Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 39

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[edit] Archive of past questions

Contents

[edit] January 14

[edit] Redirects

Why does William H. Jackson redirect to William Jackson when the code tells it to redirect to William Henry Jackson? Or is my computer just not working? Zafiroblue05 02:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

It should be working fine. Looking at the history, the redirect to William Henry Jackson was made 6 minutes before you made this post, so perhaps you got redirected whilst on the old page, but then when you had a look at the William H. Jackson page with redirecting off, it had been changed to redirect to William Henry Jackson. I hope that makes sense! - Akamad 03:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Default background colour

I want to design a portal with a white background coulor on the German Wikipedia site. Usually the default whole background colour is defined by the software and can only be changed with personal sylesheets (user/monobook.css). I saw on this site that there is not the default coulor being used. Is there a way to override the default settings and change the colour? I hope somebody can help. Thanks --De.Doit 07:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Google has failed me.

I was wondering why some of my articles that I have posted on Wikipedia don't appear when I type in the article title on google is this a google problem or is it a wikipedia problem or other thanks. --Coachpatato49 09:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Maybe google hasn't had time to find them? Kappa 09:12, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
It could be because Google is still crawling. If they are fairly new articles they may take a while to appear in Google's search results. The more articles linking to that article means you'll have a better chance of it being crawled. --Thorpe | talk 17:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] image copyright question..

This person has pictures scanned in from Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, first published in 1789. However, the Selborne page says the book is still in print; anyone know if the images are public domain? -Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 09:28, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Someone else maybe able to clarify this, but according to the link you gave those images are from an edition that was copywrited in 1853. Public domain says a work is in the public domain if:
  • The work was created and first published before January 1, 1923, or at least 95 years before January 1 of the current year, whichever is later;
  • The last surviving author died at least 70 years before January 1 of the current year;
  • No Berne Convention signatory has passed a perpetual copyright on the work; and
  • Neither the United States nor the European Union has passed a copyright term extension since these conditions were last updated. (This must be a condition because the exact numbers in the other conditions depend on the state of the law at any given moment.)
I don't know about that last two points, but the first two certainly seem to apply, even if the book is still in print. BTW, that link looks like a great resource. Thanks--◀Pucktalk▶ 13:00, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Remember, though, that that's "first published in the US before 1923". The terms are a little more stringent for anything first published outside the US - we can't tell for this copy - but, usefully, pre-1909 is generally safe per [1]. Shimgray | talk | 13:55, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe that the copyright date issue is "published in the US before 1923", not "first published". Rmhermen 00:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia Commons

How do you tag an image to be placed into Commons? Is there a helpdesk for Commons? - Ta bu shi da yu 09:45, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Commons is not busy enough for a separate help desk, so post any problems/questions you have on commons:COM:VP. Or here, ask questions on Wikipedia talk:Commons or Wikipedia talk:Moving images to the Commons. pfctdayelise 14:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Logged but "not logged in" error = wasted 30 minutes

I was Clicked "Move Page", Displaying message "Not logged in". but I'm Logged.

I don't know what the hell this is about......

You can help me now? I want to Normal Use. -- Korean alpha for knowledge 12:44, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Is it claiming you are not logged in while you are definitly logged in (you have your my talk, my preferences, etc, links on the top), or did it just log you out? Wikipedia has been known to sometimes log out people after a period of time, if that is the case. -- Natalya 13:30, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

::Yes. I Waiting for Another reply. --Korean alpha for knowledge 13:40, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Firefox + My Stupidity = 4 wasted hours, help?

I was editing an article, making major changes over a 4 hour period, then FF crashed and I lost everything. I've gotten past the fact that I'm an idiot and I hate Firefox, but maybe it can save me on this one. Does anyone know if there's a way to get to past page views (i.e. my multiple previews) in Firefox? Please tell me there is... otherwise I think I may cut off my fingers one by one. Scm83x 12:27, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but if you go to the history page on an article and then right-click/"Open Link in New Tab" on the dates of the revisions you want to see you will have "multiple previews." At least it seems to me that's what you're asking.--◀Pucktalk▶ 12:48, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh no, lol, I wasn't that smart. I never actually saved the article. I meant preview as in "show preview". Scm83x 12:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I just did it over again. It only took me an hour, and it was probably more efficiently written anyway. Scm83x 13:41, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cannot correct a mistake

In the article for Creaton I have put the wrong square brackets in at the end of a wikilink. Whenever I try to edit the article to fix it I get:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CLONE, expecting T_STRING in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/GlobalFunctions.php on line 1757

Help please. Saga City 13:49, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that is just a temporary bit of problem with the servers. I ran into it last night. Try again in a few minutes. BTW, I was just able to open it for editing with no problem.--◀Pucktalk▶ 14:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I still cannot open it for editing. Can someone else please fix the error? TIA Saga City 17:33, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
If you mean the internal link for civil parish, it's done.--◀Pucktalk▶ 17:43, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation page with a general topic

I recently created the dab page Quint (disambiguation). Right now, Quint links to the first article (about the Jaws character), but it would be good for it to redirect to the disambiguation page, since in this case it is not necessarily the primary topic. Right now it just has an other uses link at the top. What is the best way to go about doing this/is it even possible? The problem I see is that the initial article was named 'Quint', and not Quint (character), or something similar.

Thanks, -- Natalya 14:27, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it is possible, with help from the page move tool (a tab up near the history tab) and an admin. The procedure (which I have carried out for you) is as follows:
  1. Move Quint to Quint (Jaws character) (by using the move tool I have preserved the edit history, a requirement of GFDL)
  2. Move Quint (disambiguation) to Quint (had to delete Quint to do that, lucky I'm an admin :))
Notice that instead of having Quint redirect to Quint (disambiguation), the disambiguation page exists at Quint instead. This is what the guideline prescribes. Ask another question if you want clarification, this sort of thing is not the simplest of procedures.--Commander Keane 15:20, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Follow up. With the help of Kate's tool I have just realised that you are a newish editor. Since you have less than 100 edits you don't have the page move tool yet.--Commander Keane 15:29, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
,Aha, that would make sense why I don't see it. Wierd, it actually is there. Thanks for the explanation of how it works and for taking care of it! -- Natalya 15:33, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Mmm. Just spoke to a developer and he said that you just needed to have the account for 4 days. I was wrong about the 100 edits thing. Sorry about that--Commander Keane 15:40, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
No worries, it's good to know about it. -- Natalya 18:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't we have a policy on nudity pics in articles

Ran across an iffy picture in an article and I seem to remember that we do. Does anyone know?--Dakota ~ ε 23:23, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I believe the policy you are referring to is Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors. - Akamad 23:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I know about that. I remember now, it's something to do with NOT SAFE WORK. It was a ramdom page (I go through them once a day to wikify, cleanup looking for orphans)and I am just not sure if full frontal is OK in articles. If it is fine, because personally it does not distrub me. When I don't know I ask questions. Thank you for your help.--Dakota ~ ε 23:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
We seem to have reached a consensus that nudity is acceptable where it is relevant and not gratuitous, but not acceptable when it isn't. So while we (largely) don't censor, equally we're not running a porno archive either. So if you were to go to an article about a sex act, sex toy, porn star, or intimate bodypart, then you're going to see something that's not worksafe. Even then, we've been pretty restrained: the sex toy articles don't show them being used, the pornstar articles generally show portraits rather than action-shots, and the body part photos are about as untitilating as it's possible to get. Things like bukkake or oral sex either have no image or some really tame drawings. So really the chance of someone accidentally chancing upon a non-worksafe image is fairly low; if you're browsing about electrical components or statistics or Jane Austen you're really unlikely to stumble into a nudie article. The "random article" issue you cite is an exception, as is going through stuff like cleanup (which is essentially random). At various times people have proposed enhancing the random page functionality (although they mostly don't want to see dull things like unimproved Rambot articles). To do this (to preclude non-worksafe content) we'd have to have a consensus for, and a concerted effort toward implementing, a means of tagging (probably using categories) articles and images which fall into classes which a searcher might wish to exclude. This is unlikely to happen (if anything there's been a hardening of opinion against schemes like this) as folks feel firstly that any classification system is hopelessly subjective (is homosexuality worksafe? Is Lewinsky scandal?), and there's a clear suspicion that while classification is itself not censorship, it's a vital enabling factor for censorship. Personally I never edit Wikipedia from a work machine. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Took me awhile to get back, I am editing at work. Thanks for the information. The article is about a male porn star and I have seen the Peter North and John Holmes articles (This one may be less well known) and their images. I am not overly concerned just making sure I understand.Thank you.--Dakota ~ ε 02:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 15

[edit] hypen usage

do you use a hypen when writing out time. I am trying to figure out if when you write out time, for example six thirty in the evening, do you use a hypen betwee six and thirty. Is it six-thirty or is it six thirty?

I've learned it as this: use six-thirty, unless you have, say, 6:35. Then say six thirty-five. Daltonls 01:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirecting

I can't seem to figure out exactly how to redirect a page. I've read several help pages, but it doesn't make much sense. Daltonls 01:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The syntax is #REDIRECT [[Article you want the redirect to go to]]. As far as I am aware, it needs to be the first line on the page that you are redirecting from. Any leading spaces before the "#" will cause the redirect to fail. When you save the redirect page, the Wikimedia software adds &redirect=no to the URL that you go to, so you will not follow the redirect, but instead see the result of your edit. Removing the &redirect=no from your URL bar and hitting return should send you to the page you set the redirect to go to. Hope this helps, but if it doesn't, post the page you're having problems trying to redirect and I will have a look. --GraemeL (talk) 02:22, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I had noticed that, and tried it, but when I previewed it, it just showed it as a numbered list, so I thought I must have been doing something wrong. Daltonls 04:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
It shows up in the Preview like that, which can be rather confusing for those new to the process, but it does work when saved. Dismas|(talk) 15:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] linking to a page that doesn't exist yet

i made some edits to the discography on the page for Corwood Industries. i added the most recent jandek album, khartoum, to the list of albums. since there was already an article on the city opf Khartoum, the page automatically linked to that article. how do you go about setting a link to a page that doesn't exist yet so that people aren't going to be directed to the Khartoum city page?

Well, it seems the article for the album has already been created, so for the link to the album, Khartoum, just add "(album)" to the end of it, as such: [[Khartoum (album)|Khartoum]] Daltonls 02:01, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wiki linking to different names

Is there a way to link to wikipage different than the text, in the same way one does an external link?

E.G. I've a "favorite movies" section on my user page, and I'd prefer to link to "American Beauty (1999 film)" using the only the text "American Beauty."

Is this possible with doing an external link style, e.g. American Beauty? --Elindstr 06:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[[American Beauty (1999 film)|American Beauty]] will do the trick. It's called "piping". enochlau (talk) 06:52, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks =) --Elindstr 07:10, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stopping Deletion of article

I recently posted an article "Firearm" under "Ultraverse" and it was deleted. This is the entry on the deletion log: 07:15, January 15, 2006 Postdlf deleted "Firearm (comics)" (unwikified text dump, substantially copied from http://www.sysabend.org/champions/gnborh/text/Firearm-jl.txt). As I had written that article in the first place, I believed I could post it here as well. How might I be able to get this article to stay up without getting deleted?

  • The first trouble is that it is difficult for us to know that you wrote the original version, so it is difficult for us to confirm that you have the rights to upload it here under GFDL. The second question would be whether or not it is text that belongs as an encylopedia article. I'm not sure I understand what it is. Is it a character in a role playing game? Johntex\talk 07:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, the original article is listed as being posted by my name, which under my profile, is listed in my email address. The character is a comic book character, for whom I wrote a champions character sheet for and submitted to that website. As the article was one I submitted for free, I don't see how the encyclopedia can claim ownership.
    • It's a character you created, so it won't be suitable for wikipedia even if the copyright issue is resolved. Although wikipedia has many fictional characters, they are all supposed to be 'notable' elements of the work they feature in. Kappa 08:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
    • It's a Malibu Comics character created by James Robinson for Malibu's Ultraverse line. It was the title character in Firearm, a comicbook series that lasted 18 issues. I created the champions character sheet, not the character. The site that I submitted the character sheet to, takes character sheets based on comicbook characters submitted by fans.

