Please read the prominent text at the top of this page that explains that this page is for asking questions about using and editing Wikipedia. Happy New Year. pfctdayelise03:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Random selection
Hey; I was just wondering how I can use the choose/option tags in Wikipedia. It works in Uncyclopedia, as you can see here. These tags would pick some text randomly from a list and then use that text. A simple example of how they would be used:
<choose>
<option weight=1>This is one option.</option>
<option weight=1>This is another option.</option>
<option weight=3>This will happen more likely than something else.</option>
</choose>
So, there you have it. Can somebody please help me?
I can't see them in action in that link. It just looks like a regular stub template. Are you wanting this functionality for the main namespace or user namespace or something else? pfctdayelise03:57, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I saw a cleanup template once that said something to the degree of "This article strays from its stated topic. If you can help to eliminate the divergent sections, please do so." This is not listed on the cleanup template list. Anyone have any idea if it exists or if I was having a wikidream? Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this. -Scm83x10:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That is just what I was thinking of. I probably saw it on TfD, as that is on my watchlist. Too bad it may be gone soon. Thanks -Scm83x23:43, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To Afd or not to Afd
(Sigh) I have stumbled across an article for WNEP-TV in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton area of North-Central Pennsylvania. I found it by looking at the Afd page for today (January 1, 2006) where there was an Afd for WNEP-TV Anchors article. Here is the problem, as best I can state it:
I grew up in North Central Pennsylvania and I am shocked to find an article on a minor local television station in the middle of nowhere (for people who don't live in NCPA). I don't find WNEP-TV Channel 16 to be notable in the least, and certainly not notable enough to merit a Wikipedia entry. I would not undertake to write an article, for example, on Channel 28 news in Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, even though the news anchor was my Battalion Commander many years ago.
I can see from looking at the article that someone has put a large amount of effort into creating the article. It's quite long, and someone before me commented on the talk page that a local station didn't need an article this long and extensive. I agree, if any case could be made that we even need an article on WNEP-TV in Wilkes-Barre-Scranton PA, we certainly don't need anything that long or elaborate.
I am conflicted about this. I don't want to move it afd because of the amount of work that someone has put into this article, but in my mind, it's first, a non-notable subject, and second it's probably close to an advertizement for the television station. And yet again, another voice (yes, I took my medicine today) says, "What's the harm?" in having this article, even if it's non-notable, if it's otherwise well written and formatted?
According to Wikipedia:Notability (broadcasting), which states "All stations with a four letter call sign, with no numbers, may be included.", it is worthy of an article. Though I agree, it's rather detailed and will more than likely become rather inaccurate fairly quickly since newscasters can come and go so rapidly and schedules can change as well. Dismas|(talk)19:34, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I don't yet know where to find all of these documents. Even though it's a proposed guideline, I'll abide. I do note that WNEP has over the years originated some of it's own programming. As to the detail, my feeling is that it had to have been written by someone who works there. Again, thanks; I'll move on to other battles. GestaltG00:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On some pages, such as Venus, there is a star next to one or several other languages that the article is also written in. What does this star mean? When is it given? Where is the meta-data page for it (like the one for all general images)? If anybody knows and would like to post, I would appreciate it. Thank you for your help.
Don't know. I just know this was asked before and that was the answer given. After a bit of clicking around, if you click on the interlanguage link for "Suomi" (I don't speak the language so I don't know what language that is) you can see the star listed next to the English version of the article. So it seems some languages do have this feature, not just the English version. Also, if you go to the English talk page, it says that it was a featured article in four other languages. The first two are Czech and German. Those are the first two that are "starred" in the interlanguage list. Dismas|(talk)20:24, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A newbie friend entered some lines including a long asterisk line ("*************") used as a separator.
On Windows it showed a multi-bulletted indentation, but on the Mac it looked fine, and so he entered these lines into the wiki. Why was he seeing it differently than expected? Should he be aborting the Mac browser if he wants to wiki? Gil_mo21:19, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what this code should do, but I assume it should not be used. To make a separator use "----". "****" appears as nothing in Opera and Firefox as far as I can tell. jnothmantalk03:19, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Drowning in the many google lookups for this search, what is the easiest method to convert an MS DOC file (or, HTML) into wiki markup? esp. for tables and other hard-to-format stuff. Gil_mo21:19, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A wiki site I've installed at work is searching in a case-sensitive manner. How can it be configured to ignore the case? Gil_mo21:54, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My user page toolbox contains a link to "What links here." What is the purpose of these links? How are they created? How can they be used by me or anyone else? Halcatalyst22:24, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This appears for every page, not just your user page. Indeed, it is not very useful on your user page as it will just indicate where you have commented plus a few. But it is very useful for articles, templates, images, etc. It tells you what other articles and pages have links to the selected page, and thus may tell you where a template is used, or gives a rough list of related articles for a given article; it's necessary also with administrative tasks like moving and deleting pages. Does that answer your question? jnothmantalk02:53, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it does, thanks. I just wondered whether it had any value in that specific context. For me, it doesn't, which means I can get on to something else. :P Halcatalyst04:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How can one possibly use the help archives for trying to locate a previously asked question? I even suspect that archive questions don't even show in the Wikipedia search... Gil_mo22:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you know approximately when the question was asked, you can search for keywords in the archive(s) selected by date. Indeed, if you know who asked the question, you can simply go to the help desk history and search through a few thousand edits for the relevant username or topic title. Finally, and most flexibly, if the question has been archived for long enough, you should be able to find it through google: Search for "site:en.wikipedia.org intitle:"help desk/archive"" and add any keywords/user names after this. jnothmantalk02:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I just wish this was written anywhere near the archives.. that would make it more useful and maybe reduce the amount of questions in the help desk.Gil_mo08:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, i've been getting into vandelism fighting for a day or two now and theres this one problem that keeps bugging me. Alot of vandelism I see is where a user blanks a part of an article but replaces it with someone positive relating to the article for example a user would blank John Kerry and replace it with "OMG JOHN KERRY ROX". When reverted should the user be given a {{test1}} warning or a {{test2a}} warning? Thanks. - iGod23:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's rather a matter of judgement, based on the content and the vandalism. Personally I very rarely warn an anon-vandal on the first occurance, as so many anon-vandals are one-shot vandals - and I'm concerned that my warning will just annoy an innocent user of the same IP later, and won't be seen by the vandal (who dropped his little turd and fled). So if that was the first recent vandalism coming from that account I'd generally revert it and not warn. If the vandal did another vandalism I'd then warn them. There's a big difference between blanking and leaving nonsense (like this) and just adding an otherwise inoffensive nonsense. In the former case I'd jump straight to a test2 warning, but for the former I'd consider going with a test1. The content of the vandalism (profanity etc.) helps me decide which is the more appropriate. I try to be gentle with first-contact vandals, and most just stop (and a few apologise and stop) and escalate promptly as vandalism continues. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk23:23, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One of the reasons for the warnings, though, is that they tell other fighters that you've made the warning... So unless the vandal-fighter checks the vandal's contribs (which they should, but don't always), they can't tell that this is the first or second time... And therefore it may be worthwhile to mark for {{test}} even on the first time. jnothmantalk02:58, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What happens when two people try to edit an article at the same time? Say person A opens the edit window, then person B opens an edit window on the same article, they both change stuff, then one saves the page, then the other. What happens?
