Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 15

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This is an archive of the help desk. Please do not edit this page. To ask a new question, go to this page.

[edit] Archive of past questions

Contents


[edit] Why does some text not show up as editable?

I recently viewed a page on Wikipedia with a small error in it. That page is the entry for Legend of the Overfiend. The page says that there is a manga based on the film, when in fact it is the film that is based on the manga. (reference here: http://www.bigempire.com/sake/manga.html) When I went to edit that, it did not show it as editable text, showing on the section of related links as editable text. Why?

You most probably clicked the section edit link for the "External links" section. Click "edit this page" at the top of the page to edit the whole article. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:02, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Machine Interface and Editing

I have had constant problems with my machine interfacing with Wikipedia since I began editing. The following occur regularly:

  • 2 out of 3 preview commands throw me out of the internet (AOL - cursed be its name!) altogether, and I lose the edit completely.
  • I am also thrown out about 2 out of 5 times when I save an edit, but most of the time (after I log back in), I find Wiki has saved that edit. About 3 times, however, Wikipedia doubled my edit - this occured shortly after the recent power failure.
  • I also find myself on both sides of edit conflicts, as AOL evidently times me out and then resends the information.
  • I have had success importing text from my computer, but no success downloading information for editing at "home."

To compensate, I have been doing way too many edits -- little ones with repeated saves. I'm sure this is annoying people, and I would like to do better. As I am more writer than tech, does anyone have any ideas what the problem may be or suggestions on how to solve them. Thanks. WBardwin 06:35, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyrights

If I take an encyclopedic article from a web page and then rewrite it in my own words, is this still copyright infringement? I mean, I don't simply cut&paste, I go from sentence to sentence and rephrase each one of them. Then I join some and leave some of them out. --Eleassar777 13:24, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) P.S.: I left a warning about copyrights on the discussion page of the article where I have done so.

Probably not but it is always best to use multiple sources - and polite to cite references, sources. Rmhermen 15:08, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

For WikiQuotes is there an easy way to request permission to add a quote from a publisher or something? I wanted to add some quotes by Erich Fromm. --Golden Eternity 01:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links

Hello, my name is Apul Parikh. I am a research registrar in plastic surgery at the Royal Free Hospital, in London, England. We are trying to establish a web site for patient information on skin cancer, which has the backing of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons. We have had a look at your web site and have performed a DISCERN score of it. Your website was one of the best we found and would like to use it as a link. Would it be possible to email me back as soon as possible and inform me as to whether this is acceptable. We are running the website as non-profit making, and there shall not be any advertisements. We shall not alter your website in anyway, and i feel this will also help publicise your good work. Thank you in advance and i look forward to hearing from you soon. I can be emailed at apulparikh ATSYMBOL yahoo.com

Apul Parikh

Sure, anyone is free to link to wikipedia as much as they like. As the content is licenced under the GFDL you could even choose to copy it to your own website and display it there (as long as you complied with the quite reasonable terms of that licence). Pray tell, what is a "DISCERN" score? -- John Fader 16:01, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If I want to add a link to an external site, is it required to ask them permission first? --Golden Eternity 01:54, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No it is not necessary. In many cases it's not even sense, e.g. BBC. In a few cases is may be polite/wise to do so. Rich Farmbrough 13:11, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] correcting a caption to an image

how do you correct a caption to an image?

Go to the page that contains it, hit the "edit this page" link at the very top of your screen, find the offending caption, change it, hit "show preview", verify all is okay, and if it is then hit "save page" and you're done. -- John Fader 21:28, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adding categories to templates

How do you add a category to a template and make all the pages that use the template add that page to the category? - Ta bu shi da yu 02:06, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ignore that. It appears that you need to make the template with the category first, then add the template to the page to get it to show up in the category. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:08, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
There is a known bug that adding a category (or other link) to an existing template doesn't alter the database's record of what pages using the template link to. Once each page that uses the template is changed (which obviously happens if you add the template to a page that didn't previously use it), the links will be re-examined, and the category change will take effect. See Bugzilla:939 for gory technical details. - IMSoP 15:28, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hey, I didn't know you could do interwiki-style [[Bugzilla:123]]-type links! That's pretty sweet. grendel|khan 15:39, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

[edit] Name Codes

You know how %20 is a space and there are tons of others? I want to know which one is for a question mark (?). It would also help in the future for a list of all of these. Sorry if this is already somewhere; I'm not good at finding things.

