Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 17

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[edit] Archive of past questions

Contents


[edit] Editing a catagory directory

Trying to edit the catagory US Civil Aircraft to add another name there and cannot figure out how to do it! I click on the edit tab and it gives me the header for the catagory above the one I need. Would like to add a "A", then under it "Aeronca" and then put my addition there.

Just made this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronca

It should be located here:

Articles in category "U.S. civil utility aircraft 1930-1939" There are 5 articles in this category. E ERCO Ercoupe G Grumman G-21 Grumman J2F Grumman JF P Piper J-3 Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:U.S._civil_utility_aircraft_1930-1939"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:U.S._civil_utility_aircraft_1930-1939

Can anyone pls give me some direction here?

Thx, JA

More details are at Wikipedia:Categorization, but the basic idea is you edit the article, not the category. The category is automatically updated, and shows member articles (or subcategories) that include a line containing a "link" to the category of the form [[category:categoryname]]. In your example, you should add [[category:U.S._civil_utility_aircraft_1930-1939]] to the Aeronca article. Although the category link will work no matter where it is added, the convention is to add category links at (or near) the bottom of articles. -- Rick Block 04:58, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unsuccessfull merge

After an attempted merge of Reaction rate into Chemical kinetics, apparently something went completely wrong since the histories of both pages are now almost empty and instead of a merge, the Chemical kinetics page was overwritten with the contents of Reaction rate. I have been able to find the version of the page previous to this merge attempt. How should we proceed to solve this problem? Jan van Male 09:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Looks like someone solved it. For histories to be merged you need the help of an administrator. I'd be happy to do the history merge if you'd like to try again. Mgm|(talk) 12:56, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Sorry for taking your time. I just found out that the whole thing is a capitalisation problem: Chemical Kinetics versus Chemical kinetics. Jan van Male 13:41, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rumiñahui

from User talk:Hyacinth#On page deletions

Hello again: I am requesting help. A few days ago, I discovered that the title of Ruminahui was misspelled. Silly me, I created a new page with the proper spelling, Rumiñahui, then did a cut-and-paste of the content from the incorrect to the correct, not taking into account that the page history on the old one needed preserving. Would you be able to untangle this? Thanks, Mona-Lynn 09:32, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

from User talk:Mona-Lynn#Rumiñahui

I attempted to fix it, but appears to be worse. I deleted Rumiñahui, then went to Ruminahui and attempted to move an old version to Rumiñahui. Apparently there was a glitch or I moved the redirect to Rumiñahui to Rumiñahui. This still should not have lost the edit history, but when I check the history of Rumiñahui it shows the old edits, and when I check the history of Ruminahui it shows only my move. Hyacinth 09:44, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What's up? Hyacinth 09:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki is overagressive on caching history. It's all displaying properly now. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks.

[edit] How to react to information that is untrue or misleading?

What can be done when an article is created and used to post information that is untrue or misleading on a particular organization, for instance GreenFacts. Who is checking the information posted? How can untrue or misleading information be effectively avoided or removed? StephanieM 13:05, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In general the first thing you should do is raise the issue on the talk page. If you can't come to some consensus, see Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. — Trilobite (Talk) 13:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to deal with a revert/renaming situation

There's a lot of trouble now at Devil's Lake. Originally, there was an article at Devils Lake, which is now at Devil's Lake (North Dakota).

An editor, DreamGuy, posted a comment back in January on Talk:Devils Lake (now Talk:Devil's Lake (North Dakota) citing a need for a disambiguation page between the few Devils Lakes in the country (of which the North Dakota one, the subject of the original article, was the largest). Nobody noticed it or commented on it. Today, he took it upon himself to move the page to Devils Lake (North Dakota), placing a disambiguation page at Devils Lake. He then placed the link to a Devils Lake (Wisconsin) at the top of this page (a page that still has not been made), citing Google hits as the reason it is more significant.

I moved this new disambiguation page to Devils Lake (disambiguation) and then redirected Devils Lake to Devils Lake (North Dakota), believing that the 200 mi2 lake to be the most likely page people looking for Devils Lake would want. DreamGuy reverted the changes and accused me of editing in bad faith.