The second person to save sees an edit conflict warning. The page shows the current text/code in one text box and their text/code in a second text box. The second person can then manually merge the two if they want or just go with the other person's if they were fixing the same things. This is why using section editing is helpful, i.e. the little blue edit link next to section headers. WAvegetarian(talk)(email)(contribs)00:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
January 2
deleting parts of talk page not considered vandalism?
Is deleting parts of talk page considered vandalism? If yes, where can I find that written down (as I don't seem to find it)? If not, why? --Dijxtra00:12, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
and get those things on your meberpage that tells you if your a partrll person ect?
madcowpoo
Question 1: You edit the person's talk page. This can be found by goingto the person's User (member) page and clicking on the discussion tab. Then click on the + tab. Question 2: I think you are referring to userboxes. You simply add the code for the box you want to your user page.
Get to a user page, or talk page where you see something you really like & want on your page.
Edit section it is in, but not change anything.
Copy/Paste the code that created the whatever to wherever on your page where you want it.
User:AlMac|(talk) 10:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Also a person can set their preferences to permit people to send e-mail to them. When someone acts on this, the recipient now sees the e-mail address of who sent it, and can opt not to reply that way, in which case their e-mail address is still private. User:AlMac|(talk)03:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uploads don't show!
I have my own wiki and for a couple of week, I uploaded my pictures with no problem. But recently I've been having some problem. I upload the fil, but after I uploaded it, the pictures do not appear in either the image page or the page I embedded the image in. What should I do? --(Aytakin) | Talk01:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I had a mistake in the link (fixed now). I don't know the answer to your problem, so no I can't really tell you. As for that picture, the original file seems to have been deleted from the server: http://www.iranclub.ca/wiki/images/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg . When you ask for help elsewhere, you might want to point out that the only other images that have done this are Art.jpg and Iran_ethnoreligious_distribution_2004.jpg (at least as far as I can see). jnothmantalk05:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth it appears the directory the image was stored in doesn't exist. There is a directory called cf, but no ca. Pehaps it got put somewhere else by mistake. You could go to the images directory and then drill down for it, but the problem may be in the configuration of your wiki and that's something I don't know anything about.--◀Pucktalk▶07:31, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Source of Templates
Hi
How do I find out what the origin and purpose of a specific template is?
Specifically the following template is the one in question
{{education}} looks like it is just intended to use as a navigational guide for education-related topics. Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Education rather confirms this. It looks confusing because someone has added a {{limitedgeographicscope}} to the template itself, so it's kinda doubling up. I don't think it's really appropriate, so I'm going to remove it and start a discussion on the Talk page about how to improve it.
Or for articles that are too specific to one country when in fact they should be talking about other views too. You can't assume the reader is in the same country as you, so you need to make clear what country an article refers to and if possible you need to include its occurance in other places. For example an article on Approval voting shouldn't only use examples from American politics. Approval voting is also used in Australia and Europe for example. - 131.211.210.1110:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
could you please try to find out this company back ground because one person called Mr. Charles Benson, Firector International Transacton offering jobs for collection of their invoice amounts from clients. Their address :
Nigerian address info removed
Dear Jawaid Iqbal, please read the information at the top of this page regarding its purpose. Also, some of us are female. cheers, pfctdayelise10:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a complete newcomer to wikipedia and I am trying to set up a page on my local area, which is called Carra (near Bonniconlon, Ireland). I went to "Help:Starting a New Page", typed "Carra" and clicked "Create a new page". However, the page already exists. It is a Redirect to an article on Raffaella Carrà (an Italian actress). Can I just delete the redirect and write my own article, or should I create a link to the Carrà article, or change the name of my article to "Carra, Bonniconlon" or something. Thanks. Baoilleach11:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)Baoilleach[reply]
Simply edit Carra and change it from a redirect to your new article. at the top include a note (in italics) that reads "This is an articel about the Irish locality. For the Italian actress, see Raffaella Carrà." I hope that helps. DES(talk)11:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I screenshotteed some pictures of a DVD with my laptop and wish to upload them onto Wikipedia. First, is that fair use, and secondly, their bitmap images, and they won't get loaded onto Wikipedia. How can this be fixed? --D-Day14:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. The laptop images can be utilized under fair use (and some copyright). Concerning your query regarding the images simply re-save the image you wish to upload under a JPEG classification, allowing you to upload it. -MegamanZero|Talk14:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(alternative response after edit conflict) Not all images captured from a DVD can be used under fair use, and certainly not in all contexts. See Wikipedia:Fair use#Images. You also need to save them as JPEGs: this can be dome in recent versions of the Paint program that comes with Windows XP, etc. Open the image in that and go to Save As. There you can choose to save the file as a JPEG. I hope that helps. jnothmantalk14:12, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MMZ, I had already written my answer and (1) was not going to remove a little redundant info just because of edit conflict (2) feel my specifying how to convert to JPEG was not redundant. jnothmantalk14:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What edit conflict..? The dates clearly depict that I wrote my comment 2 minutes before yours. But I'm not trying to start anything, just wanted to clarify. It's all good. :) -MegamanZero|Talk15:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
About the fair use, I forgot to mention, these pictures are from a concert. Does that still qualify, sorry about the confusion. --D-Day14:29, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, you posted your comment five minutes before. I could claim something like I went and did research, or that it is late at night and I am slow. Either way, I should learn to click the [edit] button after I do my research =) (Often though, I open up to reply to multiple responses in different tabs at the same time.) jnothmantalk15:14, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see. I perfectly understand; I have the same habbit of opening up multiple tabs and multi-tasking. I, However, still am victorious by a paltry 5 miutes, my friend. :) -MegamanZero|Talk15:18, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, an edit conflic occurs if user A hits edit, user B saves and user A saves, in that order, but independent of time. And, friend, I think your "victory" is paltry if the question can be answered more thoroughly. jnothmantalk15:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. I, however, did not encounter an edit conflict on my PC, and the date located on our headers were somewhat too far apart to warrent an "edit conflict". Regarding the elaboration on answers, I believe you did excellent in the area, and I did not call foul on you because of it. Finally, if you wish to respond, continue this conversation on my talkpage. Thanks, -MegamanZero|Talk15:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(I assume you meant "sending", not "ending".) Why would you want to advertise your user page? We are here to build an encyclopedia, without personal motive for fame. If you are here for a different reason, please consider if it is compatible with our goals. See Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia. pfctdayelise21:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why not just user your watchlist? It might be worth adding a template like {{helpnotify|user}}, though. Please suggest this at the village pump.--Urthogie18:44, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You are suggesting that people answer questions on the asker's talk page instead of here where they asked them... is that right?