Try using the values in the "Hex" column of the tables at ASCII. It looks like the question mark is %3F . —Triskaideka 16:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Looks right to me. Another way is, in Microsoft Word (sorry...), to do Insert | Symbol and click on the character you want. The code is displayed in the text box at the bottom in hex. Smoddy (t) (e) 17:08, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
To give a definitive and geeky answer: these are how a URL "escapes" characters that would otherwise be illegal. It is simply defined as a % followed by the hexadecimal equivalent of what would normally be used. So if what would normally be used is an ASCII "?", what will actually be used is "%3F", because the ASCII representation of "?" translates to the hexadecimal number "3F". So, yeah, just look it up in any ASCII table you have to hand - and if the character was in, say, UTF-8, you'd just look up the relevant representation for that and convert to hexadecimal. - IMSoP 15:19, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help about MD5

We are trying to create a site which will mirror the contents of WIKIPEDIA.But this site will be sematically web enabled.How do we locate the changes in a modified article which we have already downloaded.We are interested in knowing whether WIKIPEDIA maintains a MD5 sum so that we can compare the articles.

Well, first off, if you're going to be mirroring more than a few articles, please don't take copies off the live website. You can download entire copies of the "cur" (the current state of each article) from Wikipedia:Database download. Ideally there would be a new version twice a week, but it seems we're several weeks behind (caused, no doubt, by our recent server woes). So that gets you snapshots of the wikipedia, but doesn't help you know which versions have changed.
  • If you have a list of articles you've changed (and their timestamps) in whatever form of storage you use, you can just load the cur table (that's what's in the database dump) into mysql and then SELECT out the cur_timestamp fields for the articles you care about (the cur table is described at m:Cur table).
  • If you want to get a list of articles that have changed between two different snapshots, you'll need to do a bit of work. I figure you can do the following:
  1. import the first (older) copy of cur into mysql
  2. use the RENAME TABLE call to rename cur to (say) firstcur
  3. import the second (newer) copy of cur into msql
  4. SELECT those entries in cur whose cur_timestamp is different from their equivalent in firstcur (using cur_id to correlate the two)
There's probably an easier way, but I can't think of one. What you're essentially talking about is keeping a synchronised fork of wikipedia, and I don't know of anyone who does that in an automatic way. -- John Fader 20:15, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blood Lust

Dear Wikipedia, I greatly enjoy your site and the wealth of information it provides. However, as I was trying to look up "bloodlust", I found no articles pertaining to that subject. If you could created a page for that, I would appreciate it immensely. Thankyou for this wonderful site. Michael Irwin

Hi, Michael (User:205.125.1.40). I assume you didn't mean the game or novel, so I added bloodlust to Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social Sciences and Philosophy. It may be a long wait; the list at recent changes get more activity, but since it's protected I can't add it. 68.81.231.127 23:50, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uploading pictures

Hi,

I uploaded a picture for the Tantrix page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantrix). The upload was successful and the file is accessible under: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/TantrixSmall.jpg - but the picture does not appear with the article... Any ideas?

Thanks.

You need to edit to page to include the image. Also, that photo needs an image copyright tag. User:Alphax/sig 23:54, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

I added to the article, using [[Image:TantrixSmall.jpg|100px|Tantrix]]. See Wikipedia:Picture tutorial for a good starting primer.

See also Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for what is necessary to prevent the picture from being deleted, and Wikipedia:Image use policy for the overview. 68.81.231.127 23:59, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What *exactly* do I put in the footer?

I plan on making a site with alot of informatino and sources and I plan on using some stuff from wikipedia.

My question is... what do I put exactly (like can someone give me the HTML) in the footer to make the site OK with wikipedia rules.

I tried finding the exact stuff myself, but there is soooooooo much text and so many different help sections and to top it off I'd dyslexic and have a headache at the moment, lol, so if someone could please just tell me what to put in the footer so I can comply with wikipedia rules, that'd be awesome.

Thanks!

Hi, 69.234.143.111. Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL, which spells out the requirements. Anything more specific should be discussed with a legal professional, though both Wikipedia:Copyrights#Users.27 rights and obligations and Wikipedia:Verbatim copying have non-legally binding information of a general nature. 68.81.231.127 14:02, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Link to an image.....

Am I allowed to on a forum website, link to a picture of a U.S. Senator picture that is in Wikipedia?

Well, if you just mean "link to" as in make something like this, I don't think anyone can stop you linking to anywhere on the web (yes, some websites try and stop deep linking, but this isn't one of them). Preferably, link to the image's description page (the page you reach when clicking it in an article) rather than just the plain image file, since then the source and copyright status would be clear to people following your link.
If, on the other hand, you mean "link to" in the sense of actually displaying the image, the answer is almost certainly no - every time somebody viewed the image, it would have to be fetched from the Wikimedia servers, which are overworked enough as it is. This is generally known as leeching or bandwidth theft - bandwidth being a potentially costly resource. Depending on the exact image in question, you might be able to copy the image to a server whose bandwidth is your own - but always check the copyright status of the image before doing this (it should be stated on the image's description page). - IMSoP 15:05, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. You gave me the answers I expected and were looking for.

[edit] External link that doesn't display right

Why doesn't the first external link at Epimedium look right? It displays as if it were marked "nowiki", though the URL is highlighted and clicking on it takes you to the right site. All the following links display fine.