At this point another editor of the North Dakota article suggested moving the Devils Lake (North Dakota) article to Devil's Lake to sidestep the controversy. I did this and was satisfied after a short rewrite of the disambiguation at Devils Lake.

Then DreamGuy renamed all the other Devils Lakes to Devil's Lake, placing a new disambig page at Devil's Lake and brought the controversy back up again. Now I am concerned that I can't revert the changes without losing edit histories.

What should I do here?! --Alexwcovington (talk) 18:03, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • This is confusing. Can you just list where stuff used to be and where it is now? Mgm|(talk) 18:25, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Sorry; here's the general idea.
Devils Lake ==> Devils Lake (North Dakota) ==> Devil's Lake ==> Devil's Lake (North Dakota)
Talk:Devils Lake ==> "" ==> "" ==> ""
Devils Lake (disambiguation) ==> Devils Lake ==> Devil's Lake

--Alexwcovington (talk) 19:47, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The summary above isn't accurate. The third editor did not suggest moving the one in North Dakota to Devil's Lake (with apostrophe) to get around the controversy, he was pointing out that it was spelled wrong and should have an apostrophe. Turns out both lakes have apostrophes. So, once again, Alexwcovington tried to make the one in North Dakota be the primary article and ignore all the other Devil's Lakes as insignificant, when the Devil's Lake in Wisconsin is a prime tourist destination and has far, far more Google hits that the one in North Dakota. I thought that one should have the main Devil's Lake article name with the North Dakota one and others being the ones with parantheses, and still think so based upon notability, but did the disambig page as an attempted compromise. That wasn't good enough and now we have the editor above complaining, making snide remarks about the actual size of the body of water involved (like that makes any difference for notability). At this point nothing really needs to be moved around, although a some pages that are unneeded (like Devils Lake (disambiguation)) could be deleted as pointless. DreamGuy 20:20, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

  • And here's the full list of pages that got moved around:
Devils Lake (old one, solely about the lake in North Dakota) ==> Devils Lake (North Dakota) ==> Devil's Lake ==> Devil's Lake (North Dakota)
Talk:Devils Lake ==> "" ==> "" ==> ""
Devils Lake (new one, the disambig page) ==> Devils Lake (disambiguation) ==> Devils Lake ==> Devil's Lake

As I said, this looks like the best compromise, regardless of whether Alexwcovington likes the fact that the North Dakota one doesn't get to be the main and only one at Devil's Lake this way. I'd rather have the Wisconsin one be the main one, which I think is fully justified, but since he seems unwilling to go that way, the disambig page is clearly the best way to go. DreamGuy 20:30, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)


DreamGuy is wildly overstating the importance of an article that does not exist. See Talk:Devil's Lake (North Dakota) to follow this situation more closely. --Alexwcovington (talk) 06:20, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] category dilemma

I've created a category for categories which are not self-inclusive and can't decide whether the category should include itself or not. Please see category:categories that are not self-inclusive. Can somebody perhaps write a bot that would add and remove the category endlessly? I suppose that might have a minor performance impact. -- Rick Block 20:18, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is writing my professional knowledge copyright violation?

I'm about to contribute some articles about medical science (I'm a doctor) but I'm not sure about what constitutes "copyright violation". Specifically, if I write an article in my very own words, format and style but using the information that I've found in books and scientific papers, would that be copyright infringment? --Antono 23:01, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, that would not cause any copyright problems. Information cannot be copyrighted; only the wording that expresses the information can be copyrighted. If you write using your own words, you're fine. You should, however, cite the sources you used (see Wikipedia:Cite your sources) in writing your article Isomorphic 23:11, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Incidentally, you're probably confusing copyright issues with plagiarism, which is taking someone else's ideas and using them as your own. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not an academic journal, none of the ideas or research here are original. All of our information is either taken from other sources, or is common knowledge in some community. Isomorphic 23:17, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
And please do cite your sources. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:28, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
My professional knowledge is all over Wikipedia. When I'm writing things that are "common knowledge" in my field, such as the entire contents of fluid dynamics, which I obviously learned either from a professor or from books, I don't even bother referencing it. If I actually pull out a book to check the correct form for, for instance, the Navier-Stokes equations, then I reference the book. I don't consider anything I write to be copyright violations, though nothing is my own work (as it should be, per Wikipedia: No original research). That's just my outlook, hope it helps. moink 23:30, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you all, I think I'm covered now! --Antono 12:51, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Welcome, Antono -- always good to have more doctors here! Please be sure to check out WikiProject_Clinical_medicine and the Doctors' mess to meet other doctors who are helping to improve our medical articles. — Catherine\talk 01:57, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The history of wikipedia categories

I know that categories have been around since late May 2004.