I think it's not a bad idea, but if they are here where everyone can see them, sometimes you can learn something by reading other answers. In fact I have learned lots of things by "eavesdropping" in this way. But for efficiency, yeah, I don't think this is the best format. (Another thing to consider is that this is the easiest way for answerers, so there may be resistance to moving to a more time-consuming format.) pfctdayelise21:40, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be more time consuming and frustrating. First the user would actually have to sign their question (which some don't) then you'd have to go to that talk page, write your comments, come back here, and explain that you answered the question. You'd have to make two edits (with possible edit conflicts) and visit two different pages which for people on dial up connections that could really take some time. And the person asking the question may end up with two or even three different sections on their talk page related to the same question. I'd be happy to stay with the current system. You only have to edit one page and the answer would be here, not on some talk page that may or may not have been archived. Dismas|(talk)22:19, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, resistance. Even if a user doesn't sign their post, the information is available from the page history. The current system is set up for the ease of the answerers. I have doubts as to its efficiency for the askers, that's all. pfctdayelise09:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason many of us enjoy answering help desk questions is that we learn from them. We learn about what people want and expect in user-interface; we learn by researching answers; we learn by reading other peoples' answers. Everyone has their own tips and tricks, so there is no single set of answers, and this is the great advantage of a discussion page like this over a single-response method. Definitely, writing on a talk page is a hassle. On the other hand, leaving a note on the talk page to say that an answer has been given is possible, if nice, but reduces efficiency of those responding: Indeed, I have done this a number of times when I have been suspicious that an individual might not check for an answer. jnothmantalk23:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, it is great for us, but how great is it for the frustrated newbies? This page moves very quickly - coming back to find a question you asked even a day earlier is not always an easy task, especially if you are not familiar with in-page text searching, and possibly didn't sign your comment, and may not remember your exact wording. In fact, a question I myself asked is languishing half-way up this page, because it just got swamped by easier questions that got answered. It is true that a question can have multiple answers, but there is nothing stopping multiple editors leaving their answer on a Talk page. Answering on a Talk page at least gives a user a big hint (the "you have new messages" bar) that someone has responded.
But I also dislike guidelines that create unnecessary manual work for editors. So clearly this calls for a User script. It could be installed just by people interested in helping answer questions here. Rightclicking on a username/IP giving an "Answer this question" option, whereupon one is automatically taken to the user's talk page. At the same time a tag is left on the HD, "A message was left on X's Talk page". This would require vigilant use of {{unsigned}}, but that's not so hard. pfctdayelise09:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
However, after i answer a question her I sometimes copy the thread to the user's talk page -- particularly if the user seems to be a newcommer. DES(talk)00:02, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do something similar, as noted above. I think, Brianna, that there might be some merit in creating a script to notify the user of a reply... I could posssibly do that, only you'd have to reenter the username... At least the section link would be right for a few days. jnothmantalk11:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it might be useful to have some variation on the "click" up top the editng box to dos something that has been mouse wipe highlighted.
Answer the question like always.
highlight the user-id that posted the question (if they did the 4 tildes, or someone else added from the history, who they were.
click on the new thing at the top of the edit box.
this has 2 effects
a bot goes to the talk page of the user-id in question and posts notification that there has been a reply to their question at .... and it gives link to the section where the question is, and the title that the user had assigned to the question
a small chunk of text goes here, to say that the person who posted the question here has been notified by this method.
Greetings. This stub ↓ contains nothing but a piece of incorrect information. I don't know what to do with it. Please help. – b_jonas18:28, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Consider that article for deletion at WP:AFD, or trying improving and/or expanding the article so it depicts correct information and conforms to a higher standard of quality. -MegamanZero|Talk20:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
questions
1.is "subst:" a namespace? if so, whats it do?
2.where could i find a template i could put in revert summaries that would be like {{revert|user1|user2}} and as edit summary, would print: rv of edits by user1 to user2, or something like that. if that exists id like to know about it.
--Urthogie18:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In response to your first question, "subst:" is not a namespace. It is used to causes replace a template link with the full template content. This reduces the load on the servers because it doesn't require two pages to be accessed to load the one using the template. For more information, see Wikipedia:Template substitution.
Um my answer to 2 is that templates don't work in edit summaries, they show up just the way you typed them. There is a tool that will let you rollback edits and automatically fill in the edit summary, it's called "god mode light" or something. Kappa20:20, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This message is not a question about using Wikipedia. Advertising for WikiProject members is not going to go down too well, anywhere except on the Talk pages of related articles. So I suggest you take your advertising there. Leave a message on the Talk pages of people who edit related articles. You will have much better success than spamming us question anwerers. Why don't you check out Wikipedia:Clueless newbies (don't take the name too seriously - we were all clueless once!) and see if you can get someone who will help make your Wikijourney to knowledge more smooth. cheers, pfctdayelise21:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello,
I have two Wikis for my self and I want to move some files from one to another. Can you tell me how I can do that?
Thanks --(Aytakin) | Talk22:15, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
yup that was it. thanks for copying my HTML out and displaying it to me so I could find my error ! lol, and thanks for the reminder that it's the <quote> <nowiki;rt </quote> tag. PeregrineAY00:02, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
more
im setting up a project but can't work out ow to make those user boxes that tell you that you belong to my project have short cuts or appear on the template for prjects page how do you do it?
--Madcowpoo22:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So to say that most users answering questions here are not admins. Administratorship only gives users the power to do things like (un)delete pages, protect pages and edit protected pages. On the other hand, "administratorship should be no big deal" and is the sort of thing conferred upon someone if they are sufficiently trusted by the community and know its policies. jnothmantalk23:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We have just seen a few alternatives acted out: WAvegetarian substed the template and changed the links internal to the Georgia article, noting that the same happened for seal as for flag. PeregrineAY, I'm not sure exactly what you did. In the end I have used optional template arguments, so that if no seallink or flaglink arguments are given, the infobox shows normally, while if they are, it will use the given text and link. This fixes the seal, and allows us to remove the flaglink parameter where it is unnecessary. jnothmantalk00:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)</nowiki>[reply]
oh ok. optional template arguments makes more sense. I added the changed parameter for the link for the flag from "[[Flag of {{{name}}}]]" to "{{{flaglink}}}" PeregrineAY00:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see. I made the assumption that when someone typed in the parameter for flaglink, they would make it [[Flag of Georgia (US state)|Flag of Georgia]]. Your method will ensure, no matter what the writer puts in flaglink, what shows up is still "Flag of {{{name}}}" Good work. PeregrineAY00:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to cite a book in an article and the book is listed as one of the sources. Is there a way to put a link at the end of a sentance in an article, and have the link point to a section of that same article? thanks. Banana0413100:13, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The article Chandrasekharendra Saraswati contains a redirect to the article Kanchi Mahaswamigal. Chandrasekharendra Saraswati is the personal name of the 68th Shankaracharya of Kanchi, as well as 7 other pontiffs. Kanchi Mahaswamigal is an honorific title bestowed upon him. The question I have is whether the pontiff should be listed by his personal name or his honorific. I note that Roman Catholic pontiffs assume a new name upon becoming pontiff, e.g. Pope John Paul II. and they are listed under their new name. However, I'm not sure that this rule applies. Kanchi Mahaswamigal is not so much a name as a description. Kanchi a location, similar to the Vatican. Maha means great and Swamigal is a title of respect for a holy teacher. An argument in the opposite direction is that the use of the pontiff's personal name is disrespectful of his high position. However, books written by the Pontiff appear in English using his personal name together with honorifics. Please express your opinion regarding the appropriate main article. Thank-you --BostonMA02:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do I find an image that can be used for a story. Specifically the story I wrote about Evo Moreles cutting his pay in half?
I am learning this. Where are some example pages that can be viewed to see how stories are written?
Someone left a message in my talk area. How do I respond?
Thanks for the help.
I don't know much about image use and can't tell you really where people find them, except by looking through categories at Wikipedia commons and the images used in related articles. I also don't know which story you are mentioning about Evo Moreles. Your contributions only list your question here.
These should tell you something about beginning to write articles and the standard styles for Wikipedia.
