Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 March 7

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Help desk
< March 6 << Feb | March | Apr >> March 8 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.


Contents


[edit] March 7

[edit] catgeory question

[edit] Categories

Is it possible to put an article in a category but to have the link from the category page have text other then the article name?--208.252.179.25 07:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Special Categories

There appears to be a special way of formatting catagories that I am not familiar with. Two examples are Cornell University and Duke. At the bottom of their pages they have categories with university logos appearing above the category. In the code these appear as {{Cornell}} and {{Dukeschools}} respectively. Do you know how I can do this?24.131.239.43 05:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

  • THose are templates which have the categories included in them, so every article tagged with that template is automatically placed in that category. - Mgm|(talk) 08:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] generating random text from source code

Is it possible to have the mediawiki software display a different inputted text from a list every time the html page is visited. For example, if the options were: hello, how are you today?, look over there etc, it would randomly chose one of these and display it, sort of like a template tag. Thanks! Think outside the box 10:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

You should only use it in userspace, but yes, it is possible to generate a more-or-less random message (depending on things like the current time); see {{User:Misza13/Random}} for an example of how to generate random numbers, and m:ParserFunctions for how to use them to change between messages. The message will change on every page edit or purge, rather than on every view; this helps to reduce server load because it means that the page can be cache. --ais523 10:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Joyce Hatto page

Will an admin kindly sprotect this page for a week? There seems to be one or more users using anon., dynamic IPs and who are intent on making statements that possibly violate WP:BLP, among other issues. Several users and I have reached consensus on this thing, and collectively reverted edits a number of times in the past 48 hours, but since it's not clearly vandalism, im out of reverts. Please sprotect it and hopefully this will force users to discuss the points on the Talk page. Thank you. --Otheus 10:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Most users who answer Help Desk questions aren't admins. If you want a page to be protected, semiprotected, or unprotected, you can place a request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, which should bring your request to the attention of administrators. Hope that helps! --ais523 11:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

So moved. Thank you. --Otheus 11:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki Atomic Betty

How I can link article Atomic Betty in this (English) version of Wikipedia with the russian version created by me? It must displayed in

in other language

tabU is for Unity 11:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

You need to write an interlanguage link. At the bottom of the article, write [[ru:Атомная Бетти]] (if there are other similar links there, try to add it approximately in alphabetical order). Likewise, you can link the article back the other way by adding [[en:Atomic Betty]] at the bottom of the Russian article. Hope that helps! --ais523 11:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
(I note that linking the Russian article to the English article has already been done.) --ais523 11:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture not showing correctly

Hi, on the Girls' Brigade page there is a picture of Image:ariselogo.gif, however it does not appear to be displaying correctly... Any ideas why? Thanks, Asics talk Editor review! 11:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Gif images can't handle shrinking very well. There simply wasn't enough space to show the lettering. I've increased the image size by a factor 2. It works now. - Mgm|(talk) 12:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, am I right in thinking it would work better if it was a JPEG? I will try that! Asics talk Editor review! 12:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
  • PNG and SVG are even better, but JPG is certainly better to use than GIF. - Mgm|(talk) 12:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blanking warnings from User pages

I assume that this is frowned upon. Is there a specific template to use to ask people not to blank warnings from their talk page? Heliomance 12:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe there is but WP:TT doesn't appear to have it. Either way, it doesn't have to have a red sign to be an official warning, so I guess you can word your own as long as it isn't worded as a personal attack or something. x42bn6 Talk 14:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Look for the Welcome to Wikipedia. It might not have been your intention, but your recent edit removed maintenance templates from Wikipedia. When removing maintenance templates, please be sure to either resolve the problem that the template refers to, or give a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry, as your removal of this template has been reverted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia, and if you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. series on WP:TT. Remember, however, that the act of blanking shows that the person has read it, and it stays in the page history. Sometimes it is better to let it go and follow up only upon further vandalism. Xiner (talk, email) 14:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Let's be real clear here: users are fully allowed to remove warnings from their user talk pages. Do not tell them they are violating policy by doing so. Do not revert their deletions. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Ah, okay then. I assumed it wasn't allowed as it makes it harder for vandalism fighters to see how many warnings they have and so what warning template is appropriate to place. If someone deletes a final warning message, the next person to come trying to warn them is going to place a warning instead of reporting them to AIV. Heliomance 12:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Delete Search Box Items?