Where are the discussions that led to the current implementation of categories in the MediaWiki software? (And why this particular system was chosen.)

I found some old proposals:

...But I don't know where the discussions are. What caused one system to be chosen over another? (Presumably ease of implementation.) - Pioneer-12 10:15, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Printing problems

When I print an article, the spacing of letters is messed up. Letters get printed over each other and it makes "the loss of far-away Jerusalem" look like "the loss ofar-away Jerusalem" (from Crusade article).

Also it isn't obvious that the stylesheet changes when printing. I was searching for ages to find a link to the printable version.

  • What OS and printer are you using? Mgm|(talk) 07:43, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • And, equally important, what browser (since that's what's interpretting the CSS). As for the "looking for a printable version" problem, perhaps you'd like to join the discussion at Bugzilla:1577 about how to make this more obvious/"intuitive" - IMSoP 18:08, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is the difference between a policy and a guideline?

What is the difference between a policy and a guideline? - Pioneer-12 13:07, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Policies are rules you must adhere to. Guidelines are suggested rules that usually aren't enforced. Mgm|(talk) 15:56, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • There isn't a completely clear distinction, since many things we call "policy" now evolved as guidelines. Mgm is basically correct, though: things we call "policy" are usually less negotiable, less likely to change, and more likely to be strictly enforced. Isomorphic 17:13, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • A good example of policy would be neutral point of view. This is Wikipedia's overall editorial policy for articles, and while it's open to some interpretation, the basic principle is not negotiable. Ignoring it over a long period could get you banned. By contrast, anything in the manual of style is a guideline. People will often correct your articles if you don't follow the style guide, but you can ignore it if you have a good reason. Not only that, but the style manual is open to revision. Isomorphic 07:05, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • "You need a decent argument for not following a guideline. You need a hell of a good argument for not following a policy", is the rule I always use... Shimgray 18:57, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quoting blocks of text

What's the best method for quoting blocks of text on talk pages? - Pioneer-12 14:44, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Indent using a colon, and put the text in italics using '' (two apostrophes.) Isomorphic 07:10, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Major problem with editing.

I attempted a major rewrite of an article and the result was a loss of most of the formatting and a lot of the links. I did preview it first and it looked O.K., but when I came to save it, the problems were obvious. I suppose I should have dome it in small sections rather than in one go. Can you help? The article is "North American Man/Boy love association".

Hmmm, that's odd. Did you pasted the text straight from the article window into your text editor? That could cause the loss of wiki coding. Mgm|(talk) 08:33, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, that's exactly what I did. I'll avoid that method in future!

[edit] Song lyrics

I just spotted, among new articles, Master Of Puppets (song). This article has the song's lyrics included in it. I checked some other song articles, and I see that sometimes the lyrics are included, sometimes they're linked to externally. I wonder if we have a guideline regarding this? Should I get rid of song lyrics where they are present and provide an external link, or vice versa? Thanks. Solver 15:58, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Copyrighted song lyrics cannot be included in Wikipedia. Remove them. Non-copyrighted or otherwise free lyrics belong at Wikisource. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:30, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How are links to lyric sites here on Wikipedia acceptable then? I assume it's because the lyric sites have the appropriate copyright notices? Solver 16:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Because we won't be the ones risking a DMCA takedown notice. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:27, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That makes sense but it's a bit irritating. Lyrics are the best thing to have in an encyclopedia, it's the song itself. But the lawsuits involved would be massive. What about if the writers have published the lyrics like in a greatest hits book or sheet music guide, could they be quoted in that case?Simondrake 04:18, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Odd "discussion" links

