Wikipedia:Help desk

This is an experimental page.

Welcome to the Newcomers' village pump! This is a version of the Wikipedia:Village pump for newcomers and users who don't yet have an account. Feel free to ask questions, and remember to check this page again (how about a bookmark?) to see if there have been any replies.

Post a question here!

Confused

I'm confused about editing pages - it seems very complicated. Is there any page with some tips about editing? 217.159.81.198 18:04, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Tutorial. LUDRAMAN | T 18:08, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sign

Is there a way to get your name to come up automatically at the end of your writing on talk pages? User:DontAskMe

Yeah. Use three tildes (~~~) to sign your name and four (~~~~) to sign your name and timestamp. LUDRAMAN | T 18:26, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! DontAskMe 18:28, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Segregation and caste systems

Is this page part of a trend toward treating anonymous users as second-class contributors?

Not at all. It's just that the original Wikipedia:Village Pump was getting way too large to handle, so we're trying to take off some of the workload. I don't think there's anybody on Wikipedia who would call new users "second-class". Meelar 04:46, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Also, this page is here so that Wikipedians who want to help out newcomers and show them their way around the site can answer their questions faster. For instance, it would be pointless to put the Village Pump on my watchlist, yet the Newcomers' village pump is. And keep in mind anonymous users are not nessecarily newcomers. This page is still just an experiment. --Alex S 04:54, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

maps

I´ve have placed this question before but haven´t seen an answer to it. Wiki is so complicated maybe I placed the question in the wrong place. Any way it has todo with having maps in places when you discuss geographical sites, a country, or whatever. I always like to know where I am. The lack of maps is one of your weakness as far as I am concerned, because of my special interest for mapsand geography and wanting to know where the place it is being discussed is. Italo Morales

As was replied to you the last time you posted this question, we are looking for noncopyrighted maps, and would enjoy having any that you can find. Note: noncopyrighted. RickK | Talk 05:21, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I would amend that to say that copyrighted is fine as long as they're released under the GFDL license. So if these are your maps, you can both retain copyright, and license them under the GFDL so that Wikipedia could use them. Dori | Talk 16:35, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

navigational boxes

Hi. I haven't been able to find information on how to create a navigational box. I'd like to create one for the Oz books and related topics, similar to the one that exists for Middle Earth. Any tips? --Woggly 09:12, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

These boxes are in the MediaWiki namespace. You create the box at a page like MediaWiki:Whatever and edit it as normal. Then you can add the content of that page anywhere else just by typing {{msg:whatever}}. Have a look at Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom elements for some examples, and then list the one you create on that page too. Angela . 10:05, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks again, Angela. --Woggly 13:45, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

202.156.2.35 13:44, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC) 202.156.2.35

Samuel Huntington

First President - was Samuel Huntington, (1871). As president of the United States Of American under Congress Assembled - he and several other presidents ran the official government of the United States - weak as it was, at the time. We had a recognized government, that operated about 8 years before General George Washington became president. If you and others choose to ignore this fact, then you have failed in your mission in providing the truth.

Yes, I've heard of him. We have an article on Huntington at Samuel Huntington (statesman). It looks pretty good to me. Isomorphic 19:06, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You might also want to look at President of the United States in Congress Assembled. RickK 23:46, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How can I add Farsi as a new language to source.wikepedia.org?

Greetings,

How can I add Farsi as a new language to http://source.wikepedia.org, so that original Farsi texts can be submitted? (Farsi is the language spoken in Persia.)

Thank you.

kh

I can't help you with this myself, but the person to talk to can be found at User talk:Tim Starling. He's a developer, and he'd be willing to help you out. Good luck, Meelar 05:30, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikisource has all languages on one site, so you don't need a developer to do anything. Just create a Farsi main page, and link that to the portal page at http://sources.wikipedia.org. Then you can start creating pages. You might want to add translations in Farsi to the instructions on the Scriptorium (their equivalent to our village pump). Have a look at some of the other main pages linked from the portal to get an idea of how to title it, and what to put on it. Angela . 17:06, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

Trail migration

hi,out there. my name is custered and i'm looking for folks who are interested in oregon/california trail migration history. thanks

The Chinese Home Pages

Hi,

I found this a bit strange: At work, I can access both the Chinese Traditional and the Chinese Simplified home pages by clicking the respective links, but at home, with a broadband connection, when I clicked on either of these links, I got only the Chinese Simplified home page. Why is this so?

Eddie Tsui eddie.tsui@sydneywater.com.au

It might be best to ask this at the Chinese village pump. Angela . 17:11, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

bringing serious competition to encarta

yes, I love wikipedia. It's an excelent resource, but I have dialup and limited access time. I was wondering if there was anyway to get all the article pages downloaded (if wikipedia already has a zip archive or gzip/tar file that'd be even better). I have the time and software to piece these html documents into an e-book.

