Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 October 7

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[edit] October 7

[edit] Question

are there are no forums in wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.214.97.221 (talk) 05:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

We have forum for development of an article but not on the subject in the article. You may see a discussion tab on each page. Amartyabag TALK2ME 06:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
See Help:Talk page to learn about how we discuss things on talk pages. (You will see "talk" and "discussion" to mean the same thing - an instance of synonym disease on Wikipedia.) (In addition to talk pages for articles, we have lots of other pages for discussing other things; you can find some by browsing to the Editor's index and doing a ctrl-F search in your browser for "forum", "talk", and "discuss". Also see WP:EIW#News.) Someday our talk pages may get some of the forum features you are probably used to, while maintaining the advantages of wikitext markup; see: mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. --Teratornis 13:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding button

is there any code which can add some extra buttons like, Support, Oppose, Comment, Done, Not Done, Question . This may help while commenting in FAC, PR and other places. Amartyabag TALK2ME 06:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

  • You want Wikipedia:User scripts. I have additional buttons in my edit bar and it is even further customizable. I think the script was made by User:MarkS. Someone also created a script for AFC that might be adapted to other processes. - Mgm|(talk) 10:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Amartyabag TALK2ME 16:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Small print

While I was viewing wikipedia, the print suddenly got very small and I can't figure out how to get it back to the way it was. I treid clearing my browser footprints, but it didn't help. Please advise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrickhahn (talk • contribs) 11:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Assuming you're using Internet Explorer, you probably held down the ctrl key and used your mouses' scrol wheel, which will change the text size of every website you visit. Hold down control and move your mousewheel towards you to reverse this effect, or go to view (it's next to "file" and "edit") --> text size --> whatever size you want —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ybbor (talk • contribs) 13:31, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question from David Brown - Organic Chemist

I am interested in your Wikipedia "list of chemists", which contains an alphabetical listing of several (both living and deceased) chemists. Upon noticing that several famous chemists were missing from your list, I began typing in their names individually into the search box only to find that they do indeed have their biographies already on Wikipedia, but their names are not linked to the list of chemists. How can I edit the list of chemists to add the names of these chemists to their existing biographies, so that their names will appear on and be linked to the list?

Currently I have never signed in with a Wikipedia username and password. Should I do that in order to be able to contribute and to view your response?

Thanks in advance for your help.

David Brown Organic Chemist 72.154.32.91 13:49, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey David! Adding a particular page to any category is simple; on the article, add the following: [[Category:List of chemists]] to the bottom. Of course, you'd change the name of the category for whichever you were doing. As for registering an account, it's definitely not required, but we do encourage it for the benefits it provides, including hiding your IP number, which is much safer. Happy editing! GlassCobra (Review) 13:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the question seems to be about the List of chemists article rather than about adding individual articles about chemists to a category. List pages differ from category pages in that human editors manually edit the list pages, while the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia generates category pages from those [[Category:...]] links in individual articles. See: WP:EIW#Lists for everything you could want to know about lists, and WP:EIW#Cat for categories. David, before you dive into editing real articles, you may want to check out the tutorial and cheat sheet. Also, if you do create an account, you will have your very own talk page where we can leave helpful instructions for you. --Teratornis 14:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Also, if you create an account, you can join Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, and coordinate your editing work on Chemistry-related articles with other chemists. But this is optional. --Teratornis 14:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
And if all the above sounds too complicated and you just want to fix the missing items on the List of chemists article now, you can leave a note on Talk:List of chemists with the names of the chemists you want to add, and someone with more Wikipedia-editing experience will add them for you. It will help if you type the chemists' names as links to their articles, like this: [[Antoine Lavoisier]], so the next person will be sure we do have an article with that exact title, by seeing the link: Antoine Lavoisier. --Teratornis 14:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Finding More Information about References Citations

