Wikipedia:Help desk

[[:|WP:HD]]

NOTE: This is not a page about specific factual questions (e.g., Who was the first Pope?). For that type of question, see Wikipedia:Reference desk.

Welcome to the Help desk! This is a place to ask questions about Wikipedia and get help with editing problems. It's mainly for newcomers and users who don't yet have an account, but anyone is welcome to ask a question. Remember to check this page again (how about a bookmark?) to see if there have been any replies.

If your question has already been covered in one of the help pages, you could get the answer you're looking for more quickly by checking the topical index.

If your question is not specifically about the Wikipedia, you'll probably find the Reference desk a better place to ask; if you want to start a more detailed and inclusive discussion, try the Village pump.

**View old Archives**
Archive 1	Prior to June 2, 2004
Archive 2	June 2, 2004 - June 18, 2004
Archive 3	June 18, 2004 - July 2, 2004
Archive 4	July 2, 2004 - July 18, 2004
Archive 5	July 19, 2004 - July 31, 2004
Archive 6	August 1, 2004 - August 18, 2004
Archive 7	August 18, 2004 - September 5, 2004
Archive 8	September 5, 2004 - September 25th, 2004
Archive 9	September 26, 2004 - October 15th, 2004
Archive 10	October 16, 2004 - November 6th, 2004
Archive 11	November 6th - December 13th, 2004

Post a question here!

School needs revision

Is school a place for screwing and smoking weed? How about masturbation?

Check out the School page to see if I am right.

I don't know how to do a revert. Help! Revmachine21 14:05, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just reverted the last edits - thanks for pointing out the vandalized page. For the record, you can do a revert by opening the article's history, then clicking on the date of the last good revision (you can compare revisions before doing that to make sure you really have a non-vandalized version) and editing that old revision. Then you just click on "Save" without changing anything, and the old version is restored. Um...I hope that was clear, I'm notoriously bad at explaining stuff like that, just ask if you have any more questions :) -- Ferkelparade π 14:17, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure many people do those things in school. Perhaps we could incorporate that into the article somehow? :) Voyager640 21:57, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

serious copyright question

I wonder if wikipedia is liable for uploaded copyrighted pictures. What happens if someone uploads a copyrighted picture to wikipedia And then the copyright owners files a lawsuit against wikiepedia?

This is no joke. Someone has threatened me with a lawsuit for the same reason.

Gunnarvb 16:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't pretend to fully understand the copyright situation here, but under the Communications Decency Act and Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, I don't believe Wikipiedia could be held liable for copyright infringement under these circumstances (those acts give bodies like Wikipedia safe harbor against infringement claims). As for the person who threatened you: After reminding her of our policy against legal threats, tell her she can raise the issue at Wikipedia:Request for immediate removal of copyright violation and the offensive content will usually be taken down immediately. Alternatively, she can contact Wikipedia's designated agent. Out of curiosity, what article/image is in question? Best, David Iberri | Talk 17:39, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. I privately run a nonprofit website for is very similar to wikipedia in many ways. Its an open information database were people can enter records and upload pictures. Its a horse encyclopedia and pedigree database and its online for many years. Last week (Erwin Escher) a photographer emailed me and told me that someone has uploaded a few of his pictures to my website. The photographer claimed that removing the pictures would not be enough and that I'll have to pay him 2,000 Euros for the time the pictures were online. He threatens me with a lawsuit. If he is right then people will be able to sue wikipedia for the same reasons wouldn't they? But I very much hope that someone here will tell me that he is not right. Cheers Gunnarvb 18:34, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First, it depends on what country your website is based in to determine what laws apply. But this is probably a question best asked of a lawyer. Rmhermen 18:43, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, my site is 100% in english but its hosted on a server in Germany. Does German law apply now? Cheers, Gunnarvb 19:44, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IANAL, but I can't say I've ever heard of payment automatically being due for copyrighted content which was included temporarily, and either in good faith or through the agency of a third party. Unless there is some specific loss of income involved, it seems a rather extreme claim to me (and I've never heard of anyone threatening Wikipedia with this, despite frequent problems with copyright content). But if you know anyone who is a lawyer, it might be worth getting their reassurance, if the photographer sounds serious about his threat. - IMSoP 20:36, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another copyright question

If I uploaded a picture from a music label's website, getting the music label's permission to use it (although it's a small file and would have been better to have gotten a larger one directly from a photographer), I'm wondering if that's enough to have true licensing permission on the photo? Do I need to hunt down the photographer? In the case involved, I actually do know how to contact the photographer, but that's only luck. Someone else had originally uploaded the photo from a music label site without getting permission; an admin questioned the person; they removed the link from the article; I got permission from the record label and readded the link. But I'm not sure if the label is enough permission for using a photo from their site? Maybe I need to go directly through photographers only when getting such permissions? Bebop 18:57, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm about as far from expert as they come, but my suspicion would be that if the record label has officially given you permission, then you can reasonably claim to be using the image under licence. If it turns out that the record company didn't have permission to grant you such licence, then I'd've thought that's their problem, since you were acting in good faith. Or that's how it ought to work, but given that "the law's an ass", there's no guarantee that it actually does... - IMSoP 20:36, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not an expert either, but take care! You need to make sure that the music label is giving the right permission. Not just permission to put it on a web site, which they may readily give, while still retaining the copyright; but an actual and specific release of the copyright under one of several licensing terms, which will effectively allow anyone, anywhere to use it in any way they like without getting further permission (or is that completely wrong?). You must be sure they consent to this. And they might not be able to, even if they want to, if elements of the design, the photos, lyrics etc. are copyright by someone else. Notinasnaid 09:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Log in problems

Why does Wikipedia log me out a lot accidentally during daytime peak use periods when I'm making edits? It makes it hard to edit sometimes. It can turn a logged-in edit into an anonymous edit also. Bebop 19:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Others have reported similar bugs. I'm not a MediaWiki developer, but I can't immediately see how this bug could be related to peak traffic. I suppose it's possible that your computer's clock is set incorrectly, making Wikipedia's cookies expire prematurely. Also, make sure you're not blocking cookies from Wikipedia. --David Iberri | Talk 21:14, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Checking the "remember my password across sessions" button on the login form is a good idea too. See Wikipedia talk:How to log in#Getting logged out whilst editing. --David Iberri | Talk 21:16, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Exrapolation/interpolation program that may be of interest

I devised an extrapolation program in 1987 that has proved invaluable in forecasting AIDS/HIV and variant CJD in the UK. I would like to offer it to wikipedia. It is in HTML as a file, can I upload it ? Edwardhfd@aol.com MBCS CITP

HTML files can't be uploaded to Wikipedia. This helps protect against malicious attacks (e.g. session hijacking) that can be embedded into HTML. The preferred alternative is to make your program available on an external website, and then mention the site in the "external links" section of the relevant Wikipedia page(s). --David Iberri | Talk 20:50, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like it would violate the no original research policy to have it here. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

However, Wikibooks or Wikisource might be interested -- have a chat with the people at those projects to see if it fits. Catherine\^talk 07:15, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I get certain accents to display on IE?

On internet explorer v6.0, certain accent marks, usually for Central European characters with diacritical marks (Czech, Polish, etc.) show up as boxes.

This isn't universal and other scripts such as Japanese, show up just fine. If I use Firefox, the characters in question display perfectly. Now the answer is of course to use Firefox ;-), but how can I get IE to display the characters properly?

Using Windows 98SE Internet Explorer 6.0

--Larry G

Larry, try going into preferences and picking a different skin (particularly "Classic"). Things won't look as nice, but the East European / Slavic languages diacrita will hopefully work. - John Fader

The Wikipedia skin shouldn't have anything to do with it. I jused browsed the Turkish and Czech Wikipedias using the Monobook skin in IE 6.0.29 on Win XP SP 2, and everything came out just fine. --David Iberri | Talk 04:18, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Under the View menu under Encoding, what options are selected when you view a Polish page in IE? --David Iberri | Talk 04:30, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

You're all barking up the wrong tree (I think): this is simply a typeface issue. The key clue is that they "show up as boxes" - these are the default character defined in the font for characters it has no glyph for. The reason the accents show up in Firefox is presumably because it is using a different font / selection of fonts for displaying the page. Since this suggests you have a font containing the characters installed, try looking in the preferences for the two browsers, and seeing if you can get IE to use whatever font(s) it is that Fx is using. - IMSoP 12:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yep, looked that up. On IE, for Latin-based fonts, I have Times New Roman and Courier New selected. However, as MonoBook is a stylesheet, I don't even know how to view that to know what font is being used to check it. If I copy the text into MS Word or something, the text merely copies as Times New Roman. the Polish page displays perfectly in Firefox, but boxes appear for certain characters in IE. What font is used on the MonoBook stylesheet. The Polish page displays as UTF-8, but I can't find settings for this on the Fonts settings in IE. If Arial, the characters should display. Thanks for any for help on this. -- 172.135.127.71 17:18, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)Larry G

I'm not as sure of the ins and outs as others might be, but this is what I was told for IE: under the Tools/Internet Options... menu, on the General tab, select the Fonts... button at the bottom. Select "Latin based" from the Language Script dropdown, then select "Arial Unicode" as your Web Page Font. (Unicode has the widest variety of glyphs from various languages.) Give it a try -- if it doesn't work, come back and ask someone more knowlegable than I..... Catherine\^talk 18:38, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Catherine. :) That did the trick, with the addition that I had to click on IE's "Accessibility" and click "Ignore font style", which then overrode the Monobook stylesheet. I still don't know what font Monobook uses, but I tried some experiments and it looks like News Gothic MT, which left out the same missing characters, at least on my Win98SE version of IE6.0. On Firefox, the font is either Arial or Arial Unicode MS. For some reason Firefox seems to handle fonts better and I don't have to adjust anything for viewing complex scripts on web pages. However, in IE, although I fixed the problem, I have to reverse my fix so that stylesheet will display properly on other webpages. Something I don't have to do yet in Firefox. I hope IE will handle fonts better in future releases. Although I suppose it would help for me to get with the program and get a WinXP machine before Longhorn is released to the public, hehe. Or buy an Apple. At any rate, thanks for the fix. -- Larry G

Aligning text without tables

In Courland colonization of the Americas, I have the text: Governors of New Courland (Tobago)

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon
1654 Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

I would like Lampsius to line up with the other names. Is there a way to do this wihout making a table? Blank space is ignored and tab doesn't work. Are there any "invisible characters" I could use? Rmhermen 15:49, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

You could use a bunch of nonbreaking spaces, but I don't recommend it because it's not guaranteed to line up your text on every browser:

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall

1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon

1654 Adrien Lampsius

1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

Preformatted text is another option, but it's not the most aesthetically pleasing, IMO, especially with the gray background and dotted border:

 1642 - 1643  Edward Marshall 
 1643 - 1650  Cornelius Caroon 
 1654         Adrien Lampsius 
 1656 - 1658  Hubert de Beveren

Alternatively, you could use a definition list, but that'll change the appearance considerably:

1642 - 1643: Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650: Cornelius Caroon
1654: Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658: Hubert de Beveren

So none of these options are really optimal. Why the aversion towards tables? --David Iberri | Talk 18:24, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Tables aren't the most user friendly. (But Wiki format is much better than HTML) Interesting though I see the pre-formatted block on sort of a pale peach background but still annoying. I was afraid the non-breaking space thing might lack browser compatibility. Tables it is then. Rmhermen 21:01, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Strange Internal Link

When you click on the internal link (article about inertia) grams you will be directed to an article from the telivision serie charmed. I accidently runned into this when checking something, already changed that link to gram but what to do about this ??

What you saw in inertia was a link to grams, which was redirecting to the television series charmed. I've changed it to redirect to gram instead. I also edited your edit from "[[gram]]" to "[[gram]]s" which links directly to "gram" but displays as "grams" since the plural form is what's needed here. Does this answer your question? Paul August ☎ 17:43, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Signature block

How does one edit their signature block on wikipedia? I've seen a lot of custom sigs but I can't find any information anywhere about how to go about editing your sig! Is there somewhere I missed that tells users how to do this (or at least informs them that it's restricted to admins if that's the case)? If there is, it's rediculously hard to find... -Lommer 19:33, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You can specify your nickname in the "user data" tab Special:Preferences. And it's not just limited to admins, anyone can do this (except anons). See Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages#Customizing your signature for more. --David Iberri | Talk 19:45, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Bah, I feel stupid now for not finding that earlier! It's so obvious! -Lommer 20:42, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deleting former versions of images

Is it possible to have old versions of images deleted? I'm asking because Image:Mvm1-machine.jpg has 5 versions of the file there, 2 of which are the same, when only 1 (the current version) is needed. Somebody in the WWW 06:36, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

With images, versions exist to show the history of the upload process. There's no need to delete them, as only the last version will ever be used. Mgm|^(talk) 09:03, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

The extra revisions do take up space on the servers. Given that there's only two identical versions and the image is small, I wouldn't bother. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about copyright issues - the first few versions were taken from a website without permission (the last 2 were taken by me and released under the GFDL). Somebody in the WWW 04:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If yo see a "Del" link next to the version hit it and it will delete the version. Before i was an admin nonadmins were able to delete old versions. I don't know if this is still true though. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 11:09, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Isn't the case now - tells me I have to be an admin to do that. Somebody in the WWW 09:34, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Japanese characters

In many entries highlighting non-english languages, the characters of those languages show up as boxes (as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Go-Komatsu_of_Japan).

How can I turn those on so that the characters appear? I have already gone to Tools->Options->Languages and loaded up Japanese, but there was no change.

Thanks.

If you're using IE, you might try the instructions given in a recent help desk question. Or you might just get a real browser ;-) --David Iberri | Talk 00:34, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

I absolutely second the real browser option, but I don't think this is a browser related problem...your OS (I'm taking a wild guess that it is Windows) has to be configured to display Japanese characters in order to give the browser a chance to display the correct characters. For Windows, go to Control Panel/Regional Settings and make sure that 1) the "East Asian Languages" option is checked under "languages" and 2) all the relevant languages are checked under "advanced". -- Ferkelparade π 00:42, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Old contributions

I made several contributions before I got an account here. Is there any way I can add them to my current contributions list? -Purplefeltangel 16:43, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely! See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. --David Iberri | Talk 17:10, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Although, don't hold your breath, as this is not treated as very high priority by the developers who have to carry it out, so there's rather a backlog. - IMSoP 19:02, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Password Problems

So, I came to the website and wasn't logged in, so I went to log in, typed in my password, and accidentally clicked "send me a new password." I wondered what I had done for a second then went back and logged in with my new password. However, I can't access my watchlist and I want to be able to change it back to my old password. How can I do this? And I'm logged in, but yet it won't let me access my watchlist. Why is this? bob rulz 21:47, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Huh...the situation seems to have resolved itself...now I'm really confused. I just typed in my old password and it logged me right back in...and now everything's fine. bob rulz 21:48, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Lost password

I had my computer stolen. Among the other things I have lost is all the passwords I used online, including the one to Wikipedia. Who should I contact to find out my password so I can log in under my account name and stop posting anonymously? 24.44.35.70 00:32, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC) (aka MK)

If you set an email address in your preferences you don't need to contact anyone. Just hit the "mail me a new password" button on the login screen. This assumes you remember the password to your email account. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:58, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, my computer was stolen when I was moving. As a result of this same move, I no longer use the same ISP and have a different email address than the one I started the account under. 24.44.35.70 06:14, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ugh, that makes things really bad. I'll try looking into it. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:28, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A developer might be persuaded that 24.44.35.70 was MK if 24.44.35.70 could show knowledge of stuff that MK would know but that others would be unlikely to know. The only think I can think of right now is MK's former IP address(es), which a developer can check against the actual accesses MK made while still signed in (assuming the logs are still retained - the sooner you ask the developers, the more likely it will be that the log still exists). Now, to find out what your IP address was at some time in the past, get some of the people to whom you sent an email (while still using the MK account) to open one of your emails and "view mail headers" or "view extended info" or whatever their mail client calls it. Find the last "received" line, which will look something like this:

Received: from blah45.badoldisp.com ([45.22.11.22] helo=[45.22.11.22])

This tells you that you were (probably) connected as IP address 45.22.11.22 at that time (won't work if you use gmail, hotmail, etc., and probably not AOL and the like). Do this a few times (for diffrent days) and you can then say to a developer "on Nov 10th I was 45.22.11.22, on November 15th I was 45.22.12.03, ...". This may or may not work, depending on the architecture of your ISP - proxy servers and other things may well mess things up.

It's quite possible, however, that either the logs will be lost or that a developer will not want to do the nasty task of trawling through giant logs. Hey, I seem to remember Tim proposing a feature whereby mediawiki would store the editor's IP for each revision, but I don't know if it was ever implemented.

Or you could just bite the bullet and start a new account (MKmk2, perhaps);( -- John Fader 18:40, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Starting a new account is the solution I'll probably end up following. It'll be easy enough to simply transfer the info from my original userpage to the new one. I was just hoping to avoid it. 24.44.35.70 04:10, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What links here ?

I'm confused about how the link What links here works. For example; if you select it from User talk: IMSoP it will list about 8 or so links although the page contains many more links than the ones listed. Please explain for the new guy. Thanks, [[User:Hydnjo| Hydnjo\^talk]] 02:22, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"What links here" means all pages that have links to that page, not pages linked from that page. HTH, Meelar (talk) 02:24, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Oops! Thanks User:Meelar. I seem to have had it backwards in my mind. I now understand the contents of that link on my User:hydnjo page. I was totally confused. I don't know how you folks pick up on questions so quickly but the hand-holding you do is amazing.

You're not the first one to make that mistake, so we've seen this confusion before. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:24, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Rename page

I initially uploaded Image:Hydnjo.JPG not realizing the case sensitvity of the upload tag. I've tried to rename it to Image:Hydnjo.jpg and/or Image:hydnjo.jpg but have been refused permission to do so. I don't know why. Help and thanks [[User:Hydnjo| Hydnjo\^talk]] 04:44, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't think image moves are supported (yet?) by the Wikipedia software. For the desired effect, just re-upload the image with the new name you want, then ask an admin (such as myself) to delete the old one for you. --David Iberri | Talk 07:30, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Embedding credits & license info in an image

From What to include on an image description page--

Note that this information should generally not go in articles that use the image, and not embedded as graphical text on the image itself. However, the image file may contain embedded comments - in particular a copyright notice and statement of license under the GFDL would be good to include.

What do they mean by "not embedded as graphical text on the image itself" but then saying the "image FILE may contain embedded comments such as a copyright notice"? When I request a photo from someone, do I ask them to not give me one with the photo credit embedded in the image in tiny text like one of them has done or is that ok? I can't tell from the above guidelines. This also impacts on any photo I take myself and whether I would choose to type in photo credits into the image via photoshop in tiny writing. I can't tell if you guys are saying this is not to be done or don't mind. It mainly affects what third parties do with the image since obviously the wikipedia image description page for any photo is going to have all the permissions and credits typed in it but third parties might not. I'd like an admin's opinion on this, please. I guess I don't know what "embedded comments" are. Emerman 16:32, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What you can't do is put the copyright in tiny text in the image itself. What you can do is exploit the ability of many image formats to store additional non-image data. This allows for the copyright to be embedded in the image file, but not in the actual image. This feature is used by many digital cameras to store EXIF information.

If I remember correctly, JFIF (JPEG) in particular allows the use of IPTC metadata, which includes a copyright field. The trick is finding an image editor that will actually work with the non-image data. I'm almost certain Photoshop can handle the job. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:22, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image metadata seems to be an utter dog's breakfast. I found three incompatible formats:

Photoshop 7 (File->FileInfo)
Photoshop appears to save some kind of IPTC, which it and imagemagick can read. Neither of the other two can see it at all.
Windows Explorer (<file's_contextmenu>->properties->summary->simple)
windows explorer seems to have its own format which none of the other tools can see. Photoshop will sometimes keep explorer's info, but sometimes will zap it.
Paintshop Pro 6
Paintshop has its own format, but can't read any of the above, and will happily annihilate all the metadata (including the EXIF) other than its own (even if all one did in paintshop is write the paintshop metadata).

imagemagick's "identify -verbose" command shows EXIF and IPTC blocks, if present in an image. I don't think it has any way of changing either.

(Gimp, btw, doesn't seem to have an option to view or edit metadata, but I'm not a gimp regular, so I could easily have overlooked an option somewhere).

Moreoever, the trouble with relying on image metadata in wikipedia is that other folks will (quite reasonably) alter your image (rescale, some photoshop improvements, or maybe run it through a palette- or compression-optimiser, to make the file smaller). Most of these operations will lose the metadata. So, in summary, you can't rely on metadata. -- John Fader 19:14, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Misspellings in Search Queries

Why not have a feature which will give correct spelling suggestions when a query is misspelled? -Isaiah R, 12/18/04

how do i make a request on a new subject

If the question is about how Wikipedia works, post it here. If the question is about a subject not directly related to how to write and edit articles here, put it at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. For example, the question about terpenoids goes to the Reference desk, and I already moved it for you. There might be an answer waiting for you already. You are most welcome. alteripse 22:43, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Character code

Where can I find the character codes that (for example} translate: "&#9786 ;" (without the space after the 6) to "☺". Thanks to Ливай | ☺]] for that one. [[User:Hydnjo| Hydnjo\^talk 23:46, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oops-never mind, I forgot to convert Unicode from Hex to Dec. Hydnjo ☜^{Talk to Joe}

11:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Shortcut

[[:|WP:HD]]

NOTE: This is not a page about specific factual questions (e.g., Who was the first Pope?). For that type of question, see Wikipedia:Reference desk.

If your question has already been covered in one of the help pages, you could get the answer you're looking for more quickly by checking the topical index.

**View old Archives**
Archive 1	Prior to June 2, 2004
Archive 2	June 2, 2004 - June 18, 2004
Archive 3	June 18, 2004 - July 2, 2004
Archive 4	July 2, 2004 - July 18, 2004
Archive 5	July 19, 2004 - July 31, 2004
Archive 6	August 1, 2004 - August 18, 2004
Archive 7	August 18, 2004 - September 5, 2004
Archive 8	September 5, 2004 - September 25th, 2004
Archive 9	September 26, 2004 - October 15th, 2004
Archive 10	October 16, 2004 - November 6th, 2004

Post a question here!

Is there an RSS feed for the main page?

I have looked for one and can't find it.

Every day I get news, history and general knowledge from the wp main page. Would love to have all the factual articles (not meta content) available in an RSS feed.

Apologies if it already exists and I've missed it.

Try http://jeays.net/rss.htm for some screen-scraping prototypes. I also worked up a My Watchlist RSS script, but ultimately I decided this wasn't all that useful. --Chinasaur 06:48, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the response, Chinasaur. Anything "official" afoot in this area?

It's not RSS, but you might be interested in Today's featured article by email. —AlanBarrett 15:15, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Votes For Deletion

God. EVERY time I try to nominate something for deletion I manage to screw it up, and I DONT understand why because I follow the instructions to a t. I have no idea how to fix my recent nominations (all Spongebob related.) Could someone go there and fix the, and then leave me a message to tell me what I did wrong? Pacian 18:55, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actor photographs

Can a case for fair use be made for the use of portfolio mugshots of an actor? Could I simply use a still from a movie that's spread amongst the press? Or should I simply wait for a reply from the actor in question? I'd like the pic to be added fairly quickly, but I don't want to break copyright laws. Any comments welcome. Mgm|^(talk) 22:42, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

If you have a publicity shot that is typically given to the press, it should be fine. They are meant to be circulated and are not copyrighted because if they were, every publication that wanted to use them would have to call the publicist. Incidentally, I would think your best bet would be to get in touch with the actor's publicist. They typically send out autographed photos to anyone who writes in. Skyler 1534 20:47, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

No case for fair use could be made if the picture is under copyright. Skyler 1534 20:47, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Being under copyright is a necessary precondition for fair use, as fair use is a limitation on the enforcement of copyright. — mendel ☎ 05:03, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

All photographs are under copyright, yes even publicity stills. The copyright holder should be contacted and his permission obtained before submitting to Wikipedia. --Minority Report (entropy rim riot) 21:59, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hyperlinks

How do you not show links within articles? The whole page is filled with links and they are distracting.

There is an option in your user Preferences under "Misc settings" that lets you turn off underlining links. I find that that helps readability. Martyman 02:15, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What article is it you aree talking about? Maybe it needs some de-wikifying.... Mgm|^(talk) 11:44, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

You can also add this to your user CSS. User:YOUR_USERNAME/monobook.css

a {text-decoration: none;
   color: inherit;}

—MikeX (Talk) 04:12, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

But, do be aware that if the number of links is not excessive, different coloured links will help with readability. MikeX (Talk) 04:13, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

How do I add a page to a category?

I created an article last night: Toasty. I'd like to add this page to Category:Computer and video game terminology, because that is a term that has been used since the 1990's. But I don't know where to start or request such a thing.

What should I do?

Place a link to [[Category:Computer and video game terminology]] at the bottom of the article, see Wikipedia:Categorization for more information. -- Ferkelparade π 18:07, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

- Thanks! -- Kitsune Sniper

I am getting a message to "stop adding nonsense," but I have not done anything!

Why do I occasionally get this message (look between lines of dashes):

User talk:198.81.26.46 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has now been removed. Please use Wikipedia:Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. Hadal 03:20, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Please stop adding nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.

I have done nothing on this site, except to find myself constantly browsing around on it with admiration! Some weeks ago, I did start one of the "learn to edit" pages, but did nothing with it.

At one point in my session today, all the characters on each page started displaying as small squares. I reloaded the site, and the problem stopped.

I am not trying to hurt the site, really. I can only be accused of spending too much time while I should be doing laundry!!

Thanks for your note -- the comments you're talking about almost certainly aren't aimed at you. If you look again at that talk page, you'll notice a note in italics that many Internet users share IP addresses (i.e., when you dial up to the Internet, you're accessing through a server that others also use for access). Unless you sign up for a Username, the site only sees you as an IP address. Apparently, occasionally you connect to the Internet through an IP that has been used by someone else for vandalism -- the warnings are for them. Sorry for the inconvenience -- I'm afraid the only thing to do is either ignore the warnings or else get a username (which is free and quick -- click the link at the top of the page that says "Create an account") so that you'll only see messages intended for you. Good luck, and sorry for the confusion! Jwrosenzweig 20:26, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fix redundant capilisation in a title

I created Estate Agent (United Kingdom) from a sketchy page on deadpages called Estate agents. As you can see I inadvertently capped the second word. I tried moving it to a page with the capping fixed but to no avail. Is there a simple way to do this (ie am I being thick) or would someone be kind enough to do the honours? Icundell 01:20, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't know what the problem was, but I tried moving it and it worked. It's now at Estate agent (United Kingdom). - MattTM | talk 05:10, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Matt (for the record, it kept teling me the page already existed) Icundell 09:55, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Prejudicial report on current court-case?

Hi. I'm a new user and haven't yet mastered all the policies but found this new page Tammy Imre which seems to concern a ongoing court-case and is quite possibly prejudicial. Not especially notable, I wouldn't have thought (althought it's sad to think that's the case...) Thought the safest thing might be to flag it up and move on. Cheers, Mattley 13:26, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion that page is a news article, not an encyclopedia article. I have listed it for deletion; its entry is here. Isomorphic 15:41, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question

I don't usually do images, but I have a drawing I want to upload. The drawing is originally from a book published in Austria in 1918. The copyright should have expired by now, right? Isomorphic 15:43, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Under U.S. federal law, which I believe is extended to other friendly countries by a number of treaties, a copyright does not expire until 70 years following the author's death. If the publisher is still around, I would contact them for permission. If not, I would say it's pretty safe as being pretty darn close to "public domain", but it's not clear-cut. I'm finding more and more that copyright law is really never clear-cut, so err on the side of caution. Personally, though, I would say you are pretty safe. Skyler 1534 16:50, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

I thought anything published in the U.S. before 1922 was in the public domain and that the new rules apply to subsequent works. PedanticallySpeaking 17:22, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

You're right. Works published prior to 1923 outside of the U.S. are now public domain. Thanks, PS. Isomorphic, you are good to go. Skyler 1534 17:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Image uploaded and added to Zvartnots. Isomorphic 22:45, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Indirectly related categories

What, if any, is the one true way to link to categories that do not properly fall within the scope of a category, but I consider it rather likely that people will want (ie. wrong from the database POV, right from the navigational concenience POV)?

Example: In Category:Proof_theory, I'd quite like something along the lines of:

Possibly you wish to find material from one of the indirectly related categories:
Category : Heuristic | Proofs

to appear just between the catmore template and the main listing of category contents ---- Charles Stewart 09:24, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To refer to a category, all you need to do is put a colon in from of the name in the wikilink, for instance [[:Category:Proofs]] displayed as Category:Proofs. Noisy | Talk 14:45, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, this solves the technical part of my question. As to the other part, is this idea of a template for indirectly related categories something that sounds reasonable stylewise? ---- Charles Stewart 16:04, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why not - go ahead and make one, and we'll see if people use it. You should probably mention it on Wikipedia:Catagorization, the Village Pump and other places when you do, so people will know to use it. JesseW

editing issue

I've managed to screw up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexology_chart The links to Sciatic and Appendix both reference the edit page, not the actual Wiki entry. Is this some bug related to the use of tables, or is there something else I'm missing?

Found the problem - The actual wiki entry didn't exist.

category question

I tried to create a category Category:Archives in the United Kingdom. If you follow it, it lists the articles, but also says that the category doesn't exist. I couldn't locate what I've done wrong at Wikipedia:Categorization. Mattley 11:59, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, that link won't work. I'm more confused than ever now. But you can get there via Modern Records Centre, which is in the phantom category. Mattley 12:09, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(I've corrected the link. Add :Category to go to the category itelf. Noisy | Talk 14:42, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC))

I don't think you've done anything wrong. The Category exists, but hasn't got a page to go with it. The page is really just to explain what the category is, and to link to other categories that this Category is a sub-category of. You don't neccesarily need an explanation, but in any case put the Category in at least one other category, as you would articles. You can edit the page as you would any other article.Silverfish 14:24, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There: that's looking a bit more healthy. You now need to see if there are any other similar articles that can become subcategories of Category:Archives by country! Noisy | Talk 14:42, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Making a contribution marked with my IP to be marked with my username

I started an Article about my project New Millennium Orchestra, but I forgot to log in. Can I make it to my username instead of showing my IP?

Thanks!

(Question moved from top of page, notice left on User talk:Rockslave.)

See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. Note that these requests may take a long time to be filled. —Triskaideka 16:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Resolving NPOV disputes

Take a look at George W. Bush. User:Patriotic is making edits that people widely disagree with, and I've been trying to explain NPOV to both him and myself. My question is not about this specific case, but more general: is there any place I can go to to ask people to help? It's nice that Patriotic and I are talking, but one of us will go away sooner or later, and I'd like to keep the fire burning (and not have everything degenerate into edit wars again). This is the first time I'm in a dispute like this, so pointers are appreciated. JRM 17:28, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Maurreen 17:47, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's exactly the link I was looking for. Thanks. JRM 17:52, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Wikipedia reverts to "old" format when I login

Hi, sometime in the last few months, Wikipedia got a wonderful new look/format, with a nice modern sans-serif font, and with the very useful tabs along the top edge of the article, etc. (was this the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.3?) Anyway, Wikipedia stays "modern" only while I'm anonymous; when I login, Wikipedia reverts to the old/less-attractive format, with the Times/NewRoman font (?) etc. - ugh! I have searched around the helpdesk, FAQ, etc., to no avail. Oh yeah, this may be significant: I use the Opera browser. Help? Harris7 19:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Could it be that your skin is set to something other than the default? Try going to Special:Preferences and changing your Skin to "MonoBook". If you've already tried that, I'm not sure what to suggest. As long as you're successfully logged in, as far as I can tell, the server should be giving you the skin of your choice, so I don't think it could be a problem with cookies or JavaScript. I don't know, though, maybe it could—what version of Opera? Tried upgrading to the latest? —Triskaideka 20:19, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bingo! My skin preference was not set to anything; setting it to MonoBook did the trick. Thanks Triskaideka!!! Harris7 20:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chemical Notation

I see there is a section in the help desk already on creating a chemical structural formula using ASCII art, but in a lot of the articles on various chemical groups people have used pictures, which look as if they have been created by a program. Is there a program somewhere that does this, or are these just pictures that have been nabbed from elsewhere?

Akchizar 04:47, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, there is ChemDraw, but that program is by no means free...I mostly nab them from other places, too little creativity in the pictures to be copyrighted. I doubt you can copyright a picture of a chemical structure. Mgm|^(talk) 09:15, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Looks like I'll stick to using ACII art then. Akchizar 03:43, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm happy to create pictures for people. Try putting the ascii art (or a really clear description of what you want)on a page User:Theresa Knott/requests for drawings, and I'll give it a go (I don't have ChemDraw, but I reckon I could do simple 2D diagrams easily enough) Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 22:19, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

red links in featured articles

I was considering suggesting an article for featured status, and wondered if the presence of links to as yet non-existent articles is considered a no-no in featured articles. Apologies if this is not the right place for this question, but the "Featured article candidates" didn't seem the place for a question about general principles.

Harry 13:34, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Generally, the best place to start a discussion on something is wherever it will be seen by the people who would be interested in the discussion. In this case that would be either Wikipedia talk: Featured article candidates or Wikipedia talk:Featured articles. Really general discussion can sometimes go to the Village pump. The Help Desk rarely spawns much discussion; most topics here are simply a question with a single response. Isomorphic 18:48, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, but I wasn't aiming to start a discussion. I imagined this would be very much in the "simply a question with a single response" category. Perhaps there's no hard and fast rule about this which is why I haven't found one. Harry 11:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would think that if the red-linked article is to an article that Wikipedia should have (at some point in the future) then this is completely fine. — Matt 11:46, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Red links aren't a bar to a featured article, but you sometimes see people complaining about. They can be an indication that an article isn't sufficiently developed - anyone with the knowledge and background to write a featured article can usually at least write appropriate stubs for most of the related red links. Wikipedia:Peer Review is intended as a stepping stone for an article you are grooming for 'Featured article candidates'. In particular you could ask for input on red links there. -- Solipsist 11:56, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Formatting tables

In wikicode tables (the whole {|, |-, |} thing), is there any way to (1) control the width of the columns and (2) to specify the horizontal alignment of the contents of certain data cells? — Matt 18:02, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:How to use tables#Setting your column widths, and elsewhere on that page it shows how to use 'align=center' (where the alternatives are left and right). (Note the AE spelling of 'center'.) More table help can be found at m:Help:Table. Noisy | Talk 22:28, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

help with sorting out kinnaur copyvio

I'd like some advice about sorting out the Kinnaur copyvio. I've checked and sufficient amounts of the article are copied word for word that I believe that it's a coypvio. At the same time, those who wrote it are not being cooperative (they delete requests for clarification from their talk pages e.g.[1]) , so I can't expect their help.

The biggest problem is that there is a reasonable amount of original material, but that the edit which introduced the first copyright violation is quite old [2]. I'm a bit unhappy to revert to the previous version to that. I may try going through the article and editing out apparently copyright material, but without cooperation it is very difficult to tell what is what.

Any suggestions?? Mozzerati 20:27, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

no instructions, no clue

This is about the most confusing site I've been on. I simply want to vote against deleting the Election 2004 discrepancies article but there is absolutely no clue as to how to do that, as invited at the top of the page. It is a valuable collection of links and information and should be retained. I guess one must be a computer programmer to post on this site.

There are a lot of instructions. (See Help:Contents, Wikipedia:How to edit a page, etc.) However, there may not be instructions on doing what you are trying to do. One reason for this is that generally voting on deletion is only done after an editor has some expierence, so basic guides have not been felt to be necessary. VfD(Votes for Deletion) is a major point of controversy for Wikipedia. Since all text(unless it's a copyvio(copyright violation)) is under the GFDL(GNU Free Documentation License) if you are concerned that the text of the Election 2004 discrepancies article will be lost, I suggest you copy it to another Wiki. There are many that specifically request articles that may be deleted from Wikipedia. Among them include(off the top of my head), Infopedia, Disinfopedia, etc. As long as the text is saved, the article can be put back if necessary. JesseW 01:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you want to add your vote to the debate, simply follow the link at the top of the article to Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/2004_U.S._Election_controversies_and_irregularities, edit the page and add your vote. Voting is so easy it doesn't need instructions. Just vote 'delete or keep and give your reasons. Mgm|^(talk) 13:15, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Dundas Square

I've run across an article in Wikipedia that reads like it was written by a marketing hack for a Toronto landmark called Dundas Square. Is there a protocol for vetting this kind of information...this is beyond a rewrite. It really does need to be examined and done away with, IMHO.

I've given the article Dundas Square a quick read and it seems to provide proper info on the square. Can you give specific examples of things you see as marketing? Mgm|^(talk) 13:03, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Diebold Message

Is anyone else seeing the message "Breaking news: Walden o'Dell, CIO of Diebold arrested for rigging the Ohio election results! Kerry recognized as the rightful Present Of the United States!" It was at the top of WP:RD but when I went to edit it out it wasn't visible in the source code, then it vanished from the display. Likewise, I found it atop the Wikipedia:Cleanup but it wasn't in the source code. How could something show up on a page and not be in the source code? Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 16:03, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

By being in the wikisource to a template the page included. The vandalism was to Template:Shortcut, and can be seen in its history. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:36, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to encourage someone to check a fact?

Twice yesterday, this newbie noticed facts in articles that may or may not be correct. I can't find out the correct version myself, but someone should. What's the correct way of dealing with things like that?

Specifically, the article on Camille Pissarro claims both that he died on 12th November and 13th November. And the article on Ellis Island used to say that it closed on 12th November but now says that it closed on 29th November. In both cases, I tried to find out the correct date from other web pages, but I found both versions were stated about equally commonly.

I tried posting on the articles' talk pages, but I'm not sure if anyone reads those. Is that the correct place, or is there another location where I could usefully post such questions?

Thanks for any guidance. Stephen Turner 14:38, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The talk page is indeed the first place to start as anyone who has the underlying article on his watch list will be alerted to the presence of additions to the talk page. Be sure that you give it an edit summary that will prompt someone to read your query, something like: "Two Contradictory Death Dates in Article" or some such thing. Another good place for this is our reference desk at WP:RD, which is seen by a lot of people who know about many topics. I'm copying your question there now. Glad to have you aboard. PedanticallySpeaking 15:10, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful answer, PedanticallySpeaking, and for posting the specifc questions to WP:RD. I'll keep an eye out there for any answers. Stephen Turner 18:15, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How do I handle transient information??

What do I do with information that is likely to change in the future? For example, in the Chartered financial analyst article, I wanted to mention how many there were, and wrote "as of 2004...". For another example, the article on Barak Obama starts: "Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician, and U.S. Senator-elect from Illinois." which is clearly only applicable for the moment (as he will soon be a senator, not a senator-elect.

Is there some convention for this sort of thing? I did not see anything on point in the style guide page.

As of is indeed the proper way to handle it., but if at all possible try to avoid time-sensitive sentence constructions alltogether. In the senator-elect example you could mention when the elections he's standing for are. That way future readers will know whether he's still an elect or actually a senator. Also, try to update as soon as new info is available. Mgm|^(talk) 15:43, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Hide the blue question mark?

I am very new to Wikipedia. I am trying to post some literal code. Parts of it, for example the text:

textureMap ":SubFolder1:SubFolder2:MyTexture.jpg"

Keep getting a blue "?" inserted in the text (treated as a WikiWord). Is there any way to supress this?

Also does Wikipedia have an equivalent to the HTML pre (pre-formated) tag, or is there a way to force the use of raw HTML?

The site I am trying to post to is not the main Wikipedia site, but seems to be some sort of sub branch, and does not use the formating bar. the site is:

http://www.poserpros.com/wiki/PublicWiki/PublicWiki

That site isn't a sub-branch of Wikipedia — rather, it's an unrelated website running similar wiki software, so things will work differently in both places, especially since Wikipedia differs from the programming-wiki standard in a few important respects. In this case, the two important differences are that on conventional wikis, links to other articles appear in CamelCase, and links to articles that don't exist get the blue question mark you're seeing.

As for the "how to avoid", the help links at the bottom of the pages on that wiki are the best place to start. Their TextFormattingRules suggest that [= this syntax =] is what you're after (under the "Escape sequence" heading there).

Of course, since it's an unrelated website running different software, you'll probably find more help on that wiki should you encounter further problems there. — mendel ☎ 05:27, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

2 vandals on my IP. Help!

(Mirrored on Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress)
User:Bobberton and User:Kuetipo use one of the same IP addresses as I do. This is because we live in the same house, because we are related. I seem to be the only one given to constructive edits, and I am fairly sure the other two are eventually going to get banned based on my conversations with them IRL. When they do get banned, I do not want to go with them, so I would like to know if there is any way to distance myself from them so that the IP we share is not banned, or that I am in some way still able to access the Wiki. Thank you! Suntiger 23:59, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, registered users can have their name banned so other people with the same IP still have access. Maybe an admin on the vandalism in progress page can help you with that. Mgm|^(talk) 19:09, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Creating a User Page - description about onesself

As a newly registered user, how should I create a user page? If I just click on edit, whilst at my account it says on the edit page:

Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy).

So this cannot be right, becasue I am not allowed to create an article about myself on that page. So is there some special way of setting up these user pages? And when it is set up, how do I get it to appear upon the structured lists (i.e. alphabetical, country) - is this a separate edit of some kind, or are they linked in some way? Zylek (sig added by User:Ambarish)

The user page isn't an article — articles are in the main namespace, and user pages are in the User: namespace. So you can happily create User:Zylek, but you shouldn't create Zylek about yourself. — mendel ☎ 01:17, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

To create your user page, click on your user name in the top right corner of the screen, next to the human head icon. That will take you to a new page where you can edit and add a description of yourself. To add yourself to the various lists, just go to list pages; find the proper part(i.e. what country you're from) and type ~~~(while logged in); this will create a link back to your User page(which you just created by following my instructions above). JesseW 02:04, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Text of language on interlanguage links

Per Template talk:Wikipedialang#Sanskrit, I'd like to change the text that appears for the interlanguage link to the Sanskrit wikipedia from संस्कृत to संस्कृतम्. I've changed the text on Template:Wikipedialang, but I suspect something more needs to be done. What? Ambarish | Talk 00:44, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Handling of Dates in Articles

What is the protcol for handling years mentioned in articles. For example, if I write in a biographical article that someone "... did something in 1965 and did something else in 1966..." is it supposed to be "[1965]" and "[1966]"? I ask only because I notice other contributors putting in the [1965] syntax and I wonder if I am missing something.

Personally, I don't see much value to linking to the 1965 page, but does the link serve any other useful purpose?

Morris 02:33, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Well, for dates it allows users to pick a date format. Check the help on Preferences for more info(I think). And, it should be [[1966]], not [1966]. Single brackets are external(full url) links, double brackets are internal(various shortcut) links. JesseW 02:48, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Linking a date like April 12, 2003 like this: [[April 12]], [[2003]] allows for dates to be formatted according to a user's preferences. Loose years should only be linked if whatever someone did had a certain impact on a country, sport, etc. Mgm|^(talk) 10:20, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

How does the size of wikipedia compares with other encyclopedias?

I know that it would not measure quality, but I was wondering if anyone had any rough measure in terms of either number of articles, or number of megabytes, etc. Morris 02:33, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Size comparisons. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cache problem on main page

I've updated Did you know and formatted some Main Page sections to wrap text around pictures and make sure the selected anniversaries stay within the table. After I purge the cache it looks fine, but when I went to look at another site and came back, I got the old version. All my changes are still intact when I look at the separate templates, what happened? Mgm|^(talk) 10:17, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Edit: I never had cache problems with this machine before. Now cleared my cache, no problems so far. Mgm|^(talk) 12:01, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Against Deletion

An article I wrote is on the votes for deletion and I want to challenge the call for deletion. How do I effectively do that? Please provide specifics, thank you.

The best way to do this, is providing others with reasons why it is not against wikipedia policy to include it. If it's a small article, maybe you could incorporate the info in a larger article. What article are you talking about? I might be able to be more specific if I know. Mgm|^(talk) 10:45, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

If you happen to be talking about Tard Blog: Websites should have a certain popularity before being included. The Alexa ranking mentioned on the deletion page shows it's not popular enough. Mgm|^(talk) 10:50, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Main Page Tables

The left table on the main page is pushing the right one away. Can someone fix it? I can't find the problem. Mgm|^(talk) 12:42, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

That's easy enough: the left table is set at width 55%, the right one at 45%, hence the difference. (I'm assuming you're referring to that, I can't find any other problem in either Firefox or IE). AFAIK, only an admin can fix that, if indeed it's something that should be fixed. JRM 12:58, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

I guess it's a problem combining 800x600 screen size with an odd Internet Explorer on a Mac. The right table is no more than 30% of the screen in what I saw. Mgm|^(talk) 13:16, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Timestamps

How do people generate the nice, neat "00:29, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)" style dates? Is there a tag you can use to automate timestamps to discussion entries?

If there isn't, it'd kick ass if there could be one. If there is, I'd have been better able to find it if wikipedia:time, date, and/or timestamp had redirected to mention of it. [User:MrZaius]

( test: 8 November 2024 10:36, 8 November 2024 UTC [refresh] 20241108103616

The current date and time in Help desk is Friday 8 November, 10:36.^[1]

Hmm... that's weird. the DATE template exists, but not one for the whole unix time? Surely I'm missing something. )

23:48:56, Venezuala/Houston/Chicago/Evansville-time

Use ~~~~ to generate the timestamp and name for discussions. - MattTM | talk 05:56, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Timestamp now... (It really should have a better link for more information; someone please fix this.) JesseW 07:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category errors & NPOV?

There is an article under the category Ethnic Groups: African labeled "Bantu". However, there is no such ethnic group as "Bantu". "Bantu" is a term created by convention among European linguists, and dozens or hundreds of different ethnic groups speak languages categorized as "Bantu" linguistically. The Bantu-speaking peoples collectively share none of the features one might use to define an ethnic group; the ethnic groups who speak Bantu-languages vary widely along all of those features.

This is an issue of definition. It is comparable to writing Ethnic Groups: European: Indo-European. Indo-European isn't an ethnic group, and neither is Bantu.

Yet obviously someone has thought otherwise. I understand the basic idea of NPOV and don't have a problem about working with it within an article.

However, to have something that seems to me to be a factual, definitional error built into the very organizing structure of the information seems to pose a different sort of problem.

Is there a convention for dealing with this sort of difference of perception? How much leeway is there? I assume an article Animals: Fishes: Whales would not be permitted to remain, except perhaps to point out that this is a somewhat common error. Is that assumption correct?

Ndlovu

I looked at the entry in question. It looks like the article itself makes it clear that "Bantu" is a linguistic and (to a lesser extent) cultural term, not an ethnicity. I suspect that it was categorized that way because even though Bantu is not an ethnicity, the ethnic groups who speak Bantu are not represented in individual articles yet. It's a way to make what information we do have on those peoples easier to find.

However, if you feel that having the "ethnic group" label is misleading readers, it's easy to recategorize it. You simply edit the article and add or remove category tags. In this case, you would remove the tag [[Category:Ethnic groups]] from the article code. Isomorphic 16:03, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moving Page Help

Help! Someone moved Bosnian language to the less common, more POV name Bosniak language. I tried to undo the move, but moves didn't work the way I though they would. See talk:bosniak language#naming for more info. Can someone help? - Key45 18:19, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your move would have worked if you had left the redirect in place, because if a redirect created by a previous move is left alone, then a move back will work. As it is, you will have to get the Bosnian language redirect deleted by an admin, by listing it on Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. Noisy | Talk 20:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Numerous questions

I have put a number of questions in my User page because they seem too long to foul up your Help desk with. The questions are listed in a part of the user page with a header shown as "November 16, 2004 -- questions to all." I'm really starting to become concerned I should remove my edits and stubs because I'm not sure I'm conforming to some of the standards listed in the citation citing discussion, verifiability, and perfect page discussions, though I'm giving accurate info. Also concerned about the "original research" and "neologisms" discussions I just read. I wonder if someone could answer in my user talk page or if I need to write a long list of questions here? I'd have uploaded a photo or two by now also but I found the copyright discussion too hard to understand. For instance, if I am directly given a photo image by the photographer, who only asks that I put "copyright" and his name on it but approves it to be used, is that not good enough? I don't really understand how to upload images. I don't understand how to make a new page for a historical figure with the same name as a currently existing page also. That issue has slowed me up some. Then if my information is directly from inquiring about birth/date/fact info from the person or their survivors, that might be thought "original research." I'm totally stymied at this point and fear I should remove my entries and edits. I have only been editing and writing about music figures in an area of my specialty in every case, except for a phrase or two related to an entry. Also, should I find a way to put my contributions list links into my user page so someone can go and tell review what I've done and tell me what I need to work on, my flaws? Bebop 20:23, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think most of my questions above are being answered at my user page, thanks. Bebop 16:31, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Spacing between paragraphs

I have discovered today with the Stax entry that someone felt the spacing I added between paragraphs to make them readable was superfluous and removed them. I find it very hard to read articles from a design standpoint if you don't properly space between paragraphs. The only way to do this is to hit Enter three times between paragraphs instead of twice. However, no entries besides the ones I've worked on do this. Therefore, regardless of what I think about the readability issue, I should go back and remove the spacing I added from all entries I've edited, correct? This is also a question in my user page. thanks, Bebop 20:25, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the same standard formatting should be used on all pages. Putting a single blank line between paragraphs makes the ... HTML tags that surround paragraphs work correctly. Putting an additional blank line adds an extra   tag, which is superfluous, at least from an HTML perspective.

If you don't like the amount of space between paragraphs, you can try editing your personal stylesheet (User:Bebop/monobook.css if you're using the default skin, Monobook) to your liking. Try adding this line:

p { margin: 1.5em 0em }

Make the number 1.5 smaller for less space between paragraphs, or larger for more. In order to see the results of your change, you'll need to follow the instructions on that page to clear your cache after you save the change.

Part of the reason you want to be consistent about style issues like the number of blank lines between paragraphs is so everybody can tweak their stylesheet as they prefer and achieve uniform results. If you insert those extra spaces manually, you're forcing a certain style on everyone. HTH—Triskaideka 21:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I have edited my stylesheet according to the above and am now going to renew the spacing on all entries I edited that way to be the one line space. At least I didn't edit anything only to do spacing and nothing else though. Bebop 21:35, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

edits

Is there a way to transfer only certain information from one article to another?

By hand, usually -- copy it out of one, paste it into the other, then remove it from the first. Unless I misunderstand what you mean — mendel ☎ 03:47, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Contents tab

I did a large bibliography section for Boris Vian a while back, and since I had to use different headers for poetry/dramatic works, Wikipedia automatically added a Contents tab right after the article text! I thought it looked very wrong, a CONTENTS tab AFTER the article, covering the bibliography section only.. is there a way to remove it? -- Jashiin 18:11, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Placement_of_the_Table_of_Contents_.28TOC.29. You can put the text string __NOTOC__ anywhere in the body of an article to suppress display of its table of contents.

Another option is to put a section heading close to the top of the article, so that the TOC shows up in a more sensible place. For example, in Boris Vian, you might start a new section called "Life and works" immediately after the first paragraph. Whether that's a better option than __NOTOC__ is a matter of personal opinion, I suppose. —Triskaideka 18:28, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks a lot!! I used the NOTOC option, since I'm planning on expanding the article and don't want to edit its header structure right now :) -- Jashiin 18:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I think having a proper header structure is far better: only a short introduction should be outside all headers in anything but the smallest article. And then, of course, people can actually make use of the ToC to access the other parts of the article. I'm going to do that now - you can, of course, revert, tweak, edit or whatever if you disagree with how I've done it, or because you're expanding and rearranging it in general. - IMSoP 18:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, yes, this looks better.. I think I'll leave it like that for a while, until I have a good cohesive text ready for the article. Thanks for your help! :) -- Jashiin 21:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Adding images to article

Help! I have this image of David Holmes (Dream Job Season 2 Winner) that I want to put into my article on him, but I don't know how to. Here's the link: [3]Mike Hackney 21:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia:Image use policy, Special:Upload, and Wikipedia:Extended image syntax for what to upload (beware copyrights), how to upload it, and what to do with it then, respectively. - IMSoP 22:04, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That image is copyright either ESPN or the guy whose name is on the image itself. Please don't upload it, we have enough images claiming to be fair use already. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:18, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Inappropriate links?

What is Wikipedia's official policy on inappropriate links?

Specifically, there is a page about an actor with an external link leading to his nude pictures. Is this allowed?

Whether a link to nude pictures of an actor is appropriate depends on the particular actor. You're going to have to actually tell us what article you're talking about if you want a specific response on whether the link belongs. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:23, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

And if you're going to keep the link, at least put in a warning. Mgm|^(talk) 08:21, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Templates and Categories

Is anyone here really good with Wikimedia templates? We're trying to think of a way to set up the {{delete}} template so that the template can contain the category tag but be sorted in the category list so that it is separate from all of the actual CSDs. I feel like there must be a way to manipulate the pipe trick and template parameters for this effect, but I don't have a lot of experience with templates. Look at my suggestion at Category talk:Candidates for speedy deletion#Cluttering and see if any of those ideas will work. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:59, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

You could use {{subst:delete}} to include the text from a template on the pages in question and manually delete the category. Mgm|^(talk) 08:18, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Search Question

I created a page, the Battle of Watling Street. In the search engine, it will only come up when I type in the exact pharse "Battle of Watling Street". Is there anyway to allow another search item to be linking to it? (e.g. by typing "battle of watling street" will bring the page up)

I'm not sure why the full text search isn't picking the article up under "Article title matches" when you search for "battle of watling street". I suppose it's possible that it was not indexed properly, but only a developer can know for sure. One workaround would be to create a redirect from Battle of watling street to Battle of Watling Street. --David Iberri | Talk 22:56, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

This is the same problem I posted about here a couple of weeks ago. Your search isn't finding the article because it would appear that the wikipedia search index is only getting updated on an occasional basis. Last time I was looking it took a month for my pages to show up in search. The reason the full article name is working is because you are using the "Go" funtion not the "Search" button. I would appreciate a comment from the developers as to whether this is the normal state of affairs. Martyman 23:03, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Are you perhaps thinking of the external search (choice of Google or Yahoo!) which is used when the "real" site search is disabled for performance reasons [which is all too often]? Being external search engines, those will only update when they periodically trawl this site along with billions of others; I can't imagine any reason for the internal search not to index pages as they are created/edited - unless, I suppose, the indexing is also disabled during busy periods... - IMSoP 18:53, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

disambiguating

I have just put up an entry for Robert Palmer (author/producer) to help sort out a conflict in other references, such as at the R. L. Burnside entry, to this Palmer being confused with the British singer by the same name. I have a couple of questions. First of all, there seem to be more than one way to do this disambiguating process. Some, as with Al Green (musician), involve making a disambiguation page and specifying what each person was known for. Obviously Al Green, the musician, is much better known than the politician mentioned on that page. Another place in the faqs here discusses just putting a notation on the top of the more famous individual's page and having the search lead straight to the best known individual. For some reason they chose to have a search of "Al Green" lead to a disambiguation page instead of to the musician. So for a search on "Robert Palmer," which method would you suggest be used to disambiguate? I feel it should go to a disambiguation page and have one that is Robert Palmer (British singer) and one that is Robert Palmer (author/producer) because both are famous. Would the problem be that there are too many already-existing links going to the british singer's current Robert Palmer page? I suppose I could try to make a project of looking all those up in a Google wikipedia search and correct them myself if someone was concerned about that. I am worried about how to complete this disambiguation correctly Bebop 23:23, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Like everything else in Wikipedia, disambiguating is done according to what each editor considers to be best practice -- and different editors write different guidelines, I'm afraid. We do TRY to be consistent and come to consensus on these things, but disambiguation is one of those things that really must be judged on each individual case. For the most part I support using a "disambiguation block" of one sentence or so at the top of the "most famous" person, but that's always subjective. I don't think the Al Green page was strictly necessary, but the creator was probably thinking ahead, since both "Al" and "Green" are very common names and there may be more Al Greens out there becoming notable as we speak. (Still, I prefer to deal with present realities -- it's very easy to change something to a disambiguation page in the future when it becomes necessary.) That said, I'm also the one who created disambiguation pages for John Taylor (33 entries!) and a few other common names...

In your case (and as one of the contributors to the current Robert Palmer page), I'd have no objection to moving it to Robert Palmer (British singer) and leaving a disamb page there -- although I'm not as familiar with the other Robert, he certainly seems equally notable to me. In my personal opinion, you might consider moving him to Robert Franklin Palmer, though; with such a multitude of talents, it seems cleaner to me, and it's easy enough to use a "piped link" such as [[Robert Franklin Palmer|Robert Palmer]] so that the middle name does not display in the linked text.

Already existing links are not an obstacle to moving or renaming a page, though they do create some work for the editor. (Accuracy is more important than ease!) Each page has a "What links here" link in the sidebar. If you move the existing RP, it would be your responsibility to use that link and go to each article that mentions RP, and fix the link in that article text so it pointed to [[Robert Palmer (British singer)|Robert Palmer]] instead of the new disambiguation page. You might even find a few more that should link to RFP as well!

Have I rambled on enough....? Catherine\^talk 00:23, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

He was never known by anyone but his mother by his full name, I hope no one tries to change it to "Robert Franklin Palmer." He was always known as "Robert Palmer," as that was his byline and his production/musician/author name. I don't see anyone wishing to call the British singer by his full name which is also written on his Robert Palmer page as "Robert Allen Palmer." Anyway, I have tried to disambiguate and had great difficulty. I have finally done it, with help from the Requested moves desk, but lost all the list of "what this links to" links. I did change a number of them prior to making the move, but I'll try looking in Google to find the rest. Thanks a lot for the comments. Bebop 02:21, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If by that you mean the list of pages that link to Robert Palmer, what's wrong with going to Robert Palmer and clicking on "What links here"? --Paul A 02:37, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It seemed that I lost a number of the "What links here" items that I saw, which was a very long list, including numerous "Talk" pages, when I made the switch. I don't know why. They do not appear in the What links here area for that page ever since I moved the page, and I feel I should have changed all the links before I made the switch. Anyway, I have made a good faith effort to find and change links intended to link to the British singer's page and will continue to change more if I find them. Everything seems fine now, thanks. Bebop 05:29, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not to worry, Bebop -- it's likely that since this was a public discussion other editors helped to fix the "What links here" links. Catherine\^talk 03:02, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How should I handle Martin Luther King and his son with the same name?

The most well known of the Martin Luther King clan is Martin Luther King Jr., (the one who delivered the "I have a dream" speach, etc.)

I am thinking of writing a short article on his eldest son, who I believe went by the name "Martin Luther King, III". Should that be the title of the article (with the comma and the roman numeral 3)?

Is there another way to handle this? Some use the custom of dropping the "jr." etc. when only one is alive, but that is probably not wise in this case, as he is so well known.

Also to add to this person's question, I'm curious about what house style is on "Jr." and "III" because some style manuals prefer people to not include a comma before "Jr." The only times I've left them that way so far is when I saw someone spelled a name that way already. P.S. Mpearl asked the above question, not I. Bebop 05:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd use Martin Luther King, Jr. for the the son and Martin Luther King, Sr. for his father. Those are the names most people will know them by, so that's the name wikipedia should use. His son Martin Luther King III should be without a comma, I believe. Mgm|^(talk) 08:13, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Hi again. I'm going to focus my reply here about the comma issue, whereas of course Mpearl (who didn't use a signature) brought the MLK topic at hand up. I am still interested in the comma issue after reading the above answer. For consistency, one would normally punctuate both III and Jr. the same way. Modern styles I've seen, such as A.P. style (and I also think Chicago Manual of Style) usually don't include a comma for either one. I didn't use one in Robert Palmer (author/producer)'s entry where I mention his full name and father's name, for instance. And if I learn of a final house style on this (and an example of which style you guys are basing the comma decision on), I could adjust any entries I've seen with commas in them (like Al Jackson, Jr., an entry which by the way is redirected strangely to a name he didn't use professionally, since I think all his recordings said "Jr." on them, but I'll study that further) or adjust anything I've put without a comma to have one, if need be. I did have a reason to not use the comma though, as I didn't see a style rule here and therefore went by house styles I'm familiar with. Maybe I should be talking about this in the talk page for the house style entry? I have experience discussing house styles, as I've written one before, so please excuse my interest in this tedious detail. Bebop 15:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A quick glance around the style and naming pages suggests to me that this has been raised a couple of times, but has never "taken off" into a proper discussion and consensus. E.g. this discussion didn't get very far, while this one amounts to "people generally use with-comma style at the moment". Maybe you'll have better luck getting people's attention ("advertise" the discussion on the village pump if you're really bothered), but, unfortunately, maybe not. It's the kind of detail a lot of people just put off thinking about; of course, you can always Be bold and start systematically changing things - then if anyone is bothered either way, they'll start complaining. ;) - IMSoP 00:50, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dificulty navigating community portal links

Hello, i am very new here, actualy just arrived for the first time... Long story short, My first action here was to put a defenition on a link that lead to nowhere (no description or article on the subject) Since i am very new i was wondering how i did and how i could make my article better; so i went to peer reveiw. However, i got hoplessly lost because i cant tell where im supposed to put up a question there (i tried to start a topic but instead i kept being brought e to a editing page of someone else's request) so i left. And i came here and i want to know: how do i navigate the community areas? i can barely tell where the questions stop and the responses begin. Thanks

Above is from User:Fledgeling, who created Fraser magnolia. (You can get these actions attributed to your new user name through Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit.)

You are probably looking for Wikipedia:How to edit a page, but my advice is just be bold. If you do something wrong, it is very likely that someone will come along and correct it. Most of the time, their actions may seem abrupt, but in general people will be pleasant if you explain your situation, as you have here. Noisy | Talk 16:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, the lack of distinction between where a question ends and the answer begins is something of a feature of wikis - just like on this page, it's actually one long block of text, so a "conversation" is just a bunch of text. On many pages, including this one and Wikipedia:Peer review, the convention is that each conversation has it's own heading - which is created like the one above, with a line like "== This is my heading ==". So to start a new section, you just add a heading; it doesn't matter if it looks like its "inside" someone else's section, all the headings are exactly the same. And, as Noisy says, if you're not sure, do your best, and someone will probably correct it for you; if they're feeling particular nice, they'll tell you what to avoid next time... - IMSoP 19:04, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

failed edit - lost the page completely!

Tried to edit an entery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_sardine

with my somewhat expanded text (below):

The Tanganyika sardine is really two species (Limnothrissa miodon and Stolothrissa tanganicae) both of which are small planktivorous pelagic freshwater clupeid originating from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. They form the major biomass of pelagic fish in Lake Tanganyika, swimming in large schools in the open lake, feeding on copepods and potentially jellyfish. Their major predators are four species of Lates which are also endemic to Lake Tanganyika, and are related to (but not the same as) the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria. All of these pelagic fish have suffered from overfishing in the last 2 decades.

The local names are Kapenta in Zambia or Dagaaor Ndgaaelsewhere. Limnothrissa miodon has been successfully introduced in both natural and artificial African lakes. Large kapenta fisheries now take place in the Kariba Dam and Cahora Bassa in Zambia.

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories:Fish, Lake Tanganyika, Fisheries

But it said it lost the page and the old ID no longer exists. What now?

To the person above who wrote about their problem without signing their user name, I am not an admin, I'm a newbie, but I just now have gone in and fixed it by the following procedure: I clicked in the History file on the time and date of an older version, clicked on the Edit tab and added into it your edits above, then hit Enter and it worked. There is helpful information in the Revert faq. There seems to be a bit of a confusing editing duel going on in the page at issue, by the way. - user Bebop

Red linked contributors

How come I can see new pages being added by people with red-linked IDs?

The red-linked user name means they have not created a user page yet. This is the default state for all new user accounts. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:22, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clarification on copywright rules- verification

I really.. um... anyway.

I have been told by some people (my writing teacher, parents) that putting up someone else's ideas or information that you learned from that book/person/website is OK, as long as you correctly cite your references/sorces. I have been working by this premice (specificly, leaf leinghts and species distribution- i cannot find species distribution by going by myself out and surveying an extensive area alone- not copyinf and pasting whole articles, just peices of information that i could not obtain elsewhere) Recently i have been told by others that THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Since the site articles on copywright information did not answer my question, i wish to verify trough a third party if either side is correct, because i am getting coflicting reports. Who's correct?

User:Fledgeling,

IANAL; but I'll tell you what my understanding is: in general, facts are not the subject of copyright - so something like the average length of a rowan leaf is probably fair game. However, copying the detailed results of a piece of research verbatim is likely to breach copyright; researchers generally want their results to be known, but the journals they publish to make their money from controlling who reads and copies the full text. I'm not sure where the line would be drawn, but I imagine it is analagous to quoting passages of, say, a short story: a few appropriate quotes, properly credited, is going to be OK, but if your quoting ends up being most of the original content, you're risking it. Obviously, anything that can be considered "general knowledge" is not going to be copyright (as long as you put it in your own words); so reading someone's website to get a better understanding of, say, Einsteinian physics, doesn't mean you mustn't write E=mc² ever again.

In general, putting someone else's conclusions in your own words, backed up with referenced quotations, is just good practice; but if it's a truly new and ground-breaking idea, then going too much further than a summary, so that you're paraphrasing almost the entire paper, might attract raised eyebrows. But as long as you're not passing the ideas off as your own, and distinguish between direct and indirect quotation, no major harm is being done. - IMSoP 00:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The amoung pages i have done so far that i am wondering about is Fraser magnolia - specificly the scentence((Magnolia fraseri) is a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree of the southern Appalachians with narrow, auriculate-lobed leaves.)- i found that out in a book i listed in references. If thats ok then i havent been copywrigting, but it is a direct quote, so im not shure. Mostly, besides one other scentance, its from my own knowlege and not taken from anywhere. One scentence is the same as on the internet reference (It grows best on moist, well-drained soil) but i already knew that because of its habitat (almost all plants found exlusively in that area require their soil to be like that) and because Magnolias virtually as a whole require that same requierment, so i assumed it was common knowledge

User:Fledgeling00:49, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC) P.s In the rowan section it should be noted that its also commonly called Mountain Ash

You should only use the exact words you read if you are using them as a "direct quotation" - that is, one with quote-marks round it, and a clear label of who actually said it, e.g.:

According to person X, the Fraser magnolia is "a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree..."

To clarify, an "indirect quotation" would be more like:

Person X describes the Fraser magnolia as small and fragrant, and notes that it is deciduous and basal-branching...

[hmm; this should be covered in quotation or somewhere, really]

Whereas what we want here is those facts, but in your words (or, I guess, mine); so, something like:

The Fraser magnolia is a small deciduous tree native to the Southern Appalachians; it is basal-branching and has...

It's not a big deal with individual sentences like that, but rewording everything you read is a good habit to get into, and it also helps you structure things into decent paragraphs when you're joining up information from multiple sources. - IMSoP 01:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There might be two different issues in question. When your professors say that using someone else's information is okay, as long as you have proper attribution (meaning citing your sources) they could be talking about meeting academic standards for research, and avoiding plagarism.

It is possible that something could be acceptable in a paper you submit for a course, and not acceptable in a commercial publication. For example, if I am doing a biography of someone, and I take a picture from his wedding album, and attached the picture to a paper, I should (for an academic paper) make clear that I did not take the picture myself. For a commercial publication (like a book being offered for sale) I would probably have to get permission of the person who took the picture (which would probably involve paying a fee if the person is a commercial photographer).

In my experience, people get made in two occasions, when they don't get credit for their work, and when someone is using their own work to compete with them. Even if you're technically in the right, having people get mad at you is not a good thing (in my opinion).

Morris 01:55, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Most of the facts i am stating would be obvious to an attentive observer, and i cannot go to, say, china, and back to comment on the leingh of the fruit myself. I doubt writers of text encyclopedias would have as well, because they cant go and do everything and be everywhere to the places and things that they list in their books; its simply not feasable. User:Fledgeling,

Nobody is saying you have to experience it all firsthand. And as mentioned above, the facts are not copyrightable. But the presentation is. Copyright is all about who gets paid for the work. Someone (author, publisher, journal, encyclopedia) gets paid to do the research to write "{Magnolia fraseri) is a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree of the southern Appalachians with narrow, auriculate-lobed leaves." Copyright says that (in theory at least) if they find that exact sentence, with those exact words and commas, in Wikipedia or any other work, they have the right to take legal action to punish us, because we "stole" the fruits of work that someone else has a legal right to be paid for. Now, if you rephrase the sentence, using the descriptive words necessary to convey the facts, but in a different order so that it is clearly a different work than the source where you found the facts (as Imsop did a nice job with, above), then the owners of the copyright have no basis for suing us.

Now, on the one hand, most of us here think it's a silly way to try to "manage" information -- saying a corporation "owns" a particular sentence is really frustrating if all you want is the information that sentence contains. (Otherwise we wouldn't be building a volunteer, open source, copylefted encyclopedia. On the other hand, much of the knowledge available to us so freely in books and on the Internet would never have been researched or written if there weren't a profit motive for the authors and publishers. Regardless of how you feel about it, the fact is that it is imperative that Wikipedia obey copyright laws -- otherwise the Wikimedia Foundation could find itself under petty legal attack that we really don't want to bother with.

We're really glad you're trying to understand the distinctions between research, plagiarism and copyright -- we need more people to "get it" so that we can spend less time checking for copyright violations, and more time writing (in our original words!) this wonderful 'pedia, which is going to be around for generations to come. Catherine\^talk 06:09, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fledgeling, you're mixing up two things. One is the need to cite sources for information. That has nothing to do with copyright; it's to help readers verify your facts. Copyrights protect creativity, which in this case would be the words themselves. It is not a good idea to copy an exact sentence from anywhere without using quotation marks and attributing your source. There's nothing wrong with stating the same fact in different words. Isomorphic 20:13, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay, i think i understand now. Thanks everyone.User:Fledgeling22:35, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC),

Missing link, version problem

I've just posted another link on my page User:MacGyverMagic/Articles. However, while it shows in the source code and the history, the new link doesn't show on the page even after I forcefully empty my cache. What am I missing? Mgm|^(talk) 08:47, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Do you mean the link to Justin Yoder? It shows up fine for me. Maybe it was just a cache issue after all; did you try purging the server cache? - IMSoP 19:05, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, and I got a message saying that User:MacGyverMagic/Articles&action=purge didn't exist, maybe it only works of title= is part of the link? Mgm|^(talk) 21:30, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it does. Or, more precisely, a web page can have parameters added like ?a=b&c=d; that question mark has to be there, so en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MacGyverMagic/Articles?action=purge, I now realise, does work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MacGyverMagic/Articles is really a kind of shorthand for http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:MacGyverMagic/Articles, and since that's already got the question mark in it, you need an & instead, to seperate further sets of parameters. Hence http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:MacGyverMagic/Articles&action=purge

Meanwhile, does the link show up for you now? Because it was visible for me as soon as I visited the article. - IMSoP 22:12, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yep, shows up fine now. Thanks for clearing up how the parameters on a link work. :-) Mgm|^(talk) 08:43, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Viktor Yanukovych

Guys,

I tried to find a better forum for this but couldn't.

When you open the following link in IE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych)

it comes up with

[CLIP START]

Viktor Yanukovych From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

[CLIP END]

where Khia links to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khia)

But when you open it up in Mozilla it comes up just fine.

It's a caching issue. There was a vandal who vandalized the page earlier today. In IE, trying hitting control+R to force a clean reload. →Raul654 07:57, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

problems with the wikipedia service

what is going on with wikipedia!! lately every time i search something i get an error page. the service is not working properly.

please fix!!!

Could you give a specific example? Mgm|^(talk) 21:23, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

probably forgotten password

Hello every sysops at English Wikipedia,

I tried already to ask help from User:Meelar;

please help me to retrieve my password to login to English Wikipedia. I am User:JanJosef, and I am not sure, If I mentioned my e-mail jpospisil at cpoj dot cz

Now I am as User:194.228.18.42 (at my work) and you can check another wikis: Czech - http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Jan Esperanto - http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipediisto:Jan Simple - http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JanJosef

(I think, the IP should be the same)

May I receive a new password?

Thank you very much. Jan Pospisil

If you provided the wiki with your email adress when you signed up, you can go to the login page and ask for the system to send you a new password on that address to gain access to your personal pages. Mgm|^(talk) 21:27, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't help you. I don't have any special rights here and I can't check such things.

I suggest you try to see if a developer can help you. Otherwise, set up a new account, using a password similar to one of the other accounts you have so you don't forget, and have your old edits attributed to you. Good luck! Mgm|^(talk) 08:59, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I will do a new account, and I will note on the User:JanJiri, that I am now JosefJan, identical with JanJosef. Tanks many, and see you :-)

--194.228.18.42 16:05, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry

The occupying force on April 9 allowed more than 70,000 women, children and elderly residents to leave the besieged city, reportedly also allowing males of military age to leave. On April 10, the U.S. military declared a unilateral truce to allow for humanitarian supplies to enter Fallujah. U.S. troops pulled back to the outskirts of the city; local leaders reciprocated the ceasefire, although lower-level intense fighting on both sides continued. An Iraqi mediation team entered the city in an attempt to set up negotiations between the U.S. and local leaders, but as of April 12 had not been successful. The resistance forces capitalized on this 'ceasefire' to conduct the most aggressive counter-offensive of the cordon. Additionally, numerous weapons were found hidden in the humanitarian supply trucks that were attempting to enter the city. [2] (http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/04/12/rebels_smuggle_supplies_into_iraqi_city/)

the above is from the fallujah article.

The link is broken(the last line) and I did not know how else to tell anyone

In general, the best way to comment about an issue with a particular article is by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the screen; in the case of the article Fallujah, it will take you to Talk:Fallujah. In this particular case, I realised that the problem was that the ")" at the end of the link was being treated as part of the link. I've fixed this by using special numbered external links: if you type "[http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/04/12/rebels_smuggle_supplies_into_iraqi_city/]", it appears as "[4]". The old links look oddly like they were copied and pasted from the display of another page on the site, rather than the underlying code you see when you click "edit this page".

See Wikipedia:How to edit a page for more on how you can fix things yourself. - IMSoP 20:18, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand all that a wiki is capable of...

I'm putting together a technology plan for an social benefit organization I'm working on starting, and I'm trying to figure out how the wiki tool can best be incorporated into the overall plan. Here are some of my goals and questions:

1. I want to have a series of webpages written by authors representing either their own ideas or those of an organization or group they represent. These authors will be identified, chosen, and recruited by members of the organization. Membership will be open to anyone who lives in the identified community and agrees to uphold certain core values and principles (as outlined by the members themselves) and to strive to behave according to a set of guidelines (also outlined by the members). What defines and unifies the group is that they all live within a defined community (with geographic boundaries) and share an intent to bring about a more just, peaceful and sustainable world in which the desires of the individual are not met at the expense of the needs of others throughout the world. This may not be the best description of the group, but I think you'll get the point.

So my question is this, can a wiki be set-up so that a section of the page which expresses the information and perspective presented by the author (membership elected individual or group of representatives), is protected from edits by others? Then the greater membership could have access to a comment section of the page for continual edits, encouraging the author to continually re-evaluate his/her perspective and integrate their feedback into an ever-evolving article.

The goal here is to take academics and others who've developed a trusted reputation and give them a more public platform upon which to communicate, while also removing them from the "echo chamber" where they only hear from others with the same perspectives. A sort of virtual dialogue amongst those who are either members of the community which is impacted by policies and practices of which they speak or respected experts selected by the community to help formulate solutions which work for the greater good.

2. I don't know how the underlying wiki engine works, as I'm not all that technical, but I'm wondering if the engine could be further developed so that there are tags to represent certain kinds of data. I'm hoping for the ability to have a reference database of books, articles, lectures, videos, etc. that anyone could select from in displaying a list of references or suggested educational materials for a particular purpose. Kind of like a shopping cart of references. Say I'm writing an article about statements made by our president which relate to global warming. I could search the reference database and select those which apply to my article and at the end, I will have an automatically generated list of references. Or perhaps in the body of my article I want to list recommended educational materials grouped by category. I could simply select from the available reference database (adding those not yet there) and have the list sorted according to my specifications (by author, keyword, date, etc). Does this seem possible?

3. How does a non-technical person go about finding someone to help set-up and administer a wiki when there is currently no budget (it's my hope that once the community begins growing, member donations will support some paid staff)?

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I apologize if this isn't the right place to post these questions; if that's the case, perhaps you can redirect me to the correct place.

Thank you, Jennifer

If you're having trouble finding technical people to set up a wiki, you might want to start a free hosted on. Starting your own would require a server and some bandwith which can be quite costly. Anyway, I think you might like to visit this link on how to start a Wiki. Good luck and don't hesitate to contact us again if you need to follow up. Mgm|^(talk) 21:38, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality

In the article Cultural and historical background of Jesus, Admin (User:Theresa knott) took sides by protecting page immediately after revert by Biased editor. Rather than protecting a pre-edit war version (the edit war goes back about 100 or so edits, by the way).

Is this allowed? CheeseDreams 22:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Without looking into the specifics of the situations, my gut feeling is that the answer is "yes", this is "allowed". Although the complaint that the version protected is the "wrong" one is a common one, it is an impossible complaint to uphold - even if you go back to before the edit war began, you are still "supporting" a particular version, which presumably somebody felt needed editing. Choosing which version to protect would, obviously, be taking sides; protecting whichever version happens to be current when the protection is carried out is in fact the only way to maintain neutrality.

This is why the message added when a page is protected includes the text "Protection is not an endorsement of the current version. To see other versions, use the page history." Queries and complaints regarding this point are frequently much less civil than yours [thank you], and are the subject of a parody on our meta-wiki entitled The Wrong Version. - IMSoP 22:48, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia mirror?

Where would one report a Wikipedia mirror which was not citing Wikipedia? http://djpronto.com/ doesn't have any reference to Wikipedia that I can find, but uses Wikipedia content. - Vague | Rant 08:16, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks, low compliance →Raul654 08:18, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Starting a category for chicken breeds.

I'm looking at starting a new category (or finding an existing one!) for chicken breeds. I'd like to make sure my understanding of Wikipedia:Categorization is correct. Here's what I'm planning to do — I'd appreciate any feedback (positive or negative) that anyone would like to offer.

Would Category:Chicken breeds be a suitable category name, based upon the fact that there is already a Category:Dog breeds to do the same task for dogs.

Currently there's Category:Galliformes which includes chickens. It would make sense for the new category to be in a subcategory of Category:Galliformes. Is there a better subcategory instead?

Many thanks,

--pjf 08:36, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In line with Wikipedia's policy on being bold, I've created the category with a few articles and placed it as a subcategory in Category:Galliformes. However I'm still hoping for a thumbs-up/down from a more experienced Wikipedian to ensure I'm on the right track. --pjf 08:43, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Noisy | Talk 13:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I appreciate the check. --pjf 08:00, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia crashes Netscape

The Wikipedia homepage seems to reliably crash Netscape 4.79. This seems to be due to its use of Javascript on the homepage.

(If I turn off Javascript in Netscape it doesn't crash).

Javascript is *not* a standardized language and I should have a perfect right to use an old browser on an old computer because Netscape 4.79 is faster than modern browsers. Wikipedia should be able to accept and work with that -- they should not be overengineering their web pages to an extent that they crash browsers. Wikipedia is distributing *information*. The distribution of information does *not* require the execution of code on machines visiting a site. I do *not* friggen care about pull down menus or pop-up windows -- I care that the site works reliably in the browser and on the machines that I choose to use.

If anyone could inform me of *who* is responsible for the Wikipedia home page I would appreciate it. Because I want to give them a piece of my mind.

Thank you, Robert Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)

I too have problem with home page. I am using Mozilla 1.0.2. To e the main page does cause crash but the browser (and hence the whole computer) seat down for 1 or 2 minutes. I am experiencing the same problem also with very long and complex page (like this one). In particular the presence of not very standard character (like chinese) seems to give troubles to my computer. AnyFile 14:54, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia and its sister sites use an open source wiki engine called MediaWiki, the project homepage for which is available at http://mediawiki.org. For information on how to report bugs in this software generally, or in the setup of this site specifically, please see Wikipedia:Bug reports. A bug which causes the entire browser to crash will no doubt be treated with very high priority.

As someone who has spent a little time on the "development" side of things, I can assure you that the software is designed to conform as closely as possible to standards, and work with as many browsers as possible. Despite what you seem to be suggesting, this site uses very little JavaScript, and in fact one of its uses, I believe, is to make the site behave correctly in more browsers. There is certainly no use of JavaScript for pull-down menus or pop-up windows; the most complex pieces of script are probably those for showing and hiding certain information, so that the server can cache one copy of the page to serve to people with several combinations of preferences (this is necessary for the distribution of information, since without it the site would slow down to a crawl).

I am sure the developers will be much more receptive of your comments if, rather than "giving them a piece of your mind", you politely explain the exact circumstances of the problem. One thing I'm not clear on is whether this is an issue with the Main Page only, or with every page on the site (which would include this one). If it is just that one page, then it is unlikely to be a JavaScript issue, since no individual page can contain custom JavaScript, and the Main Page is not special in this respect. I gather that the Main Page has recently been edited to make different/more use of CSS, however, so maybe this is causing the problem? Perhaps, as suggested in this announcement, you should therefore mention it on this discussion page.

Once again, I'm sorry you have had such a severe problem with the site, and hope it is successfully resolved soon; thank you for pointing it out to us. - IMSoP 18:41, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello Robert, I have just changed the Main Page to mostly use CSS instead of tables, which has stopped it crashing Netscape 4. You do, indeed, have a right to use any browser you wish to access Wikipedia and we try to cater for as many as possible. There are still a few problems with the Main Page and Netscape 4, which I am trying to solve. These are problems with NS4 not conforming to established standards such as CSS. The problem with Netscape crashing was not an issue with JavaScript, but in fact with CSS - which due to the way NS4 works is also disabled when you disable JS. Thanks, Tom- 22:18, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

History: current and last

What is the meangin of the last link on the history pages? AnyFile 15:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It compares the selected version to the version immediately preceeding it. It essentially shows you the changes made in individual edits. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere not updating

I switched Template:New York so it links to Capital District rather than to Capitol District (see Talk:Capitol District). But Whatlinkshere:Capitol_District still lists all the pages that include Template:New York. Why? (It only bothers me because I'm trying to see if anything links to Capitol District, now a redirect page, and I'm getting all these false positive results.) —msh210 18:06, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It is most likely to be a caching issue -- to see if it's on your machine, try holding Control/Command down when clicking your refresh button, or using Control-F5, or following the instructions at Wikipedia:Clear your cache. If it's a caching problem on one of the intermediary servers, it should clear up soon (10 minutes to an hour). I know it's frustrating when you're trying to follow up on work that's half-finished, but use your watchlist or a to-do list on your user page to remind you to come back to it, and trust me that the developers are working as hard as they can to keep things like this from interfering with our work. (If you're inclined, please consider making a donation so that we can continue to upgrade our hardware....) HTH, Catherine\^talk 19:37, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No, it's still doing it (from a different machine). Would you mind checking it out, someone, and see if you see it too, please? —msh210 14:47, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's wrong from my computer as well. I'm not sure what's going on, but it might have something to do with the dates of last change compared to what is being cached. I think I'm going to try testing a bit. Wålberg 20:49, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My small tests weren't successfull. But I have an idea what it could be. I assume all articles have an internal id in the database. If the caching of the What links here and/or the templates only happens once in a while, and the id of the article remained the same when you renamed it, changing the template to point to the new name means it still points to the same id internally. Hence the software might think nothing has changed and therefore nothing to update. I didn't have the patience to test this theory though. It would probably take two of the cycles mentioned by Catherine, one for updating the link to something else, and then another for changing it back. Wålberg 21:42, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Heh, just saw the post a bit further down on the page, about changes to templates not being properly propagated to pages using the templates. :-) That would explain it. But it certainly defeats the point of templates, doesn't it? Wålberg 21:50, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Firstly: yes, this does seem to be a problem with the template code, similar to that with categories - ordinary links being stored in the database in a similar way, for purposes of Special:Whatlinkshere etc.

