Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 February 3

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February 3

Creating templates

Resolved

 – All up and running due to steep learning curve on parsing parameters

Hi, I want to create a template to link to a website that has UK Chart positions in the same way that the IMDb template links to actors, films etc., but can't find how to do this. A sample URL is "http://www.chartstats.com/artistinfo.php?id=2205" and I would like to parameterise the "id=" field such that all the editor has to do is fill in the template with the number. Any advice towards a suitable instruction page please? --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 01:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You should bring this up at m:Talk:Interwiki, if you want to link like this: [[chartstats:XXX]]. However, if you want a template, just tell me the data that needs to go in, and I might be able to make it. Good luck! Soxred93 | talk count bot 01:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. That page doesn't seem to exist but it's not really an Interwiki issue, as I see it, it's limited to en:Wiki. What I would like to do is have a template that looks like {{ukchartstats|XXX}} linking to the appropriate page on that website; but of course it has to deal with the empty parameter if people forget it, as invalid parameters are passed to the website & handled there. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 01:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Try the following: {{#if:{{{1|}}}| '''[http://www.chartstats.com/artistinfo.php?id={{{1|}}} Chart Stats]'''}}XENON54 | talk | who? | 03 Feb 2008 01:55_GMT

Looks good, thanks, I'll give it a go. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 02:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, the correct link I meant was m:Talk:Interwiki map. Soxred93 | talk count bot 02:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I've put the template in my userspace. User:Xenon54/ChartStats. If an id is passed it looks like :::

Chart Stats and if not

i.e. it doesn't appear. I haven't figured out how to get text to show up yet, I'll leave that to an experienced templater. XENON54 | talk | who? | 03 Feb 2008 02:16_GMT

Much obliged to you. I'll copy it over & work on it. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 02:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia as a search engine in my Internet Explorer Browser

On a couple of computers ago, I had Wikipedia as a Search Engine in my Internet Explorer Browser. That made it convenient to go straight to Wikipedia when I wanted to reference something. What happened to that option? There was an option to make Wikipedia my home page, what happened to that option? Has anyone on your staff ever heard of Letters From the Earth by Mark Twain. It had been banned until the 60's. Do you have any adults working for Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.57.39 (talk) 02:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems that you have a few questions, so I'll answer them one by one.

1. Re the search engine: It is still there. On the search engine menu (the down arrow next to the magnifying glass), click something to the effect of "Add more search engines...".
2. Re the home page: I believe that you have to do that yourself now - go to Tools -> Internet Options.
3. Re Mark Twain: You will be interested in Letters from the Earth.
4. Re the age question: We are all volunteers here from all age groups. Some of the best administrators are eleven- and twelve-year-olds, while some of the worst vandals are thirty-five- and forty-year-old adults. XENON54 | talk | who? | 03 Feb 2008 02:22_GMT

deleted

I am an attorney and the executive director of a 501(c)4 organization whose Wiki is being consistently deleted. The wiki is for "Better Courts for Missouri."

I would appreciate it if the wiki were not consistently deleted as the organization is the subject of substantial news coverage in Missouri in addition to being founded and headed by notable attorneys and physicians in that state.

Thank you for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mo supreme court (talk • contribs) 04:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you complaining about an article being deleted? If so this not the place to do this. This is a section for getting help on how to use wikipedia. Cryo921 (talk) 04:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

People are actually told they can ask questions about deleted articles here, and trying to create an article is using Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and (although it's not a busines) Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. You are strongly discouraged from creating an article about the organization you represent. See Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted? Better courts for missouri was deleted for not asserting significance and later for being blatant advertising. It's rare for an organization about a week old to have an article (unless the article was created by the organization as advertising against our guidelines). This is an encyclopedia and not a news site. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

As a side-note, also be aware of WP:LEGAL, as you have stated you are an attorney. -- Kesh (talk) 21:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Edited Page Does Not Appear First Time

Hi!

I made some edit changes to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods page. When I try to access using the CISG redirect it sometimes redirects to the previous version of the page. If I then select, for example, the 'history' tab and then go back to the 'article' tab I can see my edited version. I don't know how to prevent users going to the old version and not realising it has been updated. Presumably I did something wrong in the edit. Can you suggest how I can fix this annoying glitch?

BTW, love your work! You volunteers are to be congratulated for the big effort you have all put into this project!

