Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 March 8

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1 March 8

[edit] March 8

[edit] Recruiting editors

I realize that recruiting editors to add weight to one's contributions violates policy. I want to recruit editors, but not for the purpose described above. I have found that Wikipedia is lacking in good articles about many of the significant figures in Pentecostal history. I propose to distribute materials to students at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary suggesting names and topics related to pentecostalism that could be written about in Wikipedia. Before doing so, however, I want to be sure that such an idea does not violate any Wikipedia policies. Can you tell me if my idea is within Wikipedia guidelines?Will3935 00:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a cool class project, but I immediately began thinking about the less technically adept students. Editing on Wikipedia is more difficult than using Microsoft Word, which is hard enough for some. Perhaps a small assignment, concerning one or two paragraphs, would be a good trial run? Xiner (talk, email) 00:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Frankly I'm a little more concerned about the content quality of such articles than I am about the students' technical abilities. They all seem to be tech-savvy, but not all are great scholars (that's probably true at all seminaries). Perhaps I'll just recommend topics to certain students to do on their own if they like. It sounds like you don't think such a thing violates Wikipedia policy. Thanks for your prompt response!Will3935 01:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I see. Good idea. You can also ask your "less scholarly" students to create pages in their own user space and submit a link on the article's discussion page so that others can review their work and integrate any useful bits. Xiner (talk, email) 02:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Rather than recruiting students to create new articles, a potentially dubious strategy if they are unfamiliar with the voluminous Wikipedia rules, I suggest finding such articles as do exist on topics they might know about, and try to direct the students to improve those articles. Getting one or two existing articles up to, say, good article status would be a tremendous achievement, and would be a good model for further article creation. You can request a peer review of an existing article, to find out what it needs. Wikipedia already has too many articles that aren't very good. By far the greatest need is to improve the existing articles. See what's out there in your topic of interest, and especially see if a WikiProject is active. Start with Pentecostalism; check the article's talk page: Talk:Pentecostalism. Aha, there is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Charismatic Christianity. I suggest you coordinate your efforts with theirs. The obvious advantage for seminary students is that they should have access to a decent library, for obtaining references. Everything in Wikipedia articles should cite its references. --Teratornis 04:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

When writing new articles, all that the students really need to remember is to cite sources and stick to the WP:NPOV policy. There are more rules but if you stick to those, you're unlikely to get into trouble. - Mgm|^(talk) 05:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Judging from the rate at which Wikipedia deletes articles, evidently it is not so simple for lots of users to follow those seemingly simple rules. Experienced people have a tendency, in every field, to forget how complex the learned skill was before they learned it. One advantage of trying to improve an existing article that has been around for a while without getting deleted already is that even unskilled attempts to improve it won't usually result in getting the whole article deleted. I'm just suggesting the lowest-risk strategy for the group of inexperienced student editors. Even well-sourced articles can get deleted if the sources themselves are not sufficiently notable, if the subjects are not sufficiently notable, if the sources are vanity press, and so on. There are probably some figures in a religious movement who wouldn't be notable outside the movement, and that might lead to problems. Wikipedia already has articles on most of the highly notable topics such as Jupiter, Microsoft, etc. The more articles Wikipedia has, the harder it gets to find new topics that can make the cut, and the more editing skill it takes to defend them. Back when Wikipedia did not yet have a Jupiter article, anybody could have started it, and nobody would question its notability even if it was full of unsourced statements. Obviously that article belongs in an encyclopedia, so people would fix it rather than delete it. The remaining topics to write about are increasingly marginal now. So it would be better to encourage more people to improve the existing articles, of which there are way too many (more than a million) that need improvement. --Teratornis 07:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, you have all been quite helpful.Will3935 11:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Different tab/window for an external link

what command should i used to an external link which when i click would open in a different tab or window? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.123.48.189 (talk) 01:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

External links open uniformly on Wikipedia. Sorry.

and, is it possible for me to ask assistance to wiki users on creating a Bioinformatics e-learning course which will be uploaded on Wikipedia? Helps would include creating animation, graphic, photo, cartoon image. how could i ask help? thanks - From Enzo ereful —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.123.48.189 (talk) 01:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Wikiversity would be what you're looking for. Xiner (talk, email) 01:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

On both Firefox and Internet Explorer, Ctrl+mouse click on a hyperlink will open that link in a new tabbed window. —Mitaphane _?|! 01:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Just in case the reference to Wikipedia is not clear: Wikipedia's only aim is to be an encyclopedia, so there is nowhere in it to put an e-learning course. It sounds useful, I hope you will find a suitable home for it. Notinasnaid 08:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Diffrent tab/window for external link

On both Firefox and Internet Explorer, Ctrl+mouse click on a hyperlink will open that link in a new tabbed window. —Mitaphane ?|! 01:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk"

- thanks for this quick reply. But is there a specific command in wiki format to execute this? I mean, without pressing control key since my students, i assume, would be beginners.