But secondly: no, this does not "defeat the point of templates" - the "point" is surely to include the same text in multiple places, and allow it to be updated "at source", as it were; this is working fine, as you can check by looking at the bottom of those pages which include the template, and seeing that the link has changed. The only problem is that until you make another edit to each page, the software "doesn't notice" that the link has changed, and so the part of the database which Special:Whatlinkshere uses remains out of date; annoying, but minor compared to actually getting the content right.

Thirdly, the way to "solve" this (not a quick one, I'm afraid) is to make a trivial edit to each page containing the template. For instance, I have edited The Bronx, and it now no longer shows up on Special:Whatlinkshere/Capitol District. AFAIK, there is no easier way at present; over time, of course, this will happen naturally, as the pages are edited. - IMSoP 14:52, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You are of course right about this not defeating the point of templates. Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that. Probably a bit hung up on the what links here thing. Wålberg 16:48, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, that's fair enough: like I say, it is a pretty irritating bug; unfortunately, it's not a trivial one to fix, as far as I can see - the obvious solution of automatically parsing all the pages that include a template (as though you'd edited them all) would put an untenable strain on the server. Meanwhile, I've updated Bugzilla:939 to reflect the fact that it's not just categories that don't get updated when you change the template. - IMSoP 19:47, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, all. —msh210 20:59, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Boilerplate Templates

Is there a special page that lists all template pages? I don't want to create new templates that duplicate the function of an existing one. Are there guidelines for what belongs in a template and what does not?

Yes, there is a list, maybe not of all templates, but at least of the templates people cared enough about to list. I'll track it down...Found them. There's a complete list at: Wikipedia:Template_messages/All, new ones can be added at Wikipedia:Template_messages. Generally, stuff you have to type repeatedly like welcome messages, or stuff that's hard to code repeatedly are done in templates. I hope this helps. Mgm|^(talk) 19:10, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Access?

Hello dear Jim,
is the only way for me to get into "Wikepedia" some mention of 42nd Baltic Fraternities` Convention [ which Corps Concordia Rigensis/Hamburg will organize] to become a contributer/editor ? Greetings from Germany
Jürgen
webmaster@concordia-rigensis.de

Everyone can contribute to Wikipedia. Just use the edit link on top of the page, or better yet, sign up for a free account so you can get your own user page. Mgm|^(talk) 09:40, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers and Wikipedia:Why create an account? - IMSoP 20:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reversing images - Can it be done with regular markup?

I've recently uploaded a picture of a leghorn chicken, and have used it on the Leghorn (chicken) page. Unfortunately, the chicken in question is looking to the right, and I'd much rather mirror the image so that it's looking to the left.

Why do I care which way the chicken is facing? It's got to do with psychology. People naturally want to see what others are looking at. If images of people or animals look interested in the article text, there's a better chance that the reader will be interested as well. If the picture is looking away from the text, then the article overall appears less interesting. Therefore, I want the chicken looking at the text to its left.

I could move the image itself to the left of the page, but then, depending upon the article text and browser settings, one can end up with orphaned words under the image. That can be a little jarring to readers, and something I'd like to avoid.

So, is it possible to automatically mirror or flip an image using regular image mark-up, or will I need to upload a second image (or replace the existing one) with a mirrored copy to suit my purpose?

Many thanks,

--pjf 07:59, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's no mark up to mirror or flip a picture. You'll have to do another upload. Mgm|^(talk) 09:46, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. In which case, I've flipped my image. --pjf 20:46, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Templates and caching

In the interests of sanity on my user page, I've borrowed an idea I found on Jimbo Wales' site, and included my picture and list of useful links in a side-bar as a template.

However I notice that any changes to this template don't update immediately, and I cannot find how to make this happen; presumably the template code is cached on the server, because refreshing my browser cache (Ctrl and reload in Mozilla Firefox) does not cause an update, and other items on the main page do update immediately. I usually just wait and hope. I wouldn't know where to look for information on how to fix this. Is there a way I can force the cached template to refresh on the server? --Minority Report (entropy rim riot) 22:14, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You've diagnosed the problem absolutely correctly. There is currently a bug in the software that means that changing a "template" which is anywhere other than the Template: namespace doesn't cause pages containing that template to be regenerated in the server's cache. There are two ways of working around this problem:

make a trivial edit to the "target" page (in this case, User:Minority Report)
use the special "action=purge" URL: either add "?action=purge" to the normal URL (like this) or hit "edit" or "history" or something, and change the "action=" bit to say "action=purge" (like this). (The two are equivalent; if you want to know why they look like that, see my comments in another section.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused." - IMSoP 23:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I know what else I was going to say: not sure why that template isn't showing up with a pink background when included, very mysterious; for a while, I thought the cache still wasn't purging even when I told it to, hence the test-vandalism you may have noticed on the template. Sorry about that. - IMSoP 23:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Yes it was mainly the background color that I was interested in propagating. This would make the divisions in the page more visible to the reader. I even tried putting the background color information in a table outside the template, but it still doesn't work. Oh well.. --Minority Report (entropy rim riot) 23:21, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Added: For now I'm putting the style stuff in front of each table item, which is tedious but has much the same effect as I intended. --Minority Report (entropy rim riot) 23:42, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

adding to a votes for deletion page

hi,

how do i vote for/against the deletion of a page

On every page that has been placed on VfD, you will find a link that reads "please see this page's entry etc". Clicking on that link will bring you to a subpage of the main VfD page where you can add your vote for that specific page. (You can also browse the main VfD page and click on "edit" next to the page you want to vote for) -- Ferkelparade π 02:59, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Categorization in Arts and Visual arts

I'd like to do a lot of cleanup in Category:Arts. There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity there. The last decision seems to be here Category_talk:Art#Category:Art. I have some suggestions at Category_talk:Visual arts.

There doesn't seem to be a wiki project about Arts. Is there a place with Arts discussions some place? What would be a good way to proceed? Clubmarx 21:51, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not really an art type of person, but it seems arts pretty much covered in Wikipedia, but not very organized. If you want Arts discussion to get centered in one place I suggest you start a WikiProject on it. Mgm|^(talk) 22:16, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems really odd that there isn't an arts project already. There seems to have been an arts wikiproject at some point in the past - a few other wikiprojects still link to it. hmm. Clubmarx 23:15, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Silkie (chicken) and Silkie — rename or redirect?

G'day lovely wikipedians,

At this time Wikipedia does not currently have a page for Silkie, however it does have Silkie (chicken). Unfortunately this means that editors must type an extra "(chicken)" every time they wish to create a link. I'm eager to see this avoided.

I can easily add a redirection page, but what I'd really like to do is rename Silkie (chicken) to Silkie, and have the redirect work the other way around. Are there any conventions that I would be breaking in doing this? Must a chicken breed end in "(chicken)" even if it's not ambiguous?

Note that the only ambiguity I can find is with Selkie, where Silkie is mentioned as an alternate spelling. I've added this to the Silkie (chicken) page, although I'd love someone to check my placement and wording.

Many thanks,

--pjf 01:25, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What you want is the "move" command. It renames the page and creates a redirect at the old title in a single operation. I've already done this for you. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:23, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Changing uploaded image name?

I uploaded Image:SelfPorEnhancedLjubljana2004.jpg after spending a long time making sure the photographer understood the copyright issues. But I'm still new to this and it's my first upload.

Big problem -- one is that I forgot to put his name in the jpg title. I certainly don't want to be confused with the person the photo was taken of. How can I move it to say Image:TavFalcoSelfPortraitSlovenia2004.jpg? I would much prefer it be titled that. It is not of interest to either me or wikipedia that it is "enhanced" and "self por" doesn't tell anyone who it's of. I don't know how to delete it and restart and the Move function didn't work. Also, I apparently only activated an "alternate text" option but not a caption and am curious how to format that (see image description page link to article using jpg). Bebop 01:55, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There's no way to change it once it's been uploaded; just upload a new copy of the image with a new name, and I or another admin can speedy delete the old one for you, since it's a duplicate of an existing image. (Normally items must be listed on Wikipedia:Images for deletion and discussed, since images cannot be undeleted.) Just let me know when you've copied over the information you want from the old image.

The same text is used for captions and the alt text. However, a caption will not display unless you use the keyword "thumb" or "frame" between pipe symbols in your image syntax: [[Image:Westminstpalace.jpg|right|thumb|200px|caption text]]. "Thumb" with a pixel size will resize it; "frame" will generate frame and caption without resizing. (Note that the first images in an article are generally placed to the right of the article text.) Catherine\^talk 04:01, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I've made the change and put a "delete" tag on the older image. I don't know if that automates some process to have it show up on a page where admins look and delete things, but I think it does. I'm putting the rest of this reply in my talk page; thanks again! Bebop 14:12, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that tag lists the article in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, which is regularly patrolled by admins. I am always appreciative of people who use the deletebecause tag and mention the reason that they think it needs deletion so that I don't have to guess why. Rmhermen 17:16, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Changing format of username

Is it possible to change my username from 'Randyjohnston' to 'Randy Johnston'? Thanks a lot. --Randyjohnston 04:53, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can create a new account, and ask the developers to attribute your old edits to the new account -- this might take several weeks or more, though, as our volunteer developers are severely overworked! Or, if you don't care about attribution, just redirect the user and talk pages from the old account to the new one.

If you just want your signature to display differently, you can customize your signature by going to Special:Preferences and changing the field "Your nickname (for signatures):". The software automatically puts "[[user:<yourusername>|" and "]]" around the text entered in this field, so that whatever nickname you choose to use as a signature will be linked to your user page, whatever the spelling. (for more, see Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages.) Good luck! Catherine\^talk 07:20, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay, thankyou. I have posted my request on Wikipedia:Changing_username. Please try and find time to move my information to my new username. Thank you a lot! --Randy Johnston 17:57, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to make a Template:.... tag.

How do I make a double brace tag such as {{inuse}} and is there a list of already existing ones?

That's called a template. If you wanted to make {{blah}}, then you would go to template:blah and put the content there. →Raul654 21:38, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and yes, there is a BIIIIIG list somewhere but I can't remember where it is off the top of my head. →Raul654 21:39, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

You're probably thinking either of Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki and Template namespace or Wikipedia:Template messages/All. --David Iberri | Talk 22:04, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Check out m:Help:Template for more details on setting up templates. --David Iberri | Talk 22:04, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Personal workplace (sandbox)

Is it OK to set up a personal workplace page (User:Name/Workplace) or something like that as a temporary place to work on an article? Hydnjo 01:58, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's perfectly okay. You can use subpages of your user page for pretty much anything short of attacking other users, violating copyright, or hosting your own wiki. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:15, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's much preferred! By working on articles in temporary workspaces on a user subpage you keep the main article namespace clean. Mgm|^(talk) 11:26, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

Linking Images

How do I link images to an external location? Oven Fresh 21:19, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can't. Every picture in Wikipedia needs to be uploaded to a wikipedia server or to the Commons. This is simply to guard wikipedia from copyright issues. All pictures on wikipedia need to have notices regarding the copyright status of the image in question. More help is available in our help section. Mgm|^(talk) 21:15, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)
- I've seen someone linking a Get Firefox logo to http://GetFirefox.com/... Must've been my imagination. Is there anyway I can stop an image from linking to its image page? Oven Fresh 21:19, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  - Nope. Best you can do is shove a redirect on the image description page. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:20, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- There's also vandalism issues as well. It makes it slightly more difficult to link in offensive images. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:20, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Downloading the Encyclopedia

Hi,

perhaps this question was here 1000 times but i didnt found an answer or i am to studpid. But if i want the content of the english encyclopedia on our school server because we dont ve access to the internet what do i ve to do? MYSQl and PHP and Apache2 is installed. How big is the full english version with pictures?

Greets and thx max

I doubt you have the server space to download the entire wikipedia. The information is spread across several severs, and it took the Wikimedia Foundation quite some time to get the equipment together. Trying to gain internet access is the cheaper solution here. Mgm|^(talk) 12:50, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

The database dump is not that big in terms of disk space (currently about 45gig for the whole thing with edit histories, 11 gig for only the current revision), but you'll need a lot of bandwith to download it. Latest database dumps are available here. Oh, and of course you will also need an internet connection to download a database dump in the first place :p -- Ferkelparade π 13:44, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to edit a protected article?

Hi,

I would like to edit the description for Capitol College, but the only edit link available lets me change the external link to the college website and nothing else. How can I change the typo in the description? Right now it says that Capitol conifers degrees, which makes me think of pine cones!

Capitol College looks editable to me. I think you may be clicking on the "edit" link next to the "External Link" heading. Instead, click on the "Edit this page" (this link) at the TOP of the page. See if that works for you. --Wolf530 18:08, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Infobox on parks pages

User:Viriditas noticed that the WikiProject Protected Areas tables are buggy in Firefox, sometimes overlapping text and causing other problems on the page. Should we be using newer markup or templates? Rmhermen 06:19, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

It's working fine now, so I wonder if it was a problem with Wikipedia. Thanks anyway. --Viriditas 10:13, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Album covers

Would it be okay if I uploaded several album covers and used them in articles about bands? The reason I'm asking is because I've seen people complaining there's a ton of images on Wikipedia that claim to be 'fair use', and a lot of notices about copyright problems etc. And I wouldn't want to add to the problem. The upload dialog has a box that goes "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." While uploading an album cover that was downloaded a long time ago from some website, I can't really grant that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it, can I? Does that mean I have to find out where I downloaded the image, then contact the webmaster of that particular site, then ask him/her for permission and only upload when the permission is granted? -- Jashiin 10:09, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Fair use, read the fair use rationale, and don't forget to add the appropriate image copyright tag, like {{Albumcover}}. --Viriditas 10:26, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

UGH this is all very confusing actually.. Oh well, I'll try to figure it out. Thanks. -- Jashiin 21:01, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bear in mind that the copyright of these album covers won't belong to the sites you found it, but to the original copyright holder: one or more of the artist, designer, lyricist, band, copy writer, publisher, distributor, photo library, etc. It is complex indeed. I am not convinced use of album covers is fair use, because it may be all of the work by a particular artist, even though it may be considered incidental to the music. But I'm not a lawyer, just careful. Notinasnaid 12:23, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Several times this week I have been automatically logged out while trying to edit. Why? NB:- If I get logged out while I'm editing this, I'm User:Gabriel Webber. Please either put the reply on my talk page, or notify me on my talk page when the reply is here. Thanks,--Gabriel Webber (babble were rig) 17:07, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Further on this topic ...

this is a real problem on another cookie‐based site I often use, LiveJournal, and there's a FAQ there about how to handle it. So I tried the techniques suggested there, since it’s been happening to me here far more often than it ever happened to me on LJ. (For example, clearing cache, clearing Wiki‐related cookies, re‐logging in etc. Probably need to reset some preferences actually, at least any that are locally stored, though from my experience using this site on different machines I seem to find few of those. Erm, anyway. Yes. Right, then!!!

So, I applied those suggested‐there techniques, but they were of little if any help today. (The problem does come, and go, and is especially... virulent?, well, that is strong very strong, but — the problem is nasty today. I fully expect this to be signed 24.58.12.141 today.) Hrm. I welcome any other suggestions for future use. (Ah, preview shows that I'm very very logged out now, so it’s a good thing I used it.)

Probably not helping that it is a slow, p’haps heavily‐used day??

Many thanks in advance from Schissel bowl ear open 03:45, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) (with no clue how to generate that by code, entering it manually)

And as I should have mentioned in the just‐above, I’m using Mozilla Firefox 1.0(1?) on a Macintosh G3 with OS 10.2.8. Using Safari (v125 I think?) doesn’t seem to help, nor does the occasional switch to IE on Windows machines at work, if I remember correctly but I’m not as sure of that part. Schissel 16:06, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Edit Search History

I'd like to delete some items from the drop-down search history (empty pages,missspelings, etc) that show up when I start to type into the search box. Can this (editing) be done? Hydnjo 20:45, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's a feature of your browser, not of the website. In Firefox, go to Tools - Options - Privacy - Saved Form Information - Clear. In IE, it's Tools - Internet Options - Content - AutoComplete - Clear Forms. Note that either one of these will clear the auto-fill history of all websites, not just wikipedia. Does anyone know how to do it on a site-by-site basis? - Key45 22:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks User:Key45 - I thought that might be the case. I'm using Safari and it saves a separate search history for each search box (Wikipedia, Google, etc.) that it recognizes as such. I'm pretty sure it's an all or none history saver, no site-by-site and no selective editing within any site. Hydnjo 23:27, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

GPS Articles

This is more a suggestion for a global feature than a question.

Add a WIKI element for latitude/longitude and range that is searchable, so articles that have a proper 'location' to reference can be found by location.

In other words, historical things have a time and a place. Many articles about things in the world also have a place in the world where those things can be found.

A query based on a GPS receiver could then type in a location and specify a range for the search and find articles about things of interest near that place on the Earth, and conversely when reading an article that contains such a GPS location, could pull up a map with that place/thing centered on it.

So when planning a trip, you could find points of interest on the way, and when doing a school report about something in history or of interest near your school or community, a lot of candidates can be trivially found from a map.

Some additional notation might be added to the location, such as the type of reference (local history, regional history, national history, global history, wildlife habitat, etc.)

It could be something like [gps:N30.24.66:W97.54.19:R1K], and an article might make more than one such reference to cover one or more regions with what are essentially circles on a map. A search engine (such as google) could then spot those references as they're finally formatted.

A java applet with a world map could allow trivial poking in of locations to some sloppy accuracy, while people who are more precise can go out and take a GPS reading and type the data in to the nearest few feet.

Please remember to sign your comments (use four tildes ~~~~ to add your name and date). I could be wrong, but I believe you should post feature requests on MediaWiki. I have linked to the section where you can add your request. --Viriditas 00:32, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I believe there has been some discussion of this; see meta:Wikiatlas and meta:Wikimaps. Catherine\^talk 15:58, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mailing list

Tim Starling is saying he will remove me from the Wikipedia mailing list, but I don't understand on what grounds the basis for this is. Is there anything I can do to get an explaination for his actions please? Thanks, --Rebroad 21:37, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would head over to User:Tim Starling's talk page and politely ask him why he's doing it. Mgm|^(talk) 22:05, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Question regarding Pesach

I have been commissioned to write an article about the Passover Seder. My question is based on some beliefs, how is Jesus the fulfillment of the Jewish festivals? Thank you.

Take a look at: Pesach and Passover. Can anyone else add something to this? Mgm|^(talk) 09:08, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Vietnamese page

I visited Wikipedia in Vietnamese page, it does not display in proper Vietnamese, it has a lots of squares in places of letters . Q: How do I set my PC to view this page in correct Vietnamese ? tro_te@yahoo.com

You need to install some Unicode fonts (typefaces) that include Vietnamese characters; putting "vietnamese font" into Google turns up plenty of promising looking leads. - IMSoP 17:02, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Simpsons character starting with the letter "Y"

A friend of mine was asked in a crossword puzzle "Simpsons character starting with "Y" " this had me stumped, could anyone help me with this problem, please email me at v8_freaq@yahoo.com.au, i am unsure if i can get back to this site, my bookmarking deletes sites on me :-(

A quick search of Wikipedia would have turned up List of characters from The Simpsons, but I didn't spot any Y's on a quick glance -- check the links at the bottom of that page for more leads. Catherine\^talk 16:07, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Placing a 'search' field elsewhere

I edit a library web page and want to put a 'search' field that will link directly to Wikipedia's search. Is there a way to do this?

If this is the incorrect place to ask this, could someone please direct me to the right window?

Thanks in advance.

Try this code, which is based on the code used on this site. Edit the attributes of each form control as desired—the important things are that there's at least one text field named "search", at least one submit button, and that the form action is the same URL (although you could replace "en" with the abbreviation for any other language's Wikipedia if you want).

<form name="wikipedia_search_form" action="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search">
<input name="search" type="text">
<input value="Go" type="submit" name="go">
<input value="Search Wikipedia" type="submit" name="fulltext">
</form>

The "Go" button will take you directly to the article with the name you enter, if it exists, so you might want to remove it if you want a "true" search. The "Search" button searches all articles for the text you enter. HTH—Triskaideka 16:40, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

action=purge

What does &action=purge do, when appended to the end of a URL? E.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hello,_world&action=purge

—msh210 20:32, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's supposed to manually purge the various Wikipedia-side caches of various things. It's generally only used to ensure the main page is updated when one of its templates is changed. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:48, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. —msh210 20:57, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More generally, off the top of my head, there are 3 situations where a manual purge is necessary, all of which can be considered bugs in the way the template code works:

a template "transcluded" by the page transcludes a further template, and that template has been changed (Bugzilla:983)
a template transcluded by the page has been changed, but is not in the Template: namespace (Bugzilla:734)
the page uses variables like {{CURRENTDAY}} in certain ways (I'm not sure about this one, but I think it's still an issue in some cases)

The main page suffers from #2 (it uses templates stored in the Wikipedia namespace) and possibly #3. - IMSoP 23:04, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PS: The title of this section seems to have broken the auto-summary feature!

How to edit signature

How do you edit your signature that appears with four tildes? Oven Fresh 00:12, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You can modify the nickname field in Special:Preferences to your liking. See Wikipedia:Username#Signatures and Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages#Customizing your signature for a bit more. --David Iberri | Talk 00:25, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Odd image change

A while back I found an image of General Georges Boulanger on the French Wikipdeia (see [5] for image. I added this image to the English language version and then got on with my life. However, I now note that the image on the English language Boulanger page is not the image I added and the page history does not show the one edit to the article since changing the image. Does anyone know what has happened here (eg. someone else has saved an image as Boulanger.jpg which has automatically replaced my image)? --Roisterer 02:14, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The image you submitted is still intact. The link in the article has just been replaced with that of an image on the English wikipedia. Mgm|^(talk) 08:07, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

PlanetMath

I am getting a Proxy Error for PlanetMath. Has it been removed?

Trying to access PlanetMath works for me. If you mean the actual web site, we don't really have anything to do with them. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:41, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why aren't thumbnails being generated?

I'm posting an article on a newly-created wiki. The owner has just turned on image uploading. However, thumbnails are not working. The image box appears, but instead of a thumbnail inside, there is only a link. The link leads to the proper image. This is the code I'm using: [[Image:test.png|right|thumb|The test image description]]

What does the owner of the wiki need to enable in order to get thumbnails to display properly?

Can you provide a link to this wiki? My guess would be that the feature is partially disabled. Is the picture displayed if you removed the "thumb" part of the coding? Mgm|^(talk) 12:29, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Disputing_vote_exclusion

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2004#Disputing_vote_exclusion. I am concerned that some will be unfairly excluded from the current arbiter election. Sam Spade Arb Com election 14:23, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Who has the right to delete text?

Today, 4 December 2004, 14.44 GMT, the article "Amnesia" on Wikipedia ends with:

My friend has it and it is sort of scary but i now wwhen the time is right it will be ok i just now it she is getting it back peice by peice but i was so nice to her does that mean she will turn back to the way she was before and if so what will happen to me and her now that shes better will i get upset like today i like her so much i don't now what to do

It seems this should not be in a Wikipedia article. I wrote about it in the "discussion" side of the page, but should I have deleted the text? Should I have put it in a  tag? Could the Wikipedia documentation be made more clear about what to do in such a case? I did look in the documentation, so if such guidelines are there, they may not be easy enough to find.

Just be bold and delete it! If somebody thinks you were wrong, they will revert it or say so. --Khendon 14:53, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would also lend my support to deleting that particular text or editing it to make it NPOV. Something like: "When a person suffers from amnesia for a long time, the resulting apparent personality change can be disturbing to those who knew them before. If they ever recover, this in turn can have a disturbing effect as they recover memories and adopt old attitudes." But on balance the observation is probably inherently POV and not backed up by reliable observation (it's just one person's feelings) so it's probably best deleted. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help formatting large image caption

Hi. I added keydrive#The internal components of a typical keydrive as an ordinary section, but really it's an extensive caption for the accompanying diagram. IMHO it would be better as a sidebar to the article, but I'm having trouble figuring out the wiki syntax for doing so. I tried just putting all the text into the image caption, but the parser doesn't seem to like the # marks (which are needed for the numerical expansion of the diagram's labels). I also tried (a bit) html-style DIV tags, but I couldn't get the formatting to work. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.-- John Fader

Well, I (sort-of) figured it out for myself. Wiki syntax doesn't work properly in image captions, but HTML syntax does. I guess it's probably frowned upon. An example (using templates, although that isn't necessary) is at keydrive (until someone reverts it). -- John Fader

Uploading ZIP archive

I'd like to upload a ZIP archive containing the image files and other stuff necessary to make a diagram (which I've already uploaded as a normal JPG). I want to do this so it can be altered by others, including translating or correcting. I tried to upload a ZIP file, but the upload program says ".zip" is not a recommended image file format.. Is there a way to upload a zip, or do I have to do something horrible like rename it to a PNG and tell folks to rename it before use? -- John Fader

Damn, even that hack doesn't work, as the system notices the intrigue and complains The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again. So am I out of luck? -- John Fader

The upload uses the unix 'file' command to determine what kind of file it is (by reading the file's magic number). Changing the extension won't make a bit of difference. If you want to make it more easily editable by others, make it a PNG instead of a jpg. →Raul654 20:41, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

I see, thanks Raul. A PNG isn't really a substitute for somone being able to edit the original structured document and the associated collateral resources. In this case all my constituent resources are, I think, uploadable (assuming it will accept SVGs) but doing so with some of the more complex cases (where there might be dozens of components) would be such an onerous task that I would probably not bother. Do you know the reason why archives (either tar or zip and its kith) are excluded? -- John Fader

That's an easy one to guess: it's too easy to make Wikipedia a gathering ground for warez d00dz and their ilk if we allowed archives. (Also see leet.) Wikipedia is not an FTP server, and I guess so far nobody's found a ZIP file of great usefulness to an encyclopedia article, so we've erred on the safe side. JRM 22:05, 2004 Dec 4 (UTC)

There used to be a 2 megabyte limit to all uploads. (I discovered this by trial and error - it wasn't documented anywhere). I bitched about it on the technical mailing list, and they increased it to 5 as a result. (I'm told that on the commons it's 20). But regardless, the low limit doesn't make it terribly attractive either. →Raul654 22:12, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

I guess that makes sense. I can think of at least two (hacky) ways around the current check, but given that the aforementioned d00dz are mostly thirteen and won't have a tool that does it for them, the check seems to be working fine. Thanks both for enlightening me. -- John Fader

Need some help editing my user page

I have no clue how to make a phrase appear directly underneath another, I tried newline, and it didn't work. Also I can't seem to link to the sandbox (or other non encyclopedia articles). 69.138.222.255 decided to use my guetsbook as a test page, so I decided to put a link to the sandbox in there.

For example, this is what might appear: sandbox

I tried this as well w:sandbox, which doesn't work either.

Thanks for the help.

Talk

Try for the line break problem. Try Wikipedia:Sandbox to get to the sandbox. If you want to put a friendly message on the talk page of the anon user, then try using the template {{test}}. Noisy | Talk 19:34, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

So I need to put "wikipedia" in front of the page name to link to non encyclopedia articles?

The encyclopedic articles are in the "main" namespace. So if you wanted to link to Albert Einstein, you link to it like that. Wikipedia related pages are in the Wikipedia namespace. You link to them like this: Wikipedia:Village pump. There's also a template namespace (for templates) (there's actually something like 14 of them, but only the main namespace, the template namespace, and the wikipedia namespace are of any consequence). →Raul654 20:36, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

You will likely also encounter the "Talk:" namespace (the "discussion" tab of each article) quite a lot. For more information, see Wikipedia:Namespace. - IMSoP 00:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stylesheet

How can I change my settings so Wikipedia will dispay using my monobook.css stylesheet? Oven Fresh 22:14, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Are you using the monobook skin? If not, change your preferences. If you are, then do a good solid reload, possibly with a purge of your browser's cache. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:19, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For how to do that, please see Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. Note that the message displayed above the CSS page is incorrect; just clicking "reload" will not bypass your cache in Mozilla. [If any sysop/admin sees this, please change MediaWiki:clearyourcache, as explained at its talk page; thank you.] - IMSoP 23:57, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WikiHiero

Is there a guide to all the symbols used in WikiHiero, including what each one represents? --ᓛᖁᑐ 04:17, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Meta lists all the hiero's you can use, but if you want to know what they mean you'll have to go outside the wiki. There's a "Hieroglyph Library" program somewhere on the net that lists numerous symbols and their meanings. I also recommend a book about glyphs from the British Museum, but I'd have to look up the authors or the title. Feel free to contact me if you want to know more. Mgm|^(talk) 13:31, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

OSI-RM and TCP/IP question

Hello,

I have a question pertaining to the OSI-RM and the TCP/IP.

What i intend to know is that how much do these models mirror the real world?

in terms of applying at least one technology such as email,video conferencing,etc; to these models;how does it fit in to the model-if it does?

Hope to learn more from Wikipedia,

Bol

Well, both are workmanlike models that have gotten the job done for two or three decades. It's not that they particularly matched the real world, rather that they forced the real world (the hardware and software that people made) to conform to them. By and large things worked out okay, with the phone network and the internet respectively built on them. But as time progresses the cracks start to show more and more. In particular:

OSI is fine at the lower levels, but the distinction between the uppermost three is fairly cloudy, and most deployments just deploy three lower layers and one upper one that they call "the application layer" for want of anthing better. TCP/IP just ducks the issue by not having any upper layers.
The abstraction between the layers was always something of a fairy-story, and it's getting more so with time. Web servers know more about the low control of the underlying socket than the model says they need to, and IP layer firewalls become progressively more stateful, introspecting packets at higher layers to figure out what's going on.
the architecture is contorted in ways that break the rigid layering: NAT, VPNs, SSH tunnelling etc rewrite packets or magically move them around inside other packets, breaking lots of the model's assumptions
more and more stuff is done in the application rather than the network stack. P2P programs and voip implement much of what they do in UDP (or just IP) themselves. HTTP has become the new lingua franca (motivated by firewalls that block everything else), with HTTP headers replacing TCP port numbers as service identifiers.

So the models still work, but lots of people spend lots of effort doing an end-run around them, and like all models they're a lot simpler than the real world demands. - John Fader

User Page Shortcuts

Just out of curiosity, are we allowed to create shortcuts to our Userpage? Like how WP:HD brings you here, could I do something like U:OF? Oven Fresh 16:14, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good question, my user name is quite a pain to type over and over again. I'm note sure, but I'd like to know this one as well. Mgm|^(talk) 16:21, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
- I'd strongly advise against doing this: non-encyclopedia content in the "main" namespace (which this would be, since there is no "U:" namespace) is quite severely frowned upon by some; the "WP:" and "WT:" shortcuts have mainly survived because they are 1) very useful (and not just for one person) and 2) long-established (inertia needs a strong consensus to overcome).
- Besides which, you don't need to type out the name, you can just use the non-timestamped signature, as in ~~~. Obviously, this doesn't apply to people like Mgm who've done weird hacks to their signature, but that's the choice one makes, I guess... - IMSoP 19:42, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - When you're logged in, you should have a link at the top of the page or in your sidebar to your user page anyway -- it's only one click away, or a press of "Home" on your keyboard and then a click. Much easier than setting up a shortcut I think.... Catherine\^talk 22:48, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Enhance My Search" nightmare: virus, spyware, help!

I am battling a "Enhance My Search" nightmare on one of my home computers. It jumps up whenever you open Google or Yahoo searches, and opens a window in front of either. Whether it open in a windows or not, it adds language to your text in any apparent attempt to create links to certain words (IE "work"). None of the programs I have used so far have been able to get rid of it. It really screws up Wikipedia work when editing. Its hard enough to find the right text to use for WP without something being inserted in it. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Any help would be appreciated. Vaoverland 06:36, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

www.GetFirefox.com! =) Oven Fresh 22:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- If you want a clean version of IE, instead of/in addition to Firefox, and the usual suspects (AdAware, Spybot S&D) were unable to help, you might try Hijack This, which should be able to get rid of practically everything, but it requires you to manually identify the offending spyware from a list of possible offenders on your machine, so it is preferable with a bit of computer knowledge. Wålberg 18:38, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi Vaoverland. Most results from a Google search seemed unhelpful, but try the instructions from this particular CastleCops thread [6] and see if that helps. Bumm13 07:44, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Regarding using Firefox instead, I do not want to give up on IE explorer because I just recently started using the IeSpell program (recommended by other WP users) which has turned out to be a big help with my typing transposition disability I have to overcome. I will trust advice from here which was right on target with the ieSpell program, and face with the rather complicated procedure to try to get rid of Enhance My Search. Drat! I fortunately have more than one computer, but the stronger one is the sick one (of course!). I'll update here with news on "how it goes". Thanks for all the help folks! Vaoverland 20:40, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Well, I might be wrong, but I think there's a spelling extension for Firefox. --Sgeo | Talk 21:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

[Note: due to a technical problem, this entire page was duplicated, and the above section was edited in more than one place; I've folded the two conversations into one above, so apologies if something doesn't make sense/surprises someone. - IMSoP 15:39, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)]

Shazaam! It seems that following the CastleCops thread [7] carefully worked. The dreaded Enhance My Search window is notpopping up in front of Google and Yahoo searches and my text is not being attached by insertions of weblinks to Enhance My Search. I suspect the duplicate text noted in the preceding message was done by my computer. SBTC (sorry 'bout that chief). Now, if only I can keep from getting EMS again! I am running ad-aware and Webroot's Spysweeper programs. Thanks to all for the help. Vaoverland 02:01, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link to Wikipedia reference from keywords

I want to add a link to a Wikipedia entry from keywords in articles on a protal page, similar to what the Trillian3 chat client does. Do you know if there is a service available that provide such short descriptions of Wikipedia entries? Also, what is the best way to find out which keywords are available on Wikipedia, should I download the database to do that?

Sending Email

Other users have sent me emails, but I don't see an option to send emails to any user on their talk pages, even though my email is listed in preferences. Also, can other users (or sysop) see my email or it remains hidden to them? OneGuy 01:04, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The "E-mail this user" option appears in the toolbox. If you're using the default Monobook skin, it'll appear on the left side between the "User contributions" link and "Upload file". Other users cannot see your email address, unless you use the email feature to send them an email first. Wikipedia's developers have low-level access to the database, and could therefore see your email address, but there's only a small number of them. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:32, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Print friendly pages missing in the default skin?

There is no "Printable page" link on any pages when using the default skin (MonoBook). I discovered quite by accident that changing the skin to Classic or CologneBlue in user preferences causes the "Printable page" option to appear in all pages. --Grnch 23:19, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why doesn't the default skin have this?

It's very non-obvious that you have to change skins to get this functionality.
Users without an account can't change it, so they are deprived of this.
The default skin is quite nice, I'd like to be able to use it and still have access to print-friendly pages.

Nevermind, figured it out... the MonoBook skin doesn't need a separate "Printable page" link, it has a print-friendly CSS which automatically hides the sidebar and other non-relevant content when printing. --Grnch 23:19, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Can I make my own Wiki Page?

If I belive I'm an important person :P, can I make my own Wiki document page? I have a user page but can I make my own Wiki/MyNameHere page? At this time, 'No page with that title exists' sid007 23:51, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Chances are that, like the overwhelming majority of us Wikipedians, you are not particularly notable and therefore shouldn't have an article devoted to you in the main namespace (see Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies). Only a select few Wikipedians are notable enough to merit inclusion; User:Jimbo (Jimmy Wales), User:RandalSchwartz (Randal Schwartz), and User:Dwheeler (David A. Wheeler) come to mind. --David Iberri | Talk 00:53, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Also note, that even if you are in fact important enough to warrant an entry in the Wikipedia, you probably shouldn't write your own autobiography. While it's not directly forbidden, it is frowned upon by many Wikipedians and not recommended. See Wikipedia:Auto-biography for more details. Someone else will eventually make an entry for you, if you are an important or famous person. Wålberg 01:34, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) (That actually happened for me... the page was created before I even became a contributor - User:RandalSchwartz)

Thanks for your answers. I guess, I'll just wait for someone to write an article about me :P sid007 08:00, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is the wikipedia PHP & software open source and available for other projects?

Our food coop wants to start a community written (ala Wiki) clearinghouse of information on the companies that provide foods and services to our coop, and it would be cool to be able to start with the tools you folks have already written. Is the underlying software/PHP scripts and whatever open source and available?

MediaWiki is released under the GPL and is available at its sourceforge site. Be warned that it's not the simplest thing out there, and you may want to use a less complicated Wiki engine. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:42, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why is it that when one puts {{R ...}} at the bottom of a redirect page, the R ... message stays there, whereas if one types something at the bottom, it doesn't? Is there a way to rig it so that I can type an explanation (not one of the R ...s) at the bottom of a page, and it'll actually appear there? (I'm thinking in particular of merging the current content of Talk:Handlebody decomposition (minus some of the formatting) into Handlebody decomposition.) —msh210 20:49, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Messages like:{{Blah)} take the information from a template (in this case: Template:Blah) and insert it into the page. [[Blah]] is simply a link to an article. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:39, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
- I know that. But that doesn't answer my question, so I guess I didn't word the latter well enough. Let me try again. —msh210 21:50, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

El Nino is a redirect page. Its text is

#Redirect [[El_Niño]] {{R from misspelling}}

So it is possible (at least under certain circumstances) to include text after a redirect command: one such circumstance is if that text is called by {{R from misspelling}}. I wish to include text after a redirect command without calling it from Template:R from misspelling or any other template. —msh210 21:50, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I decided to ask on IRC also, and sannse told me there that it'll work if the text (or template that calls the text) is on the same line as the redirect command. So that answers my question. Thanks for trying, though, Mgm; and thanks, sannse. —msh210 21:55, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I display an image from a foreign-language wikipedia?

You can't - at least not directly. A link to a foreign-language wikipedia is treated as an external link, and all linked images must reside on the local Wiki server. However, if the image in question is released under the GFDL or is public domain, you can just upload it here and add the relevant license tag (remember to include the original contributor to the foreign-language wikipedia for GFDL images) -- Ferkelparade π 00:58, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Note that there's a special feature for images hosted on the Wikimedia Commons. Images hosted there can be included by using the standard image syntax. If an image with a particular name does not exist on a given language, but does exist on the Commons, it will be included from the Commons. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:39, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How to display images from other-language wikipedias.

See above -- Ferkelparade π 01:24, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I link to a headline that's also a hyperlink?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_skunk#Diet. There is a broken link there to the Skunk Haven section. It isn't working because the Skunk Haven headline is also a hyperlink to their external website. Can anyone help me fix it? Nathanlarson32767 04:33, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think you're going to have to take the external link out of the heading. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:30, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also linking to article sections is discouraged as someone may easily change it's name and break the link unknowingly in the editing process. Mgm|^(talk) 11:20, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I must say, I think external links in headings are discouraged in themselves as well. Add to that the fact that that article seems to be tending away from an encyclopedia article and toward a "skunk-keepers guide" (see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not; perhaps this should be moved to Wikibooks?) and I feel that fixing the link is the least of our worries here. Nonetheless, I've fixed it with the good old trick of replacing ":" with "%3a"; and don't forget you can do section linking with internal links, not just external ones (e.g. [[Pet skunk#Diet]], [[#Diet]]). - IMSoP 22:47, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Place names in article titles?

I've seen two different styles used to dis-ambiguate place names in article titles:

Location, enclosing location Location (encloseing location)

Which is preferred? More specifically, should it be "Bronx, New York", or "Bronx (New York)"?

The comma convention is preferred according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names). Best, David Iberri | Talk 21:30, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

The policy Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) applies to cities, however, not to geographic features. In the case of City Island (New York), it is a both an island and a neighborhood of the Bronx, but it is not a city. Likewise the other islands in Long Island Sound. Using the simple comma form in this case is incorrect, in my opinion, since it casts the article in the form of a municipality, which none of them are. In the case of these islands, the correct form should be the parentheses, or alternatively, the full neighborhood form of the Bronx, for example City Island, Bronx, New York. -- Decumanus 18:09, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Now, I've got another related problem.

There is an article with the title "City Island (New York)". I was going to move it to "City Island, New York" to go along with the above, but when I tried to do that, I discovered that the comma-delimited version already exists, as a redirect back to the paren-delimited version. To slightly complicate things, there's also a "City Island" article, which is also a redirect. What should I do now to best straighten out this mess?

In such a case, you have to contact an admin to delete the redirect so that the page can be moved to its correct title. Things get more complicated when the redirect has an edit history, but this one didn't have one, so I just del/moved the article to its proper title. If you encounter any more cases like this, just contact an admin and tell them why you think the page should be moved -- Ferkelparade π 16:07, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm -- now the "City Island, New York" page has lost its entire history!

It has? Maybe some caching issue, I can still see the entire history here: [8] -- Ferkelparade π 16:34, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category question

Please see Duboce Triangle. I added an external link to a neighborhood association but the category assigned is also adding an External Link section - bad style. What is protocol here?

The category was not used properly in the article. It should be included like this: [[Category:San Francisco neighborhoods]], not like this: {{Category:San Francisco neighborhoods}}. The later syntax is used for templates. Also sections (such as External links) should have double equal sign around them. Brona 00:48, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

JPG Help

I can't seem to make [[Image:Hydnjo.JPG]] thumbnail sized. I've uploaded it as a 2KB file but it still comes out BIG. Feel free to edit or explain so that I can edit. Also how can I reference that image without displaying it. I used "nowiki" for that image reference in this message but that requires some helpful soul to type it out rather than clicking on it. Thanks, User talk:Hydnjo

(From Hydnjo): Experimenting around it seems that my original upload needs a "syop" to delete. Sorry about that, I'll be more careful in the future. Would a "syop" please help. Delete everything if you wish and I'll start over. Thanks Hydnjo 02:55, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC) User talk:Hydnjo

Firstly, you can display a reference to an image by including a colon at the beginning of the wiki-brackets, like this: [[:Image:Hydnjo.JPG]] , which displays this: Image:Hydnjo.JPG. Secondly, it's okay to upload big (within reason), because you can use the Wikipedia:Extended image syntax to display a smaller version, but still have the large version available for users who want to see more detail. Thirdly, you can modify an uploaded image by uploading a modified copy with exactly the same file name -- you will be given the option to overwrite the original image. See also Wikipedia:Picture tutorial for more info and links. Best of luck to you! Catherine\^talk 06:54, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Your browser probably has the original image in its cache, and isn't downloading the new version. Try Shift-Refresh. — PhilHibbs | talk 16:55, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dynamic signature

Hello. I'm trying to make a signature that one can change already existing copies of by changing a template which is a subpage of my user page, User:Vacuum/sig. Then I set my signature in the preferences to {{:User:Vacuum/sig}}. Unfortunately, it comes out looking like this:

Vacuum c

Thanks in advance, Vacuum. PS. The page User:Vacuum/sig does exist, despite the red link.

Ok, according to Sunborn there appears to be some limitations on the sig template. Sunborn says the template will only work five times per page. You can use your dynamic sig if you change Vacuum c to this instead:

Vacuum [[User_talk:Vacuum|(tc)]] [[Special:Watchlist/Vacuum|w]]

Here is my result with four tildes: [[User:Viriditas|User:Viriditas/sig]] 03:50, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Note that Special:Watchlist/Viriditas is redundant: you can only ever view your own watchlist, so this is exactly the same as just Special:Watchlist (try it: Special:Watchlist/IMSoP). Given that, it's not a very useful thing to have in a signature, since everyone has a link to their watchlist on their own screen already. (I believe some people were concerned that they would be "stalked" if other users could see what they were watching). - IMSoP 14:51, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Meanwhile, there are a number of users who make public watchlists. If User:Vacuum wants to do this, all he has to do is create a subpage of links he wants to watch or allow others to watch (see User:Viriditas/public). Then, he can link to the public watchlist in his sig. I still don't understand why I can't watch user contribs. --Viriditas | Talk 08:01, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I realised why it wasn't working: you'd used "{{:User:Vacuum/sig}}" instead of "{{User:Vacuum/sig}}". The leading colon makes the software look for an article called "User:Vacuum/sig" in the main namespace, rather than a page called "Vacuum/sig" in the User namespace (the "User:" bit isn't actually stored as part of the page's name). As a side-effect, because of an oddity in the way the software checks links, this was making all the links to User:Vacuum/sig turn red. So, sort of a bug, but only because you misunderstood the syntax (you only need the leading : to include something that's in the un-named "main"/"article" namespace).

Incidentally, I fixed your template up a bit, too (if you look, it gets substituted in after "[[User:Vacuum|" and before a closing "]]", so it's best to leave those out of the template).

Oh, and finally, to avoid the only-5-times-per-page doom, you might want to try using {{subst:User:vacuum/sig}}, which is replaced just once at save time and never changes again. Although this rather defeats the point of having a template, I spose, because you could just change your preferences each time, rather than the template... - IMSoP 15:44, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contributions analysis

Hi, does anyone know of any third party programs (or for that matter, features of wikipedia) that can do interesting things with one's "contributions" list? I've seen other wikipedians with all sorts of statistical analysis done to their contributions (e.g. time of day, over the history of their user account, etc.) Are these just generated by scripts that they've written themselves or are there widely available tools? How automated are these programs/scripts/whatever? And finally, does anyone know a better way of finding out how many edits you have other than pasting them all into notepad and seeing how many lines there are? :-) -Lommer 08:48, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Someone made a beatiful tool to count edits. I can't remember the link, but it's by someone called Kate and it's linked at the bottom on my user page. Mgm|^(talk) 09:13, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

According to that tool: Lommer has 1094 edits (311 current revisions, 783 old revisions) - Mgm|^(talk) 09:17, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Numbered definition list

I need a numbered definition list. Simply combining # and ;: like this:

#;item1 : def1
#;item2 : def2

does not work; only the first list number is printed. If I add a newline:

#;item1 : def1

#;item2 : def2

then I get two lists, each starting with a one. Is this a bug in wiki? If not, then what should I do? It is a long list so I shouldn't use a table...

Welcome, User:145.97.223.187. Why not register - it'll make you feel all warm and tingly inside (or perhaps that's just me and the curry). How about just leaving the ';' out of the loop, like this:

#item1 : def1
#item2 : def2

giving

item1 : def1
item2 : def2

Wiki markup is probably quite different to what you are used to, so have a look at Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Noisy | Talk 18:06, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm currently using:

#;item1
#:def1
#'''item2'''
#:def2
#'''item3'''
#:def3

which gives the desired result and is not too bad..., 145.97.223.187 14:53, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Make Google/Yahoo default

Every now and then the search button leads to a page saying that for performance reasons the function is not working and putting up Google and Yahoo search boxes instead. Is there a way to make Google the default search option, since the wikipedia search function drives me bonkers with its inflexibility? ta. Icundell 17:15, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, you can always just ignore the box on the site, and construct the searches yourself - I don't know about Yahoo!, but in Google it's just a matter of adding "site:en.wikipedia.org" to the search terms you enter by your favourite method (by going to http://google.com, by typing in Mozilla's address bar or Firefox's search bar, by using the Google toolbar, etc).

If you are using Mozilla or Firefox (and maybe others, but those are the ones I know about) you could also set up a "bookmark keyword": create a new bookmark, and set the "location" to "http://google.com/search?q=site:en.wikipedia.org+%s", and set a "keyword" like "wp" or something. Then you can type "wp word or phrase" into the address bar, and it will do a Google search of the English Wikipedia for word or phrase. - IMSoP 17:31, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Note that if you're using the Google toolbar (and probably other installable bars), you can customize the toolbar to add a "search site" button in addition to the usual "search The Web" button. This is very useful for searching only the site you're currently on -- which is almost always WP for me, oddly enough... Catherine\^talk 22:30, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You can also alter Internet Explorer 6 so that typing search terms in the address bar uses your favorite search engine (rather than MSN Search). Click the Search button on the toolbar (the magnifying glass) to open the search sidebar. Click "Customize" at the top of the sidebar. Ignore the dialog box, just click "Autosearch settings" button at the bottom, and select your desired search provider from the dropdown list. Now if you type anything other than an URL into the Address bar, it'll do a search using this setting. HTH Catherine\^talk 22:55, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cheers. Trouble is i'm on a somewhat elderly Mac (for another month at least, too). Hopefully, once I get a nice whizzy G5 and Firefox (which has some rather coll extensions) these issues will become moot, but in the mean time I was hopeing for a in-wikipedia solution. Icundell 23:55, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help setting up a disambiguation page

Hi all,

I am a BCP/DR specialist and found a the need for a disambiguation page for the acronym "DR"

Right now, if you search for "DR" the 'doctor' page pops up.

I just don't know how to make a new disa page.

DR - doctor
DR - disaster recovery

Thanks in advance...

Revmachine21 18:42, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, DR redirects to Dalereckoning. Dr redirects to Doctor. To edit redirects, use a link of the form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR?redirect=no. Then you can edit the redirect page. Note that Dalereckoning has a disambiguation section at the top, but this section is getting too large, so a new disambig page is definitely needed (I doubt "Dalereckoning" is the primary expansion of this abbreviation, but even if it is, you still need DR (disambiguation).)

Read Wikipedia:Disambiguation for everything you need to know, and don't be afraid to post a question on my talk page if anything is unclear. JRM 18:50, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

lawyer

where can I find a list of common law lawyers in the state of michigan.

It's not a list, but the State Bar of Michigan has a searchable directory online. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:26, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Watched Users?

Is it possible to maintain a watchlist of users? That is, all edits that they make are reported on some central page? I recall seeing mention of this feature somewhere, but cannot find it. -leigh (φθόγγος) 03:12, Dec 12, 2004 (UTC)

~~Yep, I just gave an example of how to do this in the Dynamic signature section.~~Sorry, I misread what you wrote. I don't think it's possible to do that. Hopefully, I'm wrong. --Viriditas | Talk 07:31, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Policy metric system?

Does Wikipedia have a policy about using/not using the metric system? Ie when looking at the page on China_National_Highway_312, and it confused me that the author was using miles - I had to use Google to convert it... (of course people from the States might have the opposite problem - what I am asking is whether there is a policy). thanks Hou Shuang 00:20, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In the scientific and medical articles most of us have been trying to use both metric (SI) and American units where different. I can think of some various policies but don't think we have an official one for geographical and other units. For example

Use the units most familiar to the author of the articles (i.e., American authors can use mi and most others can use km).
1. If the author feels like it, he can put alternate units as well. This is I suspect our current de facto policy.
2. Link all units in all articles to a conversion page so the reader doesn't have to use Google to find conversions.
Use the units most familiar/appropriate to the subject matter of the articles (i.e., use km in articles about Europe and Asia, but mi in US).
1. Make it policy that both types of units be provided by the author(s).
Make it policy that all units should be metric because most of the world uses them. Since I think the majority of writers and maybe readers are currently American I don't think it would be accepted.

I agree with you we should do better at this and it deserves a policy. alteripse 00:45, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

With my European bias, I would be in favour of only using SI units, and having a bot clean up all the mess (should be pretty doable), but I understand if others don't agree... In the meantime, I was just looking for a policy. Hou Shuang 03:36, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it's worth adding an appeal here for people using non-metric measures to remember that "gallons" is a useless and ambiguous measure unless you indicate whether this is US or imperial gallons. The same for the derived measure mpg. Notinasnaid 10:33, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Moving of pages, fixing of links

I just moved NORAD to North American Aerospace Defense Command, and created a disambiguation page, to be able to include Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation... While I believe this is the right thing to do, I am at loss as to how to clean up all the references to NORAD all over the place - is there some way to do that automatically? Hou Shuang 03:36, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid there's no automatic way -- you will have to go to the "What links here" link (in the Toolbox, usually in the sidebar) from the NORAD article. (Here's a direct link: [9]). Go to each page linked there, find the mention of NORAD, and edit it as appropriate to the article -- in most cases, you'll probably want to use a piped link like this: [[North American Aerospace Defense Command|NORAD]]. It's time consuming, but it's always better to have human judgment involved in sorting out these links. Good luck! Catherine\^talk

Alternatively, if the task is large enough you could ask someone who runs a bot to help you. Isomorphic 21:17, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Listing watchlist, exclude own

I use my watchlist often, to see what has happened to articles I have helped with, but if I am in a heavy editing bout, it gets all cluttered up with my own changes. I think it would be very useful to have a little (show own edits) (don't show own edits) link. Or is there already a way? Hou Shuang 03:39, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia can't currently do this, as far as I'm aware. You might consider suggesting this feature as an enhancement to MediaWiki (Wikipedia's underlying software) here. Best, David Iberri | Talk 00:09, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

See User:JesseW#Bookmarklet Rmhermen 01:10, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hot dang, that's cool. Obviously, I rescind my prior statement that this isn't currently possible. --David Iberri | Talk 05:52, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Add picture to user page

Sorry to not be a techie, but although I've reviewed the relevant instructions on Wiki, I still can't figure out how to add a photo (I have jpg & tif formats) to my user page. Can you explain this to me? Thanks.

User:sca 13dec04

Have you read Wikipedia:Uploading images? All you need to do is upload the JPG file (click the "Upload file" link in the toolbox), give it an appropriate image copyright tag, then stick [[Image:Mypicture.jpg]] on your username, replacing "Mypicture.jpg" with the actual name of the image. Best, David Iberri | Talk 21:11, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC) P.S. You don't have to manually date your posts; you can use four tildes ~~~~ to get a full signature and timestamp.

New article not in search results

I created a new article and I find that I can not locate the article doing a search but since I have the url I know it did exists. What do I do to add the new article to the archives so that it can be found in a search?

You do not need to do anything - it may take some time for internal Wikipedia search to update its index. It takes even longer for external search engines such as Google to update their index. It is a good idea to categorize your article and link to it from some related articles so that Wikipedia readers can get to it more easily. Brona 23:54, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you have been stung by the all-too-common confusion over internal versus external search: when the Wikimedia servers are particularly busy, the actual internal site search is disabled (to allow viewing and editing to remain usable) and you are instead offered searches using either Google or Yahoo!. These alternative searches do not use any special archives, and so can only search the pages that those search engines have crawled on their regular spiderings of the web. The main upshot being that a new page won't show up for some time (i.e. until Google or Yahoo! "spots" it) and there is very little to be done about it.

If I'm wrong, and you are using the internal search, there may be something wrong in the site's software, or it may be that the terms you are searching for fall under certain exclusions (e.g. common words, short words). - IMSoP 23:57, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC) [drafted simultaneously to Brona's answer above]

School needs revision

Is school a place for screwing and smoking weed? How about masturbation?

Check out the School page to see if I am right.

I don't know how to do a revert. Help! Revmachine21 14:05, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

serious copyright question

I wonder if wikipedia is liable for uploaded copyrighted pictures. What happens if someone uploads a copyrighted picture to wikipedia And then the copyright owners files a lawsuit against wikiepedia?

