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December 31

Tab

Resolved

 – {{pad}} works perfectly. Thanks John. -JamesyWamesy (talk) 02:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to place a large space in the middle of text like a tab key would in Word? Or would I just have to place several   to get that effect? -JamesyWamesy (talk) 00:42, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the most straight-forward way to do that would be several   characters. A tab usually creates a gap up to the next tab point in the horizontal rule, so tabs don't apply to html documents or to wikipedia. The only other way I know of to have a tab-like effect is to use tables or CSS positioning. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 01:03, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

How would I use CSS positioning? -JamesyWamesy (talk) 01:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

This should be done almost never on Wikipedia. Why do you want to do it? Algebraist 02:30, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

There's also {{pad}}, which inserts a controlled amount of horizontal space. The contributor is trying to format a list of descendents in User:JamesyWamesy/sandbox1 -- John of Reading (talk) 09:47, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Australian football club logos and jumpers/guernseys

Resolved

 – At least at the Help Desk. – ukexpat (talk) 16:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'm finding it hard to understand with Australian rules football logos and logos on jumpers, how wikipedia allows some yet doesn't allow others despite the copyright allow/disallow criteria appearing identical between the images. There appears to be a inconsistent policy. For instance the St George jumper image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St_George_Dragons_Jumper.svg has their logo on the front and is allowed on wikipedia yet the logo by itself was not and was deleted (without any explanation I might add). Another example is the jumper for another club http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holroyd-Parramatta_Blacktown_AFC_Goannas which has a goanna on the front and was deleted despite the image being my own replica creation of it. Then there's the example of the Western Suburb Magpies jumper whose WS logo is allowed by wikipedia on the jumper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Suburbs_Magpies_Jumper.svg yet a small icon I created with the same WS logo was deleted.

It seems the only explanations I can gather is (i) the images accepted are on a en.wikipedia page whereas mine were uploaded to the commons (some still exist http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Australian_rules_football_jumper ) and (ii) certain images are allowed on wikipedia if you state "The entire logo is used to convey the meaning intended and avoid tarnishing or misrepresenting the intended image" and "The image is placed in the infobox at the top of the article discussing insert football club's name, a subject of public interest. The significance of the logo is to help the reader identify the organization, assure the readers that they have reached the right article containing critical commentary about the organization, and illustrate the organization's intended branding message in a way that words alone could not convey" and "Because it is a logo there is almost certainly no free equivalent. Any substitute that is not a derivative work would fail to convey the meaning intended, would tarnish or misrepresent its image, or would fail its purpose of identification or commentary." However as with the St George and Western Suburbs jumpers above this disclaimer was not included and there's no proof the uploader is the copyright holder as he/she has uploaded a whole set of different club jumpers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Saebhiar/Table.

May I have some clarification please on the first paragraph plus how do you upload images and include the above copyright disclaimers? The images of logos and jumpers that I uploaded but have been deleted would make each club's wikipedia page complete and are of public interest as some clubs have the same colours so just stating colours doesn't distinguish between all clubs.

Yours Sincerely,

User:Mtiges

Mtiges (talk) 11:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Media copyright questions is the best place to ask this, but my initial reaction is: first the easy ones - the jerseys that are just simple combinations of shapes and colours almost certainly lack the required amount of creativity to be copyrghtable, that would include many of the jerseys in that table; second, we upload and use copyrighted logos all the time pursuant to the non-free content criteria, but that may limit the number of articles in which the copyright image can be used - such images will not/should not be deleted provided that the {{logo fur}} template is properly completed for every use of the image. Hope this helps. – ukexpat (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Ta User:Ukexpat. That makes sense to me. One of my queries is some pre-existing images on wikipedia that I would believe on that criteria should have the {{logo fur}} such as the St George and western suburb jumpers don't have it but I'll put that question to the media copyright question section as you've suggested. Thanks for your help.Mtiges (talk) 14:53, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

meters

Alanna Kraus is an article about an Olympic athelete-a runner. References are made to race distances, ie: 1500 m. My question is should it be edited to read---1500m, with no space? Buster Seven Talk 13:53, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Unit symbols says:

• Values and unit symbols are separated by a non-breaking space. The {{nowrap}} template or the   character can be used for this purpose. For example, use 10 m or 29 kg, not 10m or 29kg.

PrimeHunter (talk) 13:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Requesting assistance

I've proposed a revision to Occidental_Petroleum#Chemical. The Occidental Petroleum talk page isn't very active, so I'm coming here for asking for assistance. Due to a potential COI, I'm seeking feedback from the community before making this addition.

• Proposed revision.

If you have any feedback, please leave it on the proposal talk page (my comments are there as well), or if you think it's good enough to add to the article, feel free to make these changes. Thanks, --CBuiltother (talk) 00:16, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

why do you need money(donations)?

Wikipedia is a website. it can be uploaded to a free domain. the people who are creating the articles are volunteres so they are not supposed to get money in exchange for thier time and effort.

so why are you asking for donations when you can run Wikipedia for free ?

I read a lot of "personal appeals" from Wikipedia's group, none of them spoke about this specific issue.

so can you please answer my specific question?

Thanks

Amir08 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.50.10 (talk) 15:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

While editors are volunteers, there has to be someone to provide the infrastructure and financial backing to allow the volunteers to do their work. For Wikipedia and its sister projects, this entity is the Wikimedia Foundation. They get the money from donations, and they mostly use it to support the projects it runs (Wikipedia included), along with maintaining a small paid staff.

You have several misconceptions about how websites are run. You cannot run one of the most popular websites in the world for free. Domain names are not free; they can cost anywhere from less than 1 to thousands and millions of dollars. I'd like to know where you think the files go once they are "uploaded to a domain". You have to run servers, and with a site with this many visitors you have to run a lot of servers. The Wikimedia Foundation spent $1,056,703 in the last fiscal year (1 July 2009 - 30 June 2010) for Internet hosting alone. In all, the Foundation spent $10.26 million last year, after recieving $17.98 million in income, $15.12 million of which was from a donation of some sort. Now, please, sit there and continue to tell us that hosting a website is free. It ain't. Xenon54 (talk) 15:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I can explain with a lot of details how to run a website for free, I did it with my friend, and the website is still online, full of articles and photos and we never paid anything to anyone in order to upload it or to keep it online. However, you don't seem interested to know, so I'll drop it.

there are millions of websites on the net and they never ask for donations, they just put some advertisements, and I cannot see why doesn't Wikipedia do that? is advertisemetns a bad thing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.50.10 (talk) 20:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you CAN "run a website for free"... However, Wikipedia is not a "site" in your apparent sense of the word "site"...