I've copied and pasted the heading and link below, and it gives the same problem in preview. Please tell me I'm not hallucinating that it's formatted right!

[edit] External links

[http://www.botany.com/epimedium.html Botany.com page on ornamental Epimedium]

—JerryFriedman 00:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There was a carriage return inserted between "ornamental" and "Epimedium" that broke the link. The entire link syntax should be on the same line. I fixed it in the article. Cheers. --Plek 00:28, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thank you! Next time anything like that happens, I'll retype the entire text. —JerryFriedman 02:01, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] isfdb template: spaces in external links?

I've created Template:isfdb name, following the example set by Template:imdb name. However, authors' pages on the site are accessed by their given name, and whitespace is converted to underscores, so an 'id' field as in the imdb template is frequently redundant.

So, while going to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Colin%20Kapp (imagine a space there, since I can't type it in with one) redirects to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Colin_Kapp, because if a space is used in the template, [http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Colin Kapp Colin Kapp] becomes Kapp Colin Kapp. (Linking to "Colin", which isn't what we wanted in any case.)

Is there a way around this, or will the template require typing in {{isfdb name|id=Colin_Kapp|name=Colin Kapp}}? Any help would be much appreciated. grendel|khan 16:12, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

No, AFAIK there's no way round this; somebody has made a feature request on the bug tracker for a new magic variable that would solve your problem, but I don't think anyone's put any code toward it as yet. Your idea of using two parameters is therefore probably as good as you'll get for the foreseeable future. - IMSoP 03:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Finding the person who introduced quoted material without identifying source and author.

Hi I'm new to the Wikipedia project. I think it is great! I am editing an article on "Self-relationship" I need to get in contact with the person who first posted the article (or the person who introduced some quoted material) to identify some quoted material introduced into the article without an identified author. Can't edit that material until I know the source and intent in including quoted material. Can you help? (User:Robert Rossel 16:00, 4 Mar 2005) was unsigned

First, check the article's talk page in case the quoted text has been discussed there. The following explains what to do if this doesn't help.
Using the article history you can examine earlier versions to find the edit in which the quoted material was added. If the history is large don't just search linearly but try very early versions and very late ones, and then compare slightly later versions with slightly less recent ones, until you find the edit or edits in which the quoted text was entered.
You can then go to the talk page of the identified user (assuming he's a logged-in user) and ask him about it.
If this fails, you may still be able to identify the quoted text by entering a section from it into google. One trick I use is to add the word "quotes" at the start of the search. So for instance if I wanted to know who said something containing the phrase "four-score years and seven" I would enter "quotes four score years and seven" (without the quote marks) into a search engine. If this fails, try without the word "quotes". --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:30, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] definition of..... ne plus ultra......

Question by anon editor 66.183.189.123 moved to WP:RD. Smoddy (t) (e) 21:09, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] copyright infringement query-how to access

Submitted "polypill" article- not in wiki style though. thought to maybe infringe copyright which it doesn't but asked to explain on copyright infringment section. I cannot find it there. What shall I do?

Have you tried Wikipedia:Copyright problems? Rmhermen 00:11, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Whoever flagged it as a copyvio didn't actually list it, but just left the template at the top of the article. I've fixed it now. — Trilobite (Talk) 07:01, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] When to request deletion of anonymous talk pages

During the last 5 (6?) months that I've been here I've welcomed quite a few anonymous users. Should these IP talk pages stay so that other anons will be encouraged to register, or be deleted? User:Alphax/sig 03:22, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I recall hearing that anonymous user talk pages get automatically deleted after a year of inactivity. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:01, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This doesn't seem to be true, see e.g. User talk:66.136.63.173. Goplat 19:02, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to get rid of an abusive page title in my recent changes?

I just marked the page FUCK BUSH for speedy deletion. Now it appears under my user contributions! I am very annoyed by that. Is there a way to remove this stupid entry? Sebastian 19:56, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Never mind - Right after I saved this I noticed that it already has been deleted, and so has the entry in my list - Cool!
Sebastian 19:58, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

  • Anyone checking your contributions could've checked to see you edited the article to add the speedy tag. Mgm|(talk) 12:23, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mohammed Atta

