Welcome—ask questions about how to use or edit Wikipedia! (Am I in the right place?)

For other types of questions, use the search box, see the reference desk or Help:Contents. If you have comments about a specific article, use that article's talk page.
Do not provide your email address or any other contact information. Answers will be provided on this page only.
If your question is about a Wikipedia article, draft article, or other page on Wikipedia, tell us what it is!
Check back on this page to see if your question has been answered.
For real-time help, use our IRC help channel, #wikipedia-en-help.
New editors may prefer the Teahouse, a help area for beginners (but please don't ask in both places).

Search the frequently asked questions

Search the help desk archives and other help pages

June 24

Good Article Icon

I seem to remember an icon that was placed in the top right corner of good articles, the same way the featured article star is. Did we get rid of it, or did it never exist and I don't know what I'm talking about? --(Review Me) R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently so... Look at WT:GA. I think they are trying to re-do it. Apparently, it was stopped because the GA system was broken, but now there's an assessment/backlog clearing drive to improve it. Evilclown93_(talk) 00:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Look at this [TfD debate]. Evilclown93_(talk) 00:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting a Line

I noticed a line in an article that (in my opinion) does not speak about the topic. Is it better to ask for a concensus in the talk page first or to just go ahead and delete it with an editing summary?

Well, I always think its best to delete first only if you think it won't cause much controversy. If you think your change will be reverted, starting an editing war, or if you aren't sure, leave a talk page message to be safe. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 00:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick responseZ1720 00:32, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overly technical information

I think I remember seeing this in the past, but is there a policy/guideline detailing what to do with over specialized information? (For example: highly detailed, technical information on a subject that the average reader would not understand and just confuse them) Michael Greiner 00:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. You can add {{confusing}}. PrimeHunter 01:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Pokemon

How do I contribute to Wikiproject Pokemon? (LatiRider 03:47, 24 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Edit any Pokemon article constructively. You could also formally join WP:POKE by adding their category to your user page or adding your name to their members list if they have one. --tjstrf talk 03:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Pokémon. -- Kesh 03:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@@

I noticed on the Phione article that there is a @@ right below the links may I remove it or shold it be there? (LatiRider 03:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I've gone ahead and done that. Probably just a typo. -- Kesh 03:55, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that shouldn't have been there. By the way, you can feel free to be bold and remove anything you think is a simple error on a page. If it turns out it wasn't, someone can always revert you. No need to ask us about every change you want to make. --tjstrf talk 04:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was added by a bot [1] but I agree it looks like an error. I will inform the bot owner. PrimeHunter 04:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Saving

Am I allowed to save pictures of wikipedia and use them personaly (eg. MS Paint)? (LatiRider 04:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

No, images uploaded are only for use with Wikipedia. See WP:NOT#WEBSPACE. -- Kesh 04:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think Kesh misunderstood your question. Nobody is going to stop you from saving images off of Wikipedia and using them for your forum avatar or whatever. (What Kesh says is correct, but it relates to using Wikipedia to host your personal images, like you might use Photobucket or something. You shouldn't do that.) --tjstrf talk 04:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right, I may have misread the question. -- Kesh 04:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to add copyrights for pictures

How do I add the copyrights for my pictures? Also I have contacted the man from whom I received the pictures, which I added. --Seantkane 04:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for uploading images here, you need to choose an appropriate copyright tag among those listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/All. Please see also Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Guidelines for detailed instructions. Peacent 04:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help Desk on Navigation

Could You put a link to the Help Desk on the navigation box to the left so people could directly link to this page if they had a question? (LatiRider 04:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I certainly can't. If there is a way, you'd need to be an administrator at the least and possibly a developer to make the change. As is, we link to Help:Contents, which I assume is where most people get to this page from. Good idea though. --tjstrf talk 04:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which navigation box are you referring to? Is it the one below the Wikipedia logo at the top left of all pages? PrimeHunter 04:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He might be on a different skin. --tjstrf talk 04:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

LatiRider has changed right to left.[2] No answer to which navigation box so I guess it was the one below the logo (a lot of pages have additional navigation boxes within the page text). There are people who are able to edit that box, but I think the "Help" link to Help:Contents in the interaction box below it is sufficient. PrimeHunter 05:19, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Help link is sufficient for users who have enough experience to use it properly. Perhaps a skin for new users who intend to edit could add a toolbox link: "Ask for help with editing this page" which would open an edit window to the Help desk pre-filled with a link to the originating page, and four tildes to generate the user's signature. That would address the two most essential items most new users omit from their Help desk questions. (There could also be a skin for new users who only intend to read Wikipedia, with extra features to support that.) --Teratornis 16:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rotate images

How do I rotate images. I posted 3 images to wiki, they were properly oriented on my computer but wiki went with an old file and has em upside down?

wiki upload help was NO Help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.77.117 (talk)

Hmm... did you save the images on your computer after you had rotated them? Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 05:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bot?

I noticed in one of my question's answers that someon said a bot placed something, although it was removed. Anyway, what is a bot? PS:sorry for asking so many questions. (LatiRider 04:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

No big deal. Take a look at WP:BOT. ~ Wikihermit 04:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You might see also Internet bot, perhaps the article could give you a clear definition. Peacent 04:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For even more details: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Bot. --Teratornis 13:29, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Prounciation

Could you add a prounciation to some names? LatiRider 05:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We are creeping up on 2 million articles. Quite a number provide pronuciations for names and words; others don't. If you find a name that you think needs pronunciation guidance, you can add that detail yourself as this is the free ancyclopedia that anyone can edit and all the content is added by volunteers just like you. Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation) if you have the ability and desire to add this material yourself. If not, and you want to request this for a particular article, go to that article's talk page and suggest it.--Fuhghettaboutit 05:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary has pronunciations for some words. You can easily link a Wikipedia article to the corresponding Wiktionary article (if one exists) by placing the {{Wiktionary}} template in the Wikipedia article's External links section. For example, see this in action in: Hospital#External links. --Teratornis 13:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page history

It is really strange because my past few edits are not showing up in the page history. I've reverted some vandalism on Talk:Main Page, (thought I did anyway) warned the user only to find there was another warning for the same vandalism I thought I reverted. Checked the page history, there was no edits by Spebi. Any ideas what is going on? +spebi ~ 05:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Someone probably beat you to the punch. If two editors revert vandalism at the same time, whoever got in first gets the History note. The second revert doesn't go through, as it's already completed. This happens a lot on frequently watched pages (like Main). Had it happen to me twice today while monitoring Special:Recentchanges. -- Kesh 05:29, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ahhhh, all clear now. Thanks ;) +spebi ~ 05:32, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

sound card

my souond card didn't work in red hat 7.what is do?

The Wikipedia Help Desk is only for asking questions about Wikipedia only as stated at the top. Ask your question at the reference desk for computers here. Thanks. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 06:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

any engineering subject

I NEED SOME INFORMATION ABOUT THIS FIELD. PLESE SEND ME ALL THE INFORMATION BY E-MAIL.(<email removed>)

Hi. This is an encyclopedia so we have lots of articles on engineering topics. Please see Category:Engineering. We don't email people with information and it's a bad idea to publicly post your email address here unless you love receiving spam. If you have a specific engineering question, please ask it at the reference desk. This page is for questions about how to use Wikipedia.--Fuhghettaboutit 07:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the name of an article

The name of the page I created is "Doctor of nursing practice" but I want it to read "Doctor of Nursing Practice" with the n in nursing and the p in practice capitalized. How do I change this?

Thanks, (<email removed>)

You need to move the page to a new title "Doctor of Nursing Practice". Click the "move" tab next to edit, history, and follow the instructions there. - Zeibura ^(Talk) 09:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1.) If you're not logged in or just recently opened your account, you may not be able to move an article at all.

2.) In the case of this article, there already exists a redirect from Doctor of Nursing Practice to Doctor of Nursing Science. So you can either work at the article on Doctor of Nursing Science (and whoever enters "Doctor of Nursing Practice" will be redirected to your work). Or, if you believe that "Doctor of Nursing Science" and "Doctor of Nursing Practice" are actually not the same (as also stated in the article) and (!) should be dealt with in two articles, then you can enter an article onto "Doctor of Nursing Practice"; it's not just possible to "move" the article you created onto an existing redirect--please either ask an administrator (e.g., you can do this on this page), or more simply, since you have been the only author so far, you can also just copy-paste your article onto the redirect (see before); in this case, please also adapt the "Doctor of Nursing Science", indicating that there is a separate article for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. - Either way, the original article "name" (lemma) without the capitalized letters [namely Doctor of nursing practice] should be deleted if you've finished moving your text: You can request deletion by placing {{delete}} into the article text; please make sure to explain that you've relocated the content.

Generally, I would also like to recommend the articles Wikipedia:How to write a great article and Wikipedia:Tutorial to you; they may give you a few new ideas about formatting etc. Hope this helps! :o) --Ibn Battuta 10:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

delete image that claims to be "fair use"

Can someone tell me what's the right procedure to request deletion of a "fair use" image without rationale of use? [The claim that those images will be deleted after 7 days is a pretty empty threat if we look around...] Which tag should I use? Do I have to put it somewhere up for deletion? (Where?) ...

I'm talking about this image, whose uploader has agreed to the deletion since the image was uploaded years ago when no free images were yet available (unfortunately, the comments are in German...). Today, we have enough free images on the Commons and further images on other Wikipedias, and the only remaining article that uses the image is postage stamp design--and there should likewise be plenty free images of postage stamps illustrating the same thing; consequently, a request for a rationale on the talk page of the article has not been answered for four weeks.

In short: I think there's no doubt that this fair-use image should be deleted because there are enough free images displaying the same, and I just wonder how to proceed from here. Thanks, Ibn Battuta 10:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you have a fair-use image than can be replaced by a free one. In this case, you should tag it with {{subst:rfu}}. See WP:IFD for more information. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 10:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right on target--thanks a lot! --Ibn Battuta 10:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Crossings Out

Just wondering why all the latest comments at Talk:L. Paul Bremer have a line drawn through them? I added a comment to the page querying this, and it too appeared with a line drawn through it! What's going on? Colin4C 11:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed it. Someone tried to strike out one word but didn't close the XHTML tags, so it struck out everything from that word onwards. - Zeibura ^(Talk) 11:22, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Colin4C 11:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for Creation

Hello, I am trying to help in AfC, but I do not quite understand the instructions for what to do in the case of nonsense or a personal attack. Could someone please help? Thank you very much, Neranei 13:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation is probably the best place to discuss it. I have no AfC experience. PrimeHunter 19:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

<noinclude></noinclude> tags

What do <noinclude></noinclude> tags do? Hallpriest9 (Talk | Archive) 18:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They are for templates - when someone creates a template, and they put it into a page, everything on the template page is put on the other page. However, if some of the template is put in those tags, it is not put on the page. Also, the <includeonly></includeonly> tags include something when it is put on a page (known as transclusion) , but not when it is viewed on the template page. Stwalkerster talk 18:57, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Colors on my watchlist

What do those green or red numbers on my watchlist indicate? Dragon Smaug 19:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They mean the number of letters added or taken away from the article. (Red is taken away, Green added) :) Stwalkerster talk 19:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. :) Dragon Smaug 19:21, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

question about citing same source multiple times

In many articles, the same source may be used to support sentences in different parts of the article and it is appropriate to reference each one. I can use WP:CITE but then each reference to the same book or article is listed completely as a separate number in the references section. For example see the refs 1 and 2 in puberty. I cannot find the method to make subsequent uses of the same citation simply refer point to ref 1 where it is listed in full. Just point me to an example of a page that does it right and I can figure it out. I am also asking this question on the talk page of WP:CITE and will watch both places for answers. Thanks. alteripse 20:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Footnotes#Citing a footnote more than once. PrimeHunter 20:39, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that does it. alteripse 20:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help me please!

I've managed (accidently) to mess up the references for Aqua (band) while adding some extra. I'm still quite new and I'm not used to the coding for citing sources. I've tried and it's gone wrong. Frankly, I don't know what to do. Please would someone who know how to do this take a look at the article and do it properly. Escape Artist Swyer | Talk to me | Articles touched by my noodly appendage 20:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it. Whenever you add in text citations, always be sure to place a {{reflist}} in the references section to make the references show up in the article. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 20:34, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Escape Artist Swyer | Talk to me | Articles touched by my noodly appendage 21:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Resolution reduction so image complies with Wikipedia's non-free content policy

What resolution is wise to use when you reduce the resolution of an image so it will comply with Wikipedia's non-free content policy?

Thank you Akiramenai 20:45, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose that'll depend, a bit. Wikipedia's default image thumb size is something like 200 to 300 pixels wide, I think, so perhaps that's a good starting point? – Luna Santin (talk) 21:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page Creation

Hey! :-)

I can't figure out how to create a page and I've looked all over but I can't find a link or anything to creating a page. Please tell me how? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taytot1995 (talk • contribs)

Type the name of your page in the Search box, or click a red link in any article. Then click the red text "You can create this page". HandigeHarry 21:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Be warned that Wikipedia deletes several articles every minute for violating various policies and guidelines. (Just in the time you probably took to find the Help desk and type your question, a whole bunch of new articles from users like you got deleted. Ouch!) I'm not trying to be insulting here, but if you're having trouble finding pages such as Help:Creating a new page, maybe you haven't spent enough time reading the lengthy manuals yet to know how to create new articles that "stick." You might end up asking Why was my article deleted?. Before you sink a lot of time into editing, you might want to tell us about the article(s) you want to write, so we can advise you on how to avoid falling prey to the deletionists. --Teratornis 02:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Software suggestion

How to suggest a change in the wiki software?

What I want is this: In my watchlist preferences I ticked "Hide bot edits from the watchlist" and I unticked "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes". The result is that manual edits are hidden when they are superseded by a bot edit. I cannot imagine that this was intended, so I suggest to modify the software. HandigeHarry 21:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You'll want to take that suggestion to the WP:Village pump. This page is only for questions about how things work right now, but there's a section on the VP about suggestions for changing the software itself. -- Kesh 22:19, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Link colours

I have noticed that some internal links here appear to be external links, with respect to the colour, and also that, on several image pages, the word "image" on the tab at the top of the page is red. What are the reasons for these anomalies? Hallpriest9 (Talk | Archive) 22:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It may depend on what browser you are using. Here is the difference between Google.com (Wikipedia article) and Google.com (external link to the actual website). I see a funny box and arrow after the second link but not the first. I don't know what you see.

