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Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 32

< Wikipedia:Help desk
This is an archive of the help desk. Please do not edit this page. To ask a new question, go to this page.

Leaving messages on other Wikipedia editions in English

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I am looking for advice on whether it is possible to leave a message on the Greek Wikipedia on an English page seeking advice on sorting out our Kalamaki article. Is there a page in the Greek Wikipedia where I can do that? Capitalistroadster 07:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • If you go through the list of Wikipedians by nationality and come across some Greek ones, you can see if they've got Greek userpages linked and leave your question there. They're bound to understand that. Failing that, you could try finding the Greek equivalent of the village pump on help desk. - Mgm|(talk) 08:01, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks MGM. I might just leave a message on their talk pages on the English Wikipedia. Capitalistroadster 09:19, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

topology

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Moved to WP:RD/SCI, wich is the apropriate place for this type of questions.

Percentage

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What does mean the percentage after a subject:eg Loading 44%

J. vautier

If you are referring to a "Progress Bar" it means that the task underway is 44% complete. --hydnjo talk 19:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Does Wikipedia Have A Search Tool?

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I was wondering if Wikipedia had some kind of downloadable search bar/toolbar that I can download as an add-on for my browser. Something similar to Google Toolbar or Yahoo Toolbar that I can just type into from whatever page my browser is on go directly to a Wikipedia entry. Please let me know. Thanks.

Jason

there is an extension for firefox that does what you disscribe but I don't know about IE.Geni 15:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia extension for Firefox can be found here. *Dan T.* 15:19, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a bookmark that I keep handy for a WP specific Google search. --hydnjo talk 19:46, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

page statistics

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is there a way within wikipedia to check page statistics (# of visits, etc...)? --Habibkoite 15:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No. While that feature exists in Mediawiki, the software Wikipedia uses, it has been disabled on Wikipedia itself for performance reasons. — mendel ☎ 17:47, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bad first content experience - Fawcett5

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Hello, During the last hour, I have tried to get several links and new content in place. While I am the owner of all the content, the Admin "Fawcett5" quickly deleted what I entered so that I am on my third iteration and ready to pass.

Why such zeal, when it is clear that I am in the middle of an edit session.

Also, I am disappointed that having just placed some content, I got a message that the ownership of the material was in question an thus marked for "speedy delete?".

So I immediately responded with proof of ownership, by your "Fawcett5" already deleted it. This whole transaction was less than 15 minutes!

Due to the person's aggressive actions, I found my first posting experience to be very difficult and disappointing. Ckuelzow 18:00, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • This user has repeatedly recreated articles that are cut-and-paste copyright violations from a website, even having been warned not to do so by other admins and (later) by myself. The articles in question were in any case designed to drive traffic to his web site, and were most definitely speediable. The non-speediable article the user created is listed on Afd. Fawcett5 18:07, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wow,
Normally I would just let this alone. However, as a business person, I know that feedback is important. I often make an effort to provide it when I believe that it can be helpful. So I will address this dispute as follows:
I looked at your official deletion policy. Your actions seem to demonstrate a willingness to be very flexible in your interpretation and execution of it.
Forget the low credibility and truth surrounding your assertions. Why so quick to act? BTW "repeatedly recreated articles" - laughable from this vantage (The whole engagement lasted less than two hours and had maybe 4 objects involved and only lasted that long since it took me a while to figure out what you were doing.)
However, judgmental and uninformed, your reply seems to be just as unfriendly/unproductive as your actions. I find the whole experience wanting.
On the other hand, I am a fluent SME in the topics I was trying to flesh out. This whole effort was counterproductive. I judge your actions and rationalizations to be capricious. Ckuelzow 18:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you complain about someone on a public forum like this, it's probably not going to improve your relationship with Fawcett5. Remember, from what I can see Fawcett has been around a bit longer than you have so he's likely to have detailed knowledge about Wikipedia's policies. Try putting your anger aside and ask Fawcett what exactly was wrong with your initial entry (before you recreated it) on his talk page. The speedy deletion criteria (WP:CSD) may also hold some useful information. If you want helpful responses that queries and comments, it's also useful to link to the article you're talking about using double square brackets. Let me know if you need any help and I'll try to give you a hand in making sure you've got something that won't get deleted. - Mgm|(talk) 19:22, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hello,
Thank you for your sincere comments and suggestions. First time content providers would benefit greatly from your open and generous input.
Since my last entry, I spent a bit more time probing policy and admin dynamics. For whatever it is worth, I see evidence of a self-aggrandizing 'priesthood' controlling/influencing access and content. Frankly, people like me (with content of interest/value) are put off by that. Ckuelzow 19:52, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Try it again with the intention of making an encyclopedia article. I read your SKIER article and have to say it was fairly unintelligible to me although the english appeared ok. I am guessing it was about some kind of database structure or software product, but you should have started the article with a paragraph of enough info for someone to at least guess what realm of knowledge you were addressing. Is it a patented computer product, a class of processes, a recognizable computer science term? There is nothing wrong with an article with esoteric technical knowledge, but it needs at least an orienting definitional paragraph that will be clear to a large portion of the readership. That might have made Fawcett5 less likely to think it was advertising for a proprietary product. You are probably correct that you have information to offer that we would value. Please try again, but show us you can write something more encyclopedic. alteripse 01:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree; perhaps if you revise them to include more information and examples about what those articles are talking about, I'd consider changing my vote from Delete to Keep. *Dan T.* 01:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to you both. As I am able I will take some "baby steps". As an example, I just fleshed out the "Impedance mismatch" object. I will hold off making several of the obvious links. I could use your feedback/suggestions so I can build my sense of how to better deliver content. Ckuelzow 13:43, 12 October 2005(UTC)

AFD

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I went through the 'New Pages' special page and found Pope Urban II. I followed all the instructions on the WP:AFD page, but it won't show up in the log. Could someone make it show, please? It's... Thelb4! 18:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you have the right article? Pope Urban II is not a new page and it doesn't meet AfD requirements. — Kjammer ⌂ 18:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I found the problem, the article you want is Pope Urban ll (lowercase 'L' not capital 'i'), the deletion page is called "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pope Urban ll" (again lowercase 'LL', not capital 'ii'), but the page you added to WP:AFD was "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pope Urban II" (with capital 'ii') which doesn't exist. Also the Afd discussion links to the wrong article. Pope Urban ll must have been speedied, because nonsense articles meet WP:CSD requirements. — Kjammer ⌂ 18:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Repeat log-ins

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I've been using WP for two months now (11 Oct.05), pretty much all the time on my original log-in. Over the last few days I find myself having to log-in every time. Common problem?--shtove 19:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Have you checked the "Remember me" box at Login? --hydnjo talk 19:36, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It's just the main page that prompts you to log in. If you click a link you'll probably find that you're already logged in. Gillean666 20:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to both: Yes, the box is checked, and clicking on a link doesn't do it (any old link?). I'm sure I haven't done anything differently, and I was guessing WP had changed its set-up. Maybe it's my set-up.--shtove 20:52, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


I'm currently logged in, but if I go to the main page of WP create account/log in still shows but if I click on any link it, the new page shows I am logged in. Gillean666 21:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It could be a caching issue...? Have you tried refreshing your view of the Main Page? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This happens to me quite frequently, and it is NOT just the main page, soemtimes I am logged in viewing a page, click edit, adn find I am editing logged out. Sometimes flushign the browser cache helps, soemtimes deletign cookies does, soemtimes nothing but leaving wikipedia dn closing all browser windows seems to help. DES (talk) 02:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Shtove, just for the record, what browser/version are you using? Perhaps someone with the same might chime in. --hydnjo talk 03:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Minor (Deletion) Edits

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Is it against policy to mark the placement of deletion templates (ex. {{subst:afd}}, {{delete}}, {{subst:tfd}}, etc.) as minor? I thought I read something like this earlier, but I can't find it. Did the policy change? I would imagine something drastic as a speedy tag wouldn't be something minor. — Kjammer ⌂ 20:21, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Suggesting deletion is not a minor change, but I wouldn't have thought it to be a huge issue, as pages with these templates are by definition reviewed by others before action is taken. Compared to, for example, masking vandalism as minor edits, it's not that bad.--Kwekubo 21:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not explicitly forbidden, but when I read the deletion policy it was suggested it's a bad idea because people might think you're trying to sneak in a deletion. The whole point of minor edits is that they don't need major scrutiny if another editor trusts you. Not breaking that trust is the best thing you can do. I would very much advise against marking them as minor. Why would you want to do that anyway? - Mgm|(talk) 21:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If I remember correctly, the practice of marking deletion nominations as minor was brought up in the GRider arbitration case. It was lumped in with a collection of other problems under the heading of disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, so no explicit ruling on that specific action was made. I believe that marking such edits as minor is generally considered a Bad Thing.
I note that some editors have set their preferences to mark edits as minor by default; I would suggest that it's a forgiveable mistake if the edit summary for the nomination clearly indicates what you've done. You're always using edit summaries, right? :D TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:03, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, it is not me making the minor edits. I just noted a handful of users who do this, and last week I have commented on one of their talk pages about this, although with little eveidence supporting the notion of minor delete edits being bad, I ended up informing him/her to write "speedy" or "delete" in the edit summary rather than leaving a blank minor. — Kjammer ⌂ 02:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WIKIPEDIA ON S-L-O-W Server

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WILL SOMEONE PLEASE MOVE THE WIKIPEDIA WEBSITE TO A FASTER SERVER BEFORE IT GRINDS TO A HALT?

WIKIPEDIA'S SERVERS ARE NOT UPTO SCRATCH IN TERMS OF SPEED. --Londonlinks

Londonlinks - see m:servers. Wikipedia has roughly 100 high-end servers. The problem is that this whole site has become far too popular far too quickly - every time we add new servers, the traffic surges and wipes out all the gains from the addition of the new servers. →Raul654 21:07, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • To get more servers, we simply need money - donating some via the link on the left will have a direct effect on speed. An order for more servers was placed in September following the fundraising drive, but I don't know whether they're hooked up yet. The more hardware we get, the better Wikipedia can keep up with the spiralling demand. --Kwekubo 21:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Public Domain image uploading

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I want to use an image for an article I'm writing on Snap-dragon, the Victorian parlour game. I believe that it's in the public domain due to age, but does that mean I can copy it from a website and upload it to Wikipedia? The image in question is Tenniel's illustration of a snap-dragon-fly in Through the Looking Glass (http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lgchap03.htm). Ziggurat 21:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's tricky, because PD applies if the author has died more than 70 years ago. Now the author to the STORY has died more than 70 years ago, but we don't know who illustrated it. Given the time the story was written, I think you'd be safe uploading it to commons under the public domain, but it would be nice to know who the illustrator was and when he/she died. -Greg Asche (talk) 02:44, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, easy, the illustrator was very famous - John Tenniel - and yes, he died more than 70 years ago. I guess what I'm asking is can I take the PD image from another website (which is otherwise copyrighted, I believe), or does the image actually have to be scanned in in order to be PD? Ziggurat 02:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If an image is PD it is PD (and this one is), and you can take it from any source and upload it. No one can copyright a PD image (or text), and If soemone uses PD materiel along with copyrighted content, you may always take the PD content and reuse it in any way you wish, including uplaoding it to wikipedia. You must credit the origina source (John Tenniel in this case) and it would be a good idea to indicate the site or other source (book if scanned) from which you obtained the image. Note that if someone alteres a PD image in a creative way, they may obtain a copyright on the altered result. Simple cropping or rescaling is probably not creative enough, however. DES (talk) 15:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! The image in question has been cleaned up and added to Snap-dragon (game). Ziggurat 21:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
In the UK there is copyright in typographical arrangment, so a republished book might have a copyright even if the text doesn't, so, at least in the UK, you can, in a way, copyright public domain text, without changing it. There is a significant market in new editions of out of copyright works. IANAL
--David Woolley 18:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

RSS support for wiki

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does wikipedia has RSS / Atom support?

Yep, see Wikipedia:Syndication for a list of all the different feeds. -Greg Asche (talk) 02:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

hi

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i am doing a reference list and i am using a sumo wrestling site and i do not know where the author is located on the sight. there is a section that says reference on the bottom and i dont know if that is author or not

If this is a page from Wikipedia, try Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Shimgray | talk | 00:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia for information on citing an article for your paper. The references section you see on the article's page are the references that the writers of tha page used for their research. Dismas|(talk) 00:33, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How do I find out new entries to wikipedia?

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Hi there, I'm looking for a page that shows new entries (new entries + descrition) to wikipedia and a page that shows new requests to wikipedia. If those pages exist, do they have RSS feeds? Thanks in advance

Special:Newpages has recently created pages. -- SCZenz 02:04, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Also see Wikipedia:Syndication for info on RSS and Atom feeds. Dismas|(talk) 03:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Requests that haven't yet been created are on Wikipedia:Requested articles. - Mgm|(talk) 04:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How do you revert to earlier versions of articles?

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Hi, I know this may seem like a newbie question but this is my last resort. I couldn't find anything in the help files about it. Basically, when someone vandalises a Wikipedia article, how would I a) clean up the vandalism or b) revert to an earlier version of the article? I would really like to know.

We were all newbies once, so don't worry about it. :) The page you're looking for is Wikipedia:Revert. And you may want to consider making an account! Titoxd(?!?) 03:43, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Question on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome article

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Hi! While I was reading the article on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, I came across this line:

"It is endangered in carpal tunnel surgery is a fraudulent surgery for cases of mercury poisoning with the incision over the carpal tunnel is made to far laterally (thumb side)."

It doesn't read quite right, and it seems as if the bit about mercury poisoning was just stuck in. If someone could fix it, that would be great! Thanks a bunch,

theh

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Titoxd(?!?) 04:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence is garbage. I will delete. See how I linked to the article with brackets above to make it easier to go check? alteripse 05:12, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked. The entire article had been vandalized with mercury nonsense. It was already reverted back to the right text. alteripse 05:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Where Is .............?

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I was just wondering where exactly I can find the old--from the year of 1945--Popeye cartoon short called/entitled "Mess Production"???!!! I have been searching "high and low" all around the web for it, but have so far failed to find it.

~anon

Short answer: It's not on Wikipedia.
Long answer: This page is for asking questions about Wikipedia. You can try and ask this question on the Reference Desk. It is likely that what you are looking for isn't on the internet, probably because the short was made thirty-something years before the invention of the World Wide Web, and no one has an incentive to upload it. — Kjammer ⌂ 05:17, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

transilating in tamil language.

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I heard about the transilation plan of some articles into all languages. I am Bagerathan studies at Univercity of Jaffna, SriLanka. I like to join in that project to trasilate them into Tamil. Could you give me the full details please?

--Bagerathan.

You should check out the Tamil Wikipedia and ask around there about projects translating articles into Tamil. Anyone can edit a wiki, so you probably could just start translating articles from English into Tamil over there. See also Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination and Wikipedia:Interlanguage links for more information. Kewp (t) 11:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

DIFFERENCE

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Not sure exactly how to ask this question, but I'll try to be as clear as possible. Is there any tool/program in Wikipedia to show me the path of links i can take to get from one page to another?

Rephrase for clarification: Is there there a wiki page where i can type the addresses of two wiki entries and then finds me what material they have in common?

For example: WikiGames such as "six degrees of separation" have users try to find links between two random pages. Is there something that can find these links/paths for me?

why does my username appear in red when I make an edit?

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Why does my username appear in red when I made an edit and all the other usernames appear in blue?

Once you have made an edit to your user page your username link will turn blue.--Gillean666 11:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not just your username. All links to non-existing pages are red. As far as I know we don't have an article on dorsal ruffles yet, so that link is red too. Once you've clicked the link and created your userpage, it'll turn blue. Also, please sign with four tildes (~~~~), so we can easily see your username ourselves and so we know who we're talking too. It's a good habit to have when you discuss on talk pages or in the Wikipedia namespace. - 131.211.51.34 11:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why are there so many dead links? That is, why do editors create links to non-existent pages? Sbz5809 12:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • We call them "red links" and its good to link to anything that should have an article, so that when someone does make an article about it, it already has links to it. Kappa 13:02, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

definition of marine tourism

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What is the definition of marine tourism? and please classification of marine tourism?

Hello! Please don't ask us to answer your homework questions for you. In any case, factual questions should be asked at the Reference desk, not the Help desk. Thank you! --Ashenai (talk) 11:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Using images from other wikis?

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If I see an image on another language wikipedia, like fr:Fontaine paris.JPG, and I want to use it on en.wikipedia, how do I go about it? Kappa 12:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. The best place to find images is through Commons. Most images are upload there and used throughout Wikimedia. Hope this helps. Psy guy (talk) 12:21, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If the image isn't on commons, you can down-load it from the other wikipedfia, and uplaod it to commons. Be sure to copy all the source and copyright info, and note that it came from anothe wikipedia (and which one, and the file name there). DES (talk) 15:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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Is it possible to add external links? There is no 'edit' option at the end of a philosophy article I wanted to add a link to. I noticed that there are links to articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but no links to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (another excellent free encyclopedia).

steve

  • Use the "edit" button at the top of the page. You can make a new section for external links like this: == External links ==

Kappa 13:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

auther

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who is the author of this site?


norepinephrine

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-which drugs influence the actions of norepinephrine? -are there any disorders that affect norepinephrine?

This page is for questions about Wikipedia itself. For factual questions, please see Wikipedia:Reference desk or see also norepinephrine. Dismas|(talk) 18:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How soon after posting can a new article be viewed?

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How soon after posing a new article can it be viewed?


Copyright?

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Firstly can the a still from a film made in 1963 be uploaded with an appropriate tag? Secondly how old must a photograph be before it can be freely uploaded. Thanks Giano | talk 18:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • IIRC, in the United States copyright expires 70 years after the photographer dies unless their relatives renew it. However, photos of films will likely belong to the studio who made the film rather than the photographer themselves, so those are unlikely to ever be free. Since there's no chance there's free images to illustrate a 1963 film, unless you're really lucky and can track down the family of an original actor or crew member and get them to release private photos of the shoot, one screenshot or film poster is generally considered fair use. Fair use images are the only non-free images allowed on Wikipedia and only if there's no free alternative. - Mgm|(talk) 18:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • The above is not quite correct. Copyright in items owned by a corporation expires a fixed time after the item was created, i think 75 years, but it may be 100 years now. The "life+70" term was not adopted until the copyright revisions in (I think) 1979 -- works created well before that date are subject to soemwhat compalex rules under U.S. law, which may depend on whether the copyright was "renewed" properly, and on the date of inmital publication. Note there is no longer such a thing as copyright renewal for works created after the "life+" term was instituted -- once the time has expired ther is no way under curretn law to renew the copyright for a longer term (of course the law can always be changed in future). In any case, a commercial film shot in the 1960s is most unlikely to be in the public domain, and so copyright restrictions will apply. Fairuse is a bit tricky, but a limited number of screen shots used to illustrate an article about the film are generally considered ok. Uses on unrelated articles might not be ok. DES (talk) 19:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

how can I install my second computer with internet and first computer

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This question is not-understanderble to me, but i moved it here, so go there if you are after an answer. (The help desk IS NOT for factual questions, they go at the reference desk). --Ballchef 05:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

People are deleting my edits!@

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I try to edit some of the pages but they were all reverted. The content was not offensive and I am sure quite helpful to people but they were all deleted for some unknown reason. I wrote something bad about Anne Coulter/Bill O'reiley (I called her a part time prostitute and him a delusional jackass) at the beginning for laughs (and it's true) but I stopped as soon as someone asked me to. Then I went on to edit some poetry and the seigneur system of New France. But the new information I added are all gone!! Explain that to all the people who would have benifited from my information while searching for articles on econimic history of Canada or the eighteen century english literature...

When your first edit to Wikipedia is to call Ann Coulter a prostitute[1], people are going to be skeptical of anything else you contribute. I looked through some of your edits, and every one was unsourced. In general, you will want to cite a source when you're making factual contributions to articles. —HorsePunchKid→龜 21:42, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
For Seigneur specifically: This is a disambiguation page, linking to a bunch of articles on things called "Seigneur". The article content is on the pages linked from that page. Your edit removed one of the links to articles, and added text that if supportable belonged in that article. For the other edits, HorsePunchKid's explanation has it, I think. You might ask Hall Monitor why he reverted you on his talk page. — mendel ☎ 16:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Persistant Questions

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I'm a new user trying to figure things out, and came here looking for answers to questions. I found my answers, but, as is usual on the web, I'm now interested in this corner of the Wikipedia. I'm just wondering how often the "search engine" type questions are cleared from the help desk. As a related item, where should a new but serious user go to learn policies? Richard Daly 22:37, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I was playin' around with the sandbox and it got vandalized in between my minor edits. Now it's locked. Can anyone do something about that? How long do those locks last? Is it worth it, when I can just edit my user page? (I came by here lookin' for information on reverting pages. I think I found that....

If you want to learn Wikipedia policies, I placed the {{subst:Welcome}} template onto your talk page, which provides links to six pages that new users (such as yourself) would find usefull, Thanks for registering your username. — Kjammer ⌂ 22:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The things I would have liked to have been told about when I was new are:

Searching Wikipedia/Wikimedia images

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How do I find out how many/which of my images have been uploaded by other people? 

  Who wrote the articles on this website?

If I knew which images had been used I'd be able to tell you.

article text is suspiciously similar to another website

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In researching the XM29 rifle, a Google search turned up the wikipedia page XM29 and this website http://world.guns.ru/assault/as40-e.htm among others. The text for each is similar and often exactly the same, and seems to have been directly copied somewhere around the 5th edit. The problem is that I am not sure who owns the original text. Was it written for wikipedia and copied to that website, or the other way around. I posted this on the discussion page for the article, but as it has only about 5 comments, I figured it would probably not get answered there, so i wanted to post here, too. So, two questions: what should be done about the content in the article, and in the future, where should issues like this be brought up? --Blazotron 01:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you posted on the talk page, which is good. Someone either needs to either email him and get permission to use the text on his site, or have the offending sections removed and re-written later if someone knows the background on it. You could list it at WP:CP, but seeing as there are parts of the article that aren't copvio, I wouldn't do so. -Greg Asche (talk) 01:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

New collaboration of the week?

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Is it possible to create a new category for collaboration of the week? I think a Military collaboration of the week would enhance the variety, amount, and quality of articles regarding military battles, armed forces of various countries, units... etc. Someone please let me know if this is possible. --Hal06 05:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think there were some problems with having two collaboartions per week: ie, no one was participating. So it got cut back to one. However, sometimes Portals or WikiProjects (try Wikipedia:WikiProject Military?) have collaborations, so maybe you could track down a project on the military and make your suggestion there. --Commander Keane 06:05, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


I want my article!

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I put alot of effort into the article 'Paduanisms'. It's an and of year gag for my school, but an administrator called Drili or Digli or something deleted it. I don't mind about the deleted, but can you give me the text back? Please contact me at <ewmail address removed>

AD or CE

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The Manual of Style calendar items sections does not give guidance on whether to use CE or AD in dating - the reason I ask is because of this edit to the Armageddon article. Alf melmac 06:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • In the MoS (dates and numbers section) there is a mention of your problem, it's in the eras section here. I interpret it to be a bit like the conflict between British/American spellings: both are acceptable, but be uniform across an article. About the specific edit, just like with spellings, it's not good form to change a format to your preference. Maybe it was inexperience from the anonymous user.--Commander Keane 10:59, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Transferring edits from anon IP to login name

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I made a few edits when I thought I was logged in today but because of Covenant College's firewall, I was actually logged out. Is there a way to transfer those edits to my username so I can check up on changes to the relevant articles?

Also, I clicked save page a few times without putting a description in first (at first I didn't realize how). Can I go back and change that? Edonovan 07:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • There used to be, it was a log of requests from newly-created users asking developers to transfer the edits, but the developers grew lazier and lazier, until it was finally shut down, and might never be restarted at all. So unfortunately it looks like you're stucl. — JIP | Talk 10:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • There was a page where you could request a developer do it, but the developers became more interested in doing more important and interesting things with their limited time. Meanwhile, stupid people, unable to imagine any reason for this besides laziness, remained stupid. -- Jeronim 07:35, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • You can also list the anon ip address on your user page, with a note saying that those edits are yours (unless other people at your school share the same ip address and edit wikipedia anonymously). You can also add the relevent articles to your watchlist, which is the easiest way to check changes to those articles. You can add articles to your watchlist by clicking the "watch" tab at the top of each page, or by clicking the "watch this page" box at the bottom of the editing screen (right next to "this is a minor edit"). Kewp (t) 13:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thanks I kinda figured that was how it was. I had already put my IP on my user page, so that's about as good as it gets. But other people do use this IP. Watchlist is how I'll keep track of any significant ones. But the firewall is still screwing me up. For example, when I clicked "Edit this page," I got logged out just now. ~Edonovan

how to contact authors of entries?

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I've just added my first wikipedia entry, it was a blank page, but in an area that someone's already done a lot of work. I'd be interested in emailing the other person as we obviously have common interests - how does one do this? (Assuming of course that he has registered his email address). cheers Martin

  • If this user registered an email address, you'll find it on their user page, but the most effective way to communicate (if a user is still active) is using their talk page, which you can reach by visiting their userpage and clicking discussion. Could you clarify what article, field and user you are talking about? Also, please sign posts/questions like this with four tildes (~~~~) so your signature is automatically added, and so we know what your username is easily. Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages. - 131.211.51.34 09:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • By the way, if you create a blank page, it is likely to be deleted right away. You need to at least create the makings of an encyclopedia article for it to be left in the site. Notinasnaid 10:33, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • The page is the 2007 Rugby World Cup Qualifying pages - e.g Europe. I guess he hasn't logged in as it's just an ISP on the history page. Sorry by blank I meant blank before I got there - the link was already there, but with no content, so I added it (for Asia and Americas). cheers Martin mlaird 08:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

wikipedia search engine

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OK, so alotta people are complaining about the wikipedia search engine. now that i think about it, yeh, it sucks. someone mentioned that they use google search instead, and disregard wikipedia's own method. I also noticed that when the wikipedia search engines are down wikipedia invites the user to search through google or yahoo. Many websites have boxes that say "powered by google", so why doesn't wikipedia get that too and solve the problem of poor searching ability? --Ballchef 10:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not a direct answer, but why don't you just use Google instead? Are you looking for advice on the easiest way to do that? Notinasnaid 10:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm suggesting this idea because lots of people have complained, not just me. It seems silly to use an ineffectual system if google works so well. I'm not looking for advice for myself, no. I just deal with the search engine and keep looking, but I imagine many wikipedians would appreciate an easier way to search.--Ballchef 12:31, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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I added two entries to chinese measure words which were justified by their presence in zh.wikipedia.org. As such, I thought it would be a good idea to link them to their wikipedia sources. After much experimenting, I decided this could only be done using an external link.

The problem with this is that these words appear in a relatively narrow table column and I could find no way of preventing the source URL being included in printed output, which expands that column to about half a page width. I tried the plainlinksneverexpand class, but to no effect. In the end I had to drop the links as they were too disruptive.

Is there a way that this could have been done successfully?

--David Woolley 11:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any reason why the normal interwiki link format [[zh:whatever|whatever]] doesn't work? *Dan T.* 12:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If one writes [[zh:英里|英里]] without the nowiki, it is interpreted as an other language link for the whole page, not as a normal link to another language wiki. There are some special interwiki prefixes for some languages, but not for Chinese. I did try it, pretty much first.
--David Woolley 12:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Put a colon in front of the zh, like this - [[:zh:英里|英里]] and it'll make an ordinary link. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:02, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That did it. It is actually in the edit help page, but I think I need to think about making that page clearer. For me a big problem is the use of definition by example, but that is endemic to most of the help system.
--David Woolley 21:52, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Acceptable contribution practice

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Is it acceptable practice to: 1. Add an abbreviation to a page like “List of computing and IT abbreviations” without first creating an article on the meaning of the abbreviation? 2. Add the abbreviation above without the proper formatting characters? (I understand that this would probably cause some veteran of this project some time to clean up my droppings and that if contributing becomes a habit for me I would be expected to learn the proper editing techniques.) --Freestyle 12:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good! Neither of those practices are perfect. But both are better than nothing. If you have the time and energy to make a polished contribution, then please do so! But if not, we'd much rather have you make a flawed but useful edit than no edit at all. Wikipedia is built on contributors building on and gradually improving each other's contributions, after all. Cheers, and happy editing! :) --Ashenai (talk) 12:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Ashenai --Freestyle 05:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are bitmaps created from unsupplied vector originals allowable under GFDL?

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As an example, Image:ShenyangDistrictAndLandmark.jpg, although I suspect this quite common, claims to be under the GFDL but is provided in a bitmap format when the associated narrative says that it is actually maintained using Adobe Illustrator, which I believe to be a vector graphics package.

Leaving aside the fact that this image shouldn't have used lossy compression, it seems to me that it constitutes an opaque version in terms of the GFDL and the vector form is not made available. That seems to me to violate the GFDL requirements, a fact that I think is obvious in terms of considering the spirit of those requirements and of Wikipedia, that anyone should be able to revise the document as easily as the originator.

I've not yet researched how well wikipedia handles vector images, so I don't know if it is currently possible to provide the image in transparent form, but I feel that GFDL cannot be validly applied to the current image.

Is this a correct interpretation?

--David Woolley 12:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe the matter has ever been settled; I suspect that because one can edit the bitmap in a bitmap editor (albeit in an unsatisfactory way) this will probably count as not being "opaque". I do, however, entirely agree that the vector format originals should be upload. Until very recently Wikipedia's servers were configured such that it was almost impossible to upload the vector original (one would have had to uuencode them or something). It is now possible to upload SVG files (but not in a way that makes composite SVGs terribly easy to work with). The servers still won't accept Adobe Illustrator documents, nor those in other formats for vector drawing like OpenOffice draw and Visio. A policy decision was made long ago (one I don't at all agree with) that we wouldn't allow all file types, and particularly we wouldn't allow archives like tar and zip (which really make handling composite documents a reasonable proposition). The theory behind this prohibition is that it was felt that Wikipedia would risk becoming a free file storage site, or maybe a warez site, if we did allow general uploads. So if the pictures aren't compliant, it's generally not through the fault of the submitter, but a matter of Wikipedia policy. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Obtaining full copyright trail for an article

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Although I haven't yet needed to do this in anger, my reading of the GFDL is that when producing opaque copies, I need to include the full copyright trail in machine readable form. I have failed to find any easy option for doing this associated with article pages. I could just about get a complete list of copyright owners (except for cut and paste) by trawling the history page, but, without individually retrieving every version, I see no way of associating an author with a change, even though that information is obviously present in a full dump of wikipedia.

I don't think having reverted version would be necessary and I wouldn't consider anyone who only created reverted versions to be a copyright owner (but I'm not a lawyer), but it seems to me that the real transparent document is the complete set of back versions and associated history entries, not the editable form of the current version.

(I havent' even really discussed the problem of cut and paste between articles.)

Have I missed a feature somewhere, or is it not possible to print large numbers of copies without supplying 26GB of the complete database?

--David Woolley 12:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It has been generally (although informally) held that online Wikipedia mirrors are compliant if they contain a link to the original wikipedia page. From there a link to the article history is available. Personally I think the mirror should provide this information itself; I guess that if the wikimedia servers were down (and thus the history were not available from us) the mirror would be breaking the GFDL. I'm not aware of any mirror that does this. As to offline mirrors, and particularly paper copies, my understanding is that they should attach a list of the contributors. This information is indeed in the full wikipedia dump (but not in the "current" version dumps), but I'm not aware of any software that extracts that information. I don't agree with your interpretation of "transparent" in this case at all : when you download GCC you only get the current version, not all the previous ones (and you certainly don't get a giant blob of CVS changesets). Figuring out what magnitude of change is and is not a copyrightable change isn't something Wikipedia has (nor needs to, I guess) concerned itself with. Similarly determining automatically that a vandal who typed "fart" into an article only to be immediately reverted isn't a copyright holder of the final article is, err, rather difficult. Cut'n'paste of paragraphs between articles isn't something that the software knows anything about; the best you can hope for is an edit summary that says "move stuff from article xyz". My guess (and I'm not a lawyer either) is that your mirror or wikiprinting could (as well as the lengthy recitation of the GFDL) contain a single attachment containing the names of all the authors of all the articles. I don't believe you'd be obligated to individually correlate each author with their articles. But no-one has ever done this, really, and it's barely been discussed, so that's just my guess. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
GCC is actually a bad example, because the primary fork is distributed by the FSF and the FSF insist on copyright assignment before they will redistribute. Multiple copyright ownership could apply to other forks.
Open source software, in my view, often has very poor copyright trails, partly because most authors don't understand copyright and, in particular, fail to understand that the licence for each contribution is normally (certainly for GPL) direct from the original author of that part, not from the redistributor. However it differs from the present case in a number of ways:
  • small changes are usually obvious bug fixes and not copyrightable;
  • conscientous authors will identify the copyright owner and licence terms for each part in the comments.
In wikipedia small changes are less likely to be obvious and people don't embed comments in-line. That means that the complete set of copyright notices is only available from the history. Note that my interpretation of a copyright notice is that it needs to identify the copyright owner, not just the licencing terms (although I believe there are Creative Commons licences that are GFDL compatible, so one can't assume that a particular part is actually under the GFDL terms). Also, the only way of working out who owns what is from the history, whereas properly maintained open source code will make that clear in the comments.
Cut and paste is a problem, because, like with Open Source software, the editors probably don't understand the need for a copyright trail.
Where a good copyright trail is important for Open Source software is when a copyright is challenged (e.g. SCO) or someone reneges on their licence grant. That leads to a messy process of identifying and removing the compromised code. Serious business users of Open Source want to minimise risks, so will expect good copyright trails. The other case is where non-copyleft material is present in copyleft material. That can legitimately be extracted and used under its own licence.
Actually, my hypothetical problem is not as big as I thought, because a reference to the web site is sufficient (that isn't always allowed for the GPL). The case I was thinking of was that I'm in a language class. I'm in the adult class, but there are also children's classes. There are only about 10 adults, but there are over 100 children. If I printed out a page to distribute to the adult class, I would be within the 100 copy limit, but I was worried that, if I distributed to the whole school, I would need to provide machine readable copies to everyone. There is still a catch, though, even for the content, in that one needs to remember to include the link to the specific back version, which is something one has to find and add manually. (You do seem to get enough information, if you add the browser printed URL, although you don't get a valid copyright notice, because it doesn't identify the copyright owner.)
Actually, looking at the GFDL, it seems to me that you need a URL that returns the complete document and copyright notices and nothing else, so the edit page doesn't count, although that is not something that would worry me so much as the difficulty of reconstructing the full set of copyright notices from the history.
--David Woolley 22:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
When you say "100 copy limit", I guess you're talking about the thing where schools and universities can make up to 100 copies of at most one chapter of a book (I forget what that's called, and it's different in different countries). If that's what you mean, I don't think it applies here. That's an agreement between educational establishments and a consortium of publishers. Individual wikipedia contributors clearly aren't parties to that agreement, so I don't think you can make copies under those terms. That leaves the terms of the GFDL or fair use (and clearly 100 copies of an entire article isn't fair use). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The 100 copy limit is in the GFDL (start of section 3). Below 100 copies, you can supply a document in a purely opaque form. Above 100 copies, you have to provide access to a transparent form (i.e. a revisable form that conforms to a publicly documented and freely re-implementable standard), either on media or as a link to that version and nothing else.
Incidentally, I'm in the UK, and the primary legislation set a limit of 1% per quarter, unless the publisher has a paid licensing scheme for at least that much. I think that this may have been modified by secondary legislation to align with the rest of Europe.
I think, though, that this is getting too deep for a help forum, so is there a better place to continue?
--David Woolley 12:46, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
100 copies - you've clearly read the GFDL much more carefully that I have :) Better place: there was a wikilegal mailing list, but it closed down (dunno why). There are several other mailing lists at Wikipedia:Mailing lists (but personally I've found them to be mostly hot air). If from all this you've gained the impression that no-one here is trying terribly hard to make life easy for those wishing to reuse WikiMedia content, you might well be right. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:56, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

no-one here is trying terribly hard to make life easy for those wishing to reuse WikiMedia content

Making such use easy is one of the guiding principles stated in the pre-amble to the GFDL, so Wikipedia had better not make it difficult (especially if, as I'm about to argue, Wikipedia isn't compliant with the letter of GFDL).
--David Woolley 19:08, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
1) If over 100 opaque copies are distributed it is sufficeient to "state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document" (GFDL section 3). I take that to mean that a printed URL is good enough. 2) A copy must include all "copyright notices" but that does not, as i read it, require the complete history -- it is rare that each contributor will append a spearate copyright notice, although this would be permitted. i don't think the wikipedia boilerplate constitutes a separate copyright notice for each contributor. 3) section 4 B of the GFDL requires you to "List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement." I read this that the history can be reduced to five names, without specific attribution of text to those names, without in any way violating the GFDL. A true "wiki-free-license" might require preservation of the history, but wikipedia has not chosen to create and use such a license. So I think that printing copies for school or other use in quantities over 100 is fine if a URL is included (I would prefer that it be the url for the specific article, or maybe even the specific version printed) and if it includes a list of contributors with at least 5 names from the history -- perhaps the list of all non-IP contributor's ID's in the history, with no ID listed multiple times, would be a good compromise. DES (talk) 15:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

it is rare that each contributor will append a spearate copyright notice

It is a mandatory requirement of contributing that they do so as i t is a requirement of the GFDL (4E)! As I see it, this is a consequence of the guiding principle of crediting the author, given in the preamble to the GFDL. The way I interpret this is that there is an implicit macro that converts the signature in the history entry into a copyright notice. There is a problem with material that is GFDL compatible but originated outside of Wikipedia, as there is currently no satisfactory way of capturing the copyright notices.

A copy must include all "copyright notices" but that does not, as i read it, require the complete history

Firstly, this requirement applies to opaque copies, such as the screen display, as well as to transparent copies; attempting to remove them creates a modified version and the rules for modified versions require the preservation of these. Clause 4I mandates the inclusion of the history.
If you included a link to the specific copyright notices, immediately after the title, or as a tab, I think you might be able to argue that HTML version fell within the spirit of the GFDL, if not the letter, but that any printout was non-compliant and therefore could not be distributed even in quantity one.

I read this that the history can be reduced to five names

You misread it. This applies to the Title page or the text immediately following the main title, in default. The operative clause is 4D which requires all the copyright notices to be preserved. The how to use section says that the copyright notices should go just after the Title page, which means it isn't part of the Title page. Basically, the Title page limit is intended to make it possible to print it on one sheet. 4I also applies and this refers to a History section that is distinct from the title page.

if a URL is included (I would prefer that it be the url for the specific article

I'd certainly say it needs to be for the specific version, but it also needs to be for a transparent copy that is complete and contains no extraneous material. The edit page is incomplete (no History or copyright notices) and has extraneous material (the form), so that doesn't count as a transparent version.
I think the good news is that the deviations from the GFDL may be so great that no reasonable contributor could expect compliance with the GFDL.
The bad news is that every contributor will have a slightly different understanding of what the real licensing terms are, a situation that is only ever good for lawyers, of which I am not one. Also, it means that GFDL source material cannot be included in Wikipedia without negoatiating an alternative licence with its copyright owners.
--David Woolley 20:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


What happened to Indonesian Wikipedia?

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I couldn't connect. The error is http error 403.2. And it's only Indonesian wikipedia. roscoe_x 15:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be all right now.--Kewp (t) 17:01, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yea, two hours problem. Quite strange, it's only affecting one in a group. roscoe_x 23:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How-to upload and edit SVG

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I see that wikipedia now allows SVG. [2] This is great news for me since I like to make charts, graphs and maps, but have been waiting for full vector graphics support.

However, I'm confused about how to actually upload an SVG file. Do I paste the xml into wikipedia somewhere, or do a simply upload a .svg file using the regular uploader? Also, in order to edit an SVG file, do you edit the XML manually in wikipedia, or would you download the .svg file, edit, and reupload? Thanks for any helpful hints. --Quasipalm 16:31, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK you simply upload it using the regular uploader (and reupload to edit). --cesarb 17:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
To edit, use Inkscape. The XML source for any nontrival SVG will quickly become so horribly complex that you'd never willingly edit it manually. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:58, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry (didn't parse your question properly). Yes, download, edit, reupload. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

adding images

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how do you add images thats not from another aticle?

Name of God or Goddess

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I am trying to find a name of a god or goddess of Karma (or similiar =you reap what you sow) for a letter.

--anon

I don't have any specific answers for you, but Karma in Hinduism might be a step in the right direction. See also:
I'm sure if you dig in there enough, you'll come up with something. --Quasipalm 21:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Inserting Taxobox

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Dear Sir, I am a student, and just creted a new article for Lycopods. As this is a biological article, it will be better if I can insert a taxobox (The box showing the classification ie taxonomy of the genus). I could not find the tool to do so. Can you please edit the article to insert a taxobox?

The following data needs to be inserted:

Class: Lycopsidagenus Order: Lycopodiales Genus: Lycopodium

This information is given in the article body also.

With Regards

Pitam

--Pitam 18:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)pitam[reply]

I'm not sure there's any specific tool for inserting infoboxes; I've always accomplished it by using the "Edit" button on another article that uses the same sort of box I want, and then doing a copy-and-paste to get the box code (which may in some cases reference a template) to copy into the new article, with appropriate editing. *Dan T.* 18:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Including user data in edit summaries

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I have noticed that several people will include user data in edit summaries especially when reverting vandalism (something I do when I come across it, as I am told any good Wikipedian should). Is there a shortcut for this? I'm guessing there must be. --Just zis Guy, you know? 18:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's rollback, but it's only available to admins I'm afraid. There are some javascript hacks which come pretty close to doing the same thing, but I'm not sure where you'd be able to find them. I'm sure someone else will. --fvw* 18:28, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The best javascript one out there is Sam Hocevar's godmode-light script. Go to User:Just zis Guy, you know?/monobook.js and add in
document.write('<SCRIPT SRC="http://sam.zoy.org/wikipedia/godmode-light.js"><\/SCRIPT>');"><\/SCRIPT>');

that will give you a rollback button when viewing the diff of an article between the current and second to current versions and when viewing a user's contributions page. -Greg Asche (talk) 23:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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Who is the sponsor of wikipedia?

Well, I guess Wikipedian's are. There are fund-drives regularly. Check out Wikipedia:About for more information. --Quasipalm 20:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yahoo also have some contributions, like setting up server in Korea. roscoe_x 23:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is one of the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. —MESSEDROCKER (talk) 20:38, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Question from a curious man

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What are erectile disfuntions?

See Erectile dysfunction --Quasipalm 20:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My never shpwed up. Why not?

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About a week ago I registered as a user and edited the "fundamentalism" article. My edit still isn't there. Any idea why not? --212.179.198.95 20:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Articles are always changing -- your edit has probably simply been changed since your edit last week. I know this can be frustrating -- sometimes you'll labor over a paragraph simply to have it removed at a later date. If you let me know what your user name is, I could help you find it by looking in the article history here and possibly find some answers. --Quasipalm 20:53, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I've re-read your question -- sorry, I think I misunderstood you. Is it possible that you clicked on "Show preview" instead of "Save page" after editing the text? As soon as you click "Save page" your changes are complete and you should see them on that page in wikipedia -- unless you are creating a new page there should be no delay. --Quasipalm 20:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Save page acting like Show preview

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Of late, I have been finding that clicking on "Save page" on an edit results in the same results as if I clicked on "Show preview". Any ideas why? Using Firefox 1.06. --Durin 21:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's not just you. It's been asked before and the idea that I got was "They're working on it". It does it in IE and Safari too. Dismas|(talk) 21:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've been getting that too, I thought maybe that was a bug because it usually happened when someone conflicted me (and yes it was the preview message not the conflict message.) -Greg Asche (talk) 23:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's anything to do with conflict, it's just when the servers are busy. --Commander Keane 05:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I had that problem, and I have found the answer (drumroll please!): enable cookies. Not only does Wikipedia need to put a few cookies on your computer but also access them. Disabling cookies freezes this interaction and does not allow the edit to be saved to your account. So it gives a preview. HereToHelp 17:37, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Star Spangled Banner

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I want to use the text of the articles and distribute them free of charge but am a bit confused by some of the legal aspects in the GNU free doc license. I am basiccally using it verbatim from your site. Am confused as to what exactly to include with my copy.

This license?

"Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed."

and this:

"Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License"."


When you say:

"To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:"

is the license the entire written pages starting with the Preamble, 1. applicability and definitions 2. etc...or just the permission statements above?

Thanks

Well, I'm not a lawyer (and certainly not your lawyer), and Wikipedia doesn't give legal advice. My personal understanding is that you need to include the entire licence. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, do you want to redistribute articles on our site or the text of the GNU? -Greg Asche (talk) 23:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Basically, if it's for a website, you need to include the original title of the article at the top, followed by "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia." Then, after the article, include the following: a link to the original Wikipedia article, a link to the URL of the page history, a link to a copy of the GDFL available on your website (use this version, perhaps), and make it clear that the content from Wikipedia is available under the GFDL license. If it's for printing, the rules are quite different. IANAL, TINLA. --Kwekubo 23:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for you comments, Yes it is for printing, website would be a piece of cake. It may end up being more than 100 copies as well but I am not a lawyer either(obviously) but you need to be a lawyer to figure out the language. It seems kind of ridiculous if a report is two pages long and the legal ease license that must accompany it is 4. I thought that was the point of the copyleft and the noted license in the first place.

This is one of the objections that some have to using the GFDL (as opposed to cc-by-sa, which is its rough equivalent). Wikitravel uses cc-by-sa because they expect their articles to be printed out and distributed individually (in places like hotels), and they don't want someone to have to print out a four page licence attached to a one page article. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:22, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Finlay. I didn't even know that existed.

Please keep my article

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Please keep my article on Paduanisms, just till the end of this year. It's an end of year gag for my school. Plus, its better written then SOME articles *tuts*. Have you SEEN the article on MIDKEMIA!? It's a classic fantasy world, and they have horrible grammar! HORRIBLE! (preceding unsigned comment by 202.182.64.1 (talk · contribs) 00:27, 14 October 2005 UTC)

You already posted a message on this topic above. Please don't keep reposting the same question; discuss the article at its Articles for Deletion page. I personally haven't got a clue what Midkemia is, but you seem to, so if you see errors please feel free to correct them. --Kwekubo 23:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How do I become a user?

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How do I become a wikipedia user? do i have to contribute to a number of articles first?

  • You're a Wikipedia user from the first time you read an article! You can even help improve articles right now, without registering, by clicking edit this page at the top of almost any article. But you can also register a username, which takes half a minute and has a lot of benefits (like giving you credit for your contributions) - see Wikipedia:Why create an account?, or just go to Special:Userlogin to do it. --Kwekubo 00:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Testing for admission to a JD program

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I hold a bachelors degree in psychology. I am more comfortable with the idea of taking the MAT as opposed to the LSAT. Could I be admitted to a JD program with good MAT scores?

Can I export the entries I imput before?

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Greeting,

If I input 1000 entries in the Wikipedia, and now I want to export all of these 1000 entries to my local computer in whatever format, is it doable? If so, how do I do that?

Thanks

You can always pull your information out of the Wikipedia database dumps, as long as you abide by the terms of the license. Do you really intend to submit 1,000 new entries, though? =0 —HorsePunchKid→龜 03:52, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That's inconsistent with the position that each article is a document for licensing purposes. The smallest unit that you can call a document is the smallest unit for which you can obtain a transparent copy.
An implication of the database being the smallest transparent unit would be that anyone printing and distributing a single article needs to provide their own machine readable copy, because it is not a complete and unmodified version. IANAL TINLA
--David Woolley 12:20, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
For a single article you can always edit and copy and paste the wiki-code -- this is the trasparent copy. There is also Special:Export pages. But neither of these is conveneint for large numbers of articles. So in such a case the data dump is an alternate way to get a trasparent copy. It is not clear to me, however, that the wikipedia license contemplates each article being a separate document. Since one can alwas distribute a "modified copy" and the modifications can consist of deletions, even if all of en.wikipedia is considered a single GFDL document, one could always distribute a "modified copy" consistign of a single article or any sub-0set of articles. DES (talk) 16:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting that that Special link isn't red. I think you meant Special:Export. Thanks for the tip, though, in any case. I hadn't seen that before. —HorsePunchKid→龜 22:20, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason, Special: links are never red. You just get an error message if you try to access something that doesn't exist. Titoxd(?!?) 22:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you're getting at there, David, but my point was that if the questioner does add articles to Wikipedia, it is possible to retrieve them later through the database dump, if nothing else. IANAL either, but I'm pretty sure anyone can do that anytime they please and do whatever they want with the output, as long as they're not distributing it in any way. That's when the GFDL comes into play. Maybe my understanding is too simplistic? —HorsePunchKid→龜 22:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is this kind of dump then should contain all the entries, and I have to use the SQL language to export my entries, is that correct?

Yes, I'm planning to do that, even more. Mostly they are the english-chinese translation for the buddhism terms.

Be sure your additions are more than just definitions or at least have hope of being expanded beyond that. See guidelines regarding this at WP:NOT and specifically at WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary. -- Qaz (talk) 10:56, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tables, pictures and skin color

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(New heading provided)

how can add table and picture and also how can i chance the skin colar. thanks

International Phonetic Alphabet symbols

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On 5 October I posted a question about the on screen non-appearance of IPA symbols/characters, with a follow up some 3 days later when there was no response to my query.