I'd say go ahead and repost it, but note in the edit summary and the talk page that you own the copyright to the text on that other website. enochlau (talk) 08:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I am relatively new at posting here, which is why I am asking all these questions. Where is the Edit Summary and the Talk Page?
    • I see you've created Firearm (comics) and you used an edit summary. The talk page is labeled "discussion", just to confuse you. I'll put a note there. Kappa 09:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Renumbering lines

Is there a way to start line numbering with a number other than 1? Using # is very sensitive as numbering restarts after every new line. I'm trying to write a section such as:

  1. Type:
bash command -r -v FileName
  1. Copy result.

etc., without numbering being reset... Thanks Gil_mo 15:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Would this work for you?
  1. Type:
    bash command -r -v FileName
  2. Copy result.
  • There is a way to do it without my "workaround", but I don't know it off the top of my head, I'd have to look around for it (it uses html code). Broken S 15:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Nice try, however I need to keep the nice formatting (frame & fill) for the bash command line. Gil_mo 15:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Try:
  1. Type:
bash command -r -v FileName
  1. Copy result.
Notice that it's a kludge, since you'll be in fact creating a new list for each item, instead of a single list. --cesarb 15:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Yep, that's the html workaround I was talking about. Man I gotta learn me some html. In this case, though, just writing the numbers could be faster. Broken S 15:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Could be faster, but would not have the exact same layout as every other list in the whole Wiki (unless you played with the CSS). I also didn't remember the exact syntax (how often do you start numbering lists at something other than 1?), but I simply looked at the official HTML 4 specification. --cesarb 15:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Mmm... still no go, first manual numbering doesn't autoindent esp. when you use ## and ###. Second, The HTML workaround doesn't seem to work with subnumbering (1.2.1 etc). If nobody can give me the proper Wiki solution for this I'll have to switch to bullets, consider myself forwarned! Gil_mo 15:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
HTML lists don't support subnumbering. Neither do Wiki lists, which are simply converted to HTML internally. There are ways to make something that, for all intents and purposes, looks like a numbered list with subnumbering, but they're all somewhat complicated. I'd recommend you just stick with <ol> or # and accept their limitations. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  1. Besides,
    1. HTML and
    2. Wiki lists
      1. do
        1. mix
        2. just
    3. fine
  2. as far as I can tell.

—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Support for Unicode fonts

Some pages here use special characters that don't appear to render in some browsers. I was having problems and thought I would just have to live with it. I finally came across information at unicode.org that helped me fix it. It was relatively trivial. Since then I have tried to find the same information in Wikipedia's <sarcasm>wonderfully organized</sarcasm> help pages. If it is there it is well hidden. My question is: Is there information in the help pages that shows how to enable special character support? If not, what would be the best place for me to add the information so that others can make the simple fix I found?--◀Pucktalk▶ 15:26, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The best place would probably be the FAQ. --cesarb 15:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I added it to the Technical FAQ and the external links on Meta:Help:Special characters.--◀Pucktalk▶ 16:03, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ¬¬¬¬\_How long are IP addresses logged and stored by Wikimedia?_/¬¬¬¬

question 1: Informations:

Could someone give me definitive answer on this?

Privacy policy says IP addresses of logged-in users are made available to people with CheckUser privileges for one week, can anyone confirm this is true?

It does NOT say that IP addresses of logged in users are deleted after one week. Presumably this means they would still be available to others, and that perhaps every IP address a user has ever used to make en edit is being logged, but only certain people can access this informations?

Please, before I make an account I would like to know this information for my own privacy

I am surprised that Wikimedia is less open about what information they log in their database

question 2:

why is information about who is collecting IP information of logged in users hidden to the public? surely this information about who has is collecting who's IP address should be made visible for anyone to see to prevent possiblity of abuses for personal gain? --168.131.46.80 16:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

As for question 1: the data is kept on the recentchanges table, and the length of time it's kept for is variable (it's at least one week, but can be more). It's a lot like the retention time of the access logs for normal websites. Only developers and people with "checkuser" access can access that information. Developers can also look at the access logs, but as they take a lot of space they are probably rotated much more often.
As for question 2: opening the log would reveal to the public the IP addresses. Consider how it's used: first you look up the user and get a list of IP addresses; then you look up the IP addresses and get a list of usernames. The correlation would be obvious looking at the log. It could also cause false accusations (you need experience to interpret the data and avoid the inevitable false positives).
Considering it all, it's not that different from most websites (where the sysop and a few trusted moderators can usually see the IP addresses of all users, to prevent abuse).
--cesarb 16:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Note on question 1: if you're not logged in and you edit an article, your edit will be tied to your IP address (on the "history" page) in perpetuity. If you would rather not have your IP address available to others, register for an account. --Quasipalm 17:19, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
The IP address information collected for logged in users is kept until it goes away. The exact time for which it is kept is not made public, partially because it varies, and partially because making this time known encourages vandals to try to game the time limit. Access to this information is strictly limited as per the privacy policy. If you don't make an account, your IP address is revealed to everyone, which is far less private than having it revealed to only the handful of people with CheckUser, m:Steward, and m:Developer rights.
Revealing the log would have several negative consequences; not only is there the correlation issue cesarb mentioned, but the mere fact that a user has been investigated might tend to put that user into suspicion unfairly. Sometimes investigations send one down blind alleys; editors should not be unfairly tarred by the mere fact that they were CheckUser'd. Kelly Martin (talk) 21:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


Reply to CesarB question 1
What determines length of time that IPs are stored in CheckUser? meta:CheckUser_Policy says one week, but you said maybe more?
is it random? what?
Are IPs logged on with tracked and logged or only each time an edit is made? Does a logged-in user have every IP they ever use available for viewing by peoples with CheckUser access or Developer?
reply to Quasipalm question 1
I know this is don't worry :) I am asking about IP storage in database and privacy for logged in users, for how long this is and exactly what data is collected
Reply to CesarB question 2
meta:Talk:CheckUser_Policy#How is such a "public" log going to look like ? has a good suggestion for making the log available either:
  1. by not displaying the IP and simply "<admin user> ran checkuser on an anonymous IP account"
    or, similar to way IPs are hidden in autoblock:
  2. by using a format similar to Special:Ipblocklist where each account including anonymous ones is assigned a individual number, and only admins can see what IP address the numbered user has
For example here is a block from that list Special:Ipblocklist with IP hidden:
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps blocked #81884 (expires 17:42, 16 January 2006) (Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "Michaelykoopoop". The reason given for Michaelykoopoop's block is: "user...".)
perhaps similar could be used on Special:Log with a Checkuser log, theoretic example:
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps got IP addresses for (anonymous) user #81884. The reason given for checking the IP address of (anonymous) user #81884 is: "to check if this is another vandal user."
or even simply:
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps ran checkuser against anonymous IP #81884 to see if the IP is or has been used by logged in users.
or
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps ran checkuser against user CesarB. The reason given is: "called me names"
Thank for helping me. -168.131.46.80 17:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
The table is called "recentchanges" for a reason. It's the same table which is used to show the Recent changes. So, it's only logged when the user does an edit. Just logging in does not add anything to that table. Since having the list of "recent" changes for edits which happened a long time ago is not very useful, the table is periodically pruned; only a developer can tell you when. There is no way to tell which IP addresses a user used to just log in.
Where can I talk to a developer to ask this question?
I still want to ask how long exactly user IPs logged in Wikimedia Foundation databases because of privacy -168.131.46.80 19:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
You can usually find them at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) or at the #wikimedia-tech IRC channel. You can also try the mailing lists, which have a higher chance of getting an answer (if you pick the right one). --cesarb 20:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
As for the public log, even with that change it still leaks information. For instance, if David Gerard looks up the IP addresses used by User:Example, then looks up the users associated with one (masked) IP address, and then looks up the IP addresses used by User:CesarB, one can easily guess that User:Example and User:CesarB have used the same IP address, when that might not be an information he's allowed to disclose. The log must be restricted exactly for privacy reasons, and so unfortunately you need to trust the users who have CheckUser access.
If you want to look at the code, CheckUser.php is where all the code for the CheckUser funcion is located, and tables.sql has the database schema.
--cesarb 18:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
That is a good point.
However would not such a thing as
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps ran checkuser against a user. The reason given is "suspect may be vandal."
and for anonymous
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps ran checkuser against an anonymous IP. The reason given is "suspect may be vandal."
This page for checkuser of course would have a warning to remind administrator that they must not say who they are making the check against in the description
If this could cause problem maybe a very private version like
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps got IPs used by a user account.
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps ran checkuser against an anonymous IP to see if matches with existing users.
or even simply
17:47, 15 January 2006, Curps ran checkuser to get IPs used by an anonymous or logged in user account.
I think it is important to make such information as public as possible taking into account privacy, to protect privacy and safeguard against maybe abuses --168.131.46.80 19:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Um, exactly what does knowing that $AbusiveArbitrator made a checkuser query tell you? How does it stop abuse? It just doesn't. [[Sam Korn]] 21:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Just to check, the original questioner is aware that it is perfectly normal for every website to log IP addresses of everybody who visits the site, right? If you visit a site, your browser automatically hands over this, and more information about you, to the server. It's part of a website administrator's basic job to be able to detect if anyone tries anything nasty, and logging details of visitors is part of that. It's only the sheer amount of data which makes it pointless for most sites to keep the data for any significant length of time. Wikipedia is actually reasonably unusual in publicly stating that this process goes on, in limiting the occasions on which it happens quite drastically, and promising to dump the data after a certain amount of time. Most websites do this stuff all the time, behind the scenes, without ever letting you know. You might have noticed recently, as I did, that it's possible to visit a site with an Amazon.com button which knows your name…when you have never visited that site before. It uses an Amazon applet which accesses your Amazon cookies, all without ever letting the hosting site in on the deal, which is reassuring once you figure out what's going on. Every time you access the Internet, you leak far more information than you might ever think. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 14:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Logs are kept forever. The CheckUser log is not stored in the database, but in a file inaccessible to the public. IP address information is stored in the recent changes cache table for X seconds, the default for which is 604800 (7 days). I'm pretty sure it's longer for our wikis, but I'd have to check. Rob Church (talk) 04:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why allow editing?

why do you allow people to edit the entries that are located in the website?

  • Hi 64.252.109.82, it's the basic principle of a wiki. If you want to know what a wiki is, just click the link. - Mgm|(talk) 18:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • To put it another way, that's where this site came from. There wasn't a big encyclopedia, then people were allowed to edit it just for fun. There was nothing, and people were allowed to create an encyclopedia. Notinasnaid 09:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 6th chief justice

The Help Desk is for questions about Wikipedia and editing articles, not for factual questions. Factual questions can be asked at the Reference desk. For your question, it's best to just read the article Chief Justice of the United States. -- Natalya 19:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] redirects

umm... i know it must say this somewhere... but how do you do redirects?

If you need to redirect a page, replace the text of the article with
#REDIRECT [[Example]]
where Example is the page to be redirected to. Ral315 (talk) 20:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
If you need addition information on redirects, take a look at Wikipedia:Redirect -- Natalya 20:26, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about IPs

Hello, I have a question. If you have an account, can administrators see your IP address? I know other editors cannot, but can admins? Thanks. 5aret 20:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The short answer is yes. I'll leave the long answer up to someone else.--◀Pucktalk▶ 21:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
The answer to your question is no, with a very limited set of exceptions. There are a handful of administrators–a selection from the Arbitration Committee–who have the ability to use the m:CheckUser tool within the wiki software. They, along with Wikimedia developers with direct access to the database, can see the IP address of logged-in users. In general, the admins with CheckUser privileges will only look up an editor's IP address if the editor is suspected of using a sockpuppet or open proxy. Returning vandals may also be investigated. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I must correct TenOfAllTrades here: editor with CheckUser need not be members of the Arbitration Committee. It's up to the Arbitration Committee to choose who the CheckUsers are, but the people chosen need not be members of the Committee. Kelly Martin (talk) 02:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Basically, there is people who can see your IP, but they won't look for it unless you're suspected of doing something seriously wrong. Staying logged in and keeping your nose clean should stop anyone from looking it up. - Mgm|(talk) 09:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

IP address information is available to developers and to those users with CheckUser permissions on each wiki. The amount of time this information is available to CheckUsers is limited, and their use of the tool is regulated according to the privacy policy of the Wikimedia Foundation, and the CheckUser policy. The former group usually only look at this sort of information in order to debug problems, trace exploits and the like (and, to be honest, aren't going to care who's who). The latter will do so if multiple accounts appear to have the same editing behaviour and are engaging in practises which breach at least some of our policies. The short answer, then, is - your information is available, but who can get at it is limited, and those people need to have a good reason for it. Rob Church (talk) 04:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Movie vs. film

I can't seem to find anything that says whether the correct word to use is "movie" or "film" when used in the title of an article? I'm guessing it's "film", but I'm not entirely sure. Daltonls

I'm not sure if there's any definite answer, but most of the disambiguation pages about movies are written as "Movie Title (film)", so you should be fine using "film". -- Natalya 04:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
The correct word to use is "film". See Wikipedia:WikiProject Films for more info on this. All of the pages that are titled "title (movie)" have been changed to "title (film)". Dismas|(talk) 16:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 16

[edit] CAN I FIND UNSOLVED MYSTERIOUS HAPPENINGS SUCH AS UNEXPLAINABLE DEATHS?

