannot delete any articals —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.59.188.108 (talk • contribs).
If, in support of other Chinese, I volunteer my bandwidth to Tor, will I be blocked from editing by your anti-Chinese policy against open proxies? --Router of The Onion12:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you provide an exit node capable of editing Wikipedia, it is likely that you will be blocked due to vandals from other countries using it. -- zzuuzz(talk)12:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a side note, it's not that Wikipedia has an anti-Chinese policy, it's that China has an anti-free-speech policy. If it weren't for that, Chinese editors wouldn't have to try to use proxies in the first place. -- Kesh02:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
i want to know
hi, plese i want to know what i am manglik in my leligon ,there is no consecpt of manglik plese plese help me about it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aqsa chochu (talk • contribs).
Many of the articles that touch on Indian subjects are written in Indian English, which (hoping I don't cause offence to any Indian editors) I regard as "non-standard" and I often edit these into formal British English. However, User:Sukh says here that "all pages related to India are meant to be in Indian English. See the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English for further details." The Manual of Style does say that no major national variety of the language is more "correct" than the others. Does this mean we are to allow such English as (examples from Indian English article) "I am understanding it" "She is knowing the answer"?--Shantavira|feed me13:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This comes up in many articles. See American football. British-English speakers continually want to alter the article. Recently, the sentence, "Both football and soccer have roots in a common earlier sport." was changed to, "Both football and football have roots in a common earlier sport." Also, they insist on changing feet/yards to meters. "10 yards" is not used as a scientific unit of measurement in the sport. It is a nice round number that sounds much better than saying, "They have to run 9.144 meters for a first down." In the end, it comes down to who will read the article most often. If it is Americans, then it should be in American English. If it is British, then it should be in British English. If it is Australians, it should be in Australian English. If it is Indians, it should be in Indian English. -- Kainaw(what?)13:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One obviously ideal technological solution would be for each person's computer to show him or her the version of the World Wide Web he or she prefers to see. Someone who is upset by, say, seeing lengths in yards instead of meters should never have to see anything but meters. Someone who is upset by seeing a photograph of a naked woman should never have to see that either, and so on. What's not nearly so obvious is how to give the user that much control over content. It will probably require something like artificial intelligence good enough to pass the Turing test. That is, by the time computer programs can pass the Turing test, computer programs may be smart enough to give everyone a fully customized view of the Web. (It stands to reason that for a computer program to pass the Turing test today, it would have to be able to answer questions about Web pages and what is on them, just like a human can. A human can look at a page and see that it mentions lengths in yards, or it has photos of animals or people, etc. I.e., the program would have to be able to defeat all current CAPTCHA programs, and more.) Instead today we are still at the mercy of one-size-must-fit-all implementations (which is where the English Wikipedia is unfortunately stuck). Another possibility might be something like a Semantic Web with enough labeling of content to allow today's primitive software to recognize every relevant type of content and customize it to the user's taste on the fly. --Teratornis16:34, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure we're addressing the original question here. It doesn't seem to be about words that have different definitions and spellings in different locations (colour vs. color and football vs. soccer) or measurement units (yards vs. meters), but about grammar and shades of idiomatic usage. Specifically items like differences in progressive tense in stative verbs, subject-verb agreement, and preposition selection are what the Wikipedian is looking for guidance about. I don't know the answer, but wanted to get the thread back on track. Jim Dunning | talk14:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Quite. I have absolutely no problem with American, Canadian, spellings etc, or even with regional idioms. I would just like to be able to edit articles on Indian subjects to improve what I cannot help but see as bad English. The examples I gave were not very good ones, and most of the Indian English has already been edited out of the Indian Constitution article. Take a minor article like All India Muslim Forum. This contains the sentence "The Forum has collaboration with Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation." This is typical Indian English in that it lacks articles. Should it be allowed to stand? (Of getting good answer I am not hopeful here.)--Shantavira|feed me10:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am wondering about an answer to this as well. I frequently encounter this dilemma when reviewing and editing Bollywood film articles. Does anyone know if the "Indian English" described in Indian English is considered "proper" English in India? Unfortunately, the article is not fully sourced, so I'll have to do some research. Jim Dunning | talk19:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sharp Pain under my Left BreastEureka16 14:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC). Eureka16
I have had a sharp eletrifying pain behind/under my left breast in the same spot for about a two weeks now. It comes and goes, but seems to be happening more often. It feels like I am being poked with an ice pick from the inside. Has anybody experienced this pain or knows what this might be?
Wikipedia does not give medial advice but it sure has some interesting medical articles. For example, Pleurisy is one of (probably) many conditions which can cause chest pain. {{Symptoms and signs}} looks interesting too. It is very unlikely you can self-diagnose by reading an encyclopedia as accurately as a physician can diagnose your condition, but while you're waiting for your appointment you might as well read some articles on Wikipedia and learn something. --Teratornis05:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Number of pages in different namespaces
The number of pages in the Main namespase is approximately 1.8 million (using {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}) and the number of pages in the Image namespace is is approximately 750 000 files (using {{NUMBEROFFILES}}), so, what is the number of pages in other namespaces (User, Wikipedia, Template, Category, etc)? --196.218.135.3214:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am getting the orange "new messages" warning box showing up on every new page after I checked my talk page. I tried connecting through both the links in the warning box and through my regular "my talk" header link. This occurred after Ralbot sent me the Signpost through AWB. Any way to fix this? VanTucky16:00, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I received a "Welcome" message after creating an account. I cannot get to my Preferences page because the site says I'm not logged in. When I try to log in, the site does not recognize me. I went to check my email confirmation. I clicked on that thinking it might make a difference. Although the email says it will expire on the 10th of July, clicking the confirmation results in a message that the confirmation did not work, and that the confirmation message may have expired, which can't be.
What is your username? --ais523 16:43, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I tried creating an account under the name Debplatt at first, but I couldn't sign in. I hadn't associated that account with an email. So I tried creating an account Dorkusdisk with an email account. I did get a confirmation email, but I still couldn't log in. Despite the initial messages that my confirmation may have expired, later that day it did accept the confirmation, but I still couldn't log in.
Thanks for pointing that out. I was aware of {{Resolved}}, {{RD1}}, {{RD2}}, and {{RD3}} already, but none of those are currently categorized in Category: Wikipedia standard response templates. It would be nice to make a comprehensive list of standard response templates to answer all the frequently asked questions on the Help desk. For example, how many times have we explained how to create a new page? Or to empty the search form of saved searches? I'm writing some notes here; comments are welcome. --Teratornis19:59, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, I was one of the creators of those RD templates, back at the days when I was active here at the help desk... Don't miss Wikipedia:Help desk/RD tip which ties the three together (but shouldn't be used itself). Another standard response template is Wikipedia:Reference desk/Article, which is meant for the reference desk rather than here, but I don't recall ever seeing it used. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion of a page describing a commercial product?
Play Attention describes a product that supposedly treats people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are no references to support the efficacy of the product. It is listed under categories such as Attention which have a scientific basis, butthis product, as far as I can tell, does not. Is this something that should be deleted?--Cooper2416:16, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Article Photo
Can you have an Article photo on your own User Page ?
You can only have an image on your userpage if it is free, not fair use (i.e. from a film, TV show, music CD cover is not allowed), people can edit your userpage if it contains non-free images although will generally ask you first. GDonato (talk) 16:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do you find out who the uploading editor was? Need to notify re: plagiarism?
The cerebral palsy article contains several plagiarized sentences. From the help pages, it seems I can immediately remove them (this is assuming that the uploading editor was not the original article of the book from which the sentences were plagiarized), followed by notifying the uploading editor.
My question is, how do I discover who the uploading editor was? I've tried searching the history of the page, but have not been able to find it.
Here is one example (from the Wikipedia article):
The first questions usually asked by parents after they are told their child has CP are "What will my child be like?" and "Will she/he walk?" Predicting what a young child with CP will be like or what he will or will not do is very difficult.
Original (from [15] Cerebral Palsy: A guide for care):
The first questions usually asked by parents after they are told their child has cerebral palsy are "What will my child be like?" and "Will he walk?" Predicting what a young child with cerebral palsy will be like or what he will or will not do (called the prognosis) is very difficult.
Can/should I:
Just delete the sentence and give the original source, citing plagiarism as the reason for removal, in the edit note? (I can't think of a way to paraphrase)
Notify the uploading editor? (Instructions on finding out who this person is needed)
Mention on the talk page?
Other?
I'm sure this has been answered elsewhere, but I've spent the last 4 hours just getting this far ... help would be greatly appreciated (and if there is a better forum to ask questions like this, please let me know). Thanks.
The phrase "Uploading editor" refers to images, but the rules for text are similar. If you find a copyright violation in text, just delete it from the text, and explain why in the edit summary ('rm copyvio' would be a common abbreviation). It's often worthwhile warning the person who added the text (although optional in the case of text, compulsory in the case of images); you can find this by checking the edit history for the first version that contained the text. Hope that helps! --ais523 16:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you! How can I find the first version that contained the text? Aside from opening every one of the hundreds of edits, I can't figure out how I would find that info.
You have to search through the history of edits. You don't have to check every one though. Go back about 50 edits and see if the text is there. If it is, go back another 50 or so edits. Eventually, you'll narrow down the area in which the edit was added. -- Kainaw(what?)17:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're probably worrying too much about this. Here at wikipedia, we have a rule: BE BOLD! It means you don't have to spend too much of your editing time worrying over tricky issues. If you see something you don't like, you can just remove it or (better) you can rewrite it and source it. You can mark your summary "rm copyvio" or whatever, then you can move on to edit something else. AndyJones19:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Editing
I added true evidence on Ashley Tisdale's page, but it was deleted. I got this information off MTV, where Ashley announced her STardoll.cam account, AshTisdaleNo._1 How can I stop it from being deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.63.156 (talk • contribs)
I believe this is a known bug that has been reported to bugzilla, but this is the first instance I've heard of it affecting a logged in user. You might want to add a report of what your recent actions on Wikipedia have been to the bug page I linked above, and discuss this at the Tech Village Pump. I'm afraid there's not much we can do to help you here. Hersfold(talk/work)16:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is the second instance I've heard of this affecting a logged-in user (the first is 7 sections above); as these are both very recent I'd suspect that this isn't coincidence. Does bypassing your cache help? (It doesn't in the case of bug 9213; if it does for you, it would imply the cause was different.) --ais523 16:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Is there a way you can find out how many instances a page you are viewing is used by other pages or highlighted in other pages? For instance lets say you are viewing a page on Baltimore, the article on Maryland probably has Balitimore in blue, so does the article on the Orioles. There may be 4,000 references to Baltimore in other articles. Can one find out how? I have seen it when I upload an image, where the text reads: "this page links to 3 wiki articles..(sic)"Marylandstater16:48, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can click on "What links here" in the sidebar (at the left of the screen) to see the pages linking to the page you're viewing; I don't think it has a count, but you could page through them and then count the number on the final page. --ais523 16:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
See WP:BIO for guidelines on articles about people. See WP:RS, WP:CITE, and WP:CITET also (one common problem with new articles by new users is they fail to cite reliable sources; that often gets their articles deleted). --Teratornis18:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above user is making multiple changes to articles involving The Used that contravene the official style guidelines and the informal, non-offical way of doing things; specifically, removing quotes from around song titles and adding a members heading in Template:The Used. He is currently refusing to take part in any form of dialogue, reverting my revertions and ignoring my comments in article revisions and the user's talkpage. What should I do from here? I shall temporarily stop reverting his changes until I get a reply, although I will resume them at 17:00 BST July 4 if no reply is posted by then. --Jamdav8618:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You might try requesting protection or some form of dispute resolution. If the other user really isn't being cooperative, then I'd say your best bet is the former, but you should definitely give the latter a try. If you do continue to revert edits, just keep the 3RR in mind, but it sounds like you are. Hersfold(talk/work)19:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Creating A New Page
Hi i am a representitve for a football club from stoke on trent. the club has been going for around 30 years now and i would like to put the team into wikipedia.
the teams name is northwood town and we play in stoke on trent, we are not to be confused with northwood fc as they are from a different part of the country.
could you tell me if this is possible and if so point me in the right direction of how to do it ?
Hello,
If you can ascertain the notability of Northwood Town (according to WP:NN), then the article is a reasonable candidate for creation. Instead of creating it yourself, I would recommend putting it up at WP:AfC (Articles for Creation). An objective editor will create it if seen as notable.
Some one made my account, it is a closed account that was made on June 30. I clicked Email password, checked my email, but nothing happened. What do I do? How do I make my password? 68.80.210.123 23:22, 3 July 2007 (UTC)Wik-Dic CAN YOU ANSWER THIS ALREADY!?!?!?!?!?!?!? 68.80.210.12323:49, 8 July 2007 (UTC)Wik-Dic[reply]
Did you set an email address for your account when you created it. If you didn't then nothing will happen. If you did, you should have recieved it. Did you check your junk mail folder? LeeboT/C23:58, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the latter, assuming that substantial issubstantially copied word for word. You may want to be bold and use {{copyvio|http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9323380}} and follow the instructions on the tag. Also check the editors of the page. Stereotypically, some newer users copy content from random sources, which is a copyright violation.(I think) SmileToday☺(talk to me , My edits) 23:42, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What encoding do I use to view Chinese characters on wikipedia pages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.108.231.182 (talk • contribs) 24:57, July 3, 2007 (UTC)
I have observed on "Aleksander Balos" entry, a repeated entries by Irishaye that are unfound , not supported and irrelevant to the subject. I have corrected to the previous version times and time again, but Irishaye keeps coming back with ..
Thank you
Thanks for bringing this up. In this case, the Wikipedia policy on biographies on living persons is probably relevant, and I would suggest that in cases where such information is being included without sources you discuss it on (a) the article's talk page, and/or (b) the talk page of the editor making the contribution. While we do have some user warning templates such as {{uw-biog1}}, I would personally avoid using such a boiler plate warning in favour of something more personalised (e.g. "Thanks for contributing to Aleksander Balos. I'm concerned your edits may not follow our policy on biographies of living persons, and would ask you not to include such information without referencing reliable sources and/or discussing it on the article's talk page.") Confusing Manifestation01:27, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do I delete my account called Bruce7777777?
You win! I've had enough and want to erase myself from Wikipedia.
It would be helpful if you listed a citation at the bottom of each article. If you need a good example, check out Merriam-Webster citations. Here is an example of the citation at the end of a M-W article:
If you're wanting to cite a wikipedia article, just look on the left-hand side of the page. There's a "Cite this article" link right there. -- Kesh02:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I uploaded an image on June 30th and now I don't see it. Will it appear on the info page? The headshot is of Thomas Alonzo Hyde, III.
Thanks
According to your talk page and the deletion log, your image was speedy deleted because it didn't include appropriate source or licensing information. Because of our image use policy, we need images to be tagged appropriately with this information. So no, you can't see the image any more, and if you want to upload it again please make sure you follow the instructions to make sure it doesn't get re-deleted. Confusing Manifestation03:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
July 4
Shaq's Big Challenge needs help
Okay, the article Shaq's Big Challenge is being attacked by several IPs! How appropriate, I looked at the sidebar and saw this link labeled "help". Please help! Protect this page/ban the vandals/something! --JDitto02:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The article Jelly bean used to have a picture of jellybeans in the top right-hand corner. The photo still exists ( you can click through to it ), and I don't think the markup used to include the image changed. Even archived versions of the page which used to show the picture, don't now. The only thing unusual about the picture is that it is rather large and I wonder if the thumbnailing won't take such large files anymore. So, what's going on? Squidfryerchef03:28, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, I haven't the faintest idea. I managed to get it fixed by telling it to be 200px wide, but I shouldn't have to do that. It worked on other sizes as well, but not at 180px, which is the default setting in my preferences. I'm going to look into this and see if this is a reported bug, and if not, report it now. Hersfold(talk/work)04:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Someone reported a similar problem last week here on the Help desk. For some reason, his link to a Commons image was pulling up a totally different image, one that was not stored on enWikipedia, nor on Commons. Might be similar to what's happening here. -- Kesh04:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems something similar is happening with other image formats - I created a test page in my sandbox here, and it also occured at the 120px size. I added a comment to the existing bug report, although I wouldn't expect much action since it's still marked as "NEW" after sitting there for over a year now. Hersfold(talk/work)04:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is it still happening? I can see the image fine, I'm using IE 7. If it isn't working, you might try re-uploading the image. Corvus cornix17:39, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Serial Merge and Wikify
I will now stop editing pages for Wikipedia, for at least a period of one year. The reason? Your "recent changes patrol" is totally unguarded against bullying - anybody can be on it.
