Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 February 22

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February 22

Issues after move

I moved the article The Last One to The Last One (Friends episode). Then I found every reference to "The Last One" and updated it to point to the new article. But some of the articles still show up on the "Whatlinkshere" page as pointing to the old article. I think it has something to do with the template, which was also updated. I tried to do "action=purge" on most of the articles thinking that would fix it, but they still show up on the "Whatlinkshere" list. What am I doing wrong? :: ZJH ^{(T C E)} 00:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if someone else did something or if it just took a while to do the purge, but the problem is fixed now. :: ZJH ^{(T C E)} 00:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

IMO, according to WP:MOS, most users probably are looking for the Friends ep, and using a disambig page for two items is usually unnecessary. A simple link on top of the original Friends page to the Aqua Teens ep would've sufficed. Xiner (talk, email) 02:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

picture problems

why can't i seem to load the pictures on wikipedia. do i have to download anything?69.236.175.219 00:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Go on Special:Upload, locate the name of the file you want to upload, add summary information and license details, then click on upload file.--Seraphim Whipp 01:07, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're just looking to load the pictures already on Wikipedia, there shouldn't be a problem. Try pressing F5 on your computer to reload the page, or Shift+F5 to completely reload the page. Ziggurat 01:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Please note that you must log in or create an account to upload pictures. --WikiSlasher 11:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Colours used on infoboxes

Someone said that the colour of a infobox for a deceased person should be silver. Is this true? Are there any other colour guidelines? --Seraphim Whipp 01:04, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Haven't heard of that one specifically, but see Wikipedia:Infobox colours for a (now-historical) treatment of colours. Ziggurat 01:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You may wish to file a request for third opinion about Anna Nicole Smith, or flip a coin, or something like that. It's quite possible that silver for deceased people was once convention, but it's clearly not followed anymore. Just make sure that in discussing the color of the bikeshed, you don't paint the town red. Gracenotes^T § 02:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• Colors still have a specific meaning in album and other music-related articles, so it's quite possible it is a convention. Ask them where they get it from. If it was once convention it doesn't hurt to follow it, unless that convention was replaced with another. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

new page

how do you start a new page? zach powell 02:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

See Help:Starting a new page —Mitaphane _?|! 02:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

As you get farther along in editing on Wikipedia, you will probably have more questions. This page is becoming my favorite method to find answers to an enormous number of them:

• User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia

That's handy to bookmark on your user page. Be sure to come back here in a few months when you have learned all the answers (a small attempt at humor there, as I doubt many mortal humans could learn all of this stuff, and by the time they did, there would be a whole bunch more new material), and help out the next wave of new users. --Teratornis 06:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

net100

I was told to sign on and search tool Net100 and I would find the page that was created through edisoncollege but there is nothing here? What am I doing wrong? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pam Clark (talk • contribs)

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you looking for a page that was created by a specific member or IP address? Hersfold ^(talk|work) 03:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

There is an Edison College article (actually a redirect to Edison Community College), but I am unable to understand the question sufficiently to guess whether that's relevant. Pam, if you could, please give us more details: who told you to sign on? Sign on to what? What page are you trying to find? --Teratornis 05:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Blue Box

Hey guys,

When I'm editing articles, I'm always selecting stuff. I select stuff to copy it. I select stuff to keep my place as I scroll down. Recently, however, somebody tweaked the Wiki software so that selecting stuff generates a live, mini-preview in JavaScript in a little blue box on the edit page.

How do I turn this off? Does anybody know?

Thanks in advance, – Lantoka (talk) 05:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This is part of the popups feature. To turn it off, put popupOnEditSelection=false; into your monobook.js. -- Chairman S. Talk ^Contribs 05:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Uploading powerpoint presentations?