Please do not write your questions in all caps text. It is much harder to read than normal questions and frustrates reference desk personnel. Your question may be deleted if you see this notice; you should reformat it to prevent this from happening. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 01:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

As the notice above notes, questions in this format are like shouting and upset the Wikipedia:Reference desk volunteers. This is the Help desk. We are answer questions about how to use Wikipedia. Please repost this question, after taking off caps lock, at the Wikipedia Reference desk, miscellaneous section. --WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 01:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EMRG HELP

There is a lot of vandlisim at wiktionary (including page moves). There is no one with admin access to stop this on line at present. Can someone plese help (contact a steward or help revert the changes).

Gerard Foley 04:34, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

If you have access to IRC, I think it's #wikipedia at irc.freenode.net? enochlau (talk) 04:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

It's OK now. I don't have access to IRC that is why I came here. It was the only thing I could think of. Thanks, Gerard Foley 04:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

In future, you're better off posting at WP:AN/I. It should get the attention of admins much quicker. pfctdayelise 16:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] question about spam and external links

I searched Wikipedia for my web site while I was here the other and found that someone had linked a couple of TV shows to my site pages (my site is about TV and covers about 45 shows pretty extensively; it is very popular and has been around 10 years). So I said, ok, I guess I will link the other shows to my other site pages about those shows. Then later I found that my links had been deleted (even the ones that were already there!) and I was told that I was posting spam. How exactly are external links supposed to be added, then? My site has useful information and daily content about these shows. I see that Wikipedia largely links to imdb.com and tv.com Those sites are fine, but imdb.com is mostly cast and credit info, and tv.com does not cover every show extensively (some of its pages are merely an episode list and only a little information). At any rate, I thought the point of Wikipedia was to be information and useful, so shouldn't the links also be information and useful? So my question is, why is this spam, and how should the links be listed? How can I get my links back on there (at least, the ones for my best show pages)? Can someone besides me add the links, if I can't add them myself?

I have to add that the external links sections of the TV shows were very inconsistent. On some shows, they wouldn't allow any links that were not "official sites". Some of them had imdb.com and tv.com listed as "official" (which of course they're not--they're just business sites but they are not affiliated with any particular show). Most linked to tv.com and imdb.com, but some only linked to one of them. Sometimes TV Tome was listed as well as tv.com (they are the same site). Some did not list the best fan sites out there, even though they listed fan sites. Shouldn't this be consistent, at least?? And I have to wonder if IMDB and TV.com spammmed Wikipedia at some point, or did they make some kind of special deal with Wikipedia (and why can't I make that deal for my site?)???

I tried asking one of the people who told me I was blocked for spamming this question, and he didn't answer but told me to come on here...

Thanks for your help! I think Wikipedia is great and I use it all the time.

Suzanne Lanoue 72.147.104.131 05:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)Slanoue

It was inappropriate for the admin who blocked you not to explain it. You should read WP:EL for our guidelines on the matter. If you have further questions after reading that, ask me on my talk page. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 05:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
P.S. As for "special deals" we don't have any. IMDB and TV.com have been deemed to be good repositories of lots of useful information. In the gaming world there is BoardGameGeek, which has been generally accepted as a site to mass link to. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 05:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
You can find the policy on link spam at Wikipedia:Spam. Sometimes, editors and administrators will suspect someone of being a link spammer if they add links to the same site to a number of different articles without making other constructive edits. Your links are more likely to be retained if you get an account and establish a history of constructive edits. Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
The reason for the inconsistencies is that different users edit different pages, and they all have different standards. - Akamad 10:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] definition needed

I WANT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ATTRITION AND TURNOVER IN HR TERMS

Is this a question about how to use or edit Wikipedia? What article do you mean? Notinasnaid 11:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a question about Human Resources (i.e., corporate personnel office stuff), but belongs at the WP:Reference desk/Miscellaneous. alteripse 15:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

And it sounds like an assignment question at a seminar (which some may call homework). hydnjo talk 02:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amicus

Hi, I have not used the Wikipedia before and I enterd a comment on the page about "psychobabble" by Dr. Hsiung , AKA dr.bob, as to if you wanted the article deleted or not, and it did not appear. Then I clicked around and got a message that I am blocked for 24 hours for vandalism.?????????? I do not understand. I also tried to register as 'Amicus" and never received back an email with a password , so I typed in my response as to why I advocate "delete" of the article and it is not visible. Could you help me understand why this is vandalism? Perhaps there is a misunderstanding? Amicus

  • If you selected a password during your signup, you should be able to use it to sign in immediately. You only get an email if you forget your password and need a new one, or if you select it, from other Wikipedians to communicate. - Mgm|(talk) 12:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Look around and find Log in - or - create an account. Go ahead and create an account named Amicus with a password of you own choosing. That User name (Amicus) is available as I type this. Move along now, that name may be claimed by someone else if you don't do it first. hydnjo talk 03:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
      • More... Go to the top of my user page by clicking on ⇛hydnjo⇚ for some more... help. :-) hydnjo talk 04:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright tag

I am wondering if the tag Template:Malaysiancopyright is a valid tag.– Matthew A. Lockhart (talk) 14:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a very easy answer: nooooooo way. Thanks for the heads-up. *goes to investigate* pfctdayelise 16:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
OK. As Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags#Other_non-free_government_copyrights suggests, it's been depreciated. So it used to be used, we keep it around so that old images tagged using it don't break, but it shouldn't be used on anything new added to WP. pfctdayelise 16:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Measurement of time

Could anyone tell me who first invented the measurement of time. e.g. Dividing the day into hours, Dividing the year into weeks,months . —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.5.126.82 (talk • contribs).

This page is for asking questions about Wikipedia policy and practices. Your question would be better suited to the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science. In the future, please read the instructions at the top of the page. Dismas|(talk) 16:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] same name, different person

Hello. How do you add a new article/bio about someone when another entry already exists of someone else with the exact same name?

For exmple, if you look up Michael Jackson you see only the entry of pop start Michael Jackson. But what if I wanted to add the talk show host Michael Jackson too?

I know this is possibe, because with the entry "William Smith" you automatically come up with a list of many different William Smiths.

Thanks

Use Michael Jackson (talk show host). For anything like above use NAME (OCCUPATION). --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 19:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Disambiguation for more info. Dismas|(talk) 19:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect

Is this redirect working? Just want to check. I cleared my cache several times and it's not working under my browser (IE) --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 19:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

It's working for me. Dismas|(talk) 19:54, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Special characters box

Is there any way to disable the special character box that appears at the bottom of an edit page? When I try to edit a page, it loads slowly and then freezes for about a minute. This problem only appeared after changes were made to the special character box a few days ago. Before it was changed, I had no problems editing pages. Please help. -Acntx 22:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 17

[edit] Idiotic Administrators on Wikipedia

Hello,

I would like to know how and why administrators are allowed to make bad decisions and delete an important addition to an article? Is wikipedia not about freedom of information and speech? I did not feel my edit was out of place. I edited the US patriot act article under the contraversy part. I stated that some critics feel that surveillance is futile and put a very useful quote that is very much related to his topic in there. It was a quote by Benjamin Franklin which says "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.183.202 (talk • contribs).

The administrator sent me a message saying it was "weasel words" and quotes that are not related to the topic. This is total bs! Does anybody on wikipedia have any common sense? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.183.202 (talk • contribs).

The administrator named "Ta bu shi da yu" is the one who did this to my edit. He/she totally deleted it! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.183.202 (talk • contribs).

Using a Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's official policies. As the user stated, your use of weasel words did not continue using a neutral point of view. -- Natalya 00:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Some people here have common sense, but they rarely agree to become administrators. First a couple of reminders, then a suggestion. 1. You have no right to have your writings preserved here. Anyone can change anything. 2. TBSDY probably did not use adminstrative powers to delete your contribution, and was acting as an ordinary editor (many of whom still retain their common sense). The suggestion is that the best place to negotiate content of an article, such as re-insertion of the sentences someone removed, is on the Talk page of the article (the button misleadingly labeled "Discussion" next to the article). Present your case there and the editors interested in that article will respond. You may win them over to your version, or may not, or may work out a compromise. That is the way this operation works. Best wishes. alteripse 00:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

And no, Wikipedia is not about freedom of speech; I am not sure why you thought that might be the case. It is about writing an encyclopedia. — Knowledge Seeker দ 00:39, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry you're upset -- but I think that User:Ta bu shi da yu did the right thing -- your addition was not entirely appropriate for the article; also inappropriate was your name calling upon being edited:

  • "Some geek who defends the patriot act will not let me post veiws a critic of the patriot act here. This really sucks because wikipedia isn't what I thought it was. It is a joke!" [2]
  • "The adminitrator "Ta bu shi da yu" is a real idiot and will not let me put IMPORTANT facts that are related to this article in it. This person is a total retard and needs to have his administration privledges taken away. Wikipedia is about freedom of information? Correct? Well with idiots like "Ta bu shi da yu" there is no freedom of speech or information that is very important to this article!!" [3]

This is a community project -- we're all allowed to edit at will. Having our edits deleted comes with the territory so I suggest you calm down a bit, stop calling people retards, and discuss any future edits on the article's talk page first. --Quasipalm 00:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I suggest posting a polite comment on that admin's talk page. Try to avoid slander or insults, since they tend to generate negetive results. "Weasel words" usually referst to unattributed quotes that begin "Some polititians say..." Whenever possible, use strong language like, "Ben Franklin said..." --TheLimbicOne(talk) 00:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • In general the "some people" or "some critics" formulation is discourged. if critics have said this, find a palce or palces where one or more of them have said it, and add an exact ciation to what has actually been said, not to a generic summery of many people's views. See Our verifiability policy. Note als that any editor, admin or not, is free to remove any text from any article, and no admin rights or powers are invoilved in any such edit. I happen to agree with the criticism you stated, but I would not add that comment unless I coudl cite a source where a specific person or group mande that criticism. It shouldn't be too hard to find one. I think that Bruce Schneirer for one, has made such comments publicly. DES (talk) 01:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all the comments. I will never "calm down" when my freedoms are at stake. It is a strange day when it is not good to quote a Founding Father of America. Now I am having port scans done more often with a recent one (just minutes ago) from Washington D.C. Hhahahahahha!!!!!!!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.183.202 (talk • contribs).