Your site has what, maybe 30-50 pages? Maybe a few hundred photos? How big was it? Less than a few hundred megabytes? Maybe a Gigabyte?

Consider this: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a small website with a few photos. The entire range of Wikimedia foundation projects are more of an archive of the entire world!

Now think back, to the days of real paper book encyclopedias. How many volumes did they take? One 2CM thick book per letter of the alphabet perhaps? More than 1? I have an old Encyclopedia Brittanica set that contains no less than 40 individual volumes. It takes up 2 full shelves in my bookcase. In the scope of physical comparison, your "free" website is perhaps a 5-10 page glossy printed booklet. It looks nice, has some info, but is not anywhere near the vast amount of information in an encyclopedia.

Furthermore, your site occupies a small fraction of the entire disk space available on -1- single server. You likely share this same server with perhaps 100 to 1000 other customers of this 'free' host. Each site on a 'free' host usually gets minimal traffic, otherwise the company hosting will take the site down, or limit the amount of views it can have for a certain period.

The server your site runs on is probably part of a handful (2-10 perhaps) servers run by your said 'free' hosting company. (All approximate, but I've seen a few of these operations before.) Between a few thousand "10 page booklet" free websites on this infrastructure, there's plenty of ads to keep the servers paid for, the company running, etc. I'd imagine your 'free' hosting company spends maybe 500 dollars per month for their server hosting fees. I would also bet your hosting company also provides pay services, which also contribute to the bottom line that allows them to essentially "give away" unused space on their servers even without the ad revenue.

Compare, Wikimedia Foundation, has HUNDREDS of servers all trying to serve up TEN MILLION articles with HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS if not MILLIONS of pictures. The ENTIRE SITE is server-end active scripting (the software Wikipedia runs on, MediaWiki, is a VERY intense PHP program that can bring a good server to its knees without meticulous tweaking, if the site is popular in any way). Maintaining this infrastructure *IS* a full-time day-job. You can't just ask some datacenter to give you 300 servers and run them all 'free'. Blood, sweat and tears are usually put into setting things of this magnitude up. (Blood, as computer case metal can be rather sharp)

There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that such a popular, worldwide mega-site, an information portal for all the planet, can be "free". Sorry bud, you've got an entire paradigm shift between your site and this mega-encyclopedia of knowledge that expands every single second.

Now, as for ads... This is a very bothersome technique to try and monetize a site (emphasis on 'try'). Seriously, would *you* want to see ads for random crap along side of an article about a terrible tragedy? A war? Religious history? No, I can't say ANYONE would *want* to see ads next to such important and emotionally moving information.

So, by asking for donations, Wikipedia is able to be 100% FREELY ACCESSED by the public. There are apparently plenty of people out there, better off than myself, who likely donate thousands of dollars a month, to make this treasure-trove of knowledge available with no restrictions to all people of the planet. Even the poorest countries that have internet access in maybe a public town hall can access the entire range of content. There is no "premium content" like many news sites will force you to pay for, to keep a revenue stream. There are no distracting ads that would litter up a pristine source of knowledge.

Please try and grasp the entire scope of what Wikipedia is and what the Wikimedia Foundation is doing, and realize, that nobody can do this much for "free".

Mystica555 (talk) 22:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations, as for my site I ran it using my50gigabytes, which is a free domain. so I had a large space to use. but I'm assuming that if my site was as big as Wikipedia we would have trouble mainting it on free serves. But i'm still going o try it, as i'm working on a new site.

as for the ads, I think you know today's ads are much more useful than they used to be. you're making it sound like the ads will make the viewers feel uncomfortable. but ad companies will know to put the relevant and useful ads next to each article, because that would be good for them, and certainly it will be good for Wikipedia. for example: If there is an article about Wild animals, then why not put an ad about volunteering in south africa wild life projects? it would be relevant and certainly "useful" to Wikipedia and to the viewers and to the ad company. another example, if there is an article about a poet, why not have an ad of a library that offers books of this poet on a sale?

What i'm saying is, advertisements can be very useful, especially in the case of Wikipedia. it's a free encyclopedia that certaily requires money to be mintained (as you explained), so I expect the people in charge to be looking for ways to earn money without asking for donations, because once we donate, and pay from our own money, the encyclopedia will not be "free " anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.50.10 (talk) 11:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

"Free" doe not mean it does not cost money to maintain, and it does not mean we don't ask for donations, it means that our readers are not required to pay for it. We don't and won't use advertising for the foreseeable future for a number of reasons but most significantly because our lifeblood is neutrality and advertising would give a perception we were beholden to sponsors, probably make us actually beholden to sponsors, make us seem hypocritical in our constant deletion of spam contributions and our policies that Wikipedia is not to be used for the same and so on. See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Advertising. As for your comments about it being free to run a website like this, you can't have been serious. The English Wikipedia alone has 61,168,318 pages, and though the largest, is just one of a few hundred websites maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation which collectively get about seven billion pageviews per month. Your comparison of it to the cost of your personal website run on a free web hosting servcie (which itself made its money by piggybacking advertising onto the "free" hosting it was providing) is like saying "I don't know why Walmart has overhead. I had a lemonade stand and my mother supplied the lemons for free."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:23, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Note: The word "free" in "Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia" primarily means free as in freedom, not free as in free beer; see Wikipedia:Five pillars. —Bkell (talk) 20:45, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It WAS NOT a comparison, it was an idea, a theory, that required an example. I had to use such an example because it seemed to me that you think i'm inventing the whole thing about free websites, that's all.

now can you tell me what changed lately? I knew Wikipedia for years and only in 2010 I started seeing personal appeals for donations from Wikipedia's staff. So Wikimedia Foundation was able to maintain Wikipedia's site for years - without asking for donations from viewers - and now they can't do it anymore? Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.50.10 (talk) 19:02, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

