Panel Switchman
Welcome. I did only a tiny bit of work with the monkey on the stick and am glad to see someone who can corrct and expand my work. You might also like to look into Wikipedia:WikiProject Bell System. And of course ask here, if you've got any questions on how Wikiediting works. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
Connecting the pictures
edit- All rightie, I answered your E-mail, and as promised am posting a copy here:
> I had uploaded two so far but they are in my area, I think.
> I need a little help understanding the upload procedure
> as it is rather terse.
Excellent. No, you don't have a particular area, at least not in the sense I think you mean. All pictures are available to anyone who searches for them. You were entirely successful in uploading; you merely failed to connect them properly to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_switch article.
> You suggested putting them in the commons area but don't know how to do that.
Actually, you succeeded in that. Not that the question of uploading to Commons vs Wikpedia is a big deal. Commons is mainly the picture department of Wikipedia, though it does other things as well. The important thing is, you correctly uploaded the pictures and I failed to take the trouble to search properly for them.
> Actually, now that I look I can't find the two I uploaded? This is
> very disconcerting considering I used to be a Systems Analyst.
> Guess I'm getting too old. Help.
A lot of us spring benders are getting too old. If you look into the article now, you'll see your first picture. Where you went wrong seems to be in counting the square brackets. Probably you followed the pattern from my crossbar IRRP caption, which has extra complications because it contains a link inside the caption. What you needed was something simpler, viz
whose double square brackets at each end mark off the code that tells Wikipedia about the picture. You unbalanced your brackets, which made the picture display fail.
To look at the details about your picture you can click on it. Its file description has a link to its Commons description. The latter page also has a link to your Commons personal page, which has a link to your "Gallery" of all the pictures you ever uploaded.
Y'see, when you opened a Wikipedia account, you also got a Commons account. Also a dozen others, but you're unlikely to care about the others. This is because of a simplification campaign early in 2008, which, umm, brought complications. Oh, well, your Commons account is the one you should be using for pictures because it makes them widely available and findable for other editors, beside Wikipedians. I sometimes find good pix in Commons that weren't intended in the first place for Wikipedia but the author wanted everyone to have a crack at them.
In the daytime I'll paste a copy of this message into your Wikipedia Talk Page and your Commons Talk Page, unless you beat me to that. It's a little difficult now because I'm at a computer that has mail but not Web. Better to discuss these things in your Wiki talk pages, in hopes of someone butting in with something useful.
- I'll also put a copy of this reply in your Commons Talk Page, just in case. You can reply by E-mail, but here is better because it's less private. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)