Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 July 8

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July 8

!vote?

I apologize if this is a "newbie" question, but what is a !vote? Cheers,VIVID (talk) 00:21, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Where did you see this? "!" in computer programming generally means "no" or "not". Is the question mark part of what you saw or is that your punctuation since you're asking a question? Dismas|^(talk) 00:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Even though Wikipedia is not a democracy, straw polls are sometimes used to form a consensus. AfD is an example of a place where straw polls (and thus the phrase !voting) are used. To stress the fact that you are not voting but forming a consensus, taking part in these polls is called !voting. The bang (!) is used in several programming languages to mean the opposite of whatever comes after it. So, !voting = not voting, !X is not X, or the opposite of X. Xenon54 00:34, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

What Xenon said is absolutely right in every way. For a more long-winded version, you can also look at (not surprisingly) WP:!VOTE. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 00:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Missing Something... Ashamed

I am having trouble with my design proposals for the Main Page (proposal 1, proposal 2). (proposal 1, proposal 2)I am missing something very obvious. Since the TFA refreshed the bottom of it gets cut off and moves to the top of the page. This is something that can be simply fixed but I cannot seem to do it. Alas, I am ashamed. Could someone please tell me what I am missing? Thank you very much! Scottydude _talk 00:35, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it happens, and haven't really looked at the template code. But putting them in a div seems to solve the issue: <div>{{Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}}}</div>. =Species8473= ^(talk) 01:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much. That fixed it. Scottydude _talk 02:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Categorization

I was wondering if it possible (or rather, admissable) to categorize pages such as Sayumi Michishige under the categories of 'Japanese female singers' and 'Japanese pop singers', for example. It makes sense because you can be a female singer but not a pop singer and a pop singer but not female. Still, I wanted to confirm that. -- Ishikawa Minoru (talk) 08:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's perfectly admissible, providing she falls into the categories. See WP:CAT for more information. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 10:06, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

how can i upload my company's profile in wikipedia

please guide me to upload the profile of my company in wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhavana 2002 (talk • contribs) 08:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't the place for company profiles; see WP:NOT and WP:SPAM. Providing your company is notable, it can be uploaded here with a neutral point of view, reliable and verifiable sources. If it is not, however, it is likely to be deleted. For more information about uploading articles, see WP:Tutorial and Your first article. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 10:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:FAQ/Business. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

AFD creation failed

Hi - I was using twinkle to create an AFD and it seems to have failed - it's done the log listing but not added the tag and has created a misformed AFD page. It's been so long since I did an AFD manually I cannot remember how, I'm trying to fix it but some assistance would be nice... see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Khorne --Allemandtando (talk) 09:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I seem to have fixed it but if someone could check it over, that would be great. --Allemandtando (talk) 09:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, all correct. It's in the log as well (Twinkle messed up for me and didn't put it in the AfD log, which caused a few minor issues). Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 10:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that, every so often, Twinkle goofs an AfD. I'm not sure why, but your best bet is to check on all of the different components after submitting it. Make sure the original author is notified, the entry is listed in today's AfD log, the discussion page is displaying properly, and the links from the article to the discussion work. Most of the time it works, but every now and then, things get a little nuts. TN‑X-Man 17:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Creating halftone (gray) text

Could someone please tell me (i.e., give me the code) for creating black-halftone (i.e., gray) text? (I'd actually like to make bold gray text :) ) —Thanks, Catdude (talk) 13:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

<span style="color: gray; font-weight: bold;">text</span> which makes text. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 14:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

See WP:COLOR. --Teratornis (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks much, Calvin 1998 and Teratornis, for the help!! —Regards, Catdude (talk) 23:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Collapsible

I just noticed that this map I created for this article here will overlap other images when a smaller screen is used to view the article. Would it be okay to transform the map and its legend into a collapsible thing? If so, may I get some help with the task? :-) Húsönd 15:31, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The first improvement would be to move the "loose" small images that are alongside gallery tags into the gallery tags. See WP:GALLERY. It looks like several editors worked on the article, and only some of them had read the instructions for gallery tags. Dealing with the map image might be harder, since it wants to be taller than the images in the adjoining gallery. See m:Help:Collapsing for information on how to make things collapsible, but I don't immediately know if that would help here. My first inclination would be to move the map or the gallery which is currently next to it so they are vertically apart. I.e., have some text to the left of the map so it can wrap more gracefully on a browser resize. Maybe all the small images could go into one very large gallery in their own section? --Teratornis (talk) 17:07, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

recent changes

Thank you to everyone who replied to my earlier question. However, my core question remains unanswered. How far back on Wikipedia do the Recent ChaNGES GO? I can only see todays changes and there are no links to go back further into the past. How far back do they go? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krishoco (talk • contribs) 17:19, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The Recent Changes are... well... recent. As I see it, you can technically view the list as the 500 most recent changes over the last 30 days. Because there are many more than 500 edits in one day, you can only see the last 500 edits made to Wikipedia. This however does not mean that all changes to Wikipedia are not recorded. You can see every users contributions to Wikipedia as well as the edit history of every page in the wiki. Scottydude _talk 17:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