The image tab could be red if the image was uploaded recently without source information. A red tab at the top of the page, for "article", "discussion", "user page", whatever, means that nobody has edited that page yet. It's possible for an image to be uploaded on Wikipedia but nobody has edited the image page yet. Yechiel Man 23:11, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help finding categories

I have difficulty finding an easy-to-use list of categories. At some point I stumbled on a searchable list of categories, but I have been unable to find it again, and lost my bookmark. WP:CAT frankly baffles me, and even the talk page is intimidating. -- Rob C (Alarob) 23:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you mean [3]? To get here, go to "special pages", then "All pages", then select the category namespace. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's it! Thanks for showing me how to navigate there. -- Rob C (Alarob) 23:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In case you don't know, it's possible to search in the whole category name by clicking Search below the normal search box to the left and then use the search box at the bottom with Category checked and the rest unchecked. PrimeHunter 00:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can also search Wikipedia categories with Google. You can remember useful search URLs by adding them to your user page (see mine at User:Teratornis#Useful searches). --Teratornis 02:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

June 25

Barnstars

Where can i find the different types of barnstars? Atrocity1313 (Contact me)

I think Wikipedia:Barnstars is the page you are after. Raven4x4x 00:45, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem uploading "The Rings of Reality", R. Stewart Hall, 2000. I am Everett Allie

I have tried to upload a manuscript with its permit and description, using the uploader. When submitted, I god an error message that the file was empty. This is a large file. Would that be the problem?

Everett E Allie (email removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Speciesup (talk • contribs)

If you are trying to create a new article by uploading a manuscript file in some other format, that's not how Wikipedia works. On Wikipedia, articles consist of wikitext that we edit ourselves. Wikitext is a markup language that is unique to the MediaWiki software and unlikely to be the same as whatever file format your manuscript uses currently. In general, MediaWiki is incompatible with almost every other form of word processing software, but there are some tools that can convert from some formats to wikitext. See User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Imp for a few. Another problem is that articles on Wikipedia cannot be verbatim copies of copyrighted works. If The Rings of Reality is a notable work, you may write an article about it, but the full text of the article does not belong here. If the work is in the public domain, you might be able to upload it to WikiSource. --Teratornis 02:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Broken bulleted list

At Alewife (MBTA station), there is an "Attractions" section. If I edit it, I see each item beginning with an asterisk. If I press {Preview}, I see bullets by the items. But going back to the actual article itself, I see no bullets. Any ideas why, or what can be done about it? Matchups 01:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see bullets for items beginning at the left edge, and no bullets for items beginning to the right of the image of the red line. This appears to be how the browser renders the page. If I change window width then each bullet comes and goes depending on whether the item starts at the left edge or not. I don't know whether this a HTML specification but I would just ignore it if this is what you see. PrimeHunter 02:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) :Yeah, the problem is that the "MBTA Red Line" template to the left of the text you're trying to edit conflicts with where the bullets belong. As a result, the bullets are hidden and do not appear on the page. (I didn't see them in the preview either.) If you remove the template, the bullets reappear, but I think it's fine the way it is. Another possibility is to devise a workaround by adding something similar to bullets using unicode or nowiki tags. Please ask me on my talk page if you want to do that and don't know how. Yechiel Man 02:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Matchups probably meant that the bullets were displayed when only the Attractions section was edited. This section does not contain the Red line, so there are no problems. PrimeHunter 02:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted bio of Joey Jett

Hi,

I tried to put up a biographical page today for Joey Jett, an upcoming skateboarder who has gained local fame and is gaining national attention. It was automatically deleted and I have no idea why. I tried to restore it with no luck.

More info on Joey is at his official site at www.joeyjett.com and I am authorized to post information about him.

Why was this deleted twice? —Preceding unsigned comment added by SiriusCreative (talk • contribs)

Welcome! We receive similar questions more often than you might think. Please read Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted? Most likely, Joey Jett failed Wikipedia's guideline of notability, and was deleted according to the speedy deletion policy for unremarkable people. Wikipedia's definition of importance tries to be more strict than what you are expecting (although you'd be surprised at some of the articles that sneak in somehow). I'd be willing to review a copy of the article if you have one with you, or if you can ask the administrator who deleted it to undelete it temporarily. You will probably need to accept that Wikipedia chooses not to have an article on every subject. Yechiel Man 02:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Joey Jett was manually deleted [4] with summary "CSD A7(Bio): Biographical article that does not assert significance". See also Wikipedia:Notability (people). Biographies should have Wikipedia:Reliable sources showing they satisfy the guidelines. PrimeHunter 02:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The short summary is that Joey Jett needs to be written about by reputable publications, and you need to cite them as reliable sources in his article to establish his notability. The subject's official Web site is not, by itself, sufficient to establish notability. So start building a file of all the press clippings about Joey Jett; if there aren't any yet, start contacting reporters who cover skateboarding and see if they will write about him. Click all the links in the responses to your question and read all those pages carefully. On Wikipedia, the rules are complicated, but they are all spelled out, just as in skateboarding competitions. Joey has to follow the rules when he competes, and writing on Wikipedia works the same way. Except that we have something like 10,000 officials looking for infractions. --Teratornis 02:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Picture upload

How do I add information for uploading an image (picture) after the upload. I do not know how to get back to image loading page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CharlotteHyde (talk • contribs)

Just add the necessary templates; see Wikipedia:Template messages. I can help you more if you provide a link to the image. --Haemo 02:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check your contributions (see Help:User contributions). It appears you uploaded an image: Image:TAH head shot.JPG. --Teratornis 02:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

B-17

In reference to the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. The info regarding the bomb load is ironeous and incompetent. The B-17 carried a maximum of 2000 lbs (907kg). THe bomb bay was not large enough for more than two 1000 Lb or four 500 lb or eight 250 lb bombs. I don't know where the writers got their info but they should check out www.aviationhistory.com/boeing b-17 to be properly informed. I have over 60 years of historical and modeling experience with aircraft plus over 6000 hours as the pilot in command in over 30 different aircraft including 1 hour in an actual B-17. Please correct your artical. You are supposed to be a historical info site but not with bad info like the b-17 bomb load. Ricahrd J Strode

You can be bold and fix this information yourself! You can also post on the talk page to get informed editors involved. --Haemo 02:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Maximum reported B-17 & B-24 bomb loads. --Teratornis 03:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

..............Mr.Strode is wrong. The B-17G carried 8 x 500 =4000 lbs at 23-25000 feet for 8-10 hours. R.K.Hoddinott,Jr. Pilot 487thBG 8thAF 1942-1945

An old proposed deletion for Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center

Recently I ran across an article at The Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center which needed work. I got to work on it, moved it to Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center (removed "the" from the title), removed POV content, added references, an infobox and a picture. As I'm looking at the "What Links Here" I do some browsing and notice that the article was proposed for deletion and deleted because a notice expired back in January. (See this link).

The bottom line is this article was deleted, recreated somewhere else with a different name, then moved (by me) to the location of the original deleted article. My concern was that I didn't contest the deletion or didn't follow protocol on restoring the article, primarly because I didn't notice it was deleted.

What should I do now? Do we just leave the article as is? I do feel that the article is notable enough (the 10 references should show that). If so, can I get an admin to throw up the Template:Oldprod tag to the talk page? Chupper 03:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't worry about it. Likely, the old article was not properly sourced or did not assert notability. Looking over what you've written, you've solved both of those problems. Good work! -- Kesh 16:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone creating short-cuts to check if one's contributions have been edited?

I can't be the only one who finds it too time-consuming to see if my contributions have been changed or deleted. Or is there an easier way? I have over 100 on my watchlist, I think. To check each one I must click on it in my watchlist, then search through the history to find my last contribution (which is often 3 or 4 pages earlier!), then compare that edit of mine with the current version, which I can't figure how to do when the versions are on different pages in the history. All that takes over 10 minutes per article, or over 1000 minutes to check them all--over 16 hours. So I check 2 or 3 articles and then give up. Thanks! Can you answer on my talk page? That's because I'm unlikely to be able to find this question again with your answer. 70.67.80.91 03:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, what? IP editors have watchlists now? --tjstrf talk 03:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!! Sorry, I thought I was logged in. That's my question above. Often I log in but after a while I'm automatically logged out but I'm not notified. I think I signed with 4 ~. Korky Day 05:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that this is actually someone with an account who is just not logged in right now (in which case posting on the IP's talk page wouldn't work since there's no way to tell if the editor will see it), here's something you can try: go to your Special:Contributions page, and look for an edit you made. If it has (top) after it, no-one's edited the article since then. If it doesn't, then it's not too hard to compare the page as you left it and as it is now by going to the history of the page, locating your edit in the list, and clicking the (cur) link next to it. (Incidentally, the (last) link will compare the chosen edit to the previous version of the page.) Confusing Manifestation 03:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!! You're right, (cur) does sometimes work, but I'd still have to go to the history page each time and look for each contribution of mine--one by one. That's what takes so long. I can't click on (cur) on my contributions page to see if it's been changed. Even if (cur) in the history saved a couple of minutes per article, it would still take 8 minutes per article, or over 13 hours altogether. It would help a little if I could find a list of articles on my watchlist (listed only once each), but I don't know how to find that. All I can find is a huge huge list of changes made to articles on my watchlist.Korky Day 05:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The list of all the pages on your watchlist is linked up the top, where it says "You have 98 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list." <- the link in "display and edit the complete list" is to Special:Watchlist/edit, where you can find links to the articles, their talk pages, and their history pages. Still not the 100% perfect solution for what you want, but perhaps a start. Confusing Manifestation 06:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'm continuing this on my help page because otherwise I'll lose track of it. Korky Day (talk) 02:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

John Kim

{{helpme}} my page is being deleted

Responded on your talk page. Miranda 04:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit facts

Under the heading subject "Rodeo Drive" there should be a reference to "David Orgell" - an existing store on Rodeo Drive, and the man, now deceased, who was a founding member of the original "Rodeo Drive Committee" which included David Orgell, Gucci, and Fred Hayman of Giorgio among others. They made Rodeo Drive what it is. See also, www.davidorgell.com (history), as well as contact the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce (David Orgell is a former President of the Chamber) for more information.

Thank you, Michele Orgell

Be bold and add the information yourself. Please be sure to provide reliable sources (not his web site, independent sources) that show he is notable and relevant to the article. -- Kesh 16:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Change of Authorship?

A couple of months back, I contributed an image to the Wikimedia Commons, and added it on a relevant article on Wikipedia (a photograph of a bird). I used the copyleft tri-license option, as I want people to be able to use my work however they want, so long as I'm credited. The problem is that I just recently took a look back at the article in question, only to find that the attributes of my photograph itself had been changed, with someone else claiming authorship and defacing the description. As near as I could tell, no record of the change had been made, although my original addition was still visible at the bottom of the page. Why is a change to the Author field of an image allowed (it's not something that can very well change, is it?), and is there any way I can prevent this from happening? I look forward to future contributions (bird photography is a hobby of mine, and I like to think that I'm pretty decent at it), but I can't feel entirely comfortable if I can't somehow permanently attach my name to the image. I don't care how the photograph itself is used, but that Author credit needs to stay intact.

I apologize in advance if I come across as rude, or ignorant of the system. I do fully support Wikipedia and its goal, I'm just afraid I'm a little bit un-informed as to its specifics; hopefully the community can educate me.

Robertbieber 04:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest changing it back -- and adding the page to your watchlist. Then, if it happens again, you can report the person who did it to the admins. --Haemo 04:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The record of change is in the history ([5]). You can also see there who made the change, but they were unregistered so there is only an IP adress. If you add the images you upload to your watchlist (there should be checkbox in the upload form) you can check if people made any changes to them in your watchlist. I think this kind of thing is quite rare though...it probably won't happen again. ssepp^(talk) 07:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

articles in different languages

I just created an article in English Wikipedia that already exists in Hebrew Wikipedia. how do i link them to each other in the "other languages" box?--Rukiddingme? 04:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At the end of the English article, add

[[he:רחל ולדן]]

At the end of the Hebrew article, add

[[en:Rachel Walden]]

I'll do it for you. Shalom ^Hello 04:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

periodic table of elements(reduced down to one page)

How do I reduce the size of your periodic table of elements to fit on one page, still with the name,weight, ect...

Wikipedia's format of the Periodic table is located at Periodic table (standard). You can transclude that onto another wiki-page by adding the following parameter:

{{:periodic table (standard)|width:50%|height:25%}}

This should produce a much smaller version, like this: {{:periodic table (standard)|width:50%|height:25%}} That probably won't solve all your problems, but I hope it helps. Shalom ^Hello 05:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Xavier Rudd interview added twice

Hello; Whilst I am very very happy for someone to add an article from our magazine, I have noticed that the same Xavier Rudd interview's been added twice in your external links...

For the record is it possible to let me know that the interview has been added with your consent - as we don't add things on here (after being told to ask the editors of each section before adding articles)

Kindest Regards Richard —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lancashire Fusileer (talk • contribs)

Hmm... could you show me to which article you are referring? Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 11:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could be: Xavier Rudd#External links. The problem is that two un-named <ref> tags in the lead section cited the same interview, and instead they needed to share a name attribute per WP:FOOT#Citing a footnote more than once. So I fixed it. --Teratornis 16:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Registering in Wikipedia

An E-mail I got from Wikipedia said:

"If you did not recently register for Wikipedia (or if you registered with a different e-mail address)..."

I don't whether I have registered for Wikipedia because I don't know what it means to register for Wikipedia (or to register for it with a particular E-mail address). What does it mean to register for Wikipedia (to register for it with a particular E-mail address)?

Bowei Huang 06:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You registered for Wikipedia when you got your username, and presumably the email address you used in the sign-up form is the one you received that email at. Confusing Manifestation 06:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Registering with Wikipedia means to create an account with Wikipedia through which all your edits and contributions are made. If you did not create an account for Wikipedia, than the e-mail may be a phishing site and should be ignored. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 07:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User's last edit date

Is there any way to display user's last activity date based on their usernamename/ip? A template of sorts that will display the last time the user changed anything in Wikipedia will make it easier for me to track potential vandals. Maurog 07:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Only way I know is to use Special:Contributions. E ^talk 07:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I use the contributions page all the time, that's not the problem. You see, I have a list of pet vandals with links to their contribution pages, but right now the only way to check if they were active is checking the contribution page of each and every one. That takes a lot of time to check and usually there are very few new contributions. If there was a way to query the last time a user has been active and display it, that would save a lot of work. Anyone knows if it's possible? Maurog 09:35, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not within Wikipedia, unless the code gets changed to support it. However, some web browsers (or other programs) can be given a URL to "watch" and report to you when its content changes. I know IE used to do that, but I haven't used that browser in forever. You set a "subscription" and tell it how often to check the page, and it'll alert you whenever the page content changes. -- Kesh 16:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

confirmation code

When I try to register I keep getting told that I have a missing or incorrect confirmation code. I do believe I read the fuzzy words correctly. What and where is the confirmation code? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.85.191.54 (talk • contribs) 07:43, 25 June 2007

You can get your account created by an administrator at WP:ACC if you're having trouble yourself. E ^talk 07:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changing my Account Name

Dear Admin,

Please help me change my account name to Schmoovy Schmoov from how it currently exist as Schmoovyschmoov with not break or capitalization on the second name.

