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[edit] Archive of past questions

Contents 1 Archive of past questions 2 March 28 2.1 About pages like ArticleName/SubPage 2.2 help me 2.3 Userbox Deletion 2.4 Merging and being bold 2.5 Question with privacy 2.6 Requesting Permisson on Copyright Photo 2.7 Name etymologies/histories on Wikipedia 2.8 New to Wikipedia and wish to add article to stub category 2.9 Can I rename an article? 2.10 How do you link to an article in another language's wikipedia? 2.11 Will It continue to be free ? 2.12 Disambiguation page styles 2.13 cleanup 2.14 Pictures don't show 2.15 Mass-crediting wikipedia quotes 2.16 again 2.17 Reverting talk pages 2.18 Help! 2.19 just one question 2.20 Quotes at top of article 2.21 Uploading an Article 2.22 Question about Deletion? 2.23 re: Today's featured picture summary 2.24 WP:??? 2.25 General Questions 2.26 Future WikiPedia ? 2.27 WYSIWYG 2.28 Best Wiki 2.29 wikipedia DB 2.30 Wikipedia with other companies 3 March 29 3.1 Arabic script together with life dates 3.2 Suggestions, please 3.3 email notification of changes to my watchlist 3.4 Editing Issue 3.5 Deleting user pages 3.6 Parental controls for Wikipedia access 3.7 Flody M. Crenshaw 3.8 Toolbar 3.9 Toni Cade Bambara 3.10 endnote 3.11 Skins [again] 3.12 Arabic letters 3.13 how to contact a contributor 3.14 Missing image OL0026.jpg 3.15 sopes to let 3.16 Underlined Links 3.17 insult 3.18 Main Page summary of featured article: Voter turnout, should be edited 4 March 30 4.1 Lost the "what links here" page 4.2 case sensitivity and searching 4.3 whats the name of the publisher who published wikipedia 4.4 Editing pages 4.5 IRC 4.6 installed Mediawiki 4.7 New Topics 4.8 translation 4.9 Pickups (Music) 4.10 Creating an entry for 'The Ridley report' 4.11 Splitting off a talk page. 4.12 Pending Questions 4.12.1 Change Colors 4.13 RollBack 4.13.1 RollBack 4.14 Hide IP 4.15 Custom Sigs 5 March 31 5.1 Computer Security 5.2 Gashtier 5.3 NAME TRANSLATION 5.4 Deletion 5.5 What is your problem ?? 5.6 Admin problems !! 5.7 Bahrain ferry 5.8 How do I change the title of an article 5.9 Ads and donations 5.10 Editing Issue (Me & You) 5.11 Steps before topics removel ? 5.12 Origin of Dylight Saving Time? 5.13 new user 5.14 how to deal with clear bias 6 April 1 6.1 i can not use the edit function 6.2 Clarification needed on copyright violation 6.3 April Fool's 6.4 Navigational bar 6.5 Registration 6.6 Control Panel 6.7 Admin wanted to Template talk:Catmore 6.8 Looking for a template, 'foreign language article may contain more info' 6.9 Copying pages (rather than moving them) 6.10 Move, Merge, Delete - page histories 6.11 MySkin 6.12 Editing some of the articles 6.13 Order of links in "What links here" page 6.14 Wikipedians Celebrate 6.15 Researchers using wiki 6.16 HTML - convert html site to wiki and vise versa 6.17 Highlight Colored 6.18 Main page code 7 April 2 7.1 tendinitis 7.2 foreign body in larynx 7.3 Links & Underscores 7.4 viewing a deleted userbox 7.5 clackamas copunty oregon 7.6 Station Entry/Exit Stats 7.7 Credibility 7.8 How to split pages - Wikipedia guidelines missing? 7.9 Template: optional parameter, manipulating parameter. 7.10 Opening a checking account 7.11 Language interwiki links 7.12 Actuall Trivia 8 April 3 8.1 Where is this text? 8.2 Common policy 8.3 bug fixing 8.4 regarding sun and earth 8.5 Template:RD2 8.6 Registered trademarks 8.7 why to post 8.8 Screenshots of GPL licensed applications 8.9 help request 8.10 new articles 8.11 help documentation 8.12 My stress-o-meter is about to explode... 8.13 Insert bot 9 April 4 9.1 Stubs in categories 9.2 why do you let just anyone edit wiki? 9.3 Oxidation of copper during electrodeposition 9.4 Basketball Terms in German 9.5 Question about Google searches on WP articles 9.6 suggestion 9.7 A new article 9.8 Clay County, NC 9.9 address problem 9.10 Splitting pages 9.11 Whether the information provided in this site is perfect. 9.12 wiki____ 9.13 Search 9.14 Dissappearing Article (David George Kendall) 9.15 How does someone give further background info on professional and indy wrestlers 9.16 How can I do like this ? 9.17 How to deal with SMS 9.18 Metaphysics of Quality 9.19 Wikipedia entries 10 April 5 10.1 Wikilink disappears 10.2 Vote For Deletion Questions 10.3 Migdia Chinea 10.4 Page Access Statistics 10.5 BOARDING SCHOOLS 10.6 Add a band 10.7 help fix image layout 11 April 6 11.1 Deleting comments on talk pages 11.2 Past archives of the entire (English) wikipedia articles? 11.3 Talk Pages and User pages 11.4 Step 3 in Afd 11.5 Long strings instead of proper text 11.6 WP:AfC 11.7 UK's participation in the european single currency 11.8 sending pages 11.9 Extra Space 11.10 Linking a Wikimedia Commons picture to Wikipedia 11.11 Disambiguate: Laurence Godfrey

[edit] March 28

[edit] About pages like ArticleName/SubPage

How do I make a second-level page (on my user page for example) that is similar to a file in a directory? For example, User_talk:Fuhghettaboutit/subpage. Do I just create a new article named ArticleName/subArticle, or is there another way to do it so that I get that little link to the higher level page at the top of the article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by J. Finkelstein (talk • contribs).

That's pretty much it. It should be noted that subpages are generally frowned upon in article space. Isopropyl 00:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just curious. Thanks! J. Finkelstein 00:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] help me

Hello!i just edited a page and there is a box on top of the text in which says something about a sandbox,if you are confused type in kapetan dragan in the search box.i probably just overlooked some instructions but if you could answer what is it and when will it go away it would be nice!thank you!--Captain ginyu 01:15, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. I assume that you began editing your article in the "Sandbox" and then copied and pasted it to a new page. In the process, you seem to have just grapped an extra line of code. I've fixed that problem. The new article looks very informative. If you need help formatting it (adding wikilinks, etc) please let us know. Johntex\^talk 01:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox Deletion

I was wondering if someone could point me to any discussion of deletion of the userbox, Template:User antireligion. It had to have been deleted very recently, but I see no listing for it on WP:TFD nor discusssion on WP:UBP. As I've never been involved with the userbox debate, I'm not sure where else to look. --Fuhghettaboutit 03:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Check out the deletion log here. If you disagree with its deletion, you should bring it up on WP:DRV. — TheKMan^talk 05:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Not going to bother. While I wholeheartedly agree with the message of the template text, I highly disagree with its name (which is not what the message implied despite what some might read into it). I also think it would be a losing battle. --Fuhghettaboutit 05:43, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging and being bold

I am interested to know the thoughts of other editors on this issue. Is it considered OK to take an established article (such as this) and merge it into its 'parent' article (in this case, Battlefield 2) without asking for any consensus or opinion by other editors? Or is that just someone being bold? Personally I find the idea of someone spontaneously removing the content of an article almost equivalent to a non-administrator speedy deleting an article. Remy B 04:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

In this case, merging should definitely be discussed with other editors. Perhaps you could begin by using the {{merge}} family of tags. However, it's perfectly fine to merge a {{stub}} article, or one that is not heavily edited. Don't worry about screwing things up, since the merge can always be undone if need be. If you feel that the merge will be controversial, it can't hurt to talk it over. You may want to check out WP:MERGE. Good luck! Isopropyl 05:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The reason I bring it up is that someone else has been merging articles (including the example I gave above) without any consultation with other editors. The last time I noticed this happen I asked that it be discussed first, and it was decided to keep the article as it was when people had the chance to give their input. However the user has now merged another article (the one above) without warning and I find it very concerning. What can be done other than reverting the merge and insisting on a discussion every single time this happens? Remy B 06:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

You may want to talk to an administrator if the user repeatedly performs controversial merges when asked to stop. Try the administrator's noticeboard. Isopropyl 18:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

• Remember to redirect the page you're merging to the page you're merging into. The GFDL requires the edit history of included information to be saved and it's easy to undo a merge if the pre-merge page is still available. (Some people see titles of merged pages as useless and ask for their deletion, which is not a good idea). - 131.211.210.15 08:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question with privacy

I edited an article and didn't realize that my IP address would be viewable by everyone. So I created an account and registered a user name to feel a little more secure. However, my newly created user name isn't coming up on the history page...my IP address is still advertised. I am not comfortable with this. What can I do to resolve this?

Please take a look at Wikipedia:How to log in; it sounds like you are not logged in to your newly-created user account. When you are, it will indeed hide your IP address. Sometimes issues with browser configurations (particularly cookies) cause problems, but once they're solved you should be able to use your account. Hope this helps. MCB 06:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick response. However, I'm logged in (I've got my "user name, my talk, my preferences...log out") at the top of the screen and still my IP address is being shown, and my user name isn't--sharp 06:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Future changes should be credited to you. Registering an account doesn't take over the previous contributions, they will continue to show the IP. Notinasnaid 08:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting Permisson on Copyright Photo

Hi

I sent a Photographer a request to use a copyright photo using this BoilerPlate. His responce was this:

"Thanks for your inquiry. The Wikipedia is an interesting problem I was looking at the other day. I was thinking of adding a photo to the Scott Walker page, but although I do not mind the use in Wikipedia, I don't want images to become generic public domain _without credit_ on every idiots web site. I don't mind you using the Amy Lee or probably Scott (big time for Scott fans- first album in 11 years, box set, also walker brothers box set and documentary.)"

I'm not sure how to respond to this. Can I ask him to give me permisson to use it just for Wikipedia? How do I do that

Gary van der Merwe 06:35, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Permission just for Wikipedia is no good. Instead of putting his work into the public domain, ask him to license his photos under a free license such as the GFDL or, preferrably, one of the following Creative Commons Licenses: {{cc-by}}, {{cc-by-sa}} (either version 1.0, 2.0, or 2.5 ar OK), or the Free Art license. All these licenses do require proper attribution, but make the work otherwise free. Since his prime concern seems to be to ensure being given proper credit; that should take care of this. See also Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission and Wikipedia:Confirmation of permission. The photographer should be aware that any free license will allow the use of the work for commercial purposes. Lupo 08:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok - After re-reading his responce - I realised that he probaly did not understand the terms of the GFDL. I intend to responced as follows:

"Hi Chris

Thank you for your reply, and for expressing your concerns.

If you were to give us permission to use the image in question under the terms of the GFDL, you would be giving anyone else permission to use it, but only under the terms of the GFDL.

If someone were to reuse this image, but not reproduce the credit, they would be violating the terms, and hence would be required to discontinue use, or reporduce the credit.

Regards,

Gary"

Is this Ok? Gary van der Merwe 08:51, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

• If you take out the typo in "reporduce". That message clearly explains how his image will not be generally public domain as he's assuming. He asks for credit, GFDL gives him that. We should be okay. - 131.211.210.15 08:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name etymologies/histories on Wikipedia

I've been looking, without much success, for articles purely about the history and etymology of names, and examples of people from history who had that name? I suspect that most of them have been moved to the name etymology parts of Wiktionary, but I would have thought some might be encyclopedic enough to have remained. Can anyone point me towards any such articles?

The reason I am asking is to do with the page Ptolemy (disambiguation). I have been working on this page, adding stuff and reorganising stuff. I recognise that some of the material might fit better under "named for", or "references in contemporary culture" sections in the relevant articles, but part of the reason I started expanding the page from the original disambiguation list was to have all the material gathered in one place, rather than having it distributed throughout Wikipedia. The descriptions were added because it is helpful to disambiguate at the disambiguation page, rather than expect people to click on lots of different links. I also feel that the page as it stands is a helpful overview of the long and varied history of this name, but maybe that is just me?

The main addition I am planning at the moment is an etymology section. Once this is done, I have been thinking that the article/list would be better at something like Ptolemy (name)? Anyway, the page feels like it is getting a bit out of control, and I'd appreciate any advice on how best to handle the addition/organisation of further material, and where to draw the line at examples of Ptolemies. Thanks. Carcharoth 16:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about how to handle such pages, but Alison is an example of a page with name etymology and a list of famous Alisons. -- Natalya 18:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that led me to Category:Names, which will help me find other examples of similar articles. At the moment, the Alison article seems like the etymology could end up at Wiktionary, and the famous Alisons list could be a disambiguation list. I think the Ptolemy (disambiguation) article deserves to avoid such a fate because (like Jesus and Leonardo and similar names), the name Ptolemy in and of itself has come to be notable. Hopefully someone will have more advice on how to structure/limit such an article. Carcharoth 18:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New to Wikipedia and wish to add article to stub category

I have gotten as far as to find "computer software" to add my article but I cannot find directions on how to add. I think I'm just lost and need someone to walk me through it. Thanks

See Wikipedia:Your first article for some good info. Dismas|^(talk) 17:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can I rename an article?

I've just done a couple of minor edits on the page "HM Land Registry". The agency is now known by the name "Land Registry" ("HM" is no longer used.) How do I change the main heading of the page?

Coultart 17:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Move a page Dismas|^(talk) 17:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't recommend such a change. There is a "Land Registry" in the UK, Eire, Hong Kong and Canada, plus Land Registry already exists as a redirect. We don't have to rename the article either, it should use the most historically important name. (Note that Cat Stevens changed his name almost 30 years ago, but that's still the name of the article). I'd recommend instead (a) keeping the name (b) changing Land Registry from a redirect into a disambiguation. Notinasnaid 18:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll leave it as it is. (I've already changed the opening sentence to reflect the new name.)

[edit] How do you link to an article in another language's wikipedia?

There is nothing linking the English article on the Israeli poetess Zelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky with the corresponding Hebrew article

For that go to the section where the interwiki links are and type in this: [[he:Name of article]]--Adam ^(talk) 18:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Note that doing this will not create a regular, inline link but will add a link to the article on the Hebrew-language Wikipedia in the "in other languages" sidebar (about a page down, on the left side). If you want to create an inline link to an article in another wikipedia, you have to use [[:he:Name of article]]. Note that this use is discouraged and you should have a very good reason for doing it - the sidebar link method explained by Adam is what you should use to link an article to its corresponding article in a different language's Wikipedia. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 12:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Will It continue to be free ?

What guarantees that Wikipedia will continue to be free ? I am afraid that it will be not free after a while ?

I remember there was a site called askme.com and it was free , after a while it was paid service !