There are fundraising drives each year. Maybe you didn't use Wikipedia during earlier periods with fundraising banners. The design of the banners vary. It hasn't always been formulated as personal appeals. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Cf. 2009, 2008, 2007. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:29, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Just as a data-point about the mind-bogglingly-large technological requirements of wikipedia vs a few pages on a free host (that consolidates a bunch of such sites into a still-small-requirements data pipe), consider the Main Page. Downloading of just that page consumes something like 60GB of bandwidth a day (calculated from today's browser-reported page-size and stats.grok's page-view count for 2010-12-31). That's not searching. That's not reading articles. That's not following links. That's not making edits. That's not including .css and other shared data files used site-wide. That's not any other languages or other sister projects. DMacks (talk) 19:40, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Personal appeals baners are bigger and they get much more attention and they look more serious. so I think there is probably be a reason to use this kind of banners, a reason that didn't exist before. is Wikipedia in danger of being sold or shut down? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.50.10 (talk) 22:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The fundraising efforts this year, using the larger banners with Jimmy Wales' face, have proven much more effective than other banner designs in past years. There are always different designs, presumably so the Foundation can find the most effective one to maximize revenue. I don't know what they'll do with the extra revenue if they get more donations than they were expecting, but I'd assume it would go towards hosting costs in subsequent years. -Nick Klose (T/C) 22:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Kinuyo Yamashita

Hi, could I get this deleted article reinstated and placed into my user space? I'm writing bios on women composers and I have some primary sources that I could add. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'd like to use what was there already. Thanks. Pkeets (talk) 16:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Userfication. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Then can I get it reinstated? If you'll do it while I'm at the computer, I can add the info immediately. Pkeets (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You say you have primary sources to add - let's make sure that we understand that: primary sources would be information written by the person themselves - or their management/agents. What Wikipedia needs is third-party sources, those written by other people, which are reliable and independent of the subject. Are your sources covered by that requirement? -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 19:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Send article by email

How to send wiki article by email,from that page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.22.33 (talk) 17:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia provides this function, but some browsers do. In Firefox I can right-click on any web page and choose "Send Link..." to begin an email message containing that page's web address. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Why not just email a copy of the article's URL? If your intended recipient can receive the email message, he or she should be able to browse to the article by clicking its URL in the message. --Teratornis (talk) 21:38, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I also recommend just emailing the URL. If you really want email— you can add links to the left toolbar for email and AddThis share by adding add this to Special:MyPage/skin.js:

importScript('User:TheDJ/sharebox.js'); //[[User:TheDJ/sharebox.js]]

--Gadget851 (talk) 23:15, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Rod Macqueen vs Rod MacQueen

I come from it.wiki, please have a look at this discussion -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 17:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I have moved Rod MacQueen to Rod Macqueen as sources say. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Section Deleted

I had edited the Sports section in the "Lyndhurst, New Jersey" article. I added a section about cross country. I went to look back today and the section was deleted. Was there any particular reason that it was removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.252.10.72 (talk) 21:03, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You can check the history tab to see what changes were made, when and by whom. In this case the editor left an edit summary "move cross country details to Lyndhurst HS article, where it better fits (if at all)". RJFJR (talk) 21:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Easy way of finding articles I've created

Is there a tool or something that allows me to find all the articles I've created in the past? The hard way is to look through my contribution history but that'll take me forever.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 22:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Right at the bottom of your "My contributions" page you will see a link named "Articles created". -- John of Reading (talk) 22:29, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

...though it's either broken or very slow when I try to use it. Hmm. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit slow but it came up for me. I normally just add a link to my user page whenever I created an article. Dismas|^(talk) 23:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

(belatedly) the time it takes seems to vary dramatically. I just keep a log on my userpage as well..Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I suppose that it should be pointed out that that tool also counts redirects as "articles". I, for one, do not count the redirects that I create as an article. Dismas|^(talk) 18:28, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If you use the article counter tool directly, you can choose whether to include redirects (and can choose a different namespace too). -- John of Reading (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

January 1

Wikipedia Development

I was wondering where I would send a few suggestions to improve the layout of your website. Things like making a static nav bar with search box that floats on top of the page so no matter where you are on it you can easily search for another topic or navigate to another page; or allow users to change their colors (ie change to black background with white text for easier readability at night, and better power savings on mobile devices), add drop down menus, etc. I am actually a freelance website designer and developer and could help you with these things if you like. I would also be more than happy to help you do these "upgrades" for free in a month or two. I'm still getting back on my feet personally, but use Wikipedia daily, and think it's a great resource. I know there are "styles" you can get for Firefox that do these things for you, but I also know not everyone uses Firefox, or even know about the styles add-on. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.

75.80.224.203 (talk) 00:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC) Sean D. Piercy The Digital Universe & The Design Hut Owner <redact>

The best place for that is Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), if the idea is fully formed, or Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) if it needs to be incubated.--SPhilbrickT 00:41, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Content improvement exercises

I'm just listening to Sue Gardner's talk at GLAM-WIKI. She mentioned "content improvement exercises". I'm very interested in this: is there a list somewhere on WP or another Wikimedia site of such exercises? Searching and Googling isn't really finding it for me. (And if there isn't, should there be?) --Tom Morris (talk) 03:57, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia:Community portal for some ideas? --Jayron32 04:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The first things that come to mind are Tony1's self-help writing tutorials. Graham87 14:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

$16 Million

Hi Wikipedia,

It is awesome that we all have wikipedia and its head quarter in USA.

I understand how much it will cost for the servers, bandwidth, maintenance and etc.

I feel it is better to look for a location where cost of overall things is not much as in USA.