Some patroller put a merge and wikify tag on my new article barely within 2 minutes of its creation. And it was a long article that I had painstakingly created beforehand with external references and internal "see also" sections. This bully wanted it to be merged with a four-sentence long article about something related but basically different and provided no reasons. He or she also wanted it wikified, though it was way closer to the Wikipedia manual of style than the article s/he proposed merging it with. How can someone spend barely a minute thinking about something like that and make such a decision? If you can't take the time for QA on your patrol volunteers then you won't get good writers either.
Please inform yourselves about workplace bullying at the following links:
[19][20]
...and then think about how to create a better Wikipedia experience for your writers. Thank You. For obvious reasons I will not sign this note, though I'm sure you could get creative with logs if you're lacking in ordinary politeness and desire to trample my preference for anonymity in this matter.
Not sure what needs to be said beyond "see you in a year" - this is the help desk not the complaints department. Your "recent changes patrol" is totally unguarded against bullying - anybody can be on it. - being that this is wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, yes yes they can. --Fredrick day06:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merger doesn't mean your article will go to waste, as it is proven by the simple maths of 1 + 1 = 2. It simply means that it is unnecessary to have 2 independent entries and should have all the information under one entry instead. Also, those tags are kind of "suggestion" only, the article may be lacking in links or otherwise not entirely conforming the Manual of Styles. It is not an insult of any kind but should actually be taken as a compliment for someone else also see potential in that entry and would like to improve it but didn't have the time (or confidence) themselves. This is NOT bullying, simply someone wanting to help improve an article by tagging it on the area that it could be improved on and create easier access on the actual "cleaners". Also, see WP:FAITH. --antilivedT | C | G10:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're not listening. This person could not possibly have taken any time to make a good decision on either of those tags because he or she took less than two minutes to place them on my article (which was at least two and a half screenfuls and had both internal and external references). AND - what's worse - he or she did not give any reasons for the tags on the discussion page as he or she was supposed to do, according to the "recent changes patrol"-ler's guide page. It was entirely an act of misused power. - Disgruntled Writer
If you would tell us what article you're talking about, we might be able to better explain what happened, or at least to understand it. Corvus cornix17:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not all about negativity here. Let me give you a starting point for further discussion. Instead of letting people do stupid things all wrong and then shaking your head at them when you have a big job of clean up to do, why don't you have pitch pages for proposed new pages? Newbies could pitch new page ideas there and get advice from old hands. And when you give advice, don't overwhelm them with a list of 85,000 links (which happened to me), because nobody has time for that. Give them the link to the Manual of Style, and tell them to ask if they have further questions. It's friendlier to repeat stuff adnauseam even if it is more work. I know, I work in tech support. I got the feeling that nobody wanted me to contribute when I got the table of links, and again when I posted the new page and was immediately tagged. I didn't do it in a hurry either, this was over a period of 4 months, reading, creating, gathering info, etc... Look, I made an honest effort to be a contributor and I got my feelings hurt. You can say I'm a baby, but I'm out. I'm a volunteer, I don't do this because I have to. Nobody's paying me. You can make it better for other people or you can ignore the flames of Rome around you. I think you're all so busy fixing stuff that you're missing the big picture. Maybe fixing it isn't the answer. Maybe pitching ideas is a better way. OR maybe not, maybe you'll think of something else. But your volunteer staff is showing the signs of burnout or delusions-of-grandeur if they're spending two minutes max on something and giving unsupported advice to boot. -Disgruntled Writer
Ok I'm going to be "mean" here: STOP SAYING YOU'RE A VOLUNTEER. We all are volunteers here, nobody forced/paid us to listen to you whine, so why should you be more important than any one of us? Wikipedia is not a huge bureaucracy, it's a huge community, being so self-centred will not do any good in here, or in fact anywhere else. Remember everyone is helping every one else simply because of good will, because they want to see Wikipedia to be better. Spending 4 months on writing an article is an EXTREMELY bad idea, just like why people hate "behind the curtain" developments in open-source projects: Why not you write part of it and put it out, deal with any issues and allow others to also COLLABORATE on it. As a (hopefully) fully functioning individual in the society nobody can force you stay here, but if you can't resolve this simple dispute with the person that tagged it and instead start whining in here, then there is absolutely nothing we can do. --antilivedT | C | G11:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hola, necesto a uvao, gracias, José!
hola, puedo save donde contrad a wikipedia?Muchas gracias, José Hernandez, *numero te telephono * ---*---*---.--71.96.231.1506:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)pueda a reply a que?Gracias a todos a que in Brazil![reply]
How do I go about requesting that someone review a possible case of a registered Wikipedia user posting a piece of work that was written by me, and was not requested to be used? I have reason to believe that Wiki articles citing these following Legal cases were taken of my personal Xanga web-blogs, which were citied in a posting discussing my current classwork in college, and posted in bits. The Wiki articles in question are on these cases:
Lockyer v. Andrade
Kyllo v. United States
Grutter v. Bollinger
These cases were discussed in a web-blog posting on August 19th, 2005, which was the date of my birthday that year. Looking at the "History" on these articles, after finding them on Wikipedia during a search for one of my Law courses I am taking this summer, many of the articles appeared on here after this August date. If it is not an infringement, that I would kindly like to know. If it is, I request that the User's account be reviewed, and if the situation was accidental, then I wish no punishment on the indivdual.
The link to my personal Xanga web-blog, which is set as public is:
Simply search for the August 19th, 2005 date, and you will notice the entry. If someone could provide me an answer as soon as possible, that would be great. I can be contacted at my e-mail:
jas3719@gmail.com
My sincrest thanks to anyone who answers this question.
It would be helpful if you could include direct links to the articles in question (both on your site and on Wikipedia), and the actual passages within the article that you believe are infringing copyright. I have had a quick look on your site, and locating the articles is not easy (I didn't succeed). I am not a copyright lawyer, but my gut feeling is that if someone has copied your text word for word, and you have not given permission, then it should be deleted. I appreciate that asking you to include the paragraphs in question here may sound dubious, but we can always delete those paragraphs too after this has been sorted out. StephenBuxton08:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've only looked at Lockyer v. Andrade and your corresponding post on your blog. I fail to see a copyright violation. Our article seems to have evolved independently; I do not see any obvious text copying. I also do not see any obvious plagiarism; the discussion of the relations to the Rummel, Solem, and Hermelin cases already occurs in the official court opinion, which is in the public domain. Could you please explain more precisely what exactly makes you think that there had been a copyright violation? Thank you. Lupo08:41, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not to make a pun about something as serious as WP:COPYVIO, but jrgini37 may have a case, but may not want to pursue it.
First, I looked at Lockyer v. Andrade and also find no significant correlations other than they are both summaries of the same public-domain-available information. The WP article developed in segments over many months and has more sources listed. The primary contributor has made what appear to be significant contributions to (including initiating) over 60 court case articles, many predating the Xanga pieces. Although there's no way to prove the veracity of her/his claims, that contributor states that she/he has a law J.D. and has been published in legal journals (I was able to find support for some of this through some quick research).
Now looking at Kyllo v. United States presents a more interesting situation. I quickly found at least two paragraphs in that article that are verbatim to two in the Xanga blog. The paragraph beginning, "For Kyllo, the result was tremendous . . ." was added here on August 12, 2006; the one beginning "Kyllo was charged with growing marijuana in violation of federal law." was added here also on August 12. The key words used to identify the correlations are "tremendous" and "reflected", respectively. I also reviewed the sources for both documents and do not find common verbiage to explain the identical passages. In Kyllo I went on to find significant portions of the article are identical to the Xanga blog. In some cases, the new (verbatim) passages in the WP article replaced existing passages that addressed the same point, but with different word choice. I'm unfamiliar with how Xanga may maintain history, but the URL on jrgini37's blog entry appears to support that the entry was added almost a full year before the material in the WP article appeared. The contributor is the primary for Lockyer.
My review of Grutter v. Bollinger is a bit more problematic. Again there is a similar level of common verbatim passages in both articles, but the ones in the WP article appear to significantly pre-date the ones in Xanga (as early as June 2003 when jrgini37 was 16). Also, the primary contributor to the other two articles does not appear to be involved. Again, I looked at original court documents and could find no obvious reasons for identical language, but further research shows the highest correlation is with what purports to be a law school student's paper apparently published in 2004 by www.4lawschool.com. (I keyed in on the phrase, "perhaps twenty-five years hence, racial affirmative action would no longer be necessary in order to promote . . .".) Since I don't have a means for verifying the actual publishing date of the 4lawshool.com paper (which is copyrighted, by the way), or whether its author (Bram) is an incarnation of either jrgini37 or the contributor to the WP Grutter v. Bollinger article, I can't determine who is copying whom.
Note that in Grutter v. Bollinger, the "twenty-five years hence" sentence has been present since June 24, 2003. See this diff. That's one day after the Supreme Court's judgment in this case.[21] I find it somewhat unlikely that our contributor copied from that 4lawschool paper... rather the inverse. At the worst, both copied from a third source, but I haven't found any. Lupo14:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent point; I didn't notice those dates. I don't think the initial WP contributor did any copying, since the complete section of the article that shows up in Xanga and 4lawschool isn't fully developed until a week later on June 30, 2003 by an anon IP. Then the complete section is available to anyone after that date. Jim Dunning | talk15:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Grutter is no longer a WP issue since the WP article appears to have the earliest versions in question (thanks Lupo). Jim Dunning 15:52, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
To summarize, since jrgini37 didn't identify the specific passages he feels have been plagiarized, we did our best to identify them ourselves; the results of the analysis:
Lockyer v. Andrade — We can identify no unusually similar passages between jrgini37's Xanga article and WP, so there appears to be no copying issue.
Kyllo v. United States — There are a number of identical passages between the Xanga and WP articles. The WP edit history indicates that the passages were added to the WP article after the apparent posting date of the Xanga article (although we have no way to verify the posting history of Xanga other than to look at the date in the blog and the date scheme used in the article's URL). The WP contributor reviewed the passages in question and believes they are her/his contributions based on writing style, but is puzzled by the apparent discrepancy in dates. At a loss to solve this puzzle, she/he is recommending that the best thing to do is revert the article to its pre-contribution state and let it develop from there.
Grutter v. Bollinger — As with Kyllo, we found a number of identical passages, but the original source material appears to be the WP article. Based on the article's detailed edit history, the passages in question clearly evolved in WP between June 24 and 30, 2003 (1234), immediately after the Supreme Court's judgment and over two years before the Xanga article was posted. Since the passages were developed on WP, any subsequent appearance would appear to be the copy. We note that the same passages appear in a copyrighted "law school student's paper" published apparently in 1994 by www.4lawschool.com (again, after the WP version appeared). The path they took to Xanga is unknown to us. The copyvio tag, therefore, has been removed from Grutter v. Bollinger, as it doesn't apply to WP.
jrgini37, we hope this answers your questions. Please let us know if you have additional information or questions, and thank you for bringing these issues to our attention. Jim Dunning | talk15:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How to submit an article
I want to submit an article about my company. As infosys and wipro are appearing in wikipedia.
How to make my company appear in Wikipedia?
College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering
This article is about an engineering college in Pakistan. Certain users espeicllay user : Ceme hanif has edited this page very frequently in the past weeks and written profane stuff about the college. Abusing college faculty and writing bad stuff. User should be banned and the article shoudl be vandalized for further editing.
Iwant to make a simple new entry in Wikipedia. Although there is tons of info about how to do it, there is no easy to find place on your site to actually do it. Please tell me where i can make an entry
If I understand you right, you just want to know how to get to the article itself so you can create it, right? You can do it one of two ways: type the name of the article in any text box, for example at WP:SAND, and put double square brackets around it, like this: [[new article name]]. Then click "show preview" and follow the red link to your article. Or, you can type the name into the search box and follow the red link at the top of the search page to your article. In either case, be sure to type the name exactly as you want the title to show up. Leave me a message on my talk page if you have any questions or want to discuss anything. delldottalk12:02, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Articles that have gone the longest without edits?
Hello. I am curious- is there a quick & easy way to search for articles that have not been edited in the longest time?
(For example, if there's an article from Spring 2002 that was only touched for the first few days but never again even to this day, it would show up on the top of this search result.) --70.133.218.4312:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
These two articles Chick Publications and Chick tract are filled with little more than advertising material. They just describe the publications and use nothing more than links back to the main site. Very, very little 3rd party citations of notability, etc. How do we clean these up? --Whydoesthisexist12:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Depending on the exact issues you can see WP:CSD for speedy deletion requirements, WP:PROD for proposing deletion or WP:AFD for the more formal deletion review process. Of course, if there are third party sources that can sustain notability, just fix it. See WP:V and WP:N for help or drop me a line at my talk page. JodyB talk13:03, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Chick Publications is way notable, both among its supporters and its detractors... I don't see it being deleted, though the articles could use work. -FisherQueen (Talk) 13:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We have a someone who is personally dominating an article, and he has bad judgement and doesn't know the subject. The big problem is that because of your present policy on citation, when he has provided one or more inconclusive or low-quality citations, it doesn't seem as though it's going to work to just add a [citation needed] after his irrelevant citations. I would like to ask that you introduce a variation on [citation needed], call it Template:Morefact, that displays as [citations inadequate] and otherwise works like [citation needed]. We need this badly.
72.85.207.1713:05, 4 July 2007 (UTC)Packer[reply]
Thank you for your suggestion. As to the article in question, is there active talk on the discussion page? You might wish to seek a third opinion at WP:3O to help encourage him. It could be that he's a good editor who just needs a little guidance and instruction. Truthfully, if he doesn't respond to the first template, I'm not sure he would respond to the second. JodyB talk13:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's pretty active, and there are quite a few people who know the subject and are wringing their hands over this person. He's a cultist. This is his big chich in life; you must have met a few of those. Sweet reason hasn't been working. DOn't you agree that there needs to be a way of dealing with inadequate citations? By the way, I just now registered, and I was embarrassed to find that I'd been informally giving a "handle" that was registered to someone else. FETSmoke13:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I should have explained that I would expect him to remove a [citation needed], but maybe not a [citations inadequate]. That's why we need the innovation. FETSmoke13:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You accuse another unnamed user of providing inadequate citations in an unnamed article, while you neglect to cite the name of the article, and the name of the user you are accusing. I doubt I'm the only reader who finds this ironic. You alluded to this unnamed article and unnamed user to build a case for this new template you are requesting. I'm trying to grasp the reasoning process that led you to believe other people would agree with your conclusion that we need a new template, based on a case you are trying to prevent anyone else from examining. Even if your accusations against this other editor are correct, there may be other ways to deal with the problem which already exist, and someone with more knowledge of Wikipedia might be able to find one if you provide the minimum information necessary for your question to make some sense. Please do not weasel on the Help desk. If a particular article or user is relevant to your question, link to them. --Teratornis18:25, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, all right. I was simply trying to prevent a big ugly scene. I thought it might be better to try to solve the problem within the community of that page, using a tool that is clearly needed on Wikipedia, but I defer to your criticism and on your head be it. It is Tesla coil. Some people find relief from the existential quandary of life by believing that Nikola Tesla discovered a way to obtain arbitrary amounts of energy anywhere for any purpose; "free energy". We have one such user. He doesn't understand what he's talking about, but it's what gives meaning to his life. He's presenting some of Tesla's more gradiose and unfounded speculation using language that implies that it's generally accepted fact, when it defies what we do know about the world. He also redid much of the page by simply transcribing from Tesla's patents, because he worships Tesla. He doesn't understand what he wrote, and few other people are likely to. It's holy writ to him. Recently some of the worst of the stuff has been fixed up a bit by others. (BTW, other people believe in space alien visitations, or that automotive engine efficiency can be increased above 100%, but that these things are being suppressed by a conspiracy, and find meaning in their lives from that.) I'm sorry you incline to such a negative view of my strategy.FETSmoke02:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't expect to benefit from outside involvement in this, and I doubt I should have let you talk me into giving specifics. [citations inadequate] is clearly very valuable, unless there be established an understanding that this is what is meant by [citation needed] when placed after existing citations. Do you assume good faith on my part? You're theoretically supposed to.FETSmoke05:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for adding useful details. I assume good faith on your part, just as I assume your opponent acts in equally good faith, but I didn't need you to have good faith, I needed you to give me information about your problem. ("Assume good faith" does not mean "Believe everything this random stranger says without any evidence." Asking someone to support his claims in no way questions his good faith. Lots of well-meaning people provide incorrect information. I'm simply pointing out that if you hang out on the Help desk for a while, you will generally see that questions which do the best job of demonstrating good faith by providing all the information helpers need to understand the problems tend to get the best answers.) The contest between you and your opponent is not to see who possesses good faith in the greatest measure. On Wikipedia we don't care what anybody thinks about their motivations, we only care what they do. We apply the policies and guidelines the same way to everyone (in theory, at least). If anything, the assumption of good faith seems somewhat patronizing to me, because it's like saying people aren't smart enough to recognize what they are doing, yet think they do know. One shows more respect, I think, by accusing someone of knowing their actions were wrong, even if the underlying assumption about their perception turns out to be too generous. Of course most people don't see it that way, they would rather be called well-meaning and (implicitly) ignorant than smart and malicious, so we cater to that preference with the assume good faith guideline. (This preference might be due to centuries of traditionally harsher punishments for deliberate evil than for unintended evil.) It doesn't affect how we apply policies and guidelines to people's actions. We delete noncompliant stuff just the same.
