Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 12

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

[edit] Archive of past questions

1 Archive of past questions

[edit] Linking dates and years. Also, question on capitalization

I was working on slowly updating some music pages related to Throwing Muses. While doing so, I got confused about something I saw on one of the wikipedia faqs about linking dates and years. Could someone let me know if I should or should not be linking every year that appears in an article? I am totally confused about when to do it, and I want to be consistent. I need to go add links to years in a discography if they are supposed to each be linked. Also, I'm not clear on when to link full month/day/year, such as in a magazine article citation in my References. And I'm not sure when to spell out the month. Usual practice in reference citations in most style books is to abbreviate the month, but maybe an online internally linked site may have different needs.

Finally, as for capitalization, I am understanding that when writing wikipedia page names and section names, the naming conventions are to only capitalize the first word and proper names after that in the name/title. I try to keep this straight from when I am typing references to magazine article titles or naming the title of a website in a reference; then I think I'm to use usual APA or Chicago stylebooks' cap style. Additionally, sometimes when I describe a website name in references or External links, I may give it a descriptive name when there's no real title for it, and in that case, i guess I'd fall back to wikipedia naming conventions of just the first word and proper names being capitalized. Trying to get things straight as I edit, Emerman 19:05, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link the first occurrance of every year number (and none of the subsequent occurances). Some people also link the rest (e.g 2 September), but I think that's dependent more on whether the event in question is notable. Wikipedia's captitalisation rule is essentially the same as "normal english" (whatever that might be), like you say. - John Fader 19:38, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link every date which has full day month year information. That allows the software to display the date in the user's chosen preference. Also link any day month for the same reason. Years alone are only linked if they are important and then usually only once per article unless it is a list or a really long article. Rmhermen 19:59, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Also month names are always written out. Rmhermen 20:04, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

So even in a reference citation, we do not abbreviate the month as per normal footnote and reference list style in other publications due to our linking needs? This is not a problem for me; I just want to be sure before I go back and correct a bunch of magazine and newspaper citations in articles. thanks very much for this help. I will be adjusting several articles soon. Emerman 20:22, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Y'know, I still don't agree with Rmhermen in the specific context you mean. The citation standard to which you refer, Wikipedia:Cite_your_sources#Web_sites_.28not_from_periodicals.29 doesn't wikify the dates and abbreviates the month names. Rmhermen is quite correct for things that are in the article as a whole, but wikifying the "retrieved" dates seems rather counterproductive to me. -- John Fader 21:27, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. I posed the question at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check which is probably the most likely place. Rmhermen 04:55, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Emerman must be the only person who actually follows the standard. Damn new people showing the rest of us up by actually reading the policy documents :) -- John Fader 01:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, yes, that's right, months are abbreviated in the Notes and References area citations per the Cite sources page. Now the question of when to wikify links for months and years still remains. So far in the one article, I have unwikified the retrieval dates just now and wikified and unabbreviated the months in the Notes and References area. I have all the full month/day/year ones wikified. I have not yet wikified magazine citations that say "June 2001" or "November/December 1991" yet. I have spelled out the months but I used to have them abbreviated in the Notes and References citations area. Now, I'm wondering if I should go back and abbreviate the months in the Notes and References area, but if I do that, should I unwikify them? The only thing that would show up if I did that is the year anyway since abbreviated months are red link dates. Now, Rmhermen says to not link to years except the first occurrence but then in the same paragraph says some people link specific month/dates in an article every time they appear and says he thinks that should depend on importance of the date, thus mixing the issue of years and specific dates. I think consistency should be important in developing a style. I will be glad to link every month/day/year if that's the style. I'm not sure if I should just show every instance of a month/day (September 2) without the year if the year has already been linked earlier in the article. Confusing, but surely not impossible to develop a style for this, explain it somewhere, and show examples in theCite sources page with wiki links. Emerman 15:52, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Y'know, I really wouldn't worry too much about super-correct formatting. Providing what you put in is sensible, someone can always come along later and change things (and policies change faster that we can ever hope to keep up with implementing them anyway). Content is far more important than format, so please don't let style and format slow down your really valuable contributions. BTW, having watched her play from about 6ft away, I can personally attest that Tanya Donelly has teeny tiny hands (not really an encyclopedic fact, I'll grant you). -- John Fader 16:05, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] proverbs

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proverb, I see many types of proverbs, even Scottish Gaelic proverbs, but no Irish Gaelic proverbs.

Can I add Irish Gaelic proverbs?

Thanks.

Paul

Yeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!! Please feel free to add anything you feel will improve an article. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 01:05, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Policies regarding essay and paper writing

I was very excited when I found this site. I thought it could be a place where I could post new articles and papers on subjects that I find interesting. All of my articles would be based on other peoples work but would have my own therories incorporated into the paper. Of course, all sources would be sited according to the standards of MLA citations, and I would not post any topics which could not be proven to be accurate and true through rigourus research and use of sources.

I was disapointed to find that Wikipedia policies state that new and original research cannot be published and that I should refrane from publishing original theories as the policy under sub heading Personal Essays or Original Research (quoted below) declares.

Wikipedia surveys existing human knowledge; it is not a place to publish new work. Do not write articles that present your own original theories, opinions, or insights.

I would like to know if a new page could be made that is linked to Wikipedia which is strictly for original works. Of course, all of the policies regarding citation and copy right laws would still be in effect, and all papers would have to be viewed by Wikipedia Administrators for authenticity and accuracy. Essentially, these papers would be written like university papers and the same rules would apply. The only concern would be that the papers could be taken and used by others without being duly accredited. They should not be allowed to be edited by others as the encyclopedia articles are.

All that aside, I am impressed by the organization of the information gathered at Wikipedia and hope to be using it as a research tool for a long time to come

--Ryth 01:28, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

You seem to be looking for something that's neither a wiki (where anyone can edit any page) nor an encyclopedia. Your suggestion might make for an admirable project, but it would seem to be outside of Wikipedia's scope. — Matt Crypto 01:39, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, no one would object if you write an encyclopedic article based on the prevailing conventional wisdom, and then on the talk page to the article, you could comment on whatever angle you wanted (assuming it wasn't 32k worth of idiosyncratic babble). alteripse 02:41, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like what you are looking for is a Blog. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:58, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikibooks is a better project for that. Please note that anything submitted to any Wikimedia project is subject to editing by other users. Masterhomer 05:22, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How do I edit {{EnderCharacters}}?