See Help:Recent changes. The section: Help:Recent changes#Viewing new changes starting from a particular time is confusing to me. On my first reading, I thought the section describes a method to view older changes, but apparently it does not. The wording in that section seems to be somewhat incoherent. In any case, Special:Recentchanges seems to be about recent changes; the people who designed that page apparently did not intend it as a method to look at old changes. It's easy enough to view old changes for a particular page or user, by "tweaking the URL". For example, these are some old edits to the Help desk:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&dir=prev&action=history

Also see Special:AncientPages, Help:User contributions, and Help:Page history. You might be able to generate other views of Recent changes with a query technique (see WP:EIW#Query). --Teratornis (talk) 18:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has to maintain a complete revision history to comply with the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. That means the revision history should go "all the way back," recording every edit by every user to Wikipedia. However, it seems Special:Recentchanges is not a particularly good tool to view changes very far back in time. You can see more by editing the limit parameter:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=1500&hideminor=0

but I don't see a way to move the viewing window backward in time, the way we can with the history of an individual page. --Teratornis (talk) 18:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The page Special:Recentchanges purposely limits the amount of edits shown to 5,000, to avoid overloading the servers. The page is primarily made for recent-changes patrol, so it is unnecessary to make it go that far. The servers do have records of every single edit to the database, but where they are located is a mystery. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 19:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

It's not much of a mystery. They're in the mw:Revision table and the mw:text table. You can access them via a database dump, or individual page history and user contribution listings. Algebraist 19:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Listing pages created by a specific user

Is it possible to list all pages created by a specific user? I'd like to add created articles list to my user page, but I can't remember all the articles I created and the Special:Newpages doesn't go very far back. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 20:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Escaladix's tool is the best for that. It shows all articles and redirects started by the user. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 20:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks PeterSymonds and thanks for rollback permission. :-) Admiral Norton ^(talk) 20:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, I've packed that shiny link into my nest. Followup question: am I right to think that Escaladix's tool does not show articles created and subsequently deleted? I tried a few recent examples, looks like it doesn't, but I don't know how well the toolserver DB is sync'ed up. Thanks! Franamax (talk) 21:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, it's only for articles that haven't been deleted. Deleted contributions are only available to administrators at this time. Sorry about that. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 21:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Escaladix's tool, as far as I know, scans either your contribs or the newpage log for new mainspace pages you made. Deleted contributions are only available through either the preview links in Special:Undelete or Special:DeletedContributions, both administrator-only, blocking the data from the tool. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 21:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thx for the quick responses. I've said it before, I'll say it again - Help desk rocks! :) Franamax (talk) 21:44, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

An excellent tool. One thing to note: unlike most tools and logs, it's case sensitive as to the first letter of your username.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:52, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I agree with Franamax about the Help desk. I have never seen another technical support system that works so well, especially considering the broad scope and complexity of the possible questions. Being able to edit replies in wikitext sure beats using e-mail, since we can compactly link to Wikipedia's huge set of internal documents that answer almost every question. In many companies, technical support is one of the most hated jobs - by the workers and the customers. The collective genius of Wikipedia has made technical support fun enough that people will do it for recreation. --Teratornis (talk) 07:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Underage?

On Wikihow I was kicked off because they found out I was younger than 13 can I use Wikipedia if I'm under 13 does wikipedia have the same policy as wikihow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.175.122.100 (talk) 20:35, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Any user of whatever age can use Wikipedia. Age doesn't matter as long as you show maturity, both of which are two different things. Let me know if you need any help. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 20:37, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Just know that Wikipedia is not censored. Of course, most kids your age might consider that a plus. Your parents, on the other hand, might not. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 03:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Archived talk page in main space

Archive Talk:Margaret Dryburgh seems to have ended up in the main space I assume as a result of an unsuccessful archiving attempt. Could anyone fix that or tell me how? I'm not sure if it would work to try and move it to a sub-page now or not...-Hunting dog (talk) 21:51, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done - moving it to a subpage of Talk:Margaret Dryburgh does work. It's now at Talk:Margaret Dryburgh/Archive 1. Not sure if we need to get Archive Talk:Margaret Dryburgh deleted or not... Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 21:57, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes {{db-maintenance}} would be appropriate for the page in the main space. I'll add it. Scottydude _talk 22:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks you both, it looks like that all worked :) -Hunting dog (talk) 05:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Please Tersen Search Results pre-amble.

When I don't get an exact hit on an article, there are search results that come after a long preamble about contributing to wikipedia. I think it could be tersened to about three lines. If one or more of the search terms fits into a category, then I think that should be listed first. BrewJay (talk) 23:13, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

You're probably better off bringing up your suggestions at the Village Pump, which deals with the technical side of Wikipedia. -- Natalya 00:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The text is from MediaWiki:Noexactmatch which can also be discussed at MediaWiki talk:Noexactmatch (but I don't know how many will see it there). PrimeHunter (talk) 01:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Creating a port page.

The port I work at has expressed interest in the creation of a wikipedia page. It is a significant entity, however I have done very little wikipedia work before. Does a county port substantiate a wiki page (it runs an airport and a marina with a wiki page, and a business park), and if so, what kind of format should I be using? Cleverlycreated (talk) 23:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Replied on user's talk page. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 23:34, 8 July 2008 (UTC)