The problem is there is no tab open command embedded with in a HTML <A> hyperlink element. That is a browser specific thing. There is a TARGET="_BLANK" attribute for <A> elements that will open new windows. Depending on whether your browser is set to have only one windowed instance, that would open a new tab. I suppose by messing around with the monobook.js file, you could have it rewrite external links to have a TARGET="_BLANK" attributes, but I'm not certain how to do that. —Mitaphane _?|! 01:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to create an article

I have been trying for a couple of days now to create an article. But I just don't know where to click. I have referred the help page, but it just doesn't seem to help me a bit. It simply says something like "clicking on the CREATE PAGE, blah blah blah" But I couldn't find any CREATE PAGE in the whole of the site.Tell me, just how the hell can I create an article on a topic. And please try making it a bit more new user friendly. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vaphualization (talk • contribs) 05:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

It's relatively easy, you can just type in your title of the article in the search box. If the article doesn't exist, there should be an option provided to create or edit a new page. Just edit the page and click save to create your article. Oh yeah, make sure your article meets Notability otherwise it may be deleted. Thanks. --- Hdt83 | Talk/Chat 05:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe new users have to wait 4 days from registration before they can make new articles; has it been that long for you? Anchoress 05:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Last time I checked that wasn't the case. Only moving articles had a wait built in. - Mgm|^(talk) 05:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry it is not more obvious how one can create an article. Before you get started, you might want to review some basic guidelines that are discussed at "Your first article." Also see "Articles for creation"; about half-way down the page is a big "Click here to start" button. Good luck!--Vbd (talk) 06:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Special:Logs

I have a few questions about the search functionality of the Special:Logs page. Left-most is a drop-down list where you get to select the type of log to search for. The next field is titled "User". In the case of, say, block logs, is this used to search for all blocks done by "User", or to "User"? And does "Title" only refer to article titles, or does it depend on what type of log is being searched for?

Also, if a user has been blocked and (a) the block has expired since; or (b) the user has since been unblocked - will the fact that the user was previously blocked, and for how long etc., still show up when searching, or will there only be results for users currently blocked?

Thank you. —Xhantar^Talk 05:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

"User" is the user who did the action described in the log. In case of blocking the title field is name of the user being blocked prefixed by "User:". Special:Ipblocklist lists all current blocks, the Block log lists ALL blocks. - Mgm|^(talk) 05:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The "User" field is the user who took the action. In the case of block logs, it's the user who blocked or unblocked another user. "Title" can refer to the title of an article in a move log or protection log, or it can refer to the user that was blocked or unblocked (when typed as "User:Foo") in a block log. About block logs: they will still be visible if the block is lifted or if it expires. Wodup 05:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the blocked template placed on this one user's talk page here, the user is/was blocked, but when I search like this, I get "No matching items in log." Could it be that the blocked template was mistakenly placed on the user's talk page (unlikely), or am I missing something obvious (more likely)? —Xhantar^Talk 06:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Netsnipe (talk · contribs) appears to have handled the unblock request, perhaps he knows more. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems that the logs didn't move past the username change: [1]. Either that, or it was an autoblock. --ais523 09:28, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

[edit] Air hostess

university of cambridge validates air hostess academy for one year diploma in aviation and hospitality services . sir i want to know is there any degree course in aviation and hospitality services

Please direct this question to the reference desk. The help desk is for questions about Wikipedia itself. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Font change?

Just noticed that the font changed for me, all over wikipedia.. Text is much larger and possibly in a different font, anybody else having this? -Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 06:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Not me. It may be your default font in your browser. You may want to check your font and text size. Wodup 06:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You probably have enlarged your text by accident... press Control + 0 to reset your font size to the default for this website. Spebi 07:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion process

I nominated a few articles for deletion in the course of my random wanderings this past week, but didn't keep a record of their titles. Is there some way to check if they were dealt with? I want to check if I'm doing it right. Clarityfiend 06:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at your contributions for about the past week. I looked into and found Neil Anderson-Himmelspach because of your edit summary. I found List of pairs of colleagues because you discussed it on this help page. Their PRODs haven't been contested yet. I don't know if there were any more (I'm not going to look at avery single edit for the past week). One way that you might be able to keep tabs on articles you nominate or propose for deletion is to use a descriptive edit summary such as Propose deletion - non-notable or Speedy delete CSD#G10. Another way (that should be in addition to, not instead of) is to keep the articles on your watchlist. Hope this helps. Wodup 07:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Technical question about renaming categories, etc.