How do you find out more information abotu references cited in the srticles? For instance, if you search for <Alois Podhajsky> there is an article. At the bottom of the article are references that come from footnotes in the article. How can I find the full name or identification for those references so that I can do further research? billseq Billseq 14:31, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello Billseq! If the editor who added the reference did not use the template format, readers can click on the external link (if there is one), or go to a library to look up the book/periodical/journal/magazine listed as the source. However, Looking at the Alois Podhajsky article, it appears that whoever added the references, never gave the primary source, so you're right, it is impossible for you to refer to another item to either verify the footnote, or to learn more. This is indeed, an issue that should be remedied. For further information about references, you can see how to cite sources and footnotes to learn more about when, how, and what is considered a reliable, third-party source that should be used in citations. Hope that helps, Ariel♥Gold 14:38, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, they did give an example. :P The article seems to cite a work by the subject of the article, but there's no mention of the subject ever publishing anything. Tough call. GlassCobra (Review) 14:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Good question. Whoever prepared those references didn't do so in a way that would allow others to confirm the quotations, which doesn't meet the Wikipedia policy for verifiability. You might try doing a Google search for "Alois Podhajsky" and the last name of the reference cited -- that may lead you to a more complete citation. Another thing to do would be to leave a question on the talk page of the "Alois Podhajsky" article, because the person who put the references in may have that page on his/her watchlist and be able to help you. Accounting4Taste 14:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I see now that an example was given, but it wasn't wiki linked so I thought it was a hypothetical name. After reviewing it, I did clarify my response. Sorry for the initial confusion. Ariel♥Gold 14:44, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I looked at the Alois Podhajsky article, and on first glance it looks like a person would need extra-sensory perception to decode the references. Whoever edited those references appears to have cited only the last name of an author, and a page number. No links, no title, etc. The references do not follow our guidelines in WP:CITE, WP:FOOT, and WP:CITET. The talk page (Talk:Alois Podhajsky) does mention at least one book title, but the talk page does not follow the talk page guidelines either, suggesting that the people who worked on this article are not very experienced with Wikipedia editing yet. It looks like we need to add some cleanup messageboxes. --Teratornis 14:46, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
The applicable WikiProject appears to be: Wikipedia:WikiProject horse training. I'm adding a {{talkheader}} template to Talk:Alois Podhajsky and adding topic headings there, to clean up the talk page at least. --Teratornis 14:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I'll be working on the article, adding tags, and a bibliography, and removing the references, as they are completely not relevant without knowing the primary source. If you look at the very first revision, it was clearly done by someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia or Wikicode, which explains it. Luckily, I'm actually quite familiar with this subject, so I think I can fix it up a bit. Thanks to all others helping, as well! Ariel♥Gold 14:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. While you're at it, how about creating a Template:Horse training because WikiProject horse training appears to have no project banner to put on Talk:Alois Podhajsky. --Teratornis 15:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Hey! Are you a mind reader? I had just reviewed the project, and it needs a lot of attention, but the most important thing is a banner for talk pages, which I plan on making, hee hee. Ariel♥Gold 15:24, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not a mind reader; I'm a talking horse. Of course. --Teratornis 22:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Folks, WikiProject horse training is a disaster that someone decided I should rescue, but it is such a mess, it's hard to know where to begin. (I tend to focus on cleaning up some of the articles, but there are so many...) However, I am a horse person, not a miracle worker...any assistance in generally cleaning up and organizing things would be appreciated. Montanabw(talk) 22:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

(undent) You should start by reading WP:PROJGUIDE, but cleaning up a disastrous WikiProject will take some work. You might look at some well-run WikiProjects such as WikiProject Mathematics and WikiProject Biography to get some ideas (or, maybe, just to get really depressed). It might be better to look at WikiProjects of intermediate sophistication, such as WikiProject Cycling and WikiProject Backpacking to give yourself a feasible target to work toward. Just take what you like from other WikiProjects, and copy and edit it into your project. There seems to be a correlation between the quality of a given WikiProject and the existence of graduate-level academic interest in that topic (especially in male-dominated fields, since men outnumber women on Wikipedia, and in fields where computing is important, which leads to a large pool of experts in the field who also have computer skills to use on Wikipedia). There probably aren't a lot of Ph.D.s awarded in horse training, so this would be one of the marginal areas of human knowledge that will take longer to formalize properly on Wikipedia. But this will probably happen for every area of knowledge that has any sort of organization whatsoever, because Wikipedia has made it so (relatively) simple, at least compared to what it would take if you had to start completely from scratch. --Teratornis 17:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ECLIPSES

WHY ARE ECLIPSES SOMETIMES TOTAL AND SOMETIMES PARTIAL? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjcnic (talk • contribs) 15:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Read the Eclipse article. Sbowers3 16:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FLOATING OF DEAD BODY

WHY DO DEAD BODY FLOAT IN WATER? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjcnic (talk • contribs) 15:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Because their bodies still contain air RyanLupin (talk/contribs) 16:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
And also because the process of Decomposition generates gas which bloats dead bodies and makes them float, even if the victims inhaled water into their lungs when they drowned. Hence the invention of Cement shoes. --Teratornis 22:28, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
...and they may well be wearing life jackets! :P RyanLupin (talk/contribs) 15:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] LOUDNESS

WHICH INSTRUMENT IS USED TO MEASURE LOUDNESS? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjcnic (talk • contribs) 15:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Read Loudness. In the See Also section it links to Sound level meter. Sbowers3 16:14, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Also note that on the internet, typing in uppercase can be used to indicate loudness or shouting. Astronaut 00:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] US Distinguished Flying Cross Recipients

How do I add my father's name to the list of recipients of this medal? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlp4776 (talk • contribs) 16:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

There does not appear to be a list of recipients of that particular award. There does exist Category:Recipients of US Distinguished Flying Cross, but your father would have to have an article on Wikipedia in order to be placed into that category. In order for your father to have an article, he would have to pass the criteria at Wikipedia:Notability (people). If you are unsure as to whether he qualifies under this guideline, you may request an article be created for him at Wikipedia:Requested articles. Thank you. Sephiroth BCR (Converse) 17:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How do I add Wikipedia to Microsoft Office 2007 Word lokkup resource?