Thank you, Schmoovy Schmoov

Schmoovyschmoov 08:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to have a look at Wikipedia:Changing username, which is where you will have a better chance. Stwalkerster talk 08:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No point going to Wikipedia:Changing username, you only have one edit so I doubt they'd do it for you. Just log out and create a new account. - Zeibura ^(Talk) 08:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If the software doesn't allow you to create the new username because it's too similar to the old one and it thinks you're trying to impersonate yourself, you can put in a request at Wikipedia:Request an account instead. --ais523 08:41, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Or you can go the slightly easier way, if you don't mind keeping Schmoovyschmoov as your username - change your signature so that it displays as Schmoovy Schmoov by changing it to [[User:Schmoovyschmoov|Schmoovy Schmoov]] - like how I'm User:ConMan, but sign as ... Confusing Manifestation 10:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Redirection" of an article

Greetings,

I recently visited an article called "Economic Democracy" on Wikipedia. It was interesting, but I felt it should be updated with more recent input from a couple of authors, one of whom is David Schweickart. So I tried my had at editing on Wikipedia for the first time, and left a fairly meek suggestion.

Next day, I tried to revisit the page and finish reading it, but the whole thing was gone. I was redirected to a new article, entitled "David Schweickart", with just a brief section about his views on "Economic Democracy".

Is this appropriate? What happened to the original page? Is Schweickart the only person entitled to have a view on "Economic Democracy"? Was this whole thing just a mistake? Do whole articles routinely disappear from Wikipedia with no notice at all? That doesn't seem very stable or reliable, does it?

Thanks for whatever light you can shed.

Thanks.

Capitalization is important; Economic democracy is different (in terms of Wikipedia) from Economic Democracy); the latter is a redirect (why? I'm not exactly sure); the former is the page you were looking at and edited. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 08:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Have a look at the discussion page Talk:Economic Democracy to see what happened. The problem seems to be at least partly between the difference between Economic Democracy (capital D) and Economic democracy (lowercase d). User:David Oberst was the person who made the suggestion and asked the question; contacting them by editing User talk:David Oberst is probably the best way to ask for more details. (This seems to be a pretty unusual case; redirects are formed routinely, but not normally in this situation.) --ais523 08:46, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

And fixed. Both capitalizations now point to the idea article. Schweickart's article is metioned there as a reference anyway. Maurog 15:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

XPress page deletion

Dear Sir,

Each time I invest my efforts in creating my company page and few days later I discover suddenly that my page has been deleted and I am the only one who is authorized to edit my company page since I am resposible for the digital marketing issues on bahalf of my company. Kindly find below link for our company page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPress

please I need to solve this deletion problem and replace the content back

I would appreciate it a lot if you can contact me at my direct email for any more clarifications *removed email address*

WP:N, WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:COI, etc etc. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 09:35, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, forgot: WP:ADS -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 09:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I sent an email with an explanation since he is probably not reading this. ssepp^(talk) 10:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

can you?

can you help me, my car broke down onHIghway 80, please help me!g2g please my number is ***-***-****, plesse, I have THREE children with me!serious I am not kidding, I happened to have my laptop in my trunk. help me!!!!

I'm sorry, this is the place for help with using Wikipedia, not a breakdown service. Please try visiting the website of a breakdown company, or contact them via VoIP. Stwalkerster talk 09:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IPC OF INDIA

pLEASE PROVIDE ME ALL SECTION OF IPC ( CRIME )OF INDIA LIKE, SECTION 1,2,3-----.−

See [6]. The first result works. ssepp^(talk) 11:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

change in website address for Israel Exploration Society

Dear Wikipedia, The address of the website of the Israel Exploration Society, to which you refer in your article about the society, has changed.

The old website address was: www.hum.huji.ac.il/ies

and is no longer operational.

The new website address is:

http://israelexplorationsociety.huji.ac.il/

We hope that you will be able to change this link in all of the Wikipedia articles referring to the Israel Exploration Society as soon as possible.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Alan Paris, editor Israel Exploration Society

You can make uncontroversial changes like this yourself, rather than having to ask here; Wikipedia is a wiki, which anyone can edit. Make sure you get the right address, though; the 'new website address' you gave was actually an email address, not a website address. --ais523 11:37, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

I believe it was a typo. Maurog 11:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing site wide changes made in the past (not so recent changes).

I want to check site wide changes made after 04:00 GMT on 2007-06-05, but the link [7] only shows the current changes. Help:Recent changes doesn't help. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-25t11:51z

Special:Recentchanges can't be paged backwards, apparently (the 'from' specifies a time to show changes since, not to show changes before, and the most recent changes are always shown), so although the information exists there isn't an obvious way to get at it (assuming that the information is still in the recentchanges table; if it isn't, it makes the problem even harder, although analysing a database dump would still give a solution). You might try asking at the technical village pump, which is a common place for this sort of question; someone there may be able to tell you how to find out the answer or to run the check themselves and give you the results. --ais523 11:58, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Thanks, I'll ask at VPT. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-25t12:23z

Saving .svg files

I've redrawn a few png images that should be SVG files. Unfortunately, I cannot find an option in Adobe Flash to save the image as an SVG. I have to save it as a PNG first and then find another program to save it as SVG. What should I do in order to save SVG in Flash directly instead of converting it a million times.

(I tried editing the images in some SVG editors like sketsa and Inkscape but I don't believe there is a bucket tool there. Flash handles filling colors much better unless I have overseen this option in sketsa and Inkscape)

Sorry for the long explanation and thank you in advance Akiramenai 12:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PNG is a raster graphics format, SVG is a vector graphics format; converting from PNG to SVG doesn't make any sense. If an image does make sense as an SVG, it has to be edited in a vector format throughout. (A vector format contains information about where all the lines, curves, fills, etc. that make up the image are; a raster format merely contains the colour of each pixel, and therefore loses information needed to scale a vector image correctly. Fill-bucket doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a vector image (although there are some ways it might be possible to code it). Any SVGs that you might produce by automatic conversion from PNG won't contain the vector information, and so will have no advantage over the original PNG and may as well just be saved as PNG files. See Image:VectorBitmapExample.png for an example of why raster formats contain less information than vector formats. --ais523 12:35, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Yes that's why I was wondering how I could save the images I made from scratch based on the png images in Flash to SVG.( I hope there is some kind of plugin of some sort) The bucket tool works good in Flash so I suppose that's no problem ( just try to enlarge a piece of an image filled with the bucket tool, the quality remains as expected) Thanks for your fast reply Akiramenai 12:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is Flash a vector graphics editor? (I don't know). If not, I suspect that creating a proper vector SVG using it is impossible. Don't use PNG as an intermediate format, though; use a different vector graphics format (WMF and EMF are common on Windows, for instance). --ais523 12:52, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Yes, Flash is a vector graphics editor. The official vector graphics format for Flash is .swf

However Flash also allows vector images made in the program to be saved in WMF or EMF. Is it wise to do this and then save it in .svg in another program? I am afraid using this method will ruin the quality (on the other hand WMF and EMF are metafile formats and that means it should be lossless or am I wrong?) Anyway, I have tried this method and for some reason the image came out HUGE in the program I used to convert it to .svg It worked out eventually, though. All I need to know now is if using this method (saving the image in EMF and then converting it in svg) is wise?The converted file can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Krasnik_herb.svg Akiramenai 13:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever method you used to create that file is fine; I've looked at its source, and it's definitely in vector format. EMF is a lossless format that's fine as an intermediary for converting to SVG. --ais523 13:23, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Ok, thanks again for your 'real-time' support Akiramenai 13:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Contact us" ????

Should there not be an actual email address to just contact Wikipedia staff about a problem? I am not illiterate in any way, and am not an idiot, but after about 15 minutes of searching for an actual 'contact' email address, I must wonder what the logic is in this. Hey wiki - I would like an email for contact! Make it easy to find and use! Does this not make sense?

What is it that you're looking to do? Because this is a collaborative encyclopedia, most communication is done through the talk pages of various articles. There are, however, certain instances that require Wikipedia personnel (i.e. a specialized group of trusted Wikipedians) to step in. You can find a list of e-mail addresses at Wikipedia:Contact us. tiZom_(2¢) 13:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it does make some sense for Wikipedia to be somewhat difficult to figure out. The initial complexity of Wikipedia acts as a kind of IQ test which has the effect of favoring smart people who are motivated to read and follow instructions. The quality and success of Wikipedia are directly the products of the kinds of people who find themselves drawn to contribute to Wikipedia in its current form. This is, after all, an encyclopedia, and as I recall from childhood, anyone who took much interest in encyclopedias came to be characterized (perhaps even ostracized) by his peers as being "a brain." Wikipedia's staggering complexity makes it comfortable for contributors from the Cognitive elite and intolerably perplexing for much of hoi polloi (because IQ test scores correlate with a person's ability to learn the complex and unfamiliar - high-scoring people tend to learn new things quickly without much direct assistance, and actually enjoy it). In any case, there is a clear payoff from having to learn wikitext editing before one can converse on talk pages: wikitext is a vastly more expressive language than plain text. Notice, for example, that I sprinkled links throughout my response, which a reader can click to understand what I am babbling about. Providing all the same background information in e-mail is more difficult for the sender to type (as bare URLs) and more difficult for the recipient to read. Other advantages of communicating with talk pages:

Discussions remain attached to their associated articles.
One can go back and correct one's errors after the fact (although etiquette suggests using the <strike> tag so as not to make any followup replies that depend on the original erroneous text appear to become errors themselves).
Formatting markup is available (such as this list).
E-mail has been severely degraded by spam, whereas Wikipedia is much better defended against spam, so far.

--Teratornis 17:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, N.Y.

Who owns the property where Kleinhans Music Hall is located in Buffalo, NY 72.88.82.169 12:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most questions not directly related to editing Wikipedia can be answered at the Reference desk, but I doubt anyone there will be able to answer this. Perhaps you can try city hall? tiZom_(2¢) 13:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Google:Kleinhans Music Hall finds this link which says: "Kleinhans Music Hall is the extraordinary gift of clothier Edward L. Kleinhans and his wife Mary Seaton Kleinhans to the city of Buffalo as provided for in their respective wills." Clicking on a few more links gives some of the history of how the Hall came to be, but I didn't find a clear statement about who owns it now. You could probably contact these folks and ask: Kleinhans Community Association. --Teratornis 15:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi i am from ennovations.

I have added a page named Ennovation, But i am unable to know that why this page is protected, and how i should make a page which should not count as a spam. i have given the referrence, but still this page is deleted.

Plz suggest me how to add a page.

Plz mail me.

Thnx

Vikas Yadav

(E-Mail removed for security purposes)

See Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?. --Teratornis 15:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possible Vandalism/Censorship

In the article on Ebay, I placed a small addition about feedback abuse. It does not mention any particular person, and I don't think my addition even actually mentions the word "Ebay", nor does it contain any factual or other errors, and I think it is quite fair and up-fropnt, yet "someone" keeps deleting it. (should we make a guess at who?) There is not much sense in the very existence of something like Wikipedia if fair and factual additions can be vandalised; -and destroying something (Deleting) IS vandalism.

WP:OR, WP:V, WP:N, etc. etc. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 13:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

you talk about feedback fraud and say it's a growing trend (what sources says it's a growning trend?). It might well be but you need a 3rd party indepedent source to back that claim, you try and use yourself as a source - that's why it keeps getting removed. --Fredrick day 13:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK.... This may be the first day Using Wikipedia, but does anyone doubt that there are people out there that will abuse just about anything? Nothing is untouchable, and there is always someone out there who doen't like what someone else is doing, or what they have, or who cannot stand honest criticism. Hey, I don't like criticism myself, but do you really think I have to lie about something like this? JUST ASK EBAY if you have any doubt that feedback is abused. - Crimony!!! P.S. I did not say "Feedback fraud" I said "Feedback abuse", for all those anal retentives out there who like to argue about the smallest details...

you don't seem to understand what you are being told. This is an encyclopedia, we are not interested in what people 'know to be true', we are interested in what people can provide good quality third party sources to attest to. If you can find good quality third party sources that say "yes this is a problem" and "this is why this is a problem", then it can be added to the article. Otherwise people will continue to remove it. It is nothing to do with "honest criticism" it is a matter of sources. --Fredrick day 13:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, hey, I understand just fine. Gee, I'd love to make a part-time job out of proving the obvious to those who will not bother to check it out for themselves, and who would doubt the color of the sky without confirmations from a legion of leading scientists, but then again, I just made a useful addition of important information for people, and gee I wish I knew such things long ago; but as with the populous world today, if I said the sky was blue, some "person" would likely have a problem with that too. - Why don't one of you check it out for yourselves and become a 3rd prty verification and do something useful, eh?

Well.. no.. because them we would be the source and that would not be independent third party verification. Anything we write ourselves is not acceptable. In addition, can you please sign your posts as outlined in the message, I left on your talkpage - it helps people know who said what. --Fredrick day 13:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If something is 'obvious', it should be easy to find a source; for instance, the sky is blue [8]. If something doesn't have a source, it isn't verifiable. --ais523 13:52, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Being rude to other editors will get you nowhere. If you do not like the rules, guidelines, and foundations of wikipedia, you are perfectly welcome to leave. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 14:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is probably different from anything you have experienced before, because it is different than anything that ever existed before. A number of things here probably won't make much sense until you have invested hundreds of hours studying the incredibly complex policies, procedures, and guidelines. I didn't like everything I saw on Wikipedia either when I was new here. But then I gradually learned a basic truism of wikis: "We are smarter than me." Almost everything you see on Wikipedia is the result of an ongoing evolutionary process, in which thousands of very smart people are empirically learning what does and doesn't work in the world's largest collaborative volunteer project. Imagine a barn raising, but instead of a two-day project involving mere hundreds of people, all of whom are neighbors in the same culture, it's a multi-year project involving millions of people, most of whom will never have any face-to-face contact and come from wildly diverse backgrounds. The only way to keep the project from spinning into total chaos is to have a very detailed list of rules that cover almost every situation that comes up, and we work out these rules through a collaborative search for consensus. One such rule is the requirement for reliable sources. On Wikipedia, we do not merely write what is true, or useful, or interesting to someone; we write what can be reliably sourced. Agreeing to so limit ourselves goes a long way toward helping millions of contributors avoid endless edit warring over differences of opinion. Of course people are still people, we all like to form strong opinions that go far beyond any conclusive evidence, so we have our disagreements, but in the end the rules trump every individual opinion, and on the rare occasion when that doesn't work, the Great Leader trumps everything.

Editing on Wikipedia is different than most editing you have probably done before. It can be very difficult to get used to the idea that anything we contribute here can and probably will be hacked, slashed, mutated, and/or deleted by others. I suggest viewing it as a game in which one tries to determine what one can write which will survive the Darwinian struggle the longest. If you cannot handle the frustration that often results from editing here (that is, if you cannot cultivate a sufficiently tranquil mindset to deal with seeing your work repeatedly clobbered), you might be happier on a smaller wiki, where one's contributions may be likely to persist longer. See List of wikis and search WikiIndex for wikis in your areas of interest. Most other wikis have very different policies from Wikipedia's, so if you don't like what's here, look around for alternatives.