Please, how do I edit the box that comes up when I type {{EnderCharacters}} in an article? I have written a new article on Si Wang-mu, and would like her to be added to the list of characters from the Ender series. Ekaterin 14:06, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Edit template:EnderCharacters -- John Fader 14:44, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Moving a subsection of an article: creating a new topic

Apologies of this is covered elsewhere, but I haven't been able to find anything about this issue so far: the entry on "hermeneutics" has a subsection on "biblical hermeneutics". I would like to move that subsection out of the 'hermeneutics' article and create a new article on 'biblical hermeneutics', building on the existing material. (The German wikipedia does that as well.) So how do I do that? And is it fair to the original writers? --Szessi 17:24, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is usually done when the article the section belongs to becomes too large. If you want to do it, be sure to summarize the section and leave a link saying "Main article: [[Biblical hermeneutics]]" at the top of the summarized section. Be sure to inform others on the talk page before you do it and do some expansion if you can after the move. Mgm|^(talk) 09:27, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

It's worth adding that there is no technical feature for this specific task, since "subsections" don't really exist as far as the software's concerned. To make sure the earlier editors of the section get due credit, it is recommended that you make prominent mentions of what you've done (linking to the other article) in the summaries of your edits and on the associated talk pages (particularly that of the new page); that way people know to look up the history of the old page, as well the new one.

In other words, just start the article, but leave lots of pointers to where you got the original content. - IMSoP 21:19, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Strange formatting issues on Vfd

Since today, about one in 5 times I am loading WP:VFD, I'm getting various very strange formatting oddities....the whole page will be in italics, or in small font, or striked out. When I look at the page source, everything seems to be fine, and after a reload, the page will look peferctly intact. This does not only affect the article text, but also the menu and sidebar. I'm using Firefox 1.0 with a bunch of extensions, monobook skin, no custom css files...anyone else notice this? It is definitely weird. -- Ferkelparade π 18:29, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I should also mention that this only affects Vfd, haven't seen it happen on any other page. Strange stuff. -- Ferkelparade π 18:30, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Have also seen some very strange things today, on lots of different pages -- very large text, text that gets larger as the page goes on, images and boxes overlaying text.... I'd hazard a guess that someone's monkeying with the site-wide CSS pages (either a vandal or a well-meaning designer). Most problems resolved themsleves with a reload or going to another page and returning, so it's obviously being fixed. Still bizarre though. Catherine\^talk 18:56, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Based on the poking around I've done, it has to do with fancy sig formatting. I suspect that some WMF-side HTML correction got itself turned off, so now we're seeing the consequences of badly made sigs. I know I've corrected at least two people's sigs on different pages, which corrected the problems there. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:19, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Developers contacted. Seems at least one of the new Apache servers is missing its copy of HTML Tidy, the software that is fixing these mistakes on all the other Apache servers. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:45, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] who designed the first?

Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk -- Ferkelparade π 09:03, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism of Wikipedia

I've come across this article, and I'm pretty sure most of it was covered in Wikipedia:Common objections, but that link is read. What was the correct address and should it be merged? Mgm|^(talk) 10:47, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

You're looking for Wikipedia:Replies to common objections, which covers the same criticisms and many more. --David Iberri | Talk 20:58, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

I just redirected the one to the other. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:31, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] picture removal

hello...I would like to know if it is possible to log on to this site with pictures removed. I have a very rare phobia about pictures, which keeps me out of many books and encyclopedias. When I first found this site, the articles I read had no pictures. Finally, I thought, I can pursue information without having to worry about the image phobia. Now I have the home page on my favorites and there are lots of pictures. I would like to remove the puzzle-sphere image also. This is not a joke. I crave information so this is horribly debilitating for me. Is there anyway you can help me? MaryEliza

I am sorry to hear about your phobia. To view Wikipedia without pictures, I would recommend you use a web browser like Lynx. Masterhomer 05:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Most if not all web browsers have an option to disable the loading of pictures. --Brion 09:40, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Indeed:

In Opera 7, go to File > Preferences > Multimedia, and set Images to "Show no images".
In Internet Explorer 6, go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced, and in the Multimedia section, unmark Show Pictures. Unfortunately, this does not hide the puzzle graphic at the top-left of every page.
In Mozilla Firefox 1, go to Tools > Options > Web Features and unmark Load Images.
In Netscape 7, go to Edit > Preferences > Privacy and Security > Images and select the Do not load any images option.

And, of course, Lynx and other text-only browsers like w3m never show any images. Those are all the browsers I have to test with; maybe someone else can help with instructions for others.

This should make sure that your web browser never displays any images at all.

If you would like to make sure that you never see any images at Wikipedia, even when you log in from another computer, sign up for an account and edit your personal stylesheet. Your stylesheet will be at the page /wiki/User:Yourusername/monobook.css . Add the line img, div#p-logo { visibility: hidden } , save the page, and purge your cache as instructed. This will hide images in articles and the puzzle image on every page, but it won't hide the background texture or the little person icon in front of the row of links at the top of the page. I imagine it must be possible to get rid of them too, but I can't figure out how just now.

However, if you use a different skin than Monobook, it won't have those images. To change your skin, log in, go to your Preferences page (Special:Preferences), click Skin, choose another skin, and click Save Preferences. In this case, you should add the line from the previous paragraph to a different stylesheet—not monobook.css, but classic.css, nostalgia.css, myskin.css, or cologneblue.css, depending on which skin you chose.

I hope this makes more sense than I think it does. Please ask if anything's not clear. —Triskaideka 17:26, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] sperm

Moved to RD. Masterhomer

[edit] My sig has been screwed up.

Even though it's still correctly coded in my preferences ([[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm]]|<sup>[[User talk:MacGyverMagic|(talk)]]</sup>, my signature is screwed up when I use four tildes. What happened? Mgm|^(talk) 08:26, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

It turns out it was the mediawiki update, adding code to my sig. I've fixed it Mgm|^{(talk) 08:41, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)}

^{Grrrr. All my old signatures have been screwed up, and I see it's the case for more people. Can someone at Bugzilla report this bug? Mgm|^(talk) 08:47, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)}

Yeah, I reaaaaly don't like the new Mediawiki update. The sig bit, plus the change to my wikibar, is driving me nuts.. Rhymeless | (Methyl Remiss) 09:02, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As you can see by the fact that it doesn't work, your signature generates invalid wiki code. Serious bugs in the old software turned that into something that sort of worked, and unfortunately you never double-checked the results and are now stuck with a lot of bogus signatures now that the bug has been fixed.

I should stress that this is not the "new software" adding things -- the signature is inserted into the page at the time that you edit, and your sigs have been invalid ever since you first wrote them.

I've added an option in the preferences for "raw signatures", which will avoid putting the "[[User:Yourname|" and "]]" around the nick if you check it. This will make inserting your sig work correctly from now on, but anyplace that you have inserted the incorrect sig before will remain as it was unless you manually edit it. --Brion 09:38, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Huh, I still don't get it. How come you can fix the bug and change all old signatures, but you can't allow raw sigs for all old signatures? Mgm|^(talk) 09:44, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
- Your sig was broken, and it was broken long before 1.4, you just didn't notice. It's been generating invalid wikimarkup since you started using it. What changed with 1.4 was how MediaWiki rendered your broken sig. The only way to fix all the old signatures is to go find them and correct their broken syntax. This is a non-trivial task. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:28, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - And it's still broken, as you didn't close your <sup> tag. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:29, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fixed now. Mgm|^(talk) 13:19, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] adding text

I want to add a new page and then add a link to an existing page. But the existing page (Scottish_Gaelic_proverbs) has no link on it for creating a new link.