How do I add Wikipedia to Microsoft Office 2007 Word lokkup resource? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenhinz (talk • contribs) 17:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend the reference desk. This page is for aid with Wikipedia-related problems. Thank you. Sephiroth BCR (Converse) 17:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More about reference citations

Similar to the question above about references, this [1] at first glance does not look a good reference, but further down the page in a Literature section is a citation to the book that clearly is what the reference is "referencing". Might it be better to move the Literature section before the References or into the References section so that a reader will more easily decipher the references? I'm asking not so much for this particular article but about how to handle similar situations in other articles. Sbowers3 17:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Instead of having them as two separate sections, the article should be formatted so that the first reference to the book should be the full citation, and then the citations after can be formatted as they are at present. I'll go ahead and do it. GlassCobra (Review) 18:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] sub categories

I am working on an entry about the composer, Meyer Kupferman. I have listed his entire catalogue of compositions by instrument, so that someone playing any instrument that he has written for could find everything easily. Unfortunately, this creates a large number of duplicates. For example, something written for flute, violin, viola, and guitar would appear four times. In the interest of streamlining this, I'd like to have a complete searchable list appear somewhere else via link in order to shorten the page, and yet have a complete list of everything he wrote on the main page, without duplications. Do you have any suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rguitphil (talk • contribs) 17:30, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, having a list of every work that he's ever done doesn't really seem all that logical. As per WP:NOT#INFO, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of information. I'm not sure of any benefits that a long list like this would have. GlassCobra (Review) 18:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How can I add an infobox?

i tried so many times to add an infobox, but always ends up only showing -template:infobox-country- or something like that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.40.109 (talk) 17:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Have you included everything between the set of double curly braces {{ and }} including the braces themselves in the article? Did you save any of your edits so that we may see the difference between the two edits? Dismas|(talk) 18:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
For more information you can also refer to Help:Infobox. As Dismas mentioned, you have to be sure you copy the infobox exactly as it appears on the infobox page, (for instance: Template:Infobox Person. If some of the lines don't apply, just leave them blank rather than remove them. If the main template page does not show the template, (such as Template:Infobox), check the template's talk page, it often will have it, and usually has information on how to use it. I hope this has helped. Cheers! Ariel♥Gold 18:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Did you see something like this: Template:This template does not exist. If so, that means you probably misspelled the name of the template you were trying to use. The template name will be the very first thing you type after the opening pair of braces: {{. It's much easier and more reliable to copy the wikitext of a working example of a template, either from the template's page itself, or from an article that uses the template. Were you trying to use {{Infobox country}}? If you stuck a stray hyphen in there, you could get: Template:Inbobox-country instead. --Teratornis 22:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
The last example also has a typo in the third letter and should be Template:Infobox-country PrimeHunter 22:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] drawing based on copyrighted photos

If a famous person has many copyrighted picture but no free photo, can I draw a portrait based on physical feature of this person manifested on those multiple photos (instead of just completely imitate those photos) without infringing the copyright? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wooyi (talk • contribs) 17:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

That is an interesting question. It may become more important in the future, when I expect consumer-grade computer software will be able to do much the same thing: analyze a collection of photographs of a person, and from them create an accurate CGI model from which anyone could generate copies of the source photographs, along with other views of the person. Anyway, I think portraits themselves are subject to copyright by their creators, which would only be possible if they do not violate the copyright of whatever the portraitist used to create them. However, I'm not an attorney, so what do I know? To be on the safe side, you might try drawing a Caricature. I would bet that few subjects of a caricaturist agree to sit to have their "likenesses" drawn, so presumably the caricaturist must work from copyrighted material, and the resulting caricatures are themselves copyrighted to the caricaturist. --Teratornis 22:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requested copyright examinations may also be able to help answer this --h2g2bob (talk) 23:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] depiction

Bala463531 18:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)what is the meaning of parsimonious depiction?

Is this in some way a reference to an article on Wikipedia or the use of Wikipedia? Into The Fray T/C 18:31, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
The Parsimony article defines the term well, and introduces its meaning in several fields. I've been reading The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins and he mentions parsimony a lot, but probably not in the sense you may mean (parsimonious depiction of what?). --Teratornis 22:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to change Fonts?