The first two lines in this article seem to be edited properly but don't render correctly. I've given a go at fixing it (using "Show preview") but can't get it to come out right. hydnjo talk 20:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What, exactly, is the problem? It seems to render all right to me. Smoddy (t) (e) 20:33, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Looks fine to me. Are you using Opera (particularly an older version)? It had/has problems with R->L languages like arabic and hebrew. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 20:35, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Using Safari - the Arabic is fine it's the sentence structure that's mixed up. Checked some of the other hi-jacker name articles and they come out ok. hydnjo talk 20:41, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm using Firefox 1.0.1 on Win2K with Verdana as default font, and am seeing a problem as well. The "1" from "1 September" and his name in Arabic are swapped, and the underline from "1 September" extends to the left (up till the "1"). --Plek 20:43, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ah. That's odd. I'm seeing the problem when I'm setting the date format in my preferences to "15 January 2001", but it is rendering correctly when set to "January 15, 2001". --Plek 20:47, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
It's a CSS issue. I'm not sure what yet, but the HTML is fine. Can't imagine what, though. Smoddy (t) (e) 20:49, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Changed my date format pref as suggested by Plek (excellent detective work) and the problem goes away. Thanks for your help. hydnjo talk 20:56, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Drawing of Ben Bolt /American Guitarist

I have a drawing of Ben Bolt done by one of his students. I would like to add this art work in the article about Ben Bolt. I own the copyright and would give permission to Wikipedia and it's users for publication. I want it to be correct according to the proper format.

[edit] Drawing of Ben Bolt /American Guitarist

I have a drawing of Ben Bolt done by one of his students. I would like to add this art work in the article about Ben Bolt. I own the copyright and would give permission to Wikipedia and it's users for publication.

You own the copyright—so you're the "one of his students" that the picture was drawn by? If so, great. If not, it might be better if the artist him-/herself contributed the picture. It would be ideal if the picture could be released under the GNU Free Documentation License, which would mean that it could be used not only by Wikipedia, but by anyone who abides by the terms of the license. This is the same license that covers all of your text contributions to Wikipedia.
It sounds like a great image to add to Wikipedia. The place to start reading about images on this site is Wikipedia:Images. From there you can learn how to get the image into the correct electronic format, looking as good as possible and in as few bytes as possible, how to upload the image and add correct copyright information to it, and how to use our image markup to include your image in the article.
Thanks for the contribution! —Triskaideka 17:13, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Navigational templates

Is there a standard way of writing Wikipedia:Navigational templates? I'm trying to write one for GNU/Linux at Template:Linux, but I'm not sure how to go about writing it. User:Alphax/sig 00:46, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Random Page

Has anyone considered making a seperate Random Stub button and Random Page button? This way brosers won't be bogged down with the black sheep of the Wikipedia but true Wikipedians can still find random page to work on or research.

  • And I thought I personally encounter stubs almost all the time when I click on the "Random page" button... ;) - Mailer Diablo 04:24, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Frequency of SQL Dumps

I've noticed that the last SQL dump was 2005-02-09. Previously, the dumps were done more frequently--about once per week. I wondered if there was a technical problem of some sort, or if the dumps were being done less often due to network traffic. Just curious. I use Wikipedia on my PDA and try to keep it somewhat updated. Thanks! --Tom Allen 05:10, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There was a big server crash in February. I'm guessing that the developers have been busy. Isomorphic 22:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Picture Import

I tried to import a picture from the German Wikipedia to the parallel article here in the English (Pan-Turkism), but failed somehow. I thought media was on a common space. Could you enlighten me what I did wrong? Refdoc 11:01, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You need to save the picture to your computer then upload it to the English Wikipedia. Each encyclopedia has their own image area but their is also Wikimedia Commons, a separate area for easier use by multiple languages. Note however that they only allow public domain or GFDL-type license pictures there. Rmhermen 13:47, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] new today! my homepage has been messed up...

hi - i don't really know how to work everything properly, but my page was messed up a few times by an anonymous ip address, and redirected to wierdo, i tried to have a joke with the person gently so that it might finish, but now i don't know what i should do Feminnem 12:57, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Now it's fine, I guess. utcursch | talk 13:08, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with table alignment

I'm writing an article that uses tables, and I want to display two tables side by side. I am not sure how to do this. Here's a link to the section. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9ole_ha%C3%AFtien#Pr.C3.A9terit The article is in French, but I'm going to translate it into English once I'm done with it. If anyone knows how to make those two tables line up side by side, I would be extremely grateful to them for their help. Zantastik 18:54, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If at all possible, try not to have them side by side. The page has too look okay on an 800x600 screen, and forcing too much stuff onto the same row can make that difficult. If you must, make a big table with two columns and put the two little tables into it. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 18:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copy Edit

I just want to meekly ask that someone sometime copy edit the "Socialism" article to fix "corrollary" etc. I don't see how to contact one of the people disputing to ask this, at least not the one I chose as not being vituperative. I don't know how to talk to people like those disputing without making them mad at me. I apologize for taking your time.

I see no reason why, even in a "neutrality-disputed" article, you cannot simply go ahead and fix a straightforward spelling mistake like this — as I have just done — without contacting anyone. -- Picapica 12:26, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help with renaming an article!

I just added my first contribution to Wikipedia and I named it incorrectly. I'd like it to be "Dean v. Utica" rather than "Dean v. utica." I've tried clicking the "Move" button after logging in, but it says I haven't logged in yet! How can I rename the article?