What do I do?

Also, I don't see how using the sandbox can result in a page that I can save permanently. It doesn't seem clear.

Thanks.

Click "edit this page" on Scottish_Gaelic_proverbs and add the link to your new page where it should be in the article. Mgm|^{(talk) 13:26, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)}

^{[edit] Recent changes patrol?}

^{The release notes for mediawiki 1.4 say it features the Recent Changes patrol feature, but doesn't say how to use it. Special:Recentchanges looks essentially the same as before (only the section->arrows are new). I can't find any docs on meta, nor any new preference for it, so how does one use RC-patrol? -- John Fader 18:49, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)}

^{I'd like to know that as well. Anyone? Mgm|^{(talk) 22:04, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)}}
^{Yes, does marking a page as "patrolled" mean that it is good, and nobody else needs to check it? Is the original author allowed to patrol his own submission? Jeff Knaggs 09:41, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)}

^{I've played around with it a little, and I'm beginning to suspect the patrolled flag isn't very useful to wikis with as many edits as we get. It's useful if you get several hundred edits a day and you can just check all the new edits once in a while; On a wiki like enwiki it's really not all that worthwhile, you have a group of people poring over RC 24/7, and I doubt significant synchronisation is going to happen. Even if everybody marked everything they've checked as checked (which is relatively a lot of work), people are going to open the same diff at the same time. --fvw* 10:01, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)}

^{[edit] Images}

^{I would like to add an image, but I am unsure of copyright classifications. How should I credit a photograph if it has been obtained from www.Imdb.com?}

^Thanks

^{I would be leery of using imdb photos at all. I took a look at their image galleries; they always include copyright info, and nothing I looked at said anything about being released to public domain. If you use them, you should include the copyright information and call them fair use. However, many Wikipedians dislike having fair use images here, especially since many countries outside the U.S. use the more restrictive fair dealing instead. See Wikipedia:Fair use for details. Isomorphic 23:37, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)}

^{[edit] WP Template Edit Langauge}

^{What does {{{a number}}} mean in a Template?}

^{It means "substitute the number-th parameter here". Explained better at Help:Template#Parameters. -- John Fader 22:31, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)}

^{Thanks Lee S. Svoboda 23:22, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)}

^{[edit] creating new page}

^{The sandbox info is not clear on how one creates a new page.}

^{At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox I see some text but no place to start creating.}

^{Also, the text makes it sound like what you create will get periodically erased...}

^Help?

^Thanks.

^{Your first article explains how best to create new articles. Other helpful content may be found at the Tutorial. Good luck! Mgm|^(talk) 13:14, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)}

Beaten to the punch, but here is my answer anyway ...

Yes, the Wikipedia:Sandbox does get cleared down, because it is just for practicing using wiki markup. To create a new page, you form a link to the page, thus [[new page]]; use 'Show preview' which will show new page as a red link; click on the red link to take you to the edit box for that page; construct the article; then press 'Show preview' to see that it comes out as you require, then press 'Save page'. Et voila! Noisy | Talk 13:20, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

And don't forget to check if a similar article already exists. Adding to an existing article is often better than fragmenting. Mgm|^(talk) 16:08, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pikmin series

I VERY recently created the article Pikmin series (which was legitimate). I saved it, and, just in case an admin mistaked it for already having the article at Pikmin (which is untrue), saved a copy to User:Oven Fresh/Pikmin series. Several minutes later, I returned to find that both of the pages mentioned above had disapeared. What the? OvenFresh ☺ 00:09, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've managed to recover the page from my cache, for now. I still don't know what happened. OvenFresh☺ 00:16, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- My page is being repeatedly deleted, or something. OvenFresh☺ 00:19, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - The problem seems to have stabalized (although the "What Links Here" for Pikmin lists "Pikmin series" seven times. OvenFresh ☺ 00:41, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There were some freakish database problems about 24 hours ago. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:24, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sysop needed

See talkpage on Template:Disputed Masterhomer 09:34, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Question about "What links here" button.

I was looking at a few of the requests for articles, and saw Hartmut Jürgens near the top of the list of unresolved links. So, I think to myself, I know something about his work with fractals, why don't I write an article.

I push the "What links here" button, to confirm that the context is what I expected (fractal geometry), and I get many (order hundreds) of pages, almost all are various user's talk pages. Does anyone know what is going on?

Is it possible that this name was once in the Welcome New User's template?? (It doesn't seem to be now.) Also, when I look at the talk pages, I don't see anything there (or in the markup language either). Is it possible that the diacritical mark(over the "u") is somehow confusing things?

What am I missing? Morris 17:13, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

At a guess, all those users have the Open tasks template, and that article appears or appeared on that template. Noisy | Talk 18:21, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] ogg ?

The term "ogg" is being used on Talk:Main page. What does it mean? [[User:Hydnjo| Hydnjo\^talk ]] 00:34, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See Ogg and Vorbis. It's a sound codec, like MP3, but ogg is free of copyrights so it's usable on Wikipedia. Those oggs at the bottom are "Merry Christmas" votes in audio format in different languages. — Kieff | Talk 00:53, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Sound, which is a little something I wrote to help people with the software side of using sound files. →Raul654 03:06, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

To clarify just a touch, Ogg is the *family*; the audio format is Vorbis, and the video format Theora. -- Baylink 01:32, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] what, if anything, is wrong with mixing test?

Try as I may, I can't figure out why the formatting of mixing test is wrong. It looks like the MediaWiki upgrade has a bug? Or have I completely overlooked something obvious? - Nunh-huh 02:34, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

it was missing an opening '. I fixed it, and it seems okay now. -- John Fader 02:58, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Goes to show tat it pays to have fresh eye looking: for the life of me I couldn't figure it out! - Nunh-huh 03:11, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting article

Hello, I wanted to request an article but I can't seem to find the right way to do this. I wanted to place a request for an article that discusses the Minority Treaties and how they contributed to the rise of antisemitism following WW1. I am trying to read Italic textThe Origins of TotalitarianismItalic text, but I stumble upon some events and subjects in which I need more background information. The Minority Treaties is / are one of those areas. In addition, any discussion about this book, which for me is a difficult read, would be greatly appreciated. I noticed Wikepedia has only a brief article about this important work. Thanks. Boxer1

See Wikipedia:Requested articles, and find the appropriate subsection in which to list your request. Isomorphic 04:04, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] UserName

Is their any way i can change my username without having to build a new account? --jmboothe 01:56, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:Changing username. However, be aware that the task requires a developer, and the developers are perpetually busy. It may take a while. Isomorphic 04:04, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Positive Manipulation?

