Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 November 9

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November 9

Archives

Hello everybody. If you go to my talk page, there is a vast accumulation of messages; my goal is to get the current page into an archivebox and clear up to start a new "shelf of messages." (I have a bot, but it doesn't appear to do any purpose.) How would this happen?--Archeopteryx (talk) 00:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

See WP:SUBPAGE or WP:ARCHIVE. Just create a page named User:Archeopteryx/Archive1 and copy and paste any messages you wish to get rid of there. When that page gets too big, go to Archive2, then Archive3, etc... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 00:27, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, sir!--Archeopteryx (talk) 00:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Can I get an opinion on a few edits

This edit as well as some of the other recent edits to the Cindy Margolis article seem rather out of place. I don't recall any other article being quite so up front about who the subject's agent is. Am I the only one who thinks that this is a bit odd/out of place/unusual/etc? Or maybe a bit too much like advertising? The user even includes Margolis' agent's web site in the external links. Dismas|^(talk) 02:51, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You're correct, the edits are a clear conflict of interest. I've restored the previous revision of the article and warned the user.

A few things give it away; check out User:Sparkato48's contributions. The account was solely created to edit this article. Also, this diff showing before and after the edits shows that there are several attempts to put the subject in a more positive light, eg "divorced" is changed to "separated". And yes, you noticed — the external link in the end. The user added Margolis' agent's name three times in their edits. Well done! Pretzels^Talk! 03:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

MY question is incorporated with the space

As we know that when we leave earth the volume of air tend to decrease and we cant adhere to one particular position as we keep on floating in the space , so my question is when once the rocket is launched ,when it leaves the earth and enter the space orbit , why does it not float in air , can you reveal the scientific reason behind it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.104.81 (talk) 04:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're asking but I'm pretty sure it belongs at the Science Reference Desk and not here. Dismas|^(talk) 05:08, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Page Format Missing

I recently came across this problem: Whenever I go to wikipedia I am missing all of the formating at the left and top of the page. All I get is the type going straight down the page. Can anyone help me with this issue? I currently use Firefox version 3.0.3. this does not happen with IE.

Thanks,

Dave Clark —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmeguy1 (talk • contribs) 04:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you have the MonoBook skin at Special:Preferences in Firefox? Have you tried to completely clear the cache in Firefox? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Degraded image

Hi, I wonder if someone who understands these things could take a look at the image Image:Pole-south.gif as it appears at the top of South Pole. For me, it's badly degraded, as if it's been through a very poor scaling algorithm (compare a similar image at North Pole, which is fine) The strange thing is that I'm sure this image was perfectly OK until quite recently, and I don't see what's changed. Any ideas? 86.133.214.217 (talk) 05:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC).

The image looks fine from my computer, The problem could be with your browser. Have you changed any settings recently? and what browser are you using?.--intraining ^{Jack In} 07:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

They look fine to me, too (if anything I'd say the South Pole image looks better than the North Pole image, but my eyesight is less than stellar...) however, there is a discussion on WP:AN right now about problems with GIFs - apparently the server-side scaling of GIFs has had to be switched off to reduce server load. I wonder if this could be the cause of the problem? I'm fairly sure I've looked at both the North and South Pole articles fairly recently, so it's quite possible I'm seeing "good" images because they're cached on my computer.

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 09:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The Sourth Pole image is a GIF, the North Pole is a PNG. GIFs do not rezise well. Click on the image: it the original size is good, then resizing is the problem. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm using IE7, with no recent setting changes that I'm aware of. "The server-side scaling of GIFs has had to be switched off to reduce server load" sounds to me very likely to be the problem that I'm seeing. The unscaled image is just fine. I don't really see why PNGs should be any less computationally intensive to scale than GIFs (or maybe they're scaled by the browser?), but if PNGs are still scaled OK (as they seem to be for me) then perhaps in an ideal world someone who has the time and the tools could convert the GIF to PNG. Pending that I've just changed the article to display the GIF actual size, which is not too bad. Thanks everyone... 00:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.30.51 (talk)

Several GIF images have appeared severely degraded this week.

You mention "The server-side scaling of GIFs has had to be switched off to reduce server load". Do we know if that is to be switched on again? Otherwise there will be a lot of GIF files to be redone and put on Commons, which might be the way we have to do it.

