Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 October 20

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October 20

No Progress on Article Name Change

I've posted my thoughts regarding Patlabor 2's title in its discussion page, as was suggested to me, but no one has yet to reply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Patlabor:_The_Movie_2

Is there anywhere else where I can get more coverage on this matter? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stepusual (talk • contribs) 00:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

You could try to file a request for comment. People often use these to solve conflicts, but in general, an RFC can be used to generate additional interest in any article where more eyes are needed. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 00:36, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

There are no comments so no conflict and I don't recommend RFC here. You can list it at Wikipedia:Requested moves, or just move it yourself since nobody has objected so far. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

You can also list it on the talk page of the WikiProjects that have their banners on that talk page, namely the Films and Anime and manga projects. This is generally the easiest way to make sure that people who are likely to be interested in participating in the discussion are notified of it. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 02:57, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

User:HunterRaven and User:Pendragon

User:HunterRaven seems to have created the page User:Pendragon while logged in as HunterRaven, which I am assuming should not be done. Neither accounts have been active since August of this year, so should User:Pendragon be tagged for deletion, or should I do something else to handle the situation? ~ Bella Swan^? 01:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Autoconfirmation

Can I please get this now? I need to upload figures for an article and I must have it complete before 4 days from now.

~~DanerAbdula~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by DanerAbdula (talk • contribs) 03:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Autoconfirmation is autodetected by the software and cannot be granted individually. If you create a Wikimedia Commons account at http://commons.wikimedia.org then you can upload images there right away (assuming they have an acceptable license) and use them in Wikipedia pages like if they had been uploaded to Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, since Wikipedia:There is no deadline, what is the big rush? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 11:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Archive on Talk

Hello. If you got to my talk page, you'll find that there are numerous entries. Do you recomend I archive, and, if so, how can I?--Archeopteryx (talk) 03:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

See Help:Archiving a talk page. I know some folks who never archive, and some who do so almost fanatically. It's a judgment call, but in general, if it becomes a pain to scroll down the Table of Contents(TOC) of your talk page, then it may be time to archive. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 03:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

question about bridge

why is an arch bridge is stronger than an ordinary straight bridge? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.56.217 (talk) 06:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Arch#Technical aspects. You should ask this at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous if you would like a more extensive reply. Darkspots (talk) 07:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I WANT TO BE UPGRADE MY PC

HA I AM KUMAR_DORA14 I HAVE AN DESK TOP PC THE CONFIGURAION OF MY PC IS INTEL CELLRON 733MHZ.128RAM.40GB HDD. AND I WANT TO UPGRADE MY PC AND I WANT TO CHANGE THE PROCEESOR PLEASE TELL ME THE WHATS PROCESSOR TO SUIT THE MOTHER BOARD TO MY PC AND WHAT WILL I CHANGE THE HARDWARE IN MY SYSTEM.

THANK YOU <email removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kumar dora14 (talk • contribs) 07:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Computing reference desk. They specialize in answering computer questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps.. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 07:22, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Noinclude?

What does it do? And is it doing anything useful in HVA? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

This Page covers the reasons for non inclusion and why it is on that disambiguation page. Pedro :  Chat  07:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Control over controversial issