Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 March 16

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[edit] March 16

[edit] Why did I get these messages?

HEllo, I got sent this and I don't know why, because I never edited anything:

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Laser, did not appear to be constructive and has been automatically reverted by ClueBot. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you believe there has been a mistake and would like to report a false positive, please report it here and then remove this warning from your talk page. If your edit was not vandalism, please feel free to make your edit again after reporting it. The following is the log entry regarding this warning: Laser was changed by 84.65.149.231 (u) (t) making a minor change adding "!!!" on 2008-02-26T17:32:08+00:00 . Thank you. ClueBot (talk) 17:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The recent edit you made to Magdalen College, Oxford constitutes vandalism, and has been reverted. Please do not continue to vandalize pages; use the sandbox for testing. Thanks. Two One Six Five Five τ ʃ 17:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC))

Can you help?

Rob Lippiatt <email removed>

There are likely other users on the same IP. Disregard those notices if you did not make these edits [1].— Ѕandahl 00:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hey, my userpage

Hey could you take a look at my userpage and maybe suggest a few improvements or just tell me what you think? Thanks --Hadseys ChatContribs 00:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Not so bad, feel free to take a look at mine. Visit me at Ftbhrygvn (Talk|Contribs|Log|Userboxes) 01:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Variables in template transclusion

I'm trying to transclude User:Tangotango/RfA Analysis/Report onto my user page, but I want to align it to the right and make it collapsible. Are there variables I can add that would do this for me? scetoaux (talk) (My contributions.) 05:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Could I get some help here, please? :) scetoaux (talk) (My contributions.) 17:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Done. — scetoaux (talk) (My contributions.) 18:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WXXS FM Ownership Update

24.34.99.161 (talk) 06:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] deleted page

A page Shlomo Dubnov was deleted for a reason that is unclear. Please explain. Was it using the wrong name space? Should it be resolved by including the compu-bio-stub?

SDubnov (talk) 07:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

According to the deletion log, it was deleted because it was a cross-namespace redirect from article namespace to user namespace. —teb728 t c 07:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
IceCreamAntisocial moved it to User:SDubnov with summary "user page". A move leaves a redirect which was deleted because it went from article space to userspace. Please see Wikipedia:Autobiography. And do not make nonsense Wikipedia "articles" as Google search experiments like you did with the same page in 2005. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Add an article

Dear,

I am Tim from OpenmindProjects, a non-profit volunteer company based in Thailand. I want to add an article about OpenmindProjects on Wikipedia under the username Openmindpr. Is this possible, is this username not to commercial? There are already non-profit's on Wikipedia, f.e. Travel To Teach, so I know it's possible, but I don't know how.

Sincerely Yours, Tim De Keyser —Preceding unsigned comment added by Openmindpr (talk • contribs) 07:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, your username is too commercial. Also, please read WP:COI: it's generally not a good idea to write an article about your employer or a group you work for. I would suggest instead requesting that someone else write an article on the organization at WP:RA. -- Kesh (talk) 09:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] drinking laws in spain

this question moved to miscellaneous ref desk here [2] Julia Rossi (talk) 00:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, this page is for getting help in using Wikipedia. You're more likely to get an answer on Wikipedia's Reference Desk - Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities is probably the most appropriate page.--86.149.58.239 (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

I have written a short article about my grandfather and have used published references. But I wondered if it was also legitimate to use personal communications, or unpublished notes - eg from his daughter (my mother)- where a particular fact might not be published. Also, how does the "Citation Needed" comment from the text get removed, or how do I notify the editor that I've provided one?

Thanks Jompo (talk) 11:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

According to the Reliable sources policy, the definition of an acceptable source is a third-party, reliable, published source. I don't think that unpublished letters would be considered reliable. As for the citation needed tag, you can remove that (or any maintenance tag, for that matter) if you feel that you have sufficiently fixed the problem. Removing tags without fixing the problem is considered unconstructive. Xenon54 12:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
A followup question. Would personal communications, letters, diaries and such, be acceptable sources if they are in a public museum, archive, or library where they are available for reference? Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 16:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
In accordance with WP:COI, I would recommend that you did not create articles about your relatives. George D. Watson (Dendodge).TalkHelp 20:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis

Please visit speech_synthesis and listen to the sample available at the top. After finishing the phrase, there's an extra bit that I can't quite make out. Perhaps an unusual form of vandalism? ----Seans Potato Business 14:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh... I'm not really sure. The file has only been uploaded once, so it hasn't been vandalized. I'd say the upload was just corrupted somehow or NeonMarlin forgot to clip it off where he intended. If you're able to upload a new version, you may want to do so. Hersfold (t/a/c) 16:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Intra Wikipedia Copying

What's the official policy or guidline on copying material from one wikipedia article to another? It has been suggested that this can't be done properly under the GNU license. The closest thing I've found is a brief mention under Help:Merge which talks about edit summaries. The FAQ only talks about external uses (Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Can_I_reuse_Wikipedia.27s_content_somewhere_else.3F). How about the inclusion of main article: subsections etc? Is wikipedia authorship article by article or is the whole wikipedia authored as one piece of work?

Anyway, if you can point me to any policys or guidlines (other than the two discussed above), this would be helpful... Thank, Dspark76 (talk) 15:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In general, it's preferable to have a section that summarizes another article, with a link to that article (see WP:SS), rather than have massive duplication between articles.
If you really, really need to copy a lot of text, at the minimum you need to say, in the edit summary, "Copying text from Name of article"), so that someone can in turn look at that other article to see who contributed the text that is being copied.
But the reason that this doesn't get a lot of discussion in Wikipedia is precisely because we don't want the same text appearing in two articles (again, WP:SS is a known exception) because it's obviously impossible to keep the two sections updated simultaneously (and a lot of extra work to even try). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
If you tell us the articles you have in mind, we might suggest a way to avoid having to copy all the text you want to represent elsewhere. We do have templates which let us insert one copy of some common boilerplate text into many articles; we use that for navigation templates (such as {{Peak oil}}), but I don't know if what you have in mind would be appropriate to template-ize. Again, if we see the specific articles you have in mind, we can give specific answers. --Teratornis (talk) 03:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Can someone quicker than me create a disambiguation page?

Hi

"Brazilian cherry" is used in English to denote two distinct types of trees, one in reference to its fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Cherry [which redirects to Eugenia uniflora]), the other in reference to its wood (jatoba, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatoba). However, if you type in "brazilian cherry" in the search field, it goes straight to eugenia uniflora. If you do a search for "brazilian cherry" in google images, you will see that the wood is a far more common result. Could someone create a disambiguation page until I get the time to learn to do it?

Regards, --Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 16:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This doesn't require a full disambiguation page. I have redirected Brazilian Cherry to Jatobá instead and placed a hatnote there with a link to Eugenia uniflora. By the way, Brazilian cherry (with small c) redirected to Jatobá before an earlier version of that article was deleted [3] due to a copyvio. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] graham stack disambiguation page

Hi, There are two articles for Graham Stack, one is Graham Stack (footballer) and the other is Graham Stack (producer/writer). I would like to create a disambiguation page for Graham Stack but that article is already taken by Graham Stack (footballer). How do I create the disambiguation page so a search of Graham Stack brings up a page listing both articles?

Many thanks, Graham Stack. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamstack (talk • contribs) 17:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You could create the wikipedia:disambiguation page yourself listing the two individuals, then use a hard WP:Redirect to the page you've created. Both links have instructions how to proceed. Cheers. Wisdom89 (T / C) 19:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't recommended that you do per WP:COI. George D. Watson (Dendodge).TalkHelp 20:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Information Boxes

Some pages relating to books have an information box on the right hand side, displaying information such as author, publishing date, and ISBN. how do i insert on of these into a page i have created.
Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by AshleyMJD (talk • contribs) 17:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Add the {{Infobox Book}} template to the top of the page (full details at Template:Infobox Book). Incidentally, ISBN numbers automatically get linked if you write "ISBN" before it (eg "ISBN 0000000000-X"). --h2g2bob (talk) 18:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Random article functionality

Hi there.

