Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 June 14

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June 14

absolutely inactive users

Recently, I was going to change my username (Flaminglawyer) to just Flaming. So I fill out the form thing, click preview, then decide to check if Flaming is already taken (here). And look what pops up: User:Flaming. Zero edits, no activity whatsoever since s/he was created about 2 years ago. Would it be safe to assume that this user is never to come back to Wikipedia, and let me change my username to Flaming? Or do we have a No User Left Behind rule or something? flaminglawyer^c 01:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:37, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, some users create accounts so they can have a watchlist, which isn't available to IP's. They may never edit, but like to track activity on certain articles. TN‑X-Man 16:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Colour Codes

I was wondering if there is a wikipedia article with a list of codes for colour, e.g. the fireworks codes? If anybody knows of an article like this, I would be very grateful, as I am a member of WikiProject Userboxes, and need a list of colour codes for Userbox Creation. Thankyou, Green1Blue2 (talk) 01:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

See List of colors and web colors. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

And the Wikipedia-specific links under WP:EIW#Color. --Teratornis (talk) 05:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Edit conflict

While attempting to answer the above question about web colors, I had an edit conflict with Gadget850. When displaying the Edit Conflict Edit Window, the entire Help Desk page was loaded into the edit box. Is there a way to avoid loading the whole page? (Should I take this to WP:VPT?) - SigmaEpsilon → ΣΕ 02:12, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but when I get an edit conflict on the Help desk, I just open the Help desk again in another browser tab, and copy my response into a fresh edit window containing the latest addition that conflicted with my first attempt to save. One way to avoid the ugliness of the edit conflict page is to click "Show changes" before clicking "Save page". That way you are still at the edit window when you detect the edit conflict - the "Show changes" button clearly shows new text that snuck in while you were editing. --Teratornis (talk) 05:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

You've probably noticed the odds of an edit conflict are higher when a question is new and the answer is likely to be obvious to many Help desk volunteers. For those kinds of questions, you'd want to edit quickly. A difficult question that has languished for a few hours is probably free for you to edit without much interference. --Teratornis (talk) 06:54, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

At the moment, no, there's no way to avoid this. If you want to do your part to attempt to fix this, please add your support vote for the following bug report: 4745 Section edit conflict expands edit box to entire article. I advertised about this here and on the help desk talk page a while back but we still only have twelve votes so far.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)

Wikiprojects

1. Are there any policies, guidelines or approval processes associated with the creation of new Wikiprojects?

2. Is a forward slash (/) in the Project title likely to cause any technical problems with the engine software or Wikimedia?

3. Is the word 'Awareness' in the Project title at all likely to be interpreted as advocacy? The proposed project is about linking Articles relating to certain medical conditions.

Jagra (talk) 03:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

1. WP:PROJGUIDE
2. Probably - a forward slash will create a Subpage in the Wikipedia: (Project:) Namespace.
3. Difficult to answer without the whole title, but my first reaction would be "yes." Just given the huge number of people on Wikipedia and all the good reasons they have to object to things.

--Teratornis (talk) 05:43, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

To see what other people have done (not necessarily an accurate guide to what is allowable), you can search the Wikipedia: namespace with Google for: wikiproject awareness. --Teratornis (talk) 06:06, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Awareness, but in the first few pages of search results, I don't see any other WikiProjects that have the word "awareness" in their titles. There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine/Raising awareness subpage. See WP:PROJGUIDE for information about making Wikipedians aware of a WikiProject, as opposed to raising awareness among the general public about a particular topic, which could fall under WP:NOTSOAPBOX. Of course, the whole point of publishing a free encyclopedia on the Web is to raise the public awareness of the "sum of human knowledge." So in a sense, Wikipedia is a soapbox for knowledge in general. I think pretty much every WikiProject ends up promoting its subject of interest to some extent, but the way to do that is by improving the articles on that subject, rather than by using Wikipedia to advertise somehow. --Teratornis (talk) 06:15, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I have some homework to do with the Projguide and I see the problem with subpage creation in a title. Still not sure about using 'awareness' in title, in this instance it would not advertise as such, but generally support (without being about) a public health initiative of the CDC Atlanta in a broader forum, given such issues are universal. Jagra (talk) 08:05, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

On the otherhand there is no subpage created in a string of related Article such as ME/CFS history so is there a difference in Article and Project title software that might apply?Jagra (talk) 09:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Subpages are disabled in the main (article) namespace. Algebraist 10:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Jagra (talk) 10:53, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The reference for that last fact is: Wikipedia:Subpages#Articles do not have sub-pages (main namespace). I recommend that you study WP:PROJGUIDE carefully before proceeding (yes, it is complex, like everything else on Wikipedia), and look at some existing WikiProjects in WP:PROJ to see what others have done. For example, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Science#Medicine. --Teratornis (talk) 16:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Copyright makes my head spin [image copyright question]