Once a decision has been made via the Cfd process, I assume that a bot carries out the steps involved in changing a category's name. Is that correct? If so, how long does that process usually take? Here's why I ask:

A decision was made on March 7th to rename certain categories. One was Category:Faculty by university in the United States to Category:Faculty by university or college in the United States. From what I can tell, rather than renaming the category, someone simply created the new category and left the old category as is.[2] Is that simply a step in the process? Will the new category be populated by the contents of the old category when a bot gets around to it?

I am even more confused by the current status of the decision to rename Category:Alumni by university in the United States to Category:Alumni by university or college in the United States. The latter was created on March 7th and is well-populated, but the former still exists and it, too, is well-populated (with different schools). The latter now includes the former as one of its subcategories, which really defeats the purpose of the rename.

Please explain?! Thanks.--Vbd (talk) 10:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

It might be a mistake. Not all categories are renamed by a bot. Sometimes it's done manually by administrators. It could be that one forgot to remove the old category when inserting the new one and also forgot to delete the old one. Also, since the decision was made just yesterday March 7, it could also be no one acted on it yet (which would explain why it's not fixed yet. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for your response. Someone has clearly acted in each instance; see here and here. But they either didn't finish what they were doing or they messed up. And from their user pages,[3],[4] it is not clear that they are even admins. How will this problem get fixed? A third category nominated at the same time was renamed by a bot, apparently without a hitch. Why were the other two done manually? Why aren't all renames done by bot?--Vbd (talk) 15:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
  - I've seen that name before - I believe Angus is an admin. In any case, have you asked the person? Xiner (talk, email) 19:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The work was probably in progress when you were looking. Categories that are in process of this type of activity can be found at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working which is where the bot operators pick them up to make the necessary actions. Looking there now, I see that it has been logged as completed. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 22:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Latest Virtual classroom lesson needs proofreading

Tutorials
Introduction to Wikipedia
Introduction to editing
Scartol, on template use and design
Dweller, on Featured Article Candidates
Yuser, on fighting linkspam
Learning the ropes
Elaragirl, about deletion and deletionism
The Rambling Man, on vandalism
Grutness's guide to stubbing
External interfaces - let's compare
Internal interfaces - what do you use?
Getting an article to featured article status
Basic dispute resolution
Adding citations
Reporting and dealing with vandals
Fundamentals of editing

Number 5 on the list above just went active, but it still needs proofreading. It's a short lesson, so if you have a spare moment, please proofread/edit it. Thanks. The Transhumanist 10:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] displaying tags without them being active

How do I display, for example, the {{fact}} tag without it going live and linking off, so that it looks the same on the page as it does when editing? Think outside the box 11:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You can preview the page. Once the tag is saved onto the page, however, it's on there and active. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 11:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

By using <nowiki>{{fact}}</nowiki> which will produce {{fact}}. Any code between a <nowiki> and </nowiki> will not be enacted upon. Cheers Lethaniol 11:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Think outside the box 11:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

If you want to provide details about a tag as well, you can use {{tlx|the tag you want}} (that is, add 'tlx|' just after the opening {{); you get a link to the tag or other template you're describing (tlx in this case). --ais523 11:50, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

[edit] to know about Donna H. Groh, executive director of toastmasters international

Please give some information about the executive director Donna H. Groh of toastmasters interantional

All the information we have is at Toastmasters International. You may be able to find more by following the external links at the bottom of that article. --Cherry blossom tree 15:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robert Munsch

i'am in grade two at school and doing abook report on Robert Munsch and need some help the story is murmel and need to find out what type of story this is i have a hard time understanding to find out what it is.

If our article on Robert Munsch doesn't help then you can ask specific questions at the reference desk, or you could, maybe, read the book. --Cherry blossom tree 15:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what are the required standard documents for a company

jaya —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.93.119.253 (talk) 13:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

If you want an answer you'll have to be ask more specifically and do it at the reference desk --Cherry blossom tree 15:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using parts of the wikipedia layout on another webpage

Hi!

I'm currently developing a drinks reciepe portal where the users can edit the reciepes themselves. Therefore I find the Wikipedia (or Mediawiki) design fitting to my purpose. The parts of the design that I'm thinking of implementing is the "Edit this page" tabs above the contents, and the navigation boxes to the left.