Howard Alexander (talk) 14:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki account

Firstly, let me tell you the account that I actually registered myself: English, Indonesian, French, and Latin. I never registered for another Wiki account besides that. However this morning, I received a message (notified by e-mail) from Malaysian wiki welcoming me to their wikipedia. I am really curious, so I checked my Global account status. Surprise, surprise: I got account in Japanese and Javanese, all of the languages that I speak/understand (though I only have intermediate understanding in Japanese) - see my userpage babel. I intend to keep those account. but what makes me curious is the fact that I am not registering to use those. Is my account being used by someone else (I am using my own laptop). w_tanoto (talk) 09:41, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• Can you access those new accounts with the password you use in the other accounts? - Mgm|^(talk) 10:22, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I use unified login. The first time I use unified login, there was 4 accounts that I created myself. Now, a total of 7 accounts are listed. Is this automatic things, because all of those are actually the language that is listed in my babel, though not all of them? May I know the IP, so I can compare it with my own IP. w_tanoto (talk) 10:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

UPDATES: I know the problem is. Once I visited wikipedia in other languages, I automatically became registered because of the use of unified login. Thanks for attempting to help me. Problem solved. w_tanoto (talk) 10:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

help me

why buying an existing business is a better option and compared to starting up one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.147.51 (talk) 14:00, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. TN‑X-Man 14:07, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I have a question

Which car should i buy? What's better a Toyota Avensis or VW Polo, cheers - matt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.145.90 (talk) 14:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. You might want to ask this at the reference desk. Not sure if they'll be able to help you though. If I were you, I'd try to find info on these vehicles from someone you can trust and really knows about them, since it is something important. Chamal ^talk 14:41, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

getting logged out while editing

I recently edited an article, taking over half an hour to do so. I started out logged in, and frequently used "show preview", but didn't save for a long time. When I eventually did so, I discovered I'd been logged out, so the edit appears under my IP address, not my username. How can I stop this happening? I never want to edit when logged out, but have done so accidentally several times now. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 14:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you check the "remember me" box when logging in?.--intraining ^{Jack In} 14:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that the "remember me" is related to automatically logging out, Theoneintraining? I'm not sure, but sounds to me like it might be something with his browser settings. Chamal ^talk 15:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Same thing happened to me some time ago; turned out I hit Ctrl+O (= "log out") by accident sometimes while I just wanted to preview my edits with Ctrl+P, because "O" is next to "P" on my keyboard. The solution was in adding the following code to the end of my Special:Mypage/monobook.js:

// Disable Alt+O ("log out")
ta['pt-logout'] = new Array(,'Log out');

HTH. - Erik Baas (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I haven't been using "remember me". I'd not been doing that because I didn't want to be left logged in when I wasn't using my computer at all. But that's why explicit logging out is provided, isn't it. I have to admit I've never been logging out, since I relied on the system doing it for me. So I think that's the answer. I'll change my habits forthwith. Thanks, theoneintraining, we'll see if that works out better. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 15:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully that works for you, please come back if you continue to have trouble.--intraining ^{Jack In} 15:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Contacting non-English Wikipedians

The entry Boogeyman has a comprehensive list of versions of the creature in other cultures, but none of them are cited. Since tracking down citations in English will be well-nigh impossible, I was wondering if any native speakers of those languages could help me track down some sources. Serendi^podous 14:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Most questions on the Help desk get some sort of answer a lot quicker than this one, suggesting that not many of the people who have been monitoring the Help desk over the past several hours know what to make of this. Maybe the following ideas will be better than no answer:

• Follow the interlanguage links from the article, for example de:Butzemann cites a source (in German, naturally).
• Examine the history of the Boogeyman article, see who added all that unsourced material, and ask them on their user talk pages where they got it.
• Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination might provide some clues.
• Go down the list in Boogeyman#Analogues in other cultures and see if we have corresponding WikiProjects. For example, the first entry is for Argentina, and we have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Argentina. Some member of that WikiProject may know a source for hombre de la bolsa or be able to find one.

--Teratornis (talk) 01:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Fuck me boots

Why does Fuck me boots redirect to Kinky boots? FMB's are not always 'extreme' or 'kinky' they are just normal boots which girls wear, normally brown or black, which when worn with a skirt in particular send the signal to men that they are up for some fun, and when men see them they want to fuck the female in question even more than normal. nothing to do with kinky fetish boots i think u will find.