I noticed this just now; a Wikipedia page I wasn't logged into, using Internet Explorer, had an odd detail - rather than the tab reading "discussion", it read "babble". Opening another article, for comparison, "discussion" appears as normal. (Both are normal articles, no discussion pages existing). See the screenshot, showing two articles with the different tabs.[screenshot deleted to avoid clutter]

Any idea what caused this? I'm baffled... Shimgray 21:13, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Could it be that one page is still showing a cached version that was pranked for April Fool's last Friday? Mgm|(talk) 21:38, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
That'd explain it - I don't think I'd noticed the prank the first time round... Shimgray 18:34, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting to earlier version

I notice that the current version of the article on Narasimhavarman_I, has a number of incorrect references in the War with the Chalukyas section. Someone seems to have confused the fictional account of the war/characters involved mentioned in the historical novel Sivagamyin sabatham with the actual incidents that took place. Can some admin revert back to the earlier version of the article? Calvinkrishy 07:01, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page counters

This is probably an obvious question, but being relatively new and not having seen it answered elsewhere from hunting around I thought I'd better ask.

Can articles have page counters on to count the number of times they are read? And if not, would this be a good proposal?

The motivation being that if you create a new article, particularly on an obscure topic, then for vanity reasons it is of interest to see whether and how often people go and read it. Assuming that some people do turn out to read it, this is a motivation to write more articles, rather than be left with the impression that in the absence of any feedback (e.g. edits by others to your article) your article has been entirely ignored and might as well not have been written.

(On the other hand, I can see that some may argue that page counters would encourage the writing of low-quality articles by shallow people who are less interested in the furtherance of the greater good and the expansion of world knowledge, than in vainly watching the page counters on their articles tick up occasionally. People, that is, such as myself.) Ben Finn 22:28, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I highly doubt there is an existing mechanism to do this, and I suspect the developers would resist the notion on performance grounds if nothing else. Most of the pages are cached. Any content that would change with each reference (like a page counter) would mean a page including it would always have to be regenerated. Rather than number of times read, you can look for references from other articles (from the "what links here" link on each page). -- Rick Block 23:50, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is support for page counters in mediawiki (witness, for example, the bottom of a page on Memory Alpha). But indeed, the squid caches that sit in front of the apaches entirely thwart this on Wikipedia, and indeed the developers turned the feature off, long ago. There is a static page somewhere that someone built from an analysis of the squid logs (I don't know where it is, but I think Raul654 made it). If memory serves, the top pages were List of sex positions and George W. Bush. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 00:01, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The reason they were turned off originally was that the implementation requires a database write for every article read. It's not an efficient use of resources. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:31, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to Request

This is liz1848, and I'd like to know how one goes about requesting an article. Please send me messages. Thank you.

Easy - you just list it in the appropriate section in Wikipedia:Requested articles. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 16:22, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Alternatively, you could also track down an Wikipedian active in the field of the article's subject matter and ask them to write one. What would you like an article about? Mgm|(talk) 18:07, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] specific date for recent changes search?

hi...i am unable to locate a specific date for the recent changes page...i thought i was able to do this in the past...ie. i am interested in seeing the recent changes for april 1st. thank you for your help!

Here you go. To see more, I think you'll have to edit the URL: you'll see the format of the URL at the end is YYYYMMDDhhmmssJohn Fader (talk | contribs) 16:46, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That link doesn't seem to do it for me even though I tried several variations at the end of the URL. I'm not the original questioner but wanted to do that before. hydnjo talk 18:30, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, you're right. It shows changes from that date, but not changes to that date, which is what you want. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 19:32, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

thanks much....but for some reason i am being silly and only can see the past 500 changes for today when i click on the link you sent...ie. at the bottom of the page only goes to 16:48 which i am guessing is just today? is there a 'next page' or something that i am missing? ekkkk!!!! (and btw why does the time reference 16:--, reykjavik time?) thanks again!

is there anyway to do this? should 'normally' it show me recent changes to specific dates? is it just a glitch in the system today?

[edit] HTML code

How do I use HTML code in the editor? I think it would be really cool if I could create interactive posts with JavaScript, but the SCRIPT tag won't work! If it is impossible, can you please make it possible? Thank you!