Please Help!

I am using IE 6 SP! on Windows 2000 Pro.

Somehow, Wikipedia page displays different Fonts than any other page. I could not determine which fonts being used. It is very condensed and practically unreadable.

How to I change page settings to display normal fonts?

I have tried followings unsuccessfully:

Tools>Internet Options>Fonts>Language Script: Latin Based Web Page Font:Verdana Plain Text Font:Courier New

I tried all available plain text font options but no change in page display.

Any help is big help

Thanks, Vijay

Hello, Vijay. A couple suggestions, because I'm not really clear what the problem is. Is it the font size, or the specific font? Regardless, you might try creating an account and changing your skin. To do this, after creating the account, go to your preferences and, under the "my preferences" link in the upper-right corner of the window, select the "skin" tab and preview a couple skins to see if it improves your readability. Otherwise, you might change the "font size" in your browser configuration, else try another browser like Firefox. Into The Fray T/C 18:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
The default font for Wikipedia articles is Arial, but when you are editing Wikipedia, the font in the editing window is Courier new, simply because all of it's letters have an equal width, and this makes formatting much easier. Cheers, ( arky ) 18:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sortable wikitable

The sortable wikitable at Chicago Marathon that lists the winners does not sort on the 4th and above columns. Instead, these columns move the page to the top.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:01, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

This happened, because three columns were connected at the year 1987. The table only compares the content of one column. I changed the content. So now it works, although it looked better before. Perhaps someone else has a better solution.--Thw1309 21:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
That looks fine. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TonyTheTiger (talk • contribs) 05:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ban vs. Block

I'm sorry, but I just don't see the difference between the descriptions of a ban and a block. One is meant to enforce the other - what do they mean? They both can be indef. or short-term.. but I still don't see a difference between banned and blocked user; some please explain this. Thanks! Domthedude001 20:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

A block is administered in order to protect Wikipedia from disruption and prevent damage to articles. A user who is banned has their editing privileges revoked for a designated (or indefinite) period. A ban is given by the community, or ArbCom (Jimbo himself and the Wikimedia Foundation as well can, but for the purposes of this discussion, we'll ignore that). While both blocks and bans can be of short length, a long duration, or indefinite, a block is given to halt disruption and damage, protecting Wikipedia's interests, while a ban specifically deals with an individual user and his or her ability to edit. It's confusing initially, but the distinction is there. Sephiroth BCR (Converse) 20:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
To phrase it another way: a ban is an admonition not to edit an article/group of articles. For instance, someone who has been disruptive on articles relating to a particular religion may get a ban on editing those articles. It's essientially the community saying "Don't touch these articles anymore."
A block, on the other hand, actually restricts or completely removes a user's ability to edit on Wikipedia. Blocks are actually part of the Wikipedia code that prevents editing. These blocks are usually put in place when someone violates a ban; when someones editing has proven to be generally disruptive; or they have made legal threats or taken other actions in violation of Wikipedia's core rules. Often the block will be for a set period of time, and the user can still edit their own Talk page to respond to comments or challenge the block. Some editors are so disruptive they recieve indefinite blocks, effectively kicking them off Wikipedia altogether.
The most extreme kind of block is an IP block. This is when an actual IP address or range of addresses are blocked, not just a username. It's usually a last resort when individuals are using those addresses to get around other blocks, or conducting a coordinated attack on Wikipedia. Since IP addresses may be recycled to innocent bystanders, and a range block will also catch innocents, they are rarely implemented and (to my knowledge) always temporary.
So, short version: a ban is a community decision stating that a user should not edit on (parts of) Wikipedia, while a block is a mechanism that prevents a user from editing on Wikipedia. Occasionally, a ban is enforced by blocks, but doesn't necessarily have to be. Hope that helps! -- Kesh 20:47, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you! I get it now, lol. Thank you both for the detailed explanations! Domthedude001 21:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing/removed article

Folks, I have been, in the past, to the article on depression (economic). I have a quote from it, in fact. However, when I just went to go back to it, which I haven't in many months, searching for Depression, and clicking on the economic link gives me Recession. Therefore, it appears to me that someone(s) have removed the article on Depression for political reasons. Any chance of getting it back? It quoted such people as John Kenneth Galbraith, and was excellent. mark roth <email address removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.229.181.54 (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Find out the admin who deleted it, and ask him for the contents you require. Domthedude001 21:28, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Depression has a link to Depression (economics) which redirects to Recession. Depression (economics) has never been deleted in the Wikipedia sense where article deletion means that only administrtors can see the content. You can see the old content before the redirect in the history [2]. The versions I examined did not mention John Kenneth Galbraith. He is mentioned in other articles, for example The Great Crash, 1929. PrimeHunter 22:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)