For those who didn't get to see my original edit which was deleted. It was nonviolent and stated that some critics feel that "surviellance is futile" in combatting terrorism. Time will tell for those who don't believe this fact. I also stated a quote by Benjamin Franklin that is found in other articles on Wikipedia which has ALOT to do with the USA PATRIOT Act whether some people agree or not. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty." - Benjamin Franklin

I rest my case lol

Dude. The .gov doesn't care that you posted a quote on Wikipedia, and wouldn't port scan you anyways. Take my word on this one.
I'm sorry that you feel slighted, but, when you get right down to it, you editorialized in a forum not intended for that. If you want to quote Ben Franklin RE: the PATRIOT Act, write to your elected representatives.
Your freedoms may be "at stake", but it's not Wikipedia's fault. Maybe you'd consider editing some non-controversial articles while you get used to the tone and community standards here?
Cheers, Adrian Lamo · (talk) · (mail) · 05:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok Robots. I do not care about your standards. The people who think for themselves and know what the hell is going on and is with me on this one. Fuck lamers on Wikipedia and the Government Patriot act bs. I don't care anymore! Someday something might happen to prove that all the surveillance in the world can't stop someone who is determined to attack the US. Maybe when that happens then what I said will be allowable in the article. You geeks may be able to suppress important information that belongs in an article on Wikipedia but you can't suppress all the information on the internet!!!!! I hope all people who read this chooses to think for themselves and not follow the herd mentality. Obviously the government does care and wants to monitor all people to make them "safe". Anybody with common sense knows this is total bs.


Terrorists are EVERYWHERE. There is no place to be safe. Now go ahead and say more dumb shit and try to sound intelligent...

Why do you continue putting yourself in ridicule? Wikipedia is not a place to convince people of your personal opinions, no matter how "correct" they are. It is an encyclopedia, nothing more, nothing less. Nor is it a place to discuss these opinions. What can be discussed is whether your quote fits in an encyclopedic article, and it seems that according to current consesus, it does not - But feel free to discuss it further in the article's talk page, instead of calling people bad names and acting foolishly. You can't be wrong and blame everyone for it (and I'm not talking about surveillance, I'm talking about your behavior). --Meni Rosenfeld 08:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't really give a fuck about my behavior lol. At least I am not killing people in THE HOLY WARS. Any more people who can't accept the truth? Go ahead and post your shit here and then point your finger at me. Go ahead brainy fukkers. You all know so much. *sigh* —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.183.202 (talk • contribs) 16:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC-5)

Look, I am about as strongly opposed to the policies of the current US govt as anyone, and I have said so, in public fora where this might make a difference. I have worked political campaigns, written letters, put signs in front of my house, etc. But there is a time and a place for making those argumetns, and a time and a place not to. If you want to add content to the article that shows where specific people have publicly critized the "patriot" act, or have said that survalience is a pointless waste of money (and people have said this publicly, so finding such citations is quite possible), Go for it. If you do, and someone reverts, I'll help. But "Many people think" or "Many critics have said" is just a poor way to write an encycloipedia articel, and that is what articels on wikipedia are suppsoed to be. DES (talk) 22:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Insulting the editors and administrators of Wikipedia is not a good way to go about achieving some change you want; it only ticks them off, including ones who would otherwise agree with you politically. *Dan T.* 22:10, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Is it just me or does all this talk about "freedom of speech" really mean "I have the right to say whatever the hell I want and no one else can say or do anything about it"? In that case, it's equivalent to "I have the right to free speech, you don't". JIP | Talk 08:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] other languages

The article germ layer on the english wikipedia went through a major revision and clean up. The other laguage articles linked to this one are still stubs. Is there a way to tag the other laguage articles so that people who speak those languages can translate the revised article? --TheLimbicOne(talk) 00:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Not really. It will just happen naturally as multilingual editors happen to check out what the article looks like in other langauges, and incorporate the best info into their target language article. Although, if it gets featured status, it will get a star next to it in the "in other languages" list. Featured articles are known to be good translation material and the star draws attention to it. pfctdayelise 01:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
How about a simple way to tag the foreign (to me) articles to let other language readers know that the english version has signifigantly changed and warrents a review for useful info?--TheLimbicOne(talk) 01:57, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
You could always put a comment on the Talk: page of each other-language article, either in English (being such an international tongue), or appropriately translated by babel.altavista or somesuch (probably good enough if you don't use too much jargon). Special tags are overrated, if you ask me - if you want to say something, just say it, why wait for someone to say it for you... - IMSoP 02:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Note: While featured articles are indeed often good translation material, one language's featured article is not necessarily another's. Specifically, many non-English featured articles would not be featured if they were in English unchanged (just as many older English FAs would no longer be up to snuff today, and are steadily being delisted as featured articles). Zafiroblue05 05:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inserting ISBN's

I just contributed to an article for the first time. I added ISBN's but I am sure I did it wrong -- when you click on the titles of the books, it takes you nowhere. Please tell me the right way to do this. You can look at the article if you like Gwen Shamblin Thanks! Anne 04:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)Anne447

I fixed 'em. WP has some kind of magic support for ISBNs! You don't need any special syntax, you just type ISBN 314159 (etc) and it does that special link thing. Sweet. pfctdayelise 04:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old newspapers

A handicapped friend of mine was born in Chicago IL Feb. 5, 1956. How would I get a copy of the newspaper for that day or the headlines and what would the cost be to send it to 85310 Phoenix AZ? Thanks. Gail

You might try contacting the specific newpaper you're interested in. There are commercial places that sell archived newspapers as well - try searching at google for "newspaper archive". -- Rick Block (talk) 04:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do you create and use backgrounds in Wikipedia?

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on 1,727,082 articles.

Art | Culture | Geography | Health | History | People | Philosophy | Science | Society | Technology

Almanac · Categories · Glossaries · Lists · Overviews · Portals · Search · Questions · Site news · Index

Does anyone know how to use a graphic as a background image in Wikipedia? I'd like to try an experiment and place the puzzle globe behind the 4 lines of text of the header above. Any help/guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. --Go for it! 06:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Typically you can use a <div style="background-image: url(filename.jpg)">Stuff</div>, but I just tried that and the parser took it out, so I guess background image isn't one of the allowed CSS elements. enochlau (talk) 06:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Did you mean like this: Titoxd(?!? - help us) 02:55, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on 1,727,082 articles.

Art | Culture | Geography | Health | History | People | Philosophy | Science | Society | Technology

Almanac · Categories · Glossaries · Lists · Overviews · Portals · Search · Questions · Site news · Index
Doesn't look very good (text over the globe is not easily readable), but there you go. The trick is to use an outer div with "position:relative", an inner div positioned absolutely with zero offsets (from the outer div), and a table to center the text properly over the image. If you increase the font size in your browser, the layout may become abhorringly crappy. HTH, Lupo 10:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW, url (...) is probably disallowed because it would enable the inclusion of off-site media. Lupo 10:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
AFAIK anything that changes the fact that an image clicks through to its image description page, and thus its licensing information, is discouraged in the strongest possible terms. I guess that would include this practice. pfctdayelise 12:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
If we really want to do this, we can solve it by adding some css (project-wide) to the default skin. We can't and shouldn't implement this is pure wikitext. ❝Sverdrup❞ 15:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I didn't understand your last statement: what is pure wikitext? For that matter, what is wikitext?
As for the clicking-through issue, we are covered here. The precedent has been set for bypassing the image page of this graphic -- the puzzle globe sits on every page in the upper-left-hand corner and clicks through to the main page. --Go for it! 05:08, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't see any globe in the "Do you mean like this" mark-up above. What could be the problem? --Go for it! 02:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe add a style directive "background: none;" to the table. But anyway, IE seems to have a problem with this markup and displays it incorrectly. And if you had stated up front that this was for some main page design, I would have given you the same answer as you got over at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). This method is a one-off hack. Lupo 10:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps something like this? (From User:Zocky/Sandbox 4):
Welcome to Wikipedia
the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit

Variations of this yellow header got too much negative feedback for us to go with it. What I'm trying to figure out is how to get the puzzle globe set as a background, locked into placed and centered behind the header text. Once that's done, I'll worry about modifying the graphic so it doesn't clash or interfere with the foreground text. But as of this moment, I'm still a long ways from the first step. Draft six of the Main Page Redesign goes up for voting on Saturday, so we don't have much time. --Go for it! 05:08, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] how to add video to a power point presentation

In powerpoint 2003 it's as follows (if you don't have Powerpoint 2003, please be more specific about which one you do have and what kind of video file you want to insert).

  1. Go to the 'Insert' menu.
  2. Choose 'Movies and Sounds'
  3. Click 'Movie from file'
  4. Choose your movie from the browser window that pops up and click 'OK' after selecting it.

By the way, all this is easily found in Powerpoint's own help system. Try clicking the 'Help' menu or simply use the 'F1' key to get there. - 131.211.210.13 08:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] pyrex

Hello I Wanted tp know a little about pyrex. wanting to avoid pvc in my home i noticed that some glass storage containers have a blue lid that has pyrex 8301-vpc on the inside. I wanted to request and article but had trouble finding the wright heading of department....thank you. Pleas forward reply to my e-mail

I commented out the e-mail address. It is still in the wikicode. Should I have removed it completely? I have no idea on answering the question, though.--◀Pucktalk▶ 10:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
The answer is: please take your question to the Wikipedia:Reference desk where it belongs. Or is this just a simple request for an article? Then Wikipedia:Requested articles. I think it would fit in Wikipedia:Requested articles/Natural Sciences. pfctdayelise 12:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
We have an article on Pyrex... it's essentially just a tougher kind of glass. Shimgray | talk | 23:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
It's worth noting that Pyrex is a trade name from Corning Glass. Things like plastic lids and accessories that accompany Pyrex glass products may also bear the Pyrex name, despite not being made from borosilicate glass. I'd suggest contacting Corning directly for information about their products. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name and date

How do I add my name and the date and time to the end of a message like everyone else does? Latinus

You just use tildes "~".
Three will put in just your user name ~~~: Dismas|(talk)
Four will put in your user name and date ~~~~: Dismas|(talk) 11:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
And five will put in just the date ~~~~~: 11:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formula Ford Page

I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place but I tried going to the Formula Ford page and a fatal error occurred. This happens all the time, but i can't access the talk page for it to flag up the fault.

Did you try refreshing the page once you got the error? It happened to me too, but when I refreshed it went to the article. -- Natalya 13:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't working for ages but seems to be ok now. The stealth fixer must have done it! Jon 14:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IDENTITY, definition

Hello, the subject of particular interest is identity in the architecture, but before approaching it I need it to start from a state of the question of the word and to analyze the different definitions and the connotations that it acquires. I would appreciate that you recommend me bibliography referred to the general and specific subject.

You can start with identity (disambiguation), which contains a list of Wikipedia articles about diffrent usages of this word. --Meni Rosenfeld 19:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFD Problem

I posted Johnny Goulden & Hugh Schieler, but something seems to have f***ed up, the subst:afd2 template on Editing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Johnny Goulden & Hugh Schieler doesn't seem to work. Does anyone have any idea what's wrong? --BadSeed 20:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Found it, I used the wrong bracked. --BadSeed 20:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Templates for user pages

I've noticed a lot of people have really nice user pages - is there a template listing for user pages that I don't know about? Thanks. Tokakeke 20:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

  • No, parts like userboxes have templates, but most are made of a variety of bits and pieces. If you come across a userpage you like, just hit the edit button to see how they coded it. You're free to copy the code used to make a certain look. - Mgm|(talk) 21:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
If whacking a template onto your user page, consider using {{subst:Foo}} rather than {{Foo}}, as it cuts down on the server load - though it's by no means a requirement :) GeeJo (t) (c) •22:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Though if userboxes are what you're after, see Wikipedia:Userbox for a collection of lists of 'em. GeeJo (t) (c) •23:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gaelic names or English names

I seem to remember reading somewhere (on the Wikipedia:Style pages?) that if a person has a commonly translated name in English then that should be used, not the original. Can anyone tell me where that page is? The reason I ask is that someone is getting annoyed over at Talk:Scotland because I removed piping which was showing the early Scottish kings with their Gaelic names, rather than the very well known English equivalents (the articles themselves use the English names).--Mais oui! 00:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure if this is the page you are looking for, but Wikipedia:Proper names addresses the question of translating names (see the section "Personal Names"). I hope that helps. -- Natalya 03:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 18

[edit] Spam(s) on Wikipedia

First of all I really don't know where to ask this question. I went to Meta and found out that I still have no place to ask, then I'm here ;)

I'm from Thai Wikipedia. My question is how to deal with the anonymous user (probably bot) posting link spams to many pages including user pages and talk pages such as [4] or [5]. There were about 15 pages each time. And this is the five times I've seen. Thanks for any answer. --manop 00:14, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Notice that they're using <snipped because it's now in the spam filters> to hide the links from normal view on the page. 1px is so small that it will be not be rendered when viewing the page normally. This is a blatant attempt to use Wikipedia for SEO purposes. When I come across this type of behaviour, I put {{bv}} on their talk page the first time and block them if they do it again. Other admins may be more lenient though. More conventional spam goes through a series of tags, {{spam1}}, {{spam2}}, {{spam3}} and {{spam4}}. --GraemeL (talk) 00:28, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grammatical error on page generated/administered by Wikipedia

Hello

I have spotted a minor grammatical error on a generic page that is generated and administered by Wikipedia itself.