This is no joke. Someone has threatened me with a lawsuit for the same reason.

Gunnarvb 16:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First, it depends on what country your website is based in to determine what laws apply. But this is probably a question best asked of a lawyer. Rmhermen 18:43, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, my site is 100% in english but its hosted on a server in Germany. Does German law apply now? Cheers, Gunnarvb 19:44, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another copyright question

Log in problems

Exrapolation/interpolation program that may be of interest

Sounds like it would violate the no original research policy to have it here. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

However, Wikibooks or Wikisource might be interested -- have a chat with the people at those projects to see if it fits. Catherine\^talk 07:15, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I get certain accents to display on IE?

On internet explorer v6.0, certain accent marks, usually for Central European characters with diacritical marks (Czech, Polish, etc.) show up as boxes.

Using Windows 98SE Internet Explorer 6.0

--Larry G

Larry, try going into preferences and picking a different skin (particularly "Classic"). Things won't look as nice, but the East European / Slavic languages diacrita will hopefully work. - John Fader

Under the View menu under Encoding, what options are selected when you view a Polish page in IE? --David Iberri | Talk 04:30, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

[My previous reply was *deleted*. If this happens again, *please* explain the reason. I was only thanking the poster for her help and explaining how I fixed the problem.] Repost - ::::Thanks Catherine. :) That did the trick, with the addition that I had to click on IE's "Accessibility" and click "Ignore font style", which then overrode the Monobook stylesheet. I still don't know what font Monobook uses, but I tried some experiments and it looks like News Gothic MT, which left out the same missing characters, at least on my Win98SE version of IE6.0. On Firefox, the font is either Arial or Arial Unicode MS. For some reason Firefox seems to handle fonts better and I don't have to adjust anything for viewing complex scripts on web pages. However, in IE, although I fixed the problem, I have to reverse my fix so that stylesheet will display properly on other webpages. Something I don't have to do yet in Firefox. I hope IE will handle fonts better in future releases. Although I suppose it would help for me to get with the program and get a WinXP machine before Longhorn is released to the public, hehe. Or buy an Apple. At any rate, thanks for the fix. -- Larry G--172.129.50.61 07:06, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aligning text without tables

In Courland colonization of the Americas, I have the text: Governors of New Courland (Tobago)

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon
1654 Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

You could use a bunch of nonbreaking spaces, but I don't recommend it because it's not guaranteed to line up your text on every browser:

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall

1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon

1654 Adrien Lampsius

1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

Preformatted text is another option, but it's not the most aesthetically pleasing, IMO, especially with the gray background and dotted border:

 1642 - 1643  Edward Marshall 
 1643 - 1650  Cornelius Caroon 
 1654         Adrien Lampsius 
 1656 - 1658  Hubert de Beveren

Alternatively, you could use a definition list, but that'll change the appearance considerably:

1642 - 1643: Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650: Cornelius Caroon
1654: Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658: Hubert de Beveren

So none of these options are really optimal. Why the aversion towards tables? --David Iberri | Talk 18:24, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Strange Internal Link

Signature block

Bah, I feel stupid now for not finding that earlier! It's so obvious! -Lommer 20:42, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deleting former versions of images

With images, versions exist to show the history of the upload process. There's no need to delete them, as only the last version will ever be used. Mgm|^(talk) 09:03, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

The extra revisions do take up space on the servers. Given that there's only two identical versions and the image is small, I wouldn't bother. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Isn't the case now - tells me I have to be an admin to do that. Somebody in the WWW 09:34, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Japanese characters

In many entries highlighting non-english languages, the characters of those languages show up as boxes (as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Go-Komatsu_of_Japan).

How can I turn those on so that the characters appear? I have already gone to Tools->Options->Languages and loaded up Japanese, but there was no change.

Thanks.

If you're using IE, you might try the instructions given in a recent help desk question. Or you might just get a real browser ;-) --David Iberri | Talk 00:34, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Old contributions

I made several contributions before I got an account here. Is there any way I can add them to my current contributions list? -Purplefeltangel 16:43, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely! See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. --David Iberri | Talk 17:10, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Although, don't hold your breath, as this is not treated as very high priority by the developers who have to carry it out, so there's rather a backlog. - IMSoP 19:02, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Password Problems

Lost password

Ugh, that makes things really bad. I'll try looking into it. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:28, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Received: from blah45.badoldisp.com ([45.22.11.22] helo=[45.22.11.22])

Or you could just bite the bullet and start a new account (MKmk2, perhaps);( -- John Fader 18:40, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What links here ?

"What links here" means all pages that have links to that page, not pages linked from that page. HTH, Meelar (talk) 02:24, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

You're not the first one to make that mistake, so we've seen this confusion before. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:24, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Rename page

Embedding credits & license info in an image

From What to include on an image description page--

Image metadata seems to be an utter dog's breakfast. I found three incompatible formats:

Photoshop 7 (File->FileInfo)
Photoshop appears to save some kind of IPTC, which it and imagemagick can read. Neither of the other two can see it at all.
Windows Explorer (<file's_contextmenu>->properties->summary->simple)
windows explorer seems to have its own format which none of the other tools can see. Photoshop will sometimes keep explorer's info, but sometimes will zap it.
Paintshop Pro 6
Paintshop has its own format, but can't read any of the above, and will happily annihilate all the metadata (including the EXIF) other than its own (even if all one did in paintshop is write the paintshop metadata).

imagemagick's "identify -verbose" command shows EXIF and IPTC blocks, if present in an image. I don't think it has any way of changing either.

(Gimp, btw, doesn't seem to have an option to view or edit metadata, but I'm not a gimp regular, so I could easily have overlooked an option somewhere).

Misspellings in Search Queries

Why not have a feature which will give correct spelling suggestions when a query is misspelled? -Isaiah R, 12/18/04

how do i make a request on a new subject

Character code

Oops-never mind, I forgot to convert Unicode from Hex to Dec. Hydnjo ☜^{Talk to Joe}

11:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Linking dates and years. Also, question on capitalization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

proverbs

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

Can I add Irish Gaelic proverbs?

Thanks.

Paul

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

Policies regarding essay and paper writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do I edit {{EnderCharacters}}?

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

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

Moving a subsection of an article: creating a new topic

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

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

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

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

Strange formatting issues on Vfd

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

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

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

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

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

who designed the first?

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

Criticism of Wikipedia

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

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

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

picture removal

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

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

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

Indeed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

sperm

Moved to RD. Masterhomer

My sig has been screwed up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

adding text

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

What do I do?

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

Thanks.

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

Recent changes patrol?

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

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

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

Images

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

Thanks

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

WP Template Edit Langauge

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

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

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

creating new page

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

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

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

Help?

Thanks.

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

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

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

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

Pikmin series

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

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

Sysop needed

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

Question about "What links here" button.

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

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

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

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

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

ogg ?

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

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

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

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

what, if anything, is wrong with mixing test?

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

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

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

Requesting article

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

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

UserName

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

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

Positive Manipulation?

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

Positive Manipulation? v2.0

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

Welcoming template broke?

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

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

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

Browser crashing

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

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

Were you aware of the existence of this site?

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/

This one too:

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

They all seem to be ripping off Wikipedia...

Here's yet another:

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

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

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

Wikipedia search and creating new article question

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

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

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

Help about categories

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

Thankin you.

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

Help about the organization of categories

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

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

How to make text surrounded by dashed line?

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

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

Some help with a bad category name I have created please

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

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

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

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

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

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

Formatting a page with table of contents

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

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

Signature using ~~~~

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

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

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

Cannot Login Already??

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

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

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

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

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

Redirection from Search keyword to a wrong page

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

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

Clive

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

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

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

what is all this???

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

Sincerely,

AngelaS

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

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

Editing

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

Thx

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

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

Empty Space

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

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

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

can anyone link me to that site? thanks

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

Editing individual sections?

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

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

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

Assistance - template centering

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

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

Creating links to external material

I looked, but can't find the mechanism.

Denton

moved from Wikipedia:Reference desk

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

Andre Rieu article needs cleanup help

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

Gccwang 04:47, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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

New Messages

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

Help! Tried to move article

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

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

Tried to move QuakeAID specific content to:

Talk:QuakeAID

...Didn't work.

Help.

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

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

New pages background?

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

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

Web capture of Wikipedia articles in Adobe Acrobat 6.0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many thanks.

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

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

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

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

What to link this article to?

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

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

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

Mark this article as patrolled

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

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

Er, can't we get this awful terminology changed? We're just going to see more questions about this if we continue to use a word which most people won't understand. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 05:27, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As can be seen below, there was no consensus to adopt the word patrolled. It would seem to be Angela's fault that it was introduced anyway. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 05:30, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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

"Patrolling" of recent changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

υωρ 23:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ᑐ 20:05, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create a Web Developer FAQ?

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

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

Table Help

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

For example,

1	2
3	4

Try using the border and cellpadding options, like so:

1	2
3	4

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

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

Thanks Lee S. Svoboda

Problem adding disucssion page

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

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

Reverting vandalism = failed spam block filters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Double Article

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

Thanks,

Greg

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

Wikipedia line spacing, changing the size and font of the heading

What is Wikipedia's line spacing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

flash .net project

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

Sounds cool, but Wikipedia isn't for software development. Try sourceforge. — PhilHibbs | talk 16:31, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
While Wikipedia isn't the right place for the software part of your project, there has been some talk of adding support for embedded Flash media [11]. IMO it's a great idea. --David Iberri | Talk 18:02, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

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

Collation order in categories

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

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

Translating Slovak

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

Odblokovaine Tvoriveho posania Zneuzitie Neschopnost ucit sa Sexuaine Ocakavania

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

History Bug

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

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

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

'Help me on this point' template request

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

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

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

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

Is there such a template?

RHaworth 05:57, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)

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

RHaworth 07:58, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Browser statistic

What about the browser statistic at Wikipedia, which browser is most used among us,Wkipedians? --ThomasK 08:42, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Browsers, unfortunately the statistics are from February 2004 - an update would indeed be nice :) -- Ferkelparade π 20:27, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OWU; Feeling very frustrated

I'm feeling very frustrated and I hope someone can help me. Let me say that I admit that I have found myself in the midst of a revert war that I should have never entered into; I should have figured out a better tact, but I didn’t and I now I’m stuck.

The entry is question is for Ohio Wesleyan University and the problem is happening with one individual, using one Wiki-user name and various IP addresses to include information that is robbing the entry of its NPOV. By making edits signed in and not signed in, the contributor is attempting to make it appear that more then one person is involved. One I.P. address is an OWU based I.P. address and I’m assuming that the other I.P. is the one that this person uses while at home on break.

Problems with the listed began in July of this year -- before I became involved with the article, which was in September under my user name of “Stude62”. Prior to that time, there have been requests, and attempts to return the document to a NPOV state, however the edits are quickly reverted.

These edits, have resulted in an article that isn’t reliable, isn’t objective and isn’t documented; references are made to publications and outside companies, but date, issue, vol. and page numbers are not included and it makes it very hard to proof the material. In place of properly documented references, superlatives were used ad nauseam.

My goal when I began working on the article was to remove its subjectivity and return the article to a NPOV state that was reliable and informative. I’m not a great writer, but I could see how sentences could be rearranged to place like topics together, and how restructuring that rewording sentences and paragraphs could reduce the wordiness of the article. In a strictly word to word comparison, this article out strips articles for other like school lists with its peer colleges by about 3to1 and that’s even without addressing the issue of content, which the OWU article is seriously lacking.

Along the lines of factual content, the article is lacking in good solid factual content. It’s my contention that the “protector” of the article is more concerned with the school at looking impressive in a way that makes the “protector” look impressive. The school’s credentials are meritorious, and should be recognized in manner in which the credentials speak for themselves, not in such a way that they appear "affected" as they do within the article.

In addition to my attempts to steer the article in the right direction, others have tried, however when suggestions are made, the “protector” immediately questions them, even when suggestions are outlined in the wiki style manual.

The “protector” is also attempting to rewrite the history of OWU without knowing anything about the history that they are trying to rewrite. In its place, the protector is basing his/her history on their perception, not fact.

Yesterday, I contacted the University and have begun to work with the archives and media relations department on formulating a factual rewrite on the article. But I am concerned about the “protector’s” continued ability to vandalize this article based on his/her perceptions trumping reality.

Can anyone help or recommend another user who is expirienced in deal with this type of "protector"?

[[User:Stude62|"user: stude62"]] 16:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It looks as if you could safely add an {{NPOV}} at the head of the article, and list it on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. These would be the first two steps to getting other people involved. Noisy | Talk 18:43, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Re: OWU; Feeling very frustrated

I am the user he is referring to. I do not appreciate the way Stude62 is working on this, but I will not discuss this as the objective is to come up with a solution. Could you be specific when you talk about "affected language" on the Wesleyan page? Did you discuss any specific words or facts that bothered you in the discussion page? If you did, I will work with you and change them if they are not NPOV. Absolutely. Instead, you keep complaining on various sites in a very general language lacking ANY specific examples. You didn't even bother discussing it on the Wesleyan's page.

Like an hour ago you made a complete overhaul of the article. I liked. Kept it. What's the problem? I only made a few changes that made the facts consistent with the school's facts. (e.g. Methodist Episc. Church). In fact, that's what you told us you heard from the President's Office. I pointed you to a link as well. I don't know what else to say or how to convince you.

FYI, I sign my contributions. :)

Rananim 21:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rananim-

If you want to talk about this, please do so through an email. I am seeking help from the Wiki Community - let the system work.[[User:Stude62|"user: stude62"]] 01:59, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Helpdesk most commonly deals with technical problems, not editorial disputes. There is a comprehensive process for dispute resolution discussed at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution - you guys are probably best advised to go with mediation if you can't work things out yourselves. -- John Fader 02:20, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Counting contributions

Is there any automatic way within WP to count the contributions I have made, or do I just have to open my contribution history and count them all myself? --Cynical 20:14, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. The list will only show your number of edits when you're in the top 1000 list, but there's also a link to a CSV file on that page that contains all users and their editcounts. Note that both the list and the csv are usually quite out of date; there used to be a tool provided by Kate here that gave you your up-to-date edit count, but Kate's tools seem to be gone for good -- Ferkelparade π 20:22, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Kate's still with us I'm happy to say, but the tools are gone for good. Luckily, there's an old version of the edit counter[12]. --fvw * 08:11, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

Thanks all :)--Cynical 22:22, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How to write the perfect Revert Edit Summary?

Hi all!

When reverting a page to an earlier version, I'm adding an edit summary like: "Reverted edits by X to last version by Y". I must be blind, lacking sleep, or both, but I can't seem to do figure out how to make "X" appear as a link to X's contribution page.

I've looked at Wikipedia:Editing FAQ, Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version, Wikipedia:Edit summary, m:Help:Edit summary and Wikipedia:Edit summary legend, but found no answers.

(Yes, I am a semi-clueless Wikinewbie)

Thanks!--Plek 03:27, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just use [[Special:Contributions/Username|Username]]. The format you mentioned is generally used by admins using the automated rollback function, in most cases there's no need to be so verbose. For simple single-edit vandalisms, just putting "rv" or "rv vandalism" will do. If you're reverting non-vandalism, you'll want to explain why you're reverting in your edit summary (or put "rv: see talk" and explain things there). --fvw * 03:41, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

I geddit now. Thanks again en bedankt! ;-) --Plek 04:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

PDA Access

Is there an easy way to access Wikipedia via WML or in a low graphics version?

I spend a lot of time sitting and waiting!

IIRC there is a text only version that used to be linked to on the front page. Unfortunately, the address escapes my mind at the moment. Maybe a search for "text only" will get you a link the a text only main page? Mgm|^(talk) 12:37, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that, but I'm afraid I couldn't get anything. This is a strange omission if it has been withdrawn. I use a P900 and I can get a great many sites on it, especially news ones.

If anyone has an idea about this, or a method of contacting the powers that be I would be very greatful.

Thanks again

Get an account, then go to Special:Preferences and experiment with Skins—try "MySkin" or "Nostalgia". Then log in to your account from your portable device. Does that help? —Triskaideka 16:35, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Does editing destroy the original information on a page

If a less knowledgable person replaces an excellent page does the original page disappear? If true this seems a serious problem.
Are there backups to pages so the original, especially if better than the replacement, does not disappear.
Does a sysopp check changes in articles - I think this would be a sensible thing.
I realize that information on subjects can be checked by following up on the usual internet search engines. But, how can one count on the information if it is so easy to edit it?
So far the information I find is excellant. What proceedures based on 1-4 protect existing articles?

I can be contacted at iatc-ourtown(at)earthlink.net

No, the information remains. See the "history" link on every page - it's possible to see and restore older versions
see 1
Lots of people check changes. Most new changes are checked as they're made, and generally all the previous authors of a page have it on their watchlist (which means they periodically review changes)
That's answered at Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections
Again, see Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections

Hope this helps. -- John Fader 20:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Links Database Error

Is there a limit to the number of completed links you can have one one page? I've been trying to add some new pages to "List of craters on the Moon", but every time I do so now it gives me a database error. However I am able to edit other pages just fine, so perhaps I hit some internal limit? The errors generally look like this:

 A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a
 bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: 
 
 INSERT IGNORE INTO `links` (l_from,l_to) VALUES ('1378918','6416'),
 ('1378918','222867'),('1378918','50283'),('1378918','1187827'),
 ('1378918','497846'),('1378918','702219')
 
 from within function "LinksUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned
 error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try
 restarting transaction (10.0.0.1)".

I tried multiple times and with more than one page, but keep getting an error. Thanks. — RJH 20:32, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I was able to edit those pages today, so perhaps it was just an interim problem with the database... — RJH 16:10, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Should there be an alphabetic index?

When reading old fashioned paper encyclopedias, I could browse by starting at a letter of the alphabet and going through articles in alphabetical order. I could be introduced to many topics I had never considered before. Is there something equivalent for Wikipedia besides the Random page?

You want Special:Allpages. Be warned, it's large. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Redirect-only text?

Is it possible to make text appear only after a redirect but not in the main article?

Example:
Rockman redirects to Mega Man series, as it should. But Rockman is also the name of a line of guitar amps. Currently the disambiguation text for this problem is at the top of the Mega Man series page, but it's only useful if the user was redirected from Rockman.

This is not yet possible, but updates to this effect are considered. For now, you should add boilerplate to pages that could be redirected to, like this:

Rockman redirects here. Rockman is also a line of guitar amplifiers.

I don't know if there are templates for this; if there are, these should preferrably be used, because they can be automagically changed if/when the hiding solution is implemented. JRM 23:26, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

Then Rockman should be a disambig page, linking to Mega Man series and Rockman (guitar amp manufacturer), even if the latter doesn't exist. — PhilHibbs | talk 11:37, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That depends wholly on which use of "Rockman" is the most prominent, which I don't know and didn't take into account — I assumed the OP was more knowledgeable than me in stating "as it should". See Wikipedia:Disambiguation; if this is primary-topic disambiguation, then adding a header is appropriate. See New York, New York, for example. Some googling turns up that "Rockman" is a trademark, and "Rockman Ace" is the name of a line of headphone amplifiers (not just guitar) from Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc., not a manufacturer in itself. So unless this line is so notable that it warrants its own article, which is doubtful, I propose

Rockman redirects here. Rockman Ace is the name of a line of instrument amplifiers made by Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc.

Or wording to that effect. A separate redirect from Rockman Ace to Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc. seems useful, too. And of course a note could be added to the Dunlop article itself. JRM 12:20, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

Rockman should absolutely not be a disambig page (and I've reverted edits to the article making it such). A 93-game franchise with a very large and active English-speaking community that uses the Japanese names mean someone is much more likely to want to know about the games vs an obscure line of musical equipment that stopped being produced 5 years ago (which is already mentioned at the top of the Mega Man series page). The only disambiguation that would make sense is differentiating between the different uses of "Rockman" within the metaseries itself. --Boco XLVII 14:05, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ISBN Problems

WHAT on earth am I doing wrong in entering my ISBN's? I simply cannot figure it out. Here is exactly what I enter, and they never link up: ISBN 0300055366. Yes: I am positive that I am not dyslexing the numbers. Many thanks, allie 23:14, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Simple: don't link. Parser magic does this for you: ISBN 0-30-005536-6. JRM 23:21, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

URI and Relations of Articles.

We are the GNU project from TIFR. We downloaded the categorieslink table as you had directed us.We are not going to keep the articles with us but only the metadata.The metadata includes the keywords and the words that can identify the articles.For that we need the URIs of the various articles.Can you help on the same.Also we aim in creating varios relations between articles.Does WIKIPEDIA already have any such relations between the articles,if it has please give us some information on that too.

Thanking you, Sakecwiki Team(TIFR)

I'm not sure what you're asking for. Your questions suggest that you have an unfamiliarity with the overal design of the database. I suggest that you read the schema before trying to work with it. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:25, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Beyond the (rather basic, relational) database schema to which Cyrius refers, there really isn't any explicit metadata. Links are held in wikitext, and are only checked when an article is rendered into html (well, technically there is the "link table", but really it only serves to make "what links here" work, and a mediawiki system works perfectly well if you don't build the linktable). Equally there are categories, but a category is just a special kind of link in an article (and one creates a category by linking to it). There's no system of keywords, and there's not (really) a meaningful index. So really there isn't any more metadata to translate. Bar a few weird things like redirects there is a 1:1 mapping between URIs and articles (technically that's not quite true: as spaces are turned into underscores, and some characters are resolved in the usual http way, the mapping is really surjective, but trivially so). So, to conclude, I think that if you need more detailed information about how articles link and are categorised then the only way is some brute-force spider/digester thing; and if you're going to run such a thing, please do it on a local copy of the wikipedia articlespace, not the (congested) real site. Information about downloading the database is at Wikipedia:Database download. -- John Fader 01:32, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Error messages

I have been having a devil of a time. I can preview edits and new articles just fine, but when attempting to save page, it goes absymally slowly and (now) usually dosn't work. I sit there waiting ages for the page to load, only to get an error message. I haven't changed my computer and this is a recent problem. The messages are (sorry, it's a bit long):

Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: INSERT IGNORE INTO `links` (l_from,l_to) VALUES ('1383433','279684'),('1383433','5355'),('1383433','10646'),('1383433','1380897'),('1383433','49404'),('1383433','555643'),('1383433','26437'),('1383433','50283'),('1383433','1187827'),('1383433','497846'),('1383433','702219') from within function "LinksUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try restarting transaction (10.0.0.1)". Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_%28profession%29"

OR:

Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request. To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia. An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts.

Generated Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:54:57 GMT by wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219)

Thanks Quill 22:46, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Commons image with duplicate Wikipedia name

I have uploaded an image to the Wikimedia Commons that has the same name as an image on the Wikipedia. What is the preferred method of adding this image to an article? I could see changing the name of one or the other but I'm guessing there is a better way.

Thanks - Trick 22:48, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think images that have been moved to Commons should be deleted, that way the commons version will be used. I'm not sure if they're speedy deleteable or if they need to be IfDed though, I seem to recall there being an attempt to get them speediable anyway. --fvw * 23:12, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

This isn't the same image but just an image with a different name. - Trick 23:25, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, in that case why don't you upload it using a different name? I think local images will always mask commons images and that's non-overridable. Even if it was, it would be rather confusing I think, changing the name would seem wise. --fvw * 23:29, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

That was my first thought but I thought maybe there was a preferred method. I'll go ahead and do that. Thanks! - Trick 23:40, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not an encyclopedia!!!

How can you say you are an on-line encyclopedia? An encyclopedia is based on fact-not liberal opinions such as stated on the tsunami article. My daughter is doing a research paper on the tsunami and pulled up your site. Thank God she asked me about it before she put in her report that the earthquake that caused the tsunami was caused by a hydrogen bomb being tested in the Indian Ocean-by the Busch administration!!! Her teachers would have that she was a complete idiot!! If you want to post crap like that in your on-line site ,call it something else besides an encyclopedia. I have instructed my daughter never to go to your site again. Your site is nothing more than a glorified chat-room.

Your daughter viewed a vandalized version of the article which was in existence for six minutes before being repaired by one of our more productive contributors. This is, unfortunately, the major flaw in Wikipedia's policy of allowing any and all comers to edit.

While I thank you for the reminder of the danger of vandals (which some of us seem to have forgotten), perhaps you should consider taking a more productive approach to voicing your concerns in the future. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:12, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Shortcut

[[:|WP:HD]]

NOTE: This is not a page about specific factual questions (e.g., Who was the first Pope?). For that type of question, see Wikipedia:Reference desk.

If your question has already been covered in one of the help pages, you could get the answer you're looking for more quickly by checking the topical index.

**View old Archives**
Archive 1	Prior to June 2, 2004
Archive 2	June 2, 2004 - June 18, 2004
Archive 3	June 18, 2004 - July 2, 2004
Archive 4	July 2, 2004 - July 18, 2004
Archive 5	July 19, 2004 - July 31, 2004
Archive 6	August 1, 2004 - August 18, 2004
Archive 7	August 18, 2004 - September 5, 2004
Archive 8	September 5, 2004 - September 25th, 2004
Archive 9	September 26, 2004 - October 15th, 2004
Archive 10	October 16, 2004 - November 6th, 2004
Archive 11	November 6th - December 13th, 2004

Post a question here!

School needs revision

Is school a place for screwing and smoking weed? How about masturbation?

Check out the School page to see if I am right.

I don't know how to do a revert. Help! Revmachine21 14:05, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure many people do those things in school. Perhaps we could incorporate that into the article somehow? :) Voyager640 21:57, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

serious copyright question

I wonder if wikipedia is liable for uploaded copyrighted pictures. What happens if someone uploads a copyrighted picture to wikipedia And then the copyright owners files a lawsuit against wikiepedia?

This is no joke. Someone has threatened me with a lawsuit for the same reason.

Gunnarvb 16:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First, it depends on what country your website is based in to determine what laws apply. But this is probably a question best asked of a lawyer. Rmhermen 18:43, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, my site is 100% in english but its hosted on a server in Germany. Does German law apply now? Cheers, Gunnarvb 19:44, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another copyright question

Log in problems

Exrapolation/interpolation program that may be of interest

Sounds like it would violate the no original research policy to have it here. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

However, Wikibooks or Wikisource might be interested -- have a chat with the people at those projects to see if it fits. Catherine\^talk 07:15, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I get certain accents to display on IE?

On internet explorer v6.0, certain accent marks, usually for Central European characters with diacritical marks (Czech, Polish, etc.) show up as boxes.

Using Windows 98SE Internet Explorer 6.0

--Larry G

Larry, try going into preferences and picking a different skin (particularly "Classic"). Things won't look as nice, but the East European / Slavic languages diacrita will hopefully work. - John Fader

Under the View menu under Encoding, what options are selected when you view a Polish page in IE? --David Iberri | Talk 04:30, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Aligning text without tables

In Courland colonization of the Americas, I have the text: Governors of New Courland (Tobago)

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon
1654 Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

You could use a bunch of nonbreaking spaces, but I don't recommend it because it's not guaranteed to line up your text on every browser:

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall

1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon

1654 Adrien Lampsius

1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

Preformatted text is another option, but it's not the most aesthetically pleasing, IMO, especially with the gray background and dotted border:

 1642 - 1643  Edward Marshall 
 1643 - 1650  Cornelius Caroon 
 1654         Adrien Lampsius 
 1656 - 1658  Hubert de Beveren

Alternatively, you could use a definition list, but that'll change the appearance considerably:

1642 - 1643: Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650: Cornelius Caroon
1654: Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658: Hubert de Beveren

So none of these options are really optimal. Why the aversion towards tables? --David Iberri | Talk 18:24, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Strange Internal Link

Signature block

Bah, I feel stupid now for not finding that earlier! It's so obvious! -Lommer 20:42, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deleting former versions of images

With images, versions exist to show the history of the upload process. There's no need to delete them, as only the last version will ever be used. Mgm|^(talk) 09:03, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

The extra revisions do take up space on the servers. Given that there's only two identical versions and the image is small, I wouldn't bother. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Isn't the case now - tells me I have to be an admin to do that. Somebody in the WWW 09:34, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Japanese characters

In many entries highlighting non-english languages, the characters of those languages show up as boxes (as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Go-Komatsu_of_Japan).