It would be difficult to charge, since anyone else can freely copy the content of Wikipedia onto their own web site. So long as there is someone who can figure out how to pay for the servers (these cost a lot of money to buy and keep running) and their internet connections, someone will provide it free. Until everyone loses interest, or Free Trade Associations ban free stuff because it's anticompetitive. Notinasnaid 18:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia's copyright ensures that the content will be freely available (forever), see Wikipedia:Copyrights. As far as I know there is no particular guarantee that the wikipedia.org website will be free forever, however it is owned and run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation whose stated goals are "to maintain and develop free-content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge". -- Rick Block (talk) 19:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

You are distinguishing here between the content being free and the transmission of the information being free? That sounds like the information, while free in the "public domain" sense, and free in the "not trapped" sense, is only being distributed free-of-charge (the "not costing anything" sense of free) because the Wikimedia Foundation covers the costs. If that ever changed (ie. "needing to charge to cover costs"), then "not costing anything" sense is lost, and the "not trapped" (or rather, fully accessible) sense is diminished (less people would be able to access it). In fact, in the "not trapped" sense, Wikipedia is not fully free at the moment. Not everyone can access it. Though I believe the Wikimedia Foundation has that as one of its aims as well (ie. expanding the sense of "public" to reach a global audience). Carcharoth 19:51, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation bylaws state that the "Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of online free, open content [...] that will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license". The GFDL ensures the content will always remain free as in libre and the Foundation's statement of purpose ensures it will remain free in terms of payment (gratis). Angela. 06:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

What I understand from you that it is 100% not going to be a paid service , shall I post all my knowledge here ?!

Well, technically if the WMF made WP unfree or charged for access it wouldn't violate the GFDL if the information was provided in another format (eg a db dump) but for all pratical purposes, there is no way one could make WP pay and have the community still show up. In short, no worries, as long as someone pays the hosting bill, this site will be up. At least thats how I see it -- Tawker 06:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation page styles

[Question also posted at Category talk:Lists of ambiguous human names and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography]

I have been looking at several disambiguation pages for names (to get some ideas following work I did on Ptolemy (disambiguation)), and I've come across pages like Jesus (disambiguation) and Leonardo (disambiguation). Some questions I want to ask:

(1) The Leonardo (disambiguation) page has a bit allowing people to see all articles starting "Leonardo", or rather to see a list of AllPages starting from Leonardo, as seen here. This is the first time I've seen this, though the Leonardo disambiguation talk page led me to Robert, which does look a bit overdone, but also has the "AllPages" link. My question is whether this is a common practice, or whether it falls foul of the "no self-reference" rule about not linking to non-article space in Wikipedia (creates problems with mirror/redistribution sites)?

(2) Is is normal to (like I have done with Ptolemy) to arrange the disambiguation page in a historical sense, thus bringing out a narrative about the name throughout history, and tracing the links that sometimes exist, with certain uses of the name being inspired by one Ptolemy, and other uses being inspired by other Ptolemies? I ask this question because I feel a similar reorganisation of the Jesus disambiguation page could help make it easier to read as an article about the history of the name, rather than as a disambiguation page. Note that this could not be done with pages like Robert, as there is no such narrative thread to pull out of the history of the name.

(3) Is there a better place to discuss this?

[Additional comment - I've found Category:Lists of ambiguous human names and its template tag. I can't work out the best place to discuss that sort of thing? Maybe I should go to the People Portal?]

Thanks. Carcharoth 18:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The Special:Allpages link from Leonardo (disambiguation) strikes me as a self reference (which WP:ASR says to avoid) and I don't think this is common. Your arrangement of Ptolemy (disambiguation) makes it more like an article about the name than a disambiguation page (which doesn't bother me). I think a good place to discuss this would be Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that advice. I will raise the subject at the talk page you've suggested. For now, I'm trying to centralise discussion back at Talk:Ptolemy (disambiguation), as I'm losing track of all the places I've asked about this. If you (or anyone else) has further advice, please add it there. Thanks. Carcharoth 23:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] cleanup

Hello!My article named Dragan Vasiljković was tagged for cleanup,but i recently corrected it so i would like someone to take a look and if it's good to remove that box on top of it.--Captain ginyu 20:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

From what I can see, it still needs more cleaning up. (1) The English grammar and writing needs to be of a higher standard; (2) the article needs to reference its sources; (3) With controversial issues such as war crimes, it needs to be written from a neutral-point-of-view (as do all Wikipedia articles). I'm not quite sure where the pages are that cover these issues, so hopefully someone else can point you in the right direction. The category tag is easy to sort out. I'll try and think of a few categories to put this article in, and hopefully others will correct it if there are better categories. Carcharoth 21:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Another thing needed is a very short first paragraph telling the reader why they should read on. This would be before the history. This should say why the subject is notable. And I agree: reputable sources are essential for this sort of article, to support everything that is reported. For example, do you have a newspaper article from Australia which said this was absurd? Notinasnaid 22:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures don't show

Somtimes when there should be an illustration of a picture I can only see a red cross (X) inside a box. What does that mean, and can I do anything to see the picture?

Can you give a specific example? Images should be linked within the image space, and if the image has been deleted, it should show red text, not an x. Images should not be linked to external websites.--Adam ^(talk) 21:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mass-crediting wikipedia quotes

I'm going to be running an online study that involves brief (2-3 sentence) informational paragraphs about 25 different items, and was hoping to quote wikipedia for both convenience and a little bit of consistency. I understand that the preferred citation method is to include a link to the source article with each quote; however, as I would like to avoid providing participants with a reason to stop participating, I would like to credit wikipedia by including a small version of the wikipedia logo on each page with quoted text, and providing a single link to the wikipedia main page on the final page of the study. Would this be okay? --71.106.164.181 21:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably not. If you don't want to link to wikipedia you could list the authors and include a copy of the GFDL but most people find it less hassel to link to the article.Geni 06:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. The main concern is just people using links during the data collection. Would a list of all the links, as active links, presented after the end of data collection be as good as offering the links one at a time as they come up? --71.106.164.181 04:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] again

I don,t understand what Carcharoth wanted to say when he wrote:the article needs to reference its sources ,and i would like someone to explain it to me. As for neutrality,i consider that article neutral,and if someone disagrees they should point out why.--Captain ginyu 22:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

As far as referencing sources goes, what they mean is to tell everyone where you got the information that you put in the article. Was it newspaper/magazine articles, books, video, websites, etc. At the very least you should create a section of the article called "References" and then list where you got your information such as:

• Warcrimes.com, author
• The New York Times, date, article title
• The History of War Criminals, date published, publisher, author
• etc.

See Wikipedia:Citing sources for more info.

Dismas|^(talk) 22:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that Dragan Vasiljković is not NPOV (neutral point of view), but certain words and phrases do seem to be too "expressive". It is difficult to explain! The words and phrases I am thinking of are: "highly disciplined and scored a number of successful commando actions" (the question here is who is calling them disciplined and successful?); and "in Australia it was considered absurd" (who considered it absurd?). But most of the article does sound OK, if not quite good English. The problem with tidying up this type of article is that rewriting the English might change the original meaning of the author. And it is always possible that the wrong words were used in the first place. It would be better to list online sources, write something short, and then let others expand it from the sources. I certainly wouldn't rewrite this without some of the original sources to refer to. Carcharoth 00:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Carcharoth, i just hope you understand croatian, because you're going to need to if you plan on rewriting my article using the links i plan to provide--Captain ginyu 00:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting talk pages

Hi! I'm a relatively new WikiGnome and Recent Changes Patroller.

Sometimes, when folks are vandalizing WikiPages, they'll vandalize warnings right off their talk pages, too. Is it bad form to revert their talk pages?

Also, if a vandal vandalizes warnings that I leave for them, they're kind of making it a personal thing, it seems. Should I refrain from reverting the talk page, and let somebody else do it, to avoid the appearance of a personal dispute?

Thank you for your guidance!

Yansa 23:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

While it is their page, I think you do have the personal right to revert it, to some extent. Maybe you should replace it the first time or two telling the user that he/she should leave messages on their talk pages. If he/she persists, you should either just ignore it (as you surely don;'t want to get into a fight), or bring it up with a higher admin who may talk to him/her. You should always try to stand your ground, though, whenever possible! Happy editing! → J@red ^talk+ _ubx  23:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Yansa 23:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I would certainly consider it a form of vandalism to blank a warning message. There is a standard template: {{blanking}} which you can place on a user's page when they are guilty of blanking pages. Just click on the link to see the text that will format if you placed the template on a page. Like most warning templates, you can make the message stronger by adding successive numbers after the message; another words {{blanking2}} is a stronger message and a "3" is a last warning before a block. --Fuhghettaboutit 00:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I should add that these warning templates are generally considered to be those that should always be subst'd. See WP:SUB. To substitute, just type subst: in the opening of any template. It would look like this: {{subst:blanking}}. --Fuhghettaboutit 01:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help!

                                                                                                 March 28, 2006

Dear Wikipedia,

I was given an assignment where I had to find out the history of two 'characters' from Ancient China. I have no idea what period of time they are from or what signifigance they had. I know that they were realated in some way, but I don't know what kind of way. These people are:

Shanghai Shuk Mau Se Tung

I am not even sure that the spelling of these names is correct and I have looked everywhere for info about them with, of course, no luck. If there is anything you can do to help me please tell me soon! If you can't, I will still be happy you helped me. I will be forever grateful if you can! Thanks alot!

                                                              Name Withheld

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities.
You might be referring to Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. -- Win777 23:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] just one question

Hello!I would like to know if i can input a link on my page just like that,or should i first ask them for permission.--Captain ginyu 00:56, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

You're wondering if you need the permission of the site the link goes to? I can't imagine a case where this would be necessary. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Some people get upset about others linking to them without asking, especially when it is not to the home page (deep linking) or the linker's site is an adult site/controversial. However, it is common practice to link without permission and it is not considered rude by most of Internet users or webmasters. An exception is when linking may cause a large bandwidth drain, such as linking to a page that contains many pictures or a very large picture. Also, displaying an image on your site while it is actually hosted on their site, called hotlinking, is unacceptable. -- Kjkolb 02:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes at top of article

Is there a template appropriate for placing a relevant quote at the beginning of an article or section? I looked through the MoS and the Template List, but I couldn't find any. But I know I've seen these quotes before. -- Creidieki 01:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure: it's Template:Quote box. --Fuhghettaboutit 02:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uploading an Article

My M. Ed. paper is a long article on "Ways of Knowing." It covers epistemology, perception, learning styles, learning preferences and is completely mine. How can I post it to Wikipedia?

Bryan

Before posting it you may want to read Wikipedia:Original research and then check out Wikipedia:Your first article. Dismas|^(talk) 02:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about Deletion?

How can I permenently delete off my account?

You basically can't, but please see Wikipedia:Account_deletion#Deleting your user account. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re: Today's featured picture summary

There's a typographical error in it. Spot it and win a prize! Downwards 03:45, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, "Chistmas." Pssst, Administrator help needed. --Fuhghettaboutit 04:19, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

user:Kmccoy fixed this. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:???

I recently stumbled across a WP page whose content changed (updated) every minute. I didn't bookmark it but I believe it had a WP shortcut. Anyone know what I'm referring to? Thanks, --hydnjo talk 04:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

What was the content? Was it a list of recent edits? Maybe it was Special:Recentchanges? tiZom_(2¢) 05:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Oops! Per your User Page, I'm assuming you already know about this page. Do you have any more details about the contents of the page you're looking for? tiZom_(2¢) 05:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

If not one of the specials (statistics, perhaps) there's a list at WP:WP and a complete list at Special:Allpages/WP. If you think of it, please let us know! -- Rick Block (talk) 05:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you thinking of WP:FC? — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• WP:FC is it. How long has it been around and how do the folks find that neat place? --hydnjo talk 12:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Arghh! *slaps forehead* - it's linked right from the main page and I overlooked it. I'll add it to WP:WP. Thanks all, :-) hydnjo talk 12:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, somehow I'd never noticed WP:WP before and thus didn't think to add the shortcut there after someone (David Levy I think) created it. The featured content page was originally a portal I created about three months ago. Cyberjunkie moved it to wikipedia space to act as a 'front page' for our featured content around the beginning of March. Glad you like the page. --CBDunkerson 13:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General Questions

1- How can I know the total posts / modifications of a person even me ? 2- Do the admins are selected from their posts ? 3- Should I erase the questions and the answers ? What about the discussions should I erase them after completing ? what of my discussion ? Thanks

1. This can be seen from the Special:Contributions pages. You can supply a user name or IP address whose contributions to view. Note that if you're using an anonymous IP address account, some of the contributions seen might not be made by you.
2. Well, yes. The way it happens is that when someone thinks he/she should be an admin, or someone thinks someone else should be an admin, he/she writes a request for adminship and then people comment on it. If there are enough positive comments that user is made an admin.
   1. Note: If you wish to know the total amount of contributions of a given user and more, use Kate's Tool.--Max Talk (add) • Contribs • 07:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
3. No, you should not. Having past discussions visible is a good way of seeing what has been discussed on Wikipedia. This does not apply to obvious vandalism though. JIP | Talk 07:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

hi Again , Just to be sure of point number 3 , can i erase ( at least my discussion page to organize it ) without being listed in the vandilism. —This unsigned comment was added by Alhoori (talk • contribs) .

You can archive your talk page if it gets too long, (which it isn't.) but it is considered vandalism if you remove warnings and the like from your talk page. Basically, unless a message is a personal attack it should generally remain there until you archive it. Otherwise your userpage and any subpages can generally have whatever you want on them. For more information userspace see Wikipedia:User page.

N.B. It is a good idea to sign your comments by typing ~~~~ at the end of the sentence, so people know who said what.--Max Talk (add) 21:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future WikiPedia ?

What is the future of wikipedia ?

Well, that's not the type of question that is easily answerable here at the Help Desk, but many discussions of future features, policies, etc., can be found at the Village Pump. Check it out! MCB 07:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WYSIWYG

When we will have this feature ? what you see is what you get ? I don't know how to do many stuff here !

I don't know when it will have this feature. For now try Help:Editing and learn how to do stuff here! jnothman ^talk 12:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikia are working on it, but there's no definite timeframe of when it will be ready. See wikiwyg.wikia.com. Until then, the closest thing we have is the edit toolbar. Angela. 13:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Neat! But for some reason refuses to load in Opera (9.0 preview which can surely handle it). Is there a list / discussion / bugs page for it? jnothman ^talk 05:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Best Wiki

What is the best WIKI software to use in terms of free , easy , simple etc

Well, the MediaWiki software that this site runs on is pretty simple to set up and edit, and it is free software (GPL). The home page is http://www.mediawiki.org. I set it up with some help from my compsci teacher. It installs via a web interface.--Max Talk (add) • Contribs • 07:07, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

You might want to view Wiki or Comparison of wiki software. Like most software, some are more useful than others for particular purposes. jnothman ^talk 12:33, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikipedia DB

1- What Database wikipedia is using ?