It is not an earth-shattering error - and the world will continue if it isn't corrected! But it's not a POV thing. It is a minor (and very common) grammatical error that should be corrected.

I know that Wikipedia template pages are not edit-able by users - so I want to know how I should go about passing on the info about the proposed correction.

Thanks from a devoted Wikipedian. Davidpatrick 01:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Most templates are editable, although some have now been protected. MediaWiki messages (system messages) are editable by administrators. Which page did you find the error? Let me know and I'll take care of it, or you can post to WP:AN. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] tiny font

Something happened and all of a sudden, Wikipedia pages have very tiny font in my browser (internet explorer). Other websites do not appear this way. Any idea what the problem is?? ike9898 01:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Try using Opera instead. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 02:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Go to your preferences and choose a different skin (don't forget to save) and see if that makes a difference. That may give you a clue as to what is going on. hydnjo talk 04:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Change the font size. Personally, I use the 90% zoom, on Opera. Looks perfect. Pacific Coast Highway|Spam me! 11:21, April 8, 2007 (UTC)

View -> Text Size -> Medium. I don't understand why when people have a problem, you tell them to switch to x. Just fix their problem. enochlau (talk) 05:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PDA Version?

Is there a PDA-friendly version of Wikipedia?

Well there is this. Is a database dump coverted to TomeRaider format for your handheld what you want?--Commander Keane 09:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Also see Wikipedia:Wikipedia on PDAs. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
If it doesn't already, Wikipedia ought to serve a media="handheld" CSS stylsheet for optimal rendering on PDA's.--Joris Gillis 16:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Special pages templates

I've seen special pages templates wandering about, but it seems I can't find any documentation about it. Who can point me to it? example: {{Special:Recentchanges/10}} yields:


8 April 2007


What parameters can be passed along? In particular, I'd like to include a search result by means of such a template. Some variant of this: {{Special:Search?search=ABC&fulltext=Search}} --Joris Gillis 12:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about the Search page, but these aren't special pages templates as such. Using {{ }} syntax, you can "transclude" the contents of any page (including articles) into another page, e.g. {{:Wikipedia}} will transclude Wikipedia here. I tried the Search one, doesn't work - presumably disabled for performance reasons. enochlau (talk) 14:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Really? How nice;-) I didn't know transcuding was possible for anything other than templates.--Joris Gillis 14:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proofing with programs... what? How?

Hello again, I am thinking about rewriting procedural texturing, which is actually pretty scarce. The topic is rather obscure and there's a little amount of references I know of. At the same time, the idea is trivial and I believe I could write some programs to show this holds true. Does this satisfy the verifiability requirement? I was thinking about releasing them (with full source obviously) under a Creative Commons license (say everything free for all but commercial use). Could you give me some hints about that?

As a second point to be discussed, I understand Java (possibly thuru Web Start) is to be used for a variety of reasons. Do you think this is acceptable? Do alternatives exist? What assumptions can I do on installed base? I was thinking at plain JOGL with no extra stuff for now. MaxDZ8 13:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

If the ideas aren't published in a standard textbook on the subject, or is not covered in research journals, then I'd be hesistant to add it, if it's just from my own knowledge. A question: how did you come across this knowledge yourself? Did you discover it yourself? If so, then that's not ok.
I did a bit of JOGL recently, and currently you need to install JOGL separately from Java, although I believe there's a way to make it install along with your JWS app. From what I understand, from version 1.6 of the Java SDK, JOGL will be bundled along with the Java libraries in the javax section, so it'll be good then. enochlau (talk) 14:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

On the references problem: definatly not. There's a book I know of co-authored by Ken Perlin which is very useful as well as a few others which I cannot remember now. Those are hard to find at best even using inter-bibliotecary ways. The point of the book is that this topic is basically another graphical spinoff from mathematics. In that way, someone who wants a quick proof may have it (but the offline references will still be listed). There are no really useful (and trustable) online resources I know of.

On JOGL: last time I tried (roughtly 10 months ago) installing JOGL was somewhat involved but JWS takes care of everything and the installation goes behind the scenes. The problem is that there seems to be no way to share libraries although I'm not sure. Most programs will be very simple however, I'm pretty sure I can also cut it with standard SWING (although this will require some work by my side). MaxDZ8 14:39, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding relative name to v.c. holders

[edit] Adding my name to v.c. holder

[edit] Links to external sites

I just tried adding a new section to the Carlos Santana entry for Fan Sites. I posted a link to a really good site which just contained info & pictures, but the changes were reverted by a Hall Monitor, saying I could not post links to commercial sites. The site I was linking is totally non-commercial, just set up by a fan & does not charge anything or advertise anything. Is it wrong to link a site like this ? Gungho 20:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

  • No, its not wrong, because its not a commercial site. The user may have thought so, or maybe he just felt it didn't add to the article. You need to ask him, though. Editing on Wikipedia often means engaging other editors. Perhaps a polite note on his talk page, saying that the site is noncommercial and that you think it belongs in the article for such-and-such reason (good graphics etc.), and can he state his obection more clearly?
If he doesn't respond after a couple days, go ahead and add the link, then note what you have done on the article talk page (e.g., "Re-added link removed by user User:HallMonitor for such-and-such reason".
He might well respond with "OK you're right" in which case, problem solved, re-add the link.
If he responds, you must be open to any arguments he makes. For instance, if he says (for example) "Well I think there are enough external links in the article" or "that site is not as good as such-and-such", you should be psychologically prepared to hear and consider what he says, and perhaps agree with him. Similarly, he will do the same. Probably eventually one of you will convince the other, in which case, problem solved. (More here: Wikipedia:Negotiation)
If you just can't agree, ask him if he'll accept a third opinion. If so, go to Wikipedia:Third opinion and add a post describing the situation, then do whatever the person says.
If he won't agree to accept a third opinion, you could step through the dispute-resolution process, although that would be highly unusual for such a minor edit. (If it was me, I'd just say "enh" and chalk it up to some-people-are-stubborn and forget about it. But you are completely entitled to go to dispute resolution.)
(NB - usually all external links go in the section "External Links". I think you should add it there with a descriptive label "fan site" or something like that.) Herostratus 22:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
(NB - the material on Wikipedia external links is here: WP:EL.

[edit] organizing user boxes on user page

I've been editing for some time now, and never bothered to view the different types of user boxes despite seeing them several times. Now that i've posted my key choices, it looks like a graphic art program threw up on the bottom of my user page. I would like to arrange them into subjects, like political, (boxes under), space, personal beliefs, (boxes)m etc. Is there a format for this? --Coolgamer 20:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

A table should be sufficient, two examples at User:GeeJo/Stats (To save breaking up this page with boxes) GeeJo (t) (c) • 01:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
... I f'ed it up somehow. I was trying for the horizontal rows of boxes, and, well, you can see for yourself what happened. Coolgamer 21:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 19

[edit] Help

Hi I'm totally new to Wiki and I seem to have been blocked. Having noe read comments and guidelines I see what I was doing wrong. Many apologies.

I actually help to edit the web pages of the site from which I copied from. This is why I wasn't thinking about copyright problems.

Please advise.

Thanks,

D Morriss

Your Tibetan buddhism articles have been deleted as copyright violations. You could ask at Wikipedia:Deletion review to have them restored, if you can indeed claim copyright on the pages you submitted. I guess a major problem was that you did not react to the messages on your talk page (you should have seen many obvious "You have new messages" messages) but continued creating articles. Kusma (討論) 01:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What are talk pages for?

User:Vuo blanked Talk:Sauli Niinistö with an edit summary "not about the article". I asked him on his user talk page if Wikipedia allowed discussion about the subject of the article on talk pages, not about the article itself. He answered no. Does this mean I can't talk about Sauli Niinistö on Talk:Sauli Niinistö? I can't talk about Helsinki on Talk:Helsinki? I can't talk about cows on Talk:Cow? Etc. Is there some sort of rule about this? JIP | Talk 08:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  • You can talk about how to improve the article and answer questions by newbies to keep the pressure off the reference desk, but discussing elections that have no bearing on either of those would be using Wikipedia like a discussion forum or soapbox which is very much discouraged as per WP:NOT. - 131.211.210.11 09:02, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I know using Talk:Sauli Niinistö to personally attack Niinistö or to smear his campaign is forbidden, but what if I were to ask, for example, where Niinistö was born, what were his parents' names, does he have any pets, or something? Would that be using Wikipedia as a discussion forum? JIP | Talk 09:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd say that if the article doesnt contain the particular factual information you're after, it's fine to ask on the talk page - and if especially relevant to the topic, to inquire why the fact isnt present in the article. If your question is fairly trivial, or doesn't get a prompt answer, you can always move the question over to the Reference Desk and hope someone there will notice it. GeeJo (t) (c) • 12:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what is the name of the musucal composition usually in 3 movements?

[edit] Image Transfer

Is there a way to move images that you uploaded on Wikipedia to Wikimedia Commons. I think not but I am hoping so! DaGizzaChat © 11:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, you can simply re-upload the image over at the Commons. This Wikipedia will still use the image on its own database, but other projects can link to the newly-uploaded file. GeeJo (t) (c) • 12:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
To save server space, have the old one deleted :) enochlau (talk) 12:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, until the developers come up with a way of moving page history across, doing that would violate the GFDL in the same way that copy/pasting an article to a new title would (unless of course there've only been edits from a single person, who requests the move themselves.) GeeJo (t) (c) • 09:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately there is no easy way, only the manual way of re-uploading. See Wikipedia:Moving images to the Commons.pfctdayelise 12:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] whats the logic in doing everything(forums,help) article style

I agree having a editable encylopedia rocks big time. But forums and everything in the same manner, is obviously very very confusing. Take for example this page. It looks just like an article page. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a seperate questions page and a seperate for answers. It takes more time to load, too much scrolling and confusing.Everything talk pages, surveys are done in the same 'edit n article' style. I would love tocontribute to wikipedia, but it all makes thigns throughly confusing

Generally you just need to look at the prefix to the article name. Any worded as Wikipedia:Foo relate to the running of the wiki itself, any with Talk:Foo are discussion pages, and any with User:Foo are pages on individual users. It just makes sense to require users to learn only one posting format, rather than three. GeeJo (t) (c) • 12:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It may seem confusing at first, but after you've used it a while, it'll start to become second nature. Wikicoding is really quite easy as if you take some time to learn it. The problem with forums is that asking coding related questions makes it nearly impossible to show for example what different pieces of code would do to an image. Especially for the Help desk, the wikiformat, is quite useful. Another problem with regular forums is that they don't have an edit history which makes it impossible to check who edited a certain question (which violates a basic wiki principle). - Mgm|(talk) 12:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • A wiki is fundamentally a tool for collaboratively writing web pages, and what are "forums and everything" but collaboratively written web pages? Of course, this may be golden hammer syndrome (when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail), but IMO it's quite elegant to use exactly the same software and user interface for writing articles, and talking about articles, and asking and answering questions about writing and talking about articles. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Not to mention the technical issues of writing a separate program for every namespace - It seems that the developers have enough on their hands with Wikipedia as it is. Although I do agree that this format is not very convenient for the help desk - Hopefully it will be streamlined sometime in the future. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Golden hammer -- I like it. I agree with our dear anon friend. I think it's golden hammer, definitely for help pages like this. But I can't think of a better, compatible solution yet. :/ pfctdayelise 01:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

So you can only be a pst of editing if you have learn everything, in other words if you all you do is edit wikipedia(have no life). C'mon now, just to reply to this i have to edit then scroll down ,t then wonder how do i differenciate bteen my reply and anothers. At the very least the community thing should be kept seperate from articles.