My question is no longer present in the list. Has it been moved? If so, where to? If deleted, please can you explain why? --Geoff Powers 10:55, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you happen to be digging through the history of the Help desk, perhaps you could explain where the "Identifying Jews" section/question went.--Commander Keane 11:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archive_31#Identifying_Jews
--David Woolley 11:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archive_31#Question:_IPA_characters.2Fsymbols
There is a link to the help desk archives (sorry, can't get it to link) near the top of this page.
--David Woolley 11:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to your question about IPA symbols is that they do not show up correctly if you are using Internet Explorer. However there is a good solution to this in the form of the IPA template which should be used for all occurrences of IPA transcriptions. I suggest you look at Template talk:IPA and then feel free to add the template to any articles where it is missing. I try to do this myself whenever I come across them. --rossb 12:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

About the archiving, what is the turn-over period for a question. The archive periods are 10 days but both the "Identifying Jews" and "Question: IPA characters/symbols" questions lasted less than this. Also, shouldn't the archiving be clearly stated in the edit summary when it's done?--Commander Keane 13:55, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

HELP! CAMBRIGE & .net

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Often on Wikipedia when I click on a link i am redirected somehow to www.cambridge.org Also, if I type in "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TKKG", for example, it comes up as "www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TKKG.net/", because something is putting www. on the beginning and .net/ on the end. Does anyone know what I mean?

Linking images to pages?

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Is there a method to link images to pages. For e.g. when I click on an image, it should take me to a page and not the 'image page.' E.g. For making picture galleries that link to other galleries. Right not I am making a gallery and using the captions to link to the pages, like this....
<gallery> Image:Gallery1_head.JPG|[[Link to gallery 2]] Image:Gallery2_head.JPG|[[Link to gallery 2]] </gallery>
Lastly, even if we could do this, is this sort of linking advisable?...and howto add line breaks in a nowiki tag,arrrrgh! - Mechanicalamit 14:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia pages are not image galleries. So in general those are not adviseable. Why are you trying to make them?
Also, people with questions are often told to click the image to go to the description page for copyright info. Linking the to a page will break such a link and makes it harder to find copyright info. - 131.211.51.34 14:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Patent citations

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Is there a preferred way to cite patent documents? Also is there a preferred URL to link to an external patent repository? At present I use http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ as they have neat URLs, but further advice would be welcome. There was no mention of patents at Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style. --Jpoth 14:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please ad to the list

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Corliss Young (1957 - current) is the Founder of The Korliss Group which is now one of if not the oldest representations of ethnic talent in Missouri. The Korliss Group was founded in 1979 and continues to grow strong. Please find The Korliss Group listed with the Missouri Film Commission and Casting Society of America among the many accomplishments. The Web site is www.thekorlissgroup.com Ms. Young was born and has grown up in the city of St. Louis and should be added to the listing. Contact phone number <removed>

Thank You

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.
However, please be sure that your contribution is suitable for wikipedia. Please read what wikipedia is not and WP:SPAM#How not to be a spammer. Please be sure to write in a neutral manner and with a proper encyclopedic tone. Please remember that once you submit content, you do not control it, and anyone may edit it in any way, and that if others do not feel that the subject is notable, or appropriate for wikipedia, they may propose deleting the article. See our speedy deletion criteria and our deletion policy. Happy editing. DES (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Walden Theatre

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How can we become a part of Wikipedia as a resource to the community. Walden Theatre is a Youth Conservatory for the study of theatre by students ages 8-18. We would like to be listed in your Arts and Entertainment section.

Sincerely, Miriam-Walden Theatre Public Relations Assistant

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.
However, please be sure that your contribution is suitable for wikipedia. Please read what wikipedia is not and WP:SPAM#How not to be a spammer. Please be sure to write in a neutral manner and with a proper encyclopedic tone. Please remember that once you submit content, you do not control it, and anyone may edit it in any way, and that if others do not feel that the subject is notable, or appropriate for wikipedia, they may propose deleting the article. See our speedy deletion criteria and our deletion policy. Happy editing. DES (talk) 16:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

cell phone monitoring

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can you monitor cell phones....can you monitor a portable house phone?

For future reference, you should probably ask your question here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science
The answer depends on what type of cell phone. Older, analog phones are easy to monitor -- all you need is some not-quite-legal equipment available on the internet. Digital cell phones are very, very difficult for the average person to monitor. However, government officials can do it easily (the phone companies are required to allow "taps" by law). Portable house phones are also easy to monitor, unless you get a digital and encrypted model. However, remeber that physical access to the phone line makes wire-tapping on land-lines very easy. --Quasipalm 17:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OS X.3, wikimedia 1.5 redirection issue

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Please pardon my noobyness. I am setting up wikipedia on OS X here at work. While I would rather be using linux or a straight unix system, that is not up to me. I have been able to get apache running, php, and mysql with no problems. After I run through the mediawiki config page, it says it is setup and to move the localsettings.php file to the root wiki directory. After I move the file, I click the link, that directs me to wikiroot/index.php. I get the page not found message. If I refresh the page, it goes back to the setup page that says I need to configure it first. If I click that link, it says it is already configured, and directs me back to wikiroot/index.php, and again I get page not found.

I have gone through and made sure everything is at least 755 permissions, just to make sure its not an access issue. I am at a complete loss for what could be causing the problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

--JoshMan

I'm sorry we can't really help you here. This page is concerned with Wikipedia, not the MediaWiki software in other uses. You should really look to mediawiki.org or Meta — Sverdrup 23:47, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Collective nouns

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What is the collective noun for teachers, shops and houses?

First, this page is for questions on how to use Wikipedia. The Wikipedia:Reference desk is for factual questions. That being said... I'm not sure if it will be there but you could check the different lists we have at List of collective nouns. Dismas|(talk) 19:46, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
(after edit conflict) That is the place to look alright, and no entries are given for any of these three subjects. DES (talk) 19:52, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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Dear Sir,

I added an entry about a DJ called Simon Loewen, but I see that there is now an entry saying that its a possible copyright infringment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simon_Loewen&oldid=24137577

If you have just labeled this page as a possible copyright infringement, please add the following to Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 October 14

Please could you tell me what specific part of the web page you are referring to and how this infringes on a copyright? Please note that I am the author of the web page http://www.simonloewen.com/upcome.htm

If I have infringed on someone else's copyright, please would you tell me what it is?

Yours sincerely, Simon.

Email: [Email removed]

  • Probably it got labelled as copyright infringement because nobody knew you were the owner of the material. You can follow point #2 on the copyright violation template that's currently at Simon Loewen: "If you hold the copyright to this material, or if you have permission to use this material under the terms of our license, please indicate so on this page's talk page and under the article's listing on Wikipedia:Copyright problems." -- SCZenz 21:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note that it is not enough to say you are the author, you will need to explicitly release the content under the GFDL, and provide soem indication that you are in fact the owner. But if you are this can probably be settled fairly easily. The action taken is the routine action when a wikipedi article seems to be a cu&paste copy from a web site. DES (talk) 22:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WHO DECIDES WHO BLOCKS?

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THERE IS A PAGE CALLED THE "KASHMIR" PAGE WHERE THE GUY HAS WRITTEN A LONG BORING PAGE THAT LEAVES OUT ALOT OF FACTS...THIS ISNT JUST MY OPINION BECAUSE OTHERS HAVE SAID SO ALSO...SO I TRIED MAKING IT SHORTER, AND WITH MORE FACTS, AND HE KEEPS CHANGING IT BACK AND NOW HES SAYING HES GOING TO BLOCK ME...WHY DOES HAVE THAT RIGHT? CAN U PLEASE EMAIL ME AND ANSWER BECAUSE I WONT KNOW HOW TO GET BACK HERE TO CHECK...MY EMAIL IS [Email Removed] PLEASE HELP THIS IS BOTHERING ME!

Change it yourself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ARYAN818 (talk • contribs) 21:24, 14 October 2005

Administrators decide who is blocked and who isn't. Removing large amounts of text from an article is a sure way to get their attention, but not in a good way. Titoxd(?!?) 21:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, you might want to review some of the instructions at the top of the Help Desk page:
  • Please sign your question. If you have an account on Wikipedia, type --~~~~ at the end. Otherwise, you may sign your name or write --anon.
  • Please do not list your e-mail address, as questions aren't normally answered by e-mail. Also, be aware that the content on Wikipedia is extensively copied to many websites, and so making your e-mail address public here may make it very public throughout the Internet.
  • Please check back for updates occasionally. A complete answer may be developed over a period of days.
  • Please avoid using all capital letters; not only do they make a question harder to read, but they are often interpreted as impolite or shouting.
As for how to get back here (if you ever do to read this), I would suggest putting this page on your watchlist, bookmarking it, or remembering that this is the Wikipedia:Help Desk. Thanks. -- SCZenz 22:03, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Underline?

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Is it just me, or have all the underlines from the links disappeared. According to my preferences, the links should always be formatted with an underline. It certainly makes things harder for the colour blind. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk), (Recent Contrib) 21:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no, the underlines are still there. There was a revamping of the preferences which introduced that as a new feature, though, so you might want to check them again and then refresh your browser's cache (it says how to on the Preferences page). Titoxd(?!?) 21:51, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Recently, a line was removed that was forcing underlining unless you had a preference to not underline. It probably is following your browser's default now (I am not sure if the "always underline" setting works) — check your browser's settings as a workaround. --cesarb 21:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Are you color blind? (Or only "colour" blind in England? ;) If you are I am fascinated at your choice of color signatures (blue and green). - Tεxτurε 22:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
All right, whoever was playing with it just caused it to stop underlining in my browser. Does anyone mind to explain what's going on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titoxd (talk • contribs) 22:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This happens when your the CSS page your browser tries to load when styling the page gets a server error. Try hitting reload, shift reload, alt reload, ctrl reload or something like that. If that doesn't work, empty your browser cache and restart your browser. --fvw* 22:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I refreshed my cache now, and it's fixed. But it was too much of a coincidence for me to say that they aren't broken and immediately break for me, isn't it? Titoxd(?!?) 22:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The underlines have disappeared for me as well. I've done a forced reload, emptied the cache, and restarted Internet Explorer, but they're still not there. -- 59.167.13.177 06:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Possible to associate anon changes with account?

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Is it possible for me|someone to associate edit's I've made as an anon-user with a new account? If so, how?

I'm thinking of creating such an account (username: rivimey) and it would make sense to me to associate my old edits with it.

Ruth

Right now it is impossible to change the attribution of edits (it was possible in the past), regardless of them being anon edits or registered user edits. However, that said, You're more than welcome to create an account! Titoxd(?!?) 23:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If you do register, you can mention what edits you made as an anon on your user page, or you can place "[[Special:Contributions/194.106.52.201]]" as a link to your anon's contributions (if all these edits are yours). — Kjammer ⌂ 03:32, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Martinus Beijerinck

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this is regarding [4]

the external link at the bottom of this page does not direct ytou to another site please resolve this issue

Link rot is always a problem. I managed to solve this for you (found [5] ) . HTH. — Sverdrup 23:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

image licensing

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Question about Image:Easternwashington.PNG which I created and uploaded under the 'cc-by-nc-sa' license. There's a message saying that this license is considered not free for the purposes of Wikipedia and that "older images with this template will be considered for deletion." I certainly don't want that to happen and I do want my images to be free. So: am I able to do anything about this situation? Can I simply decide I want to replace the 'cc-by-nc-sa' license with a freer license? How is the best way to do that? (As a side note, this came up because I noticed the Washington State Democrats were using a version of the image on their home page, http://www.wa-democrats.org/, which usage I have no problem with and which I believe is allowed) --Lukobe 23:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you created it, and retain all rights, you can always "license down" to a freer license. If you're willing to have it licensed as available for commercial use - we try and have commercial-use images to accomodate any possible reuse of the encyclopedia - it would seem simplest to go with the GFDL. Shimgray | talk | 23:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I did indeed create it and retain all rights. So I just go in to the image page and replace cc-by-nc-sa with whatever the proper GFDL tag is (don't worry, I can find it)? If so, that's exactly what I'll do...thanks... --Lukobe 23:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

song about the death of hank williams

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my father used to sing a song about the death of hank williams, I think I know them all but would like confirmation.

way back in west virgina, between midnight and dawn a big blue car came rolling it's wheels they hummed a song the headlights shown into the night to light the road so steep while in the back Hank Williams lay in a deep and dreamless sleep he was heading for Ohio, to play a show next day while thousands there were waiting to hear him sing and play. the chauffer reached into the back and shook the sleeping man he said wake up, wake up my friend then took him by the hand he tried to wake him up again then rushed him into town but the doctor said too late, too late he's gone to a better land He wrote songs about the bible and songs about the hills his songs about the lonesome blues they gave the world a thrill. although he's gone on to his rest his songs live on and on Hank Williams, here's to you

A need a guide to write a grammar of a language whose page is still incomplete

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I want to complete the pages related to Kawésqar, Yamana, tehuelche and Ona languages. Is there any standard way to describe a language in a wikipedia article? ~~DaniloVilicic

  • There's a wikibook about this titled "How to write a book on any language" or something like that. --User:Mdob

name of the author

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I need the name of the [author of the ]short story "but the one on the right". I remember she is American and famous. Please, help me!

Dorothy Parker. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Dorothy Parker. Cheers --Quasipalm 03:18, 15 October 2005 (UTC) Oops, Rick beat me to it.  :-) In the future, you might ask here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities[reply]

Fixing old cut and paste moves

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About a month ago, the article Gravitar has been cut[6] and pasted[7] to gravitar (arcade game). The problem is that since it has been a month, there has been subsequent edits to the later article, meaning the edits in the that article's history would be lost if a proper move is to be made. How do I handle the situation? Is it still a good idea to proceed with the process of reverting the former article, temporarily deleteing the later, and move the former to the later namespace, and re-revert the former page?

I have not notified the editor yet, it has been a month and it is probably old news to him. — Kjammer ⌂ 03:24, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Naming conventions and categories

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Recently I saw a lot of edits to the categories of bio articles by the same editor. Curious, I checked them out. They were adding cat's such as Category:Natives of Bremen, Category:Las Vegans, and Category:Rochesterians. There are a number of them in the cat Category:American people by city. According to the naming conventions, shouldn't these be "People from Las Vegas" or "People from Rochester"? And really, shouldn't they be even more specific since there's probably more than one "Las Vegas" or "Rochester" so they would then be "People from Las Vegas, Nevada" or "People from Rochester, New York"?

Although, I'm of the opinion that it's being overly specific. I would think that "People from Nevada" or "People from New York" would suffice. Otherwise it could create such things as "People from Ottumwa, Iowa" and every other small town. This would then create arguments about where to draw the line as to whether a particular town needs a "People of..." cat. Arrrgh... I really should have stayed in bed.... Dismas|(talk) 11:27, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Letters

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I am interested in Japanese/Greek/Asain/other symbols and letters as shown on the little puzzle-globe. I may create a page of language or reasearch about it or make my own language.....how do you post them? Turn on "Greek Wkipedia" and just type away?

Please see m:Help:Special_characters. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

David Bradley

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I've just noticed that we somehow have two pages for the British actor David Bradley — one at David Bradley (actor) and the other at David Bradley (Actor). I've never come across this sort of thing before, so I thought I'd better point it out and enquire as to what the procedure for dealing with it would be? Angmering 14:00, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can list the two articles at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles or take a look at Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages which tells you how to merge the articles. The article should probably stay at David Bradley (actor), because according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions, "Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized." The material from David Bradley (Actor) should be incorporated into David Bradley (actor) and the David Bradley (Actor) should be turned into a redirect. --Kewp (t) 15:02, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Adding Signatures and Other General Things

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Hey, everyone. I have already done some light work here. I made some updates to the Morse Code page, as well as created a page for Ernest Chappell. I'm getting the hang of most of this, but this is still all new territory for me and I was wondering if anyone had any good resources for how to really get started (Books, websites, etc.). Amazon has some books about Wiki's, but they seem to assume the reader has knowledge of other systems such as PERL, HTML, etc... all things that I know nothing about, so I don't know if those books would be of any use.

For one, I have no idea how to add my signature to a post such as this. I don't fuly understand where the community asspect of Wikipedia starts, and the Encyclopedia begins. I don't understand the etiquite or protocol for referencing an article, or noting what changes I have made to another page.

Thanks in advance for any help.