Finally, there are a couple of conventions for talk pages. Again I don't see aything on the talk page (unless you had been logged into an account and got logged out somehow). The most common is to reply on the talk page of the person who sent you the message. That is, go to their page, and if there is no section for it already, add a new section by clicking the "+" at the top of the page and write your reply. jnothmantalk04:52, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The user might have one of those "rotating"-style IPs assigned to them. AOL at work? I don't know how you can track down the previous IPs, unfortunately. I've seen them at work on pages where you have multiple vandalous edits all in row, say a dozen in 5 minutes, and they're obviously the work of the same person, but the IP address is different. Not one each, but maybe six for one and six for a different one. pfctdayelise09:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To oversimplify: Finding an illustration is a problem. Almost every image you can find, anywhere, is copyright. That means, in general, it can't be used in Wikipedia unless you get permission to use it from the owner. The owner needs to give a special permission, allowing their image to be used by anyone, anywhere, including making money for other people. So they may not do this. So, unless you have a photo that you took with your camera, which you are prepared to give to the world, you may not get an illustration. This does mean that most articles will never have suitable illustrations. Unfortunately, many people just search the internet for something, copy it and use it. This puts other wikipedians to a lot of trouble, to make sure these get tracked down and deleted before Wikipedia is sued. Notinasnaid16:30, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
However, if someone at Wikipedia were to develop a modicum of common sense and permit the use of a license which allowed free use on Wikipedia but no commercial use anywhere, there would be far more images available. This is, apparently, too obvious a solution. Sbz580917:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We take being a 'free' encyclopedia seriously. Wikipedia is free to use, free to edit, free to distribute; by virtue of its licensing terms it remains free in derivative works. Using non-free images would interfere with that goal. It's obviously a philosophical point and a philosophical disagreement you might have with the project—but for Wikipedia, noncommercial use only images would be a problem and not a solution. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why, given that Wikipedia is allegedly a non-commercial undertaking? If it's free, and that freedom is intended to cascade to copies, it should permit only non-commercial use. A license that permits free use, for non-commercial purposes only, is surely closer to the stated aims than one which allows commercial use. Saying that "by virtue of its licensing terms it remains free in derivative works" misses the point that although derivative works may use Wikipedia content free of charge, such works are simultaneously able to benefit from it. Sbz580918:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Free is free is free is free. What if we want to one day put WP on CDs to sell cheaply as fundraisers? de: has already done this. What if other org's want to do that and distribute them cheaply to schools that don't have internet access? Do we want to discourage that? Yes, derivative works can benefit from it. That's an inherent part of the GFDL. pfctdayelise23:48, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would you please nail those goalposts down so they don't move again. "Free is free is free is free. What if we want to one day put WP on CDs to sell cheaply as fundraisers?" Did you not notice the contradiction there (free vs cheap)? So now, as well as derivative works using freely-provided Wikipedia content for commercial purposes, Wikipedia itself can do so. Sbz580909:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Sbz; I was unnecessarily curt. I understand your frustration, but the fact is that de: has already sold a CD, as I mentioned. Jimbo himself personally disallowed the use of nc or Wikipedia-only images, so I consider the issue closed. pfctdayelise10:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see you've asked an admin to delete your images, which is actually an ideal way to have your images deleted. Which pages did you want deleted? pfctdayelise12:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, in the future, when you see images that you need to delete (weather yours or another users) please go to Wikipedia:Images for deletion and put them there. This also allows others to input their concensus regarding their reasons why or why not they may want them to deleted, as well is a good opurtunity to meet more wikipedians. :) -MegamanZero|Talk13:17, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
rawsigniture
what are they?
can you show me one?
how do i make one?
--Madcow 13:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
In order:
rawsignitures are your "custom" signures that appear when you type four ~ on the pages. You can customize it to show a link to your talkpage and/or other links with your sigs as well. It is located in your preferences section.
my son is in the lewis complex i have no idea when i can see him i sent all my paper work and no answer yet is there a phnone nmbr i cn hv —the preceding unsigned comment is by70.190.82.155 (talk • contribs) 18:21, January 3, 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that in certain contexts ISBN numbers are linked, and users can set up preferences about what to do with these links. I wanted to link one in an article I'm working on, but I can't quite figure it out. From the publisher's site the "number" is ISBN13: 9780195111712 . The problem is that it seems that ISBNs only link when:
There is no weird prefix like 13
There are dashes in the number
But I think that if you change either of those things it changes what the ISBN refers to. I've looked at the wiki help on ISBN, but it seems to be referring to some template that doesn't work or exist on Wikipedia, and says nothing about the prefix issue or how to add dashes without going to graduate school for that purpose. Thanks for any guidance. Makemi20:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Dashes shouldn't matter. That 13 isn't part of the ISBN - it means it's a 13 digit ISBN. ISBN 9780195111712 should work, but as it doesn't, someone has mistyped I suggest you search for the book (by title, author etc) some other place, and use the ISBN that gives you. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk20:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I've got it: Can't have a colon between ISBN and the number, and if it's a 13 digit number it works (at least in US) if you remove the first three digits. Makemi20:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Those first three digits where added to allow for more ISBN numbers a while back. Removing them could cause problems for some books. Make sure the 10 number ISBN is allowed for that particular book. - 82.172.14.10821:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've checked all the ones I've done so far, and they seem to work fine. Maybe just Amazon doesn't care about the 13-digit ones, and with other book vendors the 13-digit one would work? I don't know, but I'll continue to check in the future, thanks to your word of caution. Makemi23:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What Links Here (Phantom Link?)
I've been redirecting all of the internal links going to the Jim O'Rourke disambiguation page and though it worked fine for the majority of the articles, the one on Steve Shelley continues to show up on the what links here page. I've tried editing it and, though I may be being completely blind the link on the Steve Shelley article seems to link to the right place. Am I missing something obvious? I know it's a very silly problem but having cleared the what links here of masses of other pages it'd be nice to have it empty. Thanks in advance. Jellypuzzle | Talk21:48, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you fixed the link in {{Sonic Youth}}, but not directly in the article itself. For whatever annoying technical reasons, this does not update the What Links Here and the categories for the articles containing the template. And yet it is easy to fix that: just edit the article (Steve, I mean), make no changes, and click save. I've done it and now your whatlinkshere page is nice and clean. jnothmantalk23:43, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I thought that might perhaps be the case but also thought that if it wasn't and I edited the article with no changes people could think I was getting Editcountitis or something. Thanks again. P.S - I hope people don't mind me removing my link to the O'Rourke DAB in my question above (that makes it even more clear. Wonderfulness. I think it's time for that sleep stuff now). Jellypuzzle | Talk23:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where do I go to find a list of all MetaWiki, Wikipedia, and other Wiki tags, e.g., POV, speedy deletion, cite, etc.? normxxx22:30, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all. You have added immeasurably to my store of knowledge of Wikipedia, and helped to build my "Starter Page for Newbys," which latter page I will make available shortly (it will, of course, never be completed...) normxxx17:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How to make a title over an outside site link
I know how to make a different name over an internal link, for example, a country. What I'd like to find out is how to, for example, make a link to www.google.com but have that link actually say "a site" to the person who reads it. Flea11023:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you want to use the <nowiki> tag. It will stop it from automatically converting to a wikilink. So put <nowiki> and </nowiki> around whatever text you want to stay exactly the same. pfctdayelise00:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I actually don't think there's a way to use <nowiki> to do this. You can do it, though, if you don't use fullurl: [url=<nowiki>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/</nowiki>{{FULLPAGENAME}}] gives [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help desk] jnothmantalk00:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Are people more properly referred to as English or British?