If your opponent is promoting patent nonsense, we have a guideline to deal with that. But it sounds more like he is promoting pseudoscience. Wikipedia has lots of articles about pseudoscience, but such articles aren't supposed to present pseudoscientific claims as widely accepted facts. If your opponent has been warned repeatedly about disruptive editing, an administrator might elect to ban him (there is a procedure for that). As to whether we need another template, as far as I know nothing stops you from being bold and creating it, but then someone else might come along and decide to delete it. I can't really predict the chances of that (my track record at predicting the behavior of 47,849,598 other registered users is rather poor). Without having delved into the details of your opponent's behavior, I guess I'm initially skeptical that he's going to be influenced much by a different template, if he's as irrational as you say he is. I.e., if all his life experience hasn't convinced him that "free energy" is a pipe dream, how will a slight change in a template change his editing habits on Wikipedia? However, I don't see any harm in trying. If you think it could help, that's reason enough to give it a shot. --Teratornis00:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The magazine is not subscription-only. It is available to buy in Borders bookshops around the UK, larger branches of Waterstones and independent bookshops such as The Women's Stand at Olive & Oscar in Shrewsbury (UK) and Foyles in London (UK), as well as Mercurysubs in Auckland (NZ) and a few shops in Europe. A full list of stockists is available on the website: www.mslexia.co.uk/menu/bookshops.html. You can also purchase single issues directly from Mslexia, or on the website: www.mslexia.co.uk/menu/subscribe.html.
The editor is now Daneet Steffens (not Debbie Taylor). Debbie Taylor is the founding editor.
More recent past guest editors include: Val McDermid (issue 33), Kirsty Gunn (issue 32), Sara Wheeler (issue 31) and Kate Mosse (issue 28). Mslexia also run an annual Women's Poetry Competition. Past judges have included: UA Fanthorpe & RV Bailey (issue 34, 2007), Wendy Cope (issue 30, 2006) and Jo Shapcott (issue 26, 2005). (Please note: to this end, Wendy Cope was not a 'mystery guest editor' in the same sense as, say, Deborah Moggach).
Other writers who have contributed articles include: Rebecca Atkinson (issue 31) and Patricia Duncker (issue 30).
The wonderful thing about Wikipedia is that its an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit...so you could have made the changes yourself, if you wanted to! Why not give it a try - simply go to the page for Mslexia and click on "Edit thig page" at the top. Leave a comment on my talk page or on this page if you need help. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)13:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Non-Citizens
Where and how can a person obtain the required forms for non-citezens to register for a work permit (Green Card) or a form permiting them to work in the U.S. Also what are the requirements?
how can i write something on wikipedia that can be found my all users as an addition to what is already on the site? EXAMPLE:
Lets say there was nothing for FBI
I could then put Federal Bureau of Investigation
do you understand?
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Qazwsxqaz (talk • contribs).
I don't really understand your question. Using your example, do you mean that there is already an entry for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but no entry for FBI, and you wanted some way that people who go to the page for FBI are automatically sent to the page for Federal Bureau of Investigation? If so, then have a look at WP:Redirect, otherwise please feel free to expand on your question below. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)14:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I want to give my uncle who is big into gardening but doesnt have an internet connection on his PC a fairly decent set of pages on gardening from wikipedia.
What would be the easiest way of collecting all the pages on plants (or a lot of them anyway) while still keeping the same formatting and for example still clicking on the genus of a plant and have that explained etc. basically to have the links to all the other pages downloaded at the same time.
About an hour ago, I had a 'password request' made on my account, leading to an e-mail saying that
Someone from the IP address ... requested that we send you a new login password for the English Wikipedia.
The new password for the user account "Andymc" is "___". You can now log in to Wikipedia using that password.
This has happened a couple of times before, like once every few months. Is this fairly normal, due to random idiots or possibly bots, or should I be worried?
Basically, it's someone trying to harass you or hijack your account. It's not common, but it's not really rare either. I don't think there's anything you can do other than remove your email address from your account and just list it on your user page --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ16:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just ignore it. The email only goes to you anyway, and you don't have to use the new password. Just take it as a note that either someone else thinks that they have your user name, or they were idiots who thought they could hijack your account with no effort. Either way, no harm was done. -- Kesh16:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to get it fixed now. It looks like your margins ceased to exist, although it might take some creative programming to get it to work. I'll let you know when it's done. Hersfold(talk/work)17:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Got it. Your table with the barnstars was missing a margin code - I added margin:0px 20px 0px 0px; to the style code, and it seems to be working now. I don't know why it wasn't a problem before, but it's working now. Hersfold(talk/work)17:23, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can check the Userboxes and see if there is one to your taste, or if not, create your own. That page provides links to the directories and gives instructions on how to do-it-yourself. Hersfold(talk/work)17:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to assist Wikipedia's online community by proofreading English articles. However, I'm not sure how to establish myself as an 'official' Wikipedia proofreader.
I have a feeling that I need to inform somebody first. I've tried researching all of this, but all the information I got was a bit vague - any help would be much appreciated!
There's no need to be an 'official' anything to proofread articles; if you find a typo, grammar mistake, or other mistake in an article, you can just click 'edit this page' at the top or the [edit] link for the relevant section to fix the problem. That said, there's a list of users at Wikipedia:Typo of users who often correct typos (which you can feel free to add yourself to if you like); that page (and Wikipedia:How to copy-edit) contain useful information that it may be worth reading if you intend to do a lot of proofreading. Hope that helps! --ais523 17:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe wikipedia syntax will expand the images, it will just go with their normal (largest) size. This wouldn't apply to .svg though, I assume, but you can't do actual pictures with that. --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ18:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Autobiography
I apologize if this is the wrong forum to ask this question, but I am not an expert on Wikipedia, and I'm not very computer savvy either. But I hope someone will provide help here.
I have spotted a biography entry that appears to have been written by the subject whom the biography is about. In other words, it appears to be autobiographical, which I understand is either prohibited by Wikipedia or highly frowned on (I'm not sure which). At the least I think this bio should be flagged with a bias caveat, or even removed. However, I'm not sure who actually wrote the bio.
The ISP of the person posting matches the city that person lives in, but authorship is otherwise unidentifiable as far as I know.
My question: can a Wikipedia administrator identify the person who wrote the entry to see if it's the same person the entry is about?
I will be happy to supply the entry title if someone wants to check this.
Please forward this post to the right people if I've picked the wrong place to send it.
Yes, we do have policies on this. WP:COI and WP:BIO state rather strongly that you shouldn't create an article on yourself, and editing it isn't a very good thing. If the subject does not meet WP:N, you can WP:SPEEDY it, although it would probably be best if you gave us a link so we can look at it for you --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ18:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for responding to my previous queries. Here is the link:
Is it possible for you to check the ID of ISP 76.184.47.215 and of Milo73? As I mentioned, I believe these identities could be for one person: the subject/writer-editor of the entry. The suspect additions and edits begin on about June 29. I would appreciate an administrator's looking into this and responding.
Debbie
I haven't had the chance to look into this in a huge amount of detail (but will do), but are you sure that you in some way suspect 76.184.47.215? As far as I can see all the edits made by that editor to the article concerned are minor / grammatical in nature, and not of any consequence in the grand scheme of the article. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)21:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Further to my earlier reply, I don't know that you can necessarily level the charge of autobiography at User:Milo73. Agreed, his / her first contribution did add a large quantity of material (about 60%, or so, roughly speaking) to the article concerned, and that the vast majority of that added material was not in accordance with the guidelines on neutral point of view and citation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the individual who made the edits is also the subject matter of the article. I'd suggest, if you have a concern, that you propose the deletion of those tracks of the article which do not accord with the above policies, and seek a consensus. Actively seek the contribution of User:Milo73, and express your concerns. Then take it from there. I'd be interested to see what other editors' views on the topic may be. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)21:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the help. I have several reasons for thinking that (1) 76.184.47.215 and Milo73 are the same person, and (2) that that person is the subject of the bio. They are too detailed to go into here, now. My question to you was whether you, as administrators, can verify poster identity definitively. I don't want to get involved with speculation and consensus efforts. I was mainly wondering whether there are technical ways for you guys at Wikipedia to figure out who's posting something -- or do they remain anonymous even to you?
I don't know how to contact Milo73; even if I were to figure it out, I'm not comfortable with the idea of making the effort. I was just hoping Wikipedia could do better than I at determining ID definitively through ISP or email tracing.
Thanks.
Changing method of deletion for superfluous user page(s)
I created a few trial pages as sub-pages of my userspace before migrating them to the mainspace. An example is at User:Gilesbennett/Ezio (opera). I no longer needed them once they had been migrated, so marked them for deletion using the method still showing on them.
A couple of days ago I created a few other trial pages, which I subsequently realised could be marked with speedy deletion templates instead. I duly did that, and the second batch of pages has been deleted, but the first remain. I would change the tag on the first batch of pages to speedy, but am aware of the note on the template which says "don't remove this notice while the discussion is in progress, unless you know what you're doing". I don't really know what I'm doing where this aspect of wikipedia is concerned - what's the correct methodology to remove the old prod template and replace it with a speedy without knackering up a load of other pages, and where can I find it?
Since it's in your own userspace, just tag it with something like {{db-test}}, and remove the MFD discussion. You don't need to take it through the formal process, since there's absolutely no reason at all why someone would object to it. That sort of thing is more for things such as Wikiproject pages, someone ELSE'S userspace, things people might actually care about --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ18:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just to follow up, would that not leave a miscellaneous page or two hanging around? I'm thinking of the MfD talk pages associated with the pages concerned - would I then flag those with {{db-talk}} just to tie up the loose ends? Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)18:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
yes, tag them with either {{db-talk}} or {{db-test}}. Alternatively, if you know any admins, you could just swing by their talk page with a list of pages you'd like deleted, and have them dispose of them for you. Not quite as formal, but likely to be much quicker and save time in the long run for the admin as well (since they won't waste time putzing around CAT:CSD making sure that it isn't a valid page and whatnot --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ18:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, not a bug. Your second diff link doesn't show that you added that information. It just shows that you'd made the last edit before that information was removed. So you made a couple edits between when it was added and when somebody noticed it, that's all. --Maelwys18:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
HELP!!! I need something to orginize my userboxes with! Two have how should I say "fused" and I am going to have to delete them. Can anyone help? -I PWN U ALL18:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
oh sorry I just the fused ones which where the this user plays gamecube games and this user plays Mario games. They are just really messy and I need help orginizing them. -I PWN U ALL20:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Link to bio that seems to have been heavily, autobiographically written/edited
Thanks for responding to my previous queries. Here is the link:
Is it possible to check the ID of ISP 76.184.47.215 and of Milo73? As I mentioned, I believe these people could be one person: the subject of the entry. The suspect additions and edits begin on about June 29.
Once edits have been made improving the prose so that the article does not read like an advertisement, you go to "edit this page" and removed the template from (typically) the top line. LaraLoveT/C20:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. The tagged version [22] had 42 links to the company website. None of them were citations, and 39 of them were to promotional pages for the company's "Areas of Expertise", added [23] by an editor saying "my company".[24] See WP:COI, WP:SPAM, WP:EL. PrimeHunter21:12, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
CFD
Someone remind me - this category seems rather pointy ("dependent" does not seem particular NPOV to me). Oh mighty helpdeskers - remind me, where's CFD? or do they go to MFD? (no wonder, newbies get confused). --Fredrick day21:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The editors of the article have apparently decided that programs without their own article will not be considered. Somebody would have to make an article about it first. See Wikipedia:Notability for notability requirements for an article. PrimeHunter00:39, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then, if I create an article of SAPO Messenger, it can appear in the comparison of instant messaging clientes, am I right?
Please read WP:N and WP:V. It would need multiple third-party references in which SAPO Messenger is the primary focus of the reference, not just a glancing mention. Is there a notability guideline for software? I guess the best would be WP:CORP, see if the software meets those criteria. Corvus cornix17:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
it would be must easier to see the features of each program having the titles of the features in view.
This means that there should be a box where a person would browse with a side-scrolling-bar having the titles of the features always viewable. Hasn't Wikipedia got such a feature (I'm a newbie in page designing)?
I have not seen such a feature, and the lack of other responses suggests none of the current Help desk helpers have either. The best I could suggest in the meantime would be to repeat the headings row a few times in the table, instead of only at the top and bottom. The complex table in this section is particularly awkward when the browser shows only rows around the middle, with no headings row visible. --Teratornis23:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you plan on adding many, many userboxes to your User space, it might be friendlier to put them on a separate subpage which is linked to from your main User page. Corvus cornix18:00, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Repeating the headlines manually is just plain dumb (unefficient). Has anyone in Wikipedia heard of text boxes!? The info of the clients could be put inside them (like a spreadsheet inside a box with a vertical scrolling-bar) and out of the box, the titles of the features! Is it THAT hard?
How long does acceptance/rejection take? I submitted an article, written by another person, a week ago, but have neither received an acknowledgment nor has the article appeared online. The article was about author-artist Kevin Cisneros, it was written by editor Mary Cadney and included a Library of Congress website link which could be used to verify article's assertions. Thank you, Ray McAfferty (email removed) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.12.174.137 (talk • contribs).
The article acceptance/rejection process works in hindsight: all new articles go 'live' immediately, but many are subsequently deleted. However, I don't see an article on Kevin Cisneros either in existence, or in the deletion log. You might have done something wrong when submitting the article. If you still have the text and want to add it you can create that article by going here and clicking on 'create this page'. ssepp(talk)22:08, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You also mention that the article was written by someone else. You can only use that text if the person who wrote it agrees to release their text under the GDFL license. ssepp(talk)22:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why doesn't the "search the FAQ" link work on the Wikipedia:Help desk. Both of them at the top of the page give the same non-result. All it does is time out for me? I can't determine if someone has already asked/answered the question I'm about to ask, so I will go ahead and ask it anyway. Truthanado22:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to filter the User contributions page so that I can see edits that are not the top (last) edit? I find myself often looking to see what has happened to articles I have recently edited. It's a great way to see what other Wikipedians are doing, often expands my knowledge of the article's topic, and sometimes catches the rare vandalism. The only way to do that now is to manually scan the list for articles without top.
If it's not currently possible to do this, let me make a suggestion. It would be nice if there was a filter option check box at the top of the page. For example: [ ] View top edits. By default, the box would be checked and could be manually unchecked if the user desires. If checked, you would get the same list you get now. If unchecked, you would get a shorter list, skipping (and not showing) those edits that are the most recent for each article. Thanks. Truthanado22:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Help me fight againts tyranny in Portuguese Wikipedia
Dear Sir,
I am a user in Portuguese Wikipedia and I was blocked by an administrator because I vote in another direction in the pages to erase. He threatened me with blockade. Because of this threat I ask a informal mediation for the problem, but when he reads my request to a mediation, blocked me immediately. And know I can’t reply any question neither the mediation. What I can do?
In Portuguese Wikipedia a group of administrators control the Wikipedia against all rules. They "erase" anyone who doesn't share their opinions. They work together promoting their point of view against anyone they don't like. They treat, block, etc, to continue to have this kind of power.
The others administrators don't do nothing because they have afraid to be a outline member.
My ask for you is:
1- Can I vote in the direction who I think is the correct, or I need to vote lined with the administrators?
1.a- Can they blocked me because I vote against their opinions?
2- Can I propose pages do erase when I think is not relevant to Wikipedia?
2.a - What is the criteria to decide if a page is relevant or not?
2.b - Can they blocked because i propose a page to erase (with a explanation)?
Sorry, this is the english wikipedia project. We have no control over what happens on the other wikiprojects last I checked. You will have to ask the Wikimedia foundation. --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ00:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Each Wikipedia works independently, although there are things each one has to follow by Foundation policy. From what I think, though, you might've done something other than the action above. Users on the English Wikipedia, for example, who act disruptive (and voting disruptively, for example) can be blocked. If you have a big issue with the Portuguese Wikipedia, I suppose you can write to a steward or the Foundation. x42bn6TalkMess12:17, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reset password
I can't remember what information i gave.
Ci guess the only thing that identifies me is the id of theis computer. i am the only one using it.Can you send me a form or something?
If you gave Wikipedia your email address, you can ask it to email you a new password from the login screen. Otherwise, you're stuck - you will need to create a new account. ShalomHello04:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No Manga!
In many (about 7/8 of the Pokemon articles I read) the Pokemon do not have Manga sections! I have not read the manga so I can't put up any information. So could anyone who has read the manga please put up a "In the Manga" section on them? Arigato. -I PWN U ALL03:59, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Did you try asking on the specific talk pages? If you were to post there, someone might be able to help you out. Hope this helps! RJaguar3 | u | t04:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How come one admin can't block several users in a short amount of time? I noticed that never happens. Cheers, JetLover04:00, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You'll have to ask the admins about that; I'd try WP:AN. My guess is that the admins need to verify that the block is actually called for by checking the contribution log and/or talk page of a suspected vandal on AIV - this takes a minute or two. They also need to lookup the IP to make sure they're not blocking the White House by mistake. (It's not a joke.) However, you will sometimes see the same admin knock out five or six users in a row - it just takes time. ShalomHello04:05, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed your links.
Changing skin
I changed my skin and now I can't change back to this "regular one". Can anyone help me? My username is "Anissima".
Can I post pictures that I bought (from WireImage, for example)?
Thanks.
No. At least, not unless you can get express permission from the copyright holder to release the images for public use on Wikipedia, which is highly unlikely. -- Kesh05:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a site for hawking your used goods. I'd suggest you try something like www.craigslist.org.
Adding to existing article
To the query "Where is the work from? (Click on the appropriate link)"
I clicked "* It is entirely my own work",
thereafter uploaded a photo Dumur_in_Bangla).jpg, which I took myself. However, I got an automated msg saying
" * Who created this image?
* Who owns the copyright to this image?
* Where did this image come from?
Unless this information is added to this page, the image will be deleted"
Since I have already declared that the photo is my own work, pl advise, where I find guidelines how to enter these additional desired data. I have marked the photo for "This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License."
Lokenrc07:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You got the message because the image description page does not currently mention anything about where the photo came from or who took it. Just put something like "this photo was taken by myself, Lokenrc", that should be sufficient. You should probably also include information such as the date you took it, where you took it and a brief description of what is in the photo. Raven4x4x08:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What's the correct warning
Would there be a specific warning template for a user (not an admin) who has placed the {{protected}} template on a user's page? I've removed the template, as they don't have the power to protect the page concerned, but now wonder what would be the appropriate warning? Misbehaving user is User:Holmes.sherlock and the user page concerned is User:Airboyd. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)08:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have just added my article on "Mazawattee Tea" but do not know how to add my Picture Gallery of some 10 pictures (which are mine). (By the way it is marvellous how your system sets everything out so well in the standars format once the article is sent).
Sorry to be a pest as I can see there is a little symbol for picture gallery but cannot work out how to transfer from "My Pictures" to the article. I am 74 now and find some things confusing - although I have put loads of my classical records on my "birthday" iPod - so there is still hope!
Please start a new section when asking a new question. Thanks, it just makes things easier for us.
To upload pictures, start by going to this page. When you click one of the links from that page, you will be brought to an upload screen where you can add your pictures. READ EVERYTHING CAREFULLY. You should also be aware of our Image Use Policy before uploading any picture to Wikipedia. Copyright is extremely important, so please be sure you know where the picture came from. If you took the picture, then please select any acceptablefree licenseor release your picture into the public domain.
Once you have uploaded a picture, the image will have its' own page, called something along the lines of "Image:Picture_Name.jpg". When you link to this page in your article by using the double brackets, ([[Image:Picture_Name.jpg]]) your picture will appear instead of a blue link. To add pictures to an article, I'd recommend adding some more information to change how the picture looks, such as this: [[Image:Picture_Name.jpg|thumb|Add a caption here]]. That code will cause your picture to be displayed like the one at right here. You can see more examples of this type of code here. Good luck with that - if you need help, please don't hesitate to ask here again in this section, or leave me a message on my talk page. Hersfold(talk/work)11:59, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
sbreans
how to submit a article or a website to wikipedia?
I'm a Chemical Engineering undergraduate and looking for some equillibrium data
for designing a stripping column to desorp CO2 from MEA solution (Rich in CO2)
with the use of steam.
So need to know some consistent sources of Equillibrium data for the above system.
Free Online data would be more useful...
Thank you
Sithara
How can I edit the Background information section.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Loulou 3 (talk • contribs)
I'm presuming you mean the information box on the Live Skull page? If so, simply click on "Edit this page" at the top of that page. The information which makes up the background information box is the first part of the page shown - make your changes, then click "save page". Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)13:39, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Multiple entries
There are currently two entries for Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, LLP, a United States law firm. The shorter one should be deleted and the longer one, which doesn't have "LLP" in the title, should stay but I do not know how to do that (or if it is possible without being an admin).
Also -- how do you add a shortcut, to link to the site from just typing in the word "milbank"?
I can see the longer one (which I believe is Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy), but cannot see the shorter one. What page is it? Can you provide a link to the page concerned, or type its name below this response?
In terms of a shortcut, do you mean you would like to arrange it so that if someone visits the entry for Milbank on WIkipedia, they automatically get diverted to Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy? As the moment Milbank is diverted to Milbank South Dakota, but a disambiguation page can be arranged.
Thousands of small wikis exist; among the few dozen I've looked at, none have anything approaching Wikipedia's Help desk and extensive online manuals. If my sample is representative, Wikipedia remains one of the best places to learn how to edit on wikis that run on the MediaWiki software. As far as how to make a border, it depends on what you want to make the border around, and on what CSS style classes your wiki's administrators have put into the MediaWiki:Common.css file on your wiki. One way to create boxes with borders is to use a table. See the entries under the "Tables:" heading just below: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Tab. Also try browsing around your wiki and look for other articles which have the kind of border you want to make; click the edit tab at the top of such an article, and scroll down to view the wikitext that creates the effect you want. If you can't find a good example on your wiki, look for one on Wikipedia, but be aware that not everything on Wikipedia works readily on another MediaWiki wiki, because Wikipedia users have added a huge number of style classes, templates, extensions, etc., which give Wikipedia many features you would have to similarly install to get them on a smaller wiki. --Teratornis21:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I might add that if you feel guilty about "abusing" Wikipedia's Help desk with questions about how to edit on another wiki, you may always soothe your guilty conscience by donating some money. --Teratornis23:11, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If a Company like "Here!" TV can have a page, why can't 360 Presents.
The article 360 Presents has been speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This was done because the article seemed to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it did not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert notability may be deleted at any time. If you can indicate why the subject is really notable, you are free to re-create the article, making sure to cite any verifiable sources.
Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and for specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. -FisherQueen (Talk) 15:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
You appear to have exactly two edits. I don't see how it could possibly be very important to get those edits listed under the new username. So, the easy solution is this: sign up for a new account, under the username you want. Problem solved. Friday(talk)16:05, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Border Colors
Ok I have something (kinda like a template but its not a userbox) and I want to change some of the colors (Orange to Green and Gold to Silver) how would I do so?-I PWN U ALL16:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've been able to add a couple of citations to the cerebral palsy page, but when I tried to cut, edit, and paste in a more complex template, I keep adding half a page of info, and no matter how many times I look at my editing code (I'm sure there's a correct phrase for that), I can't see what I did wrong.
I also tried to use the sandbox page to test it, but it only adds the footnote number, not the reference note.
(I added this to my talk page as well in case you can only see the footnote, not the code).
When I paste this into the article, it pulls the info from the example I used to get the template.
Also, I'm having a problem with the access date. It comes up in red, which adds a link to the page for that date. Is that the right format to use for accessdate?
Right - well, the first thing to point out is that your closing <ref> tag was lacking the / - it should have read </ref>. Incidentally (and it's not your fault), this then lead to a problem with this page (which I think I've rectified), as subsequent editors posting to the helpdesk were unable to see their code, so posted their question multiple times without seeing any responses. When I then answered your question, it posted their question but with my signature - see [bottom of this history page] for an example!
The second thing to remember is that you will need to place a <reference> tag later on in the page to tell the Wiki where to show your references. I've mocked up how the page should look here. Post a message on my talk page if you need any further help. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)16:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On the second part of your question, change the line with the access date to | accessdate=2007-07-05 - Wikipedia will automatically put in the appropriate links, without you needing to put in the [[ ]]. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)17:09, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Questionable edits
I noticed editor PorchBoard Bass Stompbox making multiple edits to Stomp Box which include links to a commercial website for PoarchBoard Floor Bass. The information added seems legitimate, but the user name is the company's name. I don't know how to proceed. Revert the edits? Leave the article alone? Ask for a NPOV review? Thanks in advance for any advice. —Travistalk16:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am having a problem with vandals on my page, is their a way to block them without blocking innocent editors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anna F C (talk • contribs)
I used Wikipedia a few times before I realized that some of the articles are factually unreliable and politically biased. It appears that I have misunderstood something. I was under the impression that I could correct errors in fact. I tried to correct an error, and within a few moments the factual error had reappeared. It appears that I may have broken the weasel rule, and someone corrected me. How should an error correction be handled? Is it necessary to document the correction, for example in this case, citing the law? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Realtat (talk • contribs)
Click on the "discussion" tab for the article and explain what you find to be wrong in the article. It is likely that this has come up in the past and the existing version is the one agreed upon by multiple users. As for weasel words, they are frowned upon. For example, I can say that "some people hate your edits" - but that really means nothing. How many is "some"? You need to be specific and back it up with valid references. -- Kainaw(what?)17:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:List of controversial issues is also informative. And a bit depressing. Why can't we all just get along? (Obviously my question is rhetorical because sociobiology explains the inevitability of conflict pretty well.) In any case, if you are looking for actual answers from the Help desk, rather than hypothetical answers, you need to post questions that are actual rather than hypothetical, which means identifying all persons and articles you merely allude to above. It appears you are User:Realtat and the article is Valerie Plame. It goes without saying to anyone familiar with contemporary politics in the United States that this article is going to be controversial. Therefore you need more than just the facts on your side; you must also be extra-compliant with all relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines to avoid giving opponents a pretext for removing your factual content (assuming your content is indeed factual). Also see: Wikipedia:WikiLawyering and WP:GAME. Wikipedia is far from a dispassionate, rigorously logical monolith; it is instead a kind of ecosystem of 47,849,598 registered users and a similarly large number of unregistereds. The behavior at many articles can fall well short of the idealized behavior prescribed in the guidelines. For example, many articles about religion fail to distinguish properly between objectively factual aspects of religions vs. doctrinal claims which are supported by no objective evidence. Religious adherents are in the habit of presenting doctrine as fact, and that habit often carries over to Wikipedia. The same often goes for proponents of political philosophies. Even in articles explicitly dealing with works of literary fiction, contributors sometimes struggle to avoid writing inappropriately in an "in-universe" view. --Teratornis20:02, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the topic. If it is primarily a U.S. topic, miles/feet are used. Otherwise, meters/km are primarily used. When it doesn't make the article look terrible, conversions are added in parenthesis after each unit. -- Kainaw(what?)17:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Units of measurement are another content item which, in my opinion, should automatically conform to the user's (i.e., the reader's) preference. However, at present we lack the technology to give each user the version of the World Wide Web he or she prefers. We are instead stuck with a one-size-must-fit-all arrangement (or more aptly: kludge) given our present technological shortcomings. --Teratornis20:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
can i view previous versions of pages that have been edited?
specifically, i am looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hfstival a few weeks ago, information was posted about a 2007 festival, but now the information has been taken down. i would like to see that information again, if possible. how can i do that? thanks!
The edit summary of the edit where the 2007 festival info was removed ([29]) was "rm false 2007 info, their has been NO ANNOUNCMENT in regards to 2007", so you should probably not rely on this information. ssepp(talk)17:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am a member of PokeWiki and while trying to up the rating of some articles I noticed that there in categories: Unessed,Stub,Assesed,Start,FA and GA what are those? -I PWN U ALL18:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Stub: This article is barely started. Maybe a lead sentence and infobox, but only one or two paragraphs of detailed information at most.
Start: It's been worked on by a few people, but has major gaps or missing context. Sometimes these are amusingly out of balance in their depth of coverage, such as when someone adds a page and a half of information about some minor detail of the subject but the introduction still reads like a stub.
B: These are the standard articles we have. Useful, more or less gives a complete overview of the subject, but still a work in progress. Probably missing references and lacks equal depth in all areas.
GA: These pages have been assessed as meeting a "Good" standard of quality. Well referenced, content is understandable to those unacquainted with the subject, no noticeable deficiencies. See WP:GA for details.
A: Does anybody actually use this class? In theory, I believe it means the article has great content, complete coverage, and has been peer reviewed, but still lacks polish.
FA: A professional quality article, referenced, stable, complete, and publishable. We put these on the front page. See WP:FA for details.
I added some user boxes to my user page. I would like to center them across the top of the page, but I don't know how to display the intermediate spaces. Looking for a help page on this and some other appearance problems I've noticed in the articles. I have used a clumsy work-around to fix some appearance problems, but they may not display correctly on other users' hardware.
I've got a faint idea and I'm usually pretty good at this stuff. How do I change spacing around image boxes, user boxes, &c. the right way? Thanks. -X ile20:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC) - Talk[reply]
I have three pages that i have put into one category , which is [[Category:Chelsea F.C. seasons]]. I have used, for each page, the template for the boxes that display the other pages in the category; but it only shows 2 out of 3 of the pages. My Chelsea F.C. 2005-2006 page is the one that deosnt appear in the box. Here is my box using the formula:
I stroke the false part. To clarify: There is no automatic connection between the contents of the template {{Chelsea F.C. seasons}} (which displays the box) and Category:Chelsea F.C. seasons (which lists articles containing [[Category:Chelsea F.C. seasons]]). The template doesn't read and display what is in the category. The template must be edited manually to add each season to it. PrimeHunter20:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Putting Wikipedia on my menu
Putting Wikipedia on my menu.
Is there any way to make the Wikipedia site a tab on my menu bar?
Like google , etc....
Thank you.
20:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Llcarlson (talk • contribs).
I tried clicking on the links I gave above to see if they might actually help the questioner figure out how to customize the bookmarks and/or toolbar in his/her Web browser. Not sure about that, but I did see this: Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools/Mozilla Firefox/Extension: Wikipedia toolbar which looks like it could be helpful for Help desk volunteers, for example if we were to construct our own Firefox menus to inject template references to boilerplate answers to frequently asked questions. For example, when several more people each day ask how to create a new page, a help desk volunteer would only have to click a few times to answer. --Teratornis22:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Should I move a page?
I want to create an article about the painter Neil Faulkner. However, there is another person called Neil Faulkner - an archaeologist, and there is a Wikipedia article about him. The article is called just "Neil Faulkner". To create an article about the painter with the same name I suppose I should move the existing "Neil Faulkner" page to "Neil Faulkner (archaeologist)" and then create a page named "Neil Faulkner (painter)". Is this really the thing I should do?
One more thing: I read that when I move "Neil Faulkner" to "Neil Faulkner (archaeologist)" a redirect page called "Neil Faulkner" will appear. This means that when someone searches for "Neil Faulkner" this redirect page will appear. But it will redirect to the archaeologist and not to the painter, and the person may be searching either for the archaeologist or the painter. So is it a good idea to transform this redirect page into a disambiguation page listing both persons?
Thank you!
Trilby*foxglove21:58, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For just two people with the same name, you can do what you describe. Or you can just leave the archaeologist article where it is and put a message at the top saying For the article about Neal Falkner the painter, see Neal Falkner (painter). Dismas|(talk)22:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot, Dismas! :) I think I'll choose the first option because adding a link to the page of the archaeologist makes the painter look inferior in my opinion. Anyway, thanks for the reassurance!
On my userpage, the typical code for creating a collapsible box (to hold my userboxen) is not working for some reason. Any help would be much appreciated. VanTucky(talk)22:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Try using Template:Userboxtop instead of <div> markup. This just requires placing your userbox list between {{userboxtop}} and {{userboxbottom}}. For example —
I can not find this page.Its about a show that my little sister watches.So I want to give her a copy for her birthay.So please put it back online in wikipedia.So my sister and other viewers can read this magnificant page,I read. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.139.221.252 (talk • contribs)
I skimmed that enormous deletion debate rather quickly, looking for any suggestion by anyone to transwiki the article to another wiki that specializes in television shows (for example, perhaps The TV IV, which seems friendlier to TV show articles than Wikipedia is, judging from its About page, and lo, it has a Naruto article), but good grief, I didn't see one. Can it really be that all those deletion debate participants (especially the "keep" voters) are unaware that thousands of other wikis exist, almost all of them with policies different than Wikipedia's? I got the sense that people were fighting over the article as if Wikipedia is the only option. Granted, Wikipedia is the most-visited wiki, but please tell me I missed something and our current questioner can find the article on some other wiki now. --Teratornis22:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My question is about this help desk: specifically, archiving. Right now, all the questions, stretching back to June 26, are still on the main page. Is this page bot-archived? And if not, how would I go about archiving it, to improve loading times? I'm actually starting to notice the lag on a cable connection. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done23:02, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it looks like the bot hasn't edited since June 26, which would certainly explain things. VectorPotential has already left a message on the owner's talk page, so I guess we can just wait and see. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done23:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just joined wikipedia. How do I add content or links to a specific page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Andrewatlanta (talk • contribs).
I'm looking for the page that discusses policy/guidelines on "future releases". That is, a discussion of whether or not topics like movies that have not yet been released are appropriate in a Wikipedia article. I've see a page on this issue before, but I can't find it now. ike989800:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Take a vacation where you will not have any Internet access for say a week and figure out all the fun stuff you can now do with the free time that you have in meatspace. --BrokenSphere05:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to add v • d • e to the left side of the header of Template:Mets but can't figure out how to do that while keeping the template collapsible. How could I do that? Thanks. -- 02:44, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Handy hint; if you find a user without a user page or talk page, look for the 'User contributions" link on the sidebar. If this link appears, the username has been registered. For example, you can see that User:A 1 does exist, but User:A 2 does not. Raven4x4x08:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am thinking of some new articles to write. I was burned the first time because my article was deleted. I have studied some AFD's so I think I am better prepared. Are geographical locations and cities always notable, within reason? Some are merely a sentence or two, though I plan to do a much better job than that. I did not see a notability essay on places, just people, movies, etc.Fineday06:59, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nearly always. If they're part of a larger district, then it's probably a good idea to make it a subsection instead, but generally if they're big enough to have a local paper, they're big enough to have their own page. --Haemo07:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can't search and find my article topic
I have created and article and saved it, but when I try to search for it, it does not show. What do I need to do to have my article show up when searched?
Is the article relevant content or an example of using the page as an additional location for her fiction writing? The article is also found on the author's myspace blog, personal website, among other locations. If this is not the proper place to ask the question, please assist me in finding the correct place to ask the question.
--Denisemarie07:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)Denisemarie[reply]
The small box at the top of the page is a userbox, and the box states that the user is a member of the WikiProject Mythology. The page itself is not part of the WikiProject, and the content on the page is most likely a favourite of the user, that the user has put on his/her page. Kind regards, Sebi[talk]07:44, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My Userpage
Hello. Recently, i changed the font colour of my userpage. I used the <font> and </font> to change my fonts into orange. Unfortunately, the fonts did'nt change. They are still blue. Can anyone help me? If possible, can you please also put the answer to the question on my talk page too? Thanks alot. --Jacklau9608:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You may have to change all your links to [[Link name|<font color="orange">link name</font>]]. You could also edit your monobook.css and add a { color: orange; } which would turn all your links everywhere on Wikipedia orange, but it would only appear orange for you. Sebi[talk]10:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Or stop living in the past and start using standard Compliant code <span style="font-family: Blah, sans; Color:Orange;">Text</span> ("Orange" is a CSS colour and not HTML colour so it probably won't work in <font> tags in all browsers). --antilivedT | C | G11:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
<font> tags are shorter, which is an important advantage in signatures (it's desirable to keep signature markup short so as to not clutter the rest of the edit page). --ais523 12:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I am looking for an old Wikipedia page that was titled 'Bhopali bakar' but now does not seem to exist anymore. Could you please provide me with access to it or re-load it on wikipedia?
Postulated here. I've bothered digging out my manual and while the text is not word-for-word, it is close. For those with the Starcraft manual... start at the last paragraph on page 52 and read onwards into page 53. You'll notice the lines ripped word-for-word from it, with the occasional paraphrashing interspersed. Is this too close for comfort?
I'd post this back on the talk page for it but nobody noticed it last time and I frankly don't have the time nor the motivation to do something about it myself. --Xoid10:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just tag the article for a re-write; those pages are mazes of poor writing and in-universe material anyways. --Haemo11:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Inconsistent Distances - air/road which should be used?
I found an inconsistency that I fear will be quite frequent:
I can't find anything in the Manual of Style that addresses this, but here's how I would handle it: What context is the distance in? Is it "XXX miles Southeast of City Y," or is it "XXX miles Southeast of City Y on Highway Z?" If there really isn't any context, then add a little note beside it, such as (Driving) or (Geographical). If there's nowhere that specifically states "this should be used", then we should go along with what most articles seem to follow. If, as in this case, there does not appear to be a consensus, be bold and make it up. Hersfold(talk/work)12:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about the missing signature! I am by no means a regular user ;-) Nevertheless I like to help out.
The distance information is given in a summary table on the right side. In edit mode it looks like "Infobox Australian Place| type = city". Further down "dist3=3314" sets the distance. The output that is generated says (amongst other locations in a dot list): "3314 km from Perth". So, no context is given, but it seems to be a defined field for that specific kind of table. Is there a description of all the fields? Maybe that should define what kind of distances are default.
150.101.147.16913:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Road distances are not unique. Multiple routes are often possible (except for two locations linked only by a single route). Various mapping sites and software packages may disagree on the length of a given route. All of them, in turn, may differ from a direct measurement using a well-calibrated cyclocomputer. I doubt that Google Earth really delivers four digits of precision for a typical road route, even though it reports all those digits. --Teratornis16:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Creating multiple external links
Dear administator,
I am a little confused with regards to the policy about creating multiple external links.
I wish to add external links from the pages of destinations such as Paris and New York, towards the informative online travel guides provided by Rough Guides. Although these pages will be from the same main website, each link would be to a separate section, which provide comprehensive information regarding the different locations. These are highly useful and relevant links. They also give users a wider choice of travel information from a well known and reputable source. In this respect I believe they would contribute to the Wikipedia page and thus would be separate from spamming. They do not lead directly to a sales website for the books but an informative site.
In light of these facts, is it possible to add external links to various different locations as they will contribute beneficial information without having them removed as 'spam'.
Well, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; external linking guidelines indicate that they should be treated like an extension of the page, for material which cannot be included in an article. For instance, an essay written by the subject. They are not loosely related material, which might be "useful", like a travel guide. --Haemo12:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I realise that registered users are allowed to add content to & edit their main page in order to add details such as their wikipedia activity, interests etc, and to archive & edit their talk page. However, are anonymous IP address users allowed to do something similar on the IP address pages, as to me it seems that in doing so they are claiming, and adding content to, something that is not actually theirs to add content to and edit? I ask specifically about one IP address user who has -
- added content as if they were a registered user with details about their interests on wikipedia and a picture (added not on the main page though, but for some reason on the talk page, for the IP address)
- deleted content from the talk page (specifically some messages left by other users)
- archived (twice) some content from the talk page
I was under the impression that only registered users were allowed to do any of this? If that is the case what can and should be done about it? I have no wish to prevent anyone from using wikipedia, just that perhaps they should at the least be encouraged to register, and whether they are actually allowed to edit what they are clearly thinking is their home page at present. Thank you in advance for any assistance.
Hi there. IP editors are allowed to edit like registered users except that IP's cannot create articles and sometimes articles are protected from vandalism in such a way that they cannot be edited by anyone except registered users. The specifics you mention are allowable although removing warnings and such is frowned upon. JodyB talk14:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Two other points: an IP cannot create any page other than a Talk page (which is presumably why the IP commented on their own Talk page rather than the associated User page), and IPs tend to change hands between people now and then, which is one reason why registered user User pages are much more common than IP "user pages" (because the information could soon be referring to the wrong person). --ais523 15:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies, I wasn't really sure and that has clarified it and of course explained why they used the talk page as a User page. I didn't realise that IP editors could only create a talk page, so if they have removed warnings, it is frowned upon, should those warnings be replaced? thanks. ♦Tangerines BFC ♦·Talk20:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Making columns
What's the preferred way to put text into columns? I've found both {{Multicols}} and {{col-begin}}, with appropriate following tags. Both seem to work. "Multicols" is the one you find by following links down from Wikipedia:Template messages to "formatting", but "col-begin" is "protected", which I think means it's one of WP's key templates. What's an editor to do? And how/where should I look for this info? PamD14:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you could click "toolbox | What links here" on each of {{Multicol}} and {{col-begin}} to see which is more popular. Normally the first place I look for information about editing on Wikipedia is: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia but this is one of the rare instances when a Ctrl-f search on the obvious keyword ("column") finds nothing appropriate. Tip: if you display template names using the {{Tl}} template, you can see whether you are spelling the template name correctly; e.g., {{Multicols}} generates a red link because that template does not exist, whereas {{Multicol}} generates a blue link because it exists). --Teratornis15:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why please was the page 'List of Esoteric subjects in Focault's Pendulum' deleted please? I didn't create it but I thought it was an interesting and worthy article. I can find no reference to it the deletion log.
I'm copying the source code for the infobox at Gillette Stadium. If you copy that code and replace as necessary, you should get something that looks reasonable. Generally, if you leave a field blank in the source code, it will not show up in the visible article layout. ShalomHello17:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
{{Infobox_Stadium |
stadium_name = Gillette Stadium |
image = [[Image:GilletteStadiumLogo.jpg|100px]]<br>[[Image:revsgame.jpg|300px]]|
location = [[Foxborough, Massachusetts]] |
broke_ground = [[March 24]], [[2000]] |
opened = [[September 9]], [[2002]] (grand opening)|
owner = [[Robert Kraft]] |
operator = [[Robert Kraft]] |
surface = [[FieldTurf]] (as of 11/26/06)<br />Grass (2002-11/12/06)|
construction_cost = [[United States dollar|$]]325 million |
architect = John Bolles |
former_names = CMGI Field ([[2002]] prior to Patriots opening) |
tenants = [[New England Patriots]] ([[National Football League|NFL]]) ([[2002]]-present) <br> [[New England Revolution]] ([[Major League Soccer|MLS]]) ([[2002]]-present) |
seating_capacity = 68,756 ([[American football|football]] & [[Football (soccer)|soccer]]) |
}}
Apologies for the poor explanation. I meant to say that there is a problem with the template at Template:Infobox Stadium and i am unsure on how to fix it. The problem with the infobox is that Certain information in the infobox such as services engineer does not appear on the article after filling in the information on the edit page. Thanks.Tbo 15717:34, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Need assistance to change
In the below information the park acres is only a total of 42 with 16 developed. can you also use our webstie www.elmwoodparkzoo.org
The Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania provides year-round admission to a collection of over 300 animals representing 100 species in 80 acres of exhibits. The zoo began operation in 1924. Exhibits of the 16-acre zoo include the Andrew L. Lewis Wetlands Aviary, The Bayou, and the Grasslands Exhibit. The zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and operated by the Norristown Zoological Society, and participates in a number of its species survival programs.
Today, Elmwood Park Zoo welcomes over 150,000 visitors annually.
The help desk is for questions on using Wikipedia only. You may want to try Wikipedia:Reference desk for questions on knowledge. In fact, I've taken the liberty of posting your question here. Hope this helps! RJaguar3 | u | t17:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Changing Username Appearance
I remember seeing in my user preferences, that it gave the option to change the way one's username ("nickname") appears on talk pages, etc. It said that to make the "raw signature" one must provide all the source code. What is the format for the source code and what do I need to include? What are my formatting and other options in making a custom "nickname"/username appearance, and what are the code syntax for those options? Thanks. Dragon Smaug17:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can do nearly anything possible in either wiki formatting or HTML with your sig, though if you do too much or an overly garish design you'll annoy people. (See Wikipedia:Signatures) For instance, my raw sig (which is rather plain), is created by [[User:tjstrf|tjstrf]] <small>[[User talk:tjstrf|talk]]</small>, and when I sign, it generates that followed by the date and time. --tjstrftalk17:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In case we still haven't implied an answer to your original question: the signature is written in wikimarkup (see Help:Editing), but most signatures end up looking like HTML with square brackets for links rather than <a> tags. --ais523 17:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Try reading through Evolution next time. It's under Objections to evolution. Since you seem so concerned, I've turned your link into a redirect (and corrected the capitalization), which is the easiest way to link it to the proper article. As a side note, we really have no interest in your ass. -- Kesh18:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's notion of a neutral point of view does not mean all viewpoints receive equal treatment. For example, people who believe the universe was created five seconds ago by the Flying spaghetti monster who created a world having a convincing appearance of much greater age, and implanted us all with complete but fictitious memories of a past which never actually occurred, probably find their manifestly unfalsifiable yet idiosyncratic point of view underrepresented here. But that's no problem, because anyone with an axe to grind is free to start their own wiki. For example, the Wikimedia Foundation donates its fine MediaWiki software (paid for by the Foundation's donors) to anyone who wants to download it, with no limits on what they can publish with it. Thousands of individuals and groups have set up their own wikis, including CreationWiki. --Teratornis20:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
can not sign in or log in to Wikipedia
I can not sign in or log in to Wikipedia and my account.
If you set a password for your account when you first created it, you can click the "Email new password" button on the Login page. Otherwise, you'll need to create a new account. Shadow1(talk)18:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
MAIL
How do you know what is your e-mail for wikipedia? and How do check your e-mail in wikipedia? Kapr0233
Wikipedia does not have its own email system. The only email is if you registered with an email address. If you did, people on Wikipedia can click a link to send you a message which will automatically go to your email address. -- Kesh19:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Notability guideline applicable to online computer games?
I've checked out WP:WEB but that doesn't really seem to apply. I also had a look down the list but couldn't see one that was really applicable. As a result of this I'm asking which guideline I should be following..
Not to be disrespectful, but I'm wondering which item under WP:WEB#Criteria you think does not apply to an Online game. They all look applicable to me, although I'm not an expert with online games by any means. I looked at Talk:Online game to see if any WikiProjects oversee it, which might provide more guidance, but it has no project tags. Category:Online games lists quite a few articles. Picking one at random (Battletech 3065) and looking at its talk page shows that the article is part of WikiProject Video games. You could look at the project page to see if they clarify the guidelines for notability. Note that WikiProjects merely interpret Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for a particular subject area; they do not override the site policies. --Teratornis00:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"This task force is intended to cover all MU* games and hopes to improve, expand, and assist all articles under it's scope. The task force was originally created to help decide what MU* games are and are not notable as some editors expressed concern over the notability of many of the MU*-related articles."
You'd be correct to think that I was talking about Starport: Galactic Empires, and, looking again at the criteria I should probably have read them a little more closely :/ I'll have a look at the stuff you mentioned, Teratornis, thanks.
If you want to make the text size smaller on Wikipedia you can use the <small>small text</small> code. If you mean on your web browser then go to the tools/options menu and check under font size. --Hdt83Chat19:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
HELP! Unacceptable server lag! AAH!
Hi. When I checked my watchlist, there was a giant problem! It said, due to high database server lag, changes newer than **** seconds may not be shown in the watchlist! Oh noes! I tried refreshing it, but the problem just won't go away! The number just keeps getting larger, and now the lag is over half an hour! I depend on my watchlist to keep me informed of new changes! How can I edit with such a high lag, with changes not displayed! How long will this last? Will this ever end? Thanks. ~AH1(TCU)20:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That is due to the database keeling over and dying. There's not really anything you can do about it but wait for it to catch up, which usually involves someone at wikimedia wetvac'ing the coffee out. Just be patient, click random article, and edit that --ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ
Yep, working now, though contribs are being a tiny bit laggy (12-18 seconds). The thing was jammed at 12:37 Pacific time (37 minutes after the last hour) for about 45 minutes though. --tjstrftalk20:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One thing a person could (theoretically) do about it would be to donate a large amount of money to the Wikimedia Foundation, some of which would probably go toward buying more servers. However, it would take a large donation to make a noticeable difference, and that would only help temporarily, as Wikipedia keeps growing. Maybe some enterprising third parties will set up more mirrors of Wikipedia and provide the CPU-hogging features such as watchlists that Wikipedia's servers probably can't do adequately for everyone. Another option might be to find other wikis specializing in your subject areas of interest that aren't so busy yet. If only a few hundred editors are interested in editing a particular article, ideally they shouldn't have to compete with 47,849,598 other users for server time. --Teratornis00:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Would Like To Rename Article "Synonym"
The article Muzafer Sherif has a "synonym" (is there a technical term for this?) of "Robbers Cave Experiement", which I'd like to correct to "Robbers Cave Experiment". Haven't a clue how. Any advice? Thanks. — Raymond Keller20:44, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the technical term you're looking for is a redirect - when a user visits the page Robber's_Cave_experiement, they automatically get redirected to Muzafer Sherif (incidentally, bear in mind that on Wikipedia the use (or not) of an apostrophe in a page title makes a difference - thus the page Robbers Cave Experiement doesn't exist (or didn't until I'd handled this query), but the page Robber's Cave Experiement did exist, and is the page you're talking about.
Whilst it would be possible to correct the redirection by deleting the page with the mis-spelling, what I think is a better solution (given that it's a quite specific page name - it's not like it's a common phrase that has been mis-spelt) is that both pages (ie. Robber's Cave Experiement and Robbers Cave Experiment) are redirected to point at Muzafer Sherif. Just to be on the safe side I have also created redirect pages for Robbers' Cave Experiment and Robbers' Cave Experiement - if you now click on any one of those four links you should (if I've done it right) end up at Muzafer Sherif automatically.
I am Second Lieutenant Tandon L. Mardis of the United States Air Force and I am a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated. I was wanting to know why it was that the information on this page is extremely scarce and what can be done to improve it. There are many brothers I know that would be more than happy to provide information regarding this area. Please let me know what avenue to take regarding these changes.
Tandon L. Mardis
<e-mail removed for privacy purposes>
Please leave a message on my talk page. I am a part of the fraternities and sororities WikiProject, and am currently working to improve NPHC related articles. Thanks. Miranda21:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Accident with altering a template page
I accidentally altered the following template page with the wrong information:
Just to expand on Teratornis' comment (I remember this sort of thing confusing me greatly when I first started on Wikipedia) - if you want to show a template's name in your text without including the template, or having an awkwardly named link, use the following text - {{tl:Template:templatenamehere}}. Giles Bennett(Talk, Contribs)22:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to know how much detail to give a questioner. Many of my Help desk responses are ridiculously verbose. It's either way too much or not enough, I guess. I kind of assume, however, that people who edit on Wikipedia will figure out pretty quickly that when they see something on a page and they want to know how it works, they can click an edit link and look at the corresponding wikitext, then cancel out of the editor window. So I would expect that if someone wants to see how I did this: {{US-finance-company-stub}}, they will click the edit link and look at the code. (Put it this way: someone who doesn't figure out how to learn from examples is going to have a rough time editing here.) But just to add to the overkill, I'm using Template:Tl to display the template, and of course we can use that template to display itself: {{Tl}}. Now that I'm rambling rather aimlessly, I could mention that in my earlier phase of learning wikitext editing, I occasionally wished for a "wikitext annotator": a way to link each item in a page of wikitext to the help topics that explain it. --Teratornis00:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Three.com.au
Hi,
(E-Mail removed for security purposes)
I would like wikipedia to start a hutchinsons telecom, "Three.com.au"
since I find that in the mobile tv and planet three section, 3G, they make the buttons so sticky, and if you click on something, such as, a news text, or news photo, you could be charged 50 cents, or many dollars. It's like how people accidentally click on wrong links and their phone bill gets huge! "Planet 3", and "Mobile TV menu" on th3 3G phone is tricky.
My email is (E-Mail removed for security purposes)
Thanks, please reply.
If you are asking about how you can get Wikipedia on your cell phone, there are some possibilities for that. See for example Tomeraider. But I can't really make sense of what you wrote. I'm not familiar with whatever system you seem to refer to. Although maybe you refer to 3 (telecommunications). --Teratornis05:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Added an image and its gone wrong slighty
Hi there,
i've recently bought a new digi cam and thought i'd update some of the photos of my local area with higher quality photos. I've just changed a photo for the Bishops Cleeve site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishops_cleeve and as you can see, the image of the church takes up the entire page. I intended it to still be the preview you usually see on the right hand side. I'd appreciate it if someone could change this for me and also inform me on what i've done wrong (i'm new to editing wikipedia you see) so in the future i won't make the same mistake.
Just turn the "frame" to "thumb", and be sure to add a size parameter if the picture is large. I went ahead and edited Bishops cleeve to fix it. Also, I put the bottom picture on the left so everything wasn't crowded on the right. Feel free to change it if you want. (By the way, for help with images, see Wikipedia:Extended image syntax) tiZom(2¢)23:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Find a Contributor's page creations
Is there any way I can find what articles a given user has created? The search page on special:newpages only goes back so far, and doesn't seem to include redirects. I seem to remember seeing this in a template call somewhere. Does this feature still exist? --YbborTalk00:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
None of those seem to provide an effective solution either, aside from mentioning special:newpages and its limitations. There was an allusion to a script Interiot runs on request, but that seems to much trouble for long-term use. Am I left to assume that there is no effective solution? No definitive answer came up. --YbborTalk12:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just created a page for Samuel A. Stouffer (1900-1960), sociologist. I would like to include a thumbnail image of him. The image is available on the American Sociological Association website:
I'll admit that the procedures for doing so have completely befuddled me. Lisences and so forth...and I can't figure out the right buttons to press anyway.
This is my first and only post, and I am clueless. Can someone who knows what they are doing (unlike me) point me in the right direction?
Well, first ensure there are no free images of him available. Once you've done that, save it, click "upload file" in the toolbox to the left. Then use the {{fairuse}} tag in the box, and leave the license menu blank. Write a short rationale explaining why this image is acceptable under the guidelines here. I think that should suffice. --Haemo01:23, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
tamil vs kannada
i want to know which is the oldest language tamil or kannada
How do I add upload a picture to a page that is already there?
To upload a picture, go to the page Wikipedia:Upload. However, please first read Wikipedia:Uploading images and our image use policy. Copyright of images is a very big issue on Wikipedia, and if you want to upload an image which you do not hold the copyright to you need to be very careful in how it is tagged and used. I've put a welcome message on your talk page with some other helpful links to do with editing here. Raven4x4x07:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
trouble uploading an article
I have created an account and would like to upload an article. Every time I log in, I am acknowledged as being logged in. I then click on Upload file and am instantly logged out and told "You must be logged in to upload a file." I log in. I click Upload file and am logged out and told "You must be logged in to upload a file." And round and round I go. Please tell me how to get out of this loop and upload my file on the "Bread and Roses" strike based on my book about the strike. Thank you.
Bruce Watson
Hi Bruce. Please see Help:Logging in#How to log in. Following the instructions there should hopefully solve your problem. Please note that articles are not uploaded to Wikipedia. The upload function is to upload media, such as images. Please see Wikipedia:Upload. For our text based articles, you must enter the words, just as you did to create your post on this page. I think you would benefit from touring the Wikipedia:Tutorial. Note that we already have an articles on Bread and Roses with a section on the strike. You could improve that article's coverage or if the strike needs a separate article, create it out of the existing redirect, Bread and Roses Strike. Because that's a redirect, when you click on that link you will be automatically taken (redirected) to the article on Bread and Roses. You will then need to click on the linked text at the top, "Redirected from Bread and Roses Strike" in order to access the page. Finally, note that because we are an encyclopedia, every statement in an article should cite to a reliable source which verifies its content.--Fuhghettaboutit12:35, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You could blank your userpage – replace all the text in the page with a space " ". If you mean delete your page and recreate it again, replace your page with {{db-userreq}}, which will tag your userpage for deletion, and will be deleted soon by an administrator. Sebi[talk]09:34, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
deleting account
Is it possible to delete my wikipedia account? This is the last time i will use this account and i no longer need it.
Accounts with contributions cannot be deleted since this would allow another user to create the account, and claim authorship of those edits. It is not possible for your edits to be removed entirely; for this reason, removing the account would potentially violate copyrights by allowing for such authorship claims. You can, however, change your username (if you've made less than 200,000 edits) and request that your userpage and talk page be deleted by placing {{db-user}} on both pages.--Fuhghettaboutit12:54, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
help me................
hello wikipedia..........i need full book of cell biology and bio organic che ,principle of chemical eng containg the following factors..........UNIT I CELL STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE ORGANELLES 9
Eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, principles of membrane organisation, membrane proteins, cytoskeletal proteins, types of cell division, mitosis & meiosis, extra cellular matrix, cell cycle and molecules that control cell cycle.<remainder of massive post removed>—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.56.231.116 (talk • contribs).
Please go to a bookstore, online or in person, and order books on these subjects. Or, you could read our various articles on biology, chemistry and the various other subjects you were inquiring about; just type a word into the search bar at left. We are an online encyclopedia. We don't provide books to people. If you have a specific question on these topics you can ask it at the science reference desk. This page is for help with using Wikpedia. However. please don't post anywhere the massive post you did here (twice)—ask a specific question. Thank you.--Fuhghettaboutit12:12, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
117 elements have been observed as of 2007. Please see our article, Chemical element. Please note that this page is for asking questions about using Wikipedia. Future questions such as the above should be asked at one of the various reference desks. On the using Wikipedia front, note how easy it is: in order to answer your question I typed "element" into the search box at left, then came to a page with various types of element articles, clicked on the one for chemistry and found your answer immediately. The whole process took me less than 1 minute. You can do the same research yourself.--Fuhghettaboutit12:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Image Upload
I am trying to show an image on the page I use to list the Members of the Watford LUG.
I think I have successfully uploaded the image to Wikipedia and in my own page I have put
File:Nameoffile.JPG when I click on this I get the message;
--File uploads are disabled on this wiki--
Can you tell me how to correct this?
Thanks Cliff — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cliffd7 (talk • contribs)
I don't see an article by the name of Members of the Watford LUG. Going through your contributions, I see a number of images uploaded but no edits to an article even remotely similar to "Members of the Watford LUG". You refer to it as "the page I use" and "in my own page", so now I'm wondering if you're referring to some other wiki that you're trying to edit and use the images from Wikipedia for an article on a different wiki. Could you maybe expand on just what article you are trying to add these images to? Dismas|(talk)14:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes you have the right location, sorry about my inept question.
If you go to the Watford LUG site >members you will see that I am trying to show an image of a member against his name.
I get the --File uploads are disabled ...-- message and that is what I am trying to fix.
Cliffd714:54, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then you should take that up with the Watford LUG site. Wikipedia has nothing to do with the LUG. Both sites use the MediaWiki software and look similar but that is where the comparisons end. It would be like going to Google because of issues you're having with Yahoo. They both run search engines but they don't provide tech support for one another. Dismas|(talk)15:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you can display images uploaded to Wikipedia at your wiki. The image should be uploaded to Waterford LUG, but the message you quote indicates the feature is disabled there. Wikipedia and Waterford LUG both use the MediaWiki software. See mw:Manual:Image Administration. You may be able to get MediaWiki help unrelated to Wikipedia at mw:Project:Support desk. PrimeHunter15:44, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Waterford LUG administrators would need to set $wgEnableUploads and possibly $wgFileExtensions in their Manual:LocalSettings.php file if they want to let you upload images. However, they might have deliberately chosen not to do that. I notice that their Recent changes page shows they're getting hit by wiki spammers. You should tell the administrators either to disable edits by non-logged-in users, or to train a massive community of users who will volunteer their time to combat spam like we do on Wikipedia. As the latter option is virtually out of the question for most small new wikis they should probably go with the far easier option of disabling edits by non-logged-in users, which at least contains the spammers to accounts they can ban. That's my advice anyway. They can read these Google search results on mediawiki.org to learn more about combating wiki spam. --Teratornis21:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since I have that script and it works fine for me, and since yours was slightly different, I pasted the script from my monobook into yours in the hope that the difference was what is bollixing it up. Go to the monobook and purge your cache (on many computers, done by hitting ctrl+f5). If it still doesn't work, revert me and wait for someone who actually understands this stuff.--Fuhghettaboutit15:43, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Recently, I updated the Jason Vale article. The article already has a tag/notice stating that it 'looked too much like an advertisement'. I've improved it now, so am I allowed get rid of the tag/notice myself?
How does Wikipedia bring news to your website before it was being mention on the news? For ex. You bring the latest news of Wimbledon ladies' Championship game when Vinus Williams win the championship before we even watch the game.
It is possible that someone was either at the match or was watching it live on TV, and subsequently updated the relevant Wikipedia article just after the championship. That's one reason why wikis are cool--they can be updated much faster than many other traditional media. It is also possible that a vandal posted false information before the match was over, but most of the time other users remove it quickly. ~MDD469617:22, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do you post a biography for someone with the same name as an existing biography? There is another Sean McLaughlin who should be listed in addition to the one who currently has an article posted.
Seantaketa18:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC) seantaketa[reply]
You'll have to create the article with something added to the name that makes it unique, like "Sean McLaughlin (musician)". After you've done that, it is then good to go to the existing article and rename it so it is also unique, like "Sean McLaughlin (meteorologist)" and then create a disambiguation page named "Sean McLaughlin" that links to both of the other articles. See the John Smith page, for example. If you need help with that, feel free to contact the Help desk again. Truthanado18:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How to align two tables next to each other?
I have two tables that I would like to have next to each other. They are narrow and having them vertically aligned, first one then the other (which is what happens by default), wastes a lot of screen space. Is there a way to do this? See my Sandbox here. Thanks. Truthanado18:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion. It's not ideal because the two tables have to contain the same number of rows, so I had to cheat a little with "blank" cells. It does the job, and maybe some Wikipedian table expert can improve it. See Baseball statistics#Good statistics. Truthanado02:19, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Do we have a template to place on user talk pages for copyright violations, similar to the ones we have for warning on vandalism? I swear I thought we did, but I can't seem to find them. --fuzzy51018:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't this a little insulting to anon users? "Please do not save test edits. If you want to experiment, please use the Sandbox." CAPTCHAs for anon users is bad enough, but must we also be insulted?--172.146.207.12221:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
'For testing, please use the sandbox instead.' is also on the edit page for registered users. I think almost nobody considers it consulting. ssepp(talk)21:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I get it. I hadn't thought that the term "Sandbox" could seem condescending to a new user, perhaps one who has never used a revision control system before and isn't familiar with the wiki use of the term, but it does make sense that someone could interpret this as a dismissive instruction to go use the child's plaything. In a large population of users, every possible interpretation of a system's instructions will occur to someone. In any case, insults are only insulting when you agree with them. I think Eleanor Roosevelt said something like that, and it is manifestly true. But brace yourself, if you think that was insulting, wait until you are asking Why was my page deleted?. I'm not trying to be even more insulting here, just pointing out that dealing with Wikipedia is often very much like dealing with a giant lumbering faceless insensitive dispassionate robot. But on the plus side it is usually a law-abiding robot. That is, everything it does is ruled by a complex set of very well-documented policies and guidelines. So once you are fluent in the rules, it doesn't feel insulting any more. This is different than dealing with an irretrievably Kafkaesque real-world bureaucracy where the rules are generally kept from outsiders and you never know what to expect. --Teratornis22:01, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:HD is "specifically" for questions regarding Wikipedia. Next time you have a general knowledge question, please comsider asking at WP:RD or searching within Wikipedia first.
Using ref name for multiple use footnote but with page number changes
I have figured out how to use ref name and cite templates for multiple footnotes referring to a single source. I combined a series of references into footnote 1 on Henry Pering Pellew Crease and it tidied things up a lot. There are times though when you want to refer to the same source several times but to a particular page of the source that changes each time you use it like footnotes 2 and 4. Is there a way to do what footnote 4 in that article does using something like ref name? --KenWalker | Talk00:28, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is a relatively new template providing a solution to the problem of an article cited many times and which you want to provide the page numbers but keep the citation as a single entry. after each subsequent cite (i.e. after each iteration of "<ref name="The name you chose before"/>, just add {{rp|page number(s)}}. This will make it so that in the text the footnote citation has a page number appended. As an example, if you were citing to page 282-3 of the article's third citation, the footnote would look like this: [3]:282-3, while the footnote itself wouldn't change. You can enter for pages listed in the footnote, "various".--Fuhghettaboutit01:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How do you make your own header like for your Talk page like Gracenotes did. It looks nice and I want to know how to make one. Please explain it simple enough for anyone who reads this to understand, as I am not the top with technical computer language. And please do not answer in Binary Code. ☺EfansayT/C☺ 01:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It takes a good bit of code to do something that nice. Best thing to do when you find a layout you like is to click on the Edit link and see what they did. In this case, it's a template stored at User talk:Gracenotes/Header. If you visit that page, and click Edit, you can see exactly how the template was made. -- Kesh01:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. A new user has just created the article Union Organizer without realising that there is an existing article Union organiser. His new article is more extensive than the existing stub. I have informed him, but he may not be familiar with the messaging system. It seems silly to have two articles. What should I do? Advice appreciated. Thanks and best regards Tree Kittens04:42, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eek! I've never done a merge or redirect before! Which one do I make into a redirect? In other words, which spelling or title should be the main one and which the redirect? I don't want to freak him out, so I'm not confident of the proper order to do things... Tree Kittens04:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Very well. I will edit the text from the older stub into the newer and larger article, which seems to have been renamed already. Then I will delete the content of the older stub and add the markup for redirect and merge as described in Help:Merging and moving pages. It'll be good to learn how to do this. I'll only be able to do it tomorrow, but I will remember. I hope this is ok. Thanks a lot for all your help. Tree Kittens06:09, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Search box focus
The site would be much easier to use if the cursor automatically went to the search box, as it does on many sites. Wouldn't this be an easy thing to implement? It would save me alone dozens, even hundreds, of "tabs" a day.--Pharillon05:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This would be most easily fixed by a setting in your browser. Just turn off the feature that tabs to links, and the Search bar will be the first form item you can tab to. -- Kesh05:43, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is the first one I can tab to; but it would be nicer if one didn't have to tab at all, as on many sites where the search function is a primary one. • Pharillon • (T)06:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why is it I have edited the biography of Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) several times, and it was changed at the time I edited, but when I go back into the bio, the changes are back to the original false facts.
Engelbert is NOT Anglo-Indian, and neither was his mother. His Mother and Father are both British, but Engelbert was born in India where his father was working.
Please correct these mistakes
thank you
M.Sacker--Msacker05:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your changes were altered here. I believe you are arguing his heritage, which should be done on the article's Talk page. Note that in many countries, simply being born there grants citizenship. Either way, what we need are verifiable sources as to how he identified himself. -- Kesh05:48, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
CAN PEOPLE PLACE THEIR RESUMES AS AN ADDED INFO ABOUT THAT PERSON
CAN PEOPLE PLACE THEIR RESUMES AS AN ADDED INFO ABOUT THAT PERSON... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.37.218.162 (talk • contribs).
If there isn't already an article, don't add a resume. If there is an article, there shouldn't be a 'resume' section either, but the info that you would normally find in a resume (significant work experience, education) should instead be integrated into the article. ssepp(talk)12:59, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. In most cases, the addition of a separate document such as a resume is not useful as encyclopediac content. The very nature of resumes are in the most part, not suitable for an encyclopaedia. For more information about what Wikipedia is not, please see WP:NOT
Shall i get any answer for the questions which is related to aeronautics —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 122.167.63.121 (talk • contribs).
I constantly come across history pages that show multiple edits by the same editor in the space of a few minutes, simply because they don't preview their changes before saving them. Wouldn't it be a great idea to force all editors to preview their changes (by removing the save changes button), so that they can only save them after previewing? This seems to be standard procedure on many other interactive websites. (I thought there was a "requested features" page but I can't find it.)--Shantavira|feed me09:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This would be very annoying to editors who make many small edits to different articles, doing for instance things like fixing spelling errors or bulleting lists and who don't need a preview. Also if for instance if I make a redirect page, I don't need a preview. Forcing everyone to always preview would do more harm than good in my opinion. You can use the template:preview to ask users to preview their edits. I wonder if a solution to messy history pages would be to have an option to 'collapse' editing streaks into a single entry in the history... ssepp(talk)12:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Problems in Submitting
I did a tutorial on using Ad-Aware 2007 Free and someone suggested that I put it on WIKI. I tried but it was deleted; the first time, it was for links for images (I deleted them). The next time, I was told not to use WIKI.
Please forgive my error. I will not make it again.
suebaby41 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.87.132.183 (talk)
Um, hi, I'm Ryan Seacrest.j/k Seruoisely how do i make a submission??? Please reply at my email below: *email removed* Thanks.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.96.243.190 (talk • contribs).
Please also remember to sign your comments. As a courtesy to other editors, it is a Wikipedia guideline to sign your posts on talk pages, user talk pages, and WikiProject pages. To do so, simply add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comments. Your user name or IP address (if you are not logged in) and the date will then be automatically added along with a timestamp when you save your comment. Signing your comments helps people to find out who said something and provides them with a link to your user/talk page (for further discussion). For further info, read Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Thank you. -- Sup?13:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Template help
The reply to the post directly above this was made with {{creation}}, a new template for the constant question we get here "how do I create a page", but it has functionality problems that are beyond my meager coding skills. The template has two parameters, one for users with accounts: {{subst:Creation|user}} and one for ips: {{subst:Creation|ip}}.
It displays fine in view mode, but in edit mode, you see a lot of the coding. Specifically, you see {{#switch:ip
| ip = (text of template), followed by the entire text of the second parameter. This is done apparently with {{Switch}}, which is deprecated;
In the template itself, the usage section is supposed to display the text, as it will appear in articles, but the paragraph spacing isn't present;
Finally, it does have paragraphs, and wouldn't be very readable without, but the problem I see is that right now it only will format correctly if a user posts it with one leading colon. This will work most of the time; but if, for whatever reason, a help desk replier is posting the template as the second replier, and thus uses two leading colons, it will format like this:
First paragraph text
Second paragraph text
Third paragraph text
Is there a way to make it so that all paragraphs of the template will format indented to the same number of leading colons a user places when they type the template? Fixing the template, rather than telling me how would, of course, be preferred;-)--Fuhghettaboutit13:16, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great work! I'm glad to see you working on our badly-needed standard response templates for the Help desk. I have a few ideas which you may consider or ignore as you like:
How about keeping it as simple as possible: have all the standard response templates for the Help desk display their output in a box, like: {{Resolved}} does (and all the infoboxes, user boxes, {{Talkheader}}, etc. Make a template look like a template). Just use a fixed indenting of one level; probably in the vast majority of cases, once the Help desk volunteers get up to speed with the standard response templates, the canned response will be the first response to a question anyway. Then you don't need any elaborate coding to figure out how much to indent multiple paragraphs. In my opinion, struggling to make the template appear to generate a human-typed response complicates the template coding unnecessarily (and undesirably; see below), and limits the number of people who can design and improve more of the many standard response templates we need for the Help desk. We need a simple template design to facilitate the maximum number of Help desk volunteers adding to the collection.
Putting the template output in a box makes the template output look distinctly different from human-typed output. I think that's a good thing, so other Help desk volunteers can realize that we have templates. The Help desk gets constant volunteer turnover - in six months we will have a whole new crew here, and probably a lot of them will learn how to answer questions by reading other people's answers. So let's make the answers self-documenting as to the methods we use to generate them, or at least make sure they don't look like we wrote all that stuff by hand every time, which could mislead the new volunteers.
That's another reason to transclude such a template rather than substitute it, so the wikitext for the question clearly shows other Help desk volunteers where the text came from. I don't think it matters that template text might change in the future, because the Help desk archives are not like a normal article's talk page; we do not need to preserve an exact record of what was said in response at the time. I.e., our answers are more or less disposable here.
Making a standard response look like a standard response also drives the point home to questioners that they are getting a canned answer to a frequently asked question. In my opinion, we should be honest about what we are doing, and not try to fool people into thinking we are doing something else. I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of here. We should promote the idea that we have engineered a system to answer questions efficiently, and expose the details for all to see. A new user should learn that there are frequently asked questions and where to find the answers without having to ask another human every time.
Another issue is that we need to document all these standard response templates in a table somewhere (for example, on Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer), so Help desk volunteers can look them up. Making the template output compact will help keep the table manageable in size. All a standard response template has to do is link to a single FAQ entry anyway. (If we aren't happy with the existing FAQ pages, we can write our own Help desk FAQ.) Sticking a lot of template-generated text directly on the Help desk page makes this already long page even longer. I don't think it burdens the questioner too much to click one link to get the canned answer. Compacting the template output also has the desirable effect of not crowding out any additional human-typed responses. --Teratornis15:53, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Putting it inside a box is a fine idea and would take care of the indenting issue right off; I agree that it's a good idea to make it obvious it's a canned template response. Note, though, that I have asked for assistance at requested templates, so some uber-template-coding-god will probably be along shortly to fix the {{switch}} and other problems, so I'm not going to change anything for a little while. We do get constant new volunteers, but many faces don't change. I've been fairly regular for a year and a half and recognize others that predate me.
Regarding the transclusion issue: like many templates, it has a commented out <-- Template:name --!> at the end. We can just switch that to the beginning to make it more noticeable (transcluded or not, editors still will have to view it in edit mode to check its origin). The reason I question keeping it transcluded is that most of that ilk are temporary (CSD templates, etc.) while the help desk archives remain forever and will continue to call the template. Think ten years down the road—we may have thousands of these templates calling. So it's not an issue of preserving exact responses to questions, but server load.
(On the more philosophical end of matters) I wholeheartedly agree with you that "new user should learn that there are frequently asked questions and where to find the answers without having to ask another human every time..." but I'm pretty pessimistic it will actually result in anything but marginal returns. I added the standard answer in the VFAQ to this very question (how do I create a new page?); at that time the header for this page was changed to make it very clear the VFAQ existed (it now links to Nubio), what this page was for, and what the refdesk was for and so on. Of course, it's hard to prove a negative, but I think it did bupkis–certainly we haven't seen any reduction in refdesk questions asked here, nor of the question this template was created to answer or other daily VFAQ-answered queries. There's a self-selection process going on: those who would search, did, and never asked their question here; those who didn't, aren't the types to. I know that's a pretty broad brush I'm painting with, but I'm generalizing.--Fuhghettaboutit16:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is another factor to consider: the role of repetition in learning. Most people need to see a really new tidbit of information several times before it sinks in. Something that is alien to their previous experience tends not to "register" the first time. So even if they seem to be ignoring an instruction here, which may be their first ever exposure, possibly they benefit later from having received their first repetition here. They might get it the second or third time around. Another way to look at it: if we don't tell people something they need to know here, we merely postpone the process of giving them the needed repetitions, and possibly shift that part of the training burden onto someone else. So even if it seems our efforts to instruct are futile, I suspect we are planting the first seeds that will only later produce fruit. It seems that virtually every user who goes on to make substantial contributions does eventually learn to navigate the FAQ pages, manuals, etc. So, how do they all learn that lesson? Obviously, someone or something had to tell them, and probably several times. We should not shrink from our chance to get the first repetition in, even if there is no instantly visible payoff. A farmer who plants seeds cannot judge their success the next day.
About server load: as far as I know, templates only load the server when someone views a page that transcludes them. Since we don't have hit counters on Wikipedia pages, we don't know how many people are viewing the Help desk archives. However, I would be very surprised to hear the Help desk archives are getting enough views to generate significant server load. If people were looking frequently at the Help desk archives, we might not get so many repeat questions. It might actually be better for server resources to shrink the size of the (infrequently viewed?) Help desk archives by compacting their repetitive content into template calls. That is, if we have large pages that few people view, maybe it is better to make them a bit smaller. Admittedly, this whole issue is hypothetical since we have no solid data about number of views and server loads or the future relative costs of CPU vs. storage etc. I would think the value of having clean wikitext for Help desk volunteers to learn from outweighs the hypothetical downside of template-laden but probably seldom-viewed Help desk archive pages. That is, I would take the known benefit for the doubtful cost. (But that's just me; see below for my comments on how to make everybody happy.) --Teratornis19:08, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding your follow-up post: So are you suggesting that instead of having the standard templates contain the canned answer, the template should say something to the effect of
"This question and other frequently asked questions are answered at [[______]]. Please read that page?" Or maybe: "See [[______#how do I create a page]]", or do you mean that the canned template should be far more terse, giving the answer and referring them to a faq for more information?
I would be opposed to the last of these. The template should either refer to another place where a full explanation is given without giving the answer, or give the full explanation, but not give the answer without forcing someone to read on. We want people to have to read about notability, and COI, and formatting and searching first, and other policies, before they get the answer (did you see my post on the talk page where I alluded to this when I announced the template's creation?) If users are provided a link to how to create a page in a compact answer, most won't go to the faq, they'll just create the page without reading about all the issues. Keeping this short, because I'm not sure I grok you.--Fuhghettaboutit17:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily instead of standard response templates containing the full text of the canned answer, but in addition to. There is no limit to the number of templates we can make. It's probably a good idea to have several alternative templates to answer the same question, so we can evolve different design styles without getting into edit wars or philosophy arguments over one particular template (like we are doing with the Help desk instructions! People keep adding instructions, then someone comes in and chops them down, then people add bits back, etc.). In my opinion, the first priority is to make the Help desk fun for the helpers, because if the helpers don't have fun, they leave. Any (correct) help is better than no help, I think, and more helpers are better than fewer. Therefore, if some helpers like to use explicit, verbose standard response templates, and other helpers want compact (one-sentence) templates, or very compact (one shortcut link) templates, everybody should get the templates they want. I don't see a reason to force everyone to answer questions the same way (and anyone who thinks a terse answer is too terse is free to tack on more explanation - we do this routinely now). As far as what sort of response is most effective for "users," I think we have to agree that once again we don't have sufficient evidence to draw sweeping conclusions. Few questioners post follow-up replies telling how they did with the answers. We don't always know if they are following links or understanding what we tell them. Was the shortcut link good enough? If they don't tell us, we probably never know. Every questioner is different, and we have no idea who we are writing to. In any case, if someone creates an article the wrong way, it often gets deleted. At least we gave them a chance to get it right first, and maybe they won't be as angry when they think back and remember that we did try to warn them. I think that's all we have to worry about here. We're not going to enlighten everybody 100% on the first go. Wikipedia has multiple lines of defense to deal with whatever slips through the cracks. --Teratornis19:08, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I actually sometimes check to see the actions users take after getting help desk responses. It sometimes gratifying and other times amusing in a pathetic way. So I get you now. You're not calling for compacting this particular template but saying that we can have a compact version. That's fine to an extent, but on this particular issue, I think if it says little more than "See Help:Starting a new page" that would not be good. First, I don't think a template is necessary, that has little utility as it can just be typed. But especially in this area (article creation) we should do our best to inform people of at least the basics of COI, verifiability, sourcing, notability requirements and so on. The processes that have to come into play when articles that shouldn't be created, are, are a waste of a lot of people's time. CSD deletion takes more time than people think if it's done with due diligence (which I strive for); there's usually a middle man new pages patroller; and if the article ends up at afd that's more resource intensive. While there's no guarantee that a person will refrain from posting an inappropriate article if they are provided those links, some number won't, whereas, not posting is cannot lead to abstention because the information isn't provided. You say "maybe they won't be as angry when they think back and remember that we did try to warn them"—nail on head.--Fuhghettaboutit04:56, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Posting an article about myself
ow do i post something regarding myself, i am a composer, and regarding my musicals.my name is linda samet— Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.195 (talk • contribs)
Please don't create an article about yourself. If you are notable as we define that terms here, i.e. you have been the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources, some third party will come along and write the article. Please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. In short, we very strongly encourage you to avoid editing Wikipedia in areas where there is a conflict of interest that would make your edits non-neutral (biased).--Fuhghettaboutit14:58, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Request for article
Please can you do some research on PAL and post on wiki
Phenylanine Ammino lyase,
< New treatemnt in Phenylketonuria>
You have a good reference to PKU and the Biochemistry,
just no reference to new treatments that are hopefully one day going to be availible soon.
Answer: The most recent published update on phenylammonia lyase enzyme therapy for phenylketonuria was published by Christineh N. Sarkissiana (Montreal) and Alejandra Gámezb (Scripps La Jolla) in December 2005. At that point they were facing the usual challenge of getting a working enzyme into a body without an immune reaction. They were having limited success with a mouse PKU model. It sounds like this is still a distance from human trials, but I may be unduly pessimistic. Does this answer your question? alteripse15:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
infobox datespan
I found this on a page about Charles Parnell. Where can I found information on how to create another infobox datespan?
The template page doesn't seem to have any help text to guide you. Generally the easiest way to put another instance of the same infobox in another article would be to copy the wikitext that generates the infobox from the Charles Parnell article into the other article, and edit the input values to the template to be correct for the other article. If you need help with this, tell us the name of the other article you want to add the infobox to, and someone can start the process for you. Also see Help:Template. --Teratornis19:22, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
i need help
i need to find out how to get information about the rich and the poor parts of rio de janeiro
Hello.
I was looking through some of the recent changes when I found this weird looking section
in the article Daltonganj. I find it weird because it's just a list with little explanation. However, I'm not familiar with much Indian geography so I'm requesting somebody else fix this up. Thanks. --JDitto19:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On my userpage I have modified a welcome template to provide myself with a quick reference for various things (and at some point I will modify to suit my needs better). What I want to do is remove the ugly grey bar in the centre, but after many hours playing with it I can't work out how to do it. If an editor would be so kind to do this for me then I can check the diff and work out how the hell they did it. Ta muchly Xarr☎20:17, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Done. As is often the case, the fix was probably too simple; that pencil you've been looking for the last hour? it's behind your ear:-)--Fuhghettaboutit21:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
off-site icon?
How does the off-site icon (box with broad arrow pointing NE) get into the HTML at the end of the anchor text for the anchor link?
Is it copyrighted or otherwise intellectual property?
See also m:Help:Link#External links (it's possible to avoid the arrow). An external link normally produces html with CSS class "external" which has the arrow. For example, http://google.com produces this html (seen with view source in my browser):
Thanks, S_Sepp and PrimeHunter. I thought the mechanics involved CSS, but I could not put my finger on it precisely. My questions are answered. Again, thanks. —Xojo (talk) 22:18, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That will place a "In other languages" link on the left side of the page to whatever language occupies "no."wikipedia.org (in this case, I believe norwegian) --Laugh!21:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the current revision of our Area 51 article, I have a footnote (the first one) that explains something, as something of a tangential aside (it doesn't belong in the article text, particularly not the opening paragraph). To support the claims made in that aside I have three references (they really should be {{cite-web}}s). But how do we handle such references when the refering text is already inside REF tags? Wikipedia:Footnotes doesn't help, so I've inlined them for now - but that doesn't look nice and isn't especially easy to read. Is there a better way? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk23:43, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the way you did it is the best way. Once someone takes the time to read the footnote, they won't mind seeing inline references there. If you ever send the article to Wikipedia:Peer review, they may have another idea, but on a "help desk" level, I'm just happy that you have the references at all, since I see so many articles lacking references. ShalomHello23:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Word
Hello, can you tell me the term or word used for words that are spelled the same; forward or backward: Bob, Eve, civic, etc.? It starts with "p" and has "drone" or "drome" at the end, I think. Thank you for your time. :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.220.75.80 (talk)
I would like to suppress categorisation on a template so that it only categorises pages in a certain namespace. Take, for instance, User:UBX/hinduism. The template currently categorises any page it is transcluded on into Category:Wikipedians interested in Hinduism via the following line of code:
<includeonly>[[Category:Wikipedians interested in Hinduism|{{PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>
I want to change this so that the template will categorise only those pages which are in the user namespace. Would replacing the code above with the code below (adapted from Template:Taxobox) be appropriate for that purpose?
<includeonly>{{#ifeq:{{{NAMESPACEE}}}|{{ns:2}}|[[Category:Wikipedians interested in Hinduism|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}</includeonly>
Note: {{ns:2}} corresponds to the User namespace per Help:Namespace.
If not, what needs to be changed? I've used here an example of a userbox, but I can think of other (more encyclopedic) uses of being able to suppress categorisation. I would appreciate assistance from someone more familiar with template coding than I. Thanks, Black Falcon(Talk)00:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're really close, just a few minor things need to be changed. This should work:
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:2}}|<includeonly>[[Category:Wikipedians interested in Hinduism|{{BASEPAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>|}}
You only need two sets of brackets around "NAMESPACE", not three - that's liable to screw it up. I also moved the include only tags inside, as that should allow you to test things out easier. Put a word like "test" just out side the tags and make sure it displays after you save the page. I changed mine to BASEPAGENAME as well, which should provide for better sorting in the category. Either version should work fine (once you take out the extra brackets in yours), just test them out first, as always. Hersfold(talk/work)01:23, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Does there exist a current (and preferably regularly updated) count of pages by namespace? {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} gives the current number of non-redirect mainspace pages and Special:Statistics provides the total number of pages (currently over 9 million), but nothing else. This page provides the desired data, but it has not been updated since October 2006. Is this information available anywhere? Thanks, Black Falcon(Talk)01:02, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can generate a list of all the pages in a name space by using Special:Allpages, but it doesn't provide a count that I can see. I'm not sure such a resource is available. You might be able to suggest that such a feature be added here. Hersfold(talk/work)01:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to start a WikiProject on malware? I've noticed that MANY (actually, this is a misnomer because there are not many articles on this topic in the first place!) articles on malware are in a state of disrepair (such as Vundo trojan, which I want to move to Vundo, and Avira which is a notable antivirus company). If anyone could help me with this, and/or if anyone is interested, don't hesitate to contact me. ZeratulEn Taro Adun!So be it.01:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post such a query, since I'm not experienced with WP:VP.
I think there is also the issue of users who are in countries that block Wikipedia. See: WP:TOR. Disclaimer: I don't know anything about this other than what I see on that page. --Teratornis02:30, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The secure login, which is mostly useful when on an insecure wireless network (to help prevent your password being stolen) and on certain satellite networks (to prevent problems with being logged out automatically), is https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin; I have it templated at User:ais523/SecureURL to make it easier to remember. Using it will cause Wikipedia browsing and editing to be slower, though, and it couldn't cope with the strain of lots of people using it, so only use it when necessary. --ais523 10:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia on desk top
Is it possible to put Wikipedia on my desk top for easy access. Peter McNicholl —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 125.237.172.56 (talk)
Right-click on your desktop, select "New -> Shortcut" and type "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" in the box that appears. Flip through the rest of the options however you'd like, and hit OK or Finish or whatever it is when you're done. Hersfold(talk/work)04:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Legal threat
There is a threat of legal action on my talk page under Acen Ravzi. I'm an admin, but I can't remeber or find the policy. thanks, Jimfbleak05:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On July 5th 2007 I uploaded an article about The Citizens Foundation ( TCF ). First there were pictures' license tagging issues and the speedy deletion warning was given. But on the July 6th the notice was removed and no warning about removing the article was given.
Today, on July 9th 2007 when I searched the article I found out that the article does not exist.
(edit conflict) The Citizens Foundation was speedy deleted by User:Evilclown93 under criterion G12, "copyvio", meaning that the text on the page had been taken from a copyrighted source, presumably the foundation's web page. See also Wikipedia:Copyright#Using copyrighted work from others. From the looks of it, you should be able to recreate the article, as long as you don't copy the text from somewhere else. I would also suggest that you be careful not to make it look too much like advertising (i.e. write it from a neutral point of view), and make sure you include an assertion of notability by including references to reliablethird-partysources (that last sentence includes a lot of links that you may want to consider reading first). That said, it looks like there are several news articles that include non-trivial reference of TCF, so citing them should be fine. Confusing Manifestation06:21, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Printed a wikipedia page
I want to print this page Metamath but the content box is cut between two pages. Is there a way to compel Wikipedia to print the content box on a page or on the following one but not on the two ? --Frédéric Liné10:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, this is a matter with your web browser, not Wikipedia. If you want to print a Wikipedia article, you could save it on your own computer, and modify it from there -_Laugh!10:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a problem with his browser, it is a problem with his printer. Have you set the printer to print in Portrait form and not landscape? If you have, then you may wish to copy and paste some of the text in the article into a word processor (e.g. Microsoft Word, or Notepad) and print it off manually from there. Also, "content box", do you mean the Table of Contents or the small infoboxes on the side of the page? Sebi[talk]10:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I mean the Table of Contents. Could you go to the Metamath page and push on the "printable version" button to see if the Table of Contents is printed on two separated pages for you as well ? --Frédéric Liné10:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK I understand: in the printable version Wikipedia doesn't indicate page frontier. And then my printer choose to break the pages where it wants. Well I think this behavior should be modified. Thank you --Frédéric Liné10:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Creating Language Link
I want to translate some articles in my native language, that is Georgian, but I don't know how. Can you explain?
That is only if the articles you want to view have an article on the Georgian Wikipedia. However, you might wish to manually copy and paste bits of the article, pasting them into a language translator. Many language translators include AltaVista's babel translator and Google's language translator. As far as I know, these only cover common languages, such as Spanish or German, etc. If you cannot find a translator that translates from English to Georgian, well I'm sorry, there is not much more Wikipedia can do about it. Sebi[talk]10:21, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Messages from Administrators regarding Paul mcewan
Dear Wikipedia,
I hope this finds you well.
My name is Paul McEwan, when I created my page I wrote it in mistakenly as Paul mcewan and asked if an administrator could help me captitalise it. I checked the internet late last night and found that an administrator had got in touch and had given me instructions on how to change it. Unfortunately I was too tired and logged on today to sort things out. However when I cliecked the link on google today my information was no longer on the page. I wondered if there had been a time control on this as I saw yesterday that the administrator had sent me the data on July 2nd. Would it be possible for you to tell me where I could locate the administrators advice.
Paul, it would make it quite a deal easier if you could provide us with the Administrator's username. If you are referring to changing your username from Paul mcewan to Paul McEwan or Paul Mcewan, please see WP:CHU. However, when I preformed an edit count on your username, you had only 1 edit (this one) with your account. It would probably be easier and faster to simply create a new account.
A problem might be that you can't create the new username 'Paul McEwan' because it's too much like 'Paul mcewan', and the system won't let you (unless you're an administrator). ssepp(talk)16:28, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. Kevinwong913Speak out loud!14:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Stating the obvious
In the humidifier article there is a section entitled "drinking the water", followed by detailed arguments why one should not drink the water. Is there a Wikipedia policy about not stating the patently obvious? Who in their right mind is going to drink the water? Or should we add "eating and drinking" sections to hundreds of other articles in case someone thinks consumption of waste products is a good idea and gets sick? (Apologies if this comes across as a rant. I'm just fishing for support to remove this sort of thing. And there is a wider question involved.)--Shantavira|feed me12:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see there's an RFAR here, and although I'm not an involved party I have watched the page and, sadly, have become embroiled in the dispute in various ways over a number of months. My question is, am I entitled to make a statement at the RFAR? If yes, is it worth doing so? I see no evidence that the parties have engaged in any other form of dispute resolution. Is the RFAR likely to be closed anyway? AndyJones12:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
note for helpers: this is about a request for arbitration, not adminship. (RFA normally refers to requests for adminship) ssepp(talk)16:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I awarded a Barnstar to someone, but apparently, this has gone to his head and he has started personally attacking other editors. I am seriously doubting myself for awarding this, so can I remove the barnstar I awarded. ~Crowstar~13:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have never heard of anyone doing this before. The whole barnstar system is informal, so there aren't many strict rules on what you can and cannot do. However, if the user put the barnstar on their userpage, then you're not really supposed to remove it from there, because you are supposed to leave other people's userpages alone (unless they don't mind you editing it). Perhaps you should just ask this user if they can remove the barnstar? ssepp(talk)16:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Recording announcements at JFK Terminal 4
There is a recording announcements at JFK terminal 4 announcing flight arrivals/departures. Who is that person that made those announcements?
I have no idea why you want to know that, but in any case the help desk is only for questions on using wikipedia. The WP:Reference Desk is for general questions, however, they might not be able to help you with your question either. Perhaps you would have most chance asking JFK directly. ssepp(talk)16:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "cutting and pasting" (moved from Humanities desk)
I've noticed many of the Guggenheim Fellowships years of names were directly cut and pasted from the external link GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP website. Is this alright to do without any legal glitches? If it is legitimate then one can easily cut and paste for the years that are not yet pasted quite readily. Pjt4813:56, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on how they're doing it. Facts can't be copyrighted, but the presentation can. The names are going to be the same, but the words around the facts, the table, even the font can be copyrighted. Geogre14:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My article is not on line yet
Hello ,
I created a text on the Aztec theatre (Aztec On The River) last week and I don´t see it in wikipedia yet.
Did I do something wrong or is it a normal timing for a text to be published ?
I have started the Lifestyle Fashion Terminal page but I am confused about the categories it has been put into. Can you take a look at the page and help me understand better what I have done wrong and how to fix it?
The page doesn't appear to be in any categories at all. Were you asking which categories it could go into? Also, are you aware you created the page in the user space not the mainspace? --Android Mouse17:11, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the following articles, there are links which I **think** are correctly constructed to point to existing articles but are appearing as red links. What's wrong?
Frederic Dorr Steele - link to Collier's Weekly; Giant's Causeway Tramway - 2 links + disambiguation link to The Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway; The Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway - disambiguation link to Giant's Causeway Tramway. Devoxo16:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The way you formatted the question all as plain text with no links makes it hard to answer. Below I linked to the first two articles you mentioned, and to a Google Search on the page names you say are red links. Google is not case-sensitive, and can correct some misspellings. It often works better than Wikipedia's built-in search.
When I opened the article, in the 'Genetics' section. more or less here:
" * Most tetraploid wheats (e.g. emmer and durum wheat) are derived from wild emmer, T. dicoccoides. Wild emmer is the result of a hybridization between two diploid wild grasses, T. urartu and a wild goatgrass such as Aegilops searsii or Ae. speltoides. The hybridization that formed wild emmer occurred in the wild, long before domestication.[12] "
Overwriting the last line in that paragraph, not really on the line was
[edit] [edit]
Two instances. By clicking on them one went to the 'Genetics' section for editing, the other to the 'History' section, the link to edit being as I have noted not just above the relevant section.
I have no idea what does that and obviously could not fix it if in fact it need fixing and is not just a fault of my browser.
I can understand that, and the Infobox is HUGE [long], but the effect is annoying, misleading, and does not do very much good to the reputation of Wikipedia for professionalism - I know it is edited by everyone, but the formatting and so on should be professional. --Dumarest18:44, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried to edit the sources and refernces for the Tommy Mottola page so that the top discretion comes off the site. I added sources to the site a month ago and it still asks for reliable sources. What needs to be done to fix this and make the sources valid?
Please advise as to how to add a company name and description to the health care company page. The name of the company is HealthString and I would like it to be added under the H category.
I think these questions are being asked by multiple people - please start a new section when asking a new question by clicking the "+" link at the very top of this page.
Question 1: You will want to see our verifiability policy for more information there. In general, sources which are not published by a reputable, third-party source are not considered reliable.
Question 2: I haven't the faintest. I'll go move the pages in just a moment, thanks for bringing that up.
Question 3: I think you're asking how to categorize a page. To add an article to a category, link to that category as you would a normal article, like so: [[Category:The weather in London]]. The article will be alphabetically sorted according to the article's name - however if you would like it to be sorted in a different manner, you can add the sort index in the link, like so: [[Category:The weather in London|A sort index]].
I need help with citing the references that I've added to the Washington, DC page!
Hello,
I was editing and adding new information on the Washington, DC page. I added the references, but they don't seem to be displaying right. I added the first paragraph under the "Economy" section. Can some look at it and offer me suggestions on how I can get the references to display correctly at the bottom of the page? Thanks in advance.