As a graphist for the graphics lab, I've been dealing with copyright issues for a while, and I've got to say, some of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Especially the concept of making images in the style of others and whether copyright law counts there (i.e. I had a problem with one of my ads because it used the pattern from the italian flag without sourcing it, even though I had created the pattern myself without actually using the flag). So I figured I'd come here with this question.
I have a picture that I've been using on forums as my avatar that I really like and would like to put on my user page- it's an illustration of me. I made it using a free flash app at South Park Studios and the animation is unmistakably similar in the style of the television show South Park- which is the point. The app is designed for this purpose, to create avatars and it says you can use them as such.
My question is, can South Park Studios copyright the images that their app creates, or only the app itself? The creators of the show have been quoted as saying that they don't care about copyright law, is this akin to releasing their stuff into public domain? Does the media company that broadcasts the show then have the right to supersede the wishes of the creators and impose copyright restrictions? Furthermore, can you copyright a style of animation, or only the individual characters? In other words, could I go in and, with photoshop, create an illustration of myself in that particular animation style and it would still technically belong to Comedy Central?
I'm so confused! Any advice, or is this a pandora's box that I should not be trying to open?
L'Aquatique[talk] 06:08, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, usually the results of running an application are copyrighted by the user of the application, not the copyright owner of the application (for example, if you create a Word document it is copyrighted to you and not Microsoft). However, if the application does indeed output a result that is very similar to a copyrighted image, it could be considered derivative work of the original image, and therefore copyrighted by the software owner (for example, if you take a copyrighted picture and delete the background to make it black, it is derivative work and your "new" image is copyrighted to the copyright owner of the original one). I am not sure, though, what happens when it is procedurally generated by a software. My guess is that, regardless of what the show creators think, all their characters are actually copyrighted by Comedy Central, and therefore their assurance is void. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 06:28, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

See the #Drawing question above for some vaguely related answers and links. You'd have to consult an attorney to get a definitive answer (which is not to say all attorneys agree on everything - if they did, nothing would go to trial). I'm by no means an expert, but you get what you pay for, so here goes: on Wikipedia we don't use avatars, so already if there's a potential copyright problem, things are going against you, and from what little I know about fair use criteria, there probably isn't a fair-use rationale for a user page. So, my advice would be to get over the need for a user page avatar and just focus on fixing some real problems. Who knows, maybe someday our 48,277,638 users will increase to a voting majority, and we'll just get rid of copyrights altogether. --Teratornis (talk) 06:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought it was a fairly valid question, I was using the "user page picture" situation partially as an example to illustrate my confusion. Being condescending is really not necessary, considering I spend more time than I care to think about cleaning up articles, making images, etc (If I'm reading conflict into the situation that doesn't exist, you'll have to excuse me, I took a bit of a fall earlier and bumped my head, so I'm not entirely running with all circuits operating, if you get my drift...)!

Thanks for the response, although it seems to raise more questions than it answers! Copyright is a fickle mistress, it seems...

L'Aquatique[talk] 07:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Your question is perfectly valid for the Help desk, and I provided as valid an answer as I had at the time. There are lots of Wikipedians who could undoubtedly provide better answers, but most of them had other things to do it seems. (Speaking for myself only, I'd prefer a somewhat blunt answer to no answer, as long as it contained at least one fact I could use as a basis for further research.) There is no simple answer to all copyright questions, and the target seems to be moving as well, for example I think the fair use criteria have gotten stricter over the years on Wikipedia, and Commons is even stricter, allowing only content that is either in the public domain or under free licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License. The whole issue of copyright is a complex headache on Wikipedia, which is why I dream of the day when humans become smart enough to stop hitting themselves in the head with this particular hammer (by eradicating those laws whose only purpose is to make life more difficult than necessary). See WP:EIW#Copy for more information. Now that I'm reviewing those links, which I would have done for my first reply if I were actually competent to answer questions here, I remember there is a Wikipedia:Media copyright questions page (I am also just now remembering that a link to that page appears at the top of this Help desk page), where you might reach someone who, unlike me, might actually give you a useful answer. I'm sorry that my previous answer could seem harsh, but it could also seem friendly, so why not assume friendly? (That's the point of WP:AGF - we assume people are trying to help until evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelmingly conclusive. See also How to ask questions the smart way for an explanation of the blunt style one normally gets when asking for free help. When it comes to being nice on the Help desk, clearly I have as much room to improve as anyone; but overall, I would say the Help desk is a paragon of compassion compared to the typical Usenet group, where the free help customarily comes laced with gratuitous insults and condescension.) I believe my answer is in accord with the facts: on Wikipedia, user pages exist only to support the encyclopedia project; the original intent wasn't to have them function as decorating projects like on MySpace. Of course lots of users do create elaborate user pages, and this is justifiable, or perhaps at least tolerable, on the basis that these users also do their share of "legitimate" article editing. Since Wikipedia does not pay its contributors cash money, giving people user pages they can enjoy decorating is a valuable perquisite which costs little and takes some of the sting out of having one's contributions mercilessly edited by others. However, user pages are even more of a do it yourself project than the rest of Wikipedia, so the user bears even more of the burden of plowing through all the already-written instructions (such as under WP:EIW#Copy) to find answers. In other words, questions about articles are likely to get more and better responses than questions about user pages. I didn't make this news, I'm only reporting it. --Teratornis (talk) 16:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Many many users