~~Wiki-Lover!

Try download.wikimedia.org to download the database, current for up to a week ago. - Woo d row 02:08, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Articles about places in New Zealand

I would like to be involved with maintaining articles about places in New Zealand. Currently there are quite a number of articles, but there are areas of inconsistency, particularly around the scope of an article, and the related issue of the use of the term "city":

Article scope: Some names refer to areas of different scales, centred on the same place, for example "Wellington" can refer to the city council area, the built-up urban area, four adjacent city councils or the area covered by the regional council. Currently there is a Wellington article and a Wellington (region) stub article, but there is only one Auckland article. How many articles should there be?
The term "city": It's ambiguous, it refers to (a) a populated place of a certain size; and (b) the administrative area of a city council. There is evidence that some Wikipedians want to avoid using the term "city" for any place that doesn't have a city council regardless of common usage.

That's the background, now I have a few questions:

Are there already policies on these issues? They must be relevant to some other countries as well.
Is there a forum for discussing a group of related articles, rather than a single one? What are my chances of getting input from other Wikipedians in a reasonable amount of time?
I am interested in maintaining population statistics for these places. Some pages seem to use standard tables to present this kind of information? Is there a special mechanism for this, or is it a matter of copying and pasting HTML?

Thanks for your help. Ben Arnold 04:27, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

2) You can set up a Wikiproject for working on a group of related articles. See Wikipedia:Wikiproject#Geography and Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities for example.
3) I don't know of any special mechanism for creating tables. You can use HTML, but there is a new wiki format described at m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables which is preferred. Angela . 05:17, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Good questions, Ben. I'm interested in much the same things and have been using the specific Talk pages from time to time to ask what other users want or believe. Check out my list of contributions to see where I've been. One useful page is called something like "List of cities in New Zealand". :robinp 00:06, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

External Links - Directories

There are three human-created directories on the web and I added links for them to some Wikipedia articles yesterday (Palestine, Yasser Arafat, Al-Qaida). The links have been deleted with no explanation. By using all three directories the external links relevant to most topics should be fairly well-covered and it's complementary to the Wikipedia goal of definition and description (encyclopedia). It rounds out the topic and leverages existing work. Did I walk into some "not invented here" syndrome? I thought this was a help-the-user project and hadn't seen any instructions or discussions telling volunteers to re-invent the wheel.

Hmm. I'm not aware of any policy discussion on this, but it seems to me that if we decide to link to directories in one article, the logical conclusion is that we should have such links in all (or nearly all) articles. At that point it seems like we'd be indexing another site. Isomorphic 21:30, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Linking to sites that have specific and detailed information about a subject is encouraged. Linking to directories isn't very helpful. --Αλεξ Σ 22:08, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Tool bar/search bar

Does any one have the knowledge or the time to code and submit open source or donate code for a Tool bar/search bar like google.com, or dictionary.com

I can't remember my Username

I know I've edited at least one article in the past, a long time ago, but I unfortunately didn't keep a record of my Username. I don't want to just create a new one because I'd like to keep continuity with the old username, in case this site keeps a record of which articles I've edited (I'd like to remember all the articles I've edited, if it's possible). Could someone please let me know how to find this out? Or if there are any Admin-type people reading this, could you please email me and let me know what my old Username was? My email address is demeter@jimmycat.com. I'll be able to remember my password if I'm reminded of the Username.

On a related note, the dang login page doesn't have an option to get this information from the server. I think it's really important to add this. If I wasn't the resourceful person that I am (and modest too!), I wouldn't have been able to figure this all out and might just have given up on Wikipedia altogether.

Thanks. -Carol

Hi Carol. If you remember which article you edited in the past then you can find out your username quite easily. Go to the article, click "page history" (on the left hand menu, or at the bottom of the page) and you will find a record of all edits made to that article, and who made them. You may need to click through to older pages if it's a frequently edited article (click "next 50"). I hope that helps. fabiform | talk 15:15, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is Carol, replying: unfortunately I can’t remember which articles I edited (that is in fact the reason I want to use my old Username – so I can find them). Thanks anyway for your message fabiform – it’s nice to know someone read my message at least. I’m still hoping to hear from anyone who manages this site, so they can email me my original Username. -Carol

Hi Carol, is the e-mail address you posted above the same as the one that you used for the account? If it is, then maybe a developer could find your username. Otherwise, it might be lost. The best way would be to remember the articles, or the general area of the articles so that we could look at them.