Regards, UTS10393609 (talk) 07:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi UTS10393609. I believe what you are experiencing is a cache issue, i.e., it's not that the page you're seeing is actually a different version, but that your computer has an older version its stored and is showing you that version out of its memory. To address this please see Wikipedia:Bypass your cache#Instructions for various browsers. Thank you very much for your kind words. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 07:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It may well not be his problem at all. There's currently a bug on the Wikipedia side in which redirect pages don't always get updated when the underlying page changes. See Wikipedia:Bypass_your_cache#Server cache and Wikipedia:Purge. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Aha, so either way it's cache-as-cache-can.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I need help doing automated editing.

Resolved

 – Anakin did it. Thanks!

I posted this elsewhere, but the help desk tends to be, well, "helpful," so I thought I'd post it here also.

I'm working on replacing Wikipedia:Bots/Status with a more intuitive system of templates. Now that the template is made, I need help populating the templates with the information in the old system.

For more, see Wikipedia:Bot requests#Need to populate a new list for Wikipedia:Bots/Status.

If anybody can do this with scripts that somehow subst the content, that'd be fine too. I don't really care how it's done, just so long as it's done and I don't have to sit there for 8 hours going:

CTRL-C *click*
CTRL-V *click*
CTRL-C *click*
CTRL-V *click*

*slams head on keyboard* ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 10:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd be glad to try. Or I'll give it a go at least. • Anakin ^(talk) 14:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

From the look of it, this can be easily done in notepad and excel (or another spreadsheet tool that accepts CSV inputs). Copy the table info into notepad or whatever, do a find/replace on the template active/inactive fields, replace "|-" with a carriage return and "| " with "," replace "{{User|" with nothing, replace "}}" with nothing, dump it into excel as a csv, change the date format for the entire date column with the one you wish, copy the user column back into notepad, replace [[User: with nothing, replace "|" with a "," and replace ]] with nothing. Import this column into a new spreadsheet as a csv, delete the duplicate column, paste this into the first spreadsheet, then add new columns for your template fields and |'s and copy them down the sheet. (Well when I said easily done.. ) Then when it looks correct, copy the lot back into notepad and do a find/replace on the blank characters the spreadsheet uses to delineate cells to get rid of them and et voila, you should have your desired output. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 15:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not CSV, but even if it could be got into Excel, it's more complicated than that. I put it through PHP using various regexps to deal with it because an awful lot of the lines are malformed. • Anakin ^(talk) 15:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hrmm, should have clarified at the time - I meant that it would be able to be imported as CSV once all the table cell seps of "| " were turned into ","; with the "|-" turned into blanks/carriage returns, they'd be interpreted as new rows in a spreadsheet when imported as a CSV. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

:) Don't worry. One way or another 'tis done now, at User:Zenwhat/Sandbox. • Anakin ^(talk) 14:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[Deleted]

[Deleted]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.89.210 (talk) 12:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not give out private information like that. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hoping I'm in the right area for a question on searching my own userpages

I've created a couple of draft articles under User:Hcberkowitz, but have forgotten exact titles. When I search userspace for User:Hcberkowitz, I got the most recent one, but then was overwhelmed with output from a bot. My guess is the bot has archived other user/talk pages where I commented, and that explains why there is so much output -- that I can't filter.

For people of UNIX-ish bent, what I'd like to do is search (recursively) on User:Hcberkowitz/*

I thought I've seen a way to do this, but I simply don't remember the technique and haven't been able to find it in documentation. Documentation is wonderful if you already know what term the documentation uses for what you are trying to find out.

Thanks! Howard Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 12:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Special:Prefixindex may be what you are looking for. Type your username into the box, then you can check the User and User talk namespaces (one at a time). --Kateshortforbob 12:56, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you want Special:Prefixindex. Algebraist 12:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

oops, conflict Algebraist 12:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

(editconflict): For you convenience here is a link NanohaA'sYuri^{Talk, My master} 12:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

cannot retrieve forgotten password.

When I attempt to log in, I get an error message that my password is incorrect. The system promises to send me an email with a new password, but it never comes. I hesitate to create a new account, but I will if I have to.