MySQL: 4.0.26-max-log

2- How huge it is ?

3- Does it have limits ?

It has the limits of MySQL tables. For size, see Wikipedia:Database download where you can actually download the content (excepting private user data). The current SQL files uncompress to a size of about 400GB, it seems. Then there is another 80GB or so of image and upload data. jnothman ^talk 12:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks , so can I download the whole wikipedia site ? what is the current size of wikipedia ?

[edit] Wikipedia with other companies

Do wikipedia have any cooporation with other IT companies like micrsoft , google etc ?

[edit] March 29

[edit] Arabic script together with life dates

I have a question regarding certain technicalities of using Arabic script. Specifically, when placing a person's name in Arabic script in parentheses after the English transliteration of their name, and then placing the person's dates of birth and death in parentheses, the dates (because of the right-left direction of Arabic script) get moved to before the name. For example:

Bâkî was helped largely by the established poet Zâtî (ذاﺕﯽ) (1471–1548) (adapted from the article Bâkî)

The life dates are, of course, 1471 to 1548 (in Roman script at least) and not the other way around. Is there any way to get around this problem? I've just been avoiding it by putting a "c." (for circa) before the first date, but this is a poor temporary solution (Zâtî was born in 1471, not just around 1471). Thanks in advance for any help. —Saposcat 08:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

One solution is to use HTML to force the direction of some text: surround the dates with <span dir="ltr"> and </span>. Eg

poet Zâtî (ذاﺕﯽ) <span dir="ltr">(1471–1548)</span>

gives: poet Zâtî (ذاﺕﯽ) (1471–1548). jnothman ^talk 12:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

One solution is enough for me. Many thanks. —Saposcat 12:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions, please

Tonight I added a bit more info to the beadlock article as well as a couple more pics. The spacing of the paragraphs and the pics just doesn't look good. I was wondering if any of you would mind looking at the article and either editing it or making suggestions on how the article could look better. I think the images are really helpful and rather necessary but I don't know if where they are is the best place for them. Maybe a gallery? Anyway, any suggestions that you could give would be welcome. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 09:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Galleries look much better, but I don't think the use of the internal beadlocks images is considered appropriate fair use of the copyrighted images. They is not here being used quite "to illustrate the work or product in question." Does anyone else have an opinion on this? jnothman ^talk

[edit] email notification of changes to my watchlist

I can't see how to set my prefs so that I am notified by email of changes to my watchlist. The relevant help page says "From MediaWiki 1.5, depending on preference settings, you get an email after a watched page has been edited by somebody else". Sorry but I don't understand this (and I think it could be phrased more clearly). Then, even more confusingly, there is a link to a help page called 'Email notification' but the links on that page lead nowhere. What is MediaWiki 1.5? Do I need to download it in order to get this functionality? I've looked at my preferences and there is nowhere for me to select to be notified by email. Please help (on my talk page). Thanks. Richardrj 09:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't run standard mediawiki 1.5 (currently uses a version of 1.6) the button is normaly in the user data section. Wikipedia has it turned off . Probably something to do with server load.Geni 09:43, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this, but I don't understand the first part of your reply. What is mediawiki - some kind of software? Do I need to download it in order to gain this (or any other) functionality? As for the second part, if I read you correctly, you are saying that there should be an option for this under my prefs, but that it is currently unavailable due to server load. Is this correct? If so, when will the option be made available again? Many thanks, Richardrj 10:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Mediawiki is the name of the Wiki software that is used to run Wikipedia. You don't need to download anything to read/edit/create articles for/etc Wikipedia. If you wanted to start your own wiki then you would need to download the software. The option for emails to be sent to users when their watchlisted articles are changed has been disabled. From the start of Wikipedia, if I'm not mistaken. This is simply because with the million + articles on Wikipedia, if an email was sent out about even half the edits, that would be millions of emails a day. There is no plan in place, as far as I know, to allow users to get updates for their watchlist via email. You just need to visit your watchlist to see any changes. I hope this answers your questions, I'm sorry if these weren't the answers you hoped for. :-) Dismas|^(talk) 11:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

No, that's fine - I quite understand the reasons for not having this feature. But if that's the case, then surely Help:Watching_pages#Email_notification is incorrect and needs to be deleted? Richardrj 12:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Dismas|^(talk) 14:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing Issue

Hi

I am new to Wikipedia and finding things a little confusing.

I created the group name Me & You in the reggae section under artists. A couple of days later I went back to put in some bigoraphical information about the group, and someone else had 'hijacked' it, and used it market an album of theirs.

Their information is in the wrong place, does not make any sense as the artist's name is Lindsey and therefore it dones not follow your policies.

I tried to edit it but the old information keeps coming back.

Please can you help and tell me how I can put the correct information in.

Also what is talk? If I read it correctly, someone appears to be saying that Me & You is an unheard of group and should not be listed. That is totally incorrect. The group which has been going for over 30 years has been signed by major record companies and had hits in many different countries and developed fans globally. The idea is to put the correct information out there including here so people will then have heard of the group and its achievements. This is one of the main reasons I signed up for editing.

I look forward to hearing from you

--Reggae Follower 09:24, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Without looking into this too deeply, I would say that one article needs to be at Me & You (band) and the other at Me & You (album). And then simply Me & You would be a disambiguation page. Dismas|^(talk) 09:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the edit history, it appears that this is the other way around - Me & You started as an article about an album, and then it was User:Reggae Follower who hijacked it to promote a Jamaican band. The revertion to the original content was then called "hijacking". And how exactly is describing the album "marketing" it? I have created articles about several buildings in Helsinki, am I trying to "market" them? In fact, is the article about Europe trying to market Europe? And, pray tell, what Wikipedia policy forbids information about artists named Lindsay (or Lindsey)? Reggae Follower, are you being serious here? JIP | Talk 11:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, take a look at [1]. This shows that the original article was created almost a year ago. [2] shows that on 29 Match, this was rewritten to be about the band instead of the album. So that was the hijacking, and it was certainly a little annoying to the people who wrote the original article to keep repeating this. This can easily be solved politely by renaming the articles as suggested, and updating all the article links. But in the mean time, I suggest that User:Reggae Follower click on this link: Me & You (band) to create their new article, and just update the link in the two reggae articles shown here [3] Notinasnaid 12:46, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting user pages

Dear sirs,

Yesterday I wanted to send a message to user QFT. I've never sent a message before, and I did it wrong. Instead of modifying his Talk page, I created a user page for him ... which changed his color from red to blue. I realized my mistake today and moved the text to his talk page, but I can't turn his name red again. I've tried to delete his user page by moving it to myne, but that didn't work, he's still blue but now when you click on QFT you get to my page instead.

Could someone please delete both of our user pages, both of which were created by me, so that we're red again? I've copied my question to his talk page.

Thank you, JarahE 13:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Done. JIP | Talk 13:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Parental controls for Wikipedia access

Are there parental controls for accessing Wikipedia, or is there any form of censorship/restricted access to this site and its contents and the external links? Looking for facts rather than opinions at this stage. Is there anywhere on this site where this issue has been discussed or considered before?

Cormullion 13:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Please take a look at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored and the Content disclaimer for information on this matter. Hope this helps. - Tangotango 13:46, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

This is an example of a discussion concering this, I'm not sure if there are any others. As for filtering external links, you might like to invest in parental control software of some kind. - Tangotango 13:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Cormullion 22:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with Tango. Investing in software that filters on your end is much more effective than trying to get Wikipedia to change a core policy. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flody M. Crenshaw

Whom is was my father he died November 20, 1989 on his marrage certificate it states that he was (31) Thirth One years old in April 1941 but on his Obtiuary he is listed as born on May 30, 1908????? If the marrage Certif is true the his date of Birth is incorrect and he was born in Jackson, Tenn to Mr. Henry and Ella Crenshaw I seek your help in this matter please,thank You!!!!!!!!

This is the help desk on how to edit the encyclopedia. I don't think an encyclopedia is the place to find your answer. Sorry. --Adam ^(talk) 14:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Toolbar

Does anyone know if there is (or if there are any plans to create) a WP browser toolbar, similar to the Yahoo 1 and Google 2 toolbars? tiZom_(2¢) 15:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

In firefox, there is a toolbar that you can download. It's quite useful and handy, actually. You can download it from this site. You must have Firefox 1.5, I think, to use it. If you don't currently use firefox, its well worth the switch; I only used IE before, but when I found the toolbar, all I use for editing WP is firefox. Good luck. → J@red ^talk+ _ubx  00:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

That is a great tip! Is it definite that it does everything it says it does, and doesn't break any pages? If so, where is this information currently placed in Wikipedia so as many people as possible can find out about it, along with similar tools? I seem to remember a "toolset" part of Wikipedia, but can't find it at the moment. Carcharoth 11:12, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Tools --Go for it! 17:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Bambara

About her life and short stories —The preceding unsigned comment was added by D skizzie (talk • contribs).

Have you tried the Toni Cade Bambara article?--Adam ^(talk) 15:43, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] endnote

There,i corrected Dragan Vasiljković as much as i could.--Captain ginyu 17:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I have added comments to the talk page. Carcharoth 23:07, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Skins [again]

I still cant change my skin back! Can someone give me a run-down of each skin and where the 'my preferences' is on each one!

Your preferences are always at Special:Preferences, independent of skin! jnothman ^talk 05:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic letters

Could someone please tell me how do i write arabic letters with my normal keyboard--Captain ginyu 17:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

What sort of computer/operating system are you using? You should be able to find some sort of control panel for the keyboard and select Arabic (on a Macintosh, click the little flag in the menu bar). Working out where each letter is will be somewhat more complicated - use Key Caps on a Macintosh, I'm not sure how you can visualise your Arabic keyboard in Windows. Palmiro | Talk 17:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] how to contact a contributor

Hi,

I would like to contact one of the authors/contributors of an article to see if I could get more information. The article is titled "Interster" and under the histroy tab, I would like to contact the User: Humansdorpie. Is it possible to contact this person?

Thanks, Ann --209.204.172.170 17:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Leave your message on the bottom of this page: User talk:Humansdorpie exactly the same way you left this message here (with the little + up at the top of the screen). Thats the user's personal talk page. They will be notified of your message the next time they log into Wikipedia. -Dawson 17:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing image OL0026.jpg

An image has gone missing. Image:OL0026.jpg is fully legal as far as copyright is concerned and I have not received any warning about its copyright status. The information about the image is still there but the image itself no longer appears in Image:OL0026.jpg nor in its article on Gliding. Puzzled. JMcC 18:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be there for me. Perhaps your browser's fetch request timed out? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The image Image:OL0026.jpg appears just fine for me on its image page and in the Gliding article, in the section Outlandings. Perhaps it is a caching problem of some sort in your browser; try quitting and restarting your browser. MCB 18:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

One day later. I went into the article again this morning after powering off last night. Still no image. This is very odd. Why should my computer have an aversion to an image that other people can see? Tried refreshing, clearing caches and all sorts of other things. JMcC 07:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• The image is actually stored at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/OL0026.jpg The ad part in the image's path is causing it to be blocked by some overzealous adblocker on your end. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • While the bug isn't really at our end, this problem seems common enough that I've submitted a request for a workaround as bug 5402. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:26, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sopes to let

l,am looking to rent a shop on sutton way

Please let us know why you have asked this question here? Notinasnaid 19:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Underlined Links

Help! All of a sudden all the links on every Wikipedia page are underlined! I don't like it as it is very distracting. Anyone know how this happened and how I can turn it off? Thanks :) PageantUpdater 21:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Click on "my preferences" above, on the very top right of the page. Click on the "Misc" tab and change the "Underlined links" option to Never. Fetofs ^Hello! 22:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] insult

--Tireoghain 21:21, 29 March 2006 (UTC) how do I address an offensive comment that has been directed against me in a Wikipedia site?

You would first tell the user to stop. If he continues, place {{Npa}}, in his talk page. If he still continues, raise the number by 1, for example {{Npa2}} and put it there again, until you have about the third or fourth warning, then you would tell that he is violating WP:NPA to an admin (with evidence, of course) and ask for a block. Fetofs ^Hello! 22:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• What offensive comment are we talking about? - Mgm|^(talk) 09:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main Page summary of featured article: Voter turnout, should be edited

The precis contains one poor syntax choices and one sentence that is awkward, makes little sense, and what sense can be made out is in contradiction to the statement contained in the main article.

Proposed changes in bold):

Voter turnout is a measure of the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. Almost all political scientists feel --->|believe or hold| that high turnout is desirable in a democracy, but there is much debate over the factors that affect turnout. Different countries have very different average voter turnouts: for example, turnouts in the United States are <awkward/nonsensicle>typically more than 40 percentage points below those in Malta, which also does not have compulsory voting, and Australia, which does</awkward/nonsensical>--->|typically more than 40 percentage points below those in Malta and Australia, which enforce compulsory voting.| ...

In the main article, Malta and Australia are said to have compulsory voting. In the above excerpt, it's unclear but the meaning appears to be that the United States' vote turnout is 40 percentage point below Malta which, like the United States, does not have compulsory voting, and Australia, for reasons unkown, is mentioned as having compulsory voting, ostensibly in contrast to Malta and the U.S., but no percentage is given for it so there's nothing to contrast. --Fuhghettaboutit 22:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

If you believe there should be a change, than be be bold and edit it.--Max Talk (add) 22:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

That answer was kind of rude. I don't thjink he's a sysop to edit it. Fetofs ^Hello! 23:45, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, I am not a sysop, and the main page is [fittingly] protected. --Fuhghettaboutit 00:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I see it did not matter; new featured article is up. Hmmm, "Today's featured article"... When does "today" start on Wikipedia? --Fuhghettaboutit 00:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably at 00:00 UTC, as it's 00:40 UTC now :) Fetofs ^Hello! 00:41, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

A better place to suggest changes to protected things is on the corresponding talk page, with a note: {{editprotected}}. For TFA for Voter turnout, Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/March 29, 2006. --Christopherlin 01:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the tone of my response. I wasn't thinking about its protection status when I made that comment. I wanted to encourage you to be bold, but the tone was slightly contemptuous, and I apologize.--Max Talk (add) 21:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] March 30

[edit] Lost the "what links here" page

One editor moved Fatima Zahra to Fatimah Zahra without discussion. After some discussion and an appeal to the Village Pump, the general feeling was that we should go by the Google metric and move the article back to Fatima Zahra, as Fatima is the most common form of the word. I finally got around to making the move. As I was going down the "what links here" page, my net connection got flaky (raining here, flash floods, water in phone lines) and my browser died. Hence I haven't been able to finish checking for any double redirects. How do I figure out if there are any Fatimahs that I need to change back to Fatima? Zora 04:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• This link works for me. BTW you got yourself a few double redirects. Eivind^t@c 04:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You can always find it by clicking the "What links here" button on the left of the page. And if you want to know what links to the old name, go to the page of the old name and it will have a link up the top "(Redirected from Fatimah Zahra)". Click that link and then click "What links here" on the left. Or, in general, you can just go to the page whose name is of the form Special:Whatlinkshere/Fatima Zahra. jnothman ^talk 06:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] case sensitivity and searching

Hello, I just created a page about an album called Out of Water. The page is not being found via a Search lookup when I enter the string all in lower case ('out of water') and I can't understand why. According to the relevant help page Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(capitalization)#Case_sensitivity_and_searching a Search lookup should be case insensitive. Hope you can help, many thanks. Richardrj 04:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunatly the wikipedia search is a bit slow in picking up newly created articles, I believe it can take at least a week before it'll work. Eivind^t@c 05:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

And note that there is a difference between "Go" and "Search". "Go" finds articles by title (and only by title), and is generally but not always case insensitive. In this instance it is case sensitive. If you want, you can add a redirect from out of water which will appear to be case insensitive. For more on this, please see Wikipedia:Redirect. -- Rick Block (talk) 06:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been following the indexing trail of an article, Linda Marie Fedigan, started on March 8 and have been posting the results at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Google's cache of en.wikipedia. As of this timestamp the article has not been indexed by WP. --hydnjo talk 16:33, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] whats the name of the publisher who published wikipedia

whats the name of the publisher who published wikipedia? —This unsigned comment was added by 69.228.1.91 (talk • contribs) .