I don't understand what you mean by the server giving you the information. Do you mean giving the e-mail address and having the server respond with the usernames registered with that address? If not, then the server has no other information to associate with a username, so it couldn't give you any more info. I'll ask a developper about the e-mail address though. Dori | Talk 03:27, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

Hi again, I just asked a developer, and there is no account associated with demeter@jimmycat.com. You would need to give us the exact e-mail address that you used, and if you didn't give an e-mail address, then I'm afraid there is no way to find out what the username is (there is no other information kept besides username/password/e-mail). Dori | Talk 03:33, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

1901 Copyright

I would like to use a picture of Islam Akhun for my article on him. The photographer, Aurel Stein, died in 1943. The picture appeared in a book written in 1901: Stein, M. Aurel. Sand-Buried Ruins OF Khotan. Personal Narrative of a Journey of Archaeological & Geographical Exploration in Chinese Turkestan. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1904

When does this image enter the public domain, if it has not already done so?

I believe that unless there are special copyright restrictions on the image, all images from before 1921 are public domain. --Αλεξ Σ 22:05, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Can't view images

Hi all,

My IE can't seem to open the images contained in the articles. All there is just a gray box with the image's title. But when I view Wikipedia from school, the images show up just fine. Any ideas?

Thanx.

On my version of IE (6.0), the setting that turns images on and off is in Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced Tab -> Multimedia -> Show Pictures. Make sure that is checked. If that doesn't work, can you not view any images on any page or just those in Wikipedia? Hope this helps, Jrdioko 19:36, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Red links (articles that do not yet exist)

Do you have any criteria for deciding when to create a link to articles that do not yet exist, or is it up to the whim of the writer?

It's pretty much up to the writer. If you feel that there should be an article on that topic, feel free to create the link. We encourage people to be bold in editing. If you'd like to learn more, you might want to try Wikipedia:Manual of style, which might help. But mainly, learn by doing, and from other articles. Yours, Meelar 22:55, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hello and welcome! If you see a red link to an article that doesn't exist and feel you know enough about the subject to contribute something useful, go ahead and give it a shot. As Meelar said, don't be afraid to be bold in editing. Even if you only know a few details about a subject, you can still create a stub. As long as you have something to contribute, go ahead and do so! Hope this helps, Jrdioko 23:00, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

In general, I think that when an article could possibly created through a red link, it's better to link it than not. --Αλεξ Σ 23:03, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A Daily Dose of Knowledge

Wikipedia rules! Is there any chance the site's creators/maintainers would implement a feature so that userse could sign up to recieve a daily (or weekly, or whatever) wikipedia entry (encyclopedia article) on a random subject (or, random within a user-selected set of categories)? It could be a daily dose of knoweldge. I would love something like that, and I'm betting others, would, too.

And, if not, is there anything like this in existence already (that is not limited to a certain subject)?

Hmm, click Special:Randompage once a day? It would be interesting to get something like that in the email though, perhaps a new mailing list that sends a copy of the featured article of the day to subscribers? -- Jrdioko 05:29, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Anyone could set up a mailing list like that. Why not organise one? Martin 15:27, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How? Email me at lukeprog@hotpop.com

What stops abuse of free editing?

If some idiot wanted to come into an article and delete information or change information so that it is inaccurate, what is to stop them from doing that?

See Wikipedia:replies to common objections. Kosebamse 09:14, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Peer review. Watch Special:Recentchanges, build up a watchlist, use "related changes" to watch for changes in your field of interest. If someone writes something that is incorrect, fix it or revert them. Simple vandalism, such as deletion of sections, is usually cleaned up within minutes. It's not perfect. For it to work, we need lots of people helping out. But wikis show that people are generally good. Good users always far outnumber malicious users. See also Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. (via EC) -- Tim Starling 09:22, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, IBM did a study, which found that the average time that vandalism persisted was less than 5 minutes. I can't remember the link, but someone could supply it if asked. Yours, Meelar 22:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Index of the Wikipedia Namespace?

Is there a page that has links to all pages in the Wikipedia namespace? Hopefully organized by topic, with short explanations of the content? So far, I've found 3 or 4 of them, all listing a small section, but nothing complete. This includes the so called 'Community Portal.' --Voodoo 01:20, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Alphabetical index. It's not annotated, but the page titles are quite clear. :) fabiform | talk 01:35, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, that's not bad, but it's alphabetical. I found two, or maybe even three more index type of pages, all of them very incomplete. The closest to complete seems to be Wikipedia:Utilities, and that's both incomplete and not very good.--Voodoo 03:46, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Of the index pages I've seen, Wikipedia:Utilities is the most comprehensive. It doesn't list all the pages, but you can probably get from there to any page in the Wikipedia namespace with only a jump or two. I'm afraid that if you don't like that page, you're probably out of luck, because I don't think we have anything better. People have done lots of indexing of those pages over time, but it's a big project. Isomorphic 05:36, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Inventor of the Long Playing Record

Question and response moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Inventor of the Long Playing Record

Using the same username for different language editions...

..is it possible, or do they use different user bases? I'm using the Arabic language edition.