If this is a question you'll have to be more specific, if this is an offer: Yes please! --fvw * 07:33, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

[edit] Positive Manipulation? v2.0

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Positive Manipulation? v2.0

[edit] Welcoming template broke?

I've had a problem several times now, in which the standard welcome template doesn't display as it should so that code involving nowiki tildes needs to be fixed every time (see [1]). What's going on? Mgm|^(talk) 10:36, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

New bug in the rendering code that's triggered by the combination of subst: and nowiki. Already reported in bugzilla. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:45, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In case anyone's interested, it's listed as bug #1188. --David Iberri | Talk 17:43, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Browser crashing

For the past week or so I've been having trouble with Internet Explorer, usually when submitting a major edit. 'Microsoft explorer has encountered a problem and needs to shut down'. It's just happened again, I did a major move, went to go back and fix the redirects--no can do. People will start to wonder about me. Any idea what's going on? Never had this trouble before. Quill 21:59, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Are you sure you that's the error message you received? It would really help if you could provide the exact text. I'm guessing you got an error saying "Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." In which case, this page would be a good place to start. Better yet, why not just switch to a faster, slimmer, more standards-compliant, more stable and less crash-prone browser like Firefox? I dumped IE a long time ago and my online browsing experience has never been better. --David Iberri | Talk 22:23, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Were you aware of the existence of this site?

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/

This one too:

http://www.fact-index.com/

They all seem to be ripping off Wikipedia...

Here's yet another:

http://www.searchspaniel.com/index.php/Main_Page

Wikipedia's content is freely downloadable and reusable under the terms of the GFDL. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:41, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We maintain a list of sites that do that at Wikipedia:Forks and mirrors. →Raul654 07:44, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia search and creating new article question

Often, when I'm searching for something, I get a message that says "Wikipedia search is disabled for performance reasons." Is this normal? It happened only occasionally so that I figured that it was normal, but now it's happening so often I'm not so sure. Also, when this happens, it doesn't let me create a new article from the search screen, which is the only place where I know I can create a new article. Is there any other place I can create a new article, and is the search disabled thing normal, or is it a problem with my connection? bob rulz 03:59, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

Ideally you would create a new article by going to an existing article, creating a link to where the new article will be, saving and then clicking on the red link. If you really want to create an article without clicking a link (and thereby risk immediate orphan status), you could just edit the URL to include the title. It works well as long as there's no special characters. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:40, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Anybody know when we're getting the new search bit back? [[User:Rhymeless|Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) ]] 10:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Help about categories

We are working with the articles of wikipedia. We intend to create a knowledge base which is semantic web enabled. We have downloaded the dump files which have the articles and their categories, but we failed to understand the relation between the categories. The hierarchy of the categories is available on the site, but couldn't be found on the dump files. Needed guidance on the same.

Thankin you.

Wikipedia:Database download says that a fuller archive of database dumps (including tables other than just cur and old) is available here. Pick a language and then download whatever database dump you need. The table you want is categorylinks, which should allow you to fully reconstruct the hierarchy of Wikipedia categories. The tables.sql maintenance file gives the SQL used to create the table and also some notes on each field which should help get you started. HTH, David Iberri | Talk 19:48, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Help about the organization of categories

We are working on GNU related content management project.Our project aims to create a semantic web enabled portal for content management.We are working at TIFR under the guidance of Dr.Nagarjuna G.
We are currently working on the articles at the Wikipedia site. We have downloaded the dump files.But are not able to configure the hierarchy of categories.Needed your guidance for the same. If the relationship between the categories is maintained in a separate database files, we would request you to provide those files.
Thanking you,
Sakecwiki team (TIFR)

The category links can be regenerated from the cur table, or you can download the categorylinks table dump. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:57, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How to make text surrounded by dashed line?

Such as the in the entry previous to this one. ike9898 16:10, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

 Dashed borders are added to preformatted text. If you start a line with a space then it'll
 be formatted exactly as you type it (hence preformatted). (Note: the previous post's
 indentation was removed after you posted your question, so it has no border now.) See
 How to edit a page for more. --David Iberri | Talk 18:36, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Some help with a bad category name I have created please

I have created a sub-category called "London's infrastructure" in the London category and moved several articles to it, but none of them are showing up. I think this might be because of the apostrophe as I also created a category called "Women's cricket" and the article I wrote and put in it called "Women's test cricket" isn't showing up either.

Is there an overall ban on using apostrophes in page and/or category names?

I marked "London's infrastructure" as a category for deletion amendment as a means of requesting that an administrator change it to "Infrastructure of London" or similar, but after a couple of hours it hasn't shown up on the list? Do I just need to wait longer, or is it part of the same problem?Philip 16:22, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Apostrophes are perfectly legal in category names (cf Category:London's West End). I'm not sure why Women's test cricket isn't showing up in Category:Women's cricket, though.

This is a known issue -- see bugzilla:1201. --Zigger 06:34, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

The CFD issue might be because while you added the necessary {{cfd}} template to the category, you forgot to list the category at WP:CFD (which is maintained by hand). Adding {{cfd}} doesn't automatically add your page to WP:CFD. --David Iberri | Talk 20:00, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting a page with table of contents

If you compare the page List of colonial governors in 2004 with the page List of colonial governors in 1899, the table of contents has disappeared in the latter, so that the text comes up and interferes with the "See also:" box on the right-hand side. How can I get the formatting to come up right all the time? 68.225.20.115 01:08, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Table of contents does not appear if there are fewer than four headings. If you would like to force a table of contents to appear even if it wouldn't, place __TOC__ where you want it to be. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:57, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Signature using ~~~~

How do I enter a signature into the User-Preferences "Your nickname (for signatures):" box to yield "hydnjo talk +time+date" using ~~~~. If I use Wiki markup I get "[[User:Hydnjo|hydnjo talk]] 02:14, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)". I don't think it used to behave that way. Thanks someone.

Click the "raw signature" box. Yes, it used to work that way. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:54, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That does it, you are serious. Thanks again to Cyrious from hydnjo talk 03:19, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Cannot Login Already??

Hi! Sorry to bother everyone. Several hours ago, I created the new user id "engywook". I entered a password that I wrote in my encrypted Palm notepad. I entered my Email address. I logged in as "engywook" and corrected a couple of minor typos on a page (mainly to see how this works). A few hours later, and still now, I cannot log in. It tells me that I have the wrong password. So, thinking that maybe I wrote it down wrong, I clicked the button for the system to Email me a new password. Unfortunately, the Email is not making it to my mailbox. So, I seem to be stuck. Help!!! Thanks!