[edit] Some tags do work

I have noticed that some, although few HTML tags actually do work.

Javascript is turned off (for ordinary articles) on purpose - the possibilities of people doing horrible things with it is too high, and it's impossible to filter out the bad stuff. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 19:37, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Here's some info on what HTML tags work in wikitext: m:Help:HTML in wikitext FreplySpang (talk) 20:28, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problem user Brian0918

This user keeps trying to alter the article on the protein titin with some nonsense about it being the longest word in English (when the sequence is expressed in the full chemical name notation). Literally, no one (other than Brian0918) cares about the full chemical name of proteins. Yet seconds after I try to move this nonsense out of the main article into a 'See also' section, he reverts the article. Is there any way to deal with wacky users? was unsigned, but added by User:Lord Kelvin

Seems a reasonable enough addition to me. I'm not a chemist, and that is by far the most interesting thing in the article for me. If it is true, I would vote to keep it. Remember, Wikipedia should be technically accurate but is not written for a pure professional audience. If you feel strongly about this, the best place to initiate a discussion is the talk page for the article, so a consensus can be reached. I think revert wars are considered a bad thing. Notinasnaid 04:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just looked at the edits there. I have to say that Brian0918 seems to be making plenty of good edits that you keep trying to change for unconvincing reasons. From my viewpoint you are the whacky one on that page. DreamGuy 05:11, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Leaving aside who's wacky, you can check Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. My advice would be to discuss on the talk page as a first step. Meelar (talk) 05:17, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Edit Summary parser

I've seen it in action, but I'm not sure how it works and what it will and won't do. Where can I find such info? Alphax τεχ 10:02, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you mean "what wiki markup does and doesn't work in edit summaries", the documentation (such that it is) is at m:Help:Edit summary. I think that's all there is. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 10:24, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ah, so links are the only thing that is parsed. Thanks. Alphax τεχ 09:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How do I avoid a nomination for deletion?

An article I wrote was given the status of needing "cleaned up." However, the complaint was that I failed to explain why the article was significant. In any case, I have updated the article, explaining why it is indeed significant. Now, how do I remove the ugly warning at the top of the article?

Thanks

E. Jurgaite

  1. Always sign your messages (with four tildes: ~~~~). It's also a good idea to provide a link to the article about which you're asking.
  2. The question in the text is easily answered: delete the warning. Only do so, however, if you're sure that you've done what was required. Following this page history to your user page (I've left a Welcome message there, incidentally), and then to your contributions history, I suppose that you're talking about Jeff Cook Effect. I'm afraid that there's a lot left to do.
    • There are actually two templates; one concerns notability, the other is a general clean-up notice. There's some overlap between them, though. You haven't presented the article in Wikipedia style (look at other articles to see what I mean, or look at the Help pages linked to in the templates), which includes telling the reader (in the first sentence) what the article is about. The phrase 'Jeff Cook Effect' doesn't appear until the end of the first paragraph, and isn't bolded.
    • Also, you haven't formatted the list of external links properly, and quite a lot of your internal links don't go directly to their subjects, but have to be redirected. You also start the article with a (the only) section heading, in the form of a question.
  3. The question in your section heading here is very different, of course — though presenting the article well, and in Wikipedia style, will probably help. The main thing is that the article should be appropriate for an encyclopædia (it's about something real and significant, for a start). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for you help.

I have since updated the article on the Jeff Cook Effect. Could you take a look at it again to make sure everything's formatted properly? Also, thanks for your welcome message. Ejurgaite 17:03, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Occasional internal link problems on my home machine, see text?