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.236.8.176 (talk) 04:08, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern. I am certain that the Wikimedia foundation has considered these issues, as well as other, non-monetary concerns, in deciding where to locate its headquarters. Understand that money is one of a number of concerns when making these decisions. --Jayron32 04:11, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

What you're not taking into account is political and financial stability, among other things. It may be quite a bit cheaper to put the servers in some third world country but who's to say how long their government will last? What if a war broke out? Would a server farm be everyone's first priority? Then what if there is a major weather event like a tsunami? Sure, Florida gets its share of hurricanes but the US has the ability to weather (no pun intended) all but the worst of them. Dismas|^(talk) 04:36, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Beyond that, the U.S. has very liberal legal protections over free speech; locating the physical servers in the U.S. affords some level of protection that locating them in a cheaper-to-run country would be. If they were located in, say, China, a country known to have a very poor outlook on free speech, what would stop the government of China to shut Wikipedia down if there were things being said in Wikipedia articles it didn't like? Remember that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in BOTH terms, that is Free as in speech, and free as in beer. The OP is considering only the "Free as in beer" definition of the term. --Jayron32 04:41, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Although it should be noted that free speech has two meanings in this context: first, the free speech guaranteed by the Second Amendment, which may prevent the US government shutting down Wikipedia; but second, Wikipedia does not itself guarantee free speech and nor is it obligated to, we can and do delete material that violates our policies. – ukexpat (talk) 19:43, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. It's Wikipedia that is free to publish whatever it chooses, but because the Wikimedia Foundation has freedom of speech, it also cannot be forced to publish anything. Wikipedia has the right to establish what it will and will not publish, that is all an inherant part of Freedom of Speech. --Jayron32 21:55, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Images and Previews

When clicking on any link or file. All boxes in the page are blank or have a question mark in the middle. I have check all I know about my Mac to see if it's me, but it seems to only be on LL's....Can anyone tell me what this might be???? Please....Very frustrating....

Thanks, Chris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.225.173.124 (talk) 09:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Does this archived help desk question help you? If not, and you are still having problems, please post your browser name and version here. Are you saying that you do see the pictures in the articles, but not when you click through to view the file description page? I confess I don't know what you mean by "LL". -- John of Reading (talk) 12:40, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Didier Deschamps

Didier Deschamps.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Donald Hernández (talk • contribs) 11:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a question about File:Didier Deschamps.jpg? -- John of Reading (talk) 12:40, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

how to use the tag filter

I've taken a look at

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter/RulesFormat

but I'm not sure how to do the search e.g. how would you use the tag filter to search the deletion log for U1 deletions or user page deletions in general? -Verapar (talk) 14:15, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The edit filter performs filters on edits as they happen, it does not back-search the database for edits. You'd have to write a script to do that on your own. It looks like your looking for a function that the edit filter doesn't perform. --Jayron32 16:54, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Need someone who can read and write Thai

Can someone who can translate Thai into English translate the image permission information for this image on the Thai Wikipedia to its English Wikipedia equivalent here? I would greatly appreciate it. Nightscream (talk) 15:42, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't read Thai, but fortunately Google Translate handles that language pretty well. See [1]. There is no image permission on that Thai image; it is being used under fair use. It is an image from web news on Thai TV. Accordingly, I'm afraid it can't be hosted on Commons. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:44, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. But what license should I use when placing it on WP? Nightscream (talk) 04:47, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Did we make the goal?

I went to sleep last night at the goal was at 15.6

Did we hit the goal?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.203.224 (talk) 16:47, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This page is for asking questions about how to use wikipedia. Please note also that we have no idea which country you're in, or what game or even what sport you're referring to. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the IP's referring to the Wikipedia fundraiser. Goodvac (talk) 17:35, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm My apologies. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:37, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

No worries. Looking at your edit summary, I thought, "That's odd. What other goal would someone be asking about?" Goodvac (talk) 17:44, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Not only did we meet the goal, we exceeded it. See wmf:Half a Million People Donate to Keep Wikipedia Free for more information. Goodvac (talk) 17:44, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Category American Women state governors

Please add (NM) Susana Martinez & remove extraneous User from "L". 75.202.142.52 (talk) 18:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done Just so you know, you could have done this yourself by editing the Susana Martinez article. Dismas|^(talk) 18:17, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I have been editing the Susana Martinez article, but didn't realize (facepalm) adding the category; had no idea how to remove the User. Thanks. 75.202.142.52 (talk) 18:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Blocked infinitely?

I've been curious about this for a while. Vandal Johnnycracka (talk · contribs) was blocked with an expiry time of infinite. I was under the impression that infinite blocks do not exist. Is there really such a capability in the system? Goodvac (talk) 18:23, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think infinite blocks work the same way as indefinite ones – they may be lifted or shorted down by any administrator. HeyMid (contribs) 18:25, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The blocking software, in the 'other time' window, accepts a wide range of time units. People can be blocked for any number of seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years, or even fortnights. It also accepts the word "infinite" for exactly what it means; entering the word "infinite" in the "other time" box has the same effect as selecting "indefinite" from the pulldown menu. --Jayron32 18:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, MediaWiki has some issues in interpreting complicated block lengths (such as 2.5345 seconds). HeyMid (contribs) 18:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

misspelled name

how do I correct the spelling of a name?

Editing Andrew McNaughton (triathlete) - should be Andrew MacNaughton - note the Mac not Mc

Thank you.

andrew Jagaamac (talk) 20:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

There is no article with the title Andrew McNaughton (triathlete). If you want to correct the name as it appears in other articles, just click the edit tab at the top of the article and edit the text in the edit window. Don't forget to complete the edit summary field and click the save button. – ukexpat (talk) 20:29, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you must be talking about the article 1991 ITU Triathlon World Cup. Do you have a source for the name change? I did find this, http://www.triathlon.org/athletes/profile/andrew_mcnaughton/ and it shows the name with out the "a". I also found this, http://www.auburntriathlon.com/2004/macattack.shtml that includes the "a". ~~ GB fan ~~ 20:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This seems non-controversial. I don't see why we can't just change based on the second source, and WP:AGF on the person above being who he claims to be. --Jayron32 21:53, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The current spelling McNaughton in 1991 ITU Triathlon World Cup is copied from the listed reference: The official https://www.triathlon.org/media/stats/1991-world-cups.pdf. Are you referring to 1991 ITU Triathlon World Cup? Are you Andrew M(a)cNaughton? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

cant see my profile

i have just created an account and written a bio for myself. Why cant i see it when i search for my name under wikipedia in google? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mariannehoullou (talk • contribs) 20:43, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Because user pages are not indexed by Google, nor should they be. Your user page should be relevant to your editing activities on Wikipedia not a biography for self promotion or other reasons not connected with Wikipedia. As it stands at the moment, yours may not comply with the user page guidelines at WP:UP. – ukexpat (talk) 20:49, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

User pages are indexed by Google unless they contain __NOINDEX__ (often via {{NOINDEX}}). User:Mariannehoullou was created today and just hasn't been indexed yet. It takes a varying amount of time for Google to discover and index new pages. It isn't controlled by Wikipedia. But if you are concerned that your user page hasn't been indexed by Google then it's a sign that you are using it for a wrong purpose. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:28, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I sit corrected, thank you. I thought they were NOINDEXed by default. – ukexpat (talk) 21:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that the user has no contributions other than posting their biography on their userpage and asking this question. Matt Deres (talk) 21:41, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Need to get the truth out there.