I just looked at User:engywook. While it exists, that user doesn't have any edits. Are you sure you didn't spell it differently? -- Cyrius|✎ 07:05, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pretty darn sure. but, if I did, I don't know how I would know. Is there someone with access to the user records that could be asked to look for users created yesterday named "something like engywook", perhaps with a partial match on an Email address?

I think I may have figured this out. When I was working through what Wikipedia was all about, I was looking at web pages on meta.wikimedia.org. It was there that I created my login. It appears that there, the login still exists (engywook). However, here, "engywook" appears to belong to someone else. My login and password work fine over in "meta"-land, but not when I try to log in here. If I'm right about this, it's a shame. A) It would mean that I have to come up with a new id for Wikipedia. B) It would mean that "engywook" is different people, depending on whether we're at wikipedia.org or meta.wikimedia.org. I would imagine that that could get confusing. I'm not sure it's even possible to be assured that a chosen name on one system is available on the other, before choosing it. I did read something about being able to change one's name on the system. Maybe that's what I'll have to do to keep them in sync.

Given that en's engywook has no edits, it may be possible to request that the account be transferred to you. I know it's happened a couple of times in the past. However, I wouldn't expect things to move rapidly on that. Normal admins can't do that sort of thing. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:32, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Redirection from Search keyword to a wrong page

A search for Connaught automatically redirects to Connacht (an alternative Irish Spelling at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught) which gives details of the County of Connacht in Ireland -- Consequently one cannot reference Connaught, the Grand Prix Racing team ( Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_%28racing_team%29 ) through a simple search.

Can someone fix this please???? Its beyond me!!

Clive

Click "Search" instead of "Go", when you type your query in the search box. I'll add a reference to the top of the other page.

Alternatively, when you get redirected to Connacht, there's a message (Redirected from Connaught) that will send you the redirection page. You can then edit this page to redirect to the Grand Prix team. There should still be an easy way to get from Connaught to the Irish county, though. 68.225.20.115 20:48, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have a friend, Jim Ross of Montreal. Quebec Canada visiting on the Island of Phu-ket. No news since before Dec. 25th. Can anyone help in locating him to see if he is alright? Barry Adams Montreal adamsdesign@sympatico.ca

[edit] what is all this???

I've stumbled on this web site quite by accident, I'm very intrigued. Not to offend anyone, but I definetly have too much time on my hands. I have registered myself, but I really don't see the point to all of this. Why would I want to edit someone else's writing. I must be missing something. I am writing in earnest and would appreciate more hands-on guidance to get me started, thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

AngelaS

More than a web site, this is a project with many web site projects, and Wikipedia is one of them. You don't necessarily have to edit someone else's writing, if you don't want to. If an article is missing, and you think it's an article that should be in an encyclopedia, you can create an article. --Trygfe 01:14, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Collectively, our purpose in writing and editing is to create a good free encyclopedia. If that sounds like something you'd like to contribute to, then there's your reason. Individually, Wikipedians have lots of reasons for writing here; some of us just enjoy writing. Others enjoy showing off how much we know, or enjoy learning new things from other editors. And there are some who are here to support causes, or get attention for little-known subjects, or just to be obnoxious. I suppose you might be interested in Wikipedia:Who, Why?, which rambles about such issues. I'm not sure there's a page anywhere on this site that is meant to tell people why they should contribute; most of us didn't need much convincing. Isomorphic 07:23, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Editing

While editing an artivle one also has the "edit summary" to fill out to explain the edit. Where is this edit summary referenced after it has been saved? For ex., where do I see the edit summary for an edit that someone has made to an article and how do I know if something has been edited in the first place. Also, is all this related to the "talk page"?

Thx

Hit the "history" link on any page, and you'll see the edit summaries for each edit, who did so, when, and whether they designated the edit as "minor" or not. It's not especially related to talk pages - talk pages are just non-encyclopedic discussion pages which are attached to each article. They themselves are edited in the normal way and have their own (independent) histories too. -- John Fader 20:43, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Edit summary. --David Iberri | Talk 22:18, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Empty Space

I wanted to add a template to the top of an article, but didn't wanted to add the "empty" space, because I think it hurts the layout of the article. How do I avoid the empty space? Mahay 00:27, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Don't leave any empty lines between the template and the content? Also check the template to make sure it doesn't contain any empty lines. --fvw * 20:00, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

[edit] i can't find the place where you post info about new users

can anyone link me to that site? thanks

Do you mean Wikipedia:New user log? Or Wikipedia:Wikipedians? You can find most stuff by looking at Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers or Wikipedia:Utilities. Cheers, Noisy | Talk 11:04, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Editing individual sections?

Some articles with section dividers have links on each section head that let you edit just that one section, but not all articles with sections have those links. How do you do that?

Some articles don't use proper wiki markup to denote sections, and so you don't see the section edit links. Which article(s) in particular are you interested in that don't have the edit links? -- John Fader 16:07, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, my apologies. I just went to look at the one I had in mind, and sure enough the edit links are there! Not sure how I missed them the first time. RoySmith

[edit] Assistance - template centering

For some reason, I haven't been able to center the SACN template the way most other templates are, despite serious attempts at copying the centering code from other (centered) templates. Help? Nightstallion 21:42, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You're mixing the old HTML way (align="center") with modern CSS (style="margin: 0 2em 0 2em"). Evidently the margins take priority over the "align" attribute, and you end up with a table that has 2em left and right margins, which doesn't give the centered look. Since the "align" attribute is deprecated in HTML anyway, I just removed it and set the left and right margins equal (with style="margin: 0 auto"), centering the table. Looks good on my browser (Firefox 1.0). --David Iberri | Talk 22:49, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Creating links to external material

I looked, but can't find the mechanism.

Denton

moved from Wikipedia:Reference desk

see Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Look for the section Links and URLs. DJ Clayworth 01:39, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Andre Rieu article needs cleanup help

I began to try to make the various blank André Rieu pages (Andre Rieu, Andre rieu) redirect automatically to the correct page (Andr%E9_Rieu), but I wasn't able to. Can you help make it look the way it's supposed to? Thanks a lot.

Gccwang 04:47, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Done. Don't use %-encoding for ISO-8859-1 characters, just include them literally. For unicode characters, use html &name; style encoding. --fvw * 04:53, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

[edit] New Messages

I seem to be getting the orange "New Messages" bar above every page I visit. While it is quite pretty, since I don't have new messages it is a bit pointless. Please reply on my talkpage, not only because I won't see your reply here but also because it will test the "New Messages" bar.--Honeycake (internal ID number: 118170) 07:42, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help! Tried to move article

I tried to move a portion of a page to a new Talk page because it is really just a rant from one user (GODRic) and a nonesense. Another user (RaD_Man) suggested that it be moved. I tried and what I did, did not work. I don't know how to retore what was there and or how to do what I needed to do.