My question is how the licensing will be, and whether I'm allowed to do this? (I'm not sure if I placed my question in the right category. Please let me know if I didn't :))--83.94.178.171 15:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You can certainly either use our software (see www.mediawiki.org) or create your own implementation. There's a similar concept at b:Cookbook:Beverages. --Cherry blossom tree 15:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. I have already made all the functionality, and ill like to use some of the CSS. What do I need to write on my page (and where) in order not to violate the mediawiki license? --83.94.178.171 15:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Mediawiki is licenced under the GNU General Public License. I assume that this is also true of the CSS, but I'm not 100% sure. Try posting to the MediaWiki mailing list at mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org or using the IRC channel at irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki for more info. --Cherry blossom tree 15:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The current revision of the main CSS file for Monobook is here in the SVN repository; it's got all the copyright info at the top of the file in a comment. (Yes, it's GPL). --ais523 16:13, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

[edit] How To Remove the 'Content' List / TOC?

Dear All

When several ==headings== are added to a page, the 'Contents' / TOC module automatically appears at the top of the page. Is there a way to remove this, for a specific page only?

Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.84.51.119 (talk) 16:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Place __NOTOC__ anywhere on the page. Note that this is probably a bad idea in the article namespace, except in unusual circumstances, but it makes sense on some other pages. --ais523 16:05, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

[edit] Building Magazine article

I have put up an article to publish on Wikipedia, but as far as I can see it hasn't been declined. However, it also hasn't been published. This is the first time I've posted an article and I'm not sure what to do in order to get this published. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Alanhumca

Alanhumca 16:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

There's a bit of a backlog at Wikipedia:Articles for Creation; not enough people are reviewing articles, and as a result it's often a while before they're accepted or rejected. As you have a username, you could try posting the article yourself (by clicking on this link: Building Magazine). Looking at your submission (Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/2007-01-22#Building_Magazine), it seems reasonable, but the second source could do with being more specific (exactly where on that rather large website is the information you used?) I'd also suggest removing the ==section headings==, because they aren't really needed for the short sections. If you make it clearer why the magazine is notable, the article's less likely to be deleted as well. Hope that helps! --ais523 16:27, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

I've created the article (Building (magazine)) after editing it a bit. Could you define the term b2b magazine, please? Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey, you could always do a little bit of research on the magazine, or create the article yourself, which is possible. Try the article creating tutorial, thanks. Retiono Virginian 16:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

B2B = Business To Business i.e. the readers are businesses. Notinasnaid 17:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've clarified the article. --Cherry blossom tree 20:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Extracting raw text data from Wikipedia

Hi! Is there an easy way to extract the complete collection of Wikipedia's English content as raw text data? In other words, no tags, no mark-up, no meta-data, just raw text. I understand I can download the content of Wikipedia as an XML file, but I'm not certain how to extract just the text information out of the XML file.

I'm a researcher in natural language processing and am looking to use Wikipedia as a corpus for some statistical NLP experiments.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

74.112.35.169 17:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's a raw-text database dump, but the raw text shouldn't be ridiculously hard to extract from the XML. (Just ignoring anything between <angle brackets> and anything that isn't an alphabetic character should do reasonably well, although you'll get the names of commonly-used templates like {{fact}} coming up more than they should do if you do that.) You might want to ask at WP:VPT for technical help. --ais523 17:08, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

WP:ACST might lead to similar studies; someone might mention their methods. If I were to tackle this problem from scratch, I would try to download (or get to) a local set of XHTML files for Wikipedia, and then I would spider through them with lynx, using the -dump option to spew out plain (markup-free) text. That is, get a dump from Wikipedia that you can browse as local XHTML files, and then there are several ways to extract the text content. Every search engine, for example, must be able to do that when it indexes pages. --Teratornis 18:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ais523 and Teratornis for the responses. Unfortunately simply ignoring brackets from the XML dump does not work as there are various other meta-data (such as templates). I'll try the idea of extracting from XHTML as well as look into WP:ACST. Thanks again! 74.112.35.169 05:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hmmm...