Yet another class where the professor pawns off the teaching on her students...As a result, I'm making some great, well-researched (not to mention good looking) powerpoint presentations on 20th and 21st century designers (So far I have Adolf Loos, the Bauhaus school, and Isamu Noguchi); any way to upload them? The only problem I could forsee would be citations;l they have bibliographies, but no in-text citations. Also, come to think of it, some "borrowed" images. 69.149.24.6 05:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Good question. Wikipedia:Presentations links to some PowerPoint presentations, but they don't seem to be part of Wikipedia. I've read lots of Wikipedia articles, but I have yet to see any that use PowerPoint files as intrinsic content (even the PowerPoint article does not use PowerPoint). I don't see anything on Help:Image about PowerPoint. However, I'm not the ranking authority on this, just the first person to respond to your question. My guess is your best bet would probably be to add your material to existing or new Wikipedia articles in the usual way (by re-working it as wikitext). There might be some other wiki that would welcome your .ppt files directly. --Teratornis 06:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Media should be in as free a format as possible. I doubt it,s possible to uplaod a .ppt file anyway. Try asking around for making a .ogg movie.Circeus 18:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Trans-language image use

I'd like to insert an image into an article, but since it's located in the German Wikipedia, it doesn't show it with a straight "[[Image:Fasching-maske-7.jpg]]." How would I go about displaying the picture in an English article? V-Man737 06:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Upload it to Commons (Wikipedia:Moving images to the Commons) & tag it with {{subst:ncd}}. afaik, you can't use images from other wikipedias, the ideal solution is commons uploading.-Wooty Woot? contribs 07:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The Incredible Ceylon Hovering Man!!!

Howdy folks. I've been working on an extensive offline revision and expansion of the Sesotho article. One of the many truly insane choices I've made is to have every example word or sentence (all 57 thousand of them) in bold and, if it's not directly followed by Template:IPA (when specifically talking about phonetics), to have the (raw) IPA guide appear in a popup box when you hover the mouse above it. My question is: is there an alternative to Template:H:title that has the desired effect without underlining the text or causing any other style changes? There's another one in the user namespace I saw but it turns the text green! Using the full <span title = "bar"> foo < /span > is too cumbersome. Thanks for any help. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 10:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• Having examples in bold violates the manual of style which says this should be used sparingly. Instead of having IPA boxes popup for every word, have you considered getting someone to do a a spoken version of the article? Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Category tag question

The category Category:Conversion templates seems to be self referencing itself or am I wrong? I thought I'd remove it from its own category but I wasn't sure if this was some odd way of cataloging things. Dismas|^(talk) 10:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

For some reason, the category was moved out of the noinclude tags that appear above in the instructions section. I've fixed it so it should look normal now. Harryboyles 10:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Okie, thanks! Dismas|^(talk) 15:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

problem with uploading image

I have uploaded an image file, Dreaming Lhasa movie.jpg, but it does not show up. I get this error message:

The image “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Dreaming_Lhasa_movie.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I have tried my best to follow all the guidelines but still no luck.

Can you help?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 10zing (talk • contribs)

Looks like it has been uploaded successfully. Here's how to link to it: [[Image:Dreaming_Lhasa_movie.jpg]] SubSeven 20:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

i appoligize

last year i uploaded alot of stupid stuff, at the time i created a joke entry for a non existant band, i was just figuring out how to use wikipedia, at the present time there are a bunch of images on your server that i uploaded and i would like to delete them, they are of no use to me, and are a bigger waste to wikipedia, i would appreciate it if ether you guys could delete all of my content so i may start fresh on wikipedia, or if somebody could assist me in deleting it id appreciate it, Mike Rosenberg —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikercool1 (talk • contribs)

Having your stuff deleted is easy, just go to the Image page and click the "edit this page"tab. Put {{db-author}} at the top of it, (make sure it's not marked as a minor edit,) and save it. It should be gone in three days tops. -- RoninBK _{T C} 12:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Redlinked articles on Watchlist, that I never put there.

I was just poking back onto Wikipedia after a bit of a wikibreak, and looked through my Special:Watchlist/edit list. Strangely I had the following articles listed:

• ‎Jimmy Wales did porn (Talk)
• ‎Jimmy was involved in porn, yet he continually denies it (Talk)
• Why on earth wouldn't anyone protect this? (Talk)

I assume that these pages were recently deleted, but I have no idea how they got to my watchlist. I don't see any reference on Special:Contributions/Roninbk that show any editing by me on those pages.