You can add your signature with four tildes (~~~~), like so: Andy Janata 15:16, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Please click "My talk" (at the top of the page). An editor left you a welcome message last August with a number of helpful links. To communicate with this editor directly (who would be happy to help you with these sorts of questions), just leave a message on their talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:21, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the tips. I did see the comments left to me by an editor. They certainly helped. I suppose I'm finding the easiest way to learn how this all works is to just click on Edit for any page I find with interesting characteristics, and then just cutting and pasting them into the Sandbox to mess around with. Also, thanks Andy for telling me about adding signatures. Phauge 21:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suspect content

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Is this the right place to query content? (Querying content on an article's talk page doesn't usually achieve much.) The haircut article says that "combing hair over a bald spot [is] currently extremely popular among the youth of America." Are the youth of America going bald? Shantavira 15:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just erased that part, I don't know what that person was thinking. Sfgiants222 03:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Observatory Criteria

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Hi, I was going to ask this over on the wikiproject telescopes and observatories, but the project is really dorment and I thought it had a better chance of being answered here. Are all observatoies in, or is there some criteria threshold that they have to meet (notability, age, etc) in order to be included. I've been just going by the information on their webpages, trying to make the best article I can, like Moletai Astronomical Observatory. I recently came across a list of over a 1000 observatories, and I was thinking of just creating stubs with basic info (who,what,where,external link), but thought that some might get deleted. What do you think? --Rayc 19:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There's a notability threshold for any article in Wikipedia, although I might say that most observatories are well within it, as long as they're not fictitious. I'd say, go ahead. Titoxd(?!?) 19:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How to create a section table of contents

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  Brazil I saw in some user pages and is some wikipages a table of contents. However the TOC shown in the template page is a Compact one. I would like to know how do I do a TOC with titles.

Answer in PT or EN

Se eu entendi você direito, basta criar quatro ou mais seções, isto é:
===Seção 1===
Blah Blah Blha
===Seção 2===
Mais texto
===Seção 3===
Outro texto
===Seção 4===
Mais texto ainda
E uma table of contents automaticamente aparecerá.
---User:Mdob | Talk 21:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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When I try to access:

My browser goes to a blank page with a message saying that that articles "doesn't exist yet". But the articles exists! I guess this has something to do with my Unicode configuration (Nordstrom has an .. over the O and Lukazievwich has an / over th L). this is a very annoing problem with almost all foreign names.

My configurations is:

  • IE 6
  • WAMP4
  • Windows XP Home Edition (Brazilian portuguese version) SP2
  • 256MB RAM

Any sugestions? User:Mdob | Talk 21:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The URL for the first one is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_%C5%81ukasiewicz. This already has the necessary URL encoding performed before sending to Mozilla. If this link fails, I would suspect that there is a problem with your proxy server. If it works, you will need to view source and see if something different is being sent to your browser.
It's possible that your software is trying to work around some common Brazillian misuse of URLs, although I think that unlikely.
--David Woolley 22:56, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Another example of unusable diffs

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Apologies if it's bad form to resurrect an archived question, but the diffs being generated are still very poor. It is hard for me to believe that it's always been this way, and I'm just noticing it now. See this new example, as well as this previous example. For the former, see here (130kB, 1600x1200, PNG) for an example of what a reasonable diff would be. The latter suffers essentially the same problem, as far as I can tell (large chunks of text are very similar but being treated as totally different). Any thoughts? I have never in the past needed to open up an external diff program just to understand changes here. —HorsePunchKid→龜 21:24, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please, contact directly Tim Starling, he is the guy who makes the crappy software we call WikiMedia; ---User:Mdob | Talk 21:30, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the pointer. I have dropped him a note. :) —HorsePunchKid→龜 03:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Postage

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(moved to WP:RD/M)

Deleting earlier versions of images; changing licensing

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I have updated many of the images I have put into articles here, but when I try to delete the older versions I am told I need to be a "sysop" to do this. I have discovered one instance of someone who has arbitrarily (or so it seems to me) reverted one of my images to a previous version, which I do not wish to happen. Also, an additional license has been added to an image of mine with which I am unfamiliar and do not want associated with the image.

I have spent considerable time adding images to articles where I think it would enhance the value of the content, but I am increasingly uncomfortable with the way others can alter the licensing I have attempted to establish for my original work. I have discussed this with my attorney, and she advised me at the very least to use lower resolution images, which I have uploaded to overwrite the higher-resolution images I had previously contributed. But evidently some people can revive older versions of files that I no longer want to be made available. My attorney's most forceful advice was *not* to provide any content to Wikipedia at all.

I *would* like to add content to the project, but if others have this amount of control over my work I am reluctant to continue. I have given this matter quite a lot of thought and find that I am simply not comfortable with the free-and-easy ethos that prevails here with resect to intellectual property. I support the idea of a group effort to which many can contribute. I just don't like the way others can change your work and its licensing. Since I make my living as a content creator, the "Wikipedia way" is just outside my comfort zone.

How can I arrange for all of my contributions to be deleted permanently from the system? It's been fun, but....

JShook 22:56, 15 October 2005 (UTC) 21:50, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can't. When you licenced content under the GFDL, it remains so licenced. If we allowed people to add stuff and then capriciously withdraw it when they discovered others could change it, that would allow them to seriously damage wikipedia. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:54, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Though that isn't the same as changing the licensing. Either you granted a suitable license originally, which you can't revoke (in the same way that the text you contribute is released for use outside your control); or you didn't, and the image has to be deleted anyway. The original license terms can't be modified (unless it is under a provision of that license). Can you give an example of an image that has had its license terms changed? Unfortunately, image descriptions are as open to mistakes and mischief as any other text. Notinasnaid 22:05, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Example of license I did not attach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Muriwai_Beach_02.jpg The second license (GNU Free Documentation License) was added by someone else. It appears the basic attitude here is Ha ha--you screwed yourself. I was not planning on "capriciously withdraw"ing images--only deleting images that are not used by any article. And maintaining the license under which they were uploaded. But you seem to want it all, whether it's in use or not. Fine. So long. Good luck with your collective endeavor. JShook 22:56, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
When you uploaded that image, you said "...releases the image under the GFDL". That's the licence under which you uploaded it. But you explicitly and clearly and with full knowledge of what you were doing licenced it under the GFDL. The GFDL absolutely was not added by someone else - you put it there yourself. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:05, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Under the GFDL you retain the image copyright, but you grant a permenant, world-wide, non-revocable licence to anyone to use the image (the same applies to any text you write and post) provided that such use complies with the GFDL which basically means that proper credit must be provided, and free access must be given. You retain the copyright, but you effectively give anyone anywhere the right to reproduce or modify the image, and use it in any publication -- provided that publication is released under the GFDL. When you upload content there is boilerplate that says you are releasing any content for which you hold copyright under the GFDL -- this applies unless you made it very clear that you did not grant this licence. Simply saying "I retain copyright" does not do that, since a GFDL uploader retains copyright.
However, if you upload a lower res version of each such image under a different file name, replace the uses in articles of the high-res with the lower res versions, and place a note on the talk page of the high res version requesting deletion, you may get it. If you do this and send me a note with links to the images involved on my talk page, I will see what I can do to assist you. I am an admin. DES (talk) 23:36, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
For the higher resolution image to be deleted in favour of the lower, it would have to be nominated on WP:IFD. The higher resolution version is not a candidate for speedy deletion. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
And how does one do that? When clicking on the link to any of the older, unwanted files, it just loads the image. There is no surrounding page in which to place the request for deletion. JShook 00:38, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As Finlay McWalter said, you must nominate the images for deletion at WP:IFD. --Kwekubo 01:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Muriwai_Beach_02.jpg. Notice that there are eight images with the same name listed at the bottom of the page. All but one is obsolete or unwanted. Clicking on any image name but the first in the list opens *just the image.* The instructions for how to list an image for deletion all require that you place specific text in the page containing the image. How does one do that with, say, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/4/45/20051003223046%21Muriwai_Beach_02.jpg ? There is no page into which you can put any text to list that image for deletion.

I think we should respect this user's wishes and delete the high-res versions; obviously he doesn't want them here. Yes, he technically released the large ones, but we can keep the high-res images against his wishes and alienate a contributor who has enthusiasm for the project and may well continue to contribute the smaller images (and he has contributed quite a few), or we can delete them, and keep the smaller but still quite good and suitable for most uses versions. Frankly I think it doesn't matter whether we're legally allowed to keep them or not; what's the right thing to do in this case? (I don't see these on IfD yet; has someone listed them already? An explanatory note that the listing applies to only the high-res versions should suffice.)Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have entered into comunication with thsi user on his talk page. i advised him to upload the low-res versions under different names, edit the relevant articels to use the low res versions, and then nominate the high-res versions on WP:IFD. If he does this I will support the delteion of the high-res versions. I will also help him with this process if he needs it. DES (talk) 07:32, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for your support. I have listed a trial balloon image for deletion (after uploading a lower-resolution version and linking the image in the article to it.) No page now uses the image. Or images, rather, since there are several trivally-different versions of it on the one page, and, of course, the high-resolution version. Let's see what happens. JShook 22:54, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Portals

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I'm sorta neutral about a Portal:Sexuality... but does anyone else think a Portal:Portal is going too far? Alf melmac 22:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Portal isn't on the requested list, I'm probably not seeing the use that the editors are intending. Alf melmac 23:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can't find the right contact section for reporting an error in an article.

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Can't find the right contact section for reporting an error in an article. So I'm sending this email here. For future help, where should I have sent this email? Thanks. The following details the (possible) "error" that I discovered:

1. Page: Lev Vygotsky URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vygotsky Section: Work To find error search for: scaffolding Detail: The sentence preceeding and following it are not complete.

2. Same page as above. To find inconsistency search for: Piaget Detail: Sentence reads that Piaget was not influenced by Vygotsky. But if you read Piaget's page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget), search for Vygotsky and it implies that, in fact, Vygotsky was influenced by Piaget. So which is it?

Regards,

Shirag

If you discover an error, you can fix it yourself. That's what the "edit this page" link on every article is for. Isomorphic 00:15, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Or, if you wish to discuss it instead of fixing it yourself, you can use the "Discussion" page connected with the article. However, if it's not a very actively-edited article, nobody may see it. *Dan T.* 00:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Right. Fixing is a valid suggestion, but I am not qualified to do that. The "discussion" suggestion may be what's needed. I'll see if anyone responds. Thank you. Shirag 04:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned above ("Suspect Content") there doesn't seem to be anywhere on Wikipedia to call suspect content to anyone's attention when one feels unqualified to edit it oneself. Except for major articles, most talk pages seem to be ignored. There is WP:RFC but this seems to be more to do with disputes, though I have usefully asked for comments on content there. Shantavira 10:12, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Relativity: The Special and General Theory

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Subject topic contains files for equations and figures such as eq07.gif and Fig01.gif. I am unable to make these files display. Please advise.

The questioner is referring to this article. The display does appear to be broken but I don't know how to fix it. Shantavira 13:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, this article is still in Einstein's copyright until 2025 in the UK (the translator also needs to be considered). It really could do with an explanation of the basis for treating it as public domain (it would seem that this is based on a US only rule about publication before 1923). I thought that Wikipedia used the 70 year rule exclusively to avoid that problem. I wonder if the images got more strictly treated.
If you are in the USA and want to see the original, it is available on the Project Guthenberg and Marxist Reference Library sites.
--David Woolley 18:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Using user language categories

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Hi, I'm a bit confused about how the different language 'subdomains' interact eg. en for English and zh for Chinese. cf. (en) lowlevel Chinese speakers / (zh) lowlevel Chinese speakers. My primary language is English... is it preferable to list myself in the en category zh-1, then? Or both? Also, how can I search the special "meta" Wikipedia pages (like this one) rather than the regular articles? Is there a shortcut or special phrase I can put in Google or Wikipedia search itself to do this? thanks! -pfctdayelise 02:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a new article

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I am trying to create a new article, but when I click "create an article with this title" I get a 404, page not found, at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%22the_michael_richards_show%22&action=edit

What's wrong and how do I get this to work?

It does. Try again, but why not with correct capitalisation. Also, please sign your name when leaving messages using four tildes (~~~~) --Perfecto 03:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried again it its the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Michael_Richards_Show&action=edit Does that link work for you? It didn't work either when I tried yesterday. Sfgiants222 03:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it does. Are you sure it's a 404 page? --Perfecto 03:24, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes:

The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.


Please try the following:

If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Open the en.wikipedia.org home page, and then look for links to the information you want. Click the Back button to try another link. Click Search to look for information on the Internet.


HTTP 404 - File not found Internet Explorer Sfgiants222 03:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, can you try your user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sfgiants222&action=edit ? --Perfecto 03:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't work either, I've tried clearing cache and restarting. 24.5.166.84 03:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That last post was mine, I forgot to log back in when I opened a new window. Sfgiants222 03:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's weird that http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=edit is working (you can leave messages here!) but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sfgiants222&action=edit doesn't. How do you explain that? --Perfecto 03:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried it in Firefox and it worked fine... That doesn't make much sense but at least it works now. Sfgiants222 03:38, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Version 6.0 with cookies enabled. Sfgiants222 21:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Can't make new pages with IE — it's a known problem. As a temporary workaround, you could try using another browser (for instance, Mozilla Firefox) to create new articles. --cesarb 23:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Newpages/User ?

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Could there be a way to see a list of articles that a user started? Thanks! --Perfecto 03:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To see your own contributions, look for the link on your screen labeled My contributions. To see someone else's, click on their linked user name and then look for the User contribution link and click on it. alteripse 03:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism Being Removed

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The page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Southern_California#Student_Government

contains common criticisms of one of the Student Government branches. However, somebody (maybe from the branch itself?) keeps removing the Criticism sub-heading. How can this be prevented?

The reason why inclusion of the criticism is so important is because it has so thoroughly colored the Student Government's history. The most recent spat, which includes even more than the common criticisms already included, happened as recently as the end of the last academic year, May 2005.

How can the section's removal be prevented?

We assume you are new here. Go to the article again. Press the link entitled Discussion to go to the Talk page for the article. This is where you ask the other contributors why they changed something and then you discuss it until you reach a mutually satisfactory resolution (we hope). To see who has done what to the page, use the link entitled Page history. You'll figure it out. Two free hints: (1) you will get much better responses if you made up a user name and log in (free and takes less than a minute and hides your IP); (2) after you have an account, you can sign your name with date/time with four tildes, like this alteripse 23:56, 16 October 2005 (UTC) (look at this in edit mode if you don't grasp it). Happy editing. alteripse 23:56, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Use of DigitalGlobe Images to illustrate an article (Copyright)

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I have created three images to illustrate an article and have based them on DigitalGlobe images from Google Earth. (I have added labels and arrows) Can I use these with out breaching DigitalGlobes copyright? If I can what attribution do I need to make?

Thanks Stagking

Look at the coyright notice that DigitalGlobe provide. Is it in one of the forms permitted for images. I would be most surprised if it was. If it is not, or you cannot find one, you cannot use a derivative work of the form that you described. Satellite imagery and aerial photography (as well as mapping data) are commercially valuable and expensive to obtain, so in general are not provided under Wikipedia compatible copyrigh terms.
More of a borderine case would be using the image to find the exact geographicalcoordinates and plotting your own map based on those. That might be interpreted as being factual data. You would have to be sure that you hadn't entered into a contract which forbids that. Unless you can find clear precedent for doing that, you should consult a lawyer. I'm not one, so you cannot rely on any adivice I give.
Note that most commercial web sites attempt to create contracts. If you see words like "By entering this site you agree", or similar, that is an attempt to create one element of the creation of a valid contract, namely acceptance. Whether all the elements are there is a question for a lawyer, and may well involve case law.
--David Woolley 07:36, 16 October 2005 (UTC) (re-edit 07:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)~)[reply]

Does anyone else have any Ideas as to this?

--Stagking 08:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't seem as if any further ideas are needed. You didn't answer the question posed: "Look at the coyright notice that DigitalGlobe provide. Is it in one of the forms permitted for images." Unless the answer to this is YES, the rest of the reply applies. Notinasnaid 08:51, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

linking

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How do I edit a page where I can have the a word that you can click on and it will take you to the relating website?

See Wikipedia:External links DES (talk) 07:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Tomas Szbarro Family

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Whats happened to the page about "The Tomas Szbarro Family", I looked for it this morning and its gone. Now people will never believe me it ever existed. Put it back, its insane!

It was probably deleted, maybe because it might be a non-notable topic. It's... Thelb4! 10:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That's gone now. Thelb'4 15:21, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Song samples

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What is the proper way to link to a song sample (which I uploaded here) on an article? -- Thorpe talk 11:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The basic method is by using a "media:" link (see Wikipedia:How to edit a page). There are a set of templates for fancier presentation, for an example of their use see Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)#Media. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:15, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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Hello!

I have this problem with hyperlinks displayed on Wikipedia pages. They are of blue colour, but they are NOT underlined. I use Mozilla Firefox and Windows XP and I am very curious if this problem can be fixed. Hyperlinks on ANY OTHER PAGE on internet are underlined, only Wikipedia is excluded!¨I have checked the Firefox settings, and in Options/General/Fonts and Colors/ there is a possibility about underlining links, which I have already okayed- but the problem stilll persists.

Please help!!!

  • It might be a problem with the CSS. If you sign up for an account and log in, you get to select between different CSS's, which presumably also gives you a choice between non-underlined and underlined links. — JIP | Talk 14:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are articles containing only speculation allowed on Wikipedia?

