Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 January 23

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

January 23

Negretti & Zambra

I have an original Crystal Palace Visitor Card 1864, with photograph on of Shakespeare's House, Stratford Upon Avon. This was given out at the Crystal Palace Exhibition. I keyed edit. In the middle of Wikipedia information, I then typed a small paragraph about this item, then keyed save. It was rejected by the auto-bot as spam, vandalism. I can't discover what I did wrong. I scanned the card so it could be inserted, but could not insert the image, which is of Shakespeare's house & the text on the exhibition visitor's card, albeit the word Shakespere is spelt different on my card. This item is original, I collect historical, pre-1900 photographs, etc. ^^^^^^^^

I think you just accidentally hit the "gallery" button in the edit window, which made the page look like this - which looked like vandalism. I have fixed it up. I am not too sure about your image question, maybe Wikipedia:Uploading images can help (or you can clarify here).--Commander Keane 00:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Photo Move

Is there a way to move photos similiar to a page move? If you could reply on my talk page, that'd be great.Just H 02:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

No. To rename an image file it must be uploaded under the new name (and the old file deleted). -- Rick Block (talk) 03:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

in other languages

I just cant figure out how to make a new page in a new language I'd be translating of an existing article, please help!!

This is just the English encyclopedia, so if you want to make an article in a different language, please go to that language's encyclopedia. If you were going to translate La Cumbrecita, you could do this at es:La Cumbrecita. — coelacan talk — 17:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, got it going but was deleted cause translation wasn't ready, no problem with that.

But how do i get the:

in other languages

• English
• Español

on the left boxes going?

I'm new in all this and is driving me nuts!!

Using the above example, you would add [[es:La Cumbrecita]] at the bottom of the English page, and [[en:La Cumbrecita]] at the bottom of the Spanish page. For any language, use the two letter prefix of that language's Wikipedia, so German is de, Chinese zh, and so on. Note the use of the colon ":" at the beginning of these wikilinks. Using [[:es:La Cumbrecita]] with the colon will create an in-line wikilink that the user can click on in the middle of a paragraph, like es:La Cumbrecita. Using [[es:La Cumbrecita]] without the beginning colon will make a sidebar link in the box on the left. Those links are usually added at the bottom of an article's wiki markup so they won't get in the way of other users when they are editing. — coelacan talk — 18:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

GREAT, thanks, think I got it, will try tonight!! There's other stuff I may need help so I may be back!

Cool. When you come back, I recommend that you start a new topic, because this one is scrolling up the page and is likely to be overlooked. And remember to WP:Sign your posts. =) — coelacan talk — 20:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

External links

Can I add external Photo links to flickr ??

• It's not something I recommend. If the copyright license allows it, the image should be uploaded for display in the article. If it doesn't, it probably isn't the type of link the article needs. See WP:EL. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Most Actively Discussed Pages?

Is there a way to retrieve a list of most actively discussed articles on Wikipedia (pages with high activity/volume on the "discussion" section)? I'm doing research on online discussion/dialogue.

Thanks a lot! Kkireyev 03:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if you go over to Special:Statistics, you will find all the information you need. From that page I found http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm which gives a list of the "50 most edited articles", and it listed Talk:Main Page and Template talk:Did you know and then the first real article talk page wsa Talk:Anarchism, with 13918 edits. In the future, questions like this are probably best asked at the Wikipedia:Reference Desk. — coelacan talk — 17:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect Information

In your page on the North Vancouver School District 44, the superintendent is no longer Dr Robyn Brayne but is Mr John Lewis.

A great chance to make an edit! Be bold. Xiner (talk, email) 03:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

How to create a user page in wikipedia ?

Please help me to creat a user page in wikipedia

Regards, Vinu Padmanabhan

Hi, your userpage is at User:Vinu Padmanabhan. That's where you can tell other Wikipedians about yourself. You can learn more about userpages at WP:USERPAGE and if you're looking for design help you can try Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help . — coelacan talk — 06:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

There's some more design help at User:The Transhumanist/User page design also. Hope those answers were useful to you. — coelacan talk — 06:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Can someone conclude this case?

The evidence gatherer has admitted that he tagged 2 legitimate users so can someone conclude the case? Bowsy 09:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The Help Desk is only for questions on how to use Wikipedia. I think you want Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I'll leave this message on your talk page as well, since I'm fairly late in answering you here. — coelacan talk — 10:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

First, the WP:SSP page has cases open that are over a month old; if you want to complain about that, you should post at Wikipedia talk:Suspected sock puppets, not here, and not at WP:AN/I. Second, it would have been a bit more straightforward if you had identified yourself as one of those "2 legitimate users" about whom another user filed the SSP report. And third, you've removed the "suspected sockpuppet" tag from your user pages, so what exactly is the urgency? -- John Broughton | ^(♫♫) 19:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

When to delete?

When looking for an article on the British band Brakes i stumbled across the US Band The Brakes. I have doubts as to their notability and feel this may be criteria for deletion in its own right, but the article is clearly an advertisement too. Is self-promotion a good enough reason to delete an article or should any notability they may have mean that it merely requires editing into a more encyclopaedic article?