I don't know what you mean to sign using that funny squiggle, but here goes: 14:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it takes time for the email to arrive. You would have to have entered your email in your preferences and I think you would have had to validate it by clicking on a link in an email around the time you entered it (as well as spelling it correctly). Maybe your spam filter is filtering out the emails. I forget exactly what email address they come from -- there was a question on this help desk about this a few days ago I think, and somebody suggested putting a certain email address in your whitelist, something like wikimedia.org. I suppose probably you forgot your password, but maybe there's a chance someone found out your password, logged into your account and changed your password and email address. You could check the contributions history of your account to see if there are any edits that are not by you.

Unless you have a large contribution history that you want to keep credit for, just creating a new account and abandoning the old one seems a good solution if you forgot your password. I don't think that would violate any policy or guideline. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppets.

Re signing with those sqiggly things (called tildes ~~~~ ) you've almost got it. I think that time you put five tildes, which posts the time only. You're supposed to put four tildes, which gives your username (or IP address if you're not logged in) and the time. --Coppertwig (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, new passwords come from wikimedia.org in a mail called "New temporary password for Wikipedia". If Help:Logging in doesn't help then you have to create a new account. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"In-line footnotes" template?

Simple question: I can't find where the "this article lacks in-line footnotes; please integrate references into the text of this article" (or along those lines) template is. Could someone give me the link/code to it? Thanks! --JamieS93 (talk) 15:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't find anything like that either. The closest I found is Template:Citations missing. Template:Inline and Template:Inline citations both redirect to it.

To look for things like this: type in a combination of words such as "needs footnotes" into the search box. Click "search". Then, at the bottom of the page, there are checkboxes for the namespaces you want to search in. Check "template" and uncheck "article". Click "search" near those checkboxes. You can then also modify the words you're searching for. --Coppertwig (talk) 15:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe {{nofootnotes}}? See Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you! Helpful to have those links to refer to. I think I was getting the citation-related templates a bit mixed up when I was trying to describe it in my original message here. The template that Fuhghettaboutit linked to was probably the one I was thinking of. (The Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles list was useful, too; just realized after seeing it that I had been looking for that page, as well!) I'll go ahead and use the nofootnotes template on an article I'm thinking of (Livestock carrier). Again, thanks for the help! --JamieS93 (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Uploading a friend's pictures

What procedures should I follow to upload some nice pictures a friend took? How should I establish I have this friend's permission to use her pictures, preferably without posting her name onwiki or forwarding her name/email address to OTRS. I'd like to preserve the friend's privacy if possible. It might be easiest to just pretend I took the pictures and upload them as self-created works, but that would be mildly inaccurate.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 16:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello there! In regards to the upload; would it be possible for her to upload them herself? I think that would be the easiest route. Alternately, she could upload them to Flickr's creative commons and you could use them. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 17:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Link my photos to the Wiki entry for Gian Lorenzo Bernini

I am uploading pictures of two sculptures by G. L. Bernini: Angel with Crown of Thorns and Angel with the Subscription, both of which are located at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, Italy. I am the owner of these 2 photos. I am attempting to link the photos to the Wiki entry for Gian Lorenzo Bernini. At the end of the article is a listing of his major works and the article is showing two stubs for each of these sculptures. It is here I am attemnpting to add the photos. Please advise me how to do this. I have searched the Wiki help sources but have not been able to learn how to link my uploaded photos. This is the first time I have attempted to contribute to Wikipedia. Please forgive my rookie ignorance. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raymosley (talk • contribs) 17:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello! Don't worry, everybody starts out somewhere. To link a photo after uploading, there's a whole bunch of stuff you can do. There's a list at here. Hope that helps! Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 17:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Image renaming

• Bugzilla link: 709

While it's not currently possible to move/rename images, Betacommand has a bot that can perform the function for us the hard way.

Requests for image movement should be placed at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:Image renaming. Admins are automatically authorized for the use of this tool, and non-admins may be added by having an admin list you at the bottom of Wikipedia:Image renaming, which also includes instructions on using the tool.

There is no "Requests for" process involved, you just need to have a reasonably good edit history.

Related pages can be found in Category:Image renaming ~Kylu (u|t) 06:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey there, Kylu. Thanks for letting us know, though I'm not sure why you chose the Help Desk to do so... :P Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 17:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I posted that here it was a cross post from WP:AN Im just trying to spread the word β^_command 17:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Where is the information coming from?