I recently added this to a few pages, and they have all been removed:

The way the 'holy' Qu'ran (Islamic bible) works, is as follows... When there is a question asked in the book, instead of giving an answer, it gives 3 replies. The question itself represents a full moon. Then, when the 3 replies begin, each one leads to 3 quarters, then to half, then a quarter moon. When one finishes reading that section, he/she is left without an answer to the question and left in the darkness.

This is very important. Allah is indeed the moon god whom is a foreign god to ADONAI. I can't stress this enough. The Muslims have been disguising the truth with your website. I personally found that the above statement is true by reading the first few pages of the Qu'ran many years ago, and I should have pursued getting this information out there back then. Please be aware of these things, and if you still have the page where Allah was discribed as the moon god laying around, do consider bringing it back up again. Thank you, no matter what you decide to do with this letter.

--Jonathan Tallant <email removed> — Preceding unsigned comment added by JT81 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, if this is the truth, then reliable sources (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources) will have written about this. I assume you have gotten this information from a well-respected author who writes about Islam and its history. If you have, you just need to cite that source. If, perchance, others disagree and feel that your source is not reliable, you should discuss the matter on article talk pages, and arrive at a consensus with others. --Jayron32 21:51, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Please also note that the purpose of Wikipedia is not "to get the truth out there". See Wikipedia:Verifiability. Karenjc 22:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry; there's no telling where the book I read had originated. I just checked the english version online, and it doesn't seem to have the statement on it that I referred to. The one I read was quite different than the one that's online. I apologize for wasting your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JT81 (talk • contribs) 22:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, its not a waste of time at all. Understand that, like you, we want Wikipedia articles to be correct. That's why Wikipedia insists on information coming from reliable sources. If we just took everyone's word for it, that we didn't ask anyone to "back up" their claims of what "the truth" is, then how can we tell WHOSE version of "the truth" is right? We welcome your help in making Wikipedia better, its just that you need to take care and understand why Wikipedia policies on verifiability and citing your sources are in place! --Jayron32 22:17, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

What Reference template do I use?

I would like to use this as a reference for Saw Ba Yi, but I am fairly perplexed on what reference template to use for it. Should I just go with Cite web? Silverseren^C 22:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Since you were the first person to add a reference, it was your prerogative to choose what style to use. Since you chose {{cite book}}, additional references should use templates from that family. As for http://www.burmalibrary.org/reg.burma/archives/199702/msg00004.html, that appears to be an archive of an online forum. Usually such material is not suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. See WP:IRS#Self-published sources (online and paper). Jc3s5h (talk) 22:56, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Intimidation to win content disputes

This isn't your typical help desk question, but I'm not sure where else to ask. There's a rather lame content dispute on some of our articles. The dispute itself is of little consequence. But what does bother me is how some of the editors are going about trying to win the content dispute. In particular, editors who change the content away from their preferred version are threatened with a block or called a vandal. These are not bad edits, they're just simply a matter of legitimate disagreement. Of course, edit-warring is wrong, but only editors who edit against the preferred version are ever threated.

I would also like to point out that there are also legitimate attempts to resolve the dispute, including discussions on the article talk page, an RfC as well as notices at several related WikiProjects.

For the most part, I've stayed out of the content dispute but the repeated threats to block editors is bothering me. It has a chilling effect and many of the editors simply walk away from the article rather than risk getting blocked. How should I deal with this? This isn't just one bad editor, it's several. 67.172.2.149 (talk) 22:44, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Could you post a link to the dispute? They are all different and might call for different responses. GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

January 2

I can't log in sucessfully to my account using firefox. I seem to get dumped out immediately. It still works in IE. Any ideas?

Resolved

 – Deleting the cookies did the trick John of Reading (talk) 22:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Using my original account, User:John Maynard Friedman with Firefox, I am unable to log in successfully. The response to my login attempt is simply the same page with the same "login or create new account" option. If I use IE, I have no problem. This problem is extant since I transferred from IE to Ff as my primary browser, importing the IE settings (favourites, cookies, etc) as per convention.

I am writing this from a temporary account, just to verify that there is nothing grossly wrong with my Firefox configuration. Yes, I can log in again at will with this a/c, but still not with my main a/c. You can see other things that I have tried and some Helpme responses at User talk:John Maynard Friedman#Helpme - changing to Firefox.

I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have. Please reply to my main account at the Helpme section.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JMF-firefox-test (talk • contribs) 02:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I've posted one more idea at User talk:John Maynard Friedman - bypass the monobook.js by changing skin -- John of Reading (talk) 12:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

What exactly can I cite, and post in an article?