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Notably video game related. I've seen a couple of articles where the only real facts are that nothing is decided yet, and the rest is speculation and guesses. Are such articles even allowed? -82.7.125.142 13:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is a qualified no. A golden rule here is "no original research", which means speculation by wikipedians isn't permitted at all. However, sourced speculation is permitted, if the source of the speculation is properly cited and from a reliable source (per WP:CITE). So, for example, we can have speculation about The Grassy Knoll, but we need to cite noted JFK conspiracy theorists for that (we can't invent our own theories). For video games, if someone can cite a games magazine article saying the next Harry Potter game will be called Harry Potter gets Hermione in the family way then that deserves a (brief) mention. But some blog somewhere, or the contributor's best guess, isn't acceptable, and must be removed. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:48, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. What do you think of this, then? I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't have many facts in it (if any at all). -82.7.125.142 14:24, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That article seems to contain little but direct quotes from reliable sources, cited in an appropriate manner. It seems entirely appropriate to me. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How to find vandal's edits

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I just reverted some nonsense written by User:67.165.105.138 but it had been there for two weeks already, since when there had been a lot more edits to the article. It took me ages to work out who had contributed nonsense so that I could find it all and delete it. Is there an easier way than working one's way through the history and comparing every single edit? And shouldn't someone have checked this new user's edits when they first appeared? Shantavira 14:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Contributions/67.165.105.138 should do the trick. You can use the diff link to find the diff between their version and the previous version. Andy Janata 14:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but my question is about how to find who the contributor is in the first place. Shantavira 15:09, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, the fastest way is to do a time-based binary search of the history. If you're not a programmer (this is a search technique familiar to all programmers) here's how this works. Pick an old version. See if it's there. If not pick a version about half-way between the old version that doesn't include it and the current version. If not in this version it must be in the "top" half, if it is in this version it must be in the "bottom" half. Repeat, each time picking a version about halfway between a version you know doesn't have the change and a version you know has the change (narrowing this range by half each time). Assuming the change you're looking for is among the most recent 50 versions, this method will find it in 6 clicks. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:56, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How to request an article?

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I've heard that you can actually request an article on something. How?

I've read the FAQs over and over again and they don't give any valid pointers on the issue. Many links sound promising but point to "requestED articles". I don't want to see a list of what someone else has requested but to make a request myself. The link to "RequestING an article" should be on the 'article about XYZ is not found on WIKIPEDIA' page, for example on page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljks there should be a 'request an article on ljks' link.

If there indeed is such a feature (so it kinda appears!) it's not very well implemented. Please do something about this. WIKIPEDIA is like the Soviet Union: It's got huge potential and many talented people are really working to make it a success. Still, it could do better, so it won't have the same faith as... This is obviously one of the basic issues with such an extreme case of a distributed project.

If you do stick the 'request an article' link on the not found page, you WILL get shitloads of requests. (Excuse my french.) However, that's exactly what you (we! ;) want. You can see what articles are needed. And friendly people who know about the subject WILL write those articles... And everybody will be happy.

I've spent the last hour or so searching answer to this trivial question. It's very frustrating. I'll try to bookmark my question so I will be able to see if someone answers this...

If you've read all this, I suggest you congratulate yourself, as you obviously are contributing to this great project. Thanks if you can help a silly fool like me and maybe someone else too...

--anon

File it on Wikipedia:Requested articles. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've added the link on the "XYZ not found on Wikipedia" page. Thanks for the suggestion. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation for the same type of topic

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I'm trying to add an entry for a band (which did publish an album and has members listed here so it is significant enough for an article) but I've found that there's already a completely different band with the same name with an article here already. How do I handle this?

--Hcs 16:34, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you're asking about Skeleton Crew (band). If they're from different countries, you could add a country qualifier, e.g. Skeleton Crew (US band) vs. Skeleton Crew (UK band). In this case they're both US-based. allmusic.com disambiguates these two bands by decade, which would argue for Skeleton Crew (80s band) vs. Skeleton Crew (90s band), with Skeleton Crew (band) being a disambiguation page (unless one of these is overwhelmingly better known than the other). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that'll do. I'd seen the reference to disambiguating by country but I didn't think to use the decade. --Hcs 14:53, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User Pages

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Is it against Wikipedia rules to copy someone's User Page exactly purposely? I'm not naming any names...(see link)--Anti-Anonymex2Come to my page! I've gone caliente loco! 20:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Copying someone's userpage is allowed, but if they're used to impersonate someone it's not. Example: I've initially copied the layout of Blankfaze's userpage (allowed), but someone else copied it word-for-word and tried to fake people into thinking the duplicate page was mine (not allowed). - Mgm|(talk) 21:10, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

T V History : Game Shows

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Hi, a friend of mine got the history of Beat The Clock from you. I would like to look up other shows history. How do I do this? John Otis (e-mail address removed)

Just type the name of the show in the search box at the top, left hand side, of any page. By the way, we have articles on more than just TV game shows... Dismas|(talk) 00:16, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
To find other shows you might like start somewhere like List of TV shows or game show. Shantavira 15:38, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia on CD or DVD as fund raiser?

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I was wondering if Wikipedia is available on CD or some other archivable non-internet source (like DVD). I would love to have the whole of Wikipedia on CD or DVD since i live in a rural area with poor internet access. I understand that Wikipedia is a work in progress and maybe it could be published every year or five years or whatever. It could be another source of revenue for the project (if it doesn't already exist) in addition to all the hats, t-shirts, mugs etc. available at the merchandise center of the site.

Perhaps this is a silly question, but it seems like a good idea to me and its another way to get good information to more people who might not have regular internet access but who have a computer that could support CDs or data DVDs (if all the data on the servers is sufficiently huge). And like i said, it could be a source of revenue for the project, and if you can sell t-shirts i imagine you could sell the encyclopedia somehow.

Thank you for your time and consideration...

It has been talked about and there is a DVD version of the german version. At the present time there is no en version.Geni 00:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Snapshots and Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 for more infromation about the Wikipedia static media project. — Kjammer ⌂ 04:37, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What content is allowable, in particular is this allowed?

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I have written an article on the subject of Robotics, Artifical Intelligence, and in particular Artificial consciousness.

However these are new thoughts, and perhaps not appropriate for a wikipedia if it is encyclopedic.

If I were to want to add this article to the wikepedia, how would I do so? How would I establish a reference to it from the main robotics article.

I understand that I can edit, yet it is entirely unclear and awkward to edit. I am spoiled by all the wyswyg editors.

The article begins as follows: 

                                    I, Robot


A recipe for the creation of a self-referential robot that can meaningfully proclaim: I, Robot.


We shall use as our model the necessaries (as we know them) for human consciousness.

IMO this would not be an appropriate article for Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. You might also want to review Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

what volume number is sugar under

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Wikipedia does not have volumes, just type in "sugar" into the search box and hit "Go." Also, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia for information on citing Wikipedia as a source. — Kjammer ⌂ 04:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I like Verse can I help it?

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Can I help Verse? I'd like to add some links to speeches and sermons and other 'non-poetic' forms of verse. I am very new. I'll check back tomorrow (Tuesday EDT early AM). Err. On review I want to make it clear I can probably figure out how ("Need some help? Ohh, all I can get."). What I really need to know is if the article is hopelessly flawed or if I should put some effort into it.

-ek hornbeck

No such thing as hopelessly flawed. Thanks for contributing! --Lukobe 06:23, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've personally seen horribly flawed articles become sparkling gems, with time and the selfless effort of Wikipedians. So yeah, no such thing as "hopelessly flawed". :) --Ashenai (talk) 09:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I soo know I'm going to regret this. sigh. What needs to be done? How soon? I need to evaluate my ability to do it. My next check in window is Wednesday Late PM EDT.

Block this IP address

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This IP 198.96.86.4 has been causing much pain. Can you please block this IP address.

thanks, Naveen. Naveenji 08:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can I request an IP blocking?

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Two anonymous users, perhaps the same user, annoy me in my talk page (see the section Crew number of Shenzhou 7). He (or she) threaten me to request blocking my ip. You see, this guy is so rude and unpolite, I did nothing wrong, and if someone wants to explain his own opinions, he should at least register a user name first. An anonymous user leaves such words on my talk page is a totally vandal and personal attack. I request to block him if possible. Or at least, how can I prevent the annoying from this rude guy. -- Yaohua2000 09:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is this avaliable under free use

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It's fascinating: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm and we don't currently have a long enough article on these schemes. The imf policy can be found at http://www.imf.org/external/terms.htm and I can't quite work out whether I can just copy this and start an article. Cheers, Spankthecrumpet 09:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No. Those terms specifically forbid copying for commercial purposes, but the GFDL specifically permits commercial use.
--David Woolley 18:53, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of "Village pump" name in Wikipedia

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My question is not about "using Wikipedia" but is more about the history of Wikipedia. I thought this sort of question would be more appropriate here than at the Reference Desk. My question is: where does the name "village pump" come from for Wikipedia:Village Pump? I get the impression it is a term similar to the term "water cooler" used to refer to the way general gossip and talking in offices takes place at the water cooler. Except that village pump is, ironically given the supposed Wikipedia user base, more understandable for those who, well, get water from a village water pump. Was the Village pump page ever called "Water cooler"? Also, I tried to look up the term Village pump on Wikipedia, but got redirected to the page in the Wikipedia namespace, which doesn't seem to explain the origin of the term. Also, the page history for the Village pump page only seems to go back to 2004, so I couldn't find the original page. I have also posted a modified form of this question at the talk page for the Village pump, so it might be worth checking answers posted there. Thanks for any answers. 194.200.237.219 10:22, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not too sure about the history of the naming of Wikipedia:Village pump (maybe "Water cooler" was not international enough?) but I'm surprised that Village pump is a redirect to the Wikipedia namespace rather than an article like Pump or Water well.--Commander Keane 11:43, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tag removal

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This is probably a question that has been asked repeatedly, but I've been unable to find a definitive answer for this situation; basically, user:211.245.243.189 has removed an AfD tag. This is not the first time they have removed tags. There have also been many other problems with this user. Most of them could easily have been resolved with a short discussion, but they *never* reply.

This also seems to be the same user as user:Mirmo!, so this should probably be taken into account.

Please advise the best policy of action here. Although the user is relatively new, they seem unwilling or unable to learn.

Fourohfour 11:10, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would 1) restore the tag; 2) notify the user again on his or her talk page, for the record; 3) repoort this at WP:ANI and perhaps WP:VIP so that admins can keep an eye on this user. DES (talk) 15:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Much appreciated, thank you. Fourohfour 17:21, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

looking for a page

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hello,

i was looking for a wikipedia page that allows you the guess the time that the number of articles in wikipedia reaches a certain milestone (1,000,000 ; 2,000,000 etc)..

cheers.

This should get ya started: Wikipedia:Million pool. Dismas|(talk) 13:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Recognisable faces in photographs

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When uploading photos to Wikipedia, I have tried to avoid adding any that show people whose faces are recognisable. However, if you look at the original photo (not the thumbnail in the article itself) there are a few images where an individual *might* posssibly be identified. All of these picture were taken in public places, and the photos do not show anyone doing anything embarrassing or disreputable. Usually they're just people walking down the street or standing in front of a building. I have looked at the two PDF documents concerning this from the Help section, and as I read them, these photographs do not violate any individual's rights since they were taken in public places and the people depicted were not in a situation where they had a right to assume privacy. But that just covers the UK and US. My photographs were taken in other countries. I have experimented with blurring the faces slightly, but that just makes it look like the individual is a criminal or innocent bystander to a crime. Not what we want, I don't think. I haven't found a document in the Help section that deals with this with respect to W--have I missed it?

JShook | Talk 13:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia generally follows U.S. law on copyright issues, since the Wikimedia foundation is hedquartered in Florida, and is legally a U.S. entity, and the main servers are also located in Florida. I presume that this issue has a simialr rule. As a matter of common sense, i don't think images of the type described should be any problem. However I am going to copy this thread to the village pump (policy) where more eyes will see it, since this really is a policy issue.
Thread copied to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Recognisable faces in photographs DES (talk) 15:21, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting POV checks

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How does one go about this? I see there is a template for it, but I can't find where to actually do it. I'm thinking specifically of Higher School Certificate. Thanks. pfctdayelise 13:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The template is ofcourse Template:POV. The relevant Wikipedia page is Wikipedia:NPOV dispute. — Sverdrup 15:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I did see that, but it's not exactly what I meant. Maybe what I mean doesn't actually exist. Is there some process where you can request "fresh eyes" to look over an article wrt NPOV? Like peer review, but not to elevate it to FA status, just to make it better. I mean, there's no real dispute, at least. It's just me. :) And I'm at a loss as to how to fix it. pfctdayelise 15:25, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Using my images

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I am a little unclear how I should/can upload some of my own images, yet still retain the rights to them. Just about all the licensing options given seem to imply that if I post an image, it will be free for anyone to use. Is this true? While I don't mind posting an image here, I am not very keen on the idea of other people taking the image and using elsewhere without my knowledge. Any suggestions? or do I simply not publish what I am not willing to give up? Thanks! Phauge 15:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You are touching upon the core goals of Wikipedia -- to create something, from which you can take all or any part and use and distribute mostly how you want. If you just want your picture on Wikipedia, but nowhere else, there are no options for you, since we only accept (or should accept) images from a selection of free licenses, all of which allow you to use, sell, derive from etc the works under various conditions (mostly attribution to the author). Read more at the general Wikipedia:Copyright or specific Wikipedia:Image use policy. — Sverdrup 15:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Note that you still retain the copyright to your images after uploading them, but you must licence them so that they can be reused by any user who complies with the proper licence (which includes giving proper credit, and making the content similarly available to other re-users in turn). if you are not willing to do that (and I can see why you might not be), you should not upload images you ahve created or own the copyright to to wikipedia. DES (talk) 15:28, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Perfect answers. Thanks for the quick help! Phauge 16:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Need help with listing page for deletion

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There was a category that was created, that is basically created to duplicate an article. It's being used to push POV stuff on DOM.

Anyway, I'm trying to get it rfd for deletion and my pages are all messed up. Can someone help me?? The page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ecclesiastical_government thanks.. Davidpdx 16:10, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See the instructions at WP:CFD#How to use this page --GraemeL (talk) 16:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What if Wikipedia content is presented as (c) on other websites?

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I wonder what Wikipedia should do when others present wikipedia articles as their own work, as owners of its copyright, and with no notice of Gfdl?

Notice Customer relationship management is copied on these sites:

Perhaps wikipedia should have a place where people can post misuses of its information so that legally-minded wikipedians can write them emails asking that they respect the licence?

I noticed these copycats by searching around on google because I thought that this sounded like a possible copy-vio, however, it looks like it was actually authored at Wikipedia and was then copied elsewhere [8].

The whole point of Wikipedia is that it can be copied under very permissive terms. That said, neither of these examples are properly acknowledging the source of the article, which does violate the GFDL. Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks is a repository of these links (you'll be amazed at how many there are). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Doppelganger

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The instructions in Wikipedia:Doppelganger account do not say where to advise administrators that a doppelganger account has been made, but was not by the original editor, nor follow the guidlines on making one. User:V.Molotov and User:V. Molotov: would someone have a look at these? Thanks. Alf melmac 18:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm honestly not sure about the policy, but I've blocked him and marked him as a doppelganger. Thanks. ~~ N (t/c) 18:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again, N Alf melmac 18:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
For future reference, if you need to find an admin to do something, try posting at WP:AN/I - response time is pretty good (and it's an education to read). Shimgray | talk | 21:56, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Will do, thanks Shimgray. Alf melmac 23:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Contributor's biased and untrue statements are inflammatory

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...to several organizations in our locale. What is your process for verifying accuracy of your content? How may we identify the contributor of the article so that we may deal personally with him or her? And don't tell me to "edit" the article or ask for its removal. That's not my job. I will ask YOU to track down a competent source for the information and not accept if from a disgruntled individual.

