Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 December 24

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December 24

Hurt (Self-titled)

Hi, i have a picture of the album cover for Hurt's album which is self-titled, but the system keeps automatically linking the image to Christina Aguilera's album, Hurt. How can i make the system link the image to the right album? —Preceding unsigned comment added by NightwingVyse (talk • contribs)

You overwrote Image:Hurt.jpg, which is displayed in Hurt (Christina Aguilera song), with an unrelated image. I have reverted this so the right image is in Hurt (Christina Aguilera song) again. I see you figured out to upload your image with an unused name and add it to Hurt (Self-Titled). The Cover parameter in {{Infobox Album}} only requires the image name so I modified [1] your edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Cannot open account

The site is not allowing me to open an account. Create a account I tried it just will not set up my account?Thanks gina —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.77.199.76 (talk)

Are you receiving an error message? If you are unable to create an account, an administrator can create one for you. Instructions are available here.--Kateshortforbob 00:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

robin williams

Resolved

the information on his bio has obviously been tampered with —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.88.139 (talk)

Thanks, someone has taken care of it. Thank you for letting editors here know! Ariel♥Gold 00:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Robin Williams was vandalized 30 minutes ago. I have reverted the vandalism. You are welcome to revert vandalism on your own. See Help:Reverting. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:33, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary

Some of Wiktionary needs to be updated.Kitty53 (talk) 01:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean the Wiktionary article in Wikipedia? I don't edit Wiktionary but maybe somebody more familiar with it will take a look. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Musical Symbols

Hi

What kind of files do I need to make musical symbols show up? They showed up before but since i reformatted they don't appear (coming up as ?). Where can I get these files from? Thanks please leave the answer on my talk page. Arc88 (talk) 02:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe Help:Special characters is of help. It may help others to know that your user page says you use Mozilla Firefox. Knowing your operating system could also be helpful. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh sorry about that. Yes I use Firefox and I'm running Windows XP SP2. I checked that help page but it doesn't mention anything about music fonts. Arc88 (talk) 04:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Article is causing a redirect

For whatever reason, I noticed that all links to the movie Species: The Awakening are automatically going to a page on Wikispecies. I thought it was a bad redirect, but I can't fix it myself--what's going on? Blueboy96 07:06, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, and I thought the issue with Help: A Day in the Life was bad. Unfortunately I have no solution other than to make a post on Village pump (technical). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 07:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

An nbsp in front works: Species: The Awakening.--Patrick (talk) 08:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This remark I made referred to a possible new name, not to recovering the existing page. See also Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Namespace_issues_wrecking_an_article.--Patrick (talk) 08:14, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

"Species:" is an interwiki link to http://species.wikimedia.org. I guess the problem started when this edit was registered by the relevant software. I don't know whether there is a way for non-developers to access the article. I see you made a recreation at Species--The Awakening but this can give GFDL problems if the article history is not accessible. I don't know where you got the source (maybe you had an old offline copy?). An archived copy of the old page can currently be found in Google's cache (click "Cached" at [2]). Google's cache says "retrieved on 23 Dec 2007 05:41:08 GMT." The cached Wikipedia page says "last modified 19:39, 8 December 2007". PrimeHunter (talk) 02:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

e-mail

How do I e-mail an article I liked to a friend's e-mail id?

As attachment a downloaded page can be used. Since someone who can receive email probably can also access the web you can also just send a link. In email through Wikipedia an attachment is not possible. You can send an article in plain text. If you send it in HTML the email program of the receiver may not interpret that, for security.--Patrick (talk) 10:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Purpose?

What is the purpose of {{-}} in Gregory Peck#Later work? Also, what is the difference (if any) between <br> and <br />? Clarityfiend (talk) 10:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Start new section below image.

Nothing. <br> is correct wikitext. In XML <br /> is the standard, some people think that makes it better as wikitext code too. However, MediaWiki automatically converts the wikitext <br> into the XML code <br />--Patrick (talk) 10:33, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

olive oil

advantage in using olive oil cooking food and also disadvantage using olive oil

This is for questions about using WIKIPEDIA. Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The Helpful One ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 14:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Want to display Fortune 1000 list on my computer

Hey my boss wants me to rank customers by the "fortune 1000" list and gave me the link en.wikkipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_1000. Clicking on this gives the reference but not list.

Simple question: I just want to display the list. 66.170.46.130 (talk) 14:18, 24 December 2007 (UTC)How do I do this?