I am talking to an artist who already has a wikipedia article, and he has emailed me information he wishes put up. The content would fit wikipedia standards, but I would only be able to cite the emails he sent me. How can I correctly post his requested information in this situation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omnipharious (talk • contribs) 02:50, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

In short, you can't reference emails! Information in articles needs to be verifiable and personal emails can't be! What you need is for the information to have been published in reliable sources which are independent of the subject - an example would be significant newspaper coverage of the individual, but not a press release. -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 02:57, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Then what way could I get the information from him in a way in which I can cite? He has given me complete permission to post the information given. If he were to post the information in question on his website, can I post said material, and cite his website? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omnipharious (talk • contribs) 08:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There are a number of issues here. First of all, subjects of articles don't get to approve those articles, or to have any special say in what goes into them (although they can, obviously, object to material that is inaccurate or controversial and unsourced, and request its removal). Whether or not this person has approved the material you wish to insert is absolutely irrelevant to Wikipedia - what matters is whether or not it can be verified in reliable sources. Second, the question of whether or not you could get it added to the artist's website and then cite it depends on the nature of the information and the purpose it plays in the article. If it's uncontroversial (basic factual, biographical stuff, for example: "Joe Brown studied at the X School of Art from 1979-1982; he is a sculptor who works in bronze") then such info could indeed be cited to Joe Brown's official website. However, if it is potentially controversial or a value judgement ("Joe Brown had an affair with the sculptor Mary Smith; he has been described as the best young British artist of the early 21st century") Brown's own website would not be a sufficiently good citation. The key points are (a) whether the information is potentially controversial or not, and (b) whether or not it is being used to support the subject's notability. For the latter, substantial coverage of the subject in independent reliable sources must be demonstrated; citations to the subject's own website don't count, so anything you do cite to such a source won't make any difference to the question of whether or not the artist is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article about him. If it's just a matter of confirming basic biographical facts, it'll probably be OK. But do remember that this is an encyclopaedia article, not a CV or a social networking profile or a promotional site. Just because it's true and verifiable doesn't automatically make it appropriate for Wikipedia. For example, many articles about artists end up looking like CVs, containing endless bullet-pointed lists of every show they ever exhibited a work at and every book or article that ever featured a passing mention of their work. In the same way, some articles about actors become lists of every minor character they ever played throughout their career. This information may be correct, and can even be referenced back to the individual's own website, but it's not suitable in terms of form or content for an encyclopaedia article. Karenjc 10:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

How to re-nominate an article for deletion

So, I was wanting to propose Queef Fraiche for deletion, but someone already has today, and the proposal was instantly removed by the author of the page, and it says in the rules for proposing for deletion that you can't propose a page for deletion that has before...so how do I get the page deleted? Passionless (talk) 03:03, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, per WP:DEPROD, you cannot restore a prod once it has been removed. The only other course of action if WP:CSD does not apply is WP:AFD. Goodvac (talk) 03:11, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I used AfD...ugh. Passionless (talk) 03:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Hackers really suck.

So while I was surfing around the wiki, I noticed an orange box above the article I was reading that said "you have new messages". I clicked on the link, and in some grey bordered boxes, there were edits made through my IP address that had been blocked. Several immature and awful things written in the place of an actual article are now acting against ME and reading of the site. I want to be able to edit things, like everyone else, and if my IP is being used as a mask for someone to vent their hate towards everyone, I want something done about it. Is there any way someone from the wikistaff or somewhere could remove these bad marks on my IP, and let me edit articles like a normal person would? And have a way of actually finding out what IP the hacker is using to route through mine, and into the internet, and thereby wikipedia? Help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.183.153.35 (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The best way to avoid having contributions you didn't make blamed on your IP address is to create an account. It's absolutely free, and prevents others from making contributions attributed to you. As far as your IP being used as a mask, it's more likely that your address is linked to multiple computers. Whatever the case, we can't remove the contributions from your IP's record, nor can we investigate any hacking that may have happened. As a side note, our logs don't indicate that you've been blocked (evidenced by the fact that you were able to post a question here), so you should still be able to edit normally even without logging in. Robert Skyhawk ^{(T C B)} 04:26, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Also note the box at the bottom of Special:Contributions/67.183.153.35:

All the vandalism edits were made 19 February 2009, probably by somebody who really had the IP address at the time. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:37, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, as PrimeHunter says, it's very unlikely this was a result of someone hacking into your network; generally people dedicated enough to hack a network do so for stronger personal gain than the ability to anonymously vandalise wikipedia. It's likely you either have a dynamic IP address, which is generally the default unless you specifically know you have a static one, or you were on a different ISP and therefore different IP when that user used the IP for vandalism. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 13:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

• IP, since your IP address is dynamic, you may find edits by other users in the same IP address as the one you're currently using. But these users are not "hackers"; like I said, this is about dynamic IP addresses. Such IP addresses may change pretty often, or sometimes. Don't worry about it, especially since the edits you're referring to were made back in 2009. HeyMid (contribs) 13:54, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Copyrighted Material

I am a member of the whippany railway museum (http://www.whippanyrailwaymuseum.net) I am also one of the Managers of their website... I am attempting to place accurate and complete information on this wikipedia. Information posted about the museum is approved by the trustees and can not be modified without permission. Unfortunately when I try and place information on this site it is complaining that the information is copyrighted. How do I go about removing this restriction for this one page so I can complete it — Preceding unsigned comment added by RichT11 (talk • contribs) 04:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You cannot. We ask that people that represent an organization refrain from adding content or editing articles about that organization. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest for an explanation of why not. If your organization meets the minimum requirements of Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) then you should request that someone create an article about it at Wikipedia:Requested articles. Someone that is unconnected to your museum will be along eventually to create a basic article using information you provide. --Jayron32 04:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You can write a paragraph explaining the most useful concept from this presentation; it has to be in your own words.--Monterey Bay (talk) 04:56, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

So someone that is affiliated and therefor able to provide the most complete and accurate information, can NOT post that information here. This is a non-profit organization. What I will do is attempt to re-word the information enough that the "Filters" will not trap it, after I get it approved of course... Thanks for the feedback, new to all this —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.58.242 (talk) 05:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not about who adds the material. The core values of Wikipedia maintain that material should always be cited to reliable sources. Insofar as anyone can read the source material, anyone can cite it and add the material. Because Wikipedia also values neutrality we ask that people that have a close connection to a subject, and thus may have their view of that subject colored by their proximity to it, refrain from editing about it. --Jayron32 05:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Since you mention approval twice, I would add that the text of the article is not subject to approval of your trustees. And even if you did write a neutral history of the museum, your text would be subject to good-faith modification by other editors. —teb728 t c 10:29, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Knowledge Generation Bureau (kgb) article is wrong

The Wikipedia page about the Knowledge Generation Bureau (542542 service) is inaccurate. Contrary to what that page says, kgb_ NEVER generates answers using an automated keyword matching system, nor does it use automated answer generating software. ALL questions are researched by real, live humans, never by a computer. This very blatant disregard for facts makes it very difficult to rely on the information given in any Wikipedia article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.239.125.34 (talk) 08:26, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Knowledge Generation Bureau (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I've looked back through the page history and found that this information was added, with a source, in this edit on 1 July 2009. The source was later deleted. I have edited the article and restored the source. Can you supply reliable sources, independent of the company, that demonstrate that the 2009 source is wrong or that the company's practices have changed since then?