Wikipedia is published by the Wikimedia Foundation. Basic information about what Wikipedia is, how it works, and the like can be found at Wikipedia:About. Hope this helps. MCB 06:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• Most people ask this question when they need to cite a page as a source for a paper or essay. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing pages

I wanted to know if when writing an article you can copy word for word from a source like the World Book Encyclopedia if you cite the source and if you can't do that but were getting your information from the World Book Encyclopedia how would be the proper way to do it without plagarising? Would you take out of the article what you want and then put it in different words and then cite it? Thanks, I am generally new to doing this.--65.96.189.248 08:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• Plagiarism is copying other people's material and presenting it as your own. Not plagiarising mean simply sharing your sources. However, sharing your sources isn't always enough. Almost all texts are copyrighted (as a general rule of thumb anything published after 1923 is copyrighted, some books published before in the US are public domain, but there are exceptions). Some sources are in the public domain and can be freely copied. Like US Government documents. Based on its website, current versions of the World Book Encyclopedia are copyrighted. To avoid copyright confusion I generally take note of facts in a text and rewrite them in my own words from the notes to avoid unconciously copying anything. If you are unsure, just don't copy and you'll be safe. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• However...I seem to recall reading that general encyclopedias are not considered an acceptable source. That is, have to cite more specialist sources. Notinasnaid 11:12, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IRC

How do the IRC works ? when i press it it open a new window but nothig !

• IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. Clicking the link alone is not enough. You need a program that allows you to connect to an IRC server before the link works for you. I use Gaim, but you could also use Chatzilla (if you have Firefox) or mIRC. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] installed Mediawiki

I just installed the new Mediawiki , but I didn't get any emails from updaing , even though I add these in the preferences , I login as another user , but the same problem is there ?

• Best place to ask is the MediaWiki support page. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Topics

1) How can i know about the new topics ? 2) How can I know about a new topic in a category ?

• New articles are recorded at Special:Newpages. Because articles are added to a category by including a tag in the article, there's no practical way of checking for new articles in a category. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] translation

How can I add a new article as the translation of an existing one?

I am assuming you are talking about translating from a foreign language Wikipedia article for which no article already exists here?. Just go ahead and translate and post the article. However, you should cite the foreign language article in your references. Here's an article I partially translated from Wikipedia Germany, which contains the reference to the translated article so you can see one way the citation can be done. --Fuhghettaboutit 17:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pickups (Music)

On page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_%28music%29 there is a reference to "Roland GK-2 (single coil) and GK-2a (humbucking) are one of the most famous models, factory-installed on many guitars. Compatible with popular Roland GR series of guitar synthesizers."

This strikes me as advertising, there is no way Roland are "One of the most famous". Most guitarists, even those who work in music shops, have never heard of them, and not one actually listed them when asked to 'Name some famous pickups'.

I edited the page, deleting 'one of the most famous models'. The sentence still made sense, but was now a little more acurate. I then cited a few far better known pickups from the lists I'd asked for above. My edit was removed the following day.

If I'm not allowed to edit it then can someone else? Wikipedia shouldn't be carrying advertising, particularly when it's also inaccurate advertising.

Deke Roberts.

GreyCat was the one who reverted you - his edit summary read "rv changes: read closely, please; it's section about *multi-transducer* pickups, not all electromagnetic pickups." Perhaps Roland make the most famous multi-transducer pickups?

If not, I would recommend discussing this on Talk:Pickups (music) and seeing whether any editors agree with you on this. --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) (talk) 17:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Thinking about it again, it looks like the reason your edit was reverted may not have been removing the POV (non-neutral point of view), but that you added some pickups that weren't multi-transducer. You might consider making the change again, then explaining on the talk page why you did it, and discussing it if an editor reverses the change again. --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) (talk) 17:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creating an entry for 'The Ridley report'

Dear wikipedia friends

I've recently scanned and corrected the text of an Economist article (from May 1978) that released details of the Ridley report (a key document in understanding the actions of the Thatcher government which was elected one year later).

Would there be any problem in up-loading this text as a Wikipedia entry (copyright etc?)

Thanks

john courtneidge

John courtneidge 18:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

No, sorry, you may not used copyrighted material in Wikipedia. Please reference WP:CP--Adam ^(talk) 19:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

There would be a copyright problem putting it anywhere, not just Wikipedia, unless you have permission from the publishers of the Economist. Don't think 1978 is too old to matter... Notinasnaid 08:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting off a talk page.

There's a talk page for two articles on Talk:McFly which needs to be split off... half of it is for McFly (disambiguation) and half for McFly... How do I go about doing this? Gflores^Talk 19:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Nm, it's been done. Gflores^Talk 22:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pending Questions

If you have the answer of any of these , please move it to the upper part with the answer.

Are these questions about Wikipedia, or are they about using the Mediawiki software to set up another wiki? · rodii · 00:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

sorry this was a mistake

[edit] Change Colors

Can we change the color ( other than black) ? for example when answering questions ?

Yes. Dismas|^(talk) 22:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Can we have a highlight colored instead of just light blue ? red

• === Edit===

what if 2 persons edit the page , one add something and other remove something ? is there is a way to indicate that a page is being accessed by someone , maybe lock while editing ? ( I read something fromo wikipedia , but It seems we need to do some testing .)

You can use the {{inuse}} tag to keep people from editing the page while you're working on it. Dismas|^(talk) 22:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hamed Alhoori 22:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RollBack

[edit] RollBack

Can a user rollback ?

On Wikipedia, only Sys-Ops (admins) can rollback.

There are also unofficial versions available as user scripts, see Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, us non-admins can easily revert, which amounts to pretty much the same thing. AndyJones 12:36, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hide IP

If I started my Mediawiki , can I hide the IP ?

No one knows ?

The problem is that your question is incomprehensible. Are you asking about how the Mediawiki software works? · rodii · 19:11, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

After I install a mediwiki , how can I hide the IPs from the public ?

[edit] Custom Sigs

How do I get a custom signature that many users have. Schzmo 23:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences and check "raw signature". Then you can make a custom sig with HTML and/or Wiki markup. Alex (+) 23:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

(by edit conflict)You have to go to "my preferences" (link on the top right), click on the "Raw signature" checkbox, and then type what you want MediaWiki to substitute whenever you type ~~~. As for what to type there, the most useful attributes are these ones:

• ^Superscript displays as ^Superscript
• _Subscript displays as _Subscript.
• <font color="red">Red text</font> displays as Red text (of course you can substitute the color, see Web colors for the list)
• Most signatures include a link to the user page, so you may want to use [[User:Schzmo|Type what you want to appear here]], that displays as Type what you want to appear here. Things also commonly linked are the talk page, the contribs page and a link to a page where users can send e-mail to you. I hope this helps. Fetofs ^Hello! 23:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] March 31

[edit] Computer Security

What is more difficult to replace, hardware and software or data?

Data. · rodii · 01:00, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• That's why a backup is so important. Programs (software) and parts (hardware) can be bought from a store. But data, the stuff you type in or download yourself can be impossible to remember or download again. - Mgm|^(talk) 04:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• A broken heart. --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) (talk) 08:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gashtier

I found an article on Gashtier that I think is bogus; I haven't found any outside information about gashtiers, robanks, or Romado Aggipe (key terms in the article) and some of the information just sounds silly (swords are called robanks because they were "formerly used to row people in river banks"?) I put a suspected hoax tag on it, which I hope is the right thing to do, but I couldn't figure out what to do next. Thanks in advance. --Maestlin 00:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Nominate it for deletion. This was one of three contributions from an anonymous editor, all on the same day over a year ago, all apparent nonsense. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NAME TRANSLATION

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN INDIAN TRANSLATION FOR THE NAME LORETTA AND LAURIE? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.163.100.11 (talk • contribs).

This page is for help with Wikipedia; you may like to ask at the Reference desk. Thank you. - Tangotango 01:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an "American Indian" language. There are many different languages. That would be like saying, what is the European translation for a word. User:Zoe|^(talk) 21:24, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion

I can't figure out why my site keeps going up for deletion. It's "Hank Greenberg AZA #151". I've looked at the help site and I can't figure out what's wrong with it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fastforce87 (talk • contribs).

This link may help you figure it out. Dismas|^(talk) 04:19, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict): According to the deletion log, the article was deleted twice with the following two deletion summaries, each by separate administrators:

1) Promotion page for nn chapter of organization; article was solely external links

2) nn chaper of a group

nn is an abbreviation for not-notable. You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Notability and What Wikipedia is not for clarity. --Fuhghettaboutit 04:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is your problem ??

Hi . I am wondering what is going on that I get a warning about not inserting " spam " feeders onto a listing ?? I was leaving the contact info from a yahoogroups group that is based at yahoo.com , and wanted to put the insert there ( in your listing for Hippie culture ) firstly for P.R. , not commerce . Would you please reply at once to explain what it is about my listing that is other than the listings for businesses , personages and products which do appear there as notable contacts to Hippness ????? > I NEED A COMMENT HERE !!!!! Thankya !!

You're talking about this edit, and the warning you got at User_talk:Mrhtmlhippie, right? I suggest you talk directly with Sam Blanning, at User_talk:Samuel_Blanning. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• Whether a link is commercial or an attempt at PR is totally irrelevant. Articles aren't supposed to be used to boost visitor numbers to a website. - Mgm|^(talk) 04:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• Replied at my talk page. --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) (talk) 08:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• Besides being an promotional link, it was also sloppily done, almost incomprehensible, and it broke the formatting of the page. Come on, you can do better than that. · rodii · 14:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Admin problems !!

How can I complain about an admin ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alhoori (talk • contribs) 00:15, March 31, 2006 (UTC)

Start at Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. --rogerd 05:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bahrain ferry

Recently I found two articles about the same event, obviously one of them has to be turned into a redirect, but I'm not sure which one is more in line with our naming polices. The articles are: Bahrain ferry sinking 2006 and 2006 Bahrain ferry disaster. BTW the accident happened yesterday. Eivind^t@c 05:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure myself which title is preferable, but the 2006 Bahrain ferry disaster article had more information, so I redirected Bahrain ferry sinking 2006 there. --rogerd 05:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Eivind^t@c 06:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• I think that's a good move. Although I can't remember any specific examples, I seem to remember that having the year first is not only common in speaking, but also when referring to other disasters in articles like earthquakes and vulcanic eruptions. (see first evaluation in WP:AA). - 131.211.210.15 08:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• • That seems to be the way we're handling earthquakes (most of the time). See, for example, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. As long as there are sensible redirects in place, then it shouldn't be a problem. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:07, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do I change the title of an article

I recently submitted a new article and I may need to make a change to the title of it. How do I go about this? --194.159.99.60 10:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, this sort of thing is called a 'move' - if you are a registered user whose account has been around for a bit of time (on the order of one or two weeks, I think), then you can move the article yourself - click on the "move" tab (top of the page, just to the left of "History" if you're using the default skin), and enter the new name of the article. For more info, see Help:Moving a page — QuantumEleven | (talk) 11:00, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ask at Wikipedia:Requested moves if you don't want to wait for your account to mature. --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) (talk) 14:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ads and donations

Hello I am looking for someone to email me about my site. We are up and running and have had very good success. We feel the main reason is that our players get their winning within 72 hours. No red tape and no on going emails back and fourth for verification, like most sites that is only a stall tactic to keep using player’s funds. I would like to find out if you would be interested in advertising us.

Regards,

[email removed]

Pat Ford

Wikipedia is not an advertisment service. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing Issue (Me & You)

The list which contains the name Me & You is a List of reggae musicians. This is the link I initially clicked on in the reggae section to find the list. It is not a list of tracks from albums.

How can it be correct to include a song from a CD called Me & You by an artist called Lindsey - it doesn't make any sense. It's in the wrong list.

Is the music reggae? If it is, it should be under another list called reggae albums or tracks from reggae albums. If it is not reggae, it should be under the music it relates to and categorised similarly.

All of the other names on this list list are other Jamaican reggae musicians and artists just like Me & You. You go down the list, find the one you want, click on it and read biographical and discographical information about the artist or group.

Nowhere else on that list am I aware of any tracks from albums being listed under the track name.

This is rightly not allowed by Wikipedia's policies, if you can put anyting you want anywhere with no logic or common sense to the system, that is a recipe for chaos.

This is a forum on how to edit Wikipedia. I suggest you raise this issue on Talk:List of reggae musicians--Adam ^(talk) 15:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The user, User:Reggae Follower, is commenting on his previous question about a dozen questions above this one. RF, the link that you followed was an error. Instead of correcting the error by changing the link to [[Me & You (band)]] you chose to rewrite the article for Me & You. I've gone ahead and fixed the link so that it now points to Me & You (band). I suggest you follow the advice given in the answers that have already been given to you above. Dismas|^(talk) 17:07, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem is in the link at List of reggae musicians, not the article Me & You. I imagine someone made a link and was surprised to find there was an article at the other end of the link. But the article presumably pre-existed the link, right? So don't change the article, make a better link. Listen to the advice you're getting. · rodii · 01:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

And Reggae Follower still has not explained what problem he has with artists named Lindsay. JIP | Talk 14:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Steps before topics removel ?

What are the steps before a topic removel from admin ? the topic was in wikipedia for around 4 weeks so it wasn't fast deletion status . Shouldn't the admin explain that in the discussion area ?