I am doing a project for school and it is about informational websites. I am wondering who is responsible for the information here? Is it a collection of people or one person? HELP!70.100.93.157 (talk) 18:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

We are. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:About, and the authors are all the editors who have edited that article in its history. x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

As to where the information comes from, ideally it is all cited by reliable, verifiable sources, such as books, newspapers and television shows, added to the encyclopedia by anyone who wishes to contribute. Good luck on your project! Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 18:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

In the event you wish to cite a particular Wikipedia article, when you are at the article, click on "Cite this page" from the toolbox links on the left hand side of your screen.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Help with a template

Hi, I have been trying to add the option of uncollapsing, collapsing, or auto-collapsing the Template:FARC-EP in the same way that Template:Colombia conflict has this option. I have been trying things for a several days but every time I preview the page something weird comes up. I want both templates to be uncollapsed by default in FARC-EP Chain of Command, but I haven't been able to do it. Could anyone help me out with it? Thanks, Colombiano21 (talk) 19:19, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello there! I've added a parameter to the template at {{FARC-EP}} to make sure that it always starts out uncollapsed. Hope that helps! Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 19:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Great, that works for now. Thanks! Colombiano21 (talk) 19:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem! Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 19:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Incorrectness

What should I do if I come across information on Wikipedia which I know to be wrong? Report it? Edit over it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.14.30 (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

If you can cite your information with reliable, verifiable sources then feel free to be bold and edit it. Also, you may want to create an account so that your edits may be attributed to yourself, and also for the other benefits an account brings. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 19:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Flicker image permission

Who do I ask for permission to use http://www.flickr.com/photos/12743464@N03/2235970668/ at Tyrone Wheatley?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 19:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Put simply we cannot use it as it is. The image states © All rights reserved, and for Wikipedia to use a copyrighted image it would have to meet the non-free content criteria, and an appropriate rationale would have to be written for it. Unfortunately, the first rule of the non-free content criteria is that there must be no free equivalent. Non-free / fair use images of living people fail the first rule.

So the only people you can ask are AAFL on Flickr, since they hold the rights to it. But to clarify, permission for use only on Wikipedia is not enough as any images uploaded here are also used on lots of other sites which host copies of Wikipedia's content, and such images are deleted. You would have to persuade them to change the "all rights reserved" thing and release the image under a free license, before it could be uploaded here. • Anakin ^(talk) 14:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

O.K. So who would I contact to attempt to get them to change the all rights reserved thing and how likely is it that anything would come of such an attempt?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 17:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, there's no rule on it. I guess you could contact them directly via Flickr if you have a Flickr account. If you ask nicely and say it's for the Wikipedia article I don't see why they wouldn't agree. But remember it's not enough to get unconfirmed permission to use it only on Wikipedia because of legal/policy restrictions -- they would need to change it to a creative commons or compatible license on that page. Then, upload it at Wikimedia Commons and give the Flickr source. That's it I think! No harm in trying. • Anakin ^(talk) 18:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

What is the policy on scanning images from media guides where no copyright is stated?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 19:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Everything is copyrighted unless otherwise stated. So a scanned image would be copyrighted by the company that produced the guide or the program they got the image from. So it would still need to meet Wikipedia's non-free content criteria, and images of living people probably fail the first rule, in that it should be possible to obtain a free equivalent. That's why it's so very hard to get images for some articles. You could try it but somebody might tag such an image with {{di-disputed fair use rationale}}. • Anakin ^(talk) 19:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I may have a shot with some dead guys, but not any living ones from what you are saying.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 19:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

War Brides

Hi I am a first time contributer to the stub "War Brides". I am an historian of the Canadian War Brides and would like to contribute something about their experience to this stub. I thought that I did when I signed up, logged in, and clicked "edit" but the changes that I made are not appearing on the live site.... I looked high and low for a "upload" or "make live" button and went through the How To's and FAQs but can't find out how to make my contribution live. Help... Cdnwarbride (talk) 20:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)cdnwarbride

Just to clarify, is War bride the page you're referring to? gb ^{(t, c)} 20:12, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

In order for your changes to appear, just click the "Save" button after you've made sure your changes are the way you want them to be. The button is right under the editing window; you may also use it by pressing a keyboard shortcut. Alt-Shift-S for Firefox and Alt-S for Internet Explorer, I believe. Hope that helps! Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 20:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Removing My Name from the user page of another user under Contacts