I should point out that all the other Help desk volunteers have (almost certainly) had many of their contributions clobbered too. It's just part of learning to function here. --Teratornis 20:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

100% free documantry down loadings

Please give me the 100% free links

What? Please expand... tiZom_(2¢) 13:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Documentary#External links might get you started. --Teratornis 21:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

moving property

I own a restaurant and the owner from a fast food establishment keeps moving my bin from its usual spot allocated to me to a place round the corner. I have explained that he shouldnt move the bin and asked him not too, this is causing friction so I would like to show him in writing that its illegal for him to move my property. 80.176.156.71 13:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, you'll need to contact a lawyer, as Wikipedia does not engage in the practice of law. tiZom_(2¢) 13:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism

How come obvious vandals, such as the 212.159.98.189 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) only get a 2 day block after numerous warnings and vandals. Its obvious that this IP is not going to change their ways, why not give them a perma ban? All this account is doing is keeping us busy reverting their numerous offences.

Because IPs tend to change hand from user to user. If a long block is placed on an IP, the problematic person who's using it will soon end up on a different (unblocked) IP and vandalise from there, while a harmless good-faith user may end up on that IP and wonder why it's been blocked. --ais523 13:35, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

User Page questions: How do you get table of contents and picture?

I have two questions:

How do you get the Table of Contents Box to appear?
How do I upload a picture, so that I can use it on my user page as as someone like User:Jayjg does?

Dragon Smaug 13:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A table of contents appears automatically once there are enough ==sections== on the page. If you want to control the table of contents manually, use __TOC__ at the point that the table of contents should go or __NOTOC__ if you don't want one at all. As for uploading a picture, see the file upload wizard; for use on a userpage, you'll have to licence the image under a licence that allows reuse and modification by anyone, so make sure that you agree to such copyright terms (there is more information on the upload wizard). See also Help:Image for how to include the image on your userpage once it's been uploaded. --ais523 13:44, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

A table of contents automatically appears if there are four or more headings on the page, and you can write (two underscores either side) or use a template such as {{TOCright}} to force one to appear. Hope that helps, matt br 13:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Section#Table of contents (TOC) which tells you what you need to know, and displays this nice table of TOC variables:

Word	Explanation
__NOTOC__	Hides ToC on the current page.
__FORCETOC__	Forces the table of contents to appear.
__TOC__	Places a ToC here (overriding any __NOTOC__). Multiple ToCs are no longer supported. If __TOC__ is used multiple times, only the first occurrence causes a ToC to appear.

--Teratornis 14:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Impotchomon

Can I have my page back? The page is just about a video-game and that's it! I just want my article back... Oh, yeah. It ain't spam. Still, it may not be a threat, but I'm still asking "can i have my page back?"?

--Cherniy X 13:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was deleted (twice) for being an article about "unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content" (Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#A7). Please see Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia deletes many articles about video games. However, the gaming community contains many people with system administrator skills who figured out how to start their own wikis. While you are trying to figure out how to edit your article to comply with Wikipedia policies, do yourself a favor and put your article on a wiki specializing in games. Usually the specialized wikis are looking to add content in their topic area, rather than delete several articles per minute like Wikipedia does. See for example the answer to this previous Help desk question:

Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 May 23#Can I use my wikipedia user space to write guides (read more in text)?

You can develop your article on a game-oriented wiki, and once you think you have it in encyclopedic shape, you can try putting it on Wikipedia again and see if it "sticks." See WP:WWMPD#If all else fails, try another wiki. --Teratornis 14:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Line Breaks

I can't find instructions on forcing a line-break anywhere in the editing help. I don't want extra (blank) lines between lines, just each 2-3 word line on a separate line.Tfleming 13:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are various possibilities, depending on what you're using the line breaks for; you can use the <br/> tag to insert a line-break anywhere in a line, form the lines into a list by writing a colon at the start of each of them, or place <poem> at the start and </poem> at the end of the sequence of lines. You can start a new paragraph by leaving a blank line in the source, which leaves a slightly bigger gap on the page. --ais523 14:01, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

But first see Wikipedia:Don't use line breaks to make sure you are using them where you should. Also, if you have trouble finding instructions, open this page in a browser tab: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia, press Ctrl-f in your Web browser, and type your search word or phrase (in this case "line break" does the job). --Teratornis 14:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Teratornis, that guideline's about single line breaks in the source of a page, which normally have no effect on the output (they're hardly ever used nowadays); one ancient browser I occasionally have to use inserts them liberally throughout the page I edit, normally annoying other people on that page (which is why I no longer normally use it to edit, only to read). The guideline isn't about causing single line-breaks to come up in the rendered version of an article. --ais523 14:18, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

My bad. --Teratornis 20:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

rotisserie speed

What is the rotaion speed of a standard rotisserie? Like for roasting a chicken ---Also How long does it take for 1 complete rotaion74.92.50.173 14:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should try asking this question at the reference desk, as this is a help desk, for help using Wikipedia. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 14:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

misclassification

A Biography tag has been placed on the Peter Nordin discussion page. The article provides a 'profile' of Peter Nordin rather than a biography. The distinction is made at Biography, which is a page listed by the Biography project page in defining the scope of their project. The biography project page does not seem to provide any review procedure and the tags are not signed. How do I request removal of the tags? Rogerfgay 14:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Biography is our encyclopedic article about biographies. The content is unrelated to our category names and internal procedures where the term "profile" is not used. The article Peter Nordin falls under Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and its talk page should be in Category:Biography articles of living people as it is. The categories in Peter Nordin are also considered biography categories by Wikipedia. PrimeHunter 14:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OKey Dokey then. I don't see it as a problem in the sense of following the general rules related to biographies of living persons (i.e. avoid liable, etc.) - (unless I just haven't read enough) - but noticed that the Biography project rates biographies on a defined scale. A profile, which is what the article contains - would likely get a very poor rating as a biography, because it's only a profile and no attempt has been made to make a biography out of it (in view of rating biographies). I don't want the article to run into the problem of being a poorly rated biography scheduled for demolition one day. Rogerfgay 15:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The project's rating system isn't "official" in the sense you seem to be worried about. A poor rating would merely encourage editors to improve the article, not to delete it outright. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 15:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. No worries then. Rogerfgay 15:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DJREJECTED needs to stop adding links to web sites with copyrights

DJREJECTED needs to stop adding links to articles. Especially links to copy righted sites!!!!!!!!!

I don't see the problem. Please collect a few diffs indicating the problem, and report it at WP:ANI. Shalom ^Hello 15:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Choosing the correct image tag

I am always baffled when it comes to choosing the correct image tag for copyright status. If I was to scan an image from a book depicting an old subject (for instance an image of an engraving, etching, artwork etc) could I use the {{PD-old}} / {{PD-art}} tags (needless to say, ensuring that the image scanned is over 100 years old)? If not, what do you suggest I use? Chris Buttigieg ^talk 14:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Media copyright questions is probably a better place to ask this sort of question, as you're more likely to find editors specialised in this specific field there. --ais523 14:54, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Ok, I'll ask the question there. Thanks anyway. Chris Buttigieg ^talk 14:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page clean-up

The Talk:Peter_Nordin page includes extensive arguing that is no longer relevant. I would like to see the page cleaned up by deletion of most material on it. Is that possible? Rogerfgay 14:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Article history keeps everything, so if it's real nasty you can just delete the section. If there's substantive value to the discussion, you're better off archiving it. Shalom ^Hello 15:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, I would strongly suggest you leave it be. The "argument" is over content of the article, and no serious civility breaches are apparent. There's no reason to delete its content. Just leave it be and eventually, when the page gets larger, it will be archived. -- Kesh 17:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How does this "ThePPN:" link works?

Hello. How come these links works: ThePPN:Main page, ThePPN:Category:Pop, etc.? Where is Wikipedia configured to point the "ThePPN:" namaspece to the external url http://wiki.theppn.org/ ? --Abu badali ^(talk) 15:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's all in the table 'interwiki' in the database. What you have is a list of prefixes such as ThePPN: and others in one column, and a list of corresponding URLs in the other.
For example: the 'google:' prefix corresponds to the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=$1, so when you type [[google:wikipedia]], it is interpreted as http://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia. the $1 is replaced with the target. This is called an interwiki link. Stwalkerster talk 15:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I suppose these interwiki links aren't user created, right? Or no? What's the process for creating one, and where can I read the policy governing it? I mean, I understand why we want to be able to use interwiki to other Wikimedia's sites (like other languages Wikipedias, Wikitionary, Commons, etc.), and I see the value of being able to use interwikis for some sites like google or imdb. But where is the line drawn? (Specifically, what's the policy that draws the line? Thanks! --Abu badali ^(talk) 16:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, the only way to edit the interwiki links is direct to the database, which requires database access. Those in the group Developers [9] should be able to help you out in adding or changing interwiki link prefixes, as they are the only ones who can do it. Stwalkerster talk 16:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I guess I found it out: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map. (or more appropriately: meta:Interwiki map ;) ). --Abu badali ^(talk) 16:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. Also see: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Int. If you install your own wiki that runs on the MediaWiki software, you will probably set up your own interwiki links to modify the default m:Interwiki map. It does require access to the MySQL database that MediaWiki uses. However, using some kinds of interwiki links from Wikipedia itself violates the Avoid self-references guideline. You may have to read that guideline a few times to digest the arcane reasoning. --Teratornis 23:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Table background

Is there any way of making a table background 'transparent' so that it fits in with Wikipedia's own background, or will I have to manually change it to the same colour? If so, what is the colour? EvilRedEye 16:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry, found the answer to my own question! EvilRedEye 16:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone else who wants to know and comes across this question, you put style="background:transparent" after the {| at the start of the table. --ais523 17:17, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Correcting False Accusations

I've been accused of Sock Puppetry Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets/Rogerfgay by opponents in a debate on content. As a new user, I did invite someone into Wikipedia who was supportive of my position. (Meat Puppetry) As soon as I was informed that this violated rules, I admitted the mistake, and the new Wikipedian dropped out of the discussion to avoid disruption. The accusers however, continued to case on Sockpuppetry Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Rogerfgay, falsely claiming that both users operate from the same IP address. The new Wikipedian has been indefinitely blocked. How can the blocked user have this situation reviewed by independent administrators? Rogerfgay 16:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The block was implemented by Akhilleus, so talking to him would be your starting point. You don't start by asking independent administrators, you start by talking to the blocking Admin. If you can convince him it won't happen again, good. If not, he can provide you with the next steps. -- Kesh 17:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Peace Touch

My friend and I invented the "Peace Touch." It is when two people make peace signs with their fingers and then touch their peace signs together. It is a gesture of peace and friendship. We are trying to make this known to the public by adding it to wikipedia and spreading the idea of peace, love and friendship to the world.

Can we please make this page to explain what a peace touch is? It keeps getting deleted!

Much love & peace,

A&A

Angela & Annie—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ange71979 (talk • contribs) 17:16, June 25, 2007

Shortly: no. See WP:MADEUP. -- Kesh 17:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jim Bailey - Actor/Entertainer..........Ii cant find

Dears Sir/Madam,

Please Help

I tried creating a page on Jim Bailey Actor/Entertainer and its not appearing can you tell me what i did wrong?

This can all be verified on www.jimbaileyweb.com or IMDB

Ive redone it a no. of times...is there a service that can do it for me?

Thanks Steve Campbell

It seems it was deleted in December of '06 due to "Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If controversial, or if there has been a previous deletion discussion that resulted in the article being kept, the article should be listed at Articles for deletion instead." Dismas|^(talk) 19:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Why was my article deleted?. --Teratornis 20:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Internet Crashed, Megaresort

My internet crashed two minutes ago, and I was editing the Megaresort Wikpedia page. The page lost half of its content because of my internet. I am terribly sorry about that!!! What can I do to get it back?

I've reverted your edit, and the article is back the way it was before again now (you can make the edit again if you like). All previous versions of a page are recorded (click on the 'history' tab for a list of versions and then on the date of a version to view it); I saved the version immediately before the one you blanked by mistake, to restore the article. See Help:Reverting for more information about restoring an article after vandalism or (in this case) accidental edits that degrade its quality. --ais523 18:30, 25 June 2007 (U T C)

Are commercial sites acceptable refs?

Is using the product page for a company selling something, e.g. a Japanese video game, an acceptable reference if I can't find any other websites that have the same information on this game in English? --BrokenSphere 18:22, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly it would be on a game-oriented wiki such as StrategyWiki, but for Wikipedia see WP:NOTE and WP:WEB. Also see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Games#Video games to find a relevant WikiProject which may further interpret Wikipedia policies for the case of specific kinds of video games. --Teratornis 20:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

T That depends. If you're using the company's website as foundation for Critcal/Reception sections, that would be a conflict of interests, but if you're just using it to support the official name over a popular name (like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princesss, and not Zelda: Twilight Princess, or just Twilight Princess), or add details about a character, that's fine. Basically, act like the company is a used car salesman trying to sell you a car. If you think the statement is trying to get you to buy it, ignore it. Oh, and don't forget- you get facts from sources, not sentences. There's nothing more annoying to me than a description ripped straight from the company's pages -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 05:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't even the page for the co. selling the product, which is wholly in Japanese, but a 3rd party distributor so yes they are trying to push it. I would basically cite the page to reference where I got the plot description and features. --BrokenSphere 15:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do you add stuff or a word to wikipedia?

How do you add stuff to wikipedia? 81.109.179.169 19:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at the top any article: You can see a button labeled 'edit this page'. Click it. Edit in the big box. For more info, visit the Tutorial. :) Stwalkerster talk 19:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I invented a word and i dont know how to add stuff...

At school, i got bored and invented a word BUT, (there is always a BUT) i do not know how to add stuff to wikipedia. The word I (me and my friend) invented is "SHINDIGRI" but i need help adding it to wikipedia. SOMEONE HELP ME!!!!!!!

Wikipedia isn't intended for original research or neologisms. Dismas|^(talk) 19:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The subject of the article needs to be notable, ie not something you made up one day and want to tell the world. Wikipedia is for notable subjects. Besides, words belong in Wikipedia's sister project, Wiktionary. :) -- Stwalkerster talk 19:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to be the buzzkill but Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day. --Teratornis 20:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Color circle (hue-sat).png

I just made an extremely minor change to Image:Color circle (hue-sat).png (changing the background from white to transparent), do I need to update the licensing information?--VectorPotential^Talk 19:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. Obviously if it was public domain, it still is, and if it's copyright, it probably still is copyright because the essential features are maintained. Image editing is a fairly common (and well-appreciated!) practice on Wikipedia. Shalom ^Hello 06:37, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Making a box floating to the right

I'm trying to make a key for a sports statistics table to float to the right of the table. Can anyone help me with this? --Yarnalgo _{talk to me} 19:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

School age

what is the outcomes of school ages?positive or negative?

Please clarify the question and ask at the reference desk. Shalom ^Hello 21:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Font

Hello.

All of a sudden, after many years of using your service, I find your typeface (font) is unclear and difficult to read. Other Web sites are fine.

Any help?

Please explain what's wrong: is the font too large or too small? Is it blurry or odd-shaped?

There might be a way of adjusting your computer settings. It would make the font on your other websites larger than usual, but it's a trade-off to consider if the font is too small. I don't know if I can give any further advice. Shalom ^Hello 21:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You could use Cascading Style Sheets to change the font. --Leon Byford 22:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CosmoGIRL! entry - name spelled wrong

Hi,

I'm the senior online editor for CosmoGIRL! magazine. I got an email from one of our users regarding a wikipedia entry page and an argument regarding what is the correct spelling of our magazine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CosmoGIRL!