[edit] Subcategories and supercategories

I have often seen it mentioned in Edit summaries and Talk page discussions that an article should not be placed in both a sub-category and the "super-category" (or "main-category"). Is this true? In practice it seems to happen quite a lot. Anyway, I tried to find reference to a Rule or Guideline in Wikipedia:Category, and several pages linked to from there - with no success. Where are the guidelines/rules on this topic?--Mais oui! 18:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable user

I've put a notice at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents about User:Alphabetagamnma which seems to have gone pretty much unnoticed. I don't want to nag but Alphabetagamnma has been adding a bunch more images that are questionable at best. Where do I go now? Dismas|(talk) 18:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

There are some comments on the user's talk page, and the uploading seems to have stopped. Is there anything else you're thinking should be done? -- Rick Block (talk) 20:02, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
The "last warning" message was put there after I asked the question here. And I don't know what else should be done. That's why I was asking where I should go next. Thanks for looking into it! Dismas|(talk) 20:06, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do I send a message to another user?

A user sent me a message (so: I saw a "you have a message" banner next time I refreshed a WP page) and I'd like to reply. Do I just add text to their talk pages? Or what? Thanks. Nick Levine 18:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

If you simply edit a user's talk page, that user will see the "you have a message" banner the next time s/he displays a page. Usually you want to start a messege in a new section unless it is a response or followup to a message already on that user's page. You can copy the message that was left for you along with your response, to show context. I often do this, but it is not required. If you do this, leave a note that some of the text was so copied. DES (talk) 18:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

Wondering how images/photos are added to articles? Thanks.

Dwacon 19:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Picture tutorial is a good place to start. After you've read this if you still have questions please feel free to ask more detailed questions. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Making a Page

How do you start an article???

Search for what you want to start an article on. If it's not found there will be a link that says "Start an article with this name" in red. Click on that and start typing. Please also see Wikipedia:Tutorial Dismas|(talk) 19:54, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
And to start a new article, you must create a Wikipedia account first (see special:userlogin). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Double redirects

I've made the disambiguation page Venus and Adonis (Disambiguation) and tried to fix any redirects for the article Venus and Adonis, now named Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem). The problem is that all of Shakespeare's works still seem to have a link to Venus and Adonis, rather than Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem). I thought this was because of the template {{template:Shakespeare}}, so I changed the link there as well, but they all still seem to be causing a double redirect. All the changes I made were about 24 hrs. ago, so I think the system should have updated by now, right? Is there something I've missed? Makemi 21:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  1. The correct format for disambiguation pages is "TITLE (disambiguation)", not "TITLE (Disambiguation)" - note the d
  2. Usually, Venus and Adonis would be the disambiguation page itself, rather than redirecting to Venus and Adonis (disambiguation).
  3. If you visit, say, Hamlet and try click the link to Venus and Adonis in the box at the bottom, you will find that it links to the same page. But, you are correct, what is shown in What links here includes all the Shakespeare plays. This is because of a difficult-to-fix MediaWiki bug. All you need to do (if you really care enough to show the correct whatlinkshere list) is to go to each entry, edit the page and save without making any changes. Colloquially known as a "null edit", this forces MediaWiki to update the links from that article including those in changed templates.
I will move the disambig page to Venus and Adonis as conventional.
jnothman talk 22:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, sorry for the wrongly titled page. Something somewhere said that sometimes you name a disambiguation page as such, so I got confused. Makemi 23:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do I make a gallery or insert a rule?

In the Hajj article, an editor has inserted two pictures side by side. The way the article formats on my old 17" monitor, the word "The" pops up between the pictures and then the rest of the para follows below. I'd like to either put the pictures side by side in a gallery, or just draw a rule below them, so that the para will display properly. However, I can't seem to find directions on how to make either change. Zora 22:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem is not that the images have been placed side-by-side but rather that one has been floated left and the other right at the same position in the article. That means that if your browser window is of a certain size (as it seems yours is, Zora), the right side of the left-floated image is close enough to the left side of the right-floated image to leave a gap wide enough for only the word "the" (and not for "greater" which is thus pushed to after the floats). I think the most appropriate solution to this problem is to move one of the images to later in the section. I've done this. jnothman talk 22:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 20

[edit] How do I delete my account?

I want to know, how do I delete my account? Please tell me!! Thanks

There's no practical way to delete an account once it's been used to make an edit without causing database errors, as well as violating the GFDL that Wikipedia is licensed under - and it's general wikimedia policy to not delete even utterly unused accounts (See Wikipedia:Account deletion). However, it is possible to change the name of an account to something like FormerUser01023 if you so wish - effectively ensuring complete anonymity provided you've removed your email link from preferences. To go about doing this, see Wikipedia:Changing username GeeJo (t) (c) • 01:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please change my username!!!

Please change my username from Bold textCykitty to Bold textCyekitty. I messed up on when I signed up^_^

You can do that by going to Wikipedia:Changing username and asking the Bureaucrats there. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 00:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing troubles

I added some newly found facts about 1. George Foreman and 2. Pelicans and they are constantly being removed. These are true facts and I don't understand why they are being removed. I am very new to wikipedia. (Unsigned comment by User:Flamesza)

From looking at your contributions, it appears you copied the text from another source. We don't allow that on Wikipedia; it is commonly called a "copyvio", short for "copyright violation". I didn't look at all your edits, but we maintain several policies, some of which I link to here; feel free to look. HTH. Hermione1980 00:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Also, take a look at the talk page for George Foreman, where it states that the joke text you continually try to add is a hoax perpetuated by an Australian Web site. In addition your pelican "fact" has no source to back it up.BabuBhatt 01:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User page vandalism

I created a log in acount on wikipedia a few days ago so I could create articles. I loged in a few days after i have created an acount and I went to my user page(when you log in, at the top of the page are around 6 objects you can click on and one of them has your log in name with a little person icon beside it. that is the button you click to get to your user name). When I reach my user page someone, somehow wrote something afending about me, yet i then click edit the page and deleted it. I don't know how he got in my acount and wrote that but he did. I looked at the history of my user page and saw who created the two pages that affended me.

Looking at the page history for your User page, it appears User:Merrr was the culprit. I've placed a warning on his/her talk page. If it continues to happen, it may be worth considering asking an administrator for help. (Though in a way you should be proud. I've been here for over 8 months and noone's paid enough attention to me to vandalise my user page :) ) GeeJo (t) (c) • 01:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Or you can add a Userbox like on my User page that proudly proclaims how many times your Userpage has been vandalized. And by the way, anyone can edit your userpage. They don't have to "get in". Your userpage is just like every other page here, it can be edited by anyone. Dismas|(talk) 01:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually that's not strictly true. If you manage to get promoted to an admin, you can protect your userpage, so it can only be edited by admins. This is however strongly discouraged and only to be used in an extreme case of vandalism. JIP | Talk 08:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wellness Paradigm

Give the dynamics of the wellness paradigm, how does it compare with the common notion that health is the absence of disease?

Please take this to the ref desk, but here is a preview of the answer:
  • The "health as absence of disease" notion is based on the traditional premise that most people consider themselves healthy until they feel bad and want help from a doctor.
  • The wellness paradigm is based on the premise that all people (or at least all people with money) who don't feel bad need to be convinced that they are not optimally healthy until you have sold them (a) energy work, (b) chiropractic, (c) cleansing enemas, or (d) lots of vitamins. Warning: Be careful with this answer-- though true, it may get you declared persona non grata at New Age health fairs or chiropractic colleges. alteripse 02:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
This is a great question, but it doesn't belong here. This page is for help in using Wikipedia. The question should be posted at the Wikipedia Reference Desk. JackofOz 02:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright Problem.

Hello, I have created an article and it was later termed violation of copyright. I have removed the infringment and the temporary article is in compliance. I was wondering how and when that can be moved from the temp article back into the actual area for it. Here is the actual article (right now it is the copyright message): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbles_(band) and here is the rewritten article :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbles_(band)/Temp

If someone could help me with that would be great. Thanks.

I would move it for you but I would also simultaneously delete it for {{nn-band}}. I'd suggest fleshing it out with some indication of this band's importance (chart rankings etc). enochlau (talk) 05:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arrondissement of Brignoles

In Arrondissement of Brignoles, when I try to link Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the infobox, it appears as [[Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur]] instead of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Why is this happening? Is it something to do with the infobox? Thelb4 07:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It works now, but I don't know what went wrong. I also did preview a few times where it appeared as [[Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur]] instead of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Garion96 (talk) 15:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why do some templates show up differently when editing?

With cleanup, for example, you can actually see {{cleanup}}, but with the AFD templates (I'm thinking more specifically of AFDX), the template name doesn't show up, instead, the template code actually shows up. Why does this happen? --82.7.125.142 08:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It's the "subst:" in the front that does it. It's a feature for substituting the actual template code directly in place of the template. JIP | Talk 08:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
The reason for the use of the subst: form being that it's easier on the database. GeeJo (t) (c) • 09:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Three technical issues related to Wikipedia

All of which apply to List of European Union member states.

1.) In Firefox, the coloured cells (light green/yellow/red) in the second table show up fine; in IE, they don't. Instead, they show up as black instead. Why's that? How can it be fixed to work for IE, as well?

I changed them meanwhile; for the record, the colour codes used were #FDD, #FFD, #DFD, or something like that. —Nightstallion (?) 10:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
This has been resolved. —Nightstallion (?) 06:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

2.) In Firefox, using rowspan="..." causes some of the grid lines to disappears (the ones to the right of the rowspanning cell). This problem doesn't occur in IE. Why's that, how can it be fixed?

3.) In Firefox, {{legend}} does not work at all, or at least not for me and one other user. I've tried on three different OS (WinXP, MacOS X, NetBSD), and the results've been the same for all three; the other user claims to have found a bugfix (cf. Template talk:Legend), but it still doesn't work for me. Help?

Thanks for any replies! —Nightstallion (?) 10:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List maintenance

What is the quickest way to find all the links that are in both list of rappers and list of hip-hop musicians and remove the repeats from the latter? we're trying to get rid of redundancy, but this seems like it would take forever without a method or program or something. Thanks--Urthogie 13:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Oleg Alexandrov (talk) has a program called Mathbot which is capable of doing all sorts of things. I'm not sure this is one of them, but you can drop him a line and ask. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Or try Wikipedia:Bot requests--Commander Keane 05:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removing sensitive information

Is it considered acceptable to edit my organization's page to remove instructions on how to exploit our software? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.223.127.66 (talk • contribs) 10:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC-5)

That depends on what you m ean by "exploit" If the information has been published elsewhere, and so has a verifiable source, it may belong on wikipedia. If not, it can proabably be removed as non-verifiable or as original research, in any case. DES (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
By the way i could help more if you indicated which article you are refering to. DES (talk) 17:37, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

The article in question is: [[6]] and it contains instructions on how to spoof a username on our blog. I'd like to remove the spoofing instructions, but not if that's against Wikipedia guidelines. --Taragl 18:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

If remove it it is still going to be in the page's history. Granted, it would take a little effort to find it rather than having it right in the open. Has anyone given any serious thought to actually trying to fix the problem? It shouldn't be that difficult to collapse the white space in the variable and then do a comparison to existing users. If not then I'd consider a different back-end.--◀Pucktalk▶ 18:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

The current back-end isn't long for this world (a few months); however, I'd still like to edit the spoofing instructions out if that's acceptable within this community. --Taragl 19:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It's not up to any one person to say. I suggest you leave a comment on the article's talk page. Click on the tab that says discussion and explain what you want to do. You might want to consider editing the article to remove the explicit instructions, but still mention that there is/was a bug that allowed for spoofing. In the context of the article it seems relevant, but the exact methodology isn't really necessary. If you do it that way you're less likely to inspire ire than if you just remove it altogether. In any event discussing it on the talk page is the proper approach to take. Besides, once you start contributing you may find it's addicting. We're always happy to have new editors--◀Pucktalk▶ 20:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Puck. We don't want to hide the fact that there is a bug, just make it a tad harder to exploit for the next few months. I'll be as open and transparent about the edit as possible. I appreciate your advice.--Taragl 21:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orphan web pages

I am a neophyte in Technical Services at the U of MO who has been asked to determine if we have "orphan" web pages in Wiki. My boss found one accidently and is concerned there are others. What is the easiest way to determine that? Thank you - Karyn

Do you mean pages without incoming links? They are listed at Special:Lonelypages. Kusma (討論) 16:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guest stars on TV show "X"

A while back I recall there being a vote for deletion of the category of people who had appeared as themselves on The Simpsons. People like George Harrison and bands like Aerosmith were in the cat. The cat was deleted. I now see a similar category of Category:Friends guest stars. I'd like to know if anyone can tell me why the Simpsons cat was deleted to see if it fits this cat as well. Thanks. Dismas|(talk) 20:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What keyboard character is the "pipe"??