Try going on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_1000 Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The Helpful One ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 14:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The link your boss gave you was to Wikipedia's article on Fortune 1000, which does not contain the list itself, apparently due to copyright concerns (also, it was massive). However, there are 3 links providing more information at the bottom of that article. The list for 2007 is available here, although it's only viewable 100 entries per page.--Kateshortforbob 17:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Idea for wikipedia

Where can I post an idea I have for wikipedia? Juliancolton (talk) 14:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

But first see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals to make sure you are not rehashing an old proposal. Some rejected proposals are so obvious that new users keep suggesting them (such as to require all editors to create accounts and log in before editing). Other proposals may have already been accepted, but take a long time to implement (such as fixing our deplorable talk pages, and this bloated Help desk page, with Liquid Threads). --Teratornis (talk) 18:38, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Long lost friend

86.136.123.137 (talk) 14:52, 24 December 2007 (UTC)is it possible to use Wikipedia to find a long lost pal in the USA? I have her married name and her maiden name. Thankyou Annie Perkins.. U K user name annie.perkins@btinternet.com

Dear Anna, this is not possible. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a people-index. Try a google search and social networks. Good luck, Poeloq (talk) 14:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

In the unlikely event that your pal is famous, see if she has a Wikipedia article written about her. Archtransit (talk) 19:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

templatesf

is there a list of football templates to say which teams you like—Preceding unsigned comment added by Zanramon (talk • contribs)

Hi Zanramon. Please see Wikipedia:Userboxes/Sports#Supporting sports teams. I would provide the link to a specific subcategory there, but I'm not sure if your question is about American Football or football (soccer). Please note that posts to pages such as this and to talk pages (but not to articles) should be signed, which you can do by adding four tildes after your post (~~~~) which automatically formats to your signature and a timestamp when you save. You can also add the tildes using the editing button which looks like this: . Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

New user help

I am new to Wiki and really a nivice.

I am writing about makoa Combatives--i notice that there dont seem to be easy options to add the kewl borders i see on other articles---i began writing and just see one area of text--

question: can you help me to be more familiar with the editing of my article in making it like the others i see here?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Makoa67 (talk • contribs)

Start with WP:CHEAT and WP:TUTORIAL. For lesson number two, read everything in the Editor's index to Wikipedia. If you prefer to read dead tree editions, a book about Wikipedia should be available Real Soon Now. --Teratornis (talk) 18:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks as though you have fallen into the common trap for new users of creating new articles before learning about Wikipedia's incredibly complicated policies and guidelines. See WP:WWMPD for advice on what to do. New articles by new users have a low probability of surviving on Wikipedia, because Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are extremely unintuitive for most people. That is, a new user's first impressions of what Wikipedia is all about are often greatly in error. The best strategy is to read the friendly manuals (start by clicking the Help link on the left side of any page), and make small edits to existing articles rather than trying to create new articles from scratch right away. The more editing experience you accumulate on Wikipedia, the better-able you should be to make edits that "stick." Also, if your subject is not appropriate for Wikipedia, be aware there are thousands of other wikis specializing in many different subjects. I guess Makoa Combatives is a form of martial arts; if so, you should join Wikipedia:WikiProject Martial arts or one of its subprojects. There you can find Wikipedia users with more editing experience who share your subject interest, and they can help you create an article that sticks. --Teratornis (talk) 20:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This question is not about using Wikipedia, but I'm not sure where else to ask

I've found this image. Web site claims that I'm the creator of the image. I'm not. As a matter of fact I've never posted any single image at this web site and I found the image, when I Google for my name. The image provides the link to Wikipedia to my image, but once again the image from yhis web site was not taken by me. This error should be corrected, but I could not find whom to contact about this. What should I do? Thanks.--Mbz1 (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

You could try and contact the website. You have to keep in mind the page may just be a duplicated version. Rt. 19:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you, Rt. This page is not duplicated version. The image is not mine. I'd like to contact web site, but I cannot find "contact us" there.--Mbz1 (talk) 19:13, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• The matter is resolved. I found the web site e-mail thanks to the help from User:andrewjd--Mbz1 (talk) 19:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Erroneous entry on The Brights' Net page (December 24, 2007)

By: Paul Geisert, Co-director of The Brights' Net

Re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement

Subject: The addition to the long-standing description of the Brights' Net. A party has added a template at the bottom of the page which is erroneous.