I don't know why it wouldn't let you move the page...can you describe the exact steps you went through? I've moved the page, by the way, so it's now at Dean v. Utica. Other than moving the page, there is no way to rename an article....but as you can see from this case, if you ever have trouble, posting a note here (or simply to another user you know) often gets the job done for you. :-) Jwrosenzweig 01:39, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Great article, by the way! I hope you'll contribute more like it. Jwrosenzweig 01:42, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I followed the steps described in the Wikipedia:How_to_rename_(move)_a_page, just as shown. I'm not sure why it didn't work either, but thank you for the quick response and the complement! Rvmiller89 01:47, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think John may be right (though I hadn't known the restriction was in effect). We have some unpleasant people who occasionally show up, create a brand new account, and move dozens of pages. Each page has to be slowly moved back by hand (it's very hard to move backwards, sadly). So we'd discussed a restriction where the newest accounts don't get to mvoe a page for their first month or two. If that is the case, please drop me a note at User talk:Jwrosenzweig anytime you want a page moved in the next month -- I'll happily help out. And hopefully we can put up a more informative error message very soon. Thanks for understanding, Jwrosenzweig 01:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Brion turned it on (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Page move vandalism brouhaha) -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 02:09, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As you're quite new, you might have been prevented from moving the article by the software (for that I apologise; it's a restriction necessitated by vandals exploiting a bug in our software). It's a shame you didn't get a more intelligible error message, however. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 01:43, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] vandalism report and request

Hi, I'm just a wiki-consumer, don't know how to fix instances of vadalism, but the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Plank

(which I got to from the random link on the side-bar) has just *got* to be a screw-up.

I found it very difficult to find the appropriate "place" to report such a problem; if this is a strategy to invite participation, I wonder if you could make that explicit and/or provide an easier way for civilians to let capable 'pedians know of such problems. thanks.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've deleted it. The page you are looking for (in case you see any more vandalism) is Wikipedia:vandalism in progress and btw Welcome to wikipedia! I hope you decide to become and editor as well as a consumer, we always need more good people. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 06:57, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Favourites

Can you please tell me how to keep track of my favourite articles etc. Is there any way I can do this on my page or any other place?

Regards & Thanks, Tanul 12:39, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

As long as you're logged in, you can use the watchlist feature to keep track of all articles you want to, umm, keep track of. You can add articles to your watchlist by clicking on the "watch" tab at the top of the article (or you can also set your preferences to automatically add all articles you edit to your watchlist) -- Ferkelparade π 12:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's a more controlled way to do this, too. Create a watch page. Make a subpage (eg: User:Tony Sidaway/Favourites). Place a link to each article you want to watch on that subpage, like this:

* [[Horse]]

* [[Sheep]]

* [[Pig]]

The list bullets are just to make the page easier to read; they're not necessary for it to work.

Then on your user page place the following link:

  • [Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:Tony_Sidaway/Favourites Favourites]


Of course you would replace "Tony Sidaway" by your own username.

This isnt as convenient as the watchlist, but it is easier to manipulate and you can also keep several different watch pages for different purposes. At the moment, silsor is maintaining a watch page for articles suspected to be targeted by Neo-nazi POV pushers, and I have a link to that on my user page. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:55, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Close account

Is there a way to have my account closed?

I don't see one. I guess you could simulate it by changing the password to something really complex and then forgetting it. Your account name has to remain so that your edits are correctly attributed in the histories. —Triskaideka 16:54, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] rv vandalism?

I checked the revision history of an article recently and I see the notation "rv vandalism" next to a user's name. What does this mean? 64.50.192.206

"rv" is short for revert, wikispeak for "put back to an earlier revision". Vandalism is, well, someone wrecking an article by putting in obviously bad things (profanity, nonsense, threats) or making unacceptably huge changes (particularly wiping some or all of the article without cause). So an editor who puts "rv vandalism" or similar in his edit summary is undoing changes done to an article by someone else, changes he regards as vandalism. 99% of the time he's right (we do get a lot of miscreants here) but occasionally he's either messed up and mistaken a valid edit for a bad one, and very occasionally an editor tags anothers contributions as vandalism maliciously (generally as part of some larger ongoing dispute). -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 00:47, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Take a look, for example, at the history of the George W. Bush article. Click on the individual diffs for each entry, and you'll see lots of silly people adding dumb things, and then (usually very quickly) the article being reverted back to the original article. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 00:54, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. 64.50.192.206 00:58, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How do I refer specifically to the current revision of an article?

Using the "history" tab, I can easily view an old version; I can then copy the URL and link to it in order to refer to that specific version. But for the current version, the only URL I can find is the "current version" URL that points to the most current revision. Um. What I'm trying to do is refer to today's version of an article, so that the link will point to this version even when somebody has edited it and a new version exists. The best solution I have so far is to make some edit to the page and then link to the "old" version.