Based just on the google results I'm inclined to believe that Shirley Kaufer is the hoax, except that Welle4 (talk · contribs) who created the article has a couple dozen other edits which would need to be examined as well, whereas the article on Helen K. Garber was written by helenkgarber (talk · contribs) which brings up other issues--VectorPotential^Talk 17:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I've flagged Shirley Kaufer for speedy delete under CSD-G1. The Helen K. Garber article will require some close inspection to make sure that everything is sourced and NPOV, since most of it was written by the subject. --Maelwys 19:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I started looking through Welle's contributions, and this wasn't the only time that he copy-paste an article, changed a few names, and called it a new person. This could take some cleanup... --Maelwys 20:15, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm also highly suspicious of Inflationary universe theory (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs), given Welle's history of copying content from other articles I suspect that this content may have been taken from a much older revision of ~~Cosmic Inflation~~ Bingo, exact copy of Flatness problem--VectorPotential^Talk 21:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This is nothing new, this sort of vandalism has been performed before. Helen K. Garber posted here a few days ago complaining about the current state of the entry we have on her. It has issues, but I'm positive Kaufer is the hoax. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Faking new articles by copying old ones and making a few changes is an act of vandalism and not acceptable. I've posted a little sterner warning. Is there a way we can have a bot check for this? - Mgm|^(talk) 22:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] referre report for medical student

content for referee report for admission in maters of physiotherapy in a australian university —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.145.128.5 (talk) 17:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

I'm happy to hear that you are content. Do you have a question for us? Notinasnaid 21:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Notinasnaid may have put the emphasis on the wrong syllable in the word "content." Assuming that you are looking for con-tent, you might want to check with the reference desk.--Vbd (talk) 03:05, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Text/Input boxes

Is there a way to insert Text/Input boxes into pages? Ajl772 17:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Only in some specific cases. You can do this:

or this:

but the general case is impossible. (See 'edit' for this section to see how I've done this, or m:Help:Inputbox for full information about the syntax.) --ais523 18:11, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

[edit] Popups

My popups script isn't filling in the $1, $2, and $3 symbols in the automatic edit summary. Would someone please tell me how to fix this. Thank you tons, Scottydude 17:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I've just tested mine and it seems to work OK. This isn't covered in WP:POPFAQ so you might want to try asking at Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups and someone should be able to help you there. mattbr³⁰ 18:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You are using the latest version of User:Lupin's stuff, which some people are having problems with. From User:Scottydude/monobook.js (which is read-only for everybody but you)

   // User:Lupin/popups.js
   importScript('User:Lupin/popups.js');

Please check User talk:Lupin and look for the several discussion sections there. (Maybe search for '$2', the the section titles are pretty easy to spot,like Getting "revision $1 dated $2 by $3") There are a couple of workarounds, one of which I'm using and works (for now :-)

   // Try to use the fix mentioned at User_talk:Lupin
   // User:Lupin/popups.js
   document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
            + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js&oldid=88729935' 
            + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

But see the discussions about trying to clear browser caches, etc., first before using extraordinary measures. Shenme 18:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks everybody, I'll look into it... Scottydude 03:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] open link in new window option

Is there an "Open Link in New Window" option that we can use, or do we have to right-click and choose it on the popup menu?

Ajl772 18:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Based on that comment, you seem to be using Internet Explorer; either that or shift-clicking are your best options. Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox both support tabbed browsing; in FireFox at least, you can open a link in a new tab (a similar effect to opening it in a new window) by middle-clicking on it. Hope that helps! --ais523 18:07, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

I actually was wondering about using something along the lines of java script or the like... Ajl772 17:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How do i actually MAKE the article? I see alot on the format, but nothing on where to go or what to do to intiate it.

Dear Wikipedia,

I just became a new member and the reason why is so that I could post an article about a scientific theory called the APD Theory. I can't, however, actually figure out HOW to make the article. Yea, I can see article and article after one another of what I should do when making an article, or how to make one, but NOTHING has yet shown me where I need to go to actually initiate making the article. I don't see an edit page, I don't see anything that I can type in, I don't see a save page, and I simply do not see any way of actually creating the article, just the format of which is should be created. Any help please? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psinetic (talk • contribs) 18:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

The most straightforward way, for a new user, is to go to Help:Starting a new page, type the page title into the box provided, and start writing. More experienced users might just type the name of the article they want into the URL bar of their browser, to go there directly - for example, if it says "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk" in your browser at the moment, you can just delete the "Wikipedia:Help desk" part and insert whatever you want. --Kwekubo 18:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Ironically (and coincidentally), I just posted a create-an-article box three questions above... but probably the best way is to introduce a [[link]] to it in another article, and then click on that link. --ais523 18:30, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

Another simple way is to edit the address bar. just enter the name of the article you want to create at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. If the article does not exist it will provide you with the link to create it and some other options. -- Myth (Talk) 07:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I actually think that the easiest way is to type the article's name into the search box on the left of the page, and click Go. This will then take you to the article, and it should either present you with the article, or provide a link to search for the topic or create the article. Stwalkerster 15:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Long URLs

Hello all!