I have a problem. I want to now: do i have to create a new user for every project? (wikiquote, commons, wikipedia, etc), because i think that my Wikipedia user should be usable in others wikiproyects, so i could't have to log every time i need to move on another place. my questions:

• Is possible to do a only-multiple user for different projects?
• If thats not possible, please tell me why?
• something else, the wiki code for edit pages (and my user page) is html or some codes are only of wikipedia?

Neotex555 - Do you have something Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to say? —Preceding comment was added at 06:14, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

See m:Help:Unified login (and for the history of this feature, WP:EIW#SingleSignon). As for the last question, see Help:Editing, WP:CHEAT, and Help:HTML in wikitext. --Teratornis (talk) 06:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

With unified login you don't have to create multiple accounts, but you do have to login on each project. But if you are using your own computer, you can tell it to remember you. —teb728 t c 09:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to mention the WP:TUTORIAL you can do to learn basic editing. --Teratornis (talk) 16:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Wiki logo

Is there a page in the MediaWiki: namespace that allows you to set the logo for the wiki that appears on all pages? -- 213.152.52.38 (talk) 11:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

And, at the same time... is there some guided, structured index to the pages in the MediaWiki: namespace somewhere? :-S It's confusing to search them randomly. -- 213.152.52.38 (talk) 11:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so...Only developers can change the logo. Also, Special:Allmessages is an alphabetical list of MediaWiki messages. :) Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 11:28, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

First question: No. The MediaWiki namespace is for system messages - for instance, the message that says "You are logged in". To add a logo, you must add the $wgLogo line to LocalSettings.php in the server directory where MediaWiki is installed. If you don't run the wiki where you want to change the logo, you must contact the person who does. See the MediaWiki FAQ for more information.

Second question: Special:Allmessages is a list of all MediaWiki namespace pages. If you want documentation, then the MediaWiki manual has documented about 20 of them. Xenon54 11:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. -- 213.152.52.38 (talk) 11:41, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem at WP:NOR

If you go to you WP:NOR a picture comes up and the page is completely messed up. I don't know if this is the right place to bring this problem to the attention of the people who can fix it, but someone should really take a look. Someone has already fixed it! Noneforall (talk) 15:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

How do I become an auto confirmed User? HELP ME!

I have an account that I set up over year ago. I now want to create a page and use a picture on it, but I am not allowed to upload pictures because I am a user (not autoconfirmed). I am told the only requirement is that my account be over 4 days old, which I assume it is since I set it up over a year ago. Any suggestions on how I can get a picture up or become an autoconfirmed user today? Thanks!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhs2002 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jhs. You also need ten edits to become autoconfirmed, per a new rule that was voted upon recently. Once you have ten edits, you'll be able to upload. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 19:52, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I am a different person than the person who asked the question. I signed up a couple of minutes ago specifically so I could provide a photo of Bree Sharp, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bree_Sharp . I took this picture with my own camera. It's not great because I had a poor quality camera. But you don't have anything. I am not interested in jumping through a lot of hoops. I just want to submit the picture. Can I just provide it to you and have you post it? Here's the picture which I'm hosting on my web site: http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/rex/RexFiles/Stevenson1999/Stevenson99/tof00045a.jpg Seems like you should have a mechanism for moderated posting of photos for people who haven't been around that long. User:Hotmetal53

I wonder how you add the date and sig to your entry.User:Hotmetal53 20080706

I agree with this statement. For some reason you need 10 edits. I understand why, but doesn't 5 get you the same results as 10?

Babel/userbox error.

At my userpage, i tried to put the userboxes in the same box as the babel boxes, to get them all on the right side, but for some reason there's a redundant "{{User" and "}}" showing in the box. I'm not good with templates, can someone assist me with this? if so, feel free to modify this on my userpage. thanks. Entheta (talk) 19:54, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

its the babel template which, it counts your boxes as babel templates ← chandler 20:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Hm, so how do I get rid of the code that shows on the page? Or how do I get the userboxes on the right side, below the babel template without putting them inside it? Entheta (talk) 20:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I know it's not really the done thing to edit someone else's user page, but I managed to partly fix it by putting the user boxes (aligned right) above the babel template, but I can't get the babel template above the user boxes to work properly. Maybe someone more experienced in Wikicode can help out. – ukexpat (talk) 20:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Entheta (talk) 22:02, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Formatting around a left-justified image

What is the code to prevent text from wrapping around a left-justified image? GrahamBould (talk) 20:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Please see {{clear}}, {{clearright}}, {{clearleft}} and {{-}}.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:38, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

HELP!! THANKS!!