Today i removed my name from the user page of User:UzEE under Contacts heading which i had added previously. But this edit was reverted by the user and he gave me a warning notice for doing vandalism. Can anyone tell me what should i do? --SMS ^Talk 20:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest communicating with the user on their talk page and trying to reach a compromise. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 20:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that that is probably the best way to deal with the situation. At any rate, I contacted the other user to allow them to know about this listing. SorryGuy  Talk  20:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I think i should also mention here that User:UzEE is totally concentrated on either reverting my edits or nominating my creations on Wikipedia for deletion for the last one month. --SMS ^Talk 21:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up SorryGuy. Well I usually play safe and disallow any editor to edit my userpage in most cases. This particular user has a history of vandalizing my page and subsequently getting blocked. If he wanted to remove the sign, he could have asked me on my talk page. I would have been happy to be of any service. UzEE!! 21:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I think all my nominations met with the guidelines. I always assume good faith towards other editors, and their edits unless I mention otherwise. UzEE!! 21:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

While I understand what you are saying UzEE, I think Smsarmad's intent has been made clear and you should go ahead and remove it. Further, I encourage both of you to use your talk pages in the future, it would have resolved the issue without it having to come here. SorryGuy  Talk  21:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Well i just want to know, was that vandalism which i did? --SMS ^Talk 21:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess you are right SorryGuy. I should remove them. As for the question of the talk page. I always try and contact the editors on thier talk pages and try to resolve issues there. I just dont go to WP:AIV and make meaningless reports. My guts tell me to put an {{uw-aiv}} on his talk page but I would not do that this time. Sorry for the trouble from my part.UzEE!! 22:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

questions for moderators

I had a few questions for moderators of wikipedia because I'm currently writing an article about wiki.

- How many of the articles (%) would you say are absolutely correct?

- how much vandalism 'attacks' on articles are there every day?

- Is vandalism discovered quickly? (Difference in size of article being vandalized?)

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Allladin (talk • contribs) 20:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello there! I'm not an administrator, but if you don't mind I think I could answer your questions.

In regards to the first two, those aren't exactly gaugeable by any means, as there are too many variables (for example, what is "absolutely correct"). I'd estimate that the number of vandalism attacks per day is somewhere in the tens of thousands, though it may be more or less.

In terms of vandalism being discovered, most of the time it is removed in roughly under five minutes. This is due to a great number of editors using special anti-vandalism programs to combat disruptive editing. There are also a number of automated anti-vandalism bots that patrol pages and revert nearly instantly. The size of the article does not contribute to reversion speed, in my opinion.

Of course, these are my personal thoughts; they aren't necessarily what other users or the Wikimedia foundation thinks. Hope that helps! Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 20:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I am also not an administrator, which is what I believe you are referring to by moderator, but also users, not just administrators can revert vandalism so I will elaborate on some of MoP's points. If you are interested in seeing the best content we have here, you may be interested at checking out our featured articles at WP:FA. As per an exact number, I agree that would be difficult to estimate and likely changes daily. However, if we estimate 10 incidents a minute, which is probably on the low end, it would be at least 15,000 a day. As for variance in vandal fighting in regards to article size, I would say there is none as a result of the tools outlined above. SorryGuy  Talk  21:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Administrators are simply users who have undergone a process to be entrusted with certain additional tools. The position does not give one any special ability to answer your questions; that comes from knowledge and experience. Some of the most knowledgeable and experienced users are not necessarily administrators (though there is some correlation as you need experience in order to become a sysop).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm an administrator but not particularly active in vandalism fighting and I don't have any special inside knowledge. However, I can give a few links which may be of interest to you: Reliability of Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Vandalism, Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies. If you are from the press then see wikimedia:Press room. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Why is my page protected?

I want to know why my page is protected. I really want to activate my page. i have not stolen information from other sites, all the information I put was given to me by the actor(whose page I created). So please make my article activate, i want to share with my friends. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nainaa (talk • contribs) 20:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Syed yasir shah is the page you mean, I think. It has been protected from recreation because you have repeatedly created an article without addressing the problems that have led to it being speedily deleted on three occasions. Please review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines with which all articles should comply. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite to reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation.