Is there any way an admin can look into this situation and confirm how this happened? I don't want to jump to the conclusion that my login info might be compromised, but if it is, I need to take precautions. -- RoninBK _{T C} 12:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Hang on a sec, can you please move User:WikiSlasher/Test to User:WikiSlasher/Test ON WHEELS!!! for me? (Explain in your edit summary I asked you too ;).) --WikiSlasher 13:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

See, my theory is that you had Jimmy Wales on your watchlist and when a pagemove vandal moved the page those pages were added to your watchlist as well. If someone can move my subpage for me I can see if it magically appears in my watchlist to test my idea. --WikiSlasher 14:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Moved. Happy Editing by Snowolf^(talk)_CON^COI on 14:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:BEANS WP:POINT etc... _→AzaToth 14:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This isn't being disruptive to illustrate a point. --WikiSlasher 07:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I am far less confused now. This is what I get for putting vandal-targets on my watchlist. Chalk this up to "I didn't know Wiki could bend like that..." -- RoninBK _{T C} 05:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep it worked, User:WikiSlasher/Test ON WHEELS!!! is in my watchlist. So it was the moving of the page that added those pages to your watchlist. --WikiSlasher 06:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

University Of Massachusetts

I am a student at the University of Massachusetts in charge of a group engaged in a project in which we are supposed to make contributions to Wikipedia. One of our goals is to create archives that have some longevity to them, and are unique and distinct as they represent Umass. My thought on this is to create an article called "Umass Rights" and simply present our findings under this title. We are a political science class studying the bill of rights, and our discussions would be limited to this area. I have charged my coworkers with finding credible discussions of rights, and basing our arguments on areas of the constitution, and on supreme court findings. Some of our discussions will inevitably overlap articles that have already been written, but we are trying to create a one stop shop for a variety of materials concerning rights under the U.S. constitution. I have been reading the guidelines for what is acceptable to post, and I feel that our project is borderline. I wanted to check with someone with Wikipedia before we began posting, but I assure you that our intention is to present only academic findings, with citations, based on research, not to infuse the article with personal views, or biases. Please let me know if what I've described violates the terms and conditions of posting on Wikipedia.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbrecher (talk • contribs)

One thing it sounds like you are in jeopardy of violating is Wikipedia's policy on no original research. Whatever you contribute, make sure it is well cited with verifiable sources. To me, it doesn't sound like the article you are thinking of creating will last. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought nor is it a webspace provider. To me, it sounds like your contributions would be best directed toward an existing article on Wikipedia such as United States Bill of Rights (although it is already a Featured article), or you may want to look into the US Supreme Court cases WikiProject. Hope this helps.↔NMajdan•talk•EditorReview 14:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I looked on the editor's index and found this: WP:SUP. Read that to see what other student groups are doing here. Wikipedia is not necessarily the best wiki for this type of assignment, because Wikipedia has stringent requirements for its articles. Your group might do better on another wiki such as Wikinfo, which accepts original work and does not demand a neutral point of view. I hope that whoever assigned the project does not share the common misconception that Wikipedia is the only wiki; there are many wikis. Wikipedia is the world's largest and most popular wiki, and often it is the only wiki some people have heard of yet. This causes Wikipedia to be the first choice of many people who have goals which differ from Wikipedia's goal (which is to write an encyclopedia). I suggest you go back to whoever assigned the project, and ask why you don't start on a wiki with more lenient requirements. A student group project may be too brief to allow the group members time to read and master much of the material for editors. If the student group contains no members who are already experienced Wikipedia editors, it would probably need supervision from someone who is, such as a faculty member. Otherwise the (unguided) members might end up making stereotypical new-user mistakes. Among these mistakes is to start right off by making new articles, a strategy with low probability of success, rather than making improvements to existing articles which have already passed the initial gauntlet of reasons for speedy deletion. There are lots of existing articles which need improvement, and there are ways to improve articles that would be easy for a group of students with no prior Wikipedia editing experience to master quickly, without running afoul of the extensive rules that govern the allowable Wikipedia content. For example, many articles contain jargon they do not define, but for which defining articles exist elsewhere on Wikipedia. It is very helpful for the reader if editors fill in those missing wikilinks, and this work is usually non-controversial, provided the links are relevant. Perhaps the person who assigned the project might do well to pose the following question to the Help desk: "How should I structure a student group Wikipedia editing project?" Also see: WP:ACST. --Teratornis 18:42, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

remove a curse?

we have had the worse luck someone suggeted a curse, is there any way to find out and can i remove it?----helpme—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Angela smylie (talk • contribs).

What exactly do you mean by that? Could you be a little more specific? Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 14:37, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Curses don't actually exist, so you shouldn't have any problems. .V. _[Talk|Email] 23:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Where can the Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! be found?