You may find the article Reliability of Wikipedia useful as background reading. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:28, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Unreferenced material and concerns of one editor's sincerity.

Hello, recently I am running into many articles that do not provide references but claim certain things which I also cannot find through my own research. I wanted to ask that should I delete the unreferenced right away or wait to resolve a conflict for every single article?

Also the articles that I had been working on were reverted if anything was unreferenced even though I have tried to reference everything. I am still concerned about one editors sincerity in watching the article Baloch people as this articles previously was full of unreferenced material but the editor did not interfere much but when I started working on the article, I was interepted which I do not mind but still I am forced to use my intelligence and ask this question that why would the editor only interfere when there is healthy work being done and not do anything when the article was full of unreferenced material and still when someone adds something to change the facts this editor does not try to help but the change was reverted by some other editor. The editor that I have been speaking about is User:AtticusX. I am happy to help you understand more of the situation. Usualphonexs (talk) 08:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Atticus (I've notified him) has been editing Baloch people longer than you have and I note that he raised a copyright issue with you. I think we will need some specifics, in particular WP:DIFFS to help you further. Dougweller (talk) 12:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Usualphonexs, the only recent interaction I recall having with you is when I tried to help you out by explaining a copyvio issue with an image collage you had placed in the article. I wasn't among the editor(s) who repeatedly had to remove your image, but I saw you struggling with their confusing edit summaries and thought you might appreciate knowing why nobody was coming to your rescue (the image was in violation of copyright guidelines). Is that why you are singling me out? Or is it something I did further back?

I don't know a great deal about Baloch people and I apologize for not being able to be helpful beyond maintenance issues. I am very sorry that you feel that I have actually been interfering with healthy work. If you can point us to an edit or edits I made that worried you, I'll do my best to explain my rationale, if need be. I know it's pointless to say it if you don't trust me, but I'll say it anyway: I don't have any ulterior motives or personal investment in the Baloch people article. It's just been on my watchlist for a while. AtticusX (talk) 13:11, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I appreciate your help in maintaince of the article, just like you I am also trying to help only. I was trying to bring the situation into notice only. As you can see the previous article had contained alot of unreferenced material previously some months ago but it was not deleted that is why I was worrying. And my question is that if I come across articles that do not provide appropriate references should I delete the material of wait to resolve conflict with each one of them? Thanks for your help. Usualphonexs (talk) 14:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The answer is that it depends on the article, the material and the quality of any references provided. Yes, in theory, potentially controversial unreferenced (or poorly sourced) content often should be deleted. Controversial unreferenced material about living people should be removed on sight unless you can supply an acceptable citation there and then to support it. However, unless you're dealing with content that is uncontroversially libellous, misleading, provably factually incorrect or unsalvageable gibberish, consider whether it might be improved rather than simply removed. Actions may include tagging the article with {{unreferenced}} or similar templates, tagging individual problem sentences with templates like {{citation needed}}, searching for references yourself, or opening a discussion on the article's talk page. There is always a danger, when deleting sections of an article because they lack citations, that someone will interpret your actions either as vandalism or as a way of removing content you dislike, using the lack of references as an excuse. This is particularly true in articles on controversial subjects. If you do remove any unreferenced content in good faith, remember WP:BRD. If someone reverts your removal, take it to the talk page. Karenjc 15:38, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Expanding on what Karenjc has written:

WP:NOCITE gives a succinct set of guidelines on how to deal with unsourced material. As Karenjc says, it depends on the context. Sometimes the ideal process is to first mark dubious unreferenced sentences with a {{fact}} or {{citation needed}} tag to draw attention to the problem. Putting a {{Citation needed}} tag on material can be your way of saying, "This material is questionable; prove it!" Or, if the issue is complicated or potentially controversial, you can go to the article's talk page and leave a short note about it there. That way, other editors have a chance to respond and seek out sources if they want. If a while goes by and it remains unreferenced, go ahead and remove it, making sure to explain why in your edit summary!

On the other hand, if the unsourced material is obvious vandalism, if it is inherently unverifiable, or if it is a harmful statement in a biography of a living person, it's best to just remove it immediately. If you have access to a reliable source that contradicts the unsourced Wikipedia material, by all means, replace the unsourced, incorrect material with correct, sourced material! The more you can back up your edits with reliable sources, the more you establish the credibility of your edits. And again, explaining your reasoning in your edit summaries always helps clear up misunderstandings. I can see from your edit history that you've been very good at using your edit summaries to explain your intentions.

The reality is, of course, that there is a lot of unreferenced stuff on Wikipedia. Not every sentence needs a source; some need sources more than others. So we have to prioritize based on our expertise. Articles like Baloch people can go for months or years full of unreferenced material because there are relatively few people who know the subject well enough to know which sentences are dubious. Looking back at my own edit history, I actually started watching that article a few months ago when a user named BalochMedia started making drastic changes that were unsourced, very messy, non-neutral, and lots of copyvio at first. But he knew the subject well. His reaction to other editors' attempts to help him adhere to Wikipedia's guidelines was negative at first, but eventually the quality of his edits improved and many of them form large chunks of the article now, for better or worse. (He appears to have stopped editing, otherwise I would advise you to try to engage with him, since you are working largely with material he generated in the case of Baloch people.)