When you paste a long URL in the edit box, a horizontal scroll bar appears for the box. This makes editing harder, specially on wikis for right-to-left languages, like Hebrew or Farsi wikipedias. Is there a way to avoid this?

As far as I know one cannot break the URL to two lines (correct me if I'm wrong) and we are not allowed to post shortified links (for example those going to tinyurl.com or similar web sites. So I'm really unable to find a way arround this.

Please share your experience. huji—TALK 18:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Which browser does this? It doesn't happen for me on Internet Explorer 6. --ais523 18:48, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

Doesn't it? He's referring to the scrollbar at the bottom of the text field that appears when a long, unbroken URL/word/etc. is inputted (so long that it doesn't wrap around). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm on firefox. I paste a fake url here for you, it makes a horizontal scroll bar to appear for me, see if it is the same for you:

Example link

huji—TALK 18:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

No scrollbar for me; the line breaks, for the edit screen only, just after the question mark. Anyway, one possible solution would be to use commented-out line breaks, like this: Example link, which shouldn't make a difference to the URL. (By the way, use example.com for examples, as the domain name is reserved for that purpose; visiting example.com itself just gives a link to the explanation why it's reserved.) On the other hand, the horizontal scrollbar behaviour is probably a good thing as long as it affects only that line, because it saves worry about whether a linebreak is real or not. --ais523 18:57, 8 March 2007 (U T C)

All right. I updated the link I posted above, and voila!!

And I know the scrollbar is a good thing, but there are times we have to avoid it! ;)

And finally, please accept my many thanks for the wise answer. I have to pass it along to many people who are annoyed of that scrollbar thing! huji—TALK 19:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PDF files converted into searchable files on the Wiki

Is there an easy way to convert a PDF file into the wiki searchable format?

209.97.228.10 20:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by the wiki searchable format? Do you want to write a Wikipedia article, or something else? Notinasnaid 20:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

What I mean by that is to be able to break down a file to be able to search it as if you were searching a page created on the wiki itself. 209.97.228.10 21:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. PDF's are more like an image than they are text. I don't think they can be converted. You might have better luck on WP:VP/T Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 22:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there a file type that can be searched on wiki when uploaded? (If I was to upload it as a file) Would this most likely have to be done manually or copied? 209.97.228.10 22:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Google search can index PDF files for searching, when Google finds such files on the Web. If you upload a PDF file to a (public) wiki, and it is at such a URL that Google can index it (I have no idea whether Google could "reach into" the wiki to index PDF files uploaded to the wiki, but that would be easy to test if we know some examples), then Google would let you search into text content of the PDF file. See Help:Searching#Search engines for tips on using external search engines to augment the rather modest built-in search feature in MediaWiki. What wiki are you talking about? --Teratornis 22:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Getting away from the PDFs what is the easiest way to take a document and make it searchable on a wiki without having to manually do it? (i.e. saving it as a certain file) The thing with this is the document going up is going to change quite a bit. If I just put it up as a PDF then it is harder to search through. If I do it manually then that is a lot of work that has to be changed. (Let me know if this makes sense.)

Let me just try and understand one thing: you say "a wiki". By this do you mean a different wiki, that you are running or using; or do you mean Wikipedia? The reason to ask particularly is that you can't put a PDF up on Wikipedia. Notinasnaid 22:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

It is a separate wiki that I am using.

Ok, it's going to depend on the specific wiki software you use, but as a general rule I'd expect most Wiki software would only index articles entered into the wiki database, not additional files, text or otherwise. However, if you are using a wiki that allows PDF files, you might find that the software authors have handled this. Also, as noted, don't overlook Google. Google is a much better tool for searching Wikipedia articles than Wikipedia's own search engine, and you might like to consider this point for your own wiki.

By the way, there is nothing inherently unsearchable about PDF files. Some of them contain only scanned pages, and little software can do the necessary work to search them. But most PDF files contain real text, and a good general purpose search engine will search them. (Yes, the code has to be written specifically for PDF files). A wiki may not, however, contain a general purpose search engine. Notinasnaid 23:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

For Google to search a wiki, it has to be a public wiki, that is, visible on the Web to Google. Many corporate wikis live behind company firewalls and are not visible to Google, and thus not searchable by Google. Some companies install their own internal search software such as ht://dig. You may be able to upload your PDF files to Google Base.