I added my first page and am adding links. I think I understand what a piped link is and want to use one (I use the word "apocalyptic" and would like to link it to the page called "apocalypse," but WHAT CHARACTER DO I TYPE ON MY KEYBOARD TO GET THE "PIPE?" I'm using an Apple. Thanks.

The pipe looks like this "|". On a QWERTY keyboard in the U.S. it is above the Enter key. Dismas|(talk) 21:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm a beginner just blundering around here, but THANKS SO MUCH! Worked perfectly.

While the user was apparantly in the U.S., for completeness: to get the pipe key on a UK keyboard, press SHIFT and \ GeeJo (t) (c) • 21:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in the British Isles, it's between "Shift" and "Z", and if you press it without pressing "Shift", you get \. AnnH (talk) 22:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Some US keyboards place it there also, and some laptop keyboards place it in the upper left. But it is AFAIK the shift of / on all english-language keyboards. i don't know about layouts for other langauges. DES (talk) 00:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Every keyboard I've had has had ? as the SHIFT of /. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 04:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, thats right. If you look above you will see that the slash is actually a backwards slash (\) not a forward one as you thought(/). :)--Ali K 04:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
For those interested, it's also between SHIFT LEFT and Y (which is where your Z is) on German and Austrian keyboards. —Nightstallion (?) 06:48, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] internet

How do I put internet on my floppy disk?

Factual questions should be asked at the reference desk. Hermione1980 23:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
It might not fit on a single floppy disk. You might need several million. JIP | Talk 14:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, if you just want to put the 'surface' part of the World Wide Web on floppy disks, you'll only need 13.2 million of them (19 TB / 1.44 MB), but for the whole Web (including the 'deep web', which is about 500 times bigger) you'll need 5.2 billion. Now, as for the whole Internet... I suggest you get a CD-R drive. :) - ulayiti (talk) 17:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Teleport back to the nineties. AOL will send out a metric ton of the things. ;-) Rob Church (talk) 22:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 21

hey i want to know to things what are the name of three of the volcanoes rocks/How does the earth act like a magnet?

Questions like this belong at the Reference Desk. -Greg Asche (talk) 03:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] tinsle strength of steel per inch

i am, with no better term, a newbie to the site. i have been searching for a few hours now as to how I can find out if there are any charts as to the tinsle strength and or mallability of mild steel under normal temperatures. (50°F -> 90°F). Are there any articles that may help me determine the rigidity or amount of force (lbs./in.) before mild steel will bend/break.

                             snoopy612

Your question belongs at the Reference Desk - it is for factual questions. The Help Desk is for questions about editing Wikipedia. -- Natalya 04:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting links

I have been looking for a way to have external links, (like edit links) not have the little square symbol. For example my signature has a link to add a comment, and I supressed the square by using the following syntax:

<small class="editlink noprint plainlinksneverexpand">
[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:User_talk:Schwarzm|action=edit&section=new}} (add)]</small>.

The problem with this solution is that it makes the text small. Is their a way to apply this to text without changing its formatting. Also, where can I go to find more information on advance topics like this? Since I only came across this style by chance, I have no idea where it came from.--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 05:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

This is use of CSS and HTML. The best way to understand advanced topics like this is to research those, which are in no way specific to Wikipedia, although Wikipedia limits their use. The main CSS stylesheets are: [7][8][9]. From these I identify that "editlink" and "noprint" both make the text within that class disappear on printing (but not on screen), something I would gather you don't want/need. The "plainlinksneverexpand", on the other hand, is the thing doing what you want. <small> is of course what is making the contained text small, and the solution is to use a more generic HTML tag that can style text inline, ie the <span> tag. The solution to your problem is thus:
<span class="plainlinksneverexpand">[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:User_talk:Schwarzm|action=edit&section=new}} (add)]</span>
jnothman talk 10:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] editing image pages

I found an image that used an old copyright statement. I placed the correct one, but I can't figure out how to remove the old one. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 07:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

That's because the tag is on its description at Commons. Try it there; you'll have no problems. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 21:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] publications

Sir,

I want the emailid of main publications from IPC KERALA

Best to ask this type of question on the reference desk, the help desk is for help on using Wikipedia. - Akamad 20:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Permissions from 3rd parties

I remember there was a page that had permissions from 3rd parties as it's subpages. I remember seeing something like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Permissions_.../FooBar and a permission from FooBar to use his... something on Wikipedia. Anybody knows which page I'm talking about? (I have a permission to publish and wich to put it there...) --Dijxtra 11:52, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you mean this. Wikipedia:Successful requests for permission. Garion96 (talk) 12:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Great! Thanks! --Dijxtra 12:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright

If I use a GFDL material (Wikipedia fork) and copy it into an article, should I mention about it (give the link and the list of authors) in the text of the article, or may I only write about it in the edit summary? I mean: would it be legal if instead of putting e.g. {{tl:planetmath}} I just included the same in the edit summary? (I understand that we miss the features of the template, such as adding category, I ask just about legality of this procedure) Thanks. Googl 19:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help needed on the Reference desk

Someone has asked for help on the reference desk because they could not edit the help desk page because of a spam filter notice. Here is the link: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Help. - Akamad 20:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem was caused by my answer to a question on spam above. the text I used was added to the spam filters after I posted it. I removed the text that was causing the problem. They should only have experienced it if they tried to edit the entire page. --GraemeL (talk) 20:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Create new articles

for some reason when I click on 'Create article' it dosen't work! WikieZach 21:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't know why the button wouldn't work, but if you want to create a new article, than you either create a link to it, which will render as a red (edit) link, or type the name of the article into the address bar, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Page). The former is preferred because it prevents orphaned articles from forming.--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 21:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-Language Accounts

Hi, I have an account in English Wikipedia. I tried to edit articles in Spanish Wikipedia, but found that I had to create a new account. Is there a way to use one account to edit all languages? Thanks. --Gaodifan 23:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You have to register anew every time. Currently there is no "single login" for all wikimedia sites. People are/were thinking about it though, see [10]. Garion96 (talk) 00:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
The reason that it's not done yet, is because the different Wikipedias use different databases and in some cases requiring a single login would mean some duplication of names. That problem needs to be solved first. - Mgm|(talk) 11:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
See meta:Single login and meta:Single login specifications. Angela. 12:01, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk Pages

What are Talk Pages for, exactly? Also, I'm not quite understanding how to use them. Do I just edit the page to respond, so it's kind of like a messageboard, am I right?

There for discussing what should go on the article, (or template, category, etc.) People go there to resolve edit wars, discuss ideas for the page, etc. In the case of user talk pages, you can leave messages for users, and they will be notified by an orange banner near the top saying they have new messages.
You can edit the page to post or add to a thread, or if you want to start a new thread, you just click on the + sign at the top next to the edit link.
For more information, visit WP:TP--Max Talk(add) • Contributions 00:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about main page configurability?

I have some questions about the possibility of users configuring the main page to fit their own tastes, and was wondering what options were available to users right now for accomplishing this. Please click on the heading above to see my questions on this subject. I look forward to reading your replies. --Go for it! 23:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

A great idea if it could work as a preference. hydnjo talk 00:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 22

[edit] How can I create an article?

I really enjoy using Wikipedia for use on my school projects. I do, however, want to know how I am able to create an article. I tried looking for 'Bread Mold', however, I was unsucsseful in my search! Please help me!

Thank you so much!

--64.131.25.65 02:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

To create an article, please see Help:Starting a new page (and Wikipedia:Tutorial, and note that you have to create an account to be able to create pages yourself). You might also be interested in Black bread mold. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Secondary pages

I have various how-to on my talk page which is getting pretty big, so I started a secondary page User:AlMac/Wiki rules to try to organize my notes, but they are showing up both there and on my talk page, which is not what I wanted. How did I mess up, and how do I fix that? User:AlMac|(talk) 02:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Well i fixed it ... I must have had some typo ... this is an area I still learning ... I know some stuff can be done, I just not know how, and in this case did not want this to happen, so that I can work on moving some categories of stuff to like archives, for easy reference as needed. User:AlMac|(talk) 02:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] icons in spanish

how do i make the icons on my pc and all the applications, etc come up in Spanish?

  • That question has nothing to do with Wikipedia. Please read the instructions at the top of this page and take your question to the reference desk. - Mgm|(talk) 11:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Headers

Why do the equals signs in the first header in List of conflicts in South America appear as equals signs and not turning the text between them into proper headers? Zafiroblue05 04:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

The first equal sign has to be the first character on the line. This was fixed by this edit. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:27, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Posting Images

I recently found an interesting article about Mark Sabia, the journalist who was arrested for impersonating professional sports for 20 years. I have pictures of this con-man in action and I would like to donate them to the site. How do I go about donating these images to the public domain where they can see it on his entry page?

Please respond via e-mail with the subject posting images to sites because I rarely check wikipedia. Thanks.


(email address removed)

Include in the subject line "Mark Sabia"

I volunteer to put the pictures up for you. Dismas|(talk) 14:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] download wikipedia

[edit] decipher a ciphertext by a simple Caesar sipher

decipher a ciphertext: ciphertext:jcpf kp rctv g qh vjtgg cpf cnn qh ugxgp

I don't see what this has to do with anything. Try the reference desk for questions not related to using Wikipedia. But the answer is "hand in part e of three and all of seven". -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:48, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do you use images from the Commons on Wikipedia?

I have tried to find out how you link to a Commons image on Wikipedia. How do you do it? The Neokid Talk 12:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

The same way as using an image from the en.wikipedia site, there is no special way since it is a commons image. Just use [[Image:SFO_at_night.jpg]] or whatever the name of the image you want to display. Garion96 (talk) 12:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Popups / Disambiguation

What is the requirement for the Popups Tool to recognize a page as disambiguation? Background: I recently created the disambiguation page Ministry of Information, using the {{disamb}} Template. Now I would like to disambiguate the pages linking there using popups, but the popups do not show the list of possible dabs. I did enable the option, and it usually works fine, for example for links like oil and doctor. I also refreshed the cache on any page that could possibly need a refresh.
Thanks in advance for any hints. -- Ravn 13:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ravn. Please note that {{disamb}} is only a redirect to the actual template {{disambig}}. If you use the latter, popups will work. -- Ravn 13:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! I should've noticed myself! -- Ravn 13:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need advice/input on Chevrolet_Nova/Revamp formatting issue

I'm working on an overhaul of the Chevrolet Nova page and have added standardized infoboxes (Template:Infobox Automobile and Template:Infobox Automobile generation) to the new draft page, which can be found at Chevrolet_Nova/Revamp. However, if you go to that draft page, you'll see the issue I'm having. With the infoboxes in place, other stuff is getting shoved all over the page, including the [edit] links for each section and thumbnail pictures, the latter of which have been removed because of the problem but which are accesible through the page history. Does anyone have a suggestion for what I may be doing wrong or, barring error on my part, suggestions on how to fix the problem (for example, by correcting the infobox templates themselves)? Thanks! A reply here, on my own talk page, or on the draft article's talk page would be most appreciated. --BRossow 15:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] about decrypt the substitution cipher

given f(x)=23x+10 (mod 26) is a bijection(one to one and onto) that it can be used as a subtitution cipher, then decrypt the message ZYCU was enctypted by using the function.