What page are you referring to? If you have questions about the process, you can check the deletion policy and articles for deletion. Perhaps the page was tagged with {{prod}}, which after five days results in the deletion of the page. Isopropyl 17:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Bahrain IT Team

that article was deleted by Vegaswikian after being tagged as {{nn-club}} by Sandstein. Looking at the deleted content, it was removed within process. There was no indication in the article as to why the group was notable. If you want the deleted content moved to yor user space, drop me a note on my talk page. --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

What do mean by notable ? this article should be modified and more things are gonna be added to it .please move the contents to my area.

Done. I also posted to your talk page. --GraemeL ^(talk) 18:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of Dylight Saving Time?

See Daylight saving time. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
In the future, ask questions like this at the Reference Desk. Thanks! Alex (+) 22:20, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] new user

hi , i want to ask if i can write a summary of an article or project,in any topic. like i get the article and i summarized the important information.--Sonare 21:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)sonare

Sure, you can create a new article, if that's what you're asking. You may want to check out this page first though. If that's not what you want, could you rephrase your question? Isopropyl 21:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• Sure you can. Writing a summary only requires you use the information - not the exact text. Copying an article requires you to commit to the GFDL, but you are free to summarize an article by just taking the facts and putting them in your own words. Perhaps you can help out atWikipedia:Requests for summaries, though. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] how to deal with clear bias

What should one do in a case like Talk:Backing_vocalist where User:Mel Etitis is basically claiming that correct US usage recorded in reputable US dictionaries is incorrect and inferior to UK usage?! He ignores references and other evidence.

This seems too obvious and ridiculous for asking mediation or even the overbooked Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal, and according to Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes all we really need at this point is at least one outsider to give a cool opinion. Any takers here? Thanks! --Espoo 22:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're really asking here, perhaps for an informal Third opinion, but as a disinterested outsider (I have not edited the article(s) in question) I would point out that (1) Mel Etitis is a very experienced Wikipedia editor, and I see no evidence that he is motivated by regional or other bias; (2) his arguments on the cited talk page are very persuasive; and (3) from my own experience and due-diligence research (and I am a native and life-long resident of the U.S.) I believe the Standard English terms are "backing vocal" and "backing vocalist", and that "backup vocal", "backup vocalist", and "backup singer", while widely used, are more colloquial. MCB 01:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's what i'm looking for, a third opinion. I was of course hoping for a different one :-) but i would be very interested to hear what you find is wrong with my arguments on the talk page. Did you read the summaries in my last entry and the addition? Let me summarise them here in even shorter form:

The main argument is that "backup singer" (in the sense of the article, see below) is a) standard, b) accepted, and c) widespread: a) It is recorded, for example, in American Heritage and Merriam-Webster without any comment of "colloquial". b) It is used more often than "backing singer" on reputable US sites and by US experts. c) It generates 2 to 6 times more Google hits on edu sites and more than twice as many on all Internet sites.

Just because most CDs in Mel Etitis's CD collection and perhaps even most US record producers use "backing singer" does not make that into widespread or even standard US usage nor does it make "backup singer" colloquial. The record industry has perhaps noted that US consumers also accept the UK term whereas UK consumers balk at the US term. The industry does not want to print different editions, so their choice is clear, but their commercially driven choice is definitely not an authoritative opinion on US usage.

The rest of this post addresses Mel Etitis's personal problems, which he is intelligent enough to be able to usually hide due to his high degree of education, but they severely reduce the value of his editing work at Wikipedia.

Mel Etitis's bias becomes evident due to his clearly expressed disdain of average Internet users and of the use of Google to demonstrate usage patterns. His attitude is clearly elitist and pro-British, in addition to being unscientific and reactionary (see below). If i hadn't shown that general Internet usage and edu-domain usage contradicts his claims and if i'd only shown the established standard usage in US dictionaries and by reputable US experts, he would have perhaps caved in to reason and proof. Instead, he launched into a crusade against what he perceives to be "language impoverishment". The only "evidence" he provides for this is vague references to blogs and other reproductions of errors by what he sees as linguistically handicapped people. This attitude alone shows that he is clearly biased because he knows or should know what established scientific consensus among linguistics is on such attitudes.

You have to realise that he is not being naive in his disdain of widespread general or "undergraduate" usage; he is a professor of philosophy at Oxford and knows what linguistics has shown about the development of language. Briefly stated, this says that all language users are more or less equal authorities. If many language users start using something that contradicts previous general usage, this becomes an acceptable variant. If they become the majority, it becomes the new standard. It's a very powerful and beautiful and shockingly democratic process that has been around forever and was discovered only comparatively recently by scientists, very ironically much later than the establishment of democracy in politics and society. Mel Etitis is profoundly upset by this fact of life, and his editing habits and the incredible volume of his edits seem to point towards a naive attempt to give Oxford elitist language preferences a chance to mold worldwide English usage by at least molding Wikipedia. His agenda is clearly antidemocratic and antiscientific. He considers large segments of native English users linguistically handicapped and is personally profoundly upset to realise that if enough people start saying, for example, "he do" instead of "he does", this will become standard English. Despite his high degree of education in some areas, he is too blinded by his personal bias to realise that such a change will have been the result not of stupidity or being linguistically handicapped but of natural development that usually follows patterns later discovered and reformulated as linguistic "laws". Most variants arise due to underlying phonetic and other laws of linguistic change. Educated users are able to monitor their own and others' language use and can try to resist these powerful forces, but in the long run, the change will take place. Traditionally, educated users have been able to prevent changes in the writing system quite very long (whereas attempts to extend control to how the majority speaks always pitifully failed), but things are changing quite dramatically here too. Reading and writing are considered banal and everyday skills in most English-speaking countries, and young users are essentially demanding, although generally unconsciously, that the writing system become a better and more efficient tool by simply starting to write the way they speak.

The same thing as described above for changes in spelling and grammar applies to changes in vocabulary. All of the world's languages are full of misunderstood words that became the accepted norm. Mel Etitis is upset that this process will now speed up due to normal users being able to publish printed texts and thereby give misunderstood words more authority. It may be true that this process is speeding up linguistic change, but AFAIK there is no reason to believe that this is doing anything except speeding it up, and even that may not be conclusively proven yet. There is no reason to believe that native English speakers will be prone to making any other except those changes they would have made without the existence of the Internet too, just less rapidly. Modern dictionary makers take Google hits very seriously. Scientists know that Google and other search engines are very powerful new methods to observe language change and status quo. There are easy and powerful methods for determining if a change in hits is due to an idiosyncrasy of only a small group of people or of only one person spreading to many sites due to copying. Attempts to disqualify large amounts of Google hits as not representing mainstream and established offline usage are clearly an attempt to grind an ax.

He is also quite dishonest in claiming that others do not provide facts when i provided extensive dictionary and reputable site evidence and he only provides references to his personal record collection. Combined with his at least devious methods of avoiding facts by trying to produce seemingly contradictory ones and his refusal to look at the links to US dictionaries, a clear pattern is emerging.

The problem becomes glaring when looking at his speculative and factually incorrect additions to the article. He claims that "There is a recent trend to use the terms "background" or "backup" singer" without any evidence existing for this claim. At best he may be (personally and therefore unscientifically) noticing an increased US influence in UK English in the case of this term, but it is incorrect to claim that this is a worldwide trend. "Backup singer" is so established and widespread in US usage that it is listed in printed US dictionaries as standard English.

He goes on to claim "though this is confined to informal and especially to Internet usage." Again, he provides no proof of this. As explained, his record collection cannot be used as proof because of possible commercial interests in choosing only one term for worldwide distribution. In addition, due to his ridiculous refusal to accept US dictionary evidence and attempts to avoid proof of accepted usage at Berklee, for example, there is good reason to believe that he would not honestly report any usage of "backup" he might find in his collection.

His attempt to disqualify my proof that Berklee Internet pages use only "backup" and never "backing singer" by producing more hits for "backing" than "backup vocalist" was probably dishonest and not due to lack of understanding. Even a professor of philosophy probably knows enough about linguistics to realise that if a term is used by a reputable source it is not correct to label this as informal or "Internet" usage. All his result proved is that "backing vocalist" is (and therefore "backing singer" could be) also used at Berklee. (It would be interesting to see if these were written by British professors or students.)

Final proof of his personal agenda causing bad editing is the following ridiculous speculative and factually incorrect claim: "and the term "backup singer" is used more widely to refer to the vocal equivalent of an understudy." That's maybe what it should mean and what he wants it to mean, but it is factually incorrect to claim that this is the case. None of the many Google hits i checked, not to mention the edu-hits, used "backup singer" in this sense.

As spurious is the following "poetry": "A backing singer is in fact not always (or even usually) in the background". This proves nothing because language usage is not based on logic. This is a clear traditional case of a philosopher talking about his made-up world instead of reality. I see that there have been previous calls to remove his admin status, and i may have time later to investigate those previous cases. --Espoo 08:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I wiz this reeeding, annd wuz hopin my teechur wud naut remoo points from my testations being in due to consequecing of my bad gramer and spelin'. I plannin tellin her'n dat all friends and myself, I included, tock like this. Why points removin, when not needing to go the bookway. (Comment made by User:Ameeya, who forgot to sign this [ed. Espoo 21:55, 1 April 2006 (UTC)])

Ameeya, in case this was not just an April Fool's joke, you may want to read Prescription_and_description. -- I was *not* saying that it's a good idea to write in a very different way than the standard. I *was* pointing out that it's insane that we are writing according to 16th century pronunciation and that if we don't start reforming spelling soon in a rational, systematic manner, today's young people will start inventing many different clumsy and contradictory systems of their own and cause general chaos. And as to the grammatical idiosyncrasies in your post, yes, if enough people make them, nobody will even notice them anymore. Until they become the norm, it's best to not use them when applying for a job or asking for something, including hoping for an answer. A good teacher will not forbid or stigmatise Black English, but s/he will also teach standard English to ensure that the pupils can get jobs. --Espoo 21:55, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the help desk, where people come for help with Wikipedia. It's the wrong place to have this discussion. If your question is about how to resolve your dispute, the answer is: go to WP:RfC or Wikipedia:Dispute Resolution. HAND, HTH. · rodii · 00:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 1

[edit] i can not use the edit function

when i type in my edit, it doesn't appear anywhere in the article, also not in the edit box. what can i do? —This unsigned comment was added by Madmax5 (talk • contribs) 01:07, April 1, 2006 (UTC).

I'm not sure what you mean - do you say that you tried to edit a page (by clicking the edit button), made some changes, clicked "save" (very important, not just "preview"!), and your changes did not appear? This seems odd - although other people have reported problems, that's true. Your contributions list doesn't show any edits to other pages, so I guess this means they weren't saved. On the other hand, your edit to this page worked just fine, didn't it? Hm... Are you sure you're clicking the "save" button after making your changes? (sorry, stupid question, I'm just trying to rule out the obvious) — QuantumEleven | (talk) 09:18, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be insulting but did you click "Edit This Page" at the top of the article?Ozone 20:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification needed on copyright violation

If I create a Wikipedia entry for a product of our company and describe it using some of the words that were used on the company's web site and in whitepapers (authored by me), will that be considered a copyright violation? If yes, what should I mention in the entry so that it is not construed as copyright violation? Thanks.

If you wish to copy text, verbatum (not just facts), you should probably explain the situation fully on the talk page. Also, you may want to make a breif note on where material came from in the "==References==" section of the article. If this material is on another web site, that web site should state explicitly that the material is public domain, or licensed by GFDL. Now, if the only thing you wish to do is use facts, but not the identical text, then don't worry about it, it won't be problem, and doing all this is not necessary (though its still appropriate to say where information came from, of course). Finally, a word of warning, if editors find your article to be an advertisement, or your company to be "non-notable", it will probably be deleted. So, please read WP:CORP carefully, before making an article on a company. The majority of articles on companies, that were made by somebody from the company, are deleted. --Rob 01:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Be careful, if you wrote the whitepapers etc. in company time, it's quite possible that your company holds the copyright (check your contract!) if so, it's not up to you to give wikipedia permission to publish it. JeffUK 10:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April Fool's

Oh Noes! It's Apr.Fools again! What should I do? Run for the hills or duck into a Cold War bunker? — Rickyrab | Talk 00:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Navigational bar

How can an admin change the Community portal , Random Page and Donations.

If you are asking about operating your own wiki using the MediaWiki software, please see the MediaWiki Support page. Best, MCB 01:53, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Registration

Is the registration open ? can't it be using only invitation ?

Just click the link at the top right corner of the page to create an account. Alex (t) 02:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

No , I need to close my wiki from others !

If you are asking about operating your own wiki using the MediaWiki software, please see the MediaWiki Support page. Best, MCB 05:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Control Panel

IS there a cp for this wiki ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.186.97.250 (talk • contribs).

Do you mean a user preference pane? Click on "my preferences" at the top right of the page. Alex (t) 02:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Admin control panel where he can change everything , for example when I wanted to upload file to appear , I changed it from the .php file , is there an eaiser way ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.186.97.250 (talk • contribs).

If you are asking about operating your own wiki using the MediaWiki software, please see the MediaWiki Support page. Best, MCB 05:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Admin wanted to Template talk:Catmore

This page is protected from editing, and numerous requests for edits to be made have been posted to the talk page, seemingly without anyone with authority noticing. Please respond! --meco 11:08, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Looking for a template, 'foreign language article may contain more info'

I saw an article with a template along the lines of 'there may be more information in a foreign language version of this article. I wanted to add this to the estepona article, as the spanish version is very in-depth, but couldn't find the template. Can someone please add the template for me (as i'll be in estepona all next week ;)) and let me know how you did it. Thanks, JeffUK 10:21, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copying pages (rather than moving them)

I am in the process of considering moving Ptolemy (disambiguation) to Ptolemy (name). Please see Talk:Ptolemy (disambiguation) for further details. After reading about how the move function works, I don't think this is quite what is needed. I think I need to copy the page instead, but I don't know how to copy page histories.

From reading about the move function, I see that this function moves the page history, when what I want to do is copy all or part of the page history, thus preserving the page history at the old location. The issue is complicated by the fact that the old page cannot remain as a redirect (as it would become if I moved the page), but needs to be edited into a more usable disambiguation page. This sounds less like a move, and more like a split or fork, combined with reverting the old page back to an earlier version (though actually, I would just edit it).