Thanks! Newartriot 11:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

• Opinions differ, but if someone can rewrite it in an encyclopedic style that should be preferred over outright deletion, provided their notability can be proven. Have you checked for newspaper reports, reviews and Allmusic.com listings for example? - Mgm|^(talk) 12:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your help here. Notability seems to be lacking given your criteria. As a preliminary measure I've removed some of the worst violations in terms of self-promotion and proposed that the article be revised/deleted on the talk page. Newartriot 13:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
    • The article read like something written by a PR flack, and was nominated by someone else for deletion via AfD. I think this article, and the discussion above, demonstrate a rule that is often not followed: If you have doubts about the notability of a subject, do a search. In this case, a Google search on Brakes band Philadelphia turned up a lot of results that, to me, indicate that the band is notable. At minimum, these should have been added to the article before it was nominated for AfD. I've added enough, I think, to the article to prevent it being deleted, but I only looked through the first two pages of Google results. And for most of the links I found, I didn't spend the time to add text in the article's body (I just put in the link) -- so there is certainly a lot of opportunity for another editor to vastly improve the article. -- John Broughton ^(♫♫) 00:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Manual line breaks

I've looked through the Help pages and cannot find a WP webpage explaining how best to do a manual line break. Do I need to type <br> each time? Or is there some simpler method? Thanks
Shawn in Montreal 15:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The simplest method is to leave a blank line between two lines. That starts a new paragraph. — Lost^(talk) 15:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

how

how do you create an article —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcspazatron (talk • contribs)

I'd suggest you take a look at Help:Starting a new page and Wikipedia:Your first article - PeaceNT 15:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

visible changes?

I edited the page on my home village of Elderslie, Renfrewshire yesterday and want to add more but my changes from yesterday have not been posted, thay are in "talk".

How do I get the changes posted and do some more please

thanks

Alan

217.36.230.210 15:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Alan. It looks to me like your changes were made correctly and they are appearing for me just fine. This is one of the changes you made: [1] and I'm seeing it in the article text at Elderslie. The talk page, Talk:Elderslie, appears to be empty. — coelacan talk — 16:05, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, but I have gone back in as a fresh window, searched, and I see a page that does not have my changes and they are still in the talk section......strange?

I am completely new to this so don't have any idea what I should be doing

thanks again

Alan

Okay, can you point me to the talk section you're talking about? As well as the page where you are not seeing your edits, but expect to? Just go to those pages, and then copy and paste the URL from your browser's location bar ( http://www.example.org/ ) over here for me to investigate, please. — coelacan talk — 16:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You might be viewing an older version of the paged cached by your browser. Try hitting Ctrl-F5 (with most browsers) while viewing the page to do a hard refresh. -Elmer Clark 01:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Citation tagging

How does one get the little box that says, "This article does not cite source. You can help Wikipedia by..." I am assuming it is one of those { { something } } tags. However, I cannot find what it is exactly.

Thanks NightFalcon90909 16:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

That's {{unreferenced}} that you want. You may also be interested in the {{fact}} tag, and the information at Template:fact is pretty helpful in finding other tags as well. — coelacan talk — 16:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, your signature is showing up unlinked. Are you typing it out? Try using four tildes: ~~~~ That will let other users click on your signature to get to your user page and user talk page. — coelacan talk — 16:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It has been doing that for awhile; I assumed that it was only doing that for me because I was me, and it would be silly for me to click me when I could click my name up at the top right corner. However, that is disconcerting that it is appearing everywhere like that. What do I do? I am definitely using the four tildes (~) if I were typing it out, I wouldn't know what time to put down. What do I do?

PS-thanks for the tag. NightFalcon90909 18:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences and untick the box that says 'Use raw signature'. --ais523 18:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I suspect that you have started using "raw signatures" without including the links in the raw signature. Go to "my preferences" at the top of the page, and uncheck the box that says "raw signature", or, change the raw signature to add links. The simplest raw signature for you would be [[User:NightFalcon90909|NightFalcon90909]] which would produce something like NightFalcon90909 18:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC). But if you don't want to get intricate (like my long font-heavy signature), you can just leave "raw signature" unchecked and a simple signature will constructed automatically. — coelacan talk — 18:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for everything! NightFalcon90909 19:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. =) — coelacan talk — 19:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Uploading Pictures

Is there a way of uploading more than one photo at a time? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thomascarter (talk • contribs).

No. Sorry. Xiner (talk, email) 16:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

No, there is no way to do this. Also, please look at the images you've uploaded, Image:Woodhead.jpg Image:Wupper.jpg Image:Blackpool.jpg Image:2161.jpg Image:Dorset2.jpg Image:Scrgrb21.jpg, you're not giving proper source information or copyright and licensing information, and all those images are going to be deleted as a result, unless you properly cite them. You need to give the URL of where you got them, and use a license tag from WP:ICT and following all the instructions at WP:IUP and WP:UPIMAGE. It is very likely that the images you have uploaded cannot be used here, because they are probably copyrighted and do not fall under our WP:FAIRUSE policy. — coelacan talk — 16:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Edits lost?