Existing files in various formats are a problem for wikis, since most if not all wikis use their own idiosyncractic wikitext markup languages which are incompatible with everything else (and not even standard among wiki software packages). For wikis to find truly broad use in business, they must come with fluent document conversion software allowing users to easily convert documents to and from wiki formats and all the common business formats, preserving as much markup and formatting as possible. See WP:TOOLS for a small start toward this. The whole world is probably not going to manually copy, paste, and edit all the Word documents and everything else to put them on wikis (although a market might someday emerge for outsourcing this grunt work of wikifying existing business content). On a large public wiki such as Wikipedia, there is less need for such compatibility, because Wikipedia is not attempting to fit itself into an existing community of users (such as a corporation) who have large volumes of information in other formats. --Teratornis 00:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

If we're talking about corporate Wikis, where there is often a significant budget for goodies, it may be worth mentioning that you can buy your own Google appliance and use it on your intranet. This (or other spidering systems which come in less shiny packages) has the virtue that it can index across the whole intranet without needing to install software on any of the servers, and may be the only way to cut the gordian knot of inter-departmental turf wars and unify searching of the intranet. It also has the virtue that it may even be simple enough to explain to the people who manage budgets. Notinasnaid 09:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong informations

Thanks for such a good website where we can find all the informations we need. I cheers you for this great success,but there some mistakes you've done. First of all,your website has a link which is KURDISTAN. What i'm excited about and what is wrong is there is no such a country. There is NO KURDISTAN. This is the idea and dream of some terrorists which has killed my citizens and still killing. So, you are making their aim much easier. What you have done is wrong and illegal. Because of your this error people think there is a country like this and what the terrorist want is this. Please correct this mistake. This is really a sensitive subject for many people who are the families of martyred people. Kerem Yücelten from Turkey

We don't call Kurdistan a country, rather a "geographic and cultural region", which seems reasonable to me. If you have any issues then you can raise them at Talk:Kurdistan. --Cherry blossom tree 20:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IPA font

Hello. When I look at Wikipedia articles, most of the text is easy to read, in a nice-size Arial font. But IPA pronunciations are not so clear. They show up in a very light serif font, and some of the strokes are so thin that they disappear. Is there any way to change the way IPA text is displayed? (I realize I asked this same question on the Help Desk before, but it was about nine months ago and there was never a response. I'm hoping maybe new people are looking at this now that didn't see the archives.) — Michael J 20:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about your question not being answered, we receiv many questions here and occasionally we do lose track of one or two. Do you mean then pronounciaton for a place when it is different font style and some letters are bakcwards. As far as I know there is no way to change this, however their could be but as far as I'm aware there isn't. However I could be wrong so keep checking back here within the next 24 hours and another editor may know how to or beable to give you further advice. Regards - Tellyaddict 21:07, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe if I show you a little screen-shot of what I see (from the article on Hawaii):

As you see, the IPAs are hard to read on my screen. — Michael J 21:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you might get a good answer at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing so I've crossposted there. — coel acan — 03:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Updating Athletics/Track & Field Tables

I have tried to update two Athletics tables with times run by two different athletes. The statistics appear as I have typed them, but there is now a problem with the tables not lining up correctly. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/world_records_in_athletics#Men and look at the "Indoor World Records" for "Men" and specifically the problem for how the 3,000 meter record is now stuck over in the right hand column of its own instead of appearing in the regular column with the other records) (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_best_progression and look under "Women" to see how Grete Waitz's time in London now sticks out on the right hand side of the page)

Could you correct the column problems for me and/or tell me how to avoid this problem in the future? I carefully typed everything just like all the other entries but somehow created column problems in doing so. Thank you.

Well, I fixed the problems. All I did was replace the dashes in the row breaks (|-) in the problem rows. Why that made any difference though I'm not sure. I believe there are 2 different types of dashes, maybe you used the wrong one in a couple places? Someone else could probably explain it better. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 21:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!