Original page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Donations_for_victims_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake

Tried to move QuakeAID specific content to:

Talk:QuakeAID

...Didn't work.

Help.

Please note that this user, User:Baoutrust has left a spam trail far and wide regarding a certain nonprofit agency, QuakeAID, and its parent/subsidiary corporations on Wikipedia. The legitimacy of all of these organizations is currently being questioned. —RaD Man (talk) 06:30, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

- The talk has been moved. --kooo 11:36, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New pages background?

Where would one go to complain about the yellow background on Special:Newpages, the equivalent of the red exclamation points at S:RC? I respect the effort, but it just looks horrible, and I used my custom CSS to remove it manually. - Vague | Rant 11:41, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Woohoo, now it's bold as well. *edits CSS again* - Vague | Rant 12:26, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Web capture of Wikipedia articles in Adobe Acrobat 6.0

I'm using Adobe Acrobat v.6.0 Standard on Windows XP and W2K Server.

I'm trying to use the facility for web capture in Acrobat 6.0.

I have a problem that specifically affects WikiPedia pages, and (seemingly) no others. None of the methods for web capture now work (they used to, and it was a great resource), including - copying the URL from the browser and pasting it into the Acrobatappropriate dialog box - clicking on a link within a page I once did manage to capture - right-clicking on a link and selecting 'append to page', etc

All these metrhods worked with Wikipedia pages up until about 16th December 2004. Has something about Wikipedia changed in the last two weeks?

I get a 'General Error' report from Acrobat (very helpful!), showing the url. NB, this happens specifically with Wikipedia pages, and not with pages on other sites. What's going on?

I have tried another machine, with the same result, and with no broswers are running.

Is there some setting I should look at in Windows, Acrobat, the browser? Are there Wiki settings on my account that might affect this? The real puzzle is that it used to work so well: why has it stopped?

Many thanks.

I just tried it with Acrobat 7 Professional; the result is the same. I'd guess that the templates and/or CSS changed on that date to something Acrobat didn't understand, or which provoked an Acrobat bug. Changing to a different template might work, though I have no idea how to do this since Acrobat does not respect cookies (or JavaScript). Notinasnaid 22:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) P.S. If there is a fix, it isn't in the browser, because the browser is not involved. In effect, Acrobat has a browser (and HTML converter) built in.

Wikimedia's servers are configured with some countermeasures to prevent leeches and webspiders. Perhaps you have run afoul of some change in one of these. Typically they consist of blocks on given user-agents. Try downloading the page (save as...) with a normal browser and have acrobat convert that. -- John Fader 23:31, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, Adobe Acrobat (at least version 6.0) uses "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; WebCapture 3.0; Windows)" as its user-agent string, which is blocked by Wikipedia. --David Iberri | Talk 00:11, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

That is a pity, because Acrobat can create a PDF containing a linked collection of pages, providing a nice self-contained record. The work-around proposed does not do that, it only works if Acrobat is the browser. I'm curious as to the rationale for this block. Is it just that they put a high load on the server? Perhaps there is an unblocked mirror somewhere...? Notinasnaid 11:00, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What to link this article to?

I confess that I'm confused. I want to link the NationStates article to an appropriate article on imaginary and/or fictional countries. But which one(s) should I link to? I've already found Fictional country, micronation (the fictional sense), and imaginary country; there's probably more that I haven't found yet. Which, if any, should I link to?

--Wyrm 21:13, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's entirely up to you! If you think that 2 or more of the articles actually cover exactly the same topic, you might want to consider merging them - mention your concerns on the talk pages of the articles concerned, and perhaps list them on Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. If you think there is a distinction, but it's not very clear, be bold and try and fix it, or ask on the talk pages if anyone else has an opinion. If you can't work out which one to link to, I'd say something's probably wrong with those articles! - IMSoP 02:01, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mark this article as patrolled

I've been watching Special: Newpages to learn how to follow the birth of a new page (worthy or not). What is the link "Mark this article as patrolled" all about? Also, if I notice an obvious vandalism should I add {del} or is that for an admin to do ? Also again, does every piece of crap have to go through the VfD process or is there a "work-around" for the obvious nonsense. hydnjo talk 23:33, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

At Newpages, new articles which have not been "patrolled" (that is, the link you speak of has not been clicked) appear on a yellow background and in bold text (or did the last time I checked). You can therefore mark an article as patrolled, to reduce the work of another editor who may also be checking Newpages. As for adding {{delete}} to obvious vandalism, that really depends on what you consider obvious. "Patrick is gay", or variations thereof, are candidates for speedy deletion, so you may feel free to add it to that. But other things which some consider obvious vandalism should in fact go to WP:VFD, for example a vanity piece which a user may write about themself. However, there currently a Proposal to expand WP:CSD. - Vague | Rant 04:25, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Er, can't we get this awful terminology changed? We're just going to see more questions about this if we continue to use a word which most people won't understand. ‣ᓛᖁ

ᑐ 05:27, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As can be seen below, there was no consensus to adopt the word patrolled. It would seem to be Angela's fault that it was introduced anyway. ‣ᓛᖁ

ᑐ 05:30, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Comments regarding this are welcomed at Mediazilla. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 05:42, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Patrolling" of recent changes

There has been some discussion on IRC about whether the term "patrolling" of recent changes gives the right impression or not. In MediaWiki 1.4, there will be a feature that allows logged in users to click a link on a diff to say they have "patrolled" the edit. The edit can then be hidden from recent changes using "hide patrolled edits". The link on a diff will say "Mark as patrolled". After you click that, you will see "The selected revision has been marked as patrolled.". When it is disabled, it will say "The Recent Changes Patrol feature is currently disabled."

Are there any suggestions on what would be a better term for this, such as "checked", or do you feel "patrolled" is appropriate? Angela . 08:24, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

"reviewed" perhaps? Or should that be reserved for future fact reviews? I don't think there's anything wrong with patrolled, really. — David Remahl 08:30, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think there are better alternatives to "patrolled"; maybe "vetted", "checked", "reviewed", "inspected"... — Matt 11:54, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Patrolled" seems fine to me, and suggests a shallow examination for obvious signs of vandalism, misinformation or POV. "Reviewed" or "inspected" imply a much deeper level of fact checking. —AlanBarrett 18:35, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like patrolled, but "checked" might be better. A question - will any user be able to use this bit, or just admins? Also, where can I find a full list of features for 1.4? --Golbez 18:49, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Who has access to it will be up to each wiki. See Wikipedia:User access levels. The default is that only sysops have it, but changes can be proposed at Wikipedia talk:User access levels. There's a partial list of new features at Test:Main Page. Angela . 22:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia should appear inclusive, not defensive. Patrolled has odd connotations, and its meaning in this context certainly isn't immediately obvious. Perhaps "this edit has been accepted by other users"? --η

υωρ 23:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How about just viewed or read. Other alternatives, scanned (elements of virus checking but also 'scan your eye over that'), perused or visited. -- Solipsist 07:45, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Patrolled seems fine to me, as does visited. They both seem neutral to me, and have no implication that action will be taken, but leave that option open. As a fallback, I'd go for scanned, but in this case the word carries a more active message. Noisy | Talk 13:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Will this just mean that a determined vandal will just make sure to patrol his own edit, or is there functionality to prevent this. Of course (!?) only logged in user should be able to patrol. But even if there is not any qualifications required it is a nice feature which work against the majority of less determined vandals, as well as well-intended people making undesirable edits.