If I had my druthers, there would be a link somewhere in the chrome for "URL for this version" so that people doing reviews of Wikipedia (or even using it as a reference) can easily link to the page version they used. --Andrew

You've summarised the situation pretty well. Things aren't assigned a "permanent" id until they're no longer the current version. That's because of a fairly fundamental design decision inside the mediawiki software: there's one data table for all the "current" revisions, and then another (huuuuge) one for all the old versions. That permanent id is infact a number that corresponds with a change being put into the "old" table. So the "current" version (in the cur table) is always id=0, and so yes, to make a permanent id you need to perform a trivial change to the article. I appreciate how this is inconvenient, but frankly the chances of it getting changed any time soon are rather low. Database redesigns are proposed periodically, but always for reasons of performance. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 03:12, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The change to give the current revision a permanent id is in the development versions of MediaWiki 1.5. It actually restructures the whole thing entirely, but that's for another discussion. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:30, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's a pain but I can understand why the database is set up that way, and I'm certainly not going to argue for restructuring it. (Although keeping the curent version in both places, instead of only one, seems harmless.) But a nice feature that the developers could put in in their copious spare time would be a link format that includes a time (like http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki-as-of/2005-03-03-17:25:32+0500/Hedgehog); the result could be computed from a simple database query for the last version before that date/time.

Anyway, I know the developers have better things to do. Thanks! --Andrew 03:29, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

There are a couple of bugs in "Mediazilla" tracking exactly what you just asked for: one for assigning a permanent ID which includes current workarounds as well as referring to the schema redesign which should come into use in version 1.5; and one for creating a "shortcut name" for those lasting IDs, which is impossible until that new schema is in place. In other words, "watch this space" ;) - IMSoP 17:31, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Number of Contributions

Is there an easy way to find out your total number of contributions? I could go to my contributions page and count how many times I can press "next 50" until the end of the list, but that seems kind of ridiculous. I must be missing an easier way to do it. Deadcorpse 07:16, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

In theory, it should be easy to do a quick database query for a user's editcount - there was a tool provided by Kate located here, but it seems to be broken at the moment. Other than that, there's Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, but it only shows the top 1000 contributors and is unfortunately quite out of date. That page also links to a csv file that contains all editors and their editcounts, but that file is usually also a couple of weeks out of date. So to get an up-to-date editcount, the only way at the moment seems to be to count them by hand (you can speed up the process by switching to 500 edits per page, but it still can take quite a while :P ) -- Ferkelparade π 11:46, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How Do I Remove A Page?

I've made a bit of an error in the creation of a page, (wrong spelling). This was pointed out, so I tried to move the page, but was told I wasn't logged in. Therefore I've created a new page, and copied the contents from the old one into it. I've changed the link, so that the new page is accessed.

So, How do I remove the wrong page? If you search for "mailbu stacey" you'll find it.

Awgj13 09:54, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Moving pages has recently been disabled for new user because page moves are rather hard to undo and the function was constanhtly abused by vandals - sorry about that, you'll be able to move pages once you have done a number of edits (the exact number escapes me at the moment :). To have a page deleted, place a {{delete}} or even better a {{db|reason for deletion}} on the article (replacing "reason for deletion" with your explanation, of course), and an admin will eventually delete the article. -- Ferkelparade π 10:07, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If it is a spelling error that other people are liklely to make, you could turn it into a Redirect instead. Rmhermen 16:58, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Trademarks?

How do we refer to trademarked things?

I am looking at Spinning (cycling). ("Spinning" is a form of group exercise on stationary bicycles.) The name "spinning" is trademarked in the United States. The generic name in the U.S. for these classes is "indoor cycling."

I am willing to update Spinning (cycling) to conform to proper use of trademarked terms, but I would like to know if there is a policy I should follow. Also, I don't know if the concept of "proper" use of these terms varies among countries.

Thanks! FreplySpang 16:45, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that we don't use the TM symbol and we don't worry about describing things by their trademarked vs generic term. If spinning is a trademark (hey, I didn't know that, btw) then it would be a good addition to the article to mention that fact. As to which the article should be called, we use the name most commonly used in english (which I'm sure is spinning in this case), but make sure to mention other names, including the generic ones. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 16:55, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Great, thanks! FreplySpang 17:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion

A user created a user article. I added the tag for speedy deletion. A few minutes later the initiator of the article removed that tag, but the article was removed anyway. My question, how does this speedy deletion work? Is it logged somewhere, so that even if the tag is removed, admins can still see that a speedy deletion was requested? Aeronautics 17:40, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When you add a speedy delete tag, the article is added to a category (Category:Candidates for speedy deletion). Some admins watch that category and delete pages that appear on it (after checking the article meets the criteria). Naturally if someone removes the speedy tag, the page is no longer in the category. But because pages take time to load, and because admins can be somewhat sluggish sometimes, there can be a lag, so they'll be in the process of deleting it when the tag gets removed, and they won't notice. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 17:48, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So what do I have to do when a user is removing the speedy deletion tag? Just wait and put it back again a day later, or can I make a note of this behaviour somewhere?