There's an article at Jenny Powell. She's an actress who was born in England. There's also another actress named Jenny Powell who was born in the U.S. What I want to do is to move Jenny Powell to either "Jenny Powell (English actress)" or "... (British actress)" but I don't know which is preferred. So what should it be, English or British? Dismas|(talk)01:15, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Generally I'd say British. There are a few cases where English would be called for - where there was also a Welsh Jenny Powell, or where Jenny Powell had played football for England (or done somethere else where the difference between the UK's member nations is still apparent). Birth is a poor indicator of Englishness, Scottishness, etc., and there is no legal distinction whatever (it's a cultural, and not a legal, artifact). The sports unions which differentiate use fairly wishy-washy criteria for distinguishing one "nationality" from another. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk01:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I should note that IMDb lists all two other actress Jenny Powells, both having only one movie each; if that's the case, I'd contend that the British Jenny Powell is very likely the person sought by someone entering her name in search, and so should probably be plain Jenny Powell, with the other two (who, unfortunately, are both likely to be Americans) disambiguated some other way. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk01:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd go with British as well. English is just a part of Britain, and whether someone identifies themselves as being English, Welsh or Scottish really depends on a lot of factors. You have no such problems when you say they're British. - 131.211.210.1108:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, templates don't work in edit summaries. But most web browsers can be configured so that it's easy to insert a standard comment into any input box. jnothmantalk03:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A User script might be able to help. Have you seen it appear in other people's edits? It might be worth asking them if they type it out each time, or if it's automated somehow. pfctdayelise09:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, a bookmarklet would do the job: if you save a bookmark/favourite with the following URL:javascript:void(document.getElementById('wpSummary').value+='Bad link repair (You can help!)');
and then put a copy of the bookmarklet on your browser toolbar, you could just click it to add the message to the edit summary! Thanks for the idea Brianna! jnothmantalk10:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
d00d... that is sweet as. I'd never even used a bookmarklet until just then. How can I find out the names of other Elements (like wpSummary), would I be able to add something in a similar fashion to the edit box?
To TheLimbicOne: If you use Firefox, adding the bookmarklet will be pretty straightforward. Then open up whatever page you're editing and make your changes. Then clicking the bookmarklet will simply fill in your edit summary, no page reload or nothin'. It's quite brilliant. pfctdayelise12:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As long as things have ids, they're easy to deal with. If not, it can get slightly harder. To find ids, I'm sure there are tools but otherwise open up the edit page source and search for id=" and you'll find more. Maybe too many more. The edit form has id "editform". This should probably be explained in detail at Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Techniques, but of course it's bedtime now.
I have written a sort of editing tool-script at User:Jnothman/automod.js. It becomes the basis of other tools I write and allows me to do some mass automated editing. But generally it allows you to modify a page by optionally clearing content, adding afterward or before, performing a search-replace (regex) and providing an edit summary. It's not bug free yet and is certainly not documented, but it is usable for many things.
You can get bookmarklets to take advantage of user scripts, but in the end the difference is that the former needs to be activated each time and the latter is automatic, but therefore might create unecessary overhead.
If you are using Firefox, go Tools > DOM Inspector (assuming you have installed the developer tools), and you can view a tree version of the page with corresponding ids instead of having to trawl through the source code. enochlau (talk) 03:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
WP performance problems
Wikipedia was down for about a half hour a couple of hours ago, and it has seemed sluggish to me for a few days. Anybody have an idea (or know) what gives? Halcatalyst05:11, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See that bar up the top with the money being counted? Not enough. (Well, okay, so hopefully this fundraiser will help. Specifically, I don't know the answer.) jnothmantalk07:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it has to do with WP:AUM where there was an effort to fix the server problem with software robots, then some administrators started deleting the same userboxes that the software robots were trying to fix, and this led to an arguement you do not want to know about or get involved in. User:AlMac|(talk)11:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No it is mostly shear volume of traffic. Wikipedia servers tend to operate towards the limit of their capacity. It doesn't take much to push them over it.Geni19:38, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where can I get information on my father's working history. He was a miner at Brandon Colliery in County Durham. I need information on his work details from 1953 onwards. He died in 1986.
Can you please help me with where I can get information on this or a telephone number which I can ring to get help.
Thank you.
If you look at the top of this page, it clearly states this page is for help about using Wikipedia. You might be able to get an answer at the Reference Desk. But they too will probably not be able to answer such a personal and individual question. jnothmantalk12:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's happening again. The "What links here" list for Isabelle Rees shows a link from Template:UK-bio-stub, although there is obviously no link to the article there. Is this a global problem with articles with stub templates but no incoming links? — JIP | Talk18:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uploading a movie
I would like to upload a movie of historical significance, the first educational film regarding gastrointestinal endoscopy. What would be a good format for the movie and how would I put the code in wikipedia to allow it? Kd4ttc22:08, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What is the best approach to improving articles in the Mathematics section?
I love Wikipedia, especially the mathematics section is a superb source information, it doesn't stop surprising me. Certain topics though, can be improved, I am sure. Editing a math article shouldn't be taken too lightly imo, that's why I have a question about the editing process. I want, and am able to add to and enhance Wikipedia content in the math section (abstract algebra mostly). Now, is it practice to just change an article if one thinks his or her version is better? Or is it preferred to propose a change somewhere else in Wikipedia? Is someone responsible for an article? What if someone thinks the change doesn't improve the article?
Oops, a lot of questions I hope it is clear what I mean, anyway??
--Jim Caprioli22:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just go ahead and make changes. If you are a compleate idiot you shall surely be informed :-) It is usually the case that the edits go along quite smoothly. Check out some article you like and look at the history. Compare a few versions and see how they progress. Sometimes big changes, sometimes small. When it works it works very well. Since there are not too many political issues regarding math articles you wont see too many goofy contributions. Kd4ttc
If you think that an edit will be particularly contriversial, you have a few options:
Bring it up on the article's talk page (click discussion up the top) first and wait for agreement, although this may take a while.
Just make the change and bring it up on the talk page with justification.
Just make the change and leave a brief rationale in the edit summary.
Hi there. I have recently updated and revised Steve Allen (radio presenter) after initially adding to it in December. To separate him from Steve Allen, but still let people find him, how do I create one of those little links at the top of each page which I've seen elsewhere along the lines of 'This article is about x but if you want the person y who did z, click here'?
I have often just typed it, but I guess it is good to use the template. In particular {{Otheruses4}} is more appropriate: write something like {{Otheruses4|the American comedian and writer|the British radio presenter|Steve Allen (radio presenter)}}. jnothmantalk23:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible to set up more than one watchlist?