Because if I could find it and have access to it I could move it as was requested above. I know my stuff. I just need to find it. --Darkest Hour|DarkeBot 16:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The actual message is available and editable at MediaWiki:Anonnotice, but as this is a MediaWiki interface message, only administrators can edit it. I'd suggest either suggesting changes to the talk page, or to the Village Pump (technical) as was suggested above. Cheers, Tangotango (talk) 16:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Drugs

Do you give information about drugs and their reactions?

You can find more information by asking at the Reference Desk - the Help Desk here is more for how to use Wikipedia, not information from it. But I would try looking at Drugs. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 16:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion?

Hi,

I was wandering through "Random Article"s and noticed the use of the terms "new", "currently", and "next" in several articles. Wouldn't it be better, in terms of building a resource with continuing future relevance, if these relative terms were avoided or at least used with a temporal context.

eg: "In 1977 this was the new gizmo on the block."

or

"Coming in 2008 the next big advance in CPUs will be giggle circuits."

Just my $0.02.

There are guidelines against what you're advising against: see Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly. The 'as of' mechanism is most commonly used to date statements as you suggest: the preferred form would be "[[As of 1977]] this was the new gizmo on the block." It might be that people aren't following the guidelines; in this case your main options are ignoring the problem, fixing it yourself, or notifying the people responsible about what the problem is. Hope that helps! --ais523 17:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• You're right, statements that date quickly should be reworded. If you can spare the time, please help us out. _ Mgm|^(talk) 22:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Editing a "campaignbox"

Good day,

I've edited an incredibly incorrect page today and it contains something I see on a lot of historical information pages, something called a "campaignbox" which lists battles (with links). I need to be able to edit one, but I can't find any way to do that.

Any help?

Many thanks in advance, Sarah—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pvtchauncey (talk • contribs).

The page in question is Battle on Snowshoes, and the "campaignbox" is {{Campaignbox French and Indian War}}. You can edit it by going into Template:Campaignbox French and Indian War; even though it does have some parser functions, it's fairly self-explanatory. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 17:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

WOW! I'm impressed you found the page and answered so quickly. Many thanks!!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pvtchauncey (talk • contribs).

No problem; it was actually very simple (the MediaWiki software maintains a list of all the edits a user has made). Also, can you sign your talk page comments? It makes it a lot easier to identify who says what. To do so, just type four tildes, like ~~~~. Thanks! Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 17:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

answers

I asked a question on 1/2/07. How do I find out if anyone has answered it?Ameliapitt 17:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The question, and any answers it might have, will be in the Help Desk archives by now: Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2007_February_1. You can find the archives from the 'Archives' link near the top of the Help Desk. Recent questions stay on the Help Desk until they're archived. --ais523 18:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it seems you asked a Reference Desk question; the answers you got are archived at [[1]]. --ais523 18:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• 1/2 could also refer to the January 2. In an international setting like this, it's best to write out a date. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Navigation boxes in Finnish railway station articles

How should we do the "previous - next" navigation boxes in articles about Finnish railway stations? For the VR commuter rail network, it is easy: simply treat Helsinki Central railway station as the heart, and have one box for each route, or group of routes, having the same previous and next station and this one.

But long distance trains pose a huge problem. The long distance railway network in Finland (see List of railway lines in Finland) is much more interconnected and decentralised than the VR commuter rail network. How should we mark each box? With the ultimate endpoints (Helsinki and Kolari in the best case)? This would create a problem when deciding which stations are more important than which. Or should we do it like the Finnish Wikipedia appears to do, by only marking one individual, nonambiguous piece of track at a time? For example, the track from Helsinki to Riihimäki is a straight line with no forks. From Riihimäki it then forks to Tampere and other directions. And how to decide which way the routes go? Automatically treating central stations in large cities as starting points and minor stations in surrounding municipalities as ending points can lead to collisions between two major cities, such as between Helsinki and Turku. Should we decide "it begins in the south" or "it begins in Helsinki"?