I go into more detail here. Any advice on how best to handle this would be much appreciated, either here (for other Help Desk users) or at the talk page I give above. Please do not move or copy the page without discussing it first, and making sure you understand why I am trying to preserve the page history in both locations. Many thanks. Carcharoth 14:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

You can't copy and paste edit histories. Only a Move is an appropriate option, since any other action would lost the edit history and would be a copyright violation under the GFDL. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

My whole question was about how to preseve the edit histories. I thought that made it clear that I realise the need to preserve the edit histories. In case it wasn't clear, I am trying to split content from one page to another, and trying to work out which bits of the page history should end up with which article. Effectively the opposite of a merge.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. I am indeed going to move the article, and I will leave notes at both article locations to avoid any confusion over what happened. Carcharoth 10:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move, Merge, Delete - page histories

I am getting slightly confused with the differences between Move, Merge and Delete. Would I be right to say the following:

• Moving an article moves the content, the page history and the talk page (if selected). The old page becomes a redirect with a new page history and no talk page, starting from the moment of the move.
• Merging article A with article B describes manually moving (cut and pasting) the content from A to B, but the page history and talk page of article A get left behind? And, to comply with GFDL, these should be added manually in some way to the talk page or history of article B if article A needs deleting (wrong name, for example, that is needed as a home for another article). If article A does not need deleting, or is a useful redirect, then the page history is left there, with appropriate comments on the talk pages of both articles.
• Deleting an article removes the content, allowing new pages to be started there. What happens to the page's history and talk page?

Maybe there is a nice little table somewhere summarising what happens to content, page histories and talk pages, with these and other options? Carcharoth 14:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

• You pretty much got the descriptions nailed. Although I must add that merges can only be done if page B actually is an existing page, page A can be integrated with. If a page is deleted, the history is deleted too and only visible for administrators (that's why history needs to be copied to a save location when material is merged because the original page needs to be deleted. The talk page is left until it's deleted separately, but sometimes it's a good idea to leave it. If you're looking for descriptions of all of these, I suggest you look into the leads of Wikipedia:Move, Wikipedia:Merge and Wikipedia:Deletion - Mgm|^(talk) 17:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MySkin

Hi, I was just wondering whether myskin is the acutal name of the skin (in Preferences) or whether I can customise this skin to my liking. If it is customisable, can someone tell me how I can do this?

Thanks!

Please see Help:User style. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:04, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing some of the articles

Some of the biographies (such as that of Max Reinhardt), don't have an "edit" function on the actual biography, just on the sections below. If there is a mistake in the actual biography, and we want to change it, how do we do it? Or can we?

• If you register an account, you can set up your account so an edit link appears for the first section of an article. Otherwise, you're going to have to use the regular edit link on top of the page top edit the entire article. The links next to the headers you see are section edit links. If you want to edit the lead, you can also click one of these and change section=x to section=0 in the URL in the address bar of your browser. - Mgm|^(talk) 17:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Wow! "Change section=x to section=0" - what a great tip! Carcharoth 18:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Wait, where is this? I looked in the edit section of Preferences, and it doesn't seem to be there. Also, Help:Section#Section_editing is helpful on this.

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Edit Top. -- Jeandré, 2006-04-02t14:02z

[edit] Order of links in "What links here" page

Is there any rhyme or reason in the order that links are listed in a "What links here" page? I'm asking because I am looking through some that have a lot of links to different namespaces (Talk, Wikipedia, User pages, and so on), and it would be nice to sort by namespaces, or restrict them to links from the article namespaces. Carcharoth 18:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Help:What links here has information explaining it, especially Help:What links here#Order. -- Natalya 21:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedians Celebrate

• Wiki-star: And a happy April Fools Day to you too fellow wikipedians! I'd like to know if Wikipedia has a section to celebrate a holiday or Special Days. Like today, it's april fools day. Does wikipedia have a section for users to congregate and celebrate holidays?

Thanks again! Wiki-star 18:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Researchers using wiki

hi , Is there any researchers that are using wiki , for example I need to know all the good research in any useful topic ? Alhoori 19:35, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HTML - convert html site to wiki and vise versa

How can I convert an html site to wiki and visa vera ?

(a) It's probably a bad idea. If the page is already in HTML, I suppose it's because it's already published on the web; therefore we don't want you to copy it to this project.

(b) If you're sure you have a good justification -- perhaps you want to copy your own page to a different MediaWiki project, where that might be acceptable -- the fastest way is probably to load the HTML into your word processor and do a global find-and-replace. You could always write a little Perl script for it, but you'll want to go over the whole text by hand carefully in either case.

(c) Conversion from wiki to HTML is easy. Just look at the rendered page with a browser and choose Show Source. Copy the HTML you need. John Reid 23:55, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Highlight Colored

How can we do a Highlight that is colored , red , green ?

If you mean changing the color of the text, like red or green, or changing the background color, like this, take a look at the source of this response. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main page code

I am trying to create a page that has a similar layout as the [wikipedia.org] main page, with a central image and other links radiating outward. I am wondering if this page can be found in Wiki write up (if that's the way sysops edit it) instead of HTML so that I can use that similar write up. It'd save me some time. If anyone knows what the name of the page is, or who I can contact to find this out, that'd be great! → J@red ^talk+ _ubx  23:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

It's much like all the other portals - is there something in particular you're interested in that's only on the Main page? -- Rick Block (talk) 03:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Well I particularly wanted the code for the central picture and the links coming off of it. I guess I could write it myself, but if I could get at the Wikicode for it, that'd be nice. → J@red  03:12, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I made a copy as a subpage for you, see User:JP06035/Mainpage. If you don't want this page any more, just add a {{db-owner}} to it. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough (and the link didn't work above). I meant the main main page. With the portal to different languages of Wikipedia. → Wikipedia.org. Do you know how I could get the code for this (in Wikicode)? → J@red  03:24, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that that page is not written in wikitext, because it does not look like a MediaWiki page, and the HTML source code for it is simple.
P.S. For external links you need to write the http:// prefix--Max Talk (add) 03:31, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I've got it now. → J@red  03:40, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 2

[edit] tendinitis

what is interperteller tendinitis, and how does it effect people?--207.200.116.71 03:14, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there. For your convenience, here's the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps.--Max Talk (add) 03:24, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] foreign body in larynx

what is HEIMLICH`S MANOEUVRE?Plz tell the procedure,indications and complications.--66.29.114.58 05:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The Heimlich maneuver is used on a person who is choking in order to dislodge the offending item. In the future, you can take other such inquiries to the Reference desk. Isopropyl 05:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links & Underscores

I think that this may be hard to explain, but is it possible to link to a section, where the section itself contains underscores?

e.g:

(Excerpt of "Page/SubpageA" )

==void function_name(short argument)==

(Excerpt of "Page/SubpageB")

[[../SubpageA#void function_name(short argument)|void function_name(short argument)]]

--60.227.19.140 05:32, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

It should work. AFAIK the linking just doesn't distinguish between spaces and underscores. So both Page/SubpageA#void function_name(short argument) and Page/SubpageA#void function name(short argument) would link to that section. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 08:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] viewing a deleted userbox

Title says it all. Is there a way to view a userbox that has been deleted? Note that looking at past versions of pages that at one time contained the template doesn't help because the template text is still being accessed in the present (and no longer exits). Alternatively, is there any way to search for subst'd versions of the userbox using its template name? They probably exist, and would solve the problem neatly; I tried without success. --Fuhghettaboutit 07:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Administrators should be able to see deleted articles, so you should ask one to look it up for you. But you'll have no luck trying to search subst'ed versions using the template name - substing leaves no trace of the identity of the transcluded page. But if you know the text that appeared in the template, maybe you can do something with that. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 08:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I tried a google search with what text I could remember + wikipedia, but the text was obviously not close enough. I'll ask an admin. --Fuhghettaboutit 15:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] clackamas copunty oregon

i own property in clackamas county i want to look at the oiginal maps of this area discover the first owner/subdivision date of the land and its exact history who bought the land from whom and where did it go from there thank you for your guidence sincerely

linda schwartz —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.34.103.61 (talk • contribs).

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). For your convenience, here's the link: Reference Desk (when you get there, just select the relevant section, and ask away). I hope this helps. -- Natalya 12:57, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Station Entry/Exit Stats

Does anyone know where to get entry/exit stats (without asking station staff) for non-London but UK train stations, i'm in the process of adding my infobox to some stations, any help would be appreciated Djm1279 11:02, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Even though your question relates to infoboxes and editing Wikipedia, since it is factual in nature, it belongs at the Reference Desk. -- Natalya 12:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, Sorry! Djm1279 16:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Credibility

How do you ensure the validity of the information posted on the website?

Roughly speaking, we don't. But every new piece that is added to an article will probably be examined by many people who have the article on their watchlist, and will be deleted if anyone thinks it is incorrect. Same goes for anyone else reading the article at any subsequent time. So every piece of information has a high probability of being correct (if it weren't correct, it would probably have been deleted by now). For more information, you can read Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to split pages - Wikipedia guidelines missing?

After reading around these Wikipedia pages: Wikipedia:Move; Wikipedia:Merge; and Wikipedia:Deletion; I started looking for instructions on the opposite of a merge: a split, or spinning content off from one article to create a new one. I looked at Wikipedia:Fork, which led me to Wikipedia:How to break up a page, but unfortunately there are no instructions on that page on how to preserve edit histories. I then looked on the talk page and realised that I wasn't the only person to have this concern, see here.

In general, I presume that if the content being spun off an article is small (eg, a section of the old article) and has a small history, then the origin can be noted in the new article's edit history, and this satisfies GFDL. When the split is more complicated though, what should be done? Does it need an admin to sort out the edit history? I've also raised this at the Village Pump. Carcharoth 11:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, not even admins, but only developers, can mess with the histories. And I doubt they'll bother to do it when splitting articles. But I don't think you should be worried about it too much - If any issue arises that requires the old history, it can just be looked up in the original article. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

So the guideline should say this? [It doesn't at the momeent]. Carcharoth 11:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that the very omission of any particular instructions regarding the edit histories, in itself serves as an implication that no special actions are required. But I haven't dealt much with splitting articles, so I can't be more informative than that. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I mean should the guideline make clear that the new article should say in the edit history and on the talk page, that the article started as a spin-off from another article. If this is not stated, then later readers and editors have no way of knowing what the original article is that they could go and look up. Ideally, the new article would say something along the lines of "For the main subject, see this article", but still, that doesn't make the origin of the original "seed text" crystal clear. I think the guideline should say add <this> to the edit history when starting the new article, and add <this> to the talk page of the new article. Carcharoth 12:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Have you tried bringing this up on the talk page of the article? It seems like a valid issue, but there may be GFDL issues that come into play. If that doesn't get a response, or maybe just as a second front, you could mention on the Village Pump Policy page that you're soliciting input on this. · rodii · 16:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I overlooked the part where mentioned that you brought this up at the Village Pump, sorry. · rodii ·

[edit] Template: optional parameter, manipulating parameter.

I'd appreciate it if someone could make Template talk:LCCN's 2nd parameter optional. Even better would be manipulating parameter 1 for the URL by removing the hyphen and adding 0s to make the post hyphen number six digits long, allowing users to use the hyphened number as the only parameter. -- Jeandré, 2006-04-02t12:38z

Answered. -- Jeandré, 2006-04-08t19:18z

[edit] Opening a checking account

How do I open an checking account with Sun Trust Bank, I have been on the internet and cannot make sense of this. Thank you

Added header. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 09:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). For your convenience, here's the link: Reference Desk (when you get there, just select the relevant section, and ask away). I hope this helps. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language interwiki links

Can anyone who knows more about other languages than I do have a look at the language interwiki links for Ptolemy (name) and Ptolemy (disambiguation)? The ones at Ptolemy (name) came from Ptolemy (disambiguation) when I moved stuff from the latter to the former (using the move function). I'm not sure whether the language interwikis in both articles should be left pointing to the same place, and whether the disambig pages in other languages should point at both pages here on the English Wikipedia? Would it be worth contacting the people who put the language interwiki tags there to see what they think? Is there some interlanguage area where I can raise this point? Thanks. Carcharoth 17:26, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Actuall Trivia

• Wiki-star: And a good day to you too fellow wikipedians! I'd like to know if a user can single handedly create a Trivia on an article. I'd like to test the reader's information on some article s i've been working on, and see if they have learned anything from reading them!

Is this ok? Thanks!

Wiki-star 19:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

You can do it in your User space, like creating a page called User:Wiki-star/Trivia, but please don't do it in the article or in article space. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:23, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

• Wiki-star: So it isn't really a good idea to post a trivia in an article right?

Wiki-star 19:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Correct, any more than you would have a trivia quiz in a printed encyclopedia. · rodii · 19:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

If you mean "trivia" in the sense that "this product was featured in this movie", then that's perfectly fine, if it's relevant to the article. See San Diego Zoo. If you're talking about "trivia" like "What's the longest river in the Czech Republic?" then it would be inappropriate for article space. Isopropyl 19:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

• Isopropyl is right. The type of trivia you described, especially with the goal of testing the article's readers, is NOT something to put in the article space. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 3

[edit] Where is this text?

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.

• Start the Eraera article or add a request for it.
• Search for Eraera in other articles.
• Look for Eraera in Wiktionary, our sister dictionary project.
• Look for Eraera in the Commons, our repository for free images, music, sound, and video.
• Look for pages within Wikipedia linking to this article.

• If you have created this page in the past few minutes and it has not yet appeared, it may not be visible due to a delay in updating the database. Try purge, otherwise please wait and check again later before attempting to recreate the page.
• If you created an article under this title previously, it may have been deleted. Check for Eraera in the deletion log, or visit its deletion vote page if it exists. See candidates for speedy deletion for possible reasons it may have been deleted.

This text is from MediaWiki:Noarticletext. jnothman ^talk 13:44, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Common policy

Is there a difference in policy across different language Wikipaedias? Someone told me that the Germans have got rid of stubs and the Dutch are trying to aswell. A matter for Esperanza? --{{subst:user|4836.03}} 06:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there are differences. As a regular German wikipedian, I can confirm what you heard about stubs in the German version. Differences in the German wikipedia I'd consider important include generally higher requirements of notability/relevance (e.g. articles on fictional persons are generally not accepted, unless the character has a special impact on "reality") and not using "fair use" images. I'm sure there are other things I'm not even aware of because I don't know how they work here. —da Pete (ノート) 07:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Japanese has an interesting policy of "nobody who isn't a public figure", as I recall. You might be interested to read the articles in Category:Wikipedias by language, which have some interesting details on the various languages. Shimgray | talk | 11:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bug fixing

I came across a problem with using Wikipedia on the Safari browser for Mac OS X - the edit toolbar doesn't appear. I searched for known bugs and was pleased to see that the problem had already been noted here: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4663 My question is, when will the bug be fixed? The bug page gives no indication of when this will be done. Richardrj 09:03, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software which runs Wikipedia is developed by volunteers. If you know a Safari who is proficient at coding in PHP, maybe they can fix it. Otherwise, the time is indeterminate. jnothman ^talk 13:27, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify - I'm not complaining about this, and I do realise that this whole thing is run by volunteers. I just wanted to point out that a fix has already been written (by User:Schnargel on 19 January), but has apparently not yet been implemented. I'm not a programmer, and I know nothing at all about MediaWiki, but it looks to me as though all this needs is for one line of code to be changed. I repeat, I'm not complaining - I just want to get it straight in my own mind what is actually involved here. Thanks. Richardrj 13:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a huge backlog of reports, many with fixes. There are only so many developers who can update the MediaWiki code. They are "working on it". At least that's what they claim. All we can do is sit on our hands and wait for the next update.—WAvegetarian•_{CONTRIBUTIONS}^TALK• ^EMAIL• 06:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] regarding sun and earth

I would like to know whether air is present in the middle of the sun and the earth. please provide me the information.

regards, balaji

• Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there. For your convenience, here's the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. Reading the article on the Sun may be of help too. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:27, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:RD2

I just tried answering above question with {{RD}} and found someone replaced it. {{RD2}} has problems with it's "click here"-link which I will try to fix. Why was this changed? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:31, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

• I can't fix that link. Will someone code savvy please have a go? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
• Never mind. Somehow i works now. Would still like to know if this change was discussed and why it was done. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The replacement was not a "replacement". We just split up the template to avoid problems on subst'ing the optional parameters. See Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk#on_using_Template:RD. It seems like the discussion was passed on to Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk/RD_tip. As you see, it was discussed and it's better like that. Fetofs ^Hello! 13:39, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

As I also replied on my talk page, these templates only work when substed (the reason is that within the template, I substed the fullurl template to avoid transclusion. But this only works if the template is substed). -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Registered trademarks

How do you enter a registered trademark on Wikipedia? - Patricknoddy 8:29am, April 3, 3006 (EDT)

Do you mean the registered trademark symbol? Type &reg; and you get ®. jnothman ^talk 13:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] why to post

how can i post somthing on the webside —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cmcgroup (talk • contribs).