I'd like to set up one (long-term) watchlist, for articles I want to monitor on an ongoing basis, and have one for short term and of-marginal-interest pages, such as AfDs. Is this possible? --Squiddy | (squirt ink?)23:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious, why bother worrying about the AfDs because once the vote is closed, you shouldn't ever see that page edited again. Therefore it won't continually come up on your watchlist. Dismas|(talk)00:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's no biggie, but I keep more or less everything I edit on the watchlist, and pruning it would be easier if the stuff I really want to watch was on a separate page to the temporaries. I watch AfDs I vote in in case there's a debate. I suspect only one list is possible, and as I say, its not a problem, but being a bit geeky, I wondered. --Squiddy | (squirt ink?)00:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
you can only have one watchlist per account. It is posible to use the related chaneges function to create something simular to a watchlist by listing the pages you want to watch on a user subpage.Geni00:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My user talk page seems to have run out of room, as the latest post is not present on my page, but I can view it in history. How do I fix it so all posts are visible? Thanks. MSTCrow01:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see what you mean. When I look at your talk page, all messages are there. Talk pages don't run out of room, and I've certainly seen them much longer than yours. jnothmantalk01:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's probably due to caching either by your browser or by the Wikipedia servers. Try appending "?action=purge" to the URL to get the server to clear the cache for that page. You may also like to try clearing your browser cache. enochlau (talk) 03:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Signing former anonymous edits
Hello, I have made a few contributions to Wikipedia as an anonymous user, but now I have a user name and I want to "sign" my previous contributions. All of them are deep into the articles history. Is there any way to achieve that ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jotam (talk • contribs)
First you should sign your unsigned posts! Please sign your comments on talk pages, help desks etc, with ~~~~. As to your question, I assume you mean have your contribs show up with your username rather than IP? I don't think this can be done easily, and even if it can be done, I'm quite sure it isn't. Among other things, there is no way to verify that all edits from an IP come from you. Anyway, if you know the IP(s) you edited from, you can place a remark on the user page (while logged into that IP, preferably) suggesting that Jotam made many of those edits. You can put a similar comment on your user page so people can see your prior contributions. jnothmantalk00:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. However, there's a notice there now saying that the service isn't operational. In the past, when it was working, you could attribute IP edits to a username if you can prove that the person editing at that IP was yours, e.g. by signing with IP and username right after each other. enochlau (talk) 03:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But that could, of course, assign you or me an IP in the School of IT at the University of Sydney... and that's a problem. Anyway, the point is it's not done. jnothmantalk04:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's very true. I made that statement after a cursory glance at the previously quoted page, which consists primarily of people wanting to assign IP edits to a username. enochlau (talk) 05:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Safari Park
Any particular reason why safari park redirects to Longleat Safari Park. I know it's one of the most prominent, but shouldnt there be an article saying what a safari park is??
Well spotted. Yes there should! It RDRs there at the moment becayse the Longleat article was originally (mistakenly) created at Safari park. Safari park can safely be turned into a proper article in its own right now. So happy editing! pfctdayelise01:06, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Boxes at the bottom of pages
I don't know what they're called, so I'm having trouble finding a tutorial for them. I want to add them to a different wiki that I contibute to, and I would really appreciate a hand finding some instructions. For an example of what I mean, there are three at the bottom of this page.
This depends what level you want to discuss the issue:
In a broad sense, I guess this is a series of articles that share a common box of information
In the next sense, that box of information is a template that is designed once and can then be used on multiple pages
On the code level, these sorts of boxes are designed as elaborate tables.
I think perhaps the two Wiki stub articles watch list and watch lists should be combined? I am a template novice, and have been into the no human's land of differint opinions of editors entirely too often, so I now like to suggest stuff, before actually taking action on it. User:AlMac|(talk)09:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I want to make my userpage's background colour black. If i do this, how do i make all of the font white? Thanks --Ali K09:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, one option would be to stick in a div as follows:
<div style="background-color: black; color: white">I can put whatever<br>I<br>like in here</div>
I'm writing an article about quints, a special type of fire engine. For a piece of apparatus to be a quint, it must perform certain functions and have specific equipment on it. These standards are defined by the National Fire Protection Agency, and it would be good to include them in the article. My question is whether it would be better to put in the entire text of the quint standards and cite the NFPA, or link to a copy of the standards. Were I to link to it, the quint standards are only 1 page in a 141 page PDF, and linking to it would not really provide the information looking to be included. Is there anything wrong with putting the entire text of the quint standards into the article, as long as it is properly cited? And if so, is there any special citation I need to do, or just make sure to credit where it came from?
There are already articles on NFPA standards - NFPA 70E and NFPA 704. Given this, you may as well give the standards their own article altogether. If you don't want to do that, I would try to summarise the standards within the article. pfctdayelise12:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt such standards are filled with jargon. I would summarize them in the article you are writing, using plain English as much as possible. - Mgm|(talk)13:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm editing translation version of one topic, can I link the photo in the orginial version into the translation one? And because my page have several english words, eg "cat", how can I link to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cat instead of linking to a page that's not existing in zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/cat? thz! ka hang16:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
About the photo: It depends on whether the photo is from Wikimedia Commons or is stored at English Wikipedia. If it is from Commons, you can include it in an article on zh: as if it were stored on zh:, but if it is from en:, you have to upload it to either Commons or zh:. Commons is better but has stricter licensing rules. If there is an image on zh: with the same name as the image on Commons, you need to upload the image to zh: under another name. You can see where an image comes from by clicking it. An example of an image from en: is Image:Glc.gif, an example of an image from Commons is Image:Coventry cathedral.jpg.
If you want to link to an article in another Wikipedia, in this case en:, use [[:en:Cat]] which will show up as en:Cat. You can of course also use a | to make a piped link, like this: [[:en:Cat|]] Remember the colon in the beginning, without it, your link will be an interwikilink in the left sidebar. Happy editing! 217.208.26.17717:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can't log in
I was successful logging in at en.wikipedia.org, but I can't login at zh.wikipedia.org, and it said I'd already create 10 account? Why's that?ka hang16:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Someone else who shares your IP already created multiple accounts. The software places a cap on the amount of accounts that can be created from a single IP in a given time period. If you have access to another computer, I suggest trying to create an account from there. - Mgm|(talk)19:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Contributions and recent changes specialties
I can't figure out how to do specific things with contributions pages or RC. I'm specifically looking for information on how to look for someone's contribution for only project spaces or talk pages, etc, and for RC, specifically looking for info on how to see only IP address changes, or only users without user pages..things like that. And can the responder please leave a message on my talk page to indicate a response has been made? Thanks, JHMM13 (T | C) 18:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For the namespaces, either in Contribs or RC, simply add "?namespace=NSNUM" to the page address where NSNUM is a number representing a namespace:
Talk
User
User talk
Wikipedia
Wikipedia talk
MediaWiki
MediaWiki talk
Template
Template talk
Help
Help talk
Category
Category talk
Portal
Portal talk
I remember finding something to only show IP edits... I have the link at home, but not where I am, sorry.
Yes, there should be a better interface for this stuff.
hi,
have been looking for the answer to this and gone round in circles in your various FAQ pages. In the History pages some entries are signed with a RED name, and others with a BLUE name. What does this mean?
thanks
ce
(after edit copnflict) By default, a user's signature links to that user's user page, as mine links to User:DESiegel. If a user has not created his or her user page, or if it is deleted for some reason, the link is red like all other links to currently non-existant pages. (I would not call such links "broken" but some do.) In many cases this indicates a relatively new user, but some long-established users prefer not to have a user page, so this is not a safe conculsion to draw. DES(talk)22:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, red means that the user doesn't exist and blue means that the user exists. The only exception to "blue" is when the user has a colored siganture. i hope this helps. --Misoka
I tried to edit the births of 1978 to add A.J. McLean of the Backstreet Boys but my edit ended up appearing in a gray box.
In order to prevent the box, do I need to create an account?