On my home machine (Apple G3 with OS 10.2.8) and Firefox 1.0.1 (not reproducible on PC with Windows XP at work also with Firefox or IE either) the edit-section (edit this page is fine) and other links on some pages (e.g. 1996) sometimes go to the Japanese page for 1996 (interwikis back, so seems to be right) (edit: using Cologne Blue!!! and to other interwiki pages. There are other problems with Mac Firefox, Cologne Blue etc. as also wrongly put on talk page.) for example. This is only occasional)... Schissel : bowl listen 13:31, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Automated VFDing

I'm going to move this discussion now to Talk:VFD, where, I suppose, it has belonged all along. Please continue any further discussion there now. —msh210 13:56, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Old contributions

I recently registered and all of my old contributions aren't showing up under my account's contributions list. Is this normal, or do I have to make any changes to my old contributions? There's like 500 of those... :l -- Matharvest 21:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • There used to be a Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit page, but it appears inactive... — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:32, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • A look at many of the requests indicates that almost all want only a very few (10 or 20) edits attributed (one wanted two attributed), and given that each assignment takes several minutes of developer time, I'm not surprised the developers can always find something better to do. I think if we set a threshold (of say 50 edits) before we'd bother a developer then the developers would be more likely to feel that it's a worthwhile way to spend their time. Matharvest's IP, by contrast, has about 280 edits; that's enough to justify prioritisation, I think. Hmm, I'll propose this (and some other work-reducing suggestions) on Wikipedia talk:Changing attribution for an edit. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 14:31, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Because there's always a chance of several people sharing an IP adress, old contributions aren't automatically reattributed. You can post a link to them from your user page while you wait for reattribution by a developer. Mgm|(talk) 08:19, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
    • Yeah, that's what I was thinking it was. Cheers to the three of you for the insight. -- Matharvest 03:20, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Somebody just erased 3/4 of article

Pope John Paul II article has been grossly altered within the last few minutes and 3/4 of it erased. This is wrong, no matter what a person's beliefs.

Thanks for reporting this and don't worry, we're onto it. This kind of vandalism happens all the time, but as that article is watched particularly closely at the moment any blanking of the kind you mention is likely to be reverted within seconds. See Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version if you want to know how to do this yourself. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:14, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting

I know this might seem a bit basic, but how do you revert back to certain version? Thought of copy&paste, but that might be a bit of a work.... thanks WB 02:05, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

There's a FAQ on this, see Wikipedia:How_to_revert_a_page_to_an_earlier_version. -- Rick Block 02:41, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Citing sources

What should i do if the book i have in hand does not have an ISBN number? i could find the book in Library of Congress catalogue. Here is the info given:

LC Control Number: 84195488 Type of Material: Text (Book, Microform, Electronic, etc.) Brief Description: Yu, Peiming. Qi Jiguang / Yu Peiming zhu. Di 1 ban. [Nanjing shi] : Jiangsu ren min chu ban she : Jiangsu sheng xin hua shu dian fa xing, 1983. 3, 90 p., [1] leaf of plates : ill., port. ; 19 cm. CALL NUMBER: DS753.6.C424 Y8 1983 China -- Request in: Asian Reading Room (Jefferson, LJ150) -- Status: Not Charged

What is the info i should include in my reference citation then? --Plastictv 09:50, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

At a minimum, the author and title of the book. I would also put in the date and the publisher. ISBN is nice but not crucial; it's not used in academic citations as far as I know. Isomorphic 13:37, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks alot! :) --Plastictv 14:57, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Skin

Most user modified skins are buggy in IE (I can't use much else). I'm especially said about how the Cheops skin renders. I'd love to use it while editing Mummy articles and such. Also, is it possible to code rounded corners in skins for IE? Mgm|(talk) 09:51, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

IE doesn't support the forthcoming CSS3 rounded-corner stuff (mozilla does, using prespec markup). There is, however, "Nifty Corners" -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 11:00, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia in the news

I've made my nextaris news tracker available for viewing, could anyone add missing mentions of Wikipedia to the press pages? Mgm|(talk) 12:28, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article on the Bari.

I authored the article on the "Bari"--see in Ethnic Groups of Africa. I would like to place it on a page by itself, and have the name "Bari" index in the appropriate list along with its peers. I have tried the editing tutorial in vain.

Thanks

The relevant help file for this is Help:Starting_a_new_page (which has information about creating a new article, different from editing an existing article), but there's a complication. The complication is that there is already an article named Bari, and it is not about the ethnic group of Africa (it's about the city in Italy). This situation is actually fairly common and has another help page, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation. If you read these help files and need more guidance, please let me know on my talk page and I'll be glad to help. -- Rick Block 04:24, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User pages

I was wondering what the policy is on creating user pages, as in, personal sandboxes, storage pages, archives, etc. How many can be made? What kinds can be made? Etc. Thanks! --Holdek 03:33, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines concerning this are at Wikipedia:User_page. -- Rick Block 04:05, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Favour for me.