Kinky boots says: "A related term is fuck-me boots, which is, however, often used in a more tongue-in-cheek, humorous way. It is a term more common to the US."

If a subject isn't notable enough for its own article (or no editor has yet made an article), then it's common to redirect the term to a related article which may include mention of the term. I have added {{R from related word}} to the redirect. If you have a reliable source explaining the term then you can edit the quoted sentence and cite your source. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Help using same reference twice

Hi,

I am trying to use the same reference at multiple places in a paragraph. The way I am able to do it creates a new reference every time I add the reference again. I am trying to edit the "Vagus nerve stimulatiors and sleep apnea" section of the article Vagus_nerve_stimulation. If you look at the footnotes for that section, you will see what my problem is. I want to be able to use the same reference in multiple places without creating a new entry in the "references" or "footnotes" section. Thanks for your help.--Rishi Raj, MD, FCCP, DABSM (talk) 17:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Rishirajmd (talk • contribs) 17:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You use the same reference multiple times by putting a name="" attribute on one of the <ref>s (putting the name between the quotes), and then using it again by inserting <ref name="[name of the reference to reuse]" /> where you want to reuse it. This way, there are two links that point to the same footnote. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 17:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

For the first occurrence do <ref name="source">rest of the reference as usual</ref>. for additional links to the same reference, use <ref name="source" />. Where source is a single word (I think only one word is supported) to name the source. --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

See WP:FOOT#Naming a ref tag so it can be used more than once for details. If you put quotes around the name attribute value, the value may contain embedded spaces (i.e., more than one word). --Teratornis (talk) 19:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

error in Wind power

Hi! I noticed an error yesterday when reading the "wind power" page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

The first sentence of the second paragraph on that page reads "The principle application of wind power today is to generate electricity." and obviously it should use the word "principal" not "principle." I registered an account, assuming that I could then make an edit to correct the word, but I can't seem to figure out how to do so, or perhaps I have to wait a few more days after registering to be allowed to make changes; I can't quite figure out all the rules here : )

Thank you, Julie Mandell (user name: juliemandell) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliemandell (talk • contribs) 18:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia!. The article is semi protected against vandalism. Thanks for pointing it out. I've corrected it. --GraemeL ^(talk) 18:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Reccomendations?

Hello. I just started an article, Patellar Subluxation Syndrome, and would like your suggestiions. Is there anything that should be fixed? Does it have a chance of staying? Thanks.--Archeopteryx (talk) 20:07, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Try WP:PR --GPPande talk! 20:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard short cuts.

Just like we have keyboard shortcut (not Wikipedia shortcut) to take the cursor to search box (alt+shift+f) do we have any for jumping to Usertalk page, user watchlist or contributions? I know of Wikipedia shortcuts which can save typing efforts in search box but want to know of any navigational shortcut keys that can be used for userspace pages. --GPPande talk! 20:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:30, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks. --GPPande talk! 20:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

There are tooltips when you hover over the navigation links in wikipedia. Theses tooltips also contain hits for the hotkeys. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

am i qualified to edit wikipedia?

i know most ppl on here are like univeseity educated and all that so i was wondering if i is educated enough to edit also? i mean i only got 4 gcses and they were pretty bad, 2 c, 2 d, 1 u ,lol i know! and then after that i quit school so i dunno now if i can edit this or not. and u can tell me written english isnt really well good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.191.55 (talk) 22:19, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• If you're not a star in writing, perhaps you can contribute in some other way. There's plenty of articles that need free (non-copyrighted) pictures. And sometimes higher-educated people simply get stuck in what they know, making what they write hard to understand for regular people. You could drop by featured article candidates and peer review to share your view on such articles. In other words: I'm sure there's something you can do for Wikipedia even if it's not writing.- Mgm|^(talk) 22:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Your English isn't amazing, but formatting and images are easy, and involve very little writing. Once you get used to being around here, you can contribute to discussions and !votes. It will probably help you learn as well. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 22:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you draw pictures? Can you take photographs? Wikipedia always needs more illustrations. Look up articles that are about things in the area where you live (bridges, parks, landmarks, etc.). You can photograph them and upload the photos to Commons. Anybody can point a camera, even people who can't spell. If you cannot write or aim a camera, you could give money. If you don't have money, you can't write, and you can't aim a camera, you could answer questions on the Help desk. I'm actually serious - to answer questions here, all you have to do is look up the answers and copy and paste the links to them, like this answer to your question:

• See Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia.