How can I delete the items which automatically appear in the search box when I type the first letter?? Ive tried MS Internet Explorer Tools and delete cookies/delete files/clear history but the search box still prompts previous searches when I type in the first letter. Paul7218 13:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Paul7218 (talk • contribs) 13:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

You are looking for AutoComplete. In Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Content > AutoComplete > Clear Forms. Or you can highlight the search box, bring up AutoComplete, highlight your mouse over the top entry and hold down delete, watching all the entries for that box whizz away. x42bn6 Talk 13:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The editing of material

Good morning,

I was looking for some information and discovered that someone had printed the words, "you suckkkkkkkkkk" after a sentence. I had never logged in before or edited but I noticed that there was an editing tool so I clicked on it and erased those two words. I didn't bother reading the rest as I was only looking for a picture. I'm sorry I don't even remember which article I was looking at so that you can examine it for yourself. My question is, how do you avoid something like this from happening if anybody can just go in and edit like I just did? I'm not even sure if it was saved but this example made me a little leary about trusting any information from this website. How do you control such a thing from happening again?… —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.208.200.17 (talk) 13:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

It's not really possible to prevent vandalism (unless we checked everyone and had some legal binding to users, and even then, that wouldn't stop all vandalism). Wikipedia is always subject to vandalism. We have a round-the-clock counter-vandalism unit that specialises in these things, several bots detecting the most obvious of vandalism, and users who patrol pages on their Watchlists for vandalism. By the way, thanks for removing vandalism. x42bn6 Talk 13:59, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. You may wish to read WP:REVERT for more info about reverting edits. Instead of manually erasing vandalism, it is preferable to click the "history" tab on the top of the page and find the last clean version of the page. Xiner (talk, email) 14:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia works because pretty much anyone can correct content, as well as vandalise it. Although some people don't have much respect for the content, many more people contribute useful changes (sometimes just typo fixes or removing vandalism like you did, sometimes more major). And yes, you should be wary about consulting Wikipedia or any other reference source for information. It's normally a wiser idea to consult the sources given in an article to check that it's correct rather than take the information at face value, due to the fluidity of the articles, although Wikipedia is usually correct. See Wikipedia:About for more information. --ais523 14:31, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Popups

I've been using popups to revert vandalism lately, and its great, but for some reason the change subject always has the $1 $2 and $3 in there, I'm not sure what this is all about. Check my contributions to see the problem Special:Contributions/Inseeisyou

Those are parameters/variables that should be filled in by the script that you're running. As to fixing it, that depends on what tool you're using. You'd probably get the fastest and most accurate answer by posting on the talk page for that tool, rather than here. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using Talk to contact other editors

I am new to Wikipedia, and can someone please give me a VERY basic, idiot's guide to how to use the Talk facility to send and receive messages to/from other editors.

Clmckelvie 16:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

To send user messages relating to wikipedia to fellow editors then click the + when on the User talk page, type a header and your comment and type an edit summary then click Save Page. To receive messages from other users then they will leave a comment on your talk page (User Talk:Clmckelvie) and a rectangular orange bar will appear informing you of these messages, when you click on it, it will automatically take you to your talk page so you can read the comments. Tellyaddict 16:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Also have a look at Help:Talk page. Cheers Lethaniol 16:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Note: The "talk" is not an IM or online chat tool. It is just a page set aside for talking about articles on Wikipedia. --Kainaw (talk) 17:59, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
The Tutorial has a good section on talk page editing, too. --ais523 18:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with a WikiTable

I have created this table on my sandbox. No matter what I have tried in the table's coding, I cannot get the year 1883 to move to the next row for its proper placing. The year 1882 requires a rowspan of 4 in order to permit multiple names on the year. Could you take a look at the table and give me a suggestion on how to correct the problem? Thanks. Mphamilton 17:37, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see my notes above your table on that page. --Kainaw (talk) 17:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Here's the issue, though. Both James French Patton need to be placed in Seat 3 for the year 1882. That is why I had originally expanded the year 1882 to rowspan=4. It was required in order to place both names within the same year at the same seat. I have reverted user:mphamilton/Sandbox if you have any further suggestions. Thank you again. Mphamilton 18:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
You can put a table within a table - that is, a cell can consist of a table with two rows, if you want. This is called a "nested table" - see Help:Table for details. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Account

I have aol and I have tried to use your and creat a new account the screen says a new password is e-mailed to to your e-mail address i checked and there isn't any new password there. Should I be more patient? Thank You, stargazer [email address removed - JB] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.244.30.101 (talk) 17:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

If (a) you've lost the original password, and (b) you're not getting a new password via your request for an email, then it would appear that you've also put in the wrong email address, and the best thing in those circumstances is simply to create a new account.
To answer your question: - the email to you should be very quick; you might submit a request a second time if you don't get an email within a day after your first request), just in case it somehow got lost. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mistake in an article which has identified source