The help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. Questions about specific subjects should be placed in the reference desk. Besides, why ask for milk when you can ask for a cow? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Because my fridge is too small for a cow. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:48, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted Images

How do I find out who deleted an image? Someone deleted and image that I had linked to, apparently without checking the links, and now I have no way to discover who it was.--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 00:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC) 17:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

See Special:Log. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Decategorizing

Suppose a page transcludes a template which includes the page in a category. Is there a way to remove the page from the category without touching the template? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps not what you're looking for, but you can subst the template and then manually remove the categorization. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Like you said, not exactly what I was looking for, but this will do. Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 07:41, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dealing with Large Image of SS400 Sea Devil

The article on the World War II submarine, the SS400 Sea Devil, had a box saying "Insert Image Here". I have such an image (Sea_Devil.jpg). I followed the instructions for uploading the image, and for modifying the page in order to show the image. The image now appears, but my browser, Internet Explorer, shows an undesirable side-effect due to the large size of the image. A portion of the text of the article is no longer displayed. Could someone please re-edit the page so that it shows a thumbnail of the image, allows someone to click on the thimbnail to see a large version, and so that the original text is displayed as it should be. I would appreciate someone doing this for me. Thanks in advance. James W. Overbeck

Fixed. The problem was that you didn't include anything telling the site what size to display the image at - I've set it to 300 pixels, which is standard for these images. Wikipedia:Images explains the syntax to use when linking images, for future reference. (You also replaced the image of the flag, not the image saying "insert photo here", but I make that mistake myself all the time...) Shimgray | talk | 18:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who wrote the article?

If you want to know who wrote a particular article in Wikipedia, click the history tab of the article (articles with extensive contributions may require you to expand the history listing to see the first contribution). Note tha very few articles in Wikipedia are really written by a single person, they are generally collaborative efforts. SailorfromNH 22:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

If, however, you're asking in order to cite a Wikipedia article in an academic submission you're working on, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Specifically, you can generally just follow the "Cite this article" link on the left of the page with the article you wish to cite, and it'll give you the info you want. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clearing out user history.

I want to purge my user page history and clear out its history - essentially starting over, with nothing showing up when one clicks on 'history'. How do I go about doing this? --The chuck 22:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

You ask an admin. I have deleted it for you. --GraemeL (talk) 22:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Just tag it with {{delete}}. enochlau (talk) 03:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] January 23

[edit] template:if and its ilk: how to use?

Is there a page that describes how to use the If Templates? The page Category:If Templates has a very incomplete description. Or, if there's no such page, can someone please clue me in? Thanks.—msh210 00:40, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The discussion pages of the individual templates are more detailed. This category description just gives an overview. See, for example, Template talk:Qif. jnothman talk 03:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Company logo

Would it be a waste of database space and/or disk space to upload my company's minilogo for use on my user page to denote that I own the company? Are there any alternative ways to show my company's minilogo other than uploading it to Wikipedia, such as hot-linking it from the company server? Lady Serena 02:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Disk space is not really a worry. There is plenty of it. And no, you can't display external images. What might be confusing, though, is finding an appropriate licence for the image. jnothman talk 03:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes that could be a problem. I don't know what you'd tag it with. Fair use doesn't apply because it's your user page; you'd have to license it under GFDL, but I'm not sure you'd want to do that for something like that. enochlau (talk) 03:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
My company minilogo icon has been uploaded and is now in use on my user page. It is free for use on pages discussing Varus Online, just don't use it to brand a website that isn't officially endorsed by Varus Online. (Lady Serena 15:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC))
The licenses you have given it allow it to be used by anyone for any purpose as long as they say its yours. Technically, they can ignore what you say here and follow the licenses. They might not even see this page. You might want to write into the license section that they can't use it without permission. Deskana (talk) 18:21, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to add personal interests/ subject areas

hello,

I am new to Wikipedia. I entered my personal info yesterday. January 21st. my username, and password works. Today I was attempting to enter my personal interests/ subject area of expertise, knowledge, education et cetera and I couln't get it to work. I got to the page where I could see peoples' usernames and what they consider to be there areas of knowledge. I could not put down mine however. Could somebody send me a step by step list of instructions of how I can accomplish this?

Sincerely,

Ajigech_gakhai/ My email address is: [email removed]

Click the edit link at the top of the page. If you cannot save the page, it may be protected. What page were you trying to edit, exactly?--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 04:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invisible sections

Is it possible to mark the ends of sections without using headers? On my userpage, I have several segments, in different parts of the table. I am able to edit some sections, but sometimes I get bits of the table formatting stuck in with them. Similarly, I would like to mark the beginning of a section without using a "=" header, because those are hard to format.--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 04:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You can use HTML comment tags, such as <!-- end of section --> ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 06:56, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be anything exactly like what you want. The closest thing I can think of is to split each section to a separate user subpage and transclude those into the table. You can then use the section edit links to edit the subpages. The downside is that this makes editing the entire page at once difficult. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userboxes

How do I make my userboxes look like this. I don't want them as a subpage though. If anyone really likes to edit, feel free to to that to my userpage. If you do please tell me how you did. Most likely, if you don't please tell me how. thanks. schyler 04:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Just click 'edit this page' on Admrboltz's subpage, copy everything, paste it on your user page, and replace his boxes with yours. Deltabeignet 05:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
    • No, not the boxes. I want them to line up up like his. I just picked a random adminisytrator's page that had stuff like that. I have like 60-something boxes. I like rows of 3 and columns of 20. How would I go about doing that? schyler 13:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh. Okay. Thanks. schyler 00:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] finding leangth of 3rd side of right angle tringle

at 90% vertical side a=9"

       horizonal bottom  b=16"
       how long is side  c=?
Questions like this belong in the reference desk.--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 06:06, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
For the record it is approximately 18.357559750686 inches at 90%

[edit] the name of a ram by age

if a lamb is described as the female less than one year old , and a hogget is between 1 and 2 years old , and a sheep is 2 or older , what are the corresponding names for the male species? thank you.

This kind of question belongs on the Reference desk.--Max Talk (add) • Contributions 07:44, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What do these do? Can't They be merged?

{{bad}} is like {{cleanup}} {{good}} is like WP:GA {{small}} is like {{stub}}

Not entirely, I agree on {{bad}}, but {{good}} is likely a template to put on an article that's listed in WP:GA and {{small}} actually gives small text, which has nothing to do with stubs. - Mgm|(talk) 10:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
See the relevant sections on templates for deletion: Good and Bad. jnothman talk 10:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

I've just done [this revert]. However, I'm still not happy with this presentation of the date. Firstly it looks ugly. Secondly it doesn't focus on the significance of 23rd April. Is there perhaps some Wikipedia policy about the presentation of dates? I've asked the same question at Talk:William Shakespeare. AndyJones 10:11, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). The section Different calendars uses Shakespeare as an example. Common Man 21:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I created my own User_talk page

After I registered (a few weeks ago), I then created my own User_talk page manually. Since then I've looked at other users' talk pages and everybody seems to have a welcome message like "Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers..."

Did I accidentally mess up the system by overwriting mine when I manually created my own talk page? Euchiasmus 11:42, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Nope, you didn't mess anything up! Those messages are are sometimes left by other users welcoming new users if they see some of their contributions or experimentations in the Sandbox. But don't worry, not nearly everyone has them. -- Natalya 12:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Don't worry, you're welcome now :) wangi 12:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I never got one either. I was curious what happened and why I didn't get one till I found out other users leave them and one of those users must have been having a day off when I registered! Hehehe... Deskana (talk) 18:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tag for 'title dispute'?

Is there some sort of tag where it would display a message like This pages title or name is currently under dispute. Please see the discussion for more information.? I want to create a page, but I do not know if the title is the official title. --136.150.200.99 15:56, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like {{move}} is the template for you. Please make sure that you read what's said on that page and follow the instructions before adding the template to the page. -- gtdp [T]/[C] 17:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Just re-read what you've said, and I've noticed that you haven't created a username of yourself. Users who aren't logged in cannot create pages. If you do decide to get an account here, feel free to create the page after you've had a look at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions. Thanks for your time. -- gtdp [T]/[C] 17:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

I was wondering if someone could clarify this for me. If an article has a stub, for example {{religion-stub}}, should the related category also be included, i.e. [[Category:Religion]]? I am pretty sure that this is the case but just looking for clarification. Thanks in advance. Forbsey 17:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Every article (stub or not) should be in at least one category (possibly more), and a stub notice doesn't change that. But just because an article has {{religion-stub}} on it doesn't mean that Category:Religion is the sharpest (ie most specific and useful) category. Take a look at the subcategories of Category:Religion, would the article more appropriately belong to one of those subcats? As a side note, {{religion-stub}} automatically adds an article to Category:Religion stubs. Further reading: Wikipedia:Category schemes, Wikipedia:Categorization, Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes.--Commander Keane 19:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
To expand on the side note above: Since the "X stubs" categories are already included in the "X" category editors should not explicitly include [[Category:X]] in the article. So, it's generally safest to just add {{X-stub}} and no explicity category. Common Man 21:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Many stub-sorters reccomend that each stub should include at least one non-stub category, usually the non-stub parent of the stub category. There are several reasons for this, but one is that when the articel groews beyond a stub and the stub tempalte is remopved, the articel will no longer be in the stub category, and should not be left uncategorized. I think this used to be suggested in WP:STUB but it doesn't seem to be mentioned one way or the other at the moment. DES (talk) 21:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not seeing any watchlist notification e-mail messages

I am not seeing any watchlist notification e-mail messages. I've entered my e-mail address into my profile. This e-mail address is one which generally works, and has been working for years. I've put some articles on my watchlist, and contributions are merrily turning up on there. But no notification e-mail messages.

Regarding the question of whether or not I have a Spam filter and perhaps messages are being assessed as Spam, I can tell you that I am checking the MTA logs of the machine which is MX server for my e-mail domain, so that will cut immediately to the chase as to whether or not delivery attempts are coming in.

I was using what I call a "tagged" e-mail address. To explain, where my e-mail address would normally be <mailbox@somedomain.org>, the "tagged" e-mail address takes the form <mailbox--wikipedia@somedomain.org>. (My mail server is configured to ignore any trailing tags in the local part.) This e-mail address is perfectly valid, and is handled OK by all good systems. I suspected that this may be causing a problem, so I have switched to using a "plain" e-mail address, e.g. <mailbox@somedomain.org>.

I have subsequently put Wikipedia:Sandbox in my watchlist, logged out, and made an edit on that. Still no e-mail.

Is Wikipedia supposed to send out notification e-mail messages?

Is there a troubleshooting procedure for this?

--Duckbill 18:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You don't receive emails when your watchlisted articles change, you need to check the watchlist manually. click on "my watchlist" at the top of any page when you are logged in and it will take you to a special page showing the last change to your watched articles over the last few days. That is basically all that your watchlist does. --GraemeL (talk) 18:11, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe it is possible to configure MediaWiki to send out email notifications of watchlisted changes, but the sheer size of Wikipedia and the potential drain on server resources means it is not enabled here. Shimgray | talk | 21:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Correct. Email notification features are disabled on the Wikimedia farm for the present. Rob Church (talk) 22:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linking to Google

how can I link my article to google so that if the title is typed into google, my article will come up Thanks

Google should eventually index your page, at least if there is a link to the page somewhere on the web. May take days or weeks, depending. You could try submitting the URL of the article to google. They make no guarantees whether the submission will have any effect, though. To find out how to submit, google for "submit page to google" :-) You can't force google to list your page first. Weregerbil 18:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 401(k) plans

Should an employer give a former employee a check for the amount do to them? why or why not?

This page is for questions relating to Wikipedia and its policies. Please see the Wikipedia:Reference desk for your question. Also see 401k since judging from your question you don't have a full understanding of how 401k's work because once money is put into a 401k, the employer no longer has it. Dismas|(talk) 23:06, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Using the same image across other languages wikis

If say you have an image [[Image:Eoin_Colfer_(writer).jpg|right|thumb|210px|Eoin Colfer]] at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoin_Colfer - is there a way to use this image at say http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Колфер,_Оуэн without re-uploading it? Sorry if common answer. valerij 23:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

  • You can use the Wikimedia Commons to upload free images (with GFDL, PD or certain creative commons licenses) which makes them available for use in all Wikimedia projects. Unfortunately images tagged as fair use (like the one you linked to can't be uploaded there, so I'm afraid it's manual uploading the the respective Wikipedia for this one. -Mgm|(talk) 00:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
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