When will this feature be available in wikipedia? Thue | talk 18:07, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"patrolled" seems wrong to me; it suggests conotations of marching, or territory, and unless you are familiar with the "RC patrol" it doesn't suggest "a quick reveiw", which(I assume) is what it means. I think "checked" or "scanned" would be better. The feature sounds great. I've wanted a way to know what pages have not been looked at on RC for a while. One posible addition would be making it allow more than one review; so there would be "checked once", "checked twice" and so on(up to, say 4 or something) That would allow more fine grained identification of non-"checked" edits. And, I assume, "checking" would be tagged with the person who did it, so people couldn't "check" their own changes, or "check" a change multiple times(with my suggested addition)? JesseW 12:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think vetted is the right term, since that is what happens when you apply for certain jobs. Likewise we vet the diffs. :ChrisG 18:32, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've never heard of that outside Wikipedia. What is "vetted" an abbreviation for? --ᓛᖁ

ᑐ 20:05, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't believe it is an abbreviation, although I don't know the etymology. More widely used in UK than US, but a perfectly good word. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:46, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

I think there's a connection to veterinarian --Phil | Talk 08:05, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Vet and patrol are standard English, but in this context "patrolled" is jargon while "vetted" is used in its normal context. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Vet (verb). Is this really such an unusual word? Maybe its use is confined to the UK. Notinasnaid 22:49, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My personal preference, be it ever so slightly verbose, would be idiot-checked as in "this edit has been checked for idiocy and none was immediately apparent". HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:05, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I think I like Accepted or Acknowledged. -- Stevietheman 19:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Patrolled" has a police connotation which comes across as negative to some people. -- Stevietheman 20:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The use of the SPAN tag with the "urlexpansion" class attribute on external links

On external links in articals I have noticed that you have the href of the link in parenthesis, proceeding it. What purpose beyond being able to toggle the display of the actual link for print style sheets, does this serve? This is not meant to be a stab from the "separation of content from structure" camp. I am merely intrigued at why Wikipedia does this.

The idea is elegant degradation. Where possible, you want to display the minimum amount of information necessary. So in CSS-capable web browsers the URL is hidden and only the link text is displayed. The URL can be seen by hovering your mouse over the link. Where linking is not possible (e.g. in plaintext and in printouts), or when CSS is not supported (e.g. in older browsers or those that support text only), you get the link plus its URL displayed on screen so you don't lose any information. --David Iberri | Talk 22:04, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Create a Web Developer FAQ?

At some point will there be a FAQ for web developers wondering about why Wikipedia is authored a certain way? This would be a useful tool for letting others know why certain Wikipedia practices may be good to adopt, or why certain things are done the way they are, and how Wikipedia looks to forward web standards.

You might be interested in m:MediaWiki or m:Help:Contents, especially the sections "For system administrators" and "For MediaWiki hackers". They're not FAQ pages per se, but they might be what you're looking for. --David Iberri | Talk 19:18, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Table Help

I've been trying to learn to make tables with the Wikicode, but I never get those embossed borders that work so well.

For example,

1	2
3	4

Try using the border and cellpadding options, like so:

1	2
3	4

For more info, see Wikipedia:How to use tables. --fvw * 22:34, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Or m:Help:Table. The embossed effect arises because cellspacing=1 (or 2?) is the default. If you set border=1, for the overall table, then it will apply to the border of the table as a whole AND to the border of each individual cell, which gives the result shown above. In general, most tables are created with cellspacing=0, but I don't think there is a hard and fast rule. With wiki markup, the quotation marks around the numbers (e.g. border="2") are unnecessary. Noisy | Talk 18:44, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Lee S. Svoboda

[edit] Problem adding disucssion page

I'm having troubles creating a Talk page for "Fort Slocum, New York". I go to the article, click on the (red) "discussion" tab, and get a page with an edit box on it. I add my comments and click the "Save page" button. Then I get to a page telling me that there is no "Fort Slocum, New York" page, and asking if I want to create it. I've tried this several times, with the same result. Am I doing something wrong, or is something broken? --RoySmith 16:53, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It looks as if you successfully added a comment at 15:58. It may be a cacheing problem. If the article is incorrect, then be bold and correct it! Noisy | Talk 18:11, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting vandalism = failed spam block filters

(I'm moving my question from the Gerald Ford talk page because it's a Wikipedia technical question)

I tried to revert vandalism on the Gerald Ford page by 205.222.240.2, but was blocked because it failed the spam block filters. I tried to revert to the latest versions by Golbez and Quadell. Attempting the edits on my Sandbox showed that a link to nyc10044.com was the offending link, but it is cited as a reference for one of the contents of the text.

The problem was bypassed when Bkonrad reverted the edits without failing the spam filters. There are at least three users who successfully reverted edits that contained this link, and I did a quick check to find that they are all admins.

What I would like to know (or in this case, verify) is: are admins the only ones allowed to submit an edit that includes a link to a site that fails the spam block filters? If so, does this mean non-admins cannot revert pages to a previous (passed) version that includes such a link? -- Deathphoenix 16:24, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it does seem like that; the spam filter is being a lot more woe than it's worth for a wikipedia as active as en: I think. A while back when the spam filter was seriously malfunctioning I managed to get around it by %-encoding a letter from the URL. This is obviously a bug in the spam filter too, but at least it worked. Does that work for you in this case? --fvw * 16:53, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, it did bypass the filters, but while Wikipedia processed the link correctly and converted the escape code to the correct character, the underlying HTML code is apparently still using the escape code. My Mozilla Firefox browser didn't process it correctly (although IE, of course, did). -- Deathphoenix 17:45, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I can confirm this. Opera and IE will decode % in the domain name part of a URL, but firefox doesn't. -- John Fader 17:52, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that is unfortunate. How about &#0xnumber; encoding it? Does that fool the filter? --fvw * 18:29, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

I tried to construct a URL with this scheme, but failed to get anything that works in any browser (so I'm clearly doing something wrong). If you can build a URL that works for "www.adultvideonews.com" (I tried substituting the "a" in adult) then I'll happily try it in firefox. -- John Fader 18:58, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Um, I'm not sure if fooling the spam filters was what I had in mind when I asked this question. Being able to successfully fool the spam filters with a fully-functional link will leave a gaping hole that can be exploited by spammers and spam-linkers. Just my two cents. -- Deathphoenix 21:37, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. What we have now is a spam filter that's easy enough to get around, but blocks legitimate edits of long-standing content. -- John Fader 23:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You have a point there. -- Deathphoenix 03:51, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Double Article

There are currently two different biographies for two different people on the same page, "David Hanson". What is current Wikipedia policy for dealing with this?