The title of the Template is "irreligion". This title is totally counter to one of the main purposes of The Brights' Net. A Bright is an individual with a naturalistic worldview. Brights do not (should not) refer to themselves or the organization using religious terminology. Thus words like irreligious, non-religious, etc. are totally inappropriate.

The left-hand column of the template is also inappropriate for use on The Brights' page. Again, all groups are referred to in terms of a negative: A - theism (without gods), A - gnosticism (without knowledge), and Non-theism (without religion).

I strongly suggest the template be removed since it has no direct connection to the Brights' movement and has direct connection to terms which are eschewed by the Brights' movement.

Note: (I did not delete it myself since I have limited abilities in using Wikipedia and did not wish to change something in an erroneous manner.)

Contact: Please contact me directly and let me know how the situation stands. Email: Paul @ the-brights@the-brights.net

Thanks much for Wikipedia -- it is my first stop whenever I have a question that needs a quick and accurate (in general) answer.

Be bold! and edit the page. I'd just remove it if it was misplaced, but if not first try to reach consensus on the talk page. Best regards, Rt. 19:06, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Your caution is well-advised. Before being bold, I'd suggest first talking to the person who added the template you consider inappropriate. Obviously whoever put it there thought it belonged, and just removing it without discussion first could trigger an edit war. Wikipedia is an incredibly complicated place, and for many questions there is no one correct answer, or the correct answer may continuously evolve. Often, getting to an answer requires engaging lots of diverse people in a tedious process to find consensus. That Wikipedia works at all is somewhat amazing. To your question: before getting too excited, rest assured that Wikipedia has a disproportionately large number of well-educated users, many of whom share your world view to varying degrees (for example, me). My personal view is not to worry much about pejorative labeling; see Euphemism#The "Euphemism Treadmill". Many advocacy groups attempt to replace what they consider to be stigmatized labels with innocuous euphemisms, but history shows that in due course, euphemisms tend to take on such underlying stigma as continues to attach to the subject. See the Euphemism article for familiar examples. The religious majority who (somehow) managed to stigmatize a rejection of faith (i.e., they essentially stigmatized reason and critical thinking) will still be around to continue stigmatizing the subject under any new label you might manage to force into general use. I suggest rather than running endlessly on the euphemism treadmill, a better strategy is to stop running and fight the ideological battle in the current semantic location. Not all negative labels are necessarily bad, for example: debt-free, disease-free, unafraid, undeluded, uncorrupted, etc. Also see Dysphemism#The “Dysphemism Treadmill” - a label you regard as stigmatized today can easily become innocuous, even complimentary over time. The gay rights movement, for example, has managed to de-stigmatize a number of formerly scary words. As far as negative labels go, what's the big deal? I don't use any recreational drugs, and this has caused some people to label me a teetotaler. That's a negative label, and from my point of view it is absurd, but from the point of view of a drunk, my lack of alcohol use might seem to be a characterizing feature. Much as a fish, if it could speak, might refer to land animals as non-aquatic. (The language used by the fish would say as much about the fish as it would say about the subject.) The simple fact is that the majority of the world's people believe in some sort of magic space man, and they were indoctrinated from childhood to regard their locally popular brand of unreason as a virtue. If 95% of the world's population were drunks, then they would label the other 5% as "non-drinkers," and in many contexts this classification could actually be useful. Remember that on Wikipedia we are trying to organize all the world's knowledge, so we need to classify everything, which means coming up with compact ways to distinguish everything from everything else. Given the vast number of religious world views, it's hard to classify the other kinds of world views as something other than non-religious. Or how about a less hypothetical example: in automobile-dominated societies, an adult who chooses to live car free will almost certainly be labeled negatively, as a "non-driver," a "person without a car," perhaps even an "a-car-ist" if gaswasters were clever enough to think that one up. How would you classify a person who chooses to live without a car? Can you think of a non-negative label for that? Humans are slavish conformists first and foremost, as well as instinctive enforcers of social norms, and anyone who cuts against the local cultural norm will experience social pressure. The most straightforward way to remove the social pressure is to make one's behavior the norm; or, failing that, show people that one's behavior is not bad, perhaps even superior, and raise people's consciousness about its benefits, namely the benefits for them. --Teratornis (talk) 19:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The word "search" in many languages

You show the word search in many different languages. search... ...haku, suk. What language is "suk"?