Please, before I go insane! --Misoka
You don't need to create an account to edit existing articles (just to add new articles). If you include any whitespace at the beginning of a line it affects the formatting (and you end up with a box). Might this be what happened? Since you didn't save your change, I can't really tell what happened. If you save it, even if it's messed up, I or someone else could look at it. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am trying to find out about an air crash in the Alps in the 1950's near La Salette, France or perhaps Corps or Gap. Do you have anything on this?? Collette
Why does the image to the right not display correctly? This problem, as seen on Hurricane Maria (2005) has persisted for several days (until a few moments ago the image wasn't added to the page because of the problem, but I figured it might be a caching problem that would fix itself once the image was added). Jdorje08:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ugh, I guess I was asking for that by not explaining fully. What we really want is to put the image into the {{infobox hurricane}}, as I have now done. When we do that, the original code is generated (with the 240px bit, which I agree is the problem) and it does not display. This only happens with a couple of images (the maria one and a philippe picture), whereas the infobox is used in hundreds of articles. Is this something that can be fixed, or do we just have to choose a different image? If the latter, would it help to re-upload the same image under a different name (not that I'm suggesting doing that, just pointing out the bizareness of the problem). Jdorje18:43, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The image is too large. Wikipedia won't resize an image over a certain original size, as it is too memory-expensive to do so. You will have to downsize the original image, or at least link to a downsized copy and use that where you need to resize. I still haven't found out an exact size, but 1000x1000px is definitely doable. jnothmantalk13:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, thanks, I guess. It seems odd that the software will resize the image to 180px but not to 240px. However I guess that's something to take up with the developers... Jdorje02:44, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a sample of those that work and those that don't at different sizes:
This indeed is not a series of results I would expect and now I am just confused. Still, the size of the image is larger than recommended. jnothmantalk03:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
do you have anything
i would like to know if you could help me find anything on english language?
I saw somewhere in Wikipedia that Wikipedia is not censored. If I censor an article, either I may get a warning message for either medium or high level vandalism and may be blocked from editing. Why is this the case?
Removing information without good reason is considered vandalism. WP:NOT states that Wikipedia is not censored, so trying to censor Wikipedia goes against policy. If someone keeps vandalizing articles, they may be blocked according to the Wikipedia:Blocking policy under the vandalism provision. - Mgm|(talk)12:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Removal of deletion notice
Someone who knows / cares may wish to check Wikology. I added a speedy deletion suggestion as the article appears to be nonsense. It was removed by an anonymous (therefore uncontactable) user. The word "wikology" returns no major hits on Google and three links to the same site. The German equivalent returns one hit, apparently to a bulletin board. Sbz580914:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, is it worth keeping or not, according to Wikipedia's criteria? Personally, I don't care one way or the other. Sbz580914:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comprehensive, systematic concentration of Wikipedia information
I am relatively new to WP, but I have pretty much learnt most of what I need for everyday usage. However, to advance to the next level, I think I need to learn virtually everything about WP. Therefore, I would a like a place that systematically lists articles about every aspect of WP, so I can be assured that once I've gone through them all, I have learnt everything about WP. I have not found such a thing. While articles like the welcome page are useful, they don't supply the systematic listing I desire. Is there any place where I can find what I'm looking for? --Meni Rosenfeld17:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Project namespace has links to some long lists of links. But I have to say, it's really not necessary to know everything about WP before you start editing. No one here is familiar with 100% of all the policies, guidelines and everything else that goes on, I would venture. The easiest way to learn stuff is to just start editing, and then you will find that issues come up naturally, that you need to learn about. Like you might want to add an image, so you'll learn about all that. Or you'll have a conflict with another user, so there are lots of pages about how to deal with that. Or you want to make a template to re-use on several pages. Or... or... you get the idea. No one is going to bite your head off if you do something "wrong" because you didn't know about the policy yet. (Well, they shouldn't!) pfctdayelise03:30, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The "Random Article" link took me to a page entitled "Evan Blanchard", which appears to be a short, jokey article about a high-schooler, created by someone with the same last name. Harmless enough, I guess, but I was wondering if there's a policy on vanity articles, or articles that have no real usefulness to the readership at large.
Dan Torosian
You can edit the page, adding {{db-bio}} at the top. This puts a notice on the page to indicate that it is, or may be, a vanity article. I've done so in this case.Sbz580917:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
RfA
If a Wikipedian is nominated for adminship, can he/she leave messages on the talk pages of his/her Wikipedia friends asking them to vote? WP:RFA says, The community grants administrator status to trusted users who are familiar with Wikipedia policies. Since trust among other users is important, wouldn't it make sense to let candidates ask users who trust them to state why they trust the candidate, in order for others to make an educated decision? — MATHWIZ2020TALK | CONTRIBS20:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is no rule on this, but if it is percieved that a candiate is in effect tryijng to recuit his friends to vote for him, there is likely to be a reaction. If a candidate feels that this is essentioal, then IMO it eould be best to word pointers neutrally, such as "I have been nominated for adminship. Perhaps you would like to express your opnion of my fitness for adminship on WP:RFA/Example" It would be even better to also leave such message on the talk pages of users with which the candidate has had neagative encounters. Whe I was nominated, i put this on my user pages, invaiting anyoen who interacted with me to comment -- and i got lots of positive comments. In general if not enough people will find there way to a person's RfA without a campaign, that says soemthing about that person's community-wide trust. DES(talk)21:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I received some comments during my own RFA. It appears that specific messages to talk pages are considered advertising the vote. I would recommend evening it out by posting in your signature, or on your userpage or talk page so any person interacting with you can see the note. That way you can't be accused of recruiting just friends. - 82.172.14.10823:45, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have created a couple of articles that come up when you type in the exact name, but when you misspell it slightly or hit the "Search" button the names of the articles never appear in the search results. Am I missing something? DLand21:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On top of, I believe (I'm sure I'll be corrected if in error) that Wikipedia runs on a Unix (or variant) OS, which is inherently case-sensitive. Sbz580923:50, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the "search" function, unlike the "Go" function, is case-insensative, but is not updated on each save -- I think it runs off data updated something like once a week. Persoanlly i prefer to use a google search of wikipedia this link is an example. DES(talk)23:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Google searches look through google's cached version of pages. Their cached versions of pages are usually two to three weeks old (older than the wiki cache). --TheLimbicOne(talk) 03:58, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is my understanding that high volume sites, such as wikipedia, are re-scanned by google rather more frequently than that, but I don't have hard figutes. In any case, my preference is based largely on the much superior search tools and search engine that google provides. That's what google does best, and IMO we should leave it to them. DES(talk)18:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Replying to Sbz5809: yes, Wikipedia servers are all to my knowledge running on Linux, but this is independent of the article names in the Wiki, which are handled by a PHP script and a database lookup, and could be made case sensitive or insensitive as the authors of MediaWiki may choose. jnothmantalk13:00, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
January 7
Transparent image background
I want to try some stuff involving superposing one image over another. The top image has to have a transparent background in order not to obscure parts of the other image. I can draw the images, using microsoft paint, and get them positioned in an article OK, but paint won't give me a transparent background, so I have an obscuration problem. Does anybody know how to tinker with a GIF or PNG file, using a regular text editor, to make the background transparent. I tried uploading some fancier graphics software to do the job, which I think it would, but I can't get it uploaded. -- U Go Boy 07 January
You won't be able to tinker with these with a regular text editor; most such editors are made for editing text. You will need a Hex editor which can edit the binary values.