As you can see from the cover on the entry page, there is no way for us to represent our title in print since the "girl" is handwritten. When it is written out in text format the "girl" is in all capital letters, as is evident on our parent company's page about the site.

http://hearst.com/magazines/property/mag_prop_cosmogirl.html

I don't know why that decision was made, but that's how it is written. Not COSMOgirl! as it is appears in the entry. Please let me know if you need more instances of this printing in order to make the change. Thank you.

All taken care of. Thanks for the cite page and info. Jim Dunning | talk 21:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Grand Lodge of All England At York

This stub was deleted today. We did not write the original stub and it was relatively fair and accurate. We added to it for the sake of accuracy.

It was vandalised by two people earlier today using offensive falsehoods. I looked because I had received an Email from a third party warning me that this was taking place. We would wish to make a formal complaint and report them to Wikipedia for acts of blatant vandalism. They should be banned from making any future contributions - a disgrace! What can we do?

Peter Clatworthy Grand Secretary Grand Lodge of All England at York.Grandsecretary 21:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Why was my article deleted? and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grand Lodge of All England at York for the discussion that led to its deletion. -- Kesh

Attempting to create a new page causes download of index.php

When logged in, any time I attempt to create a new page, it instead just downloads index.php. I am running Windows XP, but I have tried this on three different machines, and 4 different browsers (Firefox, IE, Opera & Safari). It seems to be a persistent issue which I have had for a really long time. I had a hack work around for a while, but I forget what I did now. It seems like this started happening when the policy was changed to require you to login before adding a new page.

So when I go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_page&action=edit

It just downloads index.php which contains the following:

[Process]
Type=Edit text
Engine=MediaWiki
Script=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php
Server=http://en.wikipedia.org
Path=/w
Special namespace=Special

[File]
Extension=wiki
URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_page&action=edit&internaledit=true

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I think what you are trying to do (without intending to) is actually create a new article called "New page", instead of whatever name you intend (and Wikipedia is set up to block creation of a page called "New page"). Try entering the name you want in the search field and if it doesn't exist it will take you to an option that allows you to edit (create) the page name you want. So don't enter "New page". Jim Dunning | talk 22:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

--Jim | talk 21:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try going to Special:Preferences, clicking on 'Editing' and unchecking 'Use external editor by default'. --Leon Byford 22:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That did it. Seems odd to have that setting on by default. Thank you very much! --Jim 22:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The setting is supposed to be off by default. I think the text means that if the setting is on, then an external editor is used by default, but there is a way to avoid that "default" without unchecking the setting. I don't know what the way is but apparently you once knew a way. PrimeHunter 23:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Caps lock, filmscripts, etc.

SORRY, I AM VERY BAD I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS THE KEYBOARD TO SIGN THE ARTICLES, PLEASE HELP ME AND I WILL NEVER STOP WRITING..I HAVE GOT FILMSCRIPTS, IDEAS AND WISH YOU ALL THE BEST MASTERS OLIVIER DORIA D'ANGRI —Preceding unsigned comment added by Olivier doria (talk • contribs)

We don't sign articles, but we do sign our posts to talk pages. Wikipedia may not be the best place for ideas; see WP:NOR. On Wikipedia we don't make original contributions to articles; instead we only write what we can reliably source. If you are interested in writing about films, see WikiMovies and the other wikis here. Choosing the right wiki for the type of writing you want to do will make your life much more pleasant. Wikipedia is only appropriate for people who want to help write an encyclopedia, and most people don't really want to do that. --Teratornis 23:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) You can sign Talk pages by putting four ~ symbols at the end of your message. Edits to articles themselves do not need signatures, you can just explain your edit in the "Edit summary" line. As for film scripts, sorry, we are not a place to submit your original works. -- Kesh 23:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute tag

How many talk page editors are required to declare a content dispute and place a dispute tag? Milo 23:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One. See User:Bibliomaniac15/How many Wikipedians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

In all seriousness, if you disagree with what the article says, and you explain why you disagree, then it's disputed. We don't have formal rules for such things. Good luck with the dispute resolution process. Shalom ^Hello 23:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Milo is probably referring to the ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler where Milo disputes [10] the guideline at Wikipedia:Spoiler and discussion has been long. An editor can place a dispute tag at the start of discussion but if there appears to be consensus without unanimity after some discussion then I think the consensus should be respected. Whether that particular discussion has consensus is not a question to decide at the help desk. PrimeHunter 00:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that my watchlist is full of edit after edit of people warring over it on the talk page, I'd call it disputed. Kuronue 01:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I asked a generic question, and got a satisfactory rules research answer from Shalom. Thank you.

But since PrimeHunter brings up the unasked question of who is disputing, let's not make it sound like it's just me. Here's the record of four dispute tag placing editors, and three removers:

20:44, 12 June 2007 RockMFR reverted by 21:00, 12 June 2007 Tony Sidaway
21:02, 12 June 2007 RockMFR reverted by 21:07, 12 June 2007 David Gerard
21:08, 12 June 2007 RockMFR reverted by 22:00, 12 June 2007 Tony Sidaway
22:04, 12 June 2007 Sethie reverted by 04:21, 13 June 2007 Ned Scott
14:08, 13 June 2007 Milomedes reverted by 19:01, 13 June 2007 Ned Scott
14:06, 25 June 2007 Kierano reverted by 21:57, 25 June 2007 Tony Sidaway

I certainly didn't ask Help desk to decide consensus, but since you mention it, how about being helpful in a catch 22 situation? What dispute process should be used to decided on whether there is a dispute, when one side illogically denies there is a dispute?? As Sethie put it: (22:04 12 June 2007): "the fact that there is a dispute about whether there is a dispute kinda proves there [is] ..... *drum roll******* A DISPUTE!" Milo 01:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most people reading your original question would probably think you referred to an article, and that's apparently what Shalom thought since Shalom wrote "the article". And you didn't say there was a long discussion involving many editors. You then wrote "I got a satisfactory rules research answer from Shalom". The only link in Shalom's answer was a User subpage in Category: Wikipedia humor. I suspect Shalom had no idea what he/she was getting into. Asking a generic question when you are really thinking about an unmentioned specific conflict can easily result in answers that don't fit the situation, so I said what is was about. I only looked briefly at the discussion and I'm not judging it. I'm just saying that I don't think the help desk should judge it, and certainly not without knowing any of the details. Shalom wrote "Good luck with the dispute resolution process". Asking generic help desk questions is not part of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. PrimeHunter 03:04, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I notice you didn't answer my complicated follow up question. That provides a hint as to what answer I would have gotten if I had originally asked a non-generic question, so I'm satisfied that I made the correct choice.

"Most people reading your original question would probably think you referred to an article, and that's apparently what Shalom thought since Shalom wrote "the article"." Since there are no dispute tag rules at all, it doesn't make any difference. If it had made any difference, no problem, I would have quickly figured that out and asked a more specific question.

"I don't think the help desk should judge it" Neither do I, and I didn't request that. I wasn't interested in a help desk opinion of the disputed dispute — I was only interested in generic guides or rules on who could place a dispute tag.

"And you didn't say there was a long discussion involving many editors." Correct, and it was properly not said. That is irrelevant to rules research and might have sounded like I wanted Help desk to judge a dispute.

"You then wrote "I got a satisfactory rules research answer from Shalom". The only link in Shalom's answer was a User subpage in Category: Wikipedia humor." The satisfactory answer was there aren't any rules. Logically, there can't be any (serious) links to non-existent rules.

"I suspect Shalom had no idea what he/she was getting into." What did Shalom get into? Shalom said "We don't have formal rules for such things." Surely you aren't claiming that answer would be somehow changed by the details of the situation? I'd guess you're concerned that Shalom might have gotten into something, but didn't.

"Asking a generic question when you are really thinking about an unmentioned specific conflict can easily result in answers that don't fit the situation, so I said what is was about." Ok, that might have happened, but it didn't. Since it didn't happen, there was no reason for you to have commented further.

"Shalom wrote "Good luck with the dispute resolution process". Asking generic help desk questions is not part of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution." {scratches head} Um, that's literally true only because the ability to ask generic help desk questions is inferred everywhere.

In summary, I asked a simple question, got a simple and correct answer, and that answer fits all situations. You seem to be complaining, this, that, or some other complication might have happened... but didn't. Perhaps a help desk vacation would improve your outlook. Milo 09:08, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first dispute tag was placed weeks ago and there had already been a long discussion. The dispute tag was removed by an ~~administrator~~ editor who claimed "There is no significant opposition to the guideline" which some editors disagreed with (and I don't want to judge that disagreement). Shalom did not know any of this, but you still used Shalom's answer as argument for your side in the conflict [11] which is what I mean by Shalom not knowing what he/she was getting into. Your linked edit was made after my comment (which was based on actually knowing the conflict) but you ignored it and said "The Help Desk told me ..." about Shalom's more convenient generic answer. I'm trying to assume good faith but I wonder whether you deliberately asked a very generic question with no reference to the actual conflict in order to improve the chance of getting an answer you could use in that conflict. I have seen that sort of thing before. Maybe we should have a guideline that says something like "If an editor in an ongoing conflict asks somebody else for an opinion without saying where the conflict is (so the person can see what is going on), then the answer should not be used as argument in the conflict". Imagine this hypothetical situation (which I certainly don't claim resembles your situation): A single editor thinks he should be allowed to add his private unpublished alleged knowledge to articles, and that editor wants to forever keep a dispute tag on Wikipedia:Verifiability "because I dispute it". I don't think that should be allowed, and I suspect you and Shalom agree (but we don't have time to consider and describe all hypothetical scenarios at the help desk). So there exist cases where a dispute tag should not be allowed to stay even if somebody wants it. Wikipidea does not accept everything just because there is no specific rule against it. Whether or not it's fair to keep placing a dispute tag in your situation is something I think it's only reasonable to evaluate after reviewing the history and discussion. PrimeHunter 12:04, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It appears it wasn't an admin. Sorry about that. PrimeHunter 14:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would also add that omitting details from a question deprives helpers of the chance to see deeper into the real problem. Sometimes people ask questions about how to carry out one specific solution to an (unstated) problem, when some other solution (which the questioner hadn't thought of) is more efficient. The question then becomes a kind of red herring, as helpers don't know what the real problem is, and can only focus on the mechanics of carrying out one type of solution. I'm not saying that was necessarily the case here, just that I haven't seen many questions that got better by being more vague. One might even go so far as to say it's rather maddening to see the number of Help desk questions which allude to articles without stating their names so we can have a look. Wikipedia is like a madhouse of overlapping and sometimes conflicting rules, so it's difficult to make our Solomonic decisions when we can't even see the baby we are being asked to divide. --Teratornis 21:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'm starting to understand the unexpected complaints about my simple rules question as a micro conspiracy theory.

Overall, PrimeHunter doesn't like advocacy rules research (or lawyering), and appears to be saying that I should have asked a different question (about consensus) so that Help desk could refuse to answer it. Right.

However, I take PrimeHunter's and Teratornis' point that Help desk has had bad experience with questions relating to ongoing disputes. Talk about biting newbies — how was I to know your problems? It's unfair to criticize my question merely because you lack confidence in the current Help desk question rules. Please take my point that nothing went wrong in this case.

PrimeHunter 12:04 wrote: "Your linked edit was made after my comment (which was based on actually knowing the conflict) but you ignored it and said "The Help Desk told me ..." about Shalom's more convenient generic answer."

Here's my indirect quote of Help desk (edit was not linked) — Milo 00:38: "The Help Desk told me that only one editor with a talk page explanation is needed to place a dispute tag, but that there are no formal rules for such things."

I did indirectly quote only two things that Help desk (Shalom 23:24 & PrimeHunter 00:14) said. Your comment (PrimeHunter 00:14) openly agreed with one thing ("One"/"An" editor is required to place a dispute tag), and presumably agreed with the other thing (the absence of dispute-tag-placing rules). Obviously, that part of your comment was not ignored.

Here's the first part of PrimeHunter's conflict-knowing comment that I did ignore — PrimeHunter 00:14:" ...but if there appears to be consensus without unanimity after some discussion then I think the consensus should be respected."

You claimed to know the conflict, so you should have known that there was no appearance of consensus as to whether there was even a dispute, much less any appearance of consensus as to placing a dispute tag. I apologize for the umbrage you are about to take, but that part of your conflict-knowing comment was useless to the actual conflict on either side, so I ignored it.

Here's my (Milo's) original generic question — Milo 23:14: "How many talk page editors are required to declare a content dispute and place a dispute tag?"

Here's the second part of PrimeHunter's conflict-knowing comment that I also ignored — PrimeHunter 00:14: "Whether that particular discussion has consensus is not a question to decide at the help desk."

Notice the complete disconnect between my question (Milo 23:14) and your comment (PrimeHunter 00:14). I did not ask a question about consensus, I asked a question about rules. Since it did not answer my question, I ignored that part of your comment. Furthermore, if I had asked a question about consensus, you would not have answered it.

PrimeHunter 12:04 wrote: "I'm trying to assume good faith but I wonder whether you deliberately asked a very generic question with no reference to the actual conflict in order to improve the chance of getting an answer you could use in that conflict. I have seen that sort of thing before."

???! Of course you have seen it before -- what you are describing is called rules research in support of an advocacy debate position. It's what lawyers and paralegals do. Again I apologize for the umbrage you are about to take, but your notion that lawyering or its rules research equivalent involves any bad faith is offensively uneducated. Lawyering is the primary basis for enforcing freedoms guaranteed under Western democratic constitutions, and indeed what lesser protections by code law are available in non-democratic states. (See Code of Hamurabi prior to which all laws were unwritten secrets known only to the wealthy, and used to oppress the poor.)

PrimeHunter 12:04 wrote: "Maybe we should have a guideline that says something like "If an editor in an ongoing conflict asks somebody else for an opinion without saying where the conflict is (so the person can see what is going on), then the answer should not be used as argument in the conflict."

Well, no, that would be censorship. But the Help desk guide could state that if the question relates to a current dispute, the questioner should disclose it. After such disclosure I expect I would have had to ask my dispute tag rules question three times to get the simple answer that there no rules, but I could live with that.

Teratornis 21:31 wrote: "omitting details from a question deprives helpers of the chance to see deeper into the real problem"

I agree that's true of the average article editors' food fight situation. But how many details? Where does one draw the line? The details in this unique spoiler tagging situation have so far filled over a half-million bytes of debate. If I had even tried to present the situation, the answer would have been something like 'that situation is too complicated for Help desk.' I already knew that. I just wanted to know what the dispute tag rules were, so that I could present my debate advocacy position based on them, which I did.