How can I turn those on so that the characters appear? I have already gone to Tools->Options->Languages and loaded up Japanese, but there was no change.

Thanks.

If you're using IE, you might try the instructions given in a recent help desk question. Or you might just get a real browser ;-) --David Iberri | Talk 00:34, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Old contributions

I made several contributions before I got an account here. Is there any way I can add them to my current contributions list? -Purplefeltangel 16:43, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely! See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. --David Iberri | Talk 17:10, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Although, don't hold your breath, as this is not treated as very high priority by the developers who have to carry it out, so there's rather a backlog. - IMSoP 19:02, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Password Problems

Lost password

Ugh, that makes things really bad. I'll try looking into it. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:28, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Received: from blah45.badoldisp.com ([45.22.11.22] helo=[45.22.11.22])

Or you could just bite the bullet and start a new account (MKmk2, perhaps);( -- John Fader 18:40, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What links here ?

"What links here" means all pages that have links to that page, not pages linked from that page. HTH, Meelar (talk) 02:24, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

You're not the first one to make that mistake, so we've seen this confusion before. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:24, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Rename page

Embedding credits & license info in an image

From What to include on an image description page--

Image metadata seems to be an utter dog's breakfast. I found three incompatible formats:

Photoshop 7 (File->FileInfo)
Photoshop appears to save some kind of IPTC, which it and imagemagick can read. Neither of the other two can see it at all.
Windows Explorer (<file's_contextmenu>->properties->summary->simple)
windows explorer seems to have its own format which none of the other tools can see. Photoshop will sometimes keep explorer's info, but sometimes will zap it.
Paintshop Pro 6
Paintshop has its own format, but can't read any of the above, and will happily annihilate all the metadata (including the EXIF) other than its own (even if all one did in paintshop is write the paintshop metadata).

imagemagick's "identify -verbose" command shows EXIF and IPTC blocks, if present in an image. I don't think it has any way of changing either.

(Gimp, btw, doesn't seem to have an option to view or edit metadata, but I'm not a gimp regular, so I could easily have overlooked an option somewhere).

Misspellings in Search Queries

Why not have a feature which will give correct spelling suggestions when a query is misspelled? -Isaiah R, 12/18/04

how do i make a request on a new subject

Character code

Oops-never mind, I forgot to convert Unicode from Hex to Dec. Hydnjo ☜^{Talk to Joe}

11:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Shortcut

[[:|WP:HD]]

NOTE: This is not a page about specific factual questions (e.g., Who was the first Pope?). For that type of question, see Wikipedia:Reference desk.

If your question has already been covered in one of the help pages, you could get the answer you're looking for more quickly by checking the topical index.

**View old Archives**
Archive 1	Prior to June 2, 2004
Archive 2	June 2, 2004 - June 18, 2004
Archive 3	June 18, 2004 - July 2, 2004
Archive 4	July 2, 2004 - July 18, 2004
Archive 5	July 19, 2004 - July 31, 2004
Archive 6	August 1, 2004 - August 18, 2004
Archive 7	August 18, 2004 - September 5, 2004
Archive 8	September 5, 2004 - September 25th, 2004
Archive 9	September 26, 2004 - October 15th, 2004
Archive 10	October 16, 2004 - November 6th, 2004

Post a question here!

Is there an RSS feed for the main page?

I have looked for one and can't find it.

Every day I get news, history and general knowledge from the wp main page. Would love to have all the factual articles (not meta content) available in an RSS feed.

Apologies if it already exists and I've missed it.

Thanks very much for the response, Chinasaur. Anything "official" afoot in this area?

It's not RSS, but you might be interested in Today's featured article by email. —AlanBarrett 15:15, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Votes For Deletion

Actor photographs

No case for fair use could be made if the picture is under copyright. Skyler 1534 20:47, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Being under copyright is a necessary precondition for fair use, as fair use is a limitation on the enforcement of copyright. — mendel ☎ 05:03, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Hyperlinks

How do you not show links within articles? The whole page is filled with links and they are distracting.

There is an option in your user Preferences under "Misc settings" that lets you turn off underlining links. I find that that helps readability. Martyman 02:15, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What article is it you aree talking about? Maybe it needs some de-wikifying.... Mgm|^(talk) 11:44, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

You can also add this to your user CSS. User:YOUR_USERNAME/monobook.css

a {text-decoration: none;
   color: inherit;}

—MikeX (Talk) 04:12, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

But, do be aware that if the number of links is not excessive, different coloured links will help with readability. MikeX (Talk) 04:13, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

How do I add a page to a category?

What should I do?

Place a link to [[Category:Computer and video game terminology]] at the bottom of the article, see Wikipedia:Categorization for more information. -- Ferkelparade π 18:07, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

- Thanks! -- Kitsune Sniper

I am getting a message to "stop adding nonsense," but I have not done anything!

Why do I occasionally get this message (look between lines of dashes):

Please stop adding nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.

I have done nothing on this site, except to find myself constantly browsing around on it with admiration! Some weeks ago, I did start one of the "learn to edit" pages, but did nothing with it.

At one point in my session today, all the characters on each page started displaying as small squares. I reloaded the site, and the problem stopped.

I am not trying to hurt the site, really. I can only be accused of spending too much time while I should be doing laundry!!

Fix redundant capilisation in a title

I don't know what the problem was, but I tried moving it and it worked. It's now at Estate agent (United Kingdom). - MattTM | talk 05:10, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Matt (for the record, it kept teling me the page already existed) Icundell 09:55, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Prejudicial report on current court-case?

In my opinion that page is a news article, not an encyclopedia article. I have listed it for deletion; its entry is here. Isomorphic 15:41, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question

I thought anything published in the U.S. before 1922 was in the public domain and that the new rules apply to subsequent works. PedanticallySpeaking 17:22, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

You're right. Works published prior to 1923 outside of the U.S. are now public domain. Thanks, PS. Isomorphic, you are good to go. Skyler 1534 17:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Image uploaded and added to Zvartnots. Isomorphic 22:45, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Indirectly related categories

Example: In Category:Proof_theory, I'd quite like something along the lines of:

Possibly you wish to find material from one of the indirectly related categories:
Category : Heuristic | Proofs

to appear just between the catmore template and the main listing of category contents ---- Charles Stewart 09:24, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To refer to a category, all you need to do is put a colon in from of the name in the wikilink, for instance [[:Category:Proofs]] displayed as Category:Proofs. Noisy | Talk 14:45, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

editing issue

Found the problem - The actual wiki entry didn't exist.

category question

Sorry, that link won't work. I'm more confused than ever now. But you can get there via Modern Records Centre, which is in the phantom category. Mattley 12:09, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(I've corrected the link. Add :Category to go to the category itelf. Noisy | Talk 14:42, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC))

Making a contribution marked with my IP to be marked with my username

I started an Article about my project New Millennium Orchestra, but I forgot to log in. Can I make it to my username instead of showing my IP?

Thanks!

(Question moved from top of page, notice left on User talk:Rockslave.)

See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. Note that these requests may take a long time to be filled. —Triskaideka 16:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Resolving NPOV disputes

See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Maurreen 17:47, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's exactly the link I was looking for. Thanks. JRM 17:52, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Wikipedia reverts to "old" format when I login

Bingo! My skin preference was not set to anything; setting it to MonoBook did the trick. Thanks Triskaideka!!! Harris7 20:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chemical Notation

Akchizar 04:47, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Looks like I'll stick to using ACII art then. Akchizar 03:43, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

red links in featured articles

Harry 13:34, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would think that if the red-linked article is to an article that Wikipedia should have (at some point in the future) then this is completely fine. — Matt 11:46, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Formatting tables

help with sorting out kinnaur copyvio

The biggest problem is that there is a reasonable amount of original material, but that the edit which introduced the first copyright violation is quite old [14]. I'm a bit unhappy to revert to the previous version to that. I may try going through the article and editing out apparently copyright material, but without cooperation it is very difficult to tell what is what.

Any suggestions?? Mozzerati 20:27, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

no instructions, no clue

Dundas Square

Diebold Message

By being in the wikisource to a template the page included. The vandalism was to Template:Shortcut, and can be seen in its history. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:36, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to encourage someone to check a fact?

I tried posting on the articles' talk pages, but I'm not sure if anyone reads those. Is that the correct place, or is there another location where I could usefully post such questions?

Thanks for any guidance. Stephen Turner 14:38, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The talk page is indeed the first place to start as anyone who has the underlying article on his watch list will be alerted to the presence of additions to the talk page. Be sure that you give it an edit summary that will prompt someone to read your query, something like: "Two Contradictory Death Dates in Article" or some such thing. Another good place for this is our reference desk at WP:RD, which is seen by a lot of people who know about many topics. I'm copying your question there now. Glad to have you aboard. PedanticallySpeaking 15:10, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful answer, PedanticallySpeaking, and for posting the specifc questions to WP:RD. I'll keep an eye out there for any answers. Stephen Turner 18:15, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How do I handle transient information??

Is there some convention for this sort of thing? I did not see anything on point in the style guide page.

Hide the blue question mark?

I am very new to Wikipedia. I am trying to post some literal code. Parts of it, for example the text:

textureMap ":SubFolder1:SubFolder2:MyTexture.jpg"

Keep getting a blue "?" inserted in the text (treated as a WikiWord). Is there any way to supress this?

Also does Wikipedia have an equivalent to the HTML pre (pre-formated) tag, or is there a way to force the use of raw HTML?

The site I am trying to post to is not the main Wikipedia site, but seems to be some sort of sub branch, and does not use the formating bar. the site is:

http://www.poserpros.com/wiki/PublicWiki/PublicWiki

2 vandals on my IP. Help!

Creating a User Page - description about onesself

As a newly registered user, how should I create a user page? If I just click on edit, whilst at my account it says on the edit page:

Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy).

Text of language on interlanguage links

Handling of Dates in Articles

Personally, I don't see much value to linking to the 1965 page, but does the link serve any other useful purpose?

Morris 02:33, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

How does the size of wikipedia compares with other encyclopedias?

I know that it would not measure quality, but I was wondering if anyone had any rough measure in terms of either number of articles, or number of megabytes, etc. Morris 02:33, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Size comparisons. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cache problem on main page

Edit: I never had cache problems with this machine before. Now cleared my cache, no problems so far. Mgm|^(talk) 12:01, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Against Deletion

An article I wrote is on the votes for deletion and I want to challenge the call for deletion. How do I effectively do that? Please provide specifics, thank you.

Main Page Tables

The left table on the main page is pushing the right one away. Can someone fix it? I can't find the problem. Mgm|^(talk) 12:42, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

I guess it's a problem combining 800x600 screen size with an odd Internet Explorer on a Mac. The right table is no more than 30% of the screen in what I saw. Mgm|^(talk) 13:16, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Timestamps

How do people generate the nice, neat "00:29, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)" style dates? Is there a tag you can use to automate timestamps to discussion entries?

If there isn't, it'd kick ass if there could be one. If there is, I'd have been better able to find it if wikipedia:time, date, and/or timestamp had redirected to mention of it. [User:MrZaius]

( test: 8 November 2024 10:36, 8 November 2024 UTC [refresh] 20241108103616

The current date and time in Help desk is Friday 8 November, 10:36.^[2]

Hmm... that's weird. the DATE template exists, but not one for the whole unix time? Surely I'm missing something. )

23:48:56, Venezuala/Houston/Chicago/Evansville-time

Use ~~~~ to generate the timestamp and name for discussions. - MattTM | talk 05:56, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Timestamp now... (It really should have a better link for more information; someone please fix this.) JesseW 07:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category errors & NPOV?

This is an issue of definition. It is comparable to writing Ethnic Groups: European: Indo-European. Indo-European isn't an ethnic group, and neither is Bantu.

Yet obviously someone has thought otherwise. I understand the basic idea of NPOV and don't have a problem about working with it within an article.

However, to have something that seems to me to be a factual, definitional error built into the very organizing structure of the information seems to pose a different sort of problem.

Ndlovu

Moving Page Help

Numerous questions

I think most of my questions above are being answered at my user page, thanks. Bebop 16:31, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Spacing between paragraphs

p { margin: 1.5em 0em }

edits

Is there a way to transfer only certain information from one article to another?

By hand, usually -- copy it out of one, paste it into the other, then remove it from the first. Unless I misunderstand what you mean — mendel ☎ 03:47, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Contents tab

Thanks a lot!! I used the NOTOC option, since I'm planning on expanding the article and don't want to edit its header structure right now :) -- Jashiin 18:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, yes, this looks better.. I think I'll leave it like that for a while, until I have a good cohesive text ready for the article. Thanks for your help! :) -- Jashiin 21:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Adding images to article

Help! I have this image of David Holmes (Dream Job Season 2 Winner) that I want to put into my article on him, but I don't know how to. Here's the link: [15]Mike Hackney 21:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That image is copyright either ESPN or the guy whose name is on the image itself. Please don't upload it, we have enough images claiming to be fair use already. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:18, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Inappropriate links?

What is Wikipedia's official policy on inappropriate links?

Specifically, there is a page about an actor with an external link leading to his nude pictures. Is this allowed?

And if you're going to keep the link, at least put in a warning. Mgm|^(talk) 08:21, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Templates and Categories

You could use {{subst:delete}} to include the text from a template on the pages in question and manually delete the category. Mgm|^(talk) 08:18, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Search Question

disambiguating

Have I rambled on enough....? Catherine\^talk 00:23, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If by that you mean the list of pages that link to Robert Palmer, what's wrong with going to Robert Palmer and clicking on "What links here"? --Paul A 02:37, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not to worry, Bebop -- it's likely that since this was a public discussion other editors helped to fix the "What links here" links. Catherine\^talk 03:02, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How should I handle Martin Luther King and his son with the same name?

The most well known of the Martin Luther King clan is Martin Luther King Jr., (the one who delivered the "I have a dream" speach, etc.)

I am thinking of writing a short article on his eldest son, who I believe went by the name "Martin Luther King, III". Should that be the title of the article (with the comma and the roman numeral 3)?

Is there another way to handle this? Some use the custom of dropping the "jr." etc. when only one is alive, but that is probably not wise in this case, as he is so well known.

Dificulty navigating community portal links

Above is from User:Fledgeling, who created Fraser magnolia. (You can get these actions attributed to your new user name through Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit.)

failed edit - lost the page completely!

Tried to edit an entery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_sardine

with my somewhat expanded text (below):

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories:Fish, Lake Tanganyika, Fisheries

But it said it lost the page and the old ID no longer exists. What now?

Red linked contributors

How come I can see new pages being added by people with red-linked IDs?

The red-linked user name means they have not created a user page yet. This is the default state for all new user accounts. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:22, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clarification on copywright rules- verification

I really.. um... anyway.

User:Fledgeling,

User:Fledgeling00:49, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC) P.s In the rowan section it should be noted that its also commonly called Mountain Ash

You should only use the exact words you read if you are using them as a "direct quotation" - that is, one with quote-marks round it, and a clear label of who actually said it, e.g.:

According to person X, the Fraser magnolia is "a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree..."

To clarify, an "indirect quotation" would be more like:

Person X describes the Fraser magnolia as small and fragrant, and notes that it is deciduous and basal-branching...

[hmm; this should be covered in quotation or somewhere, really]

Whereas what we want here is those facts, but in your words (or, I guess, mine); so, something like:

The Fraser magnolia is a small deciduous tree native to the Southern Appalachians; it is basal-branching and has...

Morris 01:55, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Okay, i think i understand now. Thanks everyone.User:Fledgeling22:35, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC),

Missing link, version problem

Do you mean the link to Justin Yoder? It shows up fine for me. Maybe it was just a cache issue after all; did you try purging the server cache? - IMSoP 19:05, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, and I got a message saying that User:MacGyverMagic/Articles&action=purge didn't exist, maybe it only works of title= is part of the link? Mgm|^(talk) 21:30, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Meanwhile, does the link show up for you now? Because it was visible for me as soon as I visited the article. - IMSoP 22:12, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yep, shows up fine now. Thanks for clearing up how the parameters on a link work. :-) Mgm|^(talk) 08:43, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Viktor Yanukovych

Guys,

I tried to find a better forum for this but couldn't.

When you open the following link in IE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych)

it comes up with

[CLIP START]

Viktor Yanukovych From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

[CLIP END]

where Khia links to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khia)

But when you open it up in Mozilla it comes up just fine.

It's a caching issue. There was a vandal who vandalized the page earlier today. In IE, trying hitting control+R to force a clean reload. →Raul654 07:57, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

problems with the wikipedia service

what is going on with wikipedia!! lately every time i search something i get an error page. the service is not working properly.

please fix!!!

Could you give a specific example? Mgm|^(talk) 21:23, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

probably forgotten password

Hello every sysops at English Wikipedia,

I tried already to ask help from User:Meelar;

please help me to retrieve my password to login to English Wikipedia. I am User:JanJosef, and I am not sure, If I mentioned my e-mail jpospisil at cpoj dot cz

(I think, the IP should be the same)

May I receive a new password?

Thank you very much. Jan Pospisil

If you provided the wiki with your email adress when you signed up, you can go to the login page and ask for the system to send you a new password on that address to gain access to your personal pages. Mgm|^(talk) 21:27, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't help you. I don't have any special rights here and I can't check such things.

Yes, I will do a new account, and I will note on the User:JanJiri, that I am now JosefJan, identical with JanJosef. Tanks many, and see you :-)

--194.228.18.42 16:05, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry

the above is from the fallujah article.

The link is broken(the last line) and I did not know how else to tell anyone

In general, the best way to comment about an issue with a particular article is by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the screen; in the case of the article Fallujah, it will take you to Talk:Fallujah. In this particular case, I realised that the problem was that the ")" at the end of the link was being treated as part of the link. I've fixed this by using special numbered external links: if you type "[http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/04/12/rebels_smuggle_supplies_into_iraqi_city/]", it appears as "[16]". The old links look oddly like they were copied and pasted from the display of another page on the site, rather than the underlying code you see when you click "edit this page".

See Wikipedia:How to edit a page for more on how you can fix things yourself. - IMSoP 20:18, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand all that a wiki is capable of...

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I apologize if this isn't the right place to post these questions; if that's the case, perhaps you can redirect me to the correct place.

Thank you, Jennifer

If you're having trouble finding technical people to set up a wiki, you might want to start a free hosted on. Starting your own would require a server and some bandwith which can be quite costly. Anyway, I think you might like to visit this link on how to start a Wiki. Good luck and don't hesitate to contact us again if you need to follow up. Mgm|^(talk) 21:38, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality

Is this allowed? CheeseDreams 22:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia mirror?

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks, low compliance →Raul654 08:18, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Starting a category for chicken breeds.

Would Category:Chicken breeds be a suitable category name, based upon the fact that there is already a Category:Dog breeds to do the same task for dogs.

Currently there's Category:Galliformes which includes chickens. It would make sense for the new category to be in a subcategory of Category:Galliformes. Is there a better subcategory instead?

Many thanks,

--pjf 08:36, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Noisy | Talk 13:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I appreciate the check. --pjf 08:00, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia crashes Netscape

The Wikipedia homepage seems to reliably crash Netscape 4.79. This seems to be due to its use of Javascript on the homepage.

(If I turn off Javascript in Netscape it doesn't crash).

If anyone could inform me of *who* is responsible for the Wikipedia home page I would appreciate it. Because I want to give them a piece of my mind.

Thank you, Robert Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)

Once again, I'm sorry you have had such a severe problem with the site, and hope it is successfully resolved soon; thank you for pointing it out to us. - IMSoP 18:41, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

History: current and last

What is the meangin of the last link on the history pages? AnyFile 15:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It compares the selected version to the version immediately preceeding it. It essentially shows you the changes made in individual edits. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere not updating

No, it's still doing it (from a different machine). Would you mind checking it out, someone, and see if you see it too, please? —msh210 14:47, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, all. —msh210 20:59, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Boilerplate Templates

Yes, there is a list, maybe not of all templates, but at least of the templates people cared enough about to list. I'll track it down...Found them. There's a complete list at: Wikipedia:Template_messages/All, new ones can be added at Wikipedia:Template_messages. Generally, stuff you have to type repeatedly like welcome messages, or stuff that's hard to code repeatedly are done in templates. I hope this helps. Mgm|^(talk) 19:10, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Access?

Everyone can contribute to Wikipedia. Just use the edit link on top of the page, or better yet, sign up for a free account so you can get your own user page. Mgm|^(talk) 09:40, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers and Wikipedia:Why create an account? - IMSoP 20:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reversing images - Can it be done with regular markup?

So, is it possible to automatically mirror or flip an image using regular image mark-up, or will I need to upload a second image (or replace the existing one) with a mirrored copy to suit my purpose?

Many thanks,

--pjf 07:59, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's no mark up to mirror or flip a picture. You'll have to do another upload. Mgm|^(talk) 09:46, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. In which case, I've flipped my image. --pjf 20:46, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Templates and caching

In the interests of sanity on my user page, I've borrowed an idea I found on Jimbo Wales' site, and included my picture and list of useful links in a side-bar as a template.

make a trivial edit to the "target" page (in this case, User:Minority Report)
use the special "action=purge" URL: either add "?action=purge" to the normal URL (like this) or hit "edit" or "history" or something, and change the "action=" bit to say "action=purge" (like this). (The two are equivalent; if you want to know why they look like that, see my comments in another section.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused." - IMSoP 23:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Added: For now I'm putting the style stuff in front of each table item, which is tedious but has much the same effect as I intended. --Minority Report (entropy rim riot) 23:42, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

adding to a votes for deletion page

hi,

how do i vote for/against the deletion of a page

On every page that has been placed on VfD, you will find a link that reads "please see this page's entry etc". Clicking on that link will bring you to a subpage of the main VfD page where you can add your vote for that specific page. (You can also browse the main VfD page and click on "edit" next to the page you want to vote for) -- Ferkelparade π 02:59, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Categorization in Arts and Visual arts

There doesn't seem to be a wiki project about Arts. Is there a place with Arts discussions some place? What would be a good way to proceed? Clubmarx 21:51, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Silkie (chicken) and Silkie — rename or redirect?

G'day lovely wikipedians,

Many thanks,

--pjf 01:25, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What you want is the "move" command. It renames the page and creates a redirect at the old title in a single operation. I've already done this for you. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:23, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Changing uploaded image name?

I uploaded Image:SelfPorEnhancedLjubljana2004.jpg after spending a long time making sure the photographer understood the copyright issues. But I'm still new to this and it's my first upload.

Changing format of username

Is it possible to change my username from 'Randyjohnston' to 'Randy Johnston'? Thanks a lot. --Randyjohnston 04:53, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay, thankyou. I have posted my request on Wikipedia:Changing_username. Please try and find time to move my information to my new username. Thank you a lot! --Randy Johnston 17:57, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to make a Template:.... tag.

How do I make a double brace tag such as {{inuse}} and is there a list of already existing ones?

That's called a template. If you wanted to make {{blah}}, then you would go to template:blah and put the content there. →Raul654 21:38, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and yes, there is a BIIIIIG list somewhere but I can't remember where it is off the top of my head. →Raul654 21:39, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

You're probably thinking either of Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki and Template namespace or Wikipedia:Template messages/All. --David Iberri | Talk 22:04, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Check out m:Help:Template for more details on setting up templates. --David Iberri | Talk 22:04, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Personal workplace (sandbox)

Is it OK to set up a personal workplace page (User:Name/Workplace) or something like that as a temporary place to work on an article? Hydnjo 01:58, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's much preferred! By working on articles in temporary workspaces on a user subpage you keep the main article namespace clean. Mgm|^(talk) 11:26, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

Linking Images

How do I link images to an external location? Oven Fresh 21:19, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can't. Every picture in Wikipedia needs to be uploaded to a wikipedia server or to the Commons. This is simply to guard wikipedia from copyright issues. All pictures on wikipedia need to have notices regarding the copyright status of the image in question. More help is available in our help section. Mgm|^(talk) 21:15, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)
- I've seen someone linking a Get Firefox logo to http://GetFirefox.com/... Must've been my imagination. Is there anyway I can stop an image from linking to its image page? Oven Fresh 21:19, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  - Nope. Best you can do is shove a redirect on the image description page. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:20, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- There's also vandalism issues as well. It makes it slightly more difficult to link in offensive images. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:20, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Downloading the Encyclopedia

Hi,

Greets and thx max

How to edit a protected article?

Hi,

Infobox on parks pages

It's working fine now, so I wonder if it was a problem with Wikipedia. Thanks anyway. --Viriditas 10:13, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Album covers

See Wikipedia:Fair use, read the fair use rationale, and don't forget to add the appropriate image copyright tag, like {{Albumcover}}. --Viriditas 10:26, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

UGH this is all very confusing actually.. Oh well, I'll try to figure it out. Thanks. -- Jashiin 21:01, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Further on this topic ...

Probably not helping that it is a slow, p’haps heavily‐used day??

Many thanks in advance from Schissel bowl ear open 03:45, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) (with no clue how to generate that by code, entering it manually)

Edit Search History

That's a feature of your browser, not of the website. In Firefox, go to Tools - Options - Privacy - Saved Form Information - Clear. In IE, it's Tools - Internet Options - Content - AutoComplete - Clear Forms. Note that either one of these will clear the auto-fill history of all websites, not just wikipedia. Does anyone know how to do it on a site-by-site basis? - Key45 22:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks User:Key45 - I thought that might be the case. I'm using Safari and it saves a separate search history for each search box (Wikipedia, Google, etc.) that it recognizes as such. I'm pretty sure it's an all or none history saver, no site-by-site and no selective editing within any site. Hydnjo 23:27, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

GPS Articles

This is more a suggestion for a global feature than a question.

Add a WIKI element for latitude/longitude and range that is searchable, so articles that have a proper 'location' to reference can be found by location.

In other words, historical things have a time and a place. Many articles about things in the world also have a place in the world where those things can be found.

Some additional notation might be added to the location, such as the type of reference (local history, regional history, national history, global history, wildlife habitat, etc.)

I believe there has been some discussion of this; see meta:Wikiatlas and meta:Wikimaps. Catherine\^talk 15:58, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mailing list

I would head over to User:Tim Starling's talk page and politely ask him why he's doing it. Mgm|^(talk) 22:05, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Question regarding Pesach

I have been commissioned to write an article about the Passover Seder. My question is based on some beliefs, how is Jesus the fulfillment of the Jewish festivals? Thank you.

Take a look at: Pesach and Passover. Can anyone else add something to this? Mgm|^(talk) 09:08, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Vietnamese page

Simpsons character starting with the letter "Y"

Placing a 'search' field elsewhere

I edit a library web page and want to put a 'search' field that will link directly to Wikipedia's search. Is there a way to do this?

If this is the incorrect place to ask this, could someone please direct me to the right window?

Thanks in advance.

<form name="wikipedia_search_form" action="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search">
<input name="search" type="text">
<input value="Go" type="submit" name="go">
<input value="Search Wikipedia" type="submit" name="fulltext">
</form>

action=purge

What does &action=purge do, when appended to the end of a URL? E.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hello,_world&action=purge

—msh210 20:32, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. —msh210 20:57, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More generally, off the top of my head, there are 3 situations where a manual purge is necessary, all of which can be considered bugs in the way the template code works:

a template "transcluded" by the page transcludes a further template, and that template has been changed (Bugzilla:983)
a template transcluded by the page has been changed, but is not in the Template: namespace (Bugzilla:734)
the page uses variables like {{CURRENTDAY}} in certain ways (I'm not sure about this one, but I think it's still an issue in some cases)

The main page suffers from #2 (it uses templates stored in the Wikipedia namespace) and possibly #3. - IMSoP 23:04, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PS: The title of this section seems to have broken the auto-summary feature!