It may be advisable to write a draft of the article in a subpage of your userspace, such as User:Nainaa/Sandbox, then ask for someone to check it over before you attempt to move it to the main encyclopedia. Bencherlite^Talk 21:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Line Numbers

When I am reviewing 'Diffs', and in the top mark up version of the page, there will be a line number in bold. something like:
Line255:
My question, is there a way to auto scroll down to that line on the formatted view of the page? On large pages, it turns into a 'wheres Waldo' exercise to find the text. Preceding unsigned comment add to 21:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I am unaware of a method to find line numbers in a text, but there are two other ways I generally use. If the section heading is near the diff, you can click that from the article's table of contents. Outside of the that, if you are a Windows' user, you can always ctrl+f for the text you are looking for. SorryGuy  Talk  21:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice idea btw. I made a note and will see if i can write some useful javascript that will help take you to such a linenumber. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the prompt reply. I have been cheating at the 'Where's Waldo' game by using my browser's text search. I was hoping that there might be a ruler or scaled view to find that line number in the formatted text. TheDJ, please let me know of any script you might create for this.
Preceding unsigned comment add to 21:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Page layout coding

Where should I look for information on coding of Wikipedia page layout? E.g., how to keep images from overlapping the text. Wanderer57 (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! For non-specific editing help, you may want to try How to edit a page. For specific image help, take a look at Help:Images and other uploaded files. From those pages you may be able to find more information regarding your specific problem. If you need more help, please add a link to the article where you are having difficulties. Hope this helped! --omtay38 21:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You might find these templates of use: {{clear}}, {{Clearleft}} and {{Clearright}}.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

And WP:BUNCH might be useful. If you have a more specific case, just post the link and i'm sure someone can help. The image and infobox flow is a complicated thing that can often be stubborn and difficult to deal with if you don't know the many quirks of HTML and CSS (still the basis of all wikipedia formatting of course). Even if you do know them, it can be a painful experience btw :D. There is unfortunately no real guide that helps prevent it for all articles and all browsers. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to all. I will look into this coding more deeply. The immediate problem is a image box on top of text. I went exploring based on Omtay's note, and found code that seems to work. Is this edit likely to mess up the layout in other browsers? I appreciate if someone will check it. (I made the edit, then reverted it.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Leo_XIII&diff=188891884&oldid=188888048

The problem image is the B&W photo of Pope Leo VIII, in his article. Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 22:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, that is definitely not the way to solve it :D I have made a few changes that repositioned the images. I thought that these would be better places for them. A couple of quick tips.

1. In general, use the "thumb|left" or "thumb|right" notation for images, without specifying a particular size. People can simply click the pictures to get larger versions, or define a "larger" default for thumbed pictures in their preferences.
2. Also in general try to keep most of the images aligned to the right side of the article, since this does not break the "flow" of the article as much. Now in this particular case you have a problem.

The problem is that the entire rightside of the article is already as good as filled up. You have the Infobox, the styles box, and the articles series box. This takes up a lot of space. So for now, i have left aligned 2 of the images, to at least provide some room. Personally, I would consider proposing to change that "article series" box in a Navbox, which are easily place at the bottom of articles, and don't limit article layout as much. But that might be something you would best discuss with a few other editors involved with those topics before you do that. Now to understand how the flow works, just experiment a bit by editing the page and previewing the article (instead of saving).

1. Images are top aligned to the paragraph of text that follow their inclusion point. So if you look at my diff you will see that i put the image "Leo-xiii-sm.jpg" just above the line "Leo XIII was the first Pope of whom" and that it now aligns with the top of the paragraph that this specific line starts. This is alway the case with both left and right aligns.
2. New paragraphs do not start under the image of the previous paragraph, but next to the image for as long as there is space to put text. This can be undesirable at times and then you have to use one of the templates: {{clear}}, {{Clearleft}} and {{Clearright}}. These force everything that follows it, to stay clear of any pictures, infoboxes or other "floating" elements. They work for both pagesides, just the left side, or just the right side respectively.
3. If you put multiple images in the text after eachother, they will also follow eachother in the article. They "stack" on top of eachother sorta speak. In general do no stack more than 2 or 3 images. If you stack than the position of the images start where you inserted them in the text, but the positions of all the lower images will basically "free flow" depending on the width of your window. It is better to insert the images in the part of text to which they apply, so that they will "anchor" to that part of the text.

meprobamate 400mg tablets

I need to know if this medicine has been discontinued. I was told this from my Walgreens medicine store.