Being a skilled reference researcher, as are many Wikipedians, I can assure you that had there been any guide or policy pages to quote on the use of dispute tags, I would not have had any reason to mention Help desk. I guess it's just a down side of your task that I had no choice but to indirectly quote Help desk to prove that certain rules don't exist. Milo 06:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was unclear when I talked about "very generic question with no reference to the actual conflict in order to improve the chance of getting an answer you could use in that conflict.". By "use in that conflict" I meant something that could be used to indicate support for your side of the conflict, while a more detailed question (for example saying it was a guideline, there was long discussion, a dispute tag had been there for long and then removed), or a question linking to the conflict, might have given a different answer that was less advantageous to your side. We have lots of guidelines about things people shouldn't do. I wouldn't call that censorship. By the time something has escalated into a conflict involving multiple editors, I think it's often too complex to get fitting answers from generic questions to editors who don't know the conflict. We try to avoid instruction creep at the help desk. It's clear that a lot of people don't even read short instructions. We get lots of questions from the FAQ, especially "How do I create a new article?". Few would probably read a long list of rules and suggestions. PrimeHunter 13:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

June 26

No images on Wikipedia?

Hello, I recently installed Vista, everything was going fine for a few days and suddently, out of the blue, IE can not load any page on Wikipedia. So i shut down IE, reload and scince then no images will appear on Wiki. Any Suggestions? KoalaMeatPie 00:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not a clue. It's worth asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing to see if anyone knows about bugs in Vista. Shalom ^Hello 04:08, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps images are disabled in IE? (Assuming you're using IE 7 because you said that you installed Vista:) Go to Tools → Internet Options. Then click on the "Advanced" tab. About half way down or so should be a "Show pictures" checkbox. Make sure that it is checked, and press OK twice. If this doesn't solve the problem, try clearing your cache (Ctrl-F5 in IE). If that still doesn't help, feel free to ask again (possibly with more information) here or on my talk page. —METS501 (talk) 04:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Create a page

How do i create a page

Read WP:FIRST. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 02:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

how to create a page

Type the name of the page you wish to create into the search box in the sidebar at the left of your screen. If it is to be in the article namespace, it doesn't need a prefix. But if it is in another namespace, like the user namespace, it needs to be preceded by the name of the namespace followed by a colon. For example to create a page called "How to create a page" in the Wikipedia namespace, type (without the quotes) "Wikipedia:How to create a page".

If the page doesn't already exist, Wikipedia will give you the option of creating the page. Read the screen carefully, and follow the directions.

Another way to create a page is to click on a red link. For example, if your name is in red at the top of your screen, click on it, and start editing in the edit box provided. (You may have to scroll down a little to see the edit box).

I hope this helps, and if you have any further questions, please feel free to ask away.

The Transhumanist 02:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC) [reply]

It was Norton 360 on Steroids. I asked their help desk after reading the article on here saying it had compatibility issues with IE 7. Half the pages wouldn't load at all and cut off my internet. KoalaMeatPie 20:30, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

HELP!

Gruntilda

I need help with this page. And no I don't want it deleted. Angry Sun 01:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As such? KoalaMeatPie 01:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That annoying Character box is all I really need fixed now... Angry Sun 01:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm. You did it again. Eh, you'll learn. - History tab, Select Version, "Undo" if you mess up to badly. KoalaMeatPie 01:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's the point of the Assessment Drive?

Why do articles need to be assessed?

Wouldn't the effort be better spent directly upon improving the articles rather than assessing them?

Just curious.

The Transhumanist 02:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Personally, I think the best answer to that question would be a matter of expanding. It helps sort articles in terms of the amount of work that still need to be done on them. Just my opinion. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 02:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment is valuable as an outside party can take a look at an article and identify problematic parts, which helps those who are involved in the article clean it up. Everyone gets a little too close to their work sometimes, so it helps to have an extra set of eyes point out the obvious flaws we may overlook. -- Kesh 03:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It also gives me a good thing to look at when I go to a relevant category to work out what article to work on next. I hate looking at articles which are better than what I can improve when I am trying to find something to work on (not that that happens very often).Ga rr ie 05:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

People are more likely to work on things if they have a specific rating of how much they've done and how much is left to do in a category; assessment helps that, I think. Plus it helps decide which articles are ready for a CD selection or the like. —Dark•Shikari^[T] 12:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some people might be able to recognize more problems than they know how to fix, or they can recognize problems faster than they can fix them. They can still help by listing the problems they recognize in a way that allows the (fewer) people who know how to fix the problems to avoid having to look for them. Pointing out problems makes them more obvious, possibly attracting the attention of someone who knows how to fix them, who might have overlooked an unmarked problem. There is also the matter of efficiency. Someone who fixes many instances of the same type of problem by working from a list can get faster at it than someone who fixes one type of problem at a time in the course of random article browsing. To fix a given type of problem, you may have to read a guideline page, look up some appropriate template, play with it until you understand it, and so on. Once you know how to fix that problem, you might as well fix as many instances of it as you can, to get a good return on the overhead effort of learning how to fix it. Plus, some people like to know how Wikipedia is doing. The MediaWiki software can automatically tell us we have 6,901,730 articles and 48,171,300 registered users, but what do those numbers mean? We can see how large Wikipedia is getting, but is it getting better? Is Wikipedia getting closer to its goal of providing a free encyclopedia of the highest quality? Wikipedia's user interface has some influence on the kinds of editing people do. For example, if we decide the article count isn't growing fast enough (which seems highly unlikely), we might be able to increase the new article creation by making it easier and more obvious. On the other hand, if we decide the volume is increasing faster than the quality, we might think of ways to encourage more users to improve the quality of existing articles rather than start so many new ones. For example, we put up the barrier of requiring users to create accounts before they can start new articles. That probably had the effect of slowing the new article creation rate below whatever it would be now if unregistered users could still create new articles. We could raise the hurdle farther in a variety of ways, such as by adding a waiting period to new accounts before they can create new articles, or by requiring them to have a minimum number of edits, etc. I'm not sure how to create additional positive incentives to improve existing articles. I guess we could hand out more barnstars or something. --Teratornis 21:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Filmography Listing

I was wondering if you could tell me how to make a filmography on an actor's article? Thank you

InsanityOnline 04:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Short answer: learn from how others have done it. Try Matt Damon, a well-known American actor. There's an infobox on the right and a Wikitable in the article text. Either presentation is effective. Use the WP:SANDBOX to tinker with these templates until you can make them do what you want. Shalom ^Hello 06:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Click "Edit this page", then copy the source code onto the sandbox, and edit the sandbox. Shalom ^Hello 06:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Passwords

How do I find my passwod if I cannot remember it?

If you listed your email address when you created your account, click "E-mail new password" on the login screen, then check your email.

If you did not list your email address, there is no way to recover your password. You will need to start over from a new account (but you can copy your old userpage etc.). Shalom ^Hello 06:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect

Following this edit to one of my user sub-pages, I thought I should put {{olddraft}} on it. That template allows me to specify the "target article" for the draft, but not the target talk page. It automatically pointed to Talk:GarrieIrons/Westfields in Australia/talk, which I turned into a redirect to my own talk page. Does all this sound about right - that is, is the redirect from the Talk namespace to my own user talk namespace break any rules?

If you think it does, please let me know on my talk page. Thanks, Ga rr ie 05:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, that's a little weird, but don't worry about it. If a similar situation were happening in the main article space, I would bother to retarget the double redirect, but since it's in your userspace, double redirects or misplaced redirects are not harmful. Shalom ^Hello 06:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

register

I want to register my name, my question is on how to creat so that i may belong to the wikipedia organization? 58.69.31.121 07:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)×[reply]

Click here and go to town. --Haemo 07:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I want to create a new article...

I want to create a new article but I dont how to use php .. please guide me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.227.106.122 (talk • contribs).

Replied on user's talk page. +spebi ~ 07:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Embeded Images

How do you put an image on an article? user talk: Naj da man

Replied on user's talk page. +spebi ~ 08:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

vandalism by ip 82.17.83.54

this guy has vandalised 2/3 pages so far. i've removed the vandalism. i've no idea how to report him. can someone do it, or show me how? thanks Geeness 10:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:AIV —Dark•Shikari^[T] 12:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

sociology

what are the roles of boys and girls in a society?

The help desk is for questions about wikipedia. You want the reference desk, but they won't help you with your homework either -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 12:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hahaha, you could ofcourse also read the article about Gender role or Sex differences. - Face 13:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do I make a page in a different language while linking it to an English page?

(Question moved from Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 June 23#How do I make a page in a different language while linking it to an English page?--VectorPotential^Talk 11:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

The page Law of the United States is only in 5 other languages, and I wanted to make one in Slovak. How do I create the page and make it show up under the same title but in the Slovak section? Any help would be appreciated, thanks! Metaalla 11:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just go to the Slovak Wikipedia, type the Slovak translation of the title "Law of the United States" into the search box on the left, click go, and then click edit - then just start writing! When you're done, you can easily add interwiki links to versions of the same article in other languages. Just go to the bottom of any existing article on the topic in another language (for example the English version), click edit, add an interwiki link to your new Slovak version, and copy and paste the other interwiki links into your new Slovak article. --Kwekubo 11:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify: there is no "Slovak section". The Slovak Wikipedia is a separate encyclopedia (and the same goes for the various other languages). --Tugbug 23:42, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic e-mail

How to get automatic e-mail on subjects or topics of interest?

I'm not sure what you mean exactly but I don't think we have anything like that. ssepp^(talk) 20:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For the closest things I know of, go here: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#New and scroll down a screen or two to the "News:" entry. There you can get news about Wikipedia itself in various formats. If you want e-mail on some other subjects, you could try Google Search. For example, say you are interested in Astronomy and you want e-mail about it. Let's ask the Great Google: Google:Astronomy e-mail. That finds a bunch of links about Astronomy mailing lists, e-mail newsletters, etc. --Teratornis 21:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

George Moore, American Radio presenter

I am quite disturbed, no, no I am PISSED, that someone took it upon themselves to delete the information on American radio 'presenter' George Moore. It did not take a LOT of digging to meticulously enter that information on Mr. Moore, because I am HE!

Would someone explain to me the correct way of inputting, and KEEPING this information available to Wiki-pedia readers. Yes, I DID check the 'relevence' percentage of my information, and it was 17 % . Now, that isn't exactly OVERWHELMING to anyone, but at least that many people MIGHT want to know something about me. So, could that deleted info be re-entered by the mensa who originally deleted, or....? do I have to re-enter it on the condition that it is LEFT THE HELL ALONE??

75.42.98.26 13:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

George Moore -American Radio presenter

The article was deleted at the following date and time with the following reason:

"23:34, 8 May 2007 Stephen (Talk | contribs) deleted "George Moore (American Radio Presenter)" (Expired prod, concern was: NN, no refs)"

I suggest you read over Wikipedia's notability guidelines as well as the guidelines for conflicts of interest and autobiographies. Dismas|^(talk) 13:15, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, almost forgot, WP:CIVIL may be of use as well. Dismas|^(talk)

What do you mean by the relevance percentage? I only know of it in a search result where I think it shows how well an articles matches a search entry, it has nothing to do with how useful or notable an article is. ssepp^(talk) 21:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should look at Wikipedia:Notability (people). ssepp^(talk) 21:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While civility is a good idea in general, we do have an ergonomic shortcoming on Wikipedia in that this is often the very first wiki many new users attempt to edit on. Many if not most new users have prior experience with other user-editable Web sites such as Google Groups, MySpace, countless blogs and Internet forum sites, etc. On most of those sites, generally one's edits stay put. For example, post a new message to Google Groups and it will probably remain online until Google goes broke, even if you beg and plead to have it deleted. After years of experience with sites like that, a typical user may have no concept of anything else. On Wikipedia, in contrast, 48,171,300 registered users can potentially mess with your work, along with any number of unregistered users. The user interface of Wikipedia doesn't do enough to warn new users such as the current questioner just how drastically Wikipedia departs from other editable sites they have used before. On Wikipedia, it is evidently very easy for a new user to figure out how to create a new article, but not nearly so easy for a new user to become aware that Wikipedia deletes several pages per minute for violating the various policies and guidelines. For example, I created my first article very early in my editing career; it was easy to get the idea to do that, and easy to figure out how. In contrast, I only gradually became aware of the scale of deletion going on here after months of actively editing. This whole deletion business just doesn't seem to be something new users are likely to grasp as early as they need to. The fact that every day we have several users asking Why was my page deleted? on the Help desk suggests something is ergonomically quite wrong with that. (Further, we can suspect the users who find their way to the Help desk are but a fraction of those we shock.) Perhaps the Main Page should not only show the current article count, but also the current deletion count. Perhaps when a new user goes to create a first new article, they should have to demonstrate some level of understanding to an actual human of how Wikipedia works. Or perhaps for that first article they should have to first propose the article and get it provisionally approved. The current method of just letting novices spend hours editing any article they think should go on Wikiepidia, only to have it deleted leads to unpleasant outcomes often enough to suggest we can find a way to make Wikipedia friendlier to new users. Before we let people wander into the minefield, we should first require them to acknowledge they understand it is a minefield. Another problem is that we just delete articles, generally without offering any advice on how to find another wiki which might accept our rejects. I don't begrudge the questioner for blowing off a bit of steam after basically getting suckered by a site that doesn't do enough to distance itself from the multitude of other more familiar user-editable sites. With thousands of pages getting deleted every day here, it's a wonder we don't have more users screaming at us. One also wonders how many users we unwittingly transform into vandals by unnecessarily angering them. --Teratornis 03:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit counter

Just wondering, is there a template in which you can put your username so that it automaticaly generates the total number of edits you have made? Or is there a userbox which does this? E.g. "This user has made 2473 edits". - Face 13:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We discourage excessive interest in edit counts because of editcountitis and because the query to get the count is a strain on the database. RJFJR 13:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And yet at the same time, edit count is the only convenient statistic we have for estimating an editor's experience level, which correlates roughly with an editor's understanding of Wikipedia policies and so on. So while we have reasons to deplore our excessive emphasis on edit count, we go right along excessively emphasizing it. For more about edit count see: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Edi. --Teratornis 14:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks for the explanations/links! - Face 16:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As for the userboxes, there used to be separate ones to display the increments in edit count as determined by the edit counters, e.g. 1,000+, 2,000+, etc. However now there's one template in use. --BrokenSphere 17:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Company entry

I was told to create an entry for our company, so people looking for information we offer can find it on Wikipedia, but I don't see a link to do so. I've looked thru the FAQs, but don't see anything there either. Do I just create a page with the information? Our site is free with a lot of great info., so I want those loooking to be able to find it. Thanks for your help — Preceding unsigned comment added by JennC72 (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a message board or classified ad system. If your company is notable, someone would have created an encyclopedia article about it. -- _(¿ʇɐɥʍ) ʍɐuıɐʞ 14:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CD

IS IT AVAILEBLE SOME TRAINING CD FOR SABRE (UPDATED LATLEY)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.117.234.210 (talk • contribs)

First, do not type in all caps. It means you are screaming at everyone. Second, this is a reference desk for Wikipedia, not Sabre. -- _(¿ʇɐɥʍ) ʍɐuıɐʞ 16:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New messages error