I was wondering that, if I edit a page which gets deleted, does my edit count drop? (in other words, is it as if those edits were never made?). | AndonicO ^{Talk · Sign Here} 16:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure but I'm going to say no. The page is removed from view by all those except administrators. At any point, the article could be restored along with the page history. Because this can be restored, I don't believe edits are lost.--NMajdan•talk 16:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The edits themselves remain in the system, and could be resurrected, but the counters that measure edit counts cannot access them, so your "edit count" does drop. — coelacan talk — 16:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both for explaining. | AndonicO ^{Talk · Sign Here} 16:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. =) — coelacan talk — 16:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

If you know an article has been stolen from another website?

I don't know much about video editing, but the video editing software page has either been copied from this: http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/softwarereviews/l/bl_hisw.htm or that website stole from Wikipedia. So what should happen?Bloogle 18:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for noting that. Please follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. — coelacan talk — 19:03, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

• What article in Wikipedia is this related to? - Mgm|^(talk) 19:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

  I think it's video editing software, which, although I didn't compare it closely to that URL, reads like a product review and very probably was copied from some such site. — coelacan talk — 19:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The great bulk of this article was added all at once with this edit [2]. This may help you identify whether it was a copy. But in any case it is indeed written as a review, without citations, and I think all the new material should go for that reason, for violation of other policies. Notinasnaid 20:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Would

It be alright to make greeting templates? --Regards, Darkest Hour ^Talk•_contribs 20:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by greeting template? For new users we have Template:Welcome. Trebor 20:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorization

I categorized an article that was tagged uncategorized. Now how do I remove that tag?Mozermay 20:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit the article and remove the {{Uncategorized}} tag. Trebor 20:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

can I underline text in an article (that isn't a link)??

When writing an article is it possible to underline text that isn't a link? Rachel Ayres 20:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but in the vast majority of cases you're encouraged to italicize with the double-apostrophes instead (''...''). Xiner (talk, email) 20:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course it is possible, but it is not really appropriate, as per the Manual of Style. Adrian M. H. 21:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help, I was just curious since I haven't seen it happen. Thanks again for the very swift replies. Rachel Ayres 21:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Columbus City Center show/hide list problems

on the Columbus City Center page there are several problems with the "hidden" list embedded in the article: first, when you just go to the page, the list is not hidden, its shown second, when you click to hide the list the mills corp template at the bottom disappears. i went to try and fix it myself, but couldn't see whats wrong. if someone who's experienced can just take a look at it it would be great. thanks in advance.

I don't think it would be correct for the list to be hidden to someone visiting the page; much better to allow the reader to hide the list if he/she wants. Second, looking at the article now (perhaps it has been changed), in Firefox, when I hide the list, the Mills template at the bottom remains visible. -- John Broughton | ^(♫♫) 16:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

direct

How do you get a welcome template to direct to your user talk?

--Darkest Hour ^Talk•_contribs 21:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "direct to your user talk"? Xiner (talk, email) 21:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

in other languages 2

Done!! It was edited immediately though, how can that be? didn't like what they did either, Isn't coloured titles allowed

Sorry, another simple question: Do i have to register in Every language, do i use a different name?

Will sign posts, i'll get to that tonight!!

Thanks again, Jorge

Yes, you do have to separately register in each Wikipedia, although universal logins might be a feature sometime in the future. -Elmer Clark 01:26, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Elmer, you guys been very helpful

Is it possible to have the history for my user page deleted?

I'd like to have my user page blanked out. Right now, it's just a redirect to my talk page. How can I get this done? (Ibaranoff24 21:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC))

I've done it for you. —Pilotguy (ptt) 21:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

browsing history

Is there a way to delete my browsing history for this website?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.67.23 (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia does not keep a browsing history, only an editing history. Your web browser might, though, on your own computer. Notinasnaid 22:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Being a browser function instead of Wikipedia's, you might wish to comment on our computing reference desk. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:37, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to delete the history stored on my computer??

If you're using Internet Explorer, follow these instructions: [3]. If you're using Firefox, go to Tools...Clear Private Data. Patstuart^talk|edits 01:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

other users

how do you contact/email other users? please reply. thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcspazatron (talk • contribs) 22:45, January 23, 2007

The easiest way is to leave a message on the user's Talk page. Just visit their userpage, click on the Discussion tab, then click on the + tab at the top to create a new topic.

Some users have turned on the option to email them, which you should see on their userpage. Others (such as myself) are wary of spam, so the only way to contact us is through our Talk pages. -- Kesh 22:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Linking to user CSS

Can I link to my own monobook.css in a page I am editing? If so, how? NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You could, just by using its name (User:Ndsg/monobook.css), but why would you want to? --Sopoforic 23:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, because I'd like to apply my own styles to some of the text. Over at the Tech Village Pump I've been told:

"Actually, your styles should be applied to articles you are working on, as long as you declare new styles for the existing classes and ids."

If that's correct, my question's answered! NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It now seems it isn't correct. Apparently you have to add your own inline styles if you want the page to appear correctly to the outside world. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)