If you're sure it's a speedy, replace the tag. If that doesn't work, list it on WP:VFD. Whereas removing a speedy tag is largely a matter of opinion, removing a VfD tag prematurely is vandalism. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 18:05, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Nile

Hey all, Hope you're all doing great. I'm just wondering if any of you knows how long it takes the Nile waters to flow from the source to the mouth. I read somewhere that it was something like 2 months to complete the whole journey. Could you please clarify if you can.

I'll greatly appreciate your help.

Reply at jnyai@hotmail.com

[edit] How to show Copyrighted Images with Permission

Hi, I started (and I am trying to improve) the Killer bunnies article. Since I didn't know quite enough, I asked permission from the company to use the information on their site. They said I could use any images or information on either of their two sites, as long as I put at the top of the page a notice crediting them. So, what template do I use for the images? Please help me soon, I want to continue to expand the article.

Thanks in advance,
Raintaster 04:22, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Respond here, or to charlie@stigler.org. I don't care which)

As I understand it (and I might not), this is not enough. For an image to be used on Wikipedia, it must either be public domain, or released under the GPL license. So you would need to ask for these specific permissions. Public domain is preferred, but understand that this is WAY different from permission to reproduce: it gives everyone perpetual permission to use the image in any way they like, including commercial or obscene ones. I don't know enough about the GPL license to know if this is likely to satisfy the people giving permission. A key reason for this is that Wikipedia content is reused on other sites, so permission to use an image on one site doesn't cover all bases. Notinasnaid 12:22, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Note that the above is basically correct, except that the license under which Wikipedia is distributed is the GFDL, not the GPL. Meanwhile, see Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for a whole lot more detail. - IMSoP 13:42, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Convert WikiText to HTML

Hello,

Does anyone know of a good Java library to convert wikitext to html? That is for converting the text with the wiki markups like

link or __bold__ to their html equivalent.

I've looked at Radeox library but their markup definition file "Radeox_markup.properties" is incomplete. Especially the link convertion (it doesn't work)

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

thank you.

We have a page called Special:Export which may help. Mgm|(talk) 11:11, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
No, Special:Export doresn't do any conversion, it just wraps the content in XML representing the metadata (title, edit time, etc). I recently collected together all the wikitext parsers I could find at meta:Alternative parsers, so maybe you could find something there that would suit.
Note however that __bold__ isn't how MediaWiki does bold (it uses '''bold'''). Are you perhaps using a different wiki engine? If so, you'll need a converter tailored to that particular markup - there's no such thing as standard wikitext, I'm afraid. - IMSoP 13:45, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] are edits good enough for cleanup tag removal?

how do I know if the edits I have made after a cleanup tag was issued are good enough? The subject matter I posted is an obscure one and I simply wanted it documented someplace where the information will last.

Thanks wiki, for just being here...

  • Personally, I consider an article cleaned up when it's uses proper English and when it has been correctly formatted. Sometimes, however, a significant lack of information plays a role as well. I may be more specific if you could tell us what article you are talking about. Mgm|(talk) 11:09, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I marked something as a copyvio by mistake, now what?

Yesterday, I noticed that the odd wording of the Pisco, Peru page was found on two other websites, so I marked it as a copyvio. Today, I looked again at the other websites and realized that they took the information from Wikipedia, not the other way around. (Both sites credit it to Wikipedia.) What should I do now? Thanks! FreplySpang 20:04, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi FreplySpang, I have already reverted the copyvio since you, the copyvio tagger, requested its removal. You can do this by going through normal reverting procedure.
To the other Wikipedians out there, if I made a mistake and removed the copyvio notice prematurely, please let me know. --Deathphoenix 20:25, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Great, thanks! FreplySpang 20:57, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
There's no problem with removing the copyvio notice when it is shown clearly that the material is not a copyvio. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:08, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I'm (not) moving to Wikibooks. What now?

I started an article, Wikipedia:How to make complex illustrations using FreeHand and Photoshop, by creating a new link from Wikipedia:Graphics tutorials. I notice there are several other tutorials in WP linked from that page, but Milkmandan has tagged the new article for removal to Wikibooks. I've already put some work into the article, its talk page, and associated images.

  1. Should I care? I don't have a problem with it. Why does it matter? Is this being ghettoized?
  2. Should I continue to build the article where it is now and just wait for the move?
  3. Will everything move together, including the talk and images?
  4. Will I need to reformat the article to conform to Wikibooks, or do I just charge straight ahead?