Thank you Janet Kurre —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.29.123 (talk) 21:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

We have an article on Meprobamate that you might consult. Besides that, I would recommend to you the reference desk. SorryGuy  Talk  21:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

wjjz calls

the history of the are complete as they were originily on 1460 am as country music format until 1977 then contempery music 1981or in that time frame they went silent,fcc pulled their lic.

Dennis Buyers <removed personal information> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.168.130.208 (talk) 21:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! If you are referring to the article WJJZ then any changes can be made by clicking the "edit this page" tab at the top of the page. If you have further issues, you may need to be more specific with your question. --omtay38 22:05, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

British using Wikipedia

I can't understand that when British people edit Wikipedia, they use commas for decimal points. This makes American people very confused. I really think that they should use periods for decimal points. 71.193.65.110 (talk) 22:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A comma should not be used as decimal point here in the English Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Decimal points. Just fix it if you see it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

British people don't use commas for decimal points - that's a continental style. DuncanHill (talk) 22:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Ugh!! Makes me cringe! The notion of British people using commas and decimal points that way around. Let me just quickly state my peace: UK and Ireland use this format: 1,000,000.00. It's in the rest of Europe (as far as my knowledge goes, and as DuncanHill has stated), that commas are used as a decimal separator. But PrimeHunter is correct - on the English Wikipedia the rule is to use the US/UK format. Anything else should be changed. In the edit summary state something like, "fixing number format per WP:MOSNUM".

Userbox

I've been able to put a "tag" (User:zrs_12/userbox) on the userbox I made, but how would I do this if I were to make more userboxes. Is there something I can type in the userbox code or what? Zrs 12 (talk) 22:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You don't have to transclude all your userboxes; you can make them, too. The simplest way would be to use {{userbox}}; for example, I could use this:

{{userbox|gold|white|[[Image:Example.jpg|50px]]|The image on the left is 50 pixels wide.}}

To create this:

The image on the left is 50 pixels wide.

You can change the colour, image and text parameters however you like. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 22:56, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know. I've already made one. I just don't know how to make the thing that makes it more accessible to others users. I was shown how to do this for the first userbox I made {{user:zrs_12/userbox}}, but I don't know how I would do this for the subsequent userboxes I will make... In other words, I would like to know what I would need to do in order to make the userboxes I will create accessible by typing in something formatted like User:UBX/sample ... Zrs 12 (talk) 23:13, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

All you need to do is create more subpages. It does not have to be called "userbox" - it can be called anything you want. Put each user box on a different page, then they can be transcluded separately. See Wikipedia:Subpages#How to create user subpages. You could also if you wanted, move your existing user box page to something that better describes what it is; e.g., User:zrs_12/userboxes/mathnotation. And if you want a list of all your user subpages, you can use Special:Prefixindex, like so. Happy editing! • Anakin ^(talk) 14:39, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

complete mess of a move

I tried to move this into userspace and made a complete bodge of it - Help - it should be off user Altenhofen's userpage. --Fredrick day (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Taken care of: the page is at User:Altenhofen/future WWW Titles, and both redirects resulting from the moves are now deleted.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you're using my toolbox, cool.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Neat! and thanks for the move. --Fredrick day (talk) 23:13, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

tags tab

I notice a "tags" tab is now available but the only problem is that it does not seem to do anything ? I've tried to use it to add tags to articles but nothing seems to happen? --Fredrick day (talk) 23:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

anyone? --Fredrick day (talk) 13:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't got a "tags" tab. I notice you've got a lot of code installed your monobook.js - the tab must be provided by something there, although I'm not familiar with those scripts, so I'm not sure what exactly. • Anakin ^(talk) 14:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Page Layout Question, part 2

Please will someone check an edit which I made, then reverted. Diff is below.

The purpose of the edit was to stop an image from overlapping on top of text.

My question is. is this edit likely to mess up the layout in other browsers? (I'm looking at it in Firefox.)

I appreciate if someone will check it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Leo_XIII&diff=188891884&oldid=188888048

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 23:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey there! The code you inserted doesn't seem to have had an effect on the text, so it seems it isn't compliant with Wikicode. So no worries about messing up layout. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 01:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The code wasn't in any syntax I've ever seen, and Wikipedia didn't realise it was code. Have a look at Help:Images for some general image and layout syntax, but if you explain what exact layout effect you want to achieve (because it wasn't "overlapping on top of text" in any browser as far as I could see) I'm sure we can easily add a little bit of HTML to fix it. • Anakin ^(talk) 14:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)