If this is inappropriate for the Help Desk, can you suggest another place for discussion? JIP | Talk 18:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This would be best suited to discussion with editors more knowledgeable in the matter, rather than a general help desk. You could try raising the issue on the template talk page (you may wish to add notes to related article talk pages directing people to the template discussion). Hope that helps. Trebor 19:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

There is also a wikiproject for rail transport, you could probably get some help from them as well. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 20:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Follow-up to technical question about infobox

Thank you, Xiner and Gracenotes, for your help. Somehow, it didn't occur to me that I was allowed to edit a template. Is there a way to make temporary changes to a template for use in a specific article? For example, if you want to make an entry (like "spouse") plural, can you? I've tried to simply add the "s" to the template after cutting and pasting it into the article, but that doesn't work. Do I edit the template, then revert it? That doesn't seem right. --Vbd | (talk) 19:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

In the case of Template:infobox performer, which is widely used by other pages, you can't customize it for one page. Conceivably you can re-code the template so that it accepts an optional argument that'd display the extra "s", but that seems like a lot of work. In the case of "Spouse", I'm not sure what the answer is - "(s)" is the best I can think of! Xiner (talk, email) 20:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Rude/Agressive Editor

I am new on this page. There is another editor that keeps reverting any changes I make, including ones where I simply request a citation, and makes very insulting comments about me on the talk pages such as "you need to go back to your trailer". He is harrassing me. I wanted to join the community because I thought that it would be a fun place to go where people would have reasoned conversations and discussions, but I am afraid to do anything anymore! Is there something to do about this harrassment? I don't want to communicate with this person because he is SO agressive and insulting. (and I looked at his profile and there have been problems with him in the past too). What should I do about this kind of problem? (I'm almost afraid to add my signature) --Kattie90 20:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You can try putting {{subst:uw-npa1}}, {{subst:uw-npa2}}, {{subst:uw-npa3}} or {{subst:uw-npa4}} on the talk page of the user who is behaving like that. >Kamope< Talk · Sign Here 20:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Include the page where he made such comments in the section header on his talk page. You can also try WP:AMARQ, but I don't know how long the wait time there is. Xiner (talk, email) 21:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Can't the user just remove the tag on his talk page? I think that he checks his wikipedia account about 5 times a day--Kattie90 23:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It stays in the history, so that doesn't matter. If you think it's particularly serious, report it to WP:ANI right away to get some admin attention. Even if he's not blocked immediately following that, he will be if it continues. Otherwise, move progressively towards npa4; if he makes a clear personal attack after that, report him to WP:AIV; if he makes an unclear personal attack after that, report him at WP:ANI. If he drops the personal attacks and just starts pointlessly reverting your edits, WP:ANI. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

help needed

> Hello: My name is Kevin (username: essetarabus) and I posted an article on > Psychogenetic and found this information on the site. I have been unable to > discover how to place a comment on the editors talk page to refute his claim. > I have listed over 10 references which use psychogenetic as a name for the > science which is currently still viable amongst psychologists. he mentions > errors in some of his comments, yet all of the work is clearly referenced. > > I am very appreciative for the existence of wikipedia and use it often. I > also have produced what I and others feel as a viable article. I would be > happy to help wikified the article, except that I am not an expert computer > programmer and have difficulty following your programming instructions. I > would be happy to discuss reasonable compensation to wikify the article, but > do not know whom to contact. > > additionally, I ocassionally get lost trying to follow the flow and > instructions to post articles, edit them, and resolve issues such as these. > Is there a "how to use wikipedia manual" for beginners like me. Several of my > colleagues who would like to contribute, have also expressed similar concerns. > > An editor has expressed concern that this article or section may be > unencyclopedic and should be deleted. > This is primarily a statement about the article's subject, not necessarily its > quality or veracity. Please review what Wikipedia is not and try to resolve > the objections on the talk page. > > This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality > standards. > Please help improve this article, especially its introduction, section layout, > and relevant internal links. (help) > This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Have you tried here? [[2]]

By the way, you don't need to start each line with a >. .V. _[Talk|Email] 23:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

uploading images

I am unable to figure out how to upload an image to the Ashley Bickerton page. Can you help?Lmgallery 21:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Go here: Special:Upload. Just make sure you read through Wikipedia's policies on images before uploading an image. I'd hate to see you go through the trouble of uploading, only to have it deleted.↔NMajdan•talk 21:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

How to: Have a thumbnail link to another page within my site.

What is the syntax to have a thumbnail on the main page link to a subpage on my site. I was unable to find anything related to this in the help section.

-js

• Are you talking about your own website or Wikipedia? If it's the first, you should ask at the reference desk, if it's the second, you probably need to know "your site" is not the correct way to talk about a Wikipedia page (see WP:OWN). If it's neither, please be more specific. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)