I'm a regular reader of Wikipedia. Being that, I find great use of random browsing with the Random article function. However, often times I find that the random article function brings me to pages of extreme triviality (pages of street names, years, people, etc.) when I'm really interested in pages of deeper content. Is there some way to limit the scope that the random article function uses to certain kind of pages, thus excluding others?--nessup (talk) 18:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Not really; Special:Random is hard-coded that way. Of course, you could always try browsing pages of a certain type by looking at their categories. Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP!☺ 18:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
You might also like to explore Wikipedia's featured articles, good articles, and WP:CONTENTS, rather than rely on Special:Random. Only a small fraction of articles on Wikipedia are of the highest quality, so you might like the results of a structured approach. --Teratornis (talk) 03:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inserting Images

What do i need to type in to insert an image on to an infobox? The web address? Or the name on my computer? can you tell me exactly what i need to type in after the word image:

Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by AshleyMJD (talk • contribs) 18:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You have to upload the image first. See WP:UPLOAD. Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP!☺ 18:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


Thanks.

Now that i have uploaded the image, how do i insert it into an info box? —Preceding unsigned comment added by AshleyMJD (talk • contribs) 19:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

There should be part of the infobox which has a section like this, when you click on edit this page:
| image = (picture).jpg
If not, add it to the infobox, where you want the image to go. Replace (picture) with the name of the image you want to put there. It doesn't need resizing, as it is automatically made to fit the box. Lradrama 19:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Ashley, I see that your article, The Jem Star (where you are trying to insert the cover image), has been deleted 3 times. I'm sorry, but in order to have an article on Wikipedia a book must fulfill Wikipedia’s notability guideline for books and the article must demonstrate that notability with references to independent published works. —teb728 t c 20:19, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Articles

~how can i use articles from wikipedia?where do i send an e-mail to get permission? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Akasha queen28 (talk • contribs) 19:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is released under the GFDL. If you adhere to the licence you do not need permission. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 19:29, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
GFDL basically means that the only requirement is that you have to say where you got the info from. I think it also means that if you publish your work and wikipedia is a source, then your work must also be published under the GFDL. Paragon12321 (talk) 23:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Website designers!!!!

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing

[edit] Nominations of Law Enforcement Officers - First responders

  I would like to nominate a fellow correctional officer as a first

responder, Her name is Darla Lathrem; She was killed in the line of duty by three inmates that wre trying to escape from a Florida correctional facility. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.123.68.50 (talk) 21:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over two million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen. If that is not fruitful, we have a reference desk, divided into various subjects areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. —teb728 t c 21:29, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Table backgrounds turning white on IE7?

I recently got a new computer running Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. Ever since I've noticed that the backgrounds of all the infoboxes and tables on Wikipedia articles appear white instead of the normal grey (I'm using that default Wikipedia skin). I've tried changing the color settings in IE and Windows without success. This is clearly a technical problem on my end because things are fine when I browse on other computers. I've googled everything I could imagine but didn't find anything that matches my problem. So far I only noticed this probelm on Wikipedia, so I really hope someone here can let me know how to fix it. Thanks! 216.58.96.135 (talk) 21:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyone?? 216.58.96.135 (talk) 06:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I also run Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. I have always assumed that table backgrounds are supposed to be white by default, and haven't considered it a problem.
class="wikitable", gives me grey background
default table, gives me white background
Do you get white background for both tables? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they are white in both cases, although the wikitable has a border while the default one does not. 216.58.96.135 (talk) 13:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The borders are as intended. Have you tried to completely clear the cache? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

<< Just tried it but didn't make any difference. I guess I should try reinstalling the browser or something. 216.58.96.135 (talk) 13:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know but maybe it would help to be logged in to an account. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Urgent help requested: India

Hi. Agekm (talk · contribs) is insistingly putting India in Africa. India is not in Africa. It is in Asia. I've reverted this user twice, yet this user keeps reverting. Please help correct this. The last time India was in Africa was 100 million years ago. Please revert. I do not wish to revert anymore so as not to approach 3RR. Please help ASAP, if it hasn't been reverted yet. Yes this page is on my watchlist because Grawp moved it to HAGGER????? . Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 23:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism does not count towards the 3 revert rule :) Stwalkerster [ talk ] 23:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Seems like the user has already been warned for the 3RR violation - if it continues, you can go to WP:AN3 and make a report or WP:ANI. Wisdom89 (T / C) 23:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The user kept on doing it (including right here); I've had to indefinitely block the account. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)