In short, you're raising a good question whose answer depends on the situation. If you have specific examples of material lacking appropriate references where you are not sure what to do, let us know. AtticusX (talk) 16:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Wrong page link - Toot & Puddle / Holly Hobbie

Good day wiki Yesterday I created a "Toot & Puddle" article and now that article is showing up under "Holly Hobbie", a related page. While setting up Toot & Puddle, which was supposed to be a link off Holly Hobbie, it seems I may have "moved" it there inadvertently. See: -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Hobbie -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toot_and_puddle Will you please help me fix the links so that the individual URLs call up only the named articles. Thank you wikifood — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikifood (talk • contribs) 12:50, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The page you created today was in your user space User:Wikifood/Toot & Puddle, not in mainspace. The mainspace pages (including the redirect) have been there for some time. - David Biddulph (talk) 13:33, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Toot & Puddle is currently a redirect to Holly Hobbie. This means that if you go to Toot & Puddle and click "Edit" then you are editing Holly Hobbie which I guess is what happened. I have reverted your edit to Holly Hobbie. If you want to replace the redirect at Toot & Puddle with an article then click "(Redirected from Toot & Puddle)" at the top of Toot & Puddle before clicking Edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, David Biddulph and PrimeHunter. Your information was extremely useful to me as this is the first time I actually attempted to create a wiki page on my own, PRACTICALLY from scratch. I eventually moved the page from my user space and I believe it now stands on it's own even as a redirect. I have another question though. The name of the show, Toot & Puddle, includes the ampersand "&" so of course that means that the URL would include additional characters "%26" >> "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toot_%26_Puddle". I have been searching the HELP pages for a way to change the URL so that it would be simply "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toot_&_Puddle". Is there a way that that can be done, please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.45.185.1 (talk) 18:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

No, this can't be changed. The ampersand character has a special meaning inside a URL. See Query string. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

wiki table quirk

I have a wiki table at Narcissism#Impact_of_healthy_v_destructive_narcissism_on_organizations which strangely causes the title of the next section Narcissism#Empirical_studies "Empirical_studies" to not appear in the text even though it appears in the TOC. Any ideas ? --Penbat (talk) 15:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixed by removing align=right from the table.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 15:12, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

thx --Penbat (talk) 15:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Computing win percentage in sports

This error is all over Wikipedia. In total points sports championships the correct way to calculate win percentage is:

Points / Maximum Points

For example:

If an NHL team has 3 wins, 1 tie and 1 loss (wins=2points, tie=1point) then the teams winning percentage is:

6 win points + 1 tie point / 10 points (maximum, 5 games x 2 points a game) = 0.700 win percentage.

Everyone seems to calculate it as: 3 wins/5 games = 0.600

Anyway to make a mass correction? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.57.38.226 (talk) 16:02, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There is no error. Your figure is properly called points percentage. You are correct that it is not used in Wikipedia, because the articles covering the only league it applies to (NHL) do not use percentages of any kind. Xenon54 (talk) 16:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

And we compute it based on custom. For example, until about 1970, the NFL did not count a tie as counting in won/loss percentage. After that, it counts as half a win and half a loss. MLB does not count a tied game in the standings at all (say, called on account of rain or darkness) even if not replayed, though the statistics count.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You are right but, regardless, in sports using "points", the win percenate (wins/total games) is not used. Point percentage is the one that is used, and as such, coaches and teams in these sports should have their win percentages computed as a ratio of the amount of points available. I challenge you to find win percentage (NBA/MLB style) in any "point" sport. Using MLB/NBA percentages penalizes their records. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.57.38.226 (talk) 16:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

How can I translate an English article to Korean and make 'Korean(한국말)' appear on the left sidebar(Languages)?

How can I translate an English article to Korean and make 'Korean(한국어)' appear on the left sidebar(Languages)? How can I do all of this at once? For example in an article, 'Editor war' from the English Wikipedia, there is a sidebar on the left side of the screen. Inside 'Languages', there are the same articles in different languages, but there is no '한국어'(Korean). How can I make this appear on the left side, too, and also, if there is no Korean translated article for this page, how and where do start translating? — Preceding unsigned comment added by YoungjooKim (talk • contribs) 17:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You'll have to generate the Korean article at ko:, and include a link at the end of the English Wikipedia article to [[ko:your Korean article name]] - David Biddulph (talk) 18:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Viewing of User Page

How would I know IF a User has at least viewed a message I left on their Talk Page? example: User talk:Bchumak.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You cannot. However, if they have edited since you last left the message, you can be sure they got the little orange bar notifying them of it. --Jayron32 20:46, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

O.K., thanks. As far as I can see they have only edited once, ever!--Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Sara Al Hashimi

<biography removed>

Yours Truely, MK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.202.60.223 (talk) 21:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

This is the Help Desk for asking questions about using Wikipedia. Do you have a question? -- John of Reading (talk) 21:51, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Chinese/Japanese character differences

A few Chinese characters are (or should be) rendered slightly differently depending on whether the language is Chinese or Japanese. You can specify the language using the "lang" property in HTML, like this:

<span lang="ja">令</span>    produces    令

<span lang="zh">令</span>    produces    令

Hopefully you will see, as I do, that the form is different even though the characters are identical and the fonts are identical. The default, for me anyway, seems to be Chinese-style. My question is: Is there any way to set a default language for a whole article, so that all the characters will automatically be displayed correctly and we don't have to mess around hand-crafting HTML? I suspect this issue may have been overlooked in some of English Wikipedia's articles about the Japanese language. 86.173.171.67 (talk) 21:56, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The {{lang}} template should be used to separate non-English text from English text. This deals with the "span" magic and also protects the text from semi-automatic spelling fixers and such like. {{lang|ja|令}} produces 令 and {{lang|zh|令}} produces 令. I don't know any way to set a per-article default. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:08, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

City sources

For articles about cities, are sources from the city's website allowed? Us441(talk)(contribs) 22:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

It depends on how likely it is that the information is going to be challenged. If the city X website says "If you relocate to city X your business will thrive", that's clearly an advertising puff and unreliable. If the city website says "There are five public parks within the city" that's probably a good enough source. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

January 3

Where is the scanning utility?

I believe there is a utility that scans an article for key words and searches Wikipedia for articles on those topics. The writer of the article can then make decisions about whether to highlight each of those keywords.

1) What is the name of this utility? 2) How do you find it and run it? 3) Why doesn't the utility run automatically after a writer creates an article?

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WWriter (talk • contribs) 02:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)WWriter (talk) 02:09, 3 January 2011 (UTC)