You can add a lot of value to Wikipedia just by telling people where to look in the online help for answers to their questions on the Help desk. Learning how to look up answers in this way will make you an expert on Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 00:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I really like the kinds of answers this guy got ! DOR (HK) (talk) 03:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Lots of people who are not university educated can also press the correct buttons on their keyboard in a way that produces standard English. I know many Wikipedia users who are prolific article writers who never attended a day of university in their lives... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Does it count if they attend Wikiversity? Actually, I would like everyone who attends university (or not) to learn how to edit on Wikipedia at some point. If everyone understood Wikipedia's methods for collaborating effectively with distant strangers, the world could perhaps become far less annoying. --Teratornis (talk) 00:59, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If by less annoying, you mean that someone every few days spraypaints the words "on wheels" across random street signs for no good reason, then someone else has to come along and wash it off, well, I might beg to differ. ;) --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The real world is much worse than that. Try dropping your wallet on the sidewalk, and come back tomorrow and see if it is still there, or if someone has returned it to you. At least on Wikipedia we have relatively efficient tools for reverting the vandals that Wikipedia's permissive editing policies encourage. Wikipedia could easily reduce vandalism to negligible levels if it wanted to, for example by only allowing registered users to edit, and requiring new accounts to present some sort of credential, such as a recommendation from another user in good standing. The downside might be slower growth of Wikipedia, but that would have to be balanced against the enormous time savings from virtually eliminating vandalism, and possibly greater retention of users who now leave because they get sick of dealing with vandalism. However, even with all the vandalism, Wikipedia still works better than the vast majority of real-world organizations, because in most of the latter, the rules and know-how tend to be largely implicit, existing only in an oral tradition, and this gives rise to Brooks' law. On Wikipedia, we are unable to talk to each other, so the only way to accomplish anything is to write. Thus we work out all our rules and know-how in writing, which then enables Wikipedia to become the world's largest do it yourself system. Any reasonably intelligent person can come here, read the instructions, and begin contributing productively with a minimum of wasting other people's time. In real-world organizations where the rules are not in writing, each newcomer requires extensive mentoring from the old hands, and thus the experienced people have to burn up their time saying the same things over and over. Not having all the rules in writing creates an additional problem of credibility - the newcomer doesn't know whether to believe a particular old-timer until hearing all the other ones confirming the message. On Wikipedia we settle that issue by collaboratively editing internal instruction documents which then become authoritative. Thus we don't have to waste time re-arguing for the policies and guidelines - we merely point newcomers to them. Having canonical instructions in writing eliminates the telephone game of individuals' imperfect recall - every time someone recites a purely oral tradition, they give a slightly different version. When we point to a written instruction, every newcomer sees the same one. --Teratornis (talk) 05:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Teflon: What happened to the original article? (pre: January 2008)

I just visited the page on Teflon. This is a page I have visited more than 10 months ago. Now I find that the current page was created in January 2008 and has precious little content. What happened to the original page?!? That page contained a great deal of information about invention of Teflon, its use on the NASA Shuttle as well as many other uses, including as a non-stick coating on frying pans. What happened to that original content? Was it deleted? Was it moved to a new heading. certainly, this page had a history prior to January 2008. Enquire (talk) 22:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

That's about the brand name 'Teflon' - there's a long word in the first paragraph that links to what you're looking for. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 22:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Teflon is a DuPont registered trademark for a number of products so the Teflon disambiguation page is correct. The most common Teflon products that you describe are made from polytetrafluoroethylene, usually referred to as PTFE. – ukexpat (talk) 02:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Text copying issue

I just ran into a problem in copying text from one article or external source to another Wikipedia article, or cutting a part of an article and pasting it into another part of the same Wikipedia article. Every time I try to paste an article, it shows the message "Text copying disabled". It is with my computer, your servers, or a combonation thereof. Please advise. Chris (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you try copying images? Sometimes it screws up if you do that.... Cheers. Imperat§ r^(Talk) 23:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)