Thanks,

Greg

Make it into a disambiguation page on which the user can choose to go to for example "David Hanson (scientist)" or "David Hanson (musician)". I've got no idea who he is. :) Using piped links those explanatory bits in brackets can be hidden when linking in other articles. Help can be found at Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Mgm|^(talk) 20:14, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia line spacing, changing the size and font of the heading

What is Wikipedia's line spacing?

How can I change the main heading's size to verdana 14pt?

How can I color in red the non-existing link?

Well, all the styling for Monobook (the default skin) is done via CSS. You can customise your own display (when logged in) using "user styles" - that would certainly allow you to change the appearance of the top heading. Links to non-existent articles should be red by default, but there is an option in the preferences that lets you switch to an older style (with a '?' link after the word) and again user styles would let you alter the display in all sorts of other ways. HTH. - IMSoP 15:33, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

But I still don't know the line spacing for Wikipedia. And I tried to make a link red in Wuxia (House of Flying Daggers) but I couldn't.

As far as I can tell from the source, Monobook's CSS is spread between MediaWiki:Monobook.css and /skins/monobook/main.css. The main.css stylesheet has a p { line-height: 1.5em } rule, if that's what you're looking for. Best, David Iberri | Talk 21:42, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Do not attempt to change the colors of links as viewed by others. Why you'd want to make a link to House of Flying Daggers the same color as links to non-existent articles baffles me. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:24, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't. But it was non-existing, and it didn't turn red. SO I wanted it to be red because I didn't want people to think that it exists. :LOL:

The software handles coloring automatically. Assuming that you are the one who added the link to Wuxia, the reason it wouldn't turn red is that you were linking to an existing article. The article House of Flying Daggers has existed since the beginning of October. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:46, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] flash .net project

As a personal project, I've been writing a Flash/ .net project to chart the evolution of the earth from the big bang through the super-contintents to our current arrangement of countries, with links to CIA worldbook, Wikipedia's country profile and multimap's free to link maps. I'd love to share it, for others to improve, can it be done here?

Sounds cool, but Wikipedia isn't for software development. Try sourceforge. — PhilHibbs | talk 16:31, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
While Wikipedia isn't the right place for the software part of your project, there has been some talk of adding support for embedded Flash media [2]. IMO it's a great idea. --David Iberri | Talk 18:02, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Guys, thanks for the support and the pointers, I guess the issue of enhanced media has come up many times already, but as a newbie...!!! I should drop this in the forum, but do you think there's value in a graphical interface to this amazing encyclopedia?

[edit] Collation order in categories

I can't find any info on how collation works in categories, and how to work around it. It appears to use strict ASCII (case-sensitive) collation, but I don't think this is ideal, it should be non-case-sensitive. One workaround would be to specify the alternate collation string entirely in uppercase in all articles (or at least, all articles that appear in the same category as other articles that lead to collation problems), but this seems excessive. Should I register this as a bug report, or is there an existing workaround? — PhilHibbs | talk 16:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't know of a way to turn the behavior off, but I think it would be a useful option. I'd file an enhancement "bug" report. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:28, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translating Slovak

I have a few words that I need translated into English: Hojnost

Odblokovaine Tvoriveho posania Zneuzitie Neschopnost ucit sa Sexuaine Ocakavania

Can you help me? My name is Kathryn Coleman-McMyne and my email address is Kathryn3in1@msn.com

[edit] History Bug

Some kind of bug messed up the histories of Wikipedia_talk:Redirects_for_deletion, Wikipedia:Redirects_for_deletion, and my history. Does anyone know what caused it or how to fix it? 郵便箱 04:27, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

It looks like my posting here affected this page's history, too... I somehow partially take oever the last edit instead of getting a new one. Has this ever happened to anyone else? 郵便箱 04:33, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

One of the secondary databases is experiencing problems that causes this and other display weirdness. No data is ever lost or corrupted due to this problem (that I'm aware of). -- Cyrius|✎ 04:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 'Help me on this point' template request

I see a bewildering variety of stub templates and a template to request general whole-article clarification. But what I feel the need for is a 'help me on this point' template. Preferably expanding inline rather than as box.

For example I would like to write: 'The North American telephone region (International code 1) consists of the USA, Canada and {{help please}}'.

OK, in this case I could research it myself, but:

it is more efficient for me to leave it and wait for someone who has the facts at their finger tips to stumble across the sentence
there are other cases where I do not know, do not know where to research it, but think others may know.

Is there such a template?

RHaworth 05:57, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)

Also, is there a template to say 'this external link is broken'.

RHaworth 07:58, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

The first preference is, obviously, that you do the research and write a complete article (section, sentence, whatever) -- you can't ALWAYS rely on someone else filling in missing data in a timely manner. Given that we don't always have time or knowledge to do this every time we're on Wikipedia, your second-best bet is to write a sentence that is complete, but acknowledges possible gaps -- something like: 'The North American telephone region (International code 1) consists of the USA, Canada and other countries.' Then write a note on the Talk page (the "discussion" tab at the top of the page), describing to other editors what you know and what help you need. Mark the page on your watchlist and you'll eventually see someone add in what they know, or make a comment on the Talk page about it. (Or you'll become embarrassed by the omission and go do the dang research yourself!) :)

As to broken external links -- if it's broke, fix it! Don't mark it for someone else to do -- that's not the wiki way! Your options: 1) delete it. It will still be there in the page history if it turns out to be a mistake. 2) comment it out, by surrounding the link with HTML comment tags (). The next person to edit the page will then have the option to see if the link has magically become unbroken, and reinstate it or delete it as necessary. 3) Put the page on your watchlist and check the link yourself over the course of a couple of days/weeks, to see for yourself whether it's temporarily or permanently broken.

Things to keep in mind -- if the link was used as a Reference for the actual writing of the article, it should not be removed. You may remove the brackets so that it's no longer a live link, or note in parentheses that it's no longer live, or you can search the net for another copy of the text (or a copy at the Internet Archive) to link to, but however you handle it there should be enough information left there for people investigating the References to see where the previous authors got their information.

If it seems the link was truly useful, and was an External Link and not a Reference, please consider doing a web search to find a similarly informative and credible link to replace it.

Whatever you do, use the Edit Summary box above the Save Page button to describe what you're doing -- will help others decide that you're not removing things randomly. Hope that clarifies things...! Catherine\^talk 00:27, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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