Help! I can't get rid of the "You have new messages (last change)." tag! I've clicked both links and it's still there... This isn't a caching problem, cos it's on every new page - 82.16.7.63 16:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It probably is a caching problem, but with Wikipedia itself rather than with you. See bugzilla:9213: it's a known problem, but it's not entirely clear what's causing it. There's also Category:Wikipedians who are terribly frustrated about Bug ID 9213; you're not the only person who's annoyed about this. (It's likely to go away eventually of its own accord; I'm not sure what causes it to do this either.) --ais523 16:58, 26 June 2007 (U T C)

i need to know terminologies

study of birds study of coins study of insects study of solar system study of heart study of plants study of weather study of rays/rotation study of animals study of heredity

Ornithology, numismatics, entomology, wait...do your own homework. Or try the Reference desk. This page is for questions about editing Wikipedia. tiZom_(2¢) 16:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try using Google; the answer is almost always in the first few hits, e.g. "study of birds". Let us know what you find. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:36, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

new page

can you please tell me how to find the button to click to create a new page. i have searched and read thoroughly.

thanks,

brian — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianrouch (talk • contribs)

Enter the name of the article in the search box and click 'go'. If the page doesn't exist and you are allowed to create it, a link will show up allowing you to create it. -- _(¿ʇɐɥʍ) ʍɐuıɐʞ 17:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Starting a new page. The Sunshine Man 17:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Be aware that Wikipedia deletes several new articles per minute on average. Before you sink lots of time into editing a new article, be sure you understand Wikipedia policies and it won't simply end up getting deleted. If you want to run your new article idea by us first, we can advise you on how to write it so it is more likely to "stick." --Teratornis 21:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Forging Signatures

I was just wondering what the penalty was on Wikipedia for forging signatures of other users (e.g.: User X gets all the HTML code from the signature of User Y, places it on a talk page, and signs it with ~~~~~, producing the date, in order to pretend to gain support on a consensus from an administrator, for example). Please do not get me wrong. I did not, and do not have any intentions to do so, forge other users' signatures. I just saw an IP address do this, and I was wondering what the penalty (if one exists) was. Also, please be kind enough to respond on my talk page. Thank you. Universe=atom^{Talk•Contributions} 17:42, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should leave them a friendly yet firm comment on their talk page and remove the incorrect comment from the page, explaining this in the edits summary, if they continue then warn them again and if they do it again you can take it to AIV. All the best. The Sunshine Man 17:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you probably want to make sure the IP in question isn't actually the person whose name they're signing. --VectorPotential^Talk 18:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And the real source remains recorded in the history regardless of how it is signed. RJFJR 04:25, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Citations

I have a question concerning citations tags on a page that I gave major contributions. I know the information to give sufficient answers, but for the life of me, I can not figure out how to edit the page to correct the citations. I have read the procedures on this subject many, many times, but it hasn’t helped me at all. I would appreciate any help. The page in question is "The Diamonds". min7th 18:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Replace each instance of {{fact}} with a citation template (follow the link for a list), wrapped in <ref> tags, so for example,

Replace

{{fact}}

with

<ref>{{cite web|author = someone |url = http://www.something.com|accessdate=2007-06-26}}</ref>

Is that what you're trying to accomplish? tiZom_(2¢) 18:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea. Thanks anyway.min7th 19:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying there are errors with the citations that you want to correct? If that is the case, in the list of references, there is a small number at the start of each. If you click it, it will take you to the point in the article where that reference is used. That linked number will appear in brackets, i.e. ^[[[1]]]. You want to click "edit this page", then go the that point in the article. You'll see ref tags and the cite web template. Cite web templates have the various fields separated for easy editing. Using the link provided by the previous responder may be of help to you in making changes. Let me know if that's not what you are trying to do and/or you need further assistance. LaraLove ^T/_C 19:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies. It did sound as if I wanted to correct errors of the citations. It all sounded very clear as I was writing it. OK, let’s start over. The page in question has citations tags on certain facts. I wanted to give source for the facts and eliminate the citation tags. I have a feeling the first answer to my question was close, but the process of doing so was leading me to other areas of not knowing what I’m doing. I thank you both for your efforts, but I think I’ll just forget the whole thing. By the way, the source to use is listed on the page as “The Official Website Original Diamonds”, under External Links. This is an authorized site.min7th 20:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Summary

I have noticed that many people manage to put in a link in the Summary describing the edit they have made.

How exactly do you do it ?

--Tovojolo 18:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The same way you'd put it in an article, by typing "[[Desired Wikipedia article link]]" in the edit summary box. (Category links need to be prefixed with ":Category:", not just "Category:", of course, otherwise they won't show up.) --tjstrf talk 19:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See: Help:Edit summary#Rendering of wikitext; URLs. --Teratornis 02:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

article

Where do i go to make an article

You will need to register an account, at which point you should read Help:Starting a new page and follow the directions there. (Page creation by unregistered users is disabled due to spam issues.)

If you do not wish to make an account, you could make a request for article creation at Wikipedia:Articles for creation. --tjstrf talk 20:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted Page History?

Sorry if this is a FAQ, but is it possible to access the page history and former revisions of a deleted article?

Kevinwong913 ^{Speak out loud!} 20:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Only editors with administrative access can do it. Friday (talk) 20:40, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's not entirely correct. See WP:OVERSIGHT. --Ybbor^Talk 20:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page/hit counter for wiki-pages

is there a way to setup a hit counter on wiki-pages?

See the previous answers to this frequent question. --Teratornis 21:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Color or colour?

I've noticed in many articles that both the UK and US spellings of words like color/colour, center/centre, and so on... get reverted back and forth as "spelling errors". Is there a preferred English to use on Wikipedia? Or does it just depend on the topic and the individual editor's preference? Just curious, I've seen some rather heated and quite amusing edit wars on this.CindyBo ^talk 23:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The official designation in the manual of style is: whichever is more appropriate for the subject. For instance, Doctor Who would more appropriately use UK English, while Stargate SG-1 would use US English. In articles where nationality is not relevant (eg. Horse), then either one is appropriate so long as the spelling choice is consistant. However, it should not be corrected whole-cloth, as you describe. Edit wars over this are quite silly, and editors involved should be reminded to leave it be. -- Kesh 23:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Talking about silly edit wars, Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars documents one over whether it should be orange (color) or orange (colour). I'm just glad I'm French...Circeus 23:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And I'm just glad you're not arguing for Orange (couleur). Confusing Manifestation 01:17, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that's makes sense.CindyBo ^talk 00:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Once upon a time I opined that the national variety of English should be localizable in the user's preferences, with only things such as organization titles showing a fixed variety of English (e.g., "Defence Ministry", etc.). It doesn't make sense to fight over something that really should be a user preference setting. Everyone should be able to read Wikipedia in the language/spelling/dialect of his/her choice. I'm surprised to hear that France avoided this problem - have no former French colonies evolved linguistically away from the mother country? One would expect any widely-spoken language to diversify. --Teratornis 02:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That has its own issues. It may be a large database hit to substitute the text on the fly; it doesn't account for misspelled words; and someone's bound to be upset if the default language setting is wrong. The current method is crude, but works well enough until people get too nationalistic. -- Kesh 02:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I may be delusional, but I like to imagine Great powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom have sufficient resources to present their own national varieties of Wikipedia to their subjects, sooner or later. (I think the importance of Wikipedia as a national resource will come to be widely understood. Imagine where we might be in another five years. Perhaps by then a large fraction of people in a given country will be relying on Wikipedia to tell them what's what, and that's bound to attract attention from influential people in that country who will want to insure their citizens are getting the best service possible.) After all, we have a whole bunch of separate language Wikipedias already. A language primarily spoken in only one country amounts to a de facto national Wikipedia. If a country like Thailand can have its own Wikipedia, why not also countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom? Any localization scheme is bound to have problems, but will they be worse than the problems created by the current system which doesn't even attempt to conform to the user's understanding of English? I wouldn't suggest a fully automated system anyway, as manual tagging of words to be spelled variably would seem necessary, to avoid localizing words that should not be localized, such as in titles of organizations and so on. Determining how best to localize the national variety of English would require some serious thought. --Teratornis 04:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting way off-topic for the help desk, but I think fracturing Wikipedia as described would lead to further problems. Might be a topic to bring up on the village pump for discussion, though. -- Kesh 04:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I the case of articles in which either is appropriate, in addition to being consistent throughout the article, as mentioned above, it is recommended that the spelling used by the original editor be kept. LaraLove ^T/_C 03:17, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

June 27

Changing A Link

I am the "webmaster" of the Henry S. Jacobs Camp wikipedia page. Below is my issue.

If you go the Ginnefer Goodwin page, it mentions that she attended our camp. The link on that page goes to the Union of Reform Judaism page. How can we switch to go to our wikipedia page?

Thanks.

First, you might want to check out WP:OWN. No one is the 'webmaster' of any Wikipedia page. As to the link, I'll take a look at that. -- Kesh 01:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, there is no Wikipedia page for Ginnefer Goodwin. Are you referring to an outside website? If so, we have no control over that. -- Kesh 01:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kesh beat me to it, no-one owns anything here. its a wiki. As for Ginnefer Goodwin, that page doesn't exist... but if you were to change a link to direct it somewhere simply type [[the article you want to link to|and here goes the text that will appear on the page]]. Hope this helps. ~ peaceful dreams 01:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Part of being a Help desk helper is knowing how to de-garble the questions people ask. The first step is to convert sloppy page references into actual links. For example, this page exists: Union for Reform Judaism. Clicking toolbox | What links here shows its backlinks. One of them is: Ginnifer Goodwin. That's probably what the questioner meant by "Ginnefer Goodwin". Tiny spelling errors like that are usually inconsequential in real life, but on Wikipedia we depend on exact spellings to look pages up. One very good reason to refer to pages as links is to catch such spelling errors, which will show up as red links. --Teratornis 02:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nice catch! Ginnifer is an unusal enough spelling I'd have never come across it, and didn't think to check the What Links Here bit. -- Kesh 02:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New accounts and old histories...

Hi there. I've decided that i really should edit from an account rather than my IP number, as I'm a bit worried that the other users of my particular IP number may choose to start editing Wikipedia too and this could cause problems. There's also a privacy issue here. My question is - If I get an account, can the contribution history of my IP number be merged with that of my new account to prevent confusion? My talk page? If not, is there any way of deleting or hiding or otherwise dealing appropriately with my IP contributions? I have not created the account yet, but it would seem a pity to loose my IP contributions. What should I do? Advice would be very much appreciated. Best regards, 195.137.96.79 01:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think IP contributions can be merged into an account, I'm afraid, but the talk page can, just copy over the comments. - Zeibura ^(Talk) 01:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the circumstances) your IP edits will not carry over to your new account. Consider it a fresh start. -- Kesh 02:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, well if that's how it is - that's how it is! Pity though... Thanks a lot for your help 195.137.96.79 02:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you want, you can put something on your user page to the effect of "Prior to July 2007, I edited under the IP 195.137.96.79 (talk · contribs)". Confusing Manifestation 03:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with specific user in specific article

I am referring to the user TJ_Spyke and the article List of Virtual Console games (North America). The article has been fully protected for months because of an edit war. The debate is whether or not to include the point values in the table wit hall the games. Recently, I started a discussion on the talk page of how we could remove the points listing from the tables (since there are over 100 titles in the tables, all following the same general form for points cost, except 2 games), and everyone except TJ_Spyke agreed, and offered suggestions. So, I took into account all of the suggestions, and created a new table listing just the points and placed it at the bottom of the article, and removed the points from the larger tables. Without even discussing his thoughts, then, TJ_Spyke reverted my edit. This article should not be fully protected, since new games come out each and every week, and it takes forever to have it edited by a moderator every single week... but no changes can be made to it with this guy around; he has been doing this for months, and will not even consider a minor change to how he envisions the article. Is there a way to prevent a certain user from editing a certain article, and who should I contact to help solve the problem? Thanks for your help! Miles Blues 02:25, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Follow the procedures outlined at dispute resolution. -- Kesh 02:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image and information

I;m trying to post information about a new magazine and I was wondering what the meta tag would be for a field like the one here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_Morgue

Thank you.

Dfrydendall 02:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you want to know how to make that funky infobox at the top of the article. I am copying the source code here (with "nowiki" tags), and you can edit it on the WP:SANDBOX to replace each data field as appropriate.

While I have your attention, you should make sure the magazine fulfills the notability criteria for articles. Otherwise, it might be deleted, and I don't want your work to fall in vain.

Here's the source code:

{{Infobox_Magazine|
  title          = Rue Morgue |
  image        = [[Image:Ruemorgue2.jpg|thumb|225px|center]] ''Issue 62 of Rue Morgue |
  editor         = Jovanka Vuckovic |
  frequency      = Monthly (exception of February) |
  category       = Horror |
  company        = Marrs Media Inc.  |
  firstdate      = October 1997 |
  country        = [[Canada]] |
  website        = [http://www.rue-morgue.com/ Official Site] |}}

Shalom ^Hello 02:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Different image appearing

I'm quite confused. I changed the image in the Chayanne article from Image:Chayanne.JPG (a copyvio) to Image:Chayanne.jpg, which I just uploaded at Commons. Now some headshot of the guy (not the free picture I uploaded) is showing up in the article. I checked the history of that filename, and there was a file uploaded there, but it was deleted in December and looks different from the one that's showing up. Anyone know what's happening? ShadowHalo 03:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The link is picking up a file that's been locally uploaded to en.wikipedia.org, rather than the commons. Images uploaded to the English Wikipedia itself take precidence over Commons links when they share the same name. You'll need to rename your file on the commons and link to the new name. -- Kesh 03:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can't link to it as commons:Image:Chayanne.jpg? Well, I guess I answered my own question there. Apparently not. --tjstrf talk 04:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware that images on English Wikipedia override ones from the Commons. But the image appearing in the article does not appear to ever have been uploaded here. ShadowHalo 05:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, something odd is going on. If you look at this diff, you get the image linked above. At this diff, you added the link which gives us a totally different image, one which is also totally different from yours on Commons. My suspicion is either a) there's a cached image on Wikipedia somewhere that is overriding your Commons image, or b) something on Commons is pointing to the wrong image file. Beyond that, I don't know what's going on. -- Kesh 05:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about a cached deleted commons image? Perhaps something here. Prodego ^talk 06:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried purging the cache of the article and the two image pages (the local copy and the Commons one), but nothing seems to have changed. Weird. Confusing Manifestation 06:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Family question

dears, i belongs to kashmiri family (mir) but i can understand that mir family is really a kashmiri family or a other if any body know about this family plz solve my this problem i trully thankfill to him or her knowl. because i have not any proof of my family so that i disturbe . and make sure that the information u provide me is that true .plz yours

ammar aslam mir

bye .

I'm afraid this is a help page about how to use wikipedia, we don't really answer those sorts of questions (and to be honest, I'm not even sure what you are asking). --Fredrick day 09:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking the same as Fredrick day, try Reference Desk, they might be able to help.Blacksmith2^talk 09:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Protecting logos / Logos copyrights

Dear Sir or Madame,

I added a logo o a page European Computer Driving Licence and I don't know how to protect the copyrights for this logo. could yoy please help with this and let me know what to do?