You know, you DO have responsibility for your content....period! Says our lawyer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.139.188 (talk • contribs) 13:28 EDT, 17 October 2005

We can only help you if you say what article you are talking about, for fairly obvious reasons. ~~ N (t/c) 18:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
In general, it is not appropriate to make legal threats on Wikipedia. Mention of lawyers is anathema; we prefer more civilized methods of resolving disagreements. We would be pleased to help you learn to edit an article, or assist you in various methods of dispute resolution. The {{disputed}} or {{NPOV}} templates can be used to mark articles whose factual accuracy or neutrality are in question. It would be much easier for us to assist you if you would tell us which articles require attention. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely agree with User:TenOfAllTrades here. I would add that you can always make a comment on the talk page of the article in question indicating whay the current version is, you belive, inaccurate or biased. I also would add that the history tab will reveal which user ID (or IP address) has made any particular edit to a page, but if a user has not revealed his or her legal identity, we have no way to identify that user beyond his or her user ID. DES (talk) 20:35, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You need better council. The likelihood of suing Wikipedia over content and winning are very low. Court precedent has shown that un-moderated message boards and the like are the responsibility of those who write the information – in Wikipedia, this is the contributors, not the site owners. (Moderated boards however are a gray area; in these areas the owner of the site can be held responsible for the information in some areas.) If you found true libel on Wikipedia, it would be your responsibility to get the court to require an ISP to provide the name of the offending IP address. Something a judge wouldn’t likely do since you have the simple recourse of changing the content yourself, eliminating the need for a lawsuit. (Nearly all judges require other methods of recourse to be exhausted before bringing a suit to court -- in the case of wikipedia, simply removing the negative comment.) Not to mention any damages would be negligible to null.
I also looked for San Jose neighborhood associations and school articles with inflammatory statements, and found none. Perhaps you could let us know what articles are so upsetting to you. --24.90.68.86 23:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

human evolution

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If we "human" are product of evolution, how and why human lost they hair?

This question would be better posted on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science--repost it there! I'd answer here, just this once, but I'm afraid I don't know enough details. -- SCZenz 19:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because people started wearing clothing the hair that used to protect our skin and body from cold temperatures was no longer needed. So slowly the amount of body hair of people decreased. It simply wasn't needed anymore. - Mgm|(talk) 22:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Nudity wouldn't perhaps be such a big deal if we were still all covered in hair. Bare skin might instinctively come across as vulnerable, which would then mean that skin was only supposed to be bared in private conditions. That's my theory anyway, I'm no biologist or psychologist. — JIP | Talk 14:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Because no man wants to reproduce with a hairy woman. I'm serious.

Unless he's a furvert. Shantavira 12:32, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That's because you're thinking of people as they are now. If we were all still covered in hair, as I said in my previous message, it would mean all men and all women were hairy. Men wouldn't even understand the concept of a non-hairy woman, except perhaps in some bizarre BDSM humiliation fantasy. — JIP | Talk 07:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

William Moulton Marston quote citation

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I am conducting research for a former Journalism professor who is writing a book. I have been pulling my hair out trying to discern the source from a quote used in your article on William Moulton Marston. I was wondering whether you could verify the source or put me in contact with whoever created this article. On the site, it says that Marston made the following statement, but gave no attribution:

"The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society. ... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element."

Here is the link to the Marston page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moulton_Marston. If you could please, please help my find this statement's source, whether it is one of the referenced books or articles mentioned in the wikipedia list, or elsewhere. I have searched through many of the books and articles already, but have been thus far unable to locate the statement.

Thank you,

Claire Duffett

[...contact details in page history]

That quote was added over a year ago by User:Hob, who didn't give a source at the time - [9]. However, in the same edit they added Wonder Woman: A Complete History and Emotions of Normal People as references on that page. Might be a good bet to look at those two.
The other trick, of course, is to ask the user who added it - they're still around, so you can leave a message for them here. (If you register an account and log in with it, you could also send them an email through this form.) Shimgray | talk | 21:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

citing

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how do i cite an article from wikipedia

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Ask your professor, publisher, or teacher about their preferred formats; we have some examples of the most popular citation styles on that page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How do I locate the most recently added entries.

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I would like to have a way to see, say the last 100 entries added to Wikipedia. Is there such a function already available? If not, then how can it be done.

Thanks, -Carl

check out Special:Recentchanges and Special:Newpages Broken S 22:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Need help listing a page for deletion

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I seem to have a difficult time listing pages for deletion. I have set up everything including the subpage and then listed it for deletion on the current page, but something is not working. Can someone help me fix this please? Davidpdx 02:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed the nomination, I'm now going to list it. Titoxd(?!?) 02:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed and listed now. Titoxd(?!?) 02:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Groups?

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Does Wikipedia have a concept of groups? I only ask because I have have taken particular interest in the Pasadena, California article. I would like to do some more updates to the page, as well as pages related to it (Pasadena City Hall, Pasadena Public Library, etc.). Is there a way for people interested in the same topic, or family of topics, to share ideas? Posting on just the Discussion page seems like an inefficient way of going about this since it will only be viewed by the people who check that one articles Discussion page. Any ideas for pooling like-minded people together to benefit an article? Phauge 03:02, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There are WikiProjects who do those kinds of things. I'm not sure if there is a WikiProject for Pasadena, but there is a WikiProject California, so I might check there. Titoxd(?!?) 03:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Research Methods

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"research methods are planned,scientific,and value-neutral."Describe what is ment by this statement.?

If you're looking for information about research methods, you may want to ask at Wikiepedia's Science Reference Desk. This help desk is intended for technical questions about Wikipedia itself. —HorsePunchKid→龜 06:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Inserting data in a wiki from another wiki

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If I want to put info in my wiki from Wikipedia (eg a template such as below) without copying all the data, eg. templates, variables, images etc. etc. to my wiki can I just 'link' to the other wiki (eg. Wikipedia) in real time as my page loads?

Say for example I want to display the Wikipedia 'Sister' projects on my main page, just like is done on Wikipedia, how can I do this...

Wikipedia's sister projects

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Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects:


Linking to another Wiki within the WikiMedia project is known as an InterWiki link. You can read more about them at Wikipedia:Interwikimedia link.
For example this link goes to the Main Page of the German Wikipedia (.de) like this:
[[:de:Main Page|this link]]
You may also find meta:Help:Interwiki linking useful (itself an Interwiki link).


-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 09:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The only way I can think of doing it would involve running your wiki on GetWiki rather than mediawiki.Geni 11:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

languages ın turkey

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The official language in Turkey is Turkish. Please read the instructions at the top of the page and direct any future questions to the reference desk if you want a more detailed answer. - 131.211.51.34 11:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

spoken languages in TC

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Who contributed this bit?

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Is it possible to find out who contributed a part of a page? I found a photo recently that seems to show that this person and I share interests. It would be great to contact them and see if this is true. Phil

If you click on the photo, you should be taken to the image's page, that shows the history of the photo, including which editor uploaded it. If you wish to know who contributed text, you'll have to check the article's history pages, using the history tab at the top of the article. Alf melmac 11:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Athlete Training

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I am a Athlete training to be a national and international competitor, I am interested in unleashing the physical and mental power of my body so I can be the best in my field. Is there any advice you can give me, I am a Springboard diver my strength and discipline needs to be stronger than that of a Gymnast. I understand the mental side of training but find it hard to find the appropriate focus. I am dedicated to the end with my sport training over 14 times a week, but find others have some kind of edge this is what I need, Is there any exercises and mind training techniques you can tell me about or know anyone who can ? Many Thanks. Sam.

This page is for questions about how to use Wikipedia. Please post your un-Wikipedia-related question at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. Dismas|(talk) 12:12, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


List edited articles

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Is there a way to get a list of articles I have contributed to as opposed to a list of contributions I have made? Additionally, could this be filtered to list major mods only? --moxon 17:06, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mod count

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Where do I find my mod count? Thanks --moxon 12:59, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the other stuff, but you can find out your edit count here: Kate's tool.--Commander Keane 13:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Propaganda

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Hey there, I'm a high school history teacher in RI and have used this site for resources in my classes. I have a question that was brought up by one of my students. On the following page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda, there is a soviet propaganda piece with three figures (a farmer, a soldier, and a worker) with a red background. One of my students pointed out, and I promised to ask, whether or not the picture was authentic. They think, andI tend to agree, that the man on the right (the worker) looks a lot, almost identical, to President George Bush. Is this some cgrpahic artist having fun, or a spooky coincidence?

Thanks. Mike Buckley (email address removed)

If you're really a teacher, you should know to read the instructions at the top of a page. And yes, it's a coincidence. Dismas|(talk) 14:18, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really necessary to be obnoxious in answering questions? cf Don't bite the newbies. Palmiro | Talk 15:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If you click on it, and click on it again, to see the full-res version, you'll see it look less and less like him. -- SCZenz 14:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Editing Problem

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Hi,

I just visited your website and typed in Hiroshima and this is what came up on your page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima

Hiroshima From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search For the town that was formerly named Hiroshima in Hokkaido, see Kitahiroshima.

Main keep of Hiroshima CastleThe city of fuck your mom (広島市; -shi) is the shit hole of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Honshu, the largest of Japan's islands. Geographical location 34° 23′ 07″ N, 132° 27′ 19″ E (City Hall). It is most known throughout the world as the first city in history subjected to nuclear warfarealec and clloin suck dick.

Oh my, please correct your page before you seriously piss someone off!

I repaired the article. See Wikipedia:Revert for instructions on how all users can revert vandalism. --GraemeL (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Graham Spry bio

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In the wikipedia listing of Graham Spry, you note that he was offered (and refused) a Senate seat by Trudeau. I have checked with both his daughter and a close colleague, and none of us have any recollection of this fact. Given I am now doing a book touching (in part) on Graham, could u pls. provide me the source for this fact.

TY

peter pearson ˜˜˜

This page is for questions about how to use Wikipedia. Please post your question on the article's discussion tab or on the relevant contributor's user page--moxon 17:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

posting from a user sandbox to Wikipedia?

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I have written an article in a user sandbox User:Fentonrobb/Gower sandbox but I can't fnd out how to post it into Wikipedia. I am a very new user indeed! FentonR 19:58, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Just go to the edit page of the sandbox, select all the text, select copy from the edit menu of your browser, and go the the appropriate article and paste in the text; then hit save page. Good luck! --fvw* 19:59, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much NHSavage - simple when you know how! FentonR 20:28, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
  • If more users than just you helped develop the article, you may wish for the article to be moved complete with edit history. If you've been around for awhile you'll have a move button, otherwise you can request a move from any experienced wikipedian. - Mgm|(talk) 20:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks MacGyverMagic - it's all my own work so far and the cut and paste seemed to work. I'll note your advice if/when there is an edit history to go with it. FentonR 20:37, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Changing how an article in a category is named

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I have a slight problem. I have merged 3 articles to form Ouse Washes. The other 2 articles were RSPB Ouse Washes and WWT Welney. The last 2 should be in the RSPB reserves and Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust categories respectively. I put the appropriate category links in the new article but of course then on the category pages the name of the article appears as Ouse Washes. Is there a solution to this? I know that you can change the sorting order but I don't think you can change the name? It's OK for the RSPB site but it might cause confusion for the WWT reserve.--NHSavage 20:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can add a redirect to a category by including the category on the same line as the redirect (I've done this with WWT Welney). You might want to see whether you prefer Ouse Washes in or out of the category. If it's out, then I think the category won't appear on the article when you're redirected there from WWT Welney. If it's in, then the category shows up on the article but both the article and the redirect show up in the category listing. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I considered that but assumed it wouldn't work... (doh!). I think it is fair enough that the Ouse Washes stays in the category as it contains WWT Welney--NHSavage 06:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Search box response

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I've noticed a peculiar habit in it. It will take names that are hyperlinked in the text, but refuse to locate them reliably when I hit "search". For instance, I tried "George Tuska", which you have a page on, and "search" came back without his name. Maybe the system needs fine tuning?

Is there a way to avoid being quite so specific in your categories? I found it a headache trying to post a possible problem (possibly my own, I admit) with your "search" function, and could not find a really good place (what seemed the correct one to me) to place it. I am (relatively) new to Wikipedia, so maybe I missed it; for others like me, perhaps a change would help? --squadfifteen, 18/10/05

The search box only searches for article titles. The search function has been toned down to allow faster servers. A better search method is to use Google, by typing in "site:http://en.wikipedia.org KEYWORD" where "KEYWORD" (no quotes)is the word(s) you are searching for. — Kjammer ⌂ 20:50, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is also possible there is a piped link at work. See Wikipedia: links for more info.

Failed wiktionary move

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Could someone who knows how to fix this do it the way it should be? [[10]]. Thanks. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 22:19, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Blockquote

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How do you add a background image to a blockquote WITHOUT making a class in the monobook.css thing? Any help will be REALLY appreciated!!! -Color Printer

Eek, please don't make background images for blockquotes or anything else. Such webpage cleverdickery doesn't really belong on an encyclopedia. Instead, impress visitors with the glory of your prose and the radiance of your ideas. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:59, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh...please note that the wiki I am using is for FANSTUFF. --Color Printer 23:03, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This page is for help for Wikipedia, not for help with your own MediaWiki installation. For that kind of question, use the mediawiki newsgroup. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:10, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Where's that? --Color Printer 23:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Wikipedia:Mailing lists (it's MediaWiki-l). -- Rick Block (talk) 23:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

waren rudman senator from new hampshire

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I would like to know how tall warren rudman is?

Please ask your question in the Wikipedia:Reference Desk. This forum is for questions about Wikipedia and how to use it, where as the reference desk is for factual questions. I don't know how tall Warren Rudman is, and I don't know where you could find that info, maybe those who check the reference desk would know. And if you do find out, maybe you can include that in our Warren Rudman article. — Kjammer ⌂ 01:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Finding information

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I am just starting out in the Wiccan Religion. I would like to find out how to find "Power Animals". I also have a Classic WEBTV and a having dfficulties getting through to some of your sites. All the help you can give me is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

Blessed be, Jean Cox

Hopefully, the limitations of your WEBTV have not kept you from visiting the Wiccan article. Unfortunatly, from my brief skim of the article, it does not seem to mention Power Animals. My only recommendation would be to lookup articles about particular animals, and see if you can't gather some of the info you are looking for from there. For example, the Bear article does talk about Bears in mythology and describe how some cultures view them as a symbol. It's not much, but it seems like a good start until someone else, or yourself, makes some contributions regarding the so called "Power Animals" topic.
On a side note, before I actually started getting into Wikipedia, by its very name I thought it was related to Wicca. Shows what I know/knew. Phauge 04:05, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Envirnomatal geography

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Delete or merge?

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I created Lengths of science fiction series/temp in order to work out some table formatting on Lengths of science fiction series without messing up that page. Now I've moved the completed table to the main page, what should I do with the /temp article? Should I put it on WP:AFD, or turn it into a redirect, or is there a way to merge its history with the main article's? (The content is already merged.) —Josiah Rowe 05:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It is possible, albiet rather tedious, for an admin to merge the histories. But if all the edits to the temp version were by you, would anything really be gained by this? If you are the creator and sole contributor, you can put {{db|temporary page, now unneeded}} (or some similar reason) on the temp page, and an admin should delete it fairly promptly. DES (talk) 05:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
A few other editors on the main page did contribute, but it's 95% my work. Can I still put {{db|temporary page, now unneeded}} on the page?—Josiah Rowe 05:36, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so I should ask an admin to merge the article histories? —Josiah Rowe 12:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Um, anybody? Should I bother an admin, or what? —Josiah Rowe 23:12, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? —Josiah Rowe 22:36, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still wondering about this... is there a better place to ask?—Josiah Rowe 23:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

1499 - seems odd.

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I assume I'm getting something wrong, but 1499: the births don't seem to have been born that year and the deaths don't seem to have died. They're not even in the same decade. Thought I'd best report it. Looks like a bot has been involved, but I'm sure the bot is cleverer than I am. --bodnotbod 06:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just looked at the articles of a random sample of people in 1499, and they seem to have been born or died in 1499, as appropriate. Can you clarify the problem? (Were you perhaps looking at the listed death date for the births, and the listed birth date for the deaths?) -- SCZenz 20:11, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

blatant error in article

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

All other web sites say to microwave the squash for 10 to 15 minutes. http://www.fabulousfoods.com/features/featuring/spagsquash.html http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/foods_view/1,1523,222,00.html http://www.kraftfoods.com/recipes/SaladsSideDishes/VegetablesSideDishes/CheesySpaghettiSquash.html

Yours says "When microwaving" "two hours and ten minutes."

If somebody microwaved for 2 hours 10 mintutes it would cause a fire.

I could find no link for reporting data errors.

Yours,

Bob

When you find an error in a Wikipedia article, please feel free to correct it yourself! Just click on the "edit this page" link at the top of any Wikipedia page, and start fixing, or addig content. Be bold!
The error on the spaghetti squash page was caused by the incomplete reversion of vandalism. I fixed it. Thank you for the heads-up! :) --Ashenai (talk) 08:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ephraim Ben-Uri

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Ephraim ben Uri is a Modern Orthodox Jew born October 18, 1987 in Mijas, Kingdom of Spain. Where do the parents of Ephraim ben Uri live?