My Dears,

I want to know which ragam was to playback in a wedding VIDEO CD. And tell me the title of the album IN CD.

And tell me where i will get.

Please contact me to msfelix@rediffmail.com or msfelix@hotmail.com.

Awaiting for the mail.

Do this favour for me.

Thanks from Felix.S.Stephenson

(Formatting fixed by MacGyverMagic)

I honestly cannot understand what this question is asking. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:18, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My brother is trying to send me photos and my computer is not posting them. He also is sending me a video game. Does my Gateway accept photos and will it accept the video game?

[edit] Translation source note

[1] In this case I found the author credited the German wikipedia for the text. I haven't ever seen this practiced so I removed it assuming it wasn't part of wikipedia convention. Of course I could be wrong - what is your opinion? Lotsofissues 20:33, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I did something similar on European tree frog when I translated the first few sections and it was also removed. I guess, it's best to leave a note crediting other wikipedias on the article's talk page if needed. Mgm|(talk) 22:44, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images showing characters in various scripts and font copyrights

I came across the article on Tamil language which uses two images that *might* have been generated using copyrighted fonts -- Image:Tamil alphabet chart.png and Image:AayuthaEzhuthu.PNG. Do such images violate the copyright of the creator of the font unless permission is granted? Especially, the latter image might just be one of the glyphs in some font. -- Paddu 20:49, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • The font only seems to represent a standard Tamil alphabet. Surely that can't be copyrighted. Any Tamil speakers around? Mgm|(talk) 22:46, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
Most functional fonts cannot be copyright... the letterforms themselves that is. Computer fonts are copyright via the software code that makes them work, but it's been a long tradition in the field to take printed out letter forms and code them yourself into new fonts, which, while often inferior due to spacing problems, is legal. Display fonts (dingbats, or particularly fancy fonts) can be copyrighted as artistic, but there's no way there's a copyright problem with the images mentioned above. DreamGuy 23:39, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
BTW does that also mean Image talk:Telugu Script Acharya.jpg is OK? -- Paddu 06:42, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Mgm, there were a lot of things that I thought "Surely that can't be copyrighted" but that can be. And what can be copyrighted varies between nations.... -- Paddu 06:42, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Mgm, I am a Tamilian. -- Paddu 09:09, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
So, is there anything special about the letters you don't find in a regular Tamil alphabet. If there's some creativity involved in creating the font it can be copyrighted. Mgm|(talk) 09:24, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
Well there would always be variation in the thickness of various strokes, the angle of the strokes, aspect ratios, etc. between fonts. That's what counts as creativity, right? And how to define "regular Tamil alphabet"? Probably equal width of all strokes can be considered regular, but what are the "regular" angles, aspect ratios, etc.? That is why I asked the question. What I would assume is having a large text that uses some font only because some font has to be used to display it and doesn't highlight any specific features of the font can be considered fair use of the font but I'm doubtful about showing one particular glyph in a font magnified. Note that it is possible that drawing three circles is so trivial, the uploader drew that himself and didn't use any fonts in the process. I have myself drawn rather crude Devanagari glyph-sequences without using any fonts: Image:Proper-vi-in-hindi.png and Image:Improper-vi-in-hindi.png. -- Paddu 11:31, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Background Colours in Tables

We're having some problems with Template:British political parties. It seems an attribute like bgcolor="#fc0" works in some browsers but not IE 6.0 while bgcolor="yellow" does. Is this documented anywhere, please? --Cavrdg 08:57, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Try using the full 6-digit number: bgcolor="#ffcc00". It seems that IE will reject the 3-digit number. Zzyzx11 | Talk 15:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • #RGB is only valid when used in CSS, so IE is actually conforming to the standard better than Firefox here. (Ironically, it only works in Firefox in standards compliance mode.) Goplat 16:34, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help with the image copyrights