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 is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. Rt. 19:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I guess you saw it at http://wikipedia.org/. That is the common entry for Wikipedia versions in hundreds of languages. The "search" translations appear to be sorted in reverse order of how many articles that Wikipedia language has, for languages with 100000+ articles. m:List of Wikipedias then indicates that "suk" is volapük (I'm surprised how many articles it has). The same 15 languages in alphabetical order can be selected in the search box below the word list at http://wikipedia.org/. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked at the Volapuek dictionary. Search was not tranlated like that. So where is this coming from? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.56.129.195 (talk) 22:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know Volapük but I guess "search" can be translated in different ways depending on the context. That's often the case for translation between any two languages. The search box in the Volapük Wikipedia at http://vo.wikipedia.org/ says "suk". It makes sense that this is the word used at http://wikipedia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Automatic WP to Commons image transfer

Why haven't all the appropriate images on Wikipedia been automatically moved to Commons? --Seans Potato Business 20:03, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

You know, that's a good question. I guess its because its ultimately up to the indivdual user whether they want to submit their freely licensed images to the commons. If a user tagged an image they created as released into the public domain, any user could move it to the Commons, as the creator has given up rights to it, but its usually a good idea to ask the original uploader. I submit anything that I created myself to the commons so that other projects can use it, but there are some exceptions, for example my photo on my userpage. That I didn't submit to the commons. Hope this helps. Mr Senseless (talk) 23:53, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Because the process to do it is, well, crap. Download the image from Wikipedia, open up the CommonsHelper, plug in the details, wait for a reply, fiddle with the result (must have a category!), upload the image onto Commons, tag the Wikipedia image with {{ncd}}. One down, only a hundred thousand more to go. User:Betacommand has a bot to simplify it (but not to automate it). Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:00, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

You can have the program automatically upload the image... it's pretty simple, I just did a few pictures a few minutes ago. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:05, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

User style

What's the page to look at different styles for the userpage, I'm new and haven't received a welcoming like other users have. Shapers (talk) 20:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shapers. Please see WP:USERPAGE, Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help, Wikipedia:User Page Design Center, User:Danieltiger45/Userpage design andWikipedia:Userboxes. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Infobox

How do I create an Infobox? I want one for the office of Pope, as you can see the current monarchy one doesn't quite work with the article...any help? Dunfermline Scholar (talk) 20:38, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Howdy! There are a lot of infobox templates (see Category:Infobox templates), but they all work in a similar way. Once you find the infobox appropriate to the article, click on it's discussion page, for instance for the generic infobox, Template talk:Infobox. You will get some code and often some instructions. To place the infobox in the article, copy the code into the article and fill out the fields. The generic infobox code looks like

{{Infobox |name= |image= |caption= |data1= |data2= |data3= |footnotes= }}

If you fill it out as

{{Infobox |name= J. P. Patches |image= Refueling, 1923.jpg |caption= A daring clown-maneuver of the post-modern era. |data1= Clown issues |data2= |footnotes= See attached bibliography. }}

Refueling, 1923.jpg A daring clown-maneuver of the post-modern era.

Clown issues

The resulting infobox is displayed at right. If you indicate what the article is, perhaps I or someone can help find the correct box for the article. Hope this helps! --TeaDrinker (talk) 22:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

There already is an {{Infobox Pope}} --teb728 t c 23:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean you want an infobox only for the article pope? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes not one for the office holder but for the office. Like, George Bush has an infobox for a politician but the President of the United States has an infobox for the office. I'll see what I can do though, thanks very much. Dunfermline Scholar (talk) 13:33, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox papacy
| body            = <br />Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church
| insignia        = Emblem of the Papacy.svg
| insigniasize    = 100px
| insigniacaption = Seal of the papacy
| image           = BentoXVI-30-10052007.jpg
| incumbent       = [[Benedict XVI]]
| formation       = [[30 AD]]
| inaugural       = [[Papal Inagural Mass, Saint Peter's Square]]
| website         = [http://www.vatican.va]
}}

This is what ive come up with, i'll try to spruce it up a little though. You might notice that there is a small infobox papcy line that appears on the left hand of the page when the template is used...i don't see what line of code is doing it though and im not sure how to get rid of it...(talk) 13:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Right, I've got it. Thanks for all the help! Dunfermline Scholar (talk) 16:59, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

What is bread?

what is bread? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.166.182.185 (talk) 23:53, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

See bread. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The helpdesk is for questions on actually using Wikipedia, not for questions on content. Next time you can ask at the reference desk. Mr Senseless (talk) 20:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)