Why do you ask? Notinasnaid 10:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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I have listed a number of images I have created as intended for deletion. What I have done is create new versions of these images in a lower resultion, uploaded them to a new name, and linked the thumbnails in the articles to the new file. I have then marked the old files for deletion, and listed them at Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion#October_18 You can read all about why I am doing this at Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion#October_16 , where I nominated the first of my images for deletion. (image:Auckland Ferry Terminal.jpg)

My question is: once an image has been marked for deletion and listed as such, is it and/or the links to the replacement image in the articles "frozen" as it were?

My concern is that a certain individual has been doggedly reverting images I have uploaded to versions I do not wish to have used. This will correct itself as I go through the articles and replace the images (I am about halfway through) with new ones for which there will be no history to use for reversion and have the old ones deleted, but my concern is that this person or someone else will remove the "ifd" marker from the images I have marked for deletion, and relink the links in the articles to the old images.

I know I may be putting ideas in this person's head about a new dimension of mischief that can be exploited by User:Lifeisunfair, but if the marked-for-deletion images are effectively frozen then s/he will at least be thwarted from countermanding my requests once I have set up an image replacement for the one I want deleted.

JShook | Talk

Unless the image has a protection tag applied (which is unusual) there is no rule againt making such chnges, but on the other hand if the image is eventually deleted all such changes will become moot. it is generally a poor idea to add images listed for deletion to articels, but there is as far as i know no absolute rule agaisnt it. If you list the images involved, more specific advice could be offered. DES (talk) 16:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
My concern is that a mischief-maker might edit the articles in which these images appear and revert the image link to the image I want deleted, presumably preventing it from being deleted. The images are:
You have added a comment that you support their deletion. Thanks. I'll just wait and see if my scenario plays out and take it from there. JShook | Talk 17:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

how to submit an article

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Yesterday I submitted an article on the Kaskaskia Baptist Association. I was wondering if I submitted it correctly. It is not coming up under a search listing.

Thanks Saluki64

You did it correctly, it's right here: Kaskaskia Baptist Association. --Ashenai (talk) 15:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

a vote on using dutch or english

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hi, i live in Den Haag and someone claimed recently that after the 2nd world war ther was a vote in The Netherlands weather to change the official language to English. Is it true?

This page is for questions about Wikipedia. Your question would be better suited for the Wikipedia:Reference desk. Dismas|(talk) 20:36, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Listing items within templates

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Hi, I am really a contributor to http://music.wikicities.com but I had a question about templates (and the 3 other people that contribute to that wikicity don't know the answer). If I am using a template, and want to make a list of names but don't know how many there will be, is there any way I can do that without changing the temnplate? (by the way, I'm using subst: with this template). What I mean is, if I want
*John
*Paul
*George
on one page(three names) an
*John
*Paul
*George
*Ringo
on the next page I make, I would need 3 parameters for the first one and 4 for the second one. Is there any way to do this with one parameter? Paul Lynch 16:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

John Nord and James Yun

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Aside from sites that copy yours, I can not find any evidence confirming John Nord having held the ACW Heavyweight Title nor any confirming that James Yun ever held the Central American Middleweight Title. The Nord article does not even specify which ACW in which Nord held the title. Granted, information about the Central American Middleweight Title is hard to find. I would appreciate it if you could direct me to where and how you found this information. Thank you very much. JKWiki —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.168.133 (talk • contribs) 02:35, 20 October 2005

the best place to ask your question might be on the Talk:John Nord and Talk:James Yun talk pages. You might also look through the article's history (click on the history tab at the top of the article) and see who added the relevant information in each article. Then you could contact that user (if they are still an active editor) and ask them to provide a source for the information that they provided. If you don't get any response on the article's talk page, or from the user who added the information in question, then be bold and remove the unsupported/uncited factoid yourself! best--Kewp (t) 18:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BCE/CE or BC/AD?

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Is there a Wikipedia standard for this? Or is it up to the author? --Benne 19:36, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

the standard is go with whatever the first major author chose. That said edit wars on this issue are far from unknown and for some reason VE isn't accepted by anyone.Geni 19:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#eras for more on this. A recent arbcom decision said, if I understand corrently, than changing existing refernces from one format to the other as a matter of style prefernce, without a substantial reaosn to do so, was not acceptable. DES (talk)

if physialogical measurements are altered how do these effect the anaesthetic process

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This page is for questions about Wikipedia. Your question would be better suited for the Wikipedia:Reference desk. Dismas|(talk) 20:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone seeing images?

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I just listed another bunch of images for deletion via replacement Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2005_October_19#October_19, and when I go to double check, the image page loads, but the image itself doesn't. Is anyone else having problems seeing graphics?

Also, why does my list for images for deletion appear at this funny "double" URL: Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2005_October_19#October_19 but not here: Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion#October_19? When I go to edit the section for October 19 at Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion#October_19, I see the text that I entered, but when I save the page it is not visible. I am mightily confused.

Only about four more to go and then I can start uploading some new images. Thanks to those that have shown patience and understanding as I grappled with the issues around licenses, uploading etc.

JShook | Talk 21:30, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

looks to be a wider problem[11]. I suspect that the image server may be becomeing overloaded. Again.Geni 21:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I see a list of 19 image nominations by you at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2005 October 19. it may be a matter of browser or server cacheing. The image servers do seem to be slow today, probably heavy load. DES (talk) 21:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Thanks --JShook | Talk 22:04, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

should I use a disambiguation page?

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My pals and I created a page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Grid_%28board_game%29

About the game "Power Grid". But when you put "Power Grid" into the search, it redirects to an article about electrical transmission. How should I make it so users can find our article? Should I put a note at the top of the electrical transmission article? Or I should I make a disambiguation page? I'm unclear on how to do this.

I have made a note on the page; see Power grid. I will also put a notice on your article (an excellent one, by the way!) to get people to the electrical topic if they mistakenly end up at the board game. —HorsePunchKid→龜 22:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Spammer problems on fr.wikipedia

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Hi, First, i hope it's the right place to ask this kind of question. If it's not... sorry

I'am a user of french Wikipedia, and we have to deal with a new problem and we'd like to know en.wikipedia policy about it. Some users pages are just a long ad with a link to a commercial web site. In one hand it is a user's page and some of us say we can't tell anything about how it is used, in the other hand some think (as i do) that this users edit some articles and talks, so they sign, so anybody will see there ad, therefore we must delete it because it is a kind of spamming.

So, have you got the same problem on en.wikipedia, and what do you do when it happen?

Sorry for my approximative english.Thank you ! Lisaël 23:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have an example? Personaly I would just blank the page.Geni 00:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an example. And look at his nickname : " admin@seymour-james.com " (I know, it is bad to do that but he began to spam us so...) (bad, naughty me). It's quite new for us and we wonder if you had the same kind of problems. Lisaël 01:24, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is a community project and nobody is given the right to use a personal page for anything they may want. I would remove the advert, and warn the user. If it becomes a widespread problem, I would propose a policy change to ban the users, just as you might if they were spamming on article pages. I haven't seen this yet on en. --Quasipalm 02:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your answers, if it intrest you, we decided to blank the pages. Bye Lisaël 00:12, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A new article I will begin

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I have interviewed a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City in 2005 that has lost the race but has no information. I have information on how he did in certain regions of New York City, but the information is far too large to place in any simple way. Is it possible for me to get assistance making an interactive map that you can click on for specific information (like a GIS map, but with districts as buttons) on each region? I would also like to see a guide on writing about a political candidate because news is easily outdated and I have extraneous details about the person that I would like a little help editing and forming. A guideline would be excellent.--Screwball23 01:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One thing about Wikipedia is that it is not a primary source. That means you can only refer to the interview if it is published elsewhere, as I understand it. I realise that doesn't help much, hopefully others can add stuff of more use. Notinasnaid 18:49, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
See New York City mayoral election, 2005. Notinasnaid is correct, by the way; as an encyclopedia that's supposed to be verifiable, we are not supposed to use "original research" here — see WP:NOR for the policy. If you have published your interview on another website then you can refer to it in the article. Tempshill 17:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A small storyline of the political race

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I would also like to write information about the race for mayor in 2005 for NYC encompassing all the information about the candidates along the race. I could include a great amount of history and press attention that was given concerning the race for mayor. I would like to know exactly who I go to for help and guidance in forming the article. Also, if I could, I would want to make it a place for some input by other users, but I don't know how to give an announcement to the other wikipedians. I may also have to give a request to make the article. Please send me advice on how to do all these things.--Screwball23 01:45, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To request the article to be made, go to Wikipedia:Requested articles and read the instructions. As for requesting help/guidance, you could try the talk page of Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board. Thelb'4 20:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You can create sub-articles linked to from the New York City mayoral election, 2005 article if you'd like. That is probably a prominent enough link to attract other editors interested in the subject. Tempshill 17:05, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A stub on Adelphi University

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I see very little has been added to the site Adelphi University which is a shame. In order to change it, I would have to add a great amount of detail about the school's history, most of which I do not have. If it is possible, I might be able to find a group of Adelphi students who are also wikipedians, or more likely, I would like to ask for advice on my specific research to learn exactly what should be there and what shouldn't. An administrator would be excellent to get in contact with and act as an unbiased judge.--Screwball23 01:45, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

May be an Internet Explorer problem, but..

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The blue links on any Wikipedia page now only appear to me underlined when the mouse pointer is scanned over them, otherwise the lines disappear. I prefer the lines to appear as a default. This has changed in front of my eyes just now when I pressed back and forward quickly. Is this a Wikipedia feature or an Internet Explorer option that must be changed? Thanks. :-)

Mmm, I just experienced the problem in Firfox, but just temporarily. I went into my Watchlist and the links were not underlined. However, after I refreshed the page the underlining returned. Maybe it's something to do with the servers, like when they load "Edit" instead of "Edit this page", but I really don't know. --Commander Keane 10:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I went to My Preferences and said that it should underline links always instead of 'browser default'. That worked. Thelb'4 20:47, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't speak Scandiwegian

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When I move my mouse over the links at the side or top of the page I get a handy explanation of what it is in some sort of Scandinavian sounding language. E.g. when I point my mouse at 'Main Page' a box comes up saying "Gå til hovudsida [alt-z]", when I move over 'my talk' I get "Diskusjonssida mi [alt-n]", etc. Not a problem for me as I know what they do anyway but a bit weird don't you think? As far as I know they were in English up until yesterday and my browser (Internet Explorer) language preference options are still set for English (GB). --Spondoolicks 10:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Me too. It's not just you. Yesterday the globe disappeared for a few hours, which no doubt had something to do with it. Shantavira 12:36, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is now back to normal. Just one of those things I suppose. --Spondoolicks 14:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User edits

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How can I see which edits another user have made?--moxon 09:30, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, this seems like a useful feature. I just need some clarification. Is it possible to see the contributions of a specific user to a specific article? Could you give an example. --moxon 15:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You could go to the article's history and scan through for their username. There may be an easier way but that's the only way I know. Dismas|(talk) 20:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

tornado definition

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I'm sorry I was unable to find if there was a way to edit definitions. It seem we can only edit articles.

This deifinition is antiquated and wholly incorrect..

A tornado is a violent windstorm characterized by a twisting, funnel-shaped cloud.

"*Tornado - A violently rotating column of air in contact with the ground and extending from the base of a thunderstorm. A condensation funnel does not need to reach to the ground for a tornado to be present; a debris cloud beneath a thunderstorm is all that is needed to confirm the presence of a tornado, even in the total absence of a condensation funnel."

In fact MANY smaller tornadoes never have a funnel cloud, this funnel cloud "myth" has caused many people to be caught or hurt in tornadoes, as well as the myth that tornadoes "touch down" when they actually "spin up".

I would then add your defintion ..

"The word "tornado" comes from the Spanish verb tornar, meaning "to turn." Tornadoes form in storms all around the world, and though they have been recorded in all 50 U.S states, they form most famously in a broad area of the American Midwest and South known as Tornado Alley. Although, in pure number of incidences, the United States experiences more tornadoes than any other country, the United Kingdom is the most tornado-prone country relative to land area. Some common, related slang terms are: twister, whirlwind, wedge, funnel, gustnado, landspout, willy-willy, or rope. Cyclone is also another term for a tornado, although it must be noted that in parts of the world (notably Australia) a Cyclone refers to what is more correctly known as a Tropical Cyclone (also known as a Hurricane, or a Typhoon), and for this reason, the use of the term Cyclone on its own should be avoided when describing a Tornado to avoid confusion (see Cyclones)."

please see this url from the national weather service

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/severewx/glossary4.php#t

for the above and other weather defintions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.197.124.62 (talk • contribs)

This is a place to ask questions about Wikipedia and get help with editing problems. If you comments about the content of specific pages, then you should either edit the page or discuss it on the article's talk page. Evil Monkey∴Hello 03:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

MY COMPUTER WILL NOT STAY LOGGED IN!

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AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!!!!

I can't edit like this, I am on one article...then anoter, boom...I am automatically logged out. Fix this, V. Molotov 14:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

it's just started happening to me too. Theresa knott
Happens to me all the time (for weeks now, at least). A fix would be nice, it does get a little annoying. --Ashenai (talk) (Galatea!) 14:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this is a continuing problem., Sometimes clearing your browser's cache helps (at leasst it helps me when i have that problem). When that doesn't work, I close all browser windows and delete all cookies, then log back in. that seems to do the trick. DES (talk) 15:05, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, but I am doing an article on Racial portrayals of Jesus - and I want to finish it, but if this keeps happening I am going to wind up pulling all my hair out. (Hey, it's not doing it so much now) - do you think it has something to do with how many people are on here at one time?? Molotov (talk)  
 16:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Try the "remember me" option when logging on. Also, you cannot disable cookies. HereToHelp 18:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
So this happened to me, and I didn't notice it before I did a "Save page". Now there's an edit with my IP instead of my name. On a discussion page I can edit the signature so it it says me (I guess that's a permissible edit). But the history still has the IP in it. Can I fix that with a revert and re-edit? Is there some other way to point the edit back to me as opposed to the random IP?--Dan Hoey 17:16, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BFBuilder for Starwars Battlefront

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Hi, Can you please tell me how to get started using BFBuilder and where I can get it from? I wish to modify Star Wars Battlefront. Thanks, gottleott

This page is for help with using Wikipedia. You might try the Reference desk, or a gaming forum. DES (talk) 15:08, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Link to incomplete page doesn't make sense.

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I created a page about "Kid Chissell." Soon after I created it, a box appeared below saying "Deaths: 1905." I thought that was a good thing, but I click on that and it takes me to a page, and Kid Chissell isn't listed, so I thought it was my duty to list it, but when I click to edit, I just get Korean characters and cannot edit the page.

It will be automaticaly listed the korean characters are just a link to the same thing in a different language.Geni 16:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Password

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Could you please email me my password? My user name is KWright. My email address is removed —Preceding unsigned comment added by KarenW (talk • contribs) 15:22, 20 October 2005

Go to Special:Userlogin, enter your username, and click the Email new password button. If you didn't enter an email address when you created the account, I'm afraid you're out of luck.
Actually, according to the edit history on this page, you were logged in when you posted that, and your user name is KarenW, not KWright. Andy Janata 22:38, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images for cleanup

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I'd like to improve many of the images found in the Category:Images for cleanup.

Image:RembrandtNightwatch.jpg is already done, but I just don't want to learn PHP to upload it (learning HTML & css was painful enough - my skills lie elsewhere). Is there another way to update the page? Fixing typos or other text-based problems is easy enough, it's just the image upload thing. For now the image is at http://www.santagata.us/wiki/Nightwatch.jpg.

Three more http://www.santagata.us/wiki/QizilDonors.jpg http://www.santagata.us/wiki/Sochumi_1915.jpg http://www.santagata.us/wiki/SuSongClock.jpg

I'm also interested in doing some of the jpg to png images.

--64.222.50.121 20:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


What am I misunderstanding about links? 64.222.50.121 20:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your links are broken. Can you view the image in your browser and copy and paste the link into this query, please? Walter Siegmund 20:57, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You can upload files using forms, i.e., Upload file in the tool box, under search in the standard skin. PHP is not required, unless I don't understand your question. -Walter Siegmund 21:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Thanks Walter, you're right, my links were broken. They should work now.

But I can no longer log in - I'm told that there is no user NancyS! What happened? It worked 2 days ago.64.222.38.143 01:35, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So I reregistered. Maybe it will stick this time.NancyS 17:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Article Discussion

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When I want to discuss an article, do I simply edit the discuss page with my point? Or is there another procedure to follow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Salioscriblita (talk • contribs) 14:37, 20 October 2005

That's exactly what you do. If the topic you're discussing already has a heading, put it under there. If it doesn't, put a new heading above your comments, like this: == My new point ==. -- SCZenz 21:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yep (and please do, we love contributors!) Please make sure to add four tildes (like this: ~~~~) after anything you write, though. The wiki software will translate that into your signature, and a timestamp. Like this: Ashenai (talk) (Galatea!) 21:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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