It's probably minor, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bob_and_Sheri_Show has one, maybe two errors, and the source of the part of the article where the error(s) is (are) has a link to a source. But the source is wrong. I found the newspaper article that shows what one of the two errors is. I haven't had any luck with the other error because I'm not at a library where I can see the article for free. And, unfortunately, that means neither can you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vchimpanzee (talk • contribs) 18:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

If you can reasonably be confident of the veracity of your source in preference to the existing source (and it sounds like you can), then feel free to edit the statement and re-source accordingly. You may like to add a comment on the article's talk page about the other error, requesting some input and/or research from other editors. Adrian M. H. 21:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tables not being sorted

For some reason the tables in WP no longer seem to obey the instruction class="wikitable sortable". Is this a known problem? JavaScript is not disabled on my system. -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:10, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

It must be something to do with my WP Preferences, because the problem disappears when I log out. I don't remember changing anything in the Prefs, however: any suggestions? -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 21:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it would help if I rephrased the question. What would I need to do (or have done) to disable the "sortable" property on my computer? -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what could cause that. Maybe your browser cache has got confused; try bypassing your cache while logged-in. If that doesn't work, posting on the technical village pump may find someone who knows the answer. --ais523 18:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted pages

Is there any way for ordinary editors to access the (former) content of deleted pages, external caches (IA, Google) aside? Many deleted pages are well-written and useful for other places (even if Wikipedia does not accept them); can they be retrieved? --Shay Guy 18:12, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Undeletion_policy. An admin will do it for you. Xiner (talk, email) 18:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hi

can someone tell me what to do?

  • That depends. What sort of thing do you want to do? (To reply to this message click the Edit link next to "hi", and type your response at the end, then click Save Page. Notinasnaid 19:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page a reasonable candidate for deletion?

What is the criteria for determining whether or not an article's subject is non-notable and, therefore, possibly open for deletion? I came across an article just recently created called socialbutter, and it doesn't seem like a webpage that is popular. I've checked Alexa and socialbutter's numbers don't seem that significant compared to other Wikipedia featured sites, but I don't know for certain if that qualifies the site as being non-notable or not. Any help is appreciated. --PoeticX 18:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

  • WP:WEB is the guideline you're looking for. —Dark•Shikari[T] 19:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the help. --PoeticX 19:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
  • The site is a mere 2 days old. Not old enough to write a reasonable article about it, and indeed a lack of visitors or news coverage. Adding an entry 2 days after its creation appears more an attempt at advertising than anything else. I think a website needs to be at least 3 months old probably more to be included based on WP:WEB criteria, but that's just my opinion. - Mgm|(talk) 20:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to edit/upload images/logos

Hello -

I noticed on the Aprilaire/Research Products page that the logo is an outdated one and that the current image is off a product that we are ceasing the model number (Humidifier 550). I have edited text/content with relative ease but cannot figure out an easy way to update the image and logo.

Thanks,

66.222.125.34 19:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:COI and WP:IMAGE. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 19:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blue dotted line

what does the blue dotted line mean

On which page? x42bn6 Talk 20:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Are you referring to the dashed blue line that makes a box around some text, such as at the top of this page? That is just a stylistic device, and has no meaning per se. Adrian M. H. 21:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Or if you're referring to text like this:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
It's because the enclosed text has the <pre> element around it in the wiki syntax to make it preformatted. —Mitaphane ?|! 01:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarism???

I found a lot of similarities between the introduction on the wikipedia page for grappling and the FILA-Wrestling website.

Adding a citation and restoring the wording may upset many grappler advocates (see talk page for grappling) and I would prefer to get a second opinion prior to acting.

Where can I go to get this second opinion? Penciljunk 19:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Whenever I find evidence of plagiarism, I go ahead and edit the text into an original form, being careful to avoid changing its meaning. Such text can frequently be improved in the process. Then state your reason in the summary. Adrian M. H. 21:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. However, wouldn't it make more sense to cite the source and take the verbiage verbatim? Penciljunk 16:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Always be careful that it is the Wikipedia article that is plagiarism. It happens the other way around to. In this case, i think the website you mentioned is indeed the original. - Mgm|(talk) 22:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the insight, I didn't think of that. Penciljunk 16:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why can't i edit text in a listing?

Hi, i am trying to edit the content of "Export Finance and Insurance Corporation" as the Minister listed is incorrect. When i click the edit link, the current text does not appear in the content editor so i am unable to change it? Am i doing something wrong? Thanks, Nikki —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Efic (talk • contribs) 23:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

It was probably a server lag. Could you try again now? Xiner (talk, email) 00:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
No i tried it again, it doesn't show the text in the listing, it just has the text below in the content editor? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Efic (talk • contribs)
Hmm, stumps me. Restart computer? Xiner (talk, email) 00:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
The edit link only edits the section below. You probably want the Edit this page link at the top. Notinasnaid 08:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)