2 Questions:

1. I just created a page, and even though the code and page itself is longer, the preview function and the created page only reveal half of the content I wrote out. When you go to the "edit page" function, the full content is there. How do I fix this? Thanks!!

2. Wikipedia asked me to write {{hangon}} directly below a tag they put on the article. Does that mean write it in the edit page area? Where else should I write it? Thanks!

{{hangon}} has to be added to the page. To do this, just go to the "edit this page" tab and add the template. macy^talk 21:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I have placed the hangon tag for you and fixed your references. Every time you open a reference with <ref> you must end it with </ref> (note the forward slash). You left out the slash for all but one references.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:25, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Really long references/URLs

In some articles, where people have put very long URLs in their reference tags, my browser layout (Firefox 2.0) does not break the line and it extends out of the page to the right. For example see Treaty of Lisbon Is this merely a browser problem, or is there an approved way of writing reference tags that works round this? Are references allowed to display only a part of the URL they link to? Que (talk) 21:23, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

It would really help if you pointed out a particular reference that's doing this—either its url, or exactly where on the page it the problem is occurring. I viewed the page in both IE and Firefox and see no problems.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:31, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I think I see the problem, in cite_note-89. The solution is to replace the bare URL with a citation template such as {{Cite web}}. E.g., change this:

<ref>http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/dv/sede110208studylisbontreaty_/SEDE110208StudyLisbonTreaty_en.pdf</ref>

to something like this:

<ref>{{cite web
|url= http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/dv/sede110208studylisbontreaty_/SEDE110208StudyLisbonTreaty_en.pdf
|title= The Lisbon Treaty and its implications for CFSP/ESDP
|accessdate= 2008-06-15
|accessdaymonth= 
|accessmonthday= 
|accessyear= 
|author= 
|last= Quille
|first= Gerrard
|authorlink= 
| date=Feb 2008 |format= PDF
|work= 
|publisher= [[European Parliament]]
}}</ref>

which renders as: Quille, Gerrard (Feb 2008). "The Lisbon Treaty and its implications for CFSP/ESDP" (PDF). European Parliament. Retrieved 2008-06-15. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessdaymonth=, |accessyear=, and |accessmonthday= (help), neatly hiding the ghastly URL. --Teratornis (talk) 23:14, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict, but Teratonis prob has the better reply anyway) Reference 90 for instance goes off the side of the page if you don't have the widow at full screen width. Those reference names should really be given the name of the document they link to or something. Not the neat URL which is pretty difficult to get any useful information from. Either do this <ref>[url-name] "document name"</ref> or this <ref>[url-name "document name"]</ref>. The square brackets cause the URL to be hidden. SpinningSpark 23:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Your answer works and is simpler for the user than mine. My answer might be "better" (if we could call it that) in the sense that the Treaty of Lisbon has a large number of references that use an unfortunate mix of styles (some use citation templates, others use bare URLs, and so on). For an article to become a featured article, one of the criteria is to put all the references in a single style, rather than the hodge-podge that most articles have at an intermediate state of development. Also, I believe I read somewhere that some third-party sites are able to parse Wikipedia's citation templates, and extract semantic information from them, making it available for advanced searches that are hard to do with plain text. Therefore, using citation templates may have the potential to make Wikipedia's content available to more people to do more things with (if not now, then possibly in the future). So, while learning to use citation templates is at present burdensome for users who haven't slogged through it yet, the exercise is probably worthwhile. But if Que just wants to fix the too-wide URL problem with the minimum effort, your method is probably the simplest. And speaking of citation templates, just now I was reading about the Amazon Mechanical Turk (and: Mieszkowski, Katharine (2006-07-24). "I make $1.45 a week and I love it". Salon.com. Retrieved 2008-06-15.). Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation might consider contracting out to "turkers" the task of upgrading our bare-URL references to citation templates. Or maybe we could set up our own task-oriented clearinghouse that parcels out small self-contained jobs like that to volunteers. Our current approach is completely unstructured - we rely on individual users to read enormous amounts of documentation so they can comprehend all the component tasks of editing articles at once. That forces each user to act as his or her own work-structuring service. I wonder if we could clean up articles more efficiently with our own system like the Mechanical Turk? --Teratornis (talk) 02:01, 15 June 2008 (UTC)