[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?--208.252.179.22 21:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe so unless there is some advanced measure. You can pipe the link so it is for alphanumeric sorting purposes (most articles on people, for example, would have something to the effect of [[Category:1988 births|Doe, John]] which would sort the name with the Ds but the name appears as John Doe). x42bn6 Talk 21:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subcategories

How do you make a page a sub category? I've read all the category help, but I still don't understand. to make roses a sub category of flowers, you just put [ category:flowers] [ category:roses] ? Bouncingmolar 21:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you mean putting a page into a subcategory? You would just use [[Category:Roses]]. However, the actual category hierarchy is Plants -> Angiosperms -> Eudicots -> Rosids -> Rosales -> Rosaceae -> Roses. If you want to make a subcategory, you simply start the "article" Category:xxyyzz where xxyyzz is your category you wish to create. You then put [[Category:Flowers]] to this new category. x42bn6 Talk 22:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

To clarify further, perhaps ... Let's say you want to create a new sub-category of Category:Dogs that you want to call Category:Dogs in TV and film (after checking to make sure that a similar sub-cat doesn't already exist). You will start populating this sub-cat with articles about "Lassie" and "Rin Tin Tin." One way to do this is to add the new category name to each of these articles. It will show up in red, as it does here. Click on it and enter the main category -- [[Category:Dogs]] -- on the edit page. The new sub-cat should then show up on the main cat page. Does that make sense?--Vbd (talk) 02:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

aha! that makes complete sense. the bit i missed what that you have to add the main category to the sub category page. CHeers. Bouncingmolar 07:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple AfD's

Is there an easy way to nominate multiple articles for deletion on the same page? Not just 5 or 6, a lot. Can I nominate all the articles in a category for deletion at once? Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 22:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#How to list multiple related pages for deletion, unless of course you meant easier than that. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 23:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Creating new page

Hello -- this is Joshua Shapiro

I have heard about Wikipedia and visited before but I didn't realize that we could be active participants to help create it and add things

is there a manual that explains how Wikipedia works

like for example I visited Strat-o-matic which is a baseball game I play and I wanted to add our web pages for readers but then I saw that you use code a bit different then html

so I figured it might be easier if you have a guide I could read how everything works

and we are free to add other things ourself?

is there any rules about things of a commercial nature -- do you first read the editions before they go live

whoever invented this did a great service for the planet -- its amazing

Joshua Shapiro The Skokie Wolfman (for Strat-o-matic) A Crystal Skull Explorer

Note: I added a welcome template to the user's talk page. Xiner (talk, email) 23:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:COI, WP:RS and WP:N to determine what can be written about. You can't just add an article about anything - it needs reliable sources and a measure of notability. -Wo o ty Woot? contribs 00:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome! For a simple introduction, take a look at "Your first article." It has some other useful links for getting started and understanding the basic guidelines for contributing to Wikipedia.--Vbd (talk) 02:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is the most famous wiki, but it is actually a very specialized wiki (an encyclopedia). See WP:NOT. However, there may be another wiki which would welcome your content even if Wikipedia does not. Search WikiIndex for "games". Maybe: Encyclopedia Gamia. Many of these special-interest wikis are begging for more content, unlike Wikipedia, which deletes enough content to fill many small wikis. --Teratornis 20:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SEARCH TERM IS BEING REDIRECTED TO WRONG SEARCH TITLE AND LIMITING INFORMATION

Dear Wikipedia Help Adminstrators,

Would you tell me how I can correct an error on a wikipedia main search term? When I type in a certain search term..eg. The name of an illness, it links to and brings up a subject matter which is only a small fraction of the Meta term I am searching for.

Hypothetical Examples: On searching the term BLOOD, PLASMA appears as the MAIN subject matter title.

This would be an error and a limitation of the concept [description]of what BLOOD is. WHEN THE TERM PLASMA IS SEARCHED FOR, THEN MOSTLY PLASMA SHOULD BE FIRST DESCRIBED ETC. WHEN 'BLOOD' IS SEARCHED FOR, MAIN SUBJECT MATTER SHOULD BE THE BIG PICTURE OF WHAT BLOOD IS.

Another example: You search for "hand" and what this brings up is "NAIL" and everything only about "Nail" but nothing about every thing else that the hand is.

SO MY QUESTION IS: HOW DO I DELINK THIS META TERM FROM THE SUBJECT MATTER IT IS BRINGING UP? [because the subject matter is limiting the meta term considerably and grossly preventing the true nature/concept of the meta term to be revealed]

Thanks,

Janya ((helpme))—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Loveyoumissyou (talk • contribs) 23:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Don't hit "search", hit "go". -Wo o ty Woot? contribs 00:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

What I think you are experiencing is the effect of a redirect. What this means is that there is no present article for the term you are trying to access, and someone in the past created it as an alternate name for the other topic. There's a great solution for this. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If you'd like to create the article on the term, type it into the search field, click go, when you get to the redirected article, you should see at the top "redirected from (your search term)". Click on the term and you will see the redirect page itself. Now click edit and create the article. You might find it useful to take a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial first.--Fuhghettaboutit 00:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)