No, I don't know how.
Yes, if you download some graphics-editing software (such as the GIMP) that has better support for transparency, that should help. Saving as GIF or PNG should let you upload the image to Wikipedia.
Why are you trying to overlap two images in Wikipedia? This would be vary rarely appropriate to Wikipedia's style...
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I noticed that too. At first I thought someone had replied by just adding the ending tag. Then I checked the edit history. For some reason it wasn't working on the page I was editing at the time. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 04:30, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright status of Jewish Encyclopedia images
There is a group of images in Category:Jewish Encyclopedia images that are from the Jewish Encyclopedia, but they came from JewishEncyclopedia.com. I know the Jewish Encyclopedia is in the public domain but is the material at that web site PD as well?
Their TOS is pretty clear: 3.2 You may search, retrieve, display, download, and print content from the Service solely for your personal, internal use, and shall make no other use of the content without the express written permission of JE.com and the copyright owner (or its authorized agent) of such content. You will not modify, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works, or in any way exploit, any of the content, in whole or in part, found on the Service. Further, you will not engage in any systematic downloading or other activity directed towards any of the content, in whole or in part, found on the Service that would create any electronic data base or archive containing such content [1]. Seems to me if that statement has any legal weight then Wikipedia shouldn't be using those images.
I would assume than applies to scans as well. In which case it would seem JE.com can't legitimately put a copyright emblem on their scans of pictures from the Jewish Encyclopedia. I bring all this up because one of the images on the category page is mislabeled--it's actually a duplicate of another--and I wanted to replace it with the correct one. I just wanted to make sure all my jots and tittles are in place.--◀Pucktalk▶06:26, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How to create new categories in an existing topic
The topic 'Logo' contains many images and is very large. I wish to create more categories and move the images from the parent topic (Logo) to existing categories (computer software) or to a new category (educational institutions).
Can you tell me how to do it?
Thanks
Vanita
vanita77@lycos.com
India
Add a category tag to the category you're making (just like you do when putting an article in a category). For example: If you want to create Category Bar in the existing Category Foo, you'd add [[Category:Foo]] to Category:Bar. - Mgm|(talk)12:01, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Image History
When I access the page :Image:MaiNessun.jpg, there is no file history. How do I know which user uploaded the file?
I've read the help documents on interwiki linking, buthtere appears to be no documentation on how to include a common image in a wikipedia article. Is there a better way than including html?
My specific exmaple is this:
Articles such as 1828 have a sidebar with links to other countries. This seems to be inserted by "{{C19YearInTopic}}". Unfortunately, currently there are two problems:
The US series is miswritten as e.g. "1828 in United States". This should be "1828 in the United States" to agree with existing articles for recent history.
UK is not mentioned. The standard here seems to be 2005 in the United Kingdom. (Canada and South Africa are, however, although they have much fewer events than the UK proper. Maybe it would make sense to combine them into something like 1828 in the Britich Empire.)
I recently started writing an article on Ayaguz, but I can't view it for some reason. When I go to the link, nothing is there, but when I go to edit the page, I see my work in the editing screen. How can I fix this? Waynem23:05, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I looked at the screen again and there was an option called "purge". I clicked it, and now everything's working fine. Thanks anyway. Waynem00:57, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
January 8
Would this article be deleted?
I want to create an article, what to do if someone you know is suicidal (with a different title, of course), considering the suicide articles lean towards pro-choice (including suicide methods) and there's simply not enough information on this sort of stuff. Perhaps it should just go on the suicide prevention article. Would it be deleted since WP is not a medical center or anything like that?
How-to guides are not for wikipedia. If you want to include information on common prevention methods used by say, the suicide hotline, that would be acceptable, but an outright how-to is not. -Greg Asche(talk)02:20, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now that it's on Articles for Deletion, the article is going through a process of consensus decision as to whether it should be included in this encyclopedia. The complaints I currently see against it are:
"nn" - the label seems non-notable. Indeed, the article does not currently assert the significance of the label and why it should have an encyclopedia article about it (whereas other labels would assert their high performance in the market; their connection to significant bands, etc). Not every organisation, band, person or idea requires an article, and Wikipedia is first an foremost an encyclopedia. Not all articles on organisations do successfully argue their significance, but until it is disputed, that is okay. For example, Fat Wreck Chords, I could argue their significance and notability, but it not given explicitly, only hinted by the numerous albums to their name and their connection with internationally-known NOFX.
"first person" - fixed
"advertising" - the tone of the article isn't encyclopedic. It seems like an advertisement in its vague but promotional statement "that's building long term relationships by working on their artists' development", and the nature and tone of its written history. See WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a soapbox.
"if it were band not a label it would be speedied by now" - this is a comment that bands have criteria of inclusion as specified here. If a band does not assert its significance to approach any of these, it may be speedily deleted according to recent changes to criterion A7.
I am not sure if these can be fixed for your article. That depends, primarily, on its encyclopedic notability as an organisation and the possibility of asserting its significance. You have a few days before the poll must be closed.
The main problem with the article is NOT notability. The main problem is Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is an official policy of WP. If information is unverifiable, it's original research, which contradicts Wikipedia:No original research, another policy. Unless you can cite a source for the information you've given, eg. some news article about the history of the label, it's got to go. pfctdayelise03:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, but what was argued against it until you placed your vote was not a question of verifiability (yes, I think you're right, it should have been), but a question of notability, tone and intention of author. jnothmantalk03:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Merging previous edits?
I made over 50 anonymous edits from 68.54.161.91 and created this account a while ago in the hope that those edits could be moved here. Since I had more edits anonymously, I continued editing from there, but recently it has obviously proved far more useful to have an account. I see that wikipedians can change usernames, so I assume it wouldn't be hard to merge old edits with this account, or merge them both into a new account? At the minimum, is it possible to rename 68.54.161.91 into a new account, and I could simply ditch this account, if you know what I'm trying to say? Any help appreciated. --Mercury106:20, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen several user pages where people have custom userboxes. I know there are language userboxes, but some people's userbox are kinda unique, and I was wondering how one could make that.
Thanks for a speedy reply, I didn't spot that. Cheer, Tompsci
Linking to other languages
I started a couple articles in Spanish, but on the sidebar it doesn't show a link to the English version, and vice-versa. How can I fix this? Thanks. --Gaodifan17:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You just add [[en:ARTICLE NAME]] at the end of the article to link to the English page, or [[es:ARTICLE NAME]] to link to the Spanish - that's me assuming that Spanish is under "es"; if not I'm sure you can quite easily find out. Seegoon17:31, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Format for a videography
I just want to add a music video to a band page, specifically here, and was wondering what the normal format is. Is it Title (Year), Director, Album... little help. Thanks Seegoon17:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The format used is normally Ogg Theora (a free format). We can of course only use freely licensed video and in some exceptions excerpts as fair use, so think about that. I'll try to find our policy page on this.Sverrrrrrrrrrrrdrup17:43, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you've misinterpreted me, sorry. What I meant was what would the correct format be for writing the entry, not displaying the video... how would I present who directed it, what album it was from and when. If there's no norm, then I guess I can just improvise. Seegoon17:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ive npotice other users have pages about themselves as a user and what kind of contributions they mkae. i would like to know how to start one about myalsef Atacama21:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC) 21:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
18:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