Hi, I'm very confused about the copyright stuff for images. I've gone through the pages related to it and thus the confusion. I am taking my own images and uploading them to wikipedia. Now if copied and used somewhere else on the internet I would like my name to be mentioned. I'm also worried about somebody else using my images, claiming that the images are theirs and making an issue about me using their images. How do I solve this problem. If a problem exists in the first place.

thankz --Viren 16:33, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

  • There's a Creative Comments Share Alike Licence that requires the person who uses the picture to credit the source and distribute it under the same licence you're using... Now if only I could remember that thing. You could ask User:Quadell.
  • Sounds to me like you are after something like {{cc-by-sa-2.0}}. That way anyone can use your work, including for commercial use (you need to allow this to contribute to Wikipedia) but they have to credit you and they can't release any derivative works they might produce under a more restrictive licence. All you need to do is slap a copyright notice and this template on the image description page and you're sorted. — Trilobite (Talk) 18:53, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User contributions data

Sometimes I see a User comment that they've made nnnnn edits or that their 10,000th edit was on mm/dd/yyyy. Is there an "easy" way to get this data (other than messing around with the "User Contributions" URL's offset and such)? hydnjo talk 19:00, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes — here. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:14, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OK good. From there it should be easy to find one's nnnnth edit. ;-) hydnjo talk 19:35, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Well, it makes it a lot easier to pin down that edit by using the "User Contributions" offset; that's apparently a memory-intensive thing and is discouraged, but once you know your total edits it should only take the one lookup. Shimgray 19:38, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It seems like an OK way to do it. I wonder why it's discouraged. Can't be that many users being so nitpicky all at once. ;-) hydnjo talk 19:45, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ah... but imagine how tricky it'd be if you didn't know how many edits you had. You'd have to fiddle the user-contributions thing quite a few times to figure it out, and then do the offset... Shimgray 17:17, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Sorry — I was rushing, and didn't read your question properly. I suspect that most users know when and what their 10,000th edit is because they were watching for it. I'll be watching out for mine in two or three weeks. (By the way, unless you plan to edit twenty-four hours a day, at breakneck speed, I'd not worry about it for a while yet...) Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 20:46, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
For sure. ;-) hydnjo talk

[edit] How do i find link to a subject?

I found similar titles with variants. The title varies with lack of s'es. I found an article that has the information. So I want to check the articles which have linked the wrong titles and correct them by changing to the correct article. And I also want to delete or in this case call for deletion. So how can I find articles linked the wrong ones? And I want to move the article, I mean change the name of the article. Thank you... — Jack in the box 19:26, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think you're looking for Wikipedia:Redirects, which has more information. Feel free to reply here if you need more help. Meelar (talk) 19:39, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
Well, I really would like to change the name and correct the articles that linked the wrong titles. Redirect will keep the extra titles. Isn't it better just to delete the wrong ones and correct the links? Well I'm a newbie so, if you say redirect I'll go with redirect. If you tell me how to do it, I'll correct every article. — Jack in the box 19:53, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Usually, we keep redirects. If you think an article is at the wrong title, you can move it using the "Move page" tab at the top of the article--that will create a redirect from the old title to the new one. There's really no need to correct the articles linking to the old title. Hope that helps, Meelar (talk) 19:57, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
Okay. I'll go with redirects. I found the articles on Special:Shortpages (#26,29,30,31) and wanted to correct them. So if I'll redirect them. What will happen? Anyway I'll go with redirects. Thank you.. — Jack in the box 20:06, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category Shortcuts?

Hey, do the category shortcuts work for anyone else? They don't work for me. For example, if I type "CAT:CSD" into the search box, I will get the article text back for Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but not the actual list of articles in the category, making them pretty worthless to me. Is this just on my side? If it is a general problem, should we just remove all of the category shortcuts? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 03:13, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

CAT:CSD doesn't work for me (are there others?). Category redirects don't work in general, so I'm not particularly surprised. -- Rick Block 03:31, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It used to work for me back in December when I did a lot of speedy deletions, but I had the same problem yesterday. In fact, I couldn't even find any tagged articles except the regular ones that can't be deleted even after a cache purge. Mgm|(talk) 08:59, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
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