How to edit signature

How do you edit your signature that appears with four tildes? Oven Fresh 00:12, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Odd image change

A while back I found an image of General Georges Boulanger on the French Wikipdeia (see [17] for image. I added this image to the English language version and then got on with my life. However, I now note that the image on the English language Boulanger page is not the image I added and the page history does not show the one edit to the article since changing the image. Does anyone know what has happened here (eg. someone else has saved an image as Boulanger.jpg which has automatically replaced my image)? --Roisterer 02:14, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The image you submitted is still intact. The link in the article has just been replaced with that of an image on the English wikipedia. Mgm|^(talk) 08:07, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

PlanetMath

I am getting a Proxy Error for PlanetMath. Has it been removed?

Trying to access PlanetMath works for me. If you mean the actual web site, we don't really have anything to do with them. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:41, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why aren't thumbnails being generated?

What does the owner of the wiki need to enable in order to get thumbnails to display properly?

Can you provide a link to this wiki? My guess would be that the feature is partially disabled. Is the picture displayed if you removed the "thumb" part of the coding? Mgm|^(talk) 12:29, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Disputing_vote_exclusion

Who has the right to delete text?

Today, 4 December 2004, 14.44 GMT, the article "Amnesia" on Wikipedia ends with:

Just be bold and delete it! If somebody thinks you were wrong, they will revert it or say so. --Khendon 14:53, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help formatting large image caption

Uploading ZIP archive

Need some help editing my user page

For example, this is what might appear: sandbox

I tried this as well w:sandbox, which doesn't work either.

Thanks for the help.

Talk

So I need to put "wikipedia" in front of the page name to link to non encyclopedia articles?

You will likely also encounter the "Talk:" namespace (the "discussion" tab of each article) quite a lot. For more information, see Wikipedia:Namespace. - IMSoP 00:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stylesheet

How can I change my settings so Wikipedia will dispay using my monobook.css stylesheet? Oven Fresh 22:14, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Are you using the monobook skin? If not, change your preferences. If you are, then do a good solid reload, possibly with a purge of your browser's cache. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:19, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WikiHiero

Is there a guide to all the symbols used in WikiHiero, including what each one represents? --ᓛᖁᑐ 04:17, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Meta lists all the hiero's you can use, but if you want to know what they mean you'll have to go outside the wiki. There's a "Hieroglyph Library" program somewhere on the net that lists numerous symbols and their meanings. I also recommend a book about glyphs from the British Museum, but I'd have to look up the authors or the title. Feel free to contact me if you want to know more. Mgm|^(talk) 13:31, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

OSI-RM and TCP/IP question

Hello,

I have a question pertaining to the OSI-RM and the TCP/IP.

What i intend to know is that how much do these models mirror the real world?

in terms of applying at least one technology such as email,video conferencing,etc; to these models;how does it fit in to the model-if it does?

Hope to learn more from Wikipedia,

Bol

OSI is fine at the lower levels, but the distinction between the uppermost three is fairly cloudy, and most deployments just deploy three lower layers and one upper one that they call "the application layer" for want of anthing better. TCP/IP just ducks the issue by not having any upper layers.
The abstraction between the layers was always something of a fairy-story, and it's getting more so with time. Web servers know more about the low control of the underlying socket than the model says they need to, and IP layer firewalls become progressively more stateful, introspecting packets at higher layers to figure out what's going on.
the architecture is contorted in ways that break the rigid layering: NAT, VPNs, SSH tunnelling etc rewrite packets or magically move them around inside other packets, breaking lots of the model's assumptions
more and more stuff is done in the application rather than the network stack. P2P programs and voip implement much of what they do in UDP (or just IP) themselves. HTTP has become the new lingua franca (motivated by firewalls that block everything else), with HTTP headers replacing TCP port numbers as service identifiers.

So the models still work, but lots of people spend lots of effort doing an end-run around them, and like all models they're a lot simpler than the real world demands. - John Fader

User Page Shortcuts

Just out of curiosity, are we allowed to create shortcuts to our Userpage? Like how WP:HD brings you here, could I do something like U:OF? Oven Fresh 16:14, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good question, my user name is quite a pain to type over and over again. I'm note sure, but I'd like to know this one as well. Mgm|^(talk) 16:21, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
- I'd strongly advise against doing this: non-encyclopedia content in the "main" namespace (which this would be, since there is no "U:" namespace) is quite severely frowned upon by some; the "WP:" and "WT:" shortcuts have mainly survived because they are 1) very useful (and not just for one person) and 2) long-established (inertia needs a strong consensus to overcome).
- Besides which, you don't need to type out the name, you can just use the non-timestamped signature, as in ~~~. Obviously, this doesn't apply to people like Mgm who've done weird hacks to their signature, but that's the choice one makes, I guess... - IMSoP 19:42, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - When you're logged in, you should have a link at the top of the page or in your sidebar to your user page anyway -- it's only one click away, or a press of "Home" on your keyboard and then a click. Much easier than setting up a shortcut I think.... Catherine\^talk 22:48, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Enhance My Search" nightmare: virus, spyware, help!

www.GetFirefox.com! =) Oven Fresh 22:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- If you want a clean version of IE, instead of/in addition to Firefox, and the usual suspects (AdAware, Spybot S&D) were unable to help, you might try Hijack This, which should be able to get rid of practically everything, but it requires you to manually identify the offending spyware from a list of possible offenders on your machine, so it is preferable with a bit of computer knowledge. Wålberg 18:38, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi Vaoverland. Most results from a Google search seemed unhelpful, but try the instructions from this particular CastleCops thread [18] and see if that helps. Bumm13 07:44, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Regarding using Firefox instead, I do not want to give up on IE explorer because I just recently started using the IeSpell program (recommended by other WP users) which has turned out to be a big help with my typing transposition disability I have to overcome. I will trust advice from here which was right on target with the ieSpell program, and face with the rather complicated procedure to try to get rid of Enhance My Search. Drat! I fortunately have more than one computer, but the stronger one is the sick one (of course!). I'll update here with news on "how it goes". Thanks for all the help folks! Vaoverland 20:40, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Well, I might be wrong, but I think there's a spelling extension for Firefox. --Sgeo | Talk 21:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Shazaam! It seems that following the CastleCops thread [19] carefully worked. The dreaded Enhance My Search window is notpopping up in front of Google and Yahoo searches and my text is not being attached by insertions of weblinks to Enhance My Search. I suspect the duplicate text noted in the preceding message was done by my computer. SBTC (sorry 'bout that chief). Now, if only I can keep from getting EMS again! I am running ad-aware and Webroot's Spysweeper programs. Thanks to all for the help. Vaoverland 02:01, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link to Wikipedia reference from keywords

Sending Email

Print friendly pages missing in the default skin?

Why doesn't the default skin have this?

It's very non-obvious that you have to change skins to get this functionality.
Users without an account can't change it, so they are deprived of this.
The default skin is quite nice, I'd like to be able to use it and still have access to print-friendly pages.

Can I make my own Wiki Page?

Thanks for your answers. I guess, I'll just wait for someone to write an article about me :P sid007 08:00, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is the wikipedia PHP & software open source and available for other projects?

Messages like:{{Blah)} take the information from a template (in this case: Template:Blah) and insert it into the page. [[Blah]] is simply a link to an article. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:39, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
- I know that. But that doesn't answer my question, so I guess I didn't word the latter well enough. Let me try again. —msh210 21:50, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

El Nino is a redirect page. Its text is

#Redirect [[El_Niño]] {{R from misspelling}}

How do I display an image from a foreign-language wikipedia?

How to display images from other-language wikipedias.

See above -- Ferkelparade π 01:24, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I link to a headline that's also a hyperlink?

I think you're going to have to take the external link out of the heading. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:30, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also linking to article sections is discouraged as someone may easily change it's name and break the link unknowingly in the editing process. Mgm|^(talk) 11:20, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Place names in article titles?

I've seen two different styles used to dis-ambiguate place names in article titles:

Location, enclosing location Location (encloseing location)

Which is preferred? More specifically, should it be "Bronx, New York", or "Bronx (New York)"?

The comma convention is preferred according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names). Best, David Iberri | Talk 21:30, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Now, I've got another related problem.

Hmmm -- now the "City Island, New York" page has lost its entire history!

It has? Maybe some caching issue, I can still see the entire history here: [20] -- Ferkelparade π 16:34, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category question

Please see Duboce Triangle. I added an external link to a neighborhood association but the category assigned is also adding an External Link section - bad style. What is protocol here?

JPG Help

Your browser probably has the original image in its cache, and isn't downloading the new version. Try Shift-Refresh. — PhilHibbs | talk 16:55, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dynamic signature

Vacuum c

Thanks in advance, Vacuum. PS. The page User:Vacuum/sig does exist, despite the red link.

Vacuum [[User_talk:Vacuum|(tc)]] [[Special:Watchlist/Vacuum|w]]

Here is my result with four tildes: [[User:Viriditas|User:Viriditas/sig]] 03:50, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, I fixed your template up a bit, too (if you look, it gets substituted in after "[[User:Vacuum|" and before a closing "]]", so it's best to leave those out of the template).

Contributions analysis

Someone made a beatiful tool to count edits. I can't remember the link, but it's by someone called Kate and it's linked at the bottom on my user page. Mgm|^(talk) 09:13, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

According to that tool: Lommer has 1094 edits (311 current revisions, 783 old revisions) - Mgm|^(talk) 09:17, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Numbered definition list

I need a numbered definition list. Simply combining # and ;: like this:

#;item1 : def1
#;item2 : def2

does not work; only the first list number is printed. If I add a newline:

#;item1 : def1

#;item2 : def2

then I get two lists, each starting with a one. Is this a bug in wiki? If not, then what should I do? It is a long list so I shouldn't use a table...

Welcome, User:145.97.223.187. Why not register - it'll make you feel all warm and tingly inside (or perhaps that's just me and the curry). How about just leaving the ';' out of the loop, like this:

#item1 : def1
#item2 : def2

giving

item1 : def1
item2 : def2

Wiki markup is probably quite different to what you are used to, so have a look at Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Noisy | Talk 18:06, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm currently using:

#;item1
#:def1
#'''item2'''
#:def2
#'''item3'''
#:def3

which gives the desired result and is not too bad..., 145.97.223.187 14:53, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Make Google/Yahoo default

Help setting up a disambiguation page

Hi all,

I am a BCP/DR specialist and found a the need for a disambiguation page for the acronym "DR"

Right now, if you search for "DR" the 'doctor' page pops up.

I just don't know how to make a new disa page.

DR - doctor
DR - disaster recovery

Thanks in advance...

Revmachine21 18:42, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:Disambiguation for everything you need to know, and don't be afraid to post a question on my talk page if anything is unclear. JRM 18:50, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

lawyer

where can I find a list of common law lawyers in the state of michigan.

It's not a list, but the State Bar of Michigan has a searchable directory online. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:26, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Watched Users?

Policy metric system?

Use the units most familiar to the author of the articles (i.e., American authors can use mi and most others can use km).
1. If the author feels like it, he can put alternate units as well. This is I suspect our current de facto policy.
2. Link all units in all articles to a conversion page so the reader doesn't have to use Google to find conversions.
Use the units most familiar/appropriate to the subject matter of the articles (i.e., use km in articles about Europe and Asia, but mi in US).
1. Make it policy that both types of units be provided by the author(s).
Make it policy that all units should be metric because most of the world uses them. Since I think the majority of writers and maybe readers are currently American I don't think it would be accepted.

I agree with you we should do better at this and it deserves a policy. alteripse 00:45, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Moving of pages, fixing of links

I'm afraid there's no automatic way -- you will have to go to the "What links here" link (in the Toolbox, usually in the sidebar) from the NORAD article. (Here's a direct link: [21]). Go to each page linked there, find the mention of NORAD, and edit it as appropriate to the article -- in most cases, you'll probably want to use a piped link like this: [[North American Aerospace Defense Command|NORAD]]. It's time consuming, but it's always better to have human judgment involved in sorting out these links. Good luck! Catherine\^talk

Alternatively, if the task is large enough you could ask someone who runs a bot to help you. Isomorphic 21:17, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Listing watchlist, exclude own

See User:JesseW#Bookmarklet Rmhermen 01:10, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hot dang, that's cool. Obviously, I rescind my prior statement that this isn't currently possible. --David Iberri | Talk 05:52, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Add picture to user page

User:sca 13dec04

New article not in search results

School needs revision

Is school a place for screwing and smoking weed? How about masturbation?

Check out the School page to see if I am right.

I don't know how to do a revert. Help! Revmachine21 14:05, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

serious copyright question

I wonder if wikipedia is liable for uploaded copyrighted pictures. What happens if someone uploads a copyrighted picture to wikipedia And then the copyright owners files a lawsuit against wikiepedia?

This is no joke. Someone has threatened me with a lawsuit for the same reason.

Gunnarvb 16:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First, it depends on what country your website is based in to determine what laws apply. But this is probably a question best asked of a lawyer. Rmhermen 18:43, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, my site is 100% in english but its hosted on a server in Germany. Does German law apply now? Cheers, Gunnarvb 19:44, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another copyright question

Log in problems

Exrapolation/interpolation program that may be of interest

Sounds like it would violate the no original research policy to have it here. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

However, Wikibooks or Wikisource might be interested -- have a chat with the people at those projects to see if it fits. Catherine\^talk 07:15, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I get certain accents to display on IE?

On internet explorer v6.0, certain accent marks, usually for Central European characters with diacritical marks (Czech, Polish, etc.) show up as boxes.

Using Windows 98SE Internet Explorer 6.0

--Larry G

Larry, try going into preferences and picking a different skin (particularly "Classic"). Things won't look as nice, but the East European / Slavic languages diacrita will hopefully work. - John Fader

Under the View menu under Encoding, what options are selected when you view a Polish page in IE? --David Iberri | Talk 04:30, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Aligning text without tables

In Courland colonization of the Americas, I have the text: Governors of New Courland (Tobago)

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon
1654 Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

You could use a bunch of nonbreaking spaces, but I don't recommend it because it's not guaranteed to line up your text on every browser:

1642 - 1643 Edward Marshall

1643 - 1650 Cornelius Caroon

1654 Adrien Lampsius

1656 - 1658 Hubert de Beveren

Preformatted text is another option, but it's not the most aesthetically pleasing, IMO, especially with the gray background and dotted border:

 1642 - 1643  Edward Marshall 
 1643 - 1650  Cornelius Caroon 
 1654         Adrien Lampsius 
 1656 - 1658  Hubert de Beveren

Alternatively, you could use a definition list, but that'll change the appearance considerably:

1642 - 1643: Edward Marshall
1643 - 1650: Cornelius Caroon
1654: Adrien Lampsius
1656 - 1658: Hubert de Beveren

So none of these options are really optimal. Why the aversion towards tables? --David Iberri | Talk 18:24, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Strange Internal Link

Signature block

Bah, I feel stupid now for not finding that earlier! It's so obvious! -Lommer 20:42, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deleting former versions of images

With images, versions exist to show the history of the upload process. There's no need to delete them, as only the last version will ever be used. Mgm|^(talk) 09:03, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

The extra revisions do take up space on the servers. Given that there's only two identical versions and the image is small, I wouldn't bother. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Isn't the case now - tells me I have to be an admin to do that. Somebody in the WWW 09:34, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Japanese characters

In many entries highlighting non-english languages, the characters of those languages show up as boxes (as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Go-Komatsu_of_Japan).

How can I turn those on so that the characters appear? I have already gone to Tools->Options->Languages and loaded up Japanese, but there was no change.

Thanks.

If you're using IE, you might try the instructions given in a recent help desk question. Or you might just get a real browser ;-) --David Iberri | Talk 00:34, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Old contributions

I made several contributions before I got an account here. Is there any way I can add them to my current contributions list? -Purplefeltangel 16:43, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely! See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. --David Iberri | Talk 17:10, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Although, don't hold your breath, as this is not treated as very high priority by the developers who have to carry it out, so there's rather a backlog. - IMSoP 19:02, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Password Problems

Lost password

Ugh, that makes things really bad. I'll try looking into it. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:28, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Received: from blah45.badoldisp.com ([45.22.11.22] helo=[45.22.11.22])

Or you could just bite the bullet and start a new account (MKmk2, perhaps);( -- John Fader 18:40, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What links here ?

"What links here" means all pages that have links to that page, not pages linked from that page. HTH, Meelar (talk) 02:24, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

You're not the first one to make that mistake, so we've seen this confusion before. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:24, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Rename page

Embedding credits & license info in an image

From What to include on an image description page--

Image metadata seems to be an utter dog's breakfast. I found three incompatible formats:

Photoshop 7 (File->FileInfo)
Photoshop appears to save some kind of IPTC, which it and imagemagick can read. Neither of the other two can see it at all.
Windows Explorer (<file's_contextmenu>->properties->summary->simple)
windows explorer seems to have its own format which none of the other tools can see. Photoshop will sometimes keep explorer's info, but sometimes will zap it.
Paintshop Pro 6
Paintshop has its own format, but can't read any of the above, and will happily annihilate all the metadata (including the EXIF) other than its own (even if all one did in paintshop is write the paintshop metadata).

imagemagick's "identify -verbose" command shows EXIF and IPTC blocks, if present in an image. I don't think it has any way of changing either.

(Gimp, btw, doesn't seem to have an option to view or edit metadata, but I'm not a gimp regular, so I could easily have overlooked an option somewhere).

Misspellings in Search Queries

Why not have a feature which will give correct spelling suggestions when a query is misspelled? -Isaiah R, 12/18/04

how do i make a request on a new subject

Character code

Oops-never mind, I forgot to convert Unicode from Hex to Dec. Hydnjo ☜^{Talk to Joe} 11:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Linking dates and years. Also, question on capitalization

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

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

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

proverbs

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

Can I add Irish Gaelic proverbs?

Thanks.

Paul

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

Policies regarding essay and paper writing

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

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

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

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

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

How do I edit {{EnderCharacters}}?

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

Moving a subsection of an article: creating a new topic

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

Strange formatting issues on Vfd

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

who designed the first?

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

Criticism of Wikipedia

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

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

picture removal

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

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

Indeed:

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

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

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

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

sperm

Moved to RD. Masterhomer

My sig has been screwed up.

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

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

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

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

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

adding text

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

What do I do?

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

Thanks.

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

Recent changes patrol?

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

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

Images

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

Thanks

WP Template Edit Langauge

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

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

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

creating new page

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

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

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

Help?

Thanks.

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

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

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

Pikmin series

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

Sysop needed

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

Question about "What links here" button.

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

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

ogg ?

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

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

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

what, if anything, is wrong with mixing test?

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

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

Requesting article

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

UserName

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

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

Positive Manipulation?

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

Positive Manipulation? v2.0

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

Welcoming template broke?

I've had a problem several times now, in which the standard welcome template doesn't display as it should so that code involving nowiki tildes needs to be fixed every time (see [22]). What's going on? Mgm|^(talk) 10:36, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

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

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

Browser crashing

Were you aware of the existence of this site?

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/

This one too:

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

They all seem to be ripping off Wikipedia...

Here's yet another:

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

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

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

Wikipedia search and creating new article question

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

Help about categories

Thankin you.

Help about the organization of categories

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

How to make text surrounded by dashed line?

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

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

Some help with a bad category name I have created please

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

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

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

Formatting a page with table of contents

Signature using ~~~~

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

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

Cannot Login Already??

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

Redirection from Search keyword to a wrong page

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

Clive

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

what is all this???

Sincerely,

AngelaS

Editing

Thx

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

Empty Space

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

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

can anyone link me to that site? thanks

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

Editing individual sections?

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

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

Assistance - template centering

Creating links to external material

I looked, but can't find the mechanism.

Denton

moved from Wikipedia:Reference desk

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

Andre Rieu article needs cleanup help

Gccwang 04:47, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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

New Messages

Help! Tried to move article

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

Tried to move QuakeAID specific content to:

Talk:QuakeAID

...Didn't work.

Help.

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

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

New pages background?

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

Web capture of Wikipedia articles in Adobe Acrobat 6.0

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

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

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

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

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

Many thanks.

What to link this article to?

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

Mark this article as patrolled

As can be seen below, there was no consensus to adopt the word patrolled. It would seem to be Angela's fault that it was introduced anyway. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 05:30, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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

"Patrolling" of recent changes

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

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

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

υωρ 23:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

ᑐ 20:05, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Create a Web Developer FAQ?

Table Help

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

For example,

1	2
3	4

Try using the border and cellpadding options, like so:

1	2
3	4

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

Thanks Lee S. Svoboda

Problem adding disucssion page

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

Reverting vandalism = failed spam block filters

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

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

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

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

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

Double Article

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

Thanks,

Greg

Wikipedia line spacing, changing the size and font of the heading

What is Wikipedia's line spacing?

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

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

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

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

flash .net project

Sounds cool, but Wikipedia isn't for software development. Try sourceforge. — PhilHibbs | talk 16:31, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
While Wikipedia isn't the right place for the software part of your project, there has been some talk of adding support for embedded Flash media [23]. IMO it's a great idea. --David Iberri | Talk 18:02, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Collation order in categories

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

Translating Slovak

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

Odblokovaine Tvoriveho posania Zneuzitie Neschopnost ucit sa Sexuaine Ocakavania

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

History Bug

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

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

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

'Help me on this point' template request

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

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

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

Is there such a template?

RHaworth 05:57, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)

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

RHaworth 07:58, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

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

Browser statistic

What about the browser statistic at Wikipedia, which browser is most used among us,Wkipedians? --ThomasK 08:42, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Browsers, unfortunately the statistics are from February 2004 - an update would indeed be nice :) -- Ferkelparade π 20:27, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OWU; Feeling very frustrated

Can anyone help or recommend another user who is expirienced in deal with this type of "protector"?

[[User:Stude62|"user: stude62"]] 16:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Re: OWU; Feeling very frustrated

FYI, I sign my contributions. :)

Rananim 21:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rananim-

If you want to talk about this, please do so through an email. I am seeking help from the Wiki Community - let the system work.[[User:Stude62|"user: stude62"]] 01:59, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Counting contributions

Is there any automatic way within WP to count the contributions I have made, or do I just have to open my contribution history and count them all myself? --Cynical 20:14, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Kate's still with us I'm happy to say, but the tools are gone for good. Luckily, there's an old version of the edit counter[24]. --fvw * 08:11, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

Thanks all :)--Cynical 22:22, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How to write the perfect Revert Edit Summary?

Hi all!

I've looked at Wikipedia:Editing FAQ, Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version, Wikipedia:Edit summary, m:Help:Edit summary and Wikipedia:Edit summary legend, but found no answers.

(Yes, I am a semi-clueless Wikinewbie)

Thanks!--Plek 03:27, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I geddit now. Thanks again en bedankt! ;-) --Plek 04:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

PDA Access

Is there an easy way to access Wikipedia via WML or in a low graphics version?

I spend a lot of time sitting and waiting!

Thanks for that, but I'm afraid I couldn't get anything. This is a strange omission if it has been withdrawn. I use a P900 and I can get a great many sites on it, especially news ones.

If anyone has an idea about this, or a method of contacting the powers that be I would be very greatful.

Thanks again

Does editing destroy the original information on a page

If a less knowledgable person replaces an excellent page does the original page disappear? If true this seems a serious problem.
Are there backups to pages so the original, especially if better than the replacement, does not disappear.
Does a sysopp check changes in articles - I think this would be a sensible thing.
I realize that information on subjects can be checked by following up on the usual internet search engines. But, how can one count on the information if it is so easy to edit it?
So far the information I find is excellant. What proceedures based on 1-4 protect existing articles?

I can be contacted at iatc-ourtown(at)earthlink.net

No, the information remains. See the "history" link on every page - it's possible to see and restore older versions
see 1
Lots of people check changes. Most new changes are checked as they're made, and generally all the previous authors of a page have it on their watchlist (which means they periodically review changes)
That's answered at Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections
Again, see Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections

Hope this helps. -- John Fader 20:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Links Database Error

 A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a
 bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: 
 
 INSERT IGNORE INTO `links` (l_from,l_to) VALUES ('1378918','6416'),
 ('1378918','222867'),('1378918','50283'),('1378918','1187827'),
 ('1378918','497846'),('1378918','702219')
 
 from within function "LinksUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned
 error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try
 restarting transaction (10.0.0.1)".

I tried multiple times and with more than one page, but keep getting an error. Thanks. — RJH 20:32, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I was able to edit those pages today, so perhaps it was just an interim problem with the database... — RJH 16:10, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Should there be an alphabetic index?

You want Special:Allpages. Be warned, it's large. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Redirect-only text?

Is it possible to make text appear only after a redirect but not in the main article?

This is not yet possible, but updates to this effect are considered. For now, you should add boilerplate to pages that could be redirected to, like this:

Rockman redirects here. Rockman is also a line of guitar amplifiers.

Then Rockman should be a disambig page, linking to Mega Man series and Rockman (guitar amp manufacturer), even if the latter doesn't exist. — PhilHibbs | talk 11:37, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rockman redirects here. Rockman Ace is the name of a line of instrument amplifiers made by Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc.

ISBN Problems

Simple: don't link. Parser magic does this for you: ISBN 0-30-005536-6. JRM 23:21, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

URI and Relations of Articles.

Thanking you, Sakecwiki Team(TIFR)

Error messages

OR:

Generated Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:54:57 GMT by wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219)

Thanks Quill 22:46, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Commons image with duplicate Wikipedia name

Thanks - Trick 22:48, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This isn't the same image but just an image with a different name. - Trick 23:25, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That was my first thought but I thought maybe there was a preferred method. I'll go ahead and do that. Thanks! - Trick 23:40, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not an encyclopedia!!!

Flagging POV articles

Really not sure where to ask/mention this...

I ran across Henry Morgenthau, Sr. today (whilst looking for his son). Almost all of the article deals heavily with the contentious issue of the Armenian Genocide and was written by an anonymous IP whose other edits were to pages about that same topic.

I don't know anything in particular about the topic ("many died, was messy, popular with revisionists"), but I do know that what's there is contentious, looks fairly one-sided and vituperative (...tendency toward fabrication...nonsensical tales of brutality...), and therefore doesn't seem entirely trustworthy; it reads as heavily PoV. So, I would edit it, neutralise it a bit. Unfortunately, for all I know he was as bad as the article portrays him, and I have very little in the way of reference material here to work from. What's the best way to flag this for the attention of people with some knowledge of the topic?

Thanks, and apologies for a stupid question. Shimgray 00:56, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(This is my opinion) I would add some more information about what he did before and after that episode, and certainly put in a reference to his more famous son (who was the secretary of the treasury under FDR). Basicly what is there now is a long paragraph, making the points that the guy was (a) racist against the Turks (BTW: was the word "Turk" used back then?), and (b) for that reason fabricated information, and helped push America into the war on the British side. I agree with you that some of the article could be worded differently, in a more neutral manner, but the more interesting question (to me) is: Were the reports of genocide accurate? I believe that people currently believe that things (in general) were more or less as bad as Morgenthau said. Therefore, I agree with you (User:Shimgray). I would write a neutral article and say Morgenthau did this, did that, and not get into whethor the dispatches were true or false or if he believed them or not. My impression is that he may have been racist, his reports were based on what other people saw, and may not have been 100% correct, but that the gist of what he said, and the tone did accurately reflect what was happening. Morris 05:30, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Merging edits by same user?

Is it possible to merge all back-to-back edits to an article by the same user into a single edit for the purposes of the history and diffs? If not, why not, and if so, why is this process not automated? --Boco XLVII 04:50, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It isn't, and I don't think I've heard anyone express an interest in doing so. What would you do with the edit summaries? -- Cyrius|✎ 05:52, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Merging edits by same user?

Multiple-person edit war - where to report/request mediation?

I can't be the only who noticed the edit-war over whether country articles are to use infobox templates or not. Where do I report this time-consuming back-and-forth-editting and request mediation of the differing opinions? As it seems, the different side where not able to come to a compromise or consensus in their discussion of the matter themselves Nightstallion 05:27, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

^ Calculated using parser functions. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.
^ Calculated using parser functions. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.