--Xiong 02:46, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

  1. Moving to WikiBooks does not signify that the article deserves any less prominence or attention, or being ghettoized. It just means that your contributions to this article is more useful if it were to be on one of Wikipedia's specialised sister project.
  2. Please continue. I believe the move should be at one go.
  3. -
  4. The formatting is basically the same. No worries, just go ahead. :)

- Mailer Diablo 04:20, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but the user who requested the move and seems to be thinking about executing it has admitted he doesn't know how to do it; and meta:Transwiki says the only way is by cut-and-paste. Is there an Old Head to take charge of this move? --Xiong 17:06, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
</panic> Looks like the article in question is not going to be moved any time soon. Sorry to stir the pot unnecessarily --Xiong 02:41, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

[edit] change username

I just created a user and want to modify the username, how can I do that? Thanks,

Try Wikipedia:Changing_username. Hope that helps! TIMBO (T A L K) 07:11, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Howard Hughes page

On the Howard Hughes entry, there is the information that Hughes wooed famous movie starlets. The list includes Pamela Anderson. The link to Anderson shows that she would have been 9 when Hughes died. Obviously a joke.

However, on trying to edit that section, her name does not show up. The only place her name shows up is when choosing the option "View Source." This seems like a hack of some sort.

Please explain how this is possible.

  • You're probably looking at an earlier version of the page. Sometimes it takes the database too long to catch up to the edits, so we see a page, which in fact has already been edited. In all likelyhood, the joke has been removed already. Mgm|(talk) 13:43, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

WARNING:PORNOGRAPHIC PICTURE.
Can someone please fix GM Daewoo. It has been made a redirect to autofellatio.jpg. Thanks - Adrian Pingstone 08:59, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

.....and (unless my computer is playing tricks) Northwest Airlines - Adrian Pingstone 09:12, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Both seem to be fixed now. For the record, if anybody wanted to revert the vandal and didn't see how, this rather sneaky fr:en:image trick messes up Wikipedia's "Redirected from..." display (see the diff). The original article can still be displayed and edited by adding ?redirect=no to the URL (so in that case, you had to enter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM Daewoo?redirect=no into your browser's address bar to access the article) -- Ferkelparade π 17:23, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Eincho

I have been attempting to trace down this term: "Eincho." There are multiple problems with it, however. Under many search engines I can easily find the word (in fact, it appears to be German and may even be Japanese). But, then, comes the catch. Using translators I come up with zero answers/definitions. What is this word? In one instance (a German Legal Dictionary), I believe I found it to mean "Farmhand, servant, slave" (from "enke" -- or some such). Some Japanese websites use it(www.tokisue.or.jp/html/eincho.htm, for example)but it beats me as to its meaning (Japanese translations yield nothing). Search engines have the word but its meaning remains evasive. Any help? If can help, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[edit] Editing

How do I edit? From User:Suffice. (update:okay i think i understand. but wait -- how do i edit an actual article? sometimes it says "source" where the) Suffice 01:39, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some articles, like the main page and those linked from it, are protected from editing - they pose too great a target for vandals. Almost everything else will have an edit link at the top, and probably lots of little edit markers on individual sections too. -- John Fader (talk • contribs) 01:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Album Infobox trouble

I added an album infobox to the Falling Into Infinity article, using the template from Category:WikiProject Albums but for some reason the 'Last Album' part is coming into the 'Reviews' section instead of the discography. Can anyone be of assistance?

You missed the field separator (|) between Reviews and Last Album. Added. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:33, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How do I do a citation in a footnote?

I know this is covered somewhere, but now I can't find it. What's the format and technical procedure on this? I want to cite books, with hyperlinked little numbers that will take the reader down to the "References" at the bottom where I'll put bibliographic entries for the books. You know what I mean, right? Probably somebody just needs to point me to the right link.

Thanks!

-Michael

Numbered footnotes are not the preferred style at Wikipedia:Cite sources, but it's not hard to piece together how to do it by looking at geographic references. If you just want to jump down to a References section, you can use [[#References|'''<sup>4</sup>''']], with the appropriate number (or &sup1; to &sup3;). 68.81.231.127 21:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Its easier to use the {{fn}} and {{fnb}} templates which create forward and backward clickable links. See Wikipedia:Footnotes Rmhermen 23:15, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clickable sister project images on Main Page

Working on Wikiquote I noticed that the images on their main page are not clickable to go to the other projects, only the names work. I found on our Template talk:WikipediaSister that it discusses making the images interwiki redirects to make the images clickable. How is this done? Does each project need to do it to their copy of the images? Rmhermen 23:15, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is a rather wacky hack whereby the image description page (where you normally go when you click an image) is replaced with a redirect, e.g. "#REDIRECT Wiktionary:Main Page". This means that wherever that image is displayed, clicking it will lead to the page named in the redirect. There may or may not be a feature to allow you to specify the target of one particular image link in the future - see Bugzilla:539 for discussion. - IMSoP 17:40, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

End of archive.

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