Many thanks in advance, Tanja — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.94.228.114 (talk • contribs)

Well, the European Computer Driving Licence article appears to have some problems and needs work. Its talk page is a bit messy as well, with entries from some people who seem unfamiliar with the talk page guidelines. I tried to encourage better talk page use by placing a {{Talkheader}} template on it. As to the image copyright problem, copyrights in general are a complicated problem on Wikipedia. For an extensive list of references, see: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Cop. See WP:IUP for more specific information. --Teratornis 14:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to edit this page?

I would like to add citations and more content to the page on flatulence, but I can't. I am a registered user. How can I add more content to this page?

Alanw337 10:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Alan--Alanw337 10:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Flatulence has been semi-protected, and so unregistered users and users whose accounts relatively new (roughly four days old is the limit, I believe) can't edit the page. Until you can, you're welcome to go to the article's talk page (the "discussion" tab up the top) and make your suggestions there. Confusing Manifestation 11:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

watchlist

How can I add articles to my watchlist? Im having a blonde day and cant seem to figure it out. Jayflips — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jayflips (talk • contribs)

Click the "watch" tab at the top when you are looking at the page. PrimeHunter 12:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Izarra

I wish to know how to pronounce this French Liqueur. Is it Iz R a or Iz air a?

24.59.219.181 11:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry this is for Wikipedia related questions only, sorry. The Sunshine Man 11:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia, but the question can be asked at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. We have an article about Izarra but it does not give pronunciation. PrimeHunter 12:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes you get lucky with Google. Let's try it: Google:Izarra pronunciation finds a bunch of pages which purport to know how to pronounce this (evidently) Basque language word. If Izarra is a Basque word, I'd imagine someone at the Basque Wikipedia could help you out. Or try Portal:Basque or Wikipedia:WikiProject Basque or ask this guy: User:Sugaar or someone else in Category:User eu. --Teratornis 14:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Abdalle Isse Yusuf

Abdalle Isse Yusuf is a young Somali stateman, he was born in the Southern East of the country now knonn as Puntland state of Somalai.

that's nice - do you have a question about wikipedia? --Fredrick day 12:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removing a redirect

I would like to remove the redirect on Grindlays Bank. I would like to add an article on Grindlays Bank, but when I click on the name in the List of Banks I get automatically redirected to Standard Chartered Bank. StanCHart acquired Grindlays in 2000, but the bank had an existence before that that I would like to document. Acad Ronin 13:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To reach the Grindlays Bank article, click on that link and let it redirect you to the Standard Chartered Bank article. At the top of the article, under the title, it will say "redirected from Grindlays Bank". Click on the link in that phrase to get back, without redirects, to the Grindlays article. You can then edit that article. Dismas|^(talk) 13:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

account problem

I opened an account yesterday (June 26) with the username Tabithajohnson. Today when I attempt to log on, I get a message saying that there's no such username. What has happened? Why can't I access my account and how can I edit the text I submitted under that username?

I'm afraid the name 'Tabithajohnson' does not appear on our list of users. It is possible you made a typo when creating the name. You said you made some edits under that name; can you remember the pages you edited? Those edits will be recorded in the history of each page, so if you can remember a page you edited you can look there and find out the name of your account. Raven4x4x 13:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you on the same Wikipedia? this is the english one. Each of the wikipedias has a separate login. -Arch dude 14:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Sources?

Can I take a sentence/paragraph from somewhere, changed most of it, but the information is still there, and put it in an article? And cite it as a source? -Zacharycrimsonwolf 13:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that's pretty much the way we are supposed to write articles on Wikipedia. See: WP:RS, WP:CITE, and WP:CITET. --Teratornis 15:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When citing another source, it's a good idea to use your own words to convey meaning and let your citation provide reference to the origina. "Changing most of it" isn't quite right, as most of the time the sentence will read poorly or not make as much sense. Just summarize the source in your own words, or quote it directly. -- Kesh 16:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Exporting Wiki content

How do I export wiki pages?

I'm not sure quite what you're asking. Try looking at Wikipedia:Database dump. In general, if you wish to copy pages, by hand, you must cite Wikipedia as the original source of the page, based on the licensing requirements of the GFDL. Shalom ^Hello 14:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you may find something you can use at User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Exp. Your question is vague because you did not specify what you want to export to, and it's not even clear what wiki you want to export from. The easiest form of exporting is from one MediaWiki wiki to another one. For example, lots of people who start their own MediaWiki wikis copy various templates and pages from well-developed wikis such as Wikipedia. As both the source and destination systems run the same software, no file conversion is necessary. However, if you want to export pages from a wiki to a different type of software, such as a word processing program, then you must convert wikitext into a file format the destination system can read. And then the adventure begins. --Teratornis 15:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Israel and my alleged "non-neutral" point of view

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Kev Kiernan (talk • contribs) (Comment removed. Wikipedia is not a soapbox.} Shalom ^Hello 14:41, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The poster was apparently trying to reply to a User talk post by Gareth Hughes (the name of User:Garzo). A reply should be posted to User talk:Garzo instead of here (where Gareth Hughes will probably not see it). PrimeHunter 15:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nathalie Baye films

Could you please give me a site where I can purchase Nathalie Baye Films?

Thank you,

Dennis Pallis

Nathalie Baye has an article which lists her filmography. Try pasting the name of the film you want into Google Search. Or try a retailer such as Amazon.com. --Teratornis 14:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Commons

Is everything from Wikipedia Commons public domain? Or is it GFDL? -- Casmith_789 (talk) 14:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Commons is a separate project than Wikipedia, but we can still answer your question. It is not all public domain, nor all GFDL. Wikipedia has an article that covers roughly the inclusion policy of the Commons: Wikimedia_Commons#Policies_and_usage. Sancho 15:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Both. Quoting from the Wikipedia article on Wikimedia Commons:

The files uploaded to the Commons repository can be used like locally uploaded files on all other projects on the Wikimedia servers in all languages, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use, as all of the content is either in the public domain or released under free licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License.

Shalom ^Hello 15:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that the name is Wikimedia Commons rather than Wikipedia Commons, although the latter is such a common misspelling (for obvious reasons) that it is a redirect to the correct name. --Teratornis 15:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

search question

I created the page "Whitney Young Birthplace and Museum" a few weeks ago, but when I search for that page it doesn't come up. The only way I can get to that page is through the link I made on the "Whitney Young" page. Please help!

J00zweig 14:57, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whitney Young Birthplace and Museum shows up as a link, so if it does not appear in Wikipedia's oft-maligned search feature, that probably means the search index updating job is lagging several weeks behind the new article creation. In the meantime, you can use Google Search on Wikipedia, which does find the article. --Teratornis 15:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dditing an entry

Hello, As a user, am I allowed to edit an entry. If not, I would like to suggest revision of one. Thanks for your help, LoriBooBoo 15:22, 27 June 2007 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LoriBooBoo (talk • contribs)

Yes, please feel free to edit. Even anonymous users may edit. I've posted some tips at User_talk:LoriBooBoo (your talk page) to help you get started. Welcome :-) Sancho 15:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you are allowed to edit nearly any page, except for a few that may be semi-protected from editing by IPs and new users due to vandalism (you'll be able to edit those once your account is 5 days old), and an even smaller set that are protected from editing by anyone but administrators, like the Main page and a few other ones where editing them incorrectly might break the entire website. --tjstrf talk 15:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Editing to learn how to edit. While you are still new, you may wish to suggest changes rather than make them yourself, particularly if you want to remove existing content. On Wikipedia, every article has an associated talk page where we can discuss changes to articles before we actually make them. This is useful for finding consensus and avoiding edit wars, and also to act as a sanity check on any one person's thinking. If something looks wrong to you, it's good to ask other people what they think. On Wikipedia we have plenty of time to make sure we get things right (see WP:CHILL and WP:TIND). --Teratornis 15:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Starting a new page

Martha Stewart Flowers was hoping to have their own Wikipedia page and I was wondering what the best way was to start a page. We are listed on the Martha Stewart Omnimedia page and would like to have a separate page that goes further into detail about the business. If someone could assist me I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you,

Heidi Jessop

Heidijessop 16:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you are closely associated with this business, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against creating an article about it- if it is truly a notable organization, someone who doesn't work for the business will inevitably create the article, but if it does not meet our notability guidelines, it will be deleted almost immediately. -FisherQueen (Talk) 16:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

EGEE

Dear Help Desk,

My name is Sy Holsinger and I work on the EGEE project. I was searching EGEE and after reading and skimming to the bottom, I saw the external link to the EGEE website. It is incorrectly liked as it currently stands "http://eu-egee.org" it should be "http://www.eu-egee.org". I would appreciate you rectifying this on behalf of the entire project.

Sincerely,

Sy Holsinger

Fixed. You can always help out and make changes to an article by editing it the same way you did this page. --Hetar 16:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Special:listusers

Is there a way to transclude that page with a limmited number of entires. When I try it gives me this:

-Icewedge 16:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Changing the name of a page to one already used - ReGenesis

The page for the UK Genesis tribute band ReGenesis is named Re-Genesis. The dash is incorrect, and probably stems from the original author taking it from the band website www.re-genesis.net, which is only like that because someone else got to www.regenesis.net first.

If I move the page from Re-Genesis to ReGenesis (band) will a disambiguation page be created automatically to distinguish it from Regenesis the TV show?

Are their any other complications / things I need to be aware of if I move this?

When you move a page it will automaticaly be redirected to the page after the move. It seems acceptable given the titles to leave it like that. -Icewedge 16:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Miami Museum of Science & Planetarium Update

I am trying to change the name of the Museum from Miami Museum of Science & Planetarium to Miami Science Museum. The text in the body is editable but I need to change the title/Museum name. Is this possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Museum_of_Science_&_Planetarium

199.227.86.10 16:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Only registered users whose accounts are 4 days old or more can rename pages. -- Kesh 17:03, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

License question

I've noticed a PNG image that I want to convert to a SVG version. The PNG version is licensed as GFDL. Am I correct in assuming that since this is a derivative work, I also have to make it GFDL? I'm asking because someone else made a worse quality SVG version (text saved as paths and so small as to be hard to read) on Commons and marked it as PD (which is also my preferred license). --Pekaje 20:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it needs to be GFDL since it's a derivative. (Aren't images usually GFDL/CC though?) That doesn't prevent you from trying to contact the original uploader to modify his license though. --tjstrf talk 20:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Supposedly I could also re-tag the image as GFDL (which is also a perfectly acceptable license for me) after I upload the updated version, right? I mean, I'm not actually basing my version on the PD SVG (since it's in poor quality), but rather making a new version with the same name (so I don't have to change it in many different wikis). --Pekaje 20:37, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see no reason you couldn't do that, it seems reasonable enough. That's really a question for the guys over at commons though, since they might want to delete the previous revisions after you update it. --tjstrf talk 20:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll see if I can get their opinion on it. Thanks for the input, though. --Pekaje 20:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading a photograph with permission

I have permission to use a photograph in an article, and I thought I uploaded it but it hasn't shown up on te article. Please advise. Thanks.

article: David Bottoms picture: http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwvil/images/2003/1202/davidbottoms.jpg

You have uploaded the image (Image:Davidbottoms.jpg), however simply uploading it will not automatically place it in the correct article. You must manually put it in the article with a code like this: [[Image:Davidbottoms.jpg|right|David Bottoms at blah in blah, blah]].

Also, simply claiming you have permission is not enough. If you are not the photographer than you need written permision from the photographer. If you already have permission, as you say, than see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission#When permission is confirmed to find out what to do next. --Yarnalgo _{talk to me} 21:48, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting my account

How do I delete my account?

You don't. But you can, of course, stop using it at any time. Friday (talk) 21:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But i want it gone.

Just don't touch it, and it won't hurt you. Friday (talk) 21:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, but you don't know that. I want no trace of this left

Accounts with contributions cannot be deleted since this would allow another user to create the account, and claim authorship of those edits. It is not possible for your edits to be removed entirely; for this reason, removing the account would potentially violate copyrights by allowing for such authorship claims. You can, of course, delete your own user pages. For more information, check out Wikipedia:User page#How do I delete my user and user talk pages?. --Hetar 21:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Error

I got this while changing my password:

= Internal error =

Invalid NULL return from broken hook logPrefsPassword
 
Backtrace:

#0 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/SpecialPreferences.php(214): wfRunHooks('PrefsPasswordAu...', Array)
 #1 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/SpecialPreferences.php(117): PreferencesForm->savePreferences()
 #2 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/SpecialPreferences.php(14): PreferencesForm->execute()
 #3 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/SpecialPage.php(653): wfSpecialPreferences(NULL, Object(SpecialPage))
 #4 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/SpecialPage.php(459): SpecialPage->execute(NULL)
 #5 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(203): SpecialPage::executePath(Object(Title))
 #6 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(45): MediaWiki->initializeSpecialCases(Object(Title), Object(OutputPage), Object(WebRequest))
 #7 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/index.php(89): MediaWiki->initialize(Object(Title), Object(OutputPage), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
 #8 /usr/local/apache/common-local/live-1.5/index.php(3): require('/usr/local/apac...')
 #9 {main}

Any reason as to why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razorclaw (talk • contribs) 21:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

v t e Wikipedia help pages
*Visit the Teahouse* or the Help desk for an interactive Q & A forum. FAQs (?) Reference desks (?) Noticeboards (?) Cheatsheet (?) Directories (?)**
About Wikipedia (?)	Administration Purpose Principles Policies and guidelines What Wikipedia is not Disclaimer (parental advice) Making requests Who writes Wikipedia?
Help for readers (?)	FAQ Books Copyright Glossary Mobile access Navigation Other languages Searching Students Viewing media
Contributing to Wikipedia (?)	Advice for young editors Avoiding common mistakes Etiquette Simplified Manual of Style Simplified rule-set "Ignore all rules" "The rules are principles" Style-tips Tip of the day Your first article (article wizard)
Getting started (?)	Why create an account? Introductions by topic Graphics tutorials Picture tutorial IRC (live chat) tutorial VisualEditor user guide
Dos and don'ts (?)	Accessibility Biographies Biographies (living) Categorization Consensus Discussions Disambiguation Images Leads Links Lists References Tables Titles (of articles)
How-to pages and information pages (?)	Appealing blocks Article deletion Categories Citations/references Referencing for beginners Citation Style 1 Cite errors References and page numbers Convert Diff Editing Minor edit toolbar edit conflict Find sources Files Footnotes Image deletion Infoboxes Linking (link color) Logging in Merging Page name Renaming pages Redirect Passwords Email confirmation Reverting Simple vandalism cleanup Talk pages (archiving simple archiving) User contributions WP search protocol
Coding (?)	Wiki markup Barcharts Calculations Characters Columns Elevation Hidden text HTML Lists Magic words Music symbols Sections Sounds Tables Templates Transclusion URL Visual files
Directories (?)	Abbreviations Contents (Encyclopedia proper) Departments Editor's index Essays FAQs Glossary Guidelines Manual of Style Policies Tasks Tips Tools
Missing Manual Ask for help on your talk page (?)