Simply go to any page you wish to edit, and click the "edit this page" tab on the top. Then, make whatever edits you wish. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Screenshots of GPL licensed applications

Hello, I would like to know which license template to use for screenshots of GPL licensed applications ? I am of course assuming that the GPLed software screenshot in question does not contain any other copyrighted materiel, for example it's icons would also be covered by the GPL.

I have groped about on Wikipedia and Google, but have not fond any strait answers.

Looking at existing screenshots of GPLed applications, I found that they use a range of different license templates, with little apparent coherency. Examples of the license templates used are : {{Template:software-screenshot}} {{Template:linux-software-screenshot}} {{Template:GFDL}} {{Template:free screenshot}} {{Template:GPL}} {{Template:linux-software-screenshot}} .

Images that use these different templates can be found here :

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nautilus-spatial.png
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rhythmbox0931.png
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gimp-gnome-2.2.8.png
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gnumeric_1.4.2_Ubuntu.png
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Inkscape_screenshot.png

The best information I can find on this subject is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#Screenshots, which states such images should be tagged with {{Template:free screenshot}} and "an appropriate copyright tag", however I am unsure what the appropriate copyright tag would be.

Also what is the appropriate license to select from the drop down box on the commons upload page ?

Thank you in advance for any help :)

--Karderio 16:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The "appropriate" copyright tag is the one you would use normally, because {{free screenshot}} only says that image can be used, but it doesn't express how the owner licenses it to Wikipedia. Therefore, anything like {{GFDL}} or {{PD}} or even {{cc-by-sa}} would do it. I'm afraid the drop-down box doesn't show all the tagging options we have, and {{free screenshot}} is not listed there. However, the other licenses are, and you can select them and after that edit the image page to put that indication above the license. Fetofs ^Hello! 23:17, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help ! So if I've understood correctly, apart from the {{free screenshot}} tag, considering myself to be the author of the screenshot, I would indicate a tag for the license(s) under which I release the shot.

However, does the GPL not limit the license choices for a screenshot of a GPLed program ? In other words, must a screenshot of a GPLed program not have to be released under the GPL ? (This would be strongly suggested to me by the fact, for example, that the applications icons are themselves released under the GPL)

Thanks, --Karderio 10:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

At doubt, be on the safe side! I would do it under the GPL. As I see now in the template, it says the author(s) of those programs has released it under a free software license (which should be indicated beside this notice), so the GPL should be the best choice. Fetofs ^Hello! 12:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] help request

How do I add a colour background to black lettering?

--204.244.118.54 16:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

This was asked and answered a few questions ago. Scroll up a bit. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Or, to make it easier, you add

<span style="background: yellow;">insert text here</span>

around the text, to produce something like this. --Rory096 04:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] new articles

how do I create a new article. This will be about the comedy- Extras.

To create a new article type the name of the article you would like to create in the search box (in your case Extras) then click Go. A page will come up saying that the page does not exist and will ask you if you would like to create it click on the create it button. Then begin. Also please put a signiture when putting a comment by typing 4 tildes like this ~~~~ after it. Lcarsdata ^{Talk | E-mail | My Contribs} 18:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Also you need an account which you can get by going to Sign in\Create account in the top right hand corner of the window. Lcarsdata ^{Talk | E-mail | My Contribs} 18:23, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Your first article. Dismas|^(talk) 04:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, please note that if you are referring to the Ricky Gervais-Stephen Merchant TV comedy series, there is an existing article at Extras (TV series); if you mean the 2005 Australian comedy film, there is an existing article at The Extra. In either case you'll want to add your material to the existing article (that is, edit) rather than create a new one. Cheers, MCB 06:00, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] help documentation

i would like to now if there is any place where i can get all the wikimedia/wikipedia documentation in a single file.

thanks

Have you checked out Wikipedia:Help?—WAvegetarian•_{CONTRIBUTIONS}^TALK• ^EMAIL• 05:52, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My stress-o-meter is about to explode...

I spent months working on the community portal, including creating/installing the Community Bulletin Board, and based on the heavy use the CBB gets, I was under the impression that most people liked the page. Unfortunately, the way the talk page system is set up, it seems like only people with complaints and gripes visit those, so all I seemed to get was negative feedback, on various points and then recently to the design effort itself. I did everything I could to accomodate the specific points (except for a select couple that I really liked). But then people started complaining about the page being changed at all - and it was supposedly an open page! Then somebody comes along and reverts the page to a version that existed months ago, including getting rid of the community bulletin board, soon followed by an admin who locks the page. Luckily another bold admin restored the CBB, but *sigh*, not the rest of the page. So... I called for a vote to get the page changed back! And finally, some encouragement shows up in the form of support votes. Is this what we have to do to avoid the Wikiblues around here? --Go for it! 20:17, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Am I the only one, or has anyone else noticed the apparent process bias towards criticism promoted by the talk page system? --Go for it! 20:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

This doesn/t really seem like a help page question. Village pump maybe? Hope you feel better soon. · rodii · 20:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Insert bot

hello! I need to operate an insert bot for the hebrew wikibooks site. I already have a bot flag etc. could anyone help me writing the bot itself?

I have a php that can create any type of document, which outputs pages in wiki format. how to insert them automatically?

Thank's in advance

Erez Segal

Hebrew Wikibooks

89.138.98.241 20:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Erez, you might try asking over at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), where a number of more technically-oriented Wikipedians participate regularly. Best, MCB 06:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 4

[edit] Stubs in categories

The card game stubs template automatically adds the page to the card game stubs category. Fair enough. But why does that have the format "[[Category:...|*]]"? That is, why the bar&star? This has the effect of putting the category page in random order instead of alphabetical order.

I want to create a subcategory for bridge stubs, so I'm looking to learn a bit more about stub categories. Matchups 03:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't make much sense to me. It was done by this edit. You might want to ask the user who made the change. Stub templates and categories are managed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. I'm sure the folks there would be more than happy to help. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• Everything that comes after a pipe character (|) in category link is used to sort the page it's added to. Adding a * is used to put articles that are the topic of the category on top of the list - in this case however, it doesn't work because it's in a stub template. It should be used to sort the card game article to the top in Category:Card games. - 131.211.210.11 08:23, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
• I've reverted this. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] why do you let just anyone edit wiki?

please write back, post comment at keziavernon.blogspot.com

thanks. 8)—This unsigned comment was added by 66.109.147.25 (talk • contribs) .

Some good answers to your question can be found at Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. Hope this helps, MCB 06:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oxidation of copper during electrodeposition

My question is: If copper is electrodeposited using acidic copper sulfate solution, will the electrodeposited copper surface be oxidised in a few minutes of time at room temp? If yes, will it behave as a semiconductor? If yes, what type and what will be the band gap? Thanks.

Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there. For your convenience, here's the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. Dismas|^(talk) 05:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Basketball Terms in German

Hi, I was wondering if anybody was at all familiar with what the correct translation for "backboard", and "rim" were in German and other basketball terms like that. I can't find any translation in any dictionary and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same word, but I am sure my teacher wouldn't be delighted. Also, though Korbball is the literal translation of basketball in German, it seems it's been left out and the term Basketball is being used, like with many English words in German. I checked the NBA Germany site and there wasn't much of anything that was useful. Thanks.

• Have you tried the Language section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there. For your convenience, here's the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about Google searches on WP articles

If I search for something, e.g. "Che Guevara" on Google, Wikipedia's article is listed but also has a small summary description, e.g. (for Che Guevara):

"Article on the revolutionary's life and legacy, with quotes and pictures."

Where does Google get that description? I can't find any reference to that in the editable wikitext. Thanks for any help with this little query. --Happynoodleboy 09:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia developers must add meta tags to certain articles. I have written webpages so I am familiar with their use, but I was not aware that any articles used them because most, when found through google, just pick up a few line of text from an article followed by "retrieved from and the url". Basically, a meta tag is just code in the background of a page that tells search engines what to display and how to order when that page is spidered by google or another search engine. Che Guevara is a featured article and it may be that some articles which are given this status are singled out for meta tag treatment. --Fuhghettaboutit 10:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll leave the above in place but its wrong. I viewed the source of the Che Guevara article and couldn't find the text of the google descriptor. Then, I actually read the full text of the wikipedia meta tag article I linked above and it states that google doesn't even use meta tags for ordering. Something else is operating. Let's you and I wait for someone more conversant. I'm now very curious as well. --Fuhghettaboutit 10:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

My guess is that it's text from an old version of the article - Wikipedia doesn't use meta description tags for its articles (as confirmed by Fuhghettaboutit). I don't think there is a tool that lets you search for a specific text string through an article's history, but if you did look through the history, I would think that there is an old version with that text string in it, and the Google index hasn't updated itself yet. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 11:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe these descriptions are generated for articles that Google favours, by humans. Notinasnaid 11:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I know this is archived but...

What's interesting is that the title on Google doesn't match the title in Wikipedia either. The title on google is "Wikipedia: Che Guevara", but the title on Wikipedia is of course "Che Guevara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".

Looking into this more, it appears that tag line comes from [DMOZ http://dmoz.org/Society/History/By_Region/Caribbean/Cuba/Guevara,_Ernesto_Che/]. -Quasipalm 15:17, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] suggestion

Dear Wiki,

Those 2 sites www.discoverlebanon.com about discovering Lebanon and www.onefineart.com which display Lebanese arts.. are nice to be added in your interesting page of Lebanon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon in the external links.

Love you Wiki —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.198.34.4 (talk • contribs).

Erm... no, sorry. External links on Wikipedia articles are there to provide additional information about the subject of the article, while you seem to be primarily interested in promoting your sites / the country. The first (www.discoverlebanon.com might have a place in Wikitravel, but I can't see a place for the second. Sorry! For more info, you can read about our policies on external links at links to avoid. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 11:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

OKI! As you wish.. but those both sites onefineart.com and discoverlebanon.com are not my sites and I am not related to them

[edit] A new article

Can anyone make a new article? I would like to write my own, but I don't know how to add one...

Thx —This unsigned comment was added by Jenovah (talk • contribs) .

Any registered user can create an article. See Help:Starting_a_new_page for info on how. --CBDunkerson 11:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, check out your first article, a good guide to getting started at writing articles. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 17:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clay County, NC

Your article on Clay County, NC doesn't give me enough information. Can you give me either another site to go on or can you give more information about Clay County, NC?

• What information do you need? - 131.211.210.11 12:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] address problem

Hi all,

I have only one question.

It is possible that wiki shows the main page address as art.new.com (for example) instead of art.new.com/index.php?title=Main_Page?

Thanks alot!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alrightythen (talk • contribs) 13:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

This isn't exactly the right place to ask, but I'm going to assume you're talking about MediaWiki and answer. If you want a URL like Wikipedia's, see m:Eliminating index.php from the url. If you want an even shorter URL, see m:Using a very short URL and m:Using a very short URL (another). - Tangotango 14:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting pages

If I need to make an uncontroversial split, how does it get done? I've put the template up suggesting it (on the page Procellariidae) - but with the backlog of splits I don't know if will happen anytime soon. Is it something I can do or do I need to get an admin to do it? There isn't really any information about splits on the wikipedia namespace, but I know that cut and pastes are frowned upon because of the edit histories. Sabine's Sunbird talk 13:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes this is something you can do yourself. There are no admin tools that could effect the change. Just cut and paste and include the original source page in the edit summary (something like "new page from material moved from "foo") Rmhermen 13:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh! Okay, I'll go ahead and do that then. Thanks! Sabine's Sunbird talk

Now I am really confused! See discussions here, here, here and here, for other views. Carcharoth 14:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• As long as the paper trail remains you can split. Just make sure the edit summary and the talk page mention it. Don't delete the article it came from. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Could you, or someone else who is confident enough they can get the guidelines right, please add something like this to Wikipedia:How to break up a page. Maybe expanding a bit to make it clear why things need to be done this way (GFDL and edit history and all that). See also the discussion at that page's talk page and at the links above. Thanks. Carcharoth 09:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whether the information provided in this site is perfect.

Hi, I want to know how do you publish the data in the site....Means whether the data or information that you provide in the website is perfect and got it from the books or from people who are related to the issues. Please let me know what is the process of publishing the data on this site. If i am not convinced with some points whom should i inform.

Thanks & Regards, K Bharat Kumar. (email removed)

I guess we should ask you. Do you you understand how Wikipedia is written? In particular, do you know that every page can be edited by anyone? Our answers may not make sense if you do not. Notinasnaid 13:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

You may be interested in reading replies to common objections about Wikipedia, and then why Wikipedia is so great and why Wikipedia is not so great. That should give you a much better understanding of the advantages and limitations of Wikipedia. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 17:18, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

And for a short answer: Absolutely not. Information in Wikipedia is far from perfect. But it's pretty good, and you really should read the pages QuantumEleven linked to for more information. (And if you ever find a source of information that is perfect, please let us all know - It would make our lives a lot easier). -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 18:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• To answer your question. Data is never perfect, it all depends on how things are measured. Ideally Wikipedia information comes from published sources which are noted in the article. Unfortunately, we don't always get the sources from the contributor. Treat Wikipedia like you should treat any source. Doublecheck your information with other sources. Any source can contain errors. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wiki____

Can I have my own wikipedia page? kinda simular to wiki.mtgsalvation.com? where I can build my own page up? amd if I can, how do I go about doing it... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Decbabiboiblu (talk • contribs).

You can certainly have your own page on this wiki, at User:Decbabiboiblu. Isopropyl 14:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the website you mention, but here you have your user page - User:Decbabiboiblu. Here are some guidelines about user pages: Wikipedia:User page. You also have a talk page where people can leave messages for you. Your talk page is located at User talk:Decbabiboiblu. On talk pages (including this page here), you can also sign your posts using four tildes: ~~~~. --Aude (talk | contribs) 14:19, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I think he means he wants to make his own wiki. If you have webhosting, then you can just download the MediaWiki software (hit the button on the very bottom right of a page), or you can go to Wikia, where they host wikis for you. --Rory096 04:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Search

I often see a link to Wikipedia when i do a Google search. Is there some code which I can put on our Intranet where users can search for a topic and go directly to the location on Wikipedia's site?

I added a header to your question to make it easier to spot. As for your question, yes, Google can search just Wikipedia, take a look at Wikipedia:Search#Google. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 17:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dissappearing Article (David George Kendall)

I'm 99.9% sure there used to be an article on David George Kendall (the British Statistician), but now it's just leads to an insert this page placeholder. This seems to be confirmed by sites that syndicate (?) wikipedia that still seem to have the article. My question is what happened to it, and how would one go about finding out? I'd guess it might have been removed for a copyright violation or somesuch, but how does one tell in these cases. MrMarshmallow 16:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The page was deleted January 19, 2006 as a copyright violation of [[4]]. As to how you can find out, you can try checking the deletion log - although nowadays that is a very long list or you can try asking a admin who can search for the title and see the deleted edits. Rmhermen 16:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not really long; you just go to Special:Log and search for the page, which singles out only the entries regarding that page. --Rory096

[edit] How does someone give further background info on professional and indy wrestlers

I work for a local wrestling venue and some wrestlers who are listed in Wikipedia. How do we include their the titles they held into their Wikipedia bio? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.48.123.163 (talk • contribs).

You are welcome to contribute to Wikipedia. You might consider registering an accout before you do, but are welcome to either way. If you are not sure if the information is appropriate for the article you wish to edit, you can ask questions on the talk page of the article. -- Natalya 19:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How can I do like this ?

http://ajaxpatterns.org/Richer_Plugin Highligh yellew , light green Alhoori

To highlight something like this, use the following tag:

<span style="background: yellow;">this</span>

You can change the color to whatever you would like to use. -- Natalya 18:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to deal with SMS

I am just a little tired of having to erase 20 messages off my cell everyday.

How do I stop this maddness?

I would appreciate some assistance.

Thanx Mike Stewart.

email address removed

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.250.250.213 (talk • contribs).

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). For your convenience, here's the link: Reference Desk (when you get there, just select the relevant section, and ask away). I hope this helps.-- Natalya 19:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Metaphysics of Quality

The block compression bug was fixed a while ago, no? So why isn't this (Metaphysics of Quality) page fixed (See the note at the top). Leonardo 21:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• Most likely because history merges are laborious or because no administrators (who can do such a thing) noticed. Drop a note on WP:AN and it should be fixed pretty soon. - 131.211.210.17 07:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia entries

can a user create a wikipedia entry?

Sure! You're encouraged to. See this page for more information. Good luck! Isopropyl 23:22, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 5

[edit] Wikilink disappears

On the adenoviridae page there is a link under "see also" for AD-36, a disease caused by an adenovirus, but it does not appear on the screen. I've tried it on other pages but it also does not appear, except on the AD-36 page, on which it appears not as a link but as bold text. I was going to see if anything redirected to the AD-36 article, but the "what links here" link is also blank. I'll try it here - AD-36 - see, nothing. Possibly some kind of tag? --Joelmills 02:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is going on but I can tell you that the link is present from my view. Some type of problem with your browser maybe? --Fuhghettaboutit 02:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Works fine for me too! — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

All right, I'll try it at work and see if it shows up. I've never had this problem before. --Joelmills 04:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vote For Deletion Questions

I wanted to nominate an article for a vote for deletion. When I checked the talk page, I noticed the article had already been nominated twice for a vote for deletion, and each time the result was keep, no consensus. Is it alright for me to nominate it? or would three times be too much? how many times can a page be nominated?--Geedubber 07:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

You should ask yourself, "what has changed between the most recent AfD and now?" If the situation doesn't differ substantially, you should think twice. What is the page in question? Isopropyl 06:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• If it was no concensus due to lack of participation, you could nominate it again. If it was no concensus because a lot of people voted, but didn't agree re-nomination is very much a bad idea. It would indeed help if we knew what page you are referring to. - 131.211.210.17 07:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

The Endor Holocaust was the page in question. Lots of people voted in both AfD discussions. It seemed like cruft to me though, and fit a lot of the criteria for WP:NOT.--Geedubber 07:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• People have tried to merge it into the article on the Forest Moon of Endor and it ended up being too large again and again. You may have a point, but I don't see how a new debate would cause a different outcome. Personally, I see both sides of the debate and I think merging it would have been the best solution. Convincing those keep voters to rewrite it in a concise manner so it can be remerged may get you better results. - 131.211.210.17 10:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Migdia Chinea

Nothing on Migdia Chinea on Wikipedia. Please, look at http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0889630/

with changes and additions in progress --

Contact Migdia at (email removed to protect from spam) — —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Migdiachinea (talk • contribs).

Looking at that brief filmography I'm not sure she (you?) meets our criteria for biographies. Requests for articles can be made at Wikipedia:Requested articles if you're sure. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 10:14, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page Access Statistics

Is there any way an ordinary user can access statistics on how often a particular Wikipedia article is accessed? This would be quite handy as currently one can only attempt to guess based on the number of edits or the number of vandalisms the page receives, which isn't particularly reliable. Cheers — SteveRwanda 11:38, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

The statistics simply aren't recorded, not even for a select elite. "Performance reasons". Some have said that the statistics couldn't meaningfully be recorded because of the serving arrangements with caches. Notinasnaid 12:37, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

A tool that provides a related function is the "What links here" link under the toolbox. This will show you all the pages that link to the article, which can at least give you an idea of how often it has the possibility to be accessed. -- Natalya 17:09, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BOARDING SCHOOLS

I wanted to know about couse safe t. iwant to apply their couse safe t .

[edit] Add a band

How can i add my band in wikipedia???--Dakrya 23:29, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

You can do this by searching for the name of your band and pressing "create this article." HOWEVER, if your band doesn't mean WP:MUSIC, it will very likely be listed for deletion, and it will be a violation of WP:AUTO either way. I suggest waiting until your band becomes notable enough that somebody else writes an article about you guys. --Rory096 23:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] help fix image layout

The artile (Gaya District) view differently on the Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. I've tried to fix the problem partly. While formating the "Contents" block overlaps with the Gaya District toolbox if I put the image (Map of Gaya) on the centre in the Mozilla browser. While in the Internet Explorer browser if I put the image (Map of Gaya) on the Centre, it moves down below the toolbox and it doesn't looks nice.

So, on the whole, if you happens to know how to fix it, please open the article Gaya District on both the browsers and make the article look the same in Internet Explorer as it in the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Thanks. --Gunjanarya 23:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I've forwarded the message here, since I don't know how to fix it. Gflores^Talk 23:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Internet Explorer often displays pages incorrectly, so it's a sad fact of life that getting the page to look just right in IE may be very hard. Alex (t) 08:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I have resolved the problem for 1024x768 screen resolution. But a problem with both the explorers (and maybe with any) will exist unless the image is resized to fit 800x600 screen resolution. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 09:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

lots of thanks Ambuj ... hope to see you again --Gunjanarya 12:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 6

[edit] Deleting comments on talk pages

It is ok for an admin to delete unwlcome comments on talk pages. No way this could be considered vandalism. Did I get that right? For example, [5]. 209.6.189.247 00:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages are for communicating with other editors in the task of creating an encyclopedia. That kind of communication should be kept. Editors (it has nothing to do with be an admin) can freely delete vandalism on talk pages. Your edit is in a gray area--not obvious vandalism, but also not in any way constructive, just a sarcastic attack on another editor's good faith. As such, I think there are grounds for deleting it; see WP:AGF and WP:DICK.

This is the help desk. It's a place for people to get help using Wikipedia. If your question was a good faith attempt to find out what how this place works, I hope the answer above was helpful. If, on the other hand, it was an attempt to enlist backup in a dispute with another editor, this is the wrong place for that. Try dispute resolution for some ideas. · rodii · 01:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the dick bit - if hypocrisy is a weakness it should be addressed. Did the editor delete the referenced article talk page comment in good faith? Obviously I don't think so. 209.6.189.247 02:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. But instead of making a straightforward inquiry about that, you just went off at him. This kind of thing happens here all the time, and editors who vehemently disagree with one another have to find some way of working together. That can't happen if you attack people.

I'm not accusing you of being a dick--I am suggesting that in your anger, you may have forgotten to be civil. It happens. And uncivil remarks on talk pages sometimes get deleted--that happens too. I'm not saying you aren't (or are) justified. Either way, you're probably not going to get what you want here at the help desk. I hope the resources at WP:DR are helpful to you. · rodii · 02:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! Per WP:DR, I asked the guy why he did it. 209.6.189.247 03:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

It appears that you're hardbanned user Zordrac. That would explain why he did it. --Rory096 04:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm Metarhyme, who burned out NPOVing NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Sockpuppets were exasperating there, so I guess I've got empathy for the shoot first impulse. Jayjg has neither responded to nor deleted my request in his talk. 209.6.189.247 05:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Past archives of the entire (English) wikipedia articles?

Does Wikipedia provide past archives of all articles that are found, e.g., in http://en.wikipedia.org/ (or any such things)? If so, where would one go about finding it? I'd highly appreciate your comments (I'll need it for research purposes). -- Orz 02:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Click on the History tab at the top of any article to see its version list. Click on the date of one to view it. Hope that helps Alex (t) 06:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

A database dump should contain all the revisions of all pages in Wikipedia, but those are huge (270 GB, last time I checked). You can download them from http://download.wikimedia.org. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a million, Titoxd! The link is exactly what I had been looking for. Orz 06:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk Pages and User pages

What is a talk page? And even thought it says not to make pages about youself, why is there a link talking about making a user page?

--Rinalda

Please see Help:Talk page and Wikipedia:User page. Perhaps Wikipedia:Tutorial might be useful as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

And in case that doesn't answer your question: There is a difference between an article Meni Rosenfeld, which (if \ when it exist) will be an encyclopedic article about a notable person - that is, part of the encyclopedia - And the article User:Meni Rosenfeld, which is a personal page of a Wikipedia user - that is, part of the process of creating the encyclopedia. Casual users that use Wikipedia as a reference will see the Meni Rosenfeld article but not the User:Meni Rosenfeld article. If I'm lucky, perhaps some day in the future I will be famous enough to have a Wikipedia article about me. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 07:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Step 3 in Afd

Hi, I nominated a page for deletion. It was the third nomination the page had received so following the three step process was a little more tricky than usual. I got past steps 1 and 2, but I messed up on step three. Can you explain what this instruction actually means, it is a little vague.

"(If you used template {{subst:afdx}} instead of {{subst:afd1}}, replace "PageName" with the name of the page plus a note like "(second nomination)" for a second nomination, etc.)."

Does "note" mean edit summary? or do I add a note to PageName --Geedubber 09:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Click here, and then add {{Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion/Endor Holocaust}} to the bottom of the page. --{{subst:user|4836.03}} 11:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

And your sure that will add the 3rd discussion, not the first?--Geedubber 19:29, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I finally figured it out. I copied the name of the new discussion page added pasted it in, then formated it to look like the rest of the listed items and it worked. thanks for the help though. much appreciated--Geedubber 19:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Long strings instead of proper text

Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates is displaying symptoms I saw before, but I can't remember the cause. Is it the < tt > tags or the < nowiki > tags? Nowiki doesn't appear to cause problems on top of this page. Can anyone tell me what's going on, how to solve it and if there's a bugzilla entry for this? - Mgm|^(talk) 09:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AfC

Why? It isn't hard to create an account and AfC seems to discourage people from doing just that, although I hope we agree that would be the best idea. --{{subst:user|4836.03}} 11:31, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• Some people simply don't want to create an account which would mean we can lose the chance to receive some pretty good articles. It's not discouraging at all. The top of the page even says creating an account is easier. But people appear to expect a place where they can make suggestions without doing all the wiki work themselves. This way people get what they want, and we still get their suggestions. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UK's participation in the european single currency

Whatis Euro ?

Who are the participating countries in the european market ?

What is single currency ?

How are the participating countries doing ?

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to the UK of participation in the European single currency. Will British business be better or worse off if the country decides to participate ?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mnada (talk • contribs).

You should ask this question at the reference desk. Even there, we won't do your homework for you. You should start with the Euro (currency) article. Isopropyl 20:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sending pages

is there a way to send this page to my email address?

Most browsers have a "save page" feature. You can download the *.html file to your computer and send it as a normal file. A better option is sending yourself the URL. Isopropyl 20:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

An easy way to send yourself the link is to simply drag the Wikipedia favicon (the "w" in the top address bar) into an email "new message" window. If you use a web mail service, just copy and paste. Ccool2ax 13:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extra Space

I noticed that in wikihtml, when we edit, formating has extra space, for example, when we edit a comment, there's a space between the $Subject/headline:$ & the content of the message. Another example is $== Extra Space ==$ is also the same as $==Extra Space==$. Does this make comments larging in size as bytewise? Even if not, it could create confusion. So I guess Mediawiki needs to be tweaked/the devlopers\the codes needs a little editing?

Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (email excluded) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNU licence hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].

thanks

24.70.95.203 20:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Please do not include your email. I noticed you posted this in several places, and I believe that Rmhermen has already answered your question. Isopropyl 21:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linking a Wikimedia Commons picture to Wikipedia

I have uploaded a pic to Commons but when I try to link it to an article in Wikipedia it just shows the filename in red above the caption where the pic should be.

Click here for:

Wikipedia article on Byron Bay <a href>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Bay,_New_South_Wales</a>

Wikimedia Commons picture <A href>http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Byron_Lighthouse_looking_south_2004-28-12.JPG</A>

This is so frustrating and I am unable to find a decent explaination of how this is meant to work —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bigbewo (talk • contribs).

It looks correctly for me. Uploading images to commons or the local Wikipedia should not matter, as they're both typed the same way... have you tried purging your cache? Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 23:45, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like he got it fixed and the ".JPG" extension being in capitals was causing the problem --GraemeL ^(talk) 23:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguate: Laurence Godfrey

I've added Laurence Godfrey to the usenet article as a notable usenet personality (he famously and successfully sued Demon Internet in the UK for libel after they failed to remove an article from their news server... despite the propogation of the article globally). However, it seems there is also Laurence Godfrey who was a UK athlete. Can you disambiguate for me? I can't work out how to do it.

Rather than try to give a tutorial on disambiguation in this rather limited space, please take a look at Wikipedia:Disambiguation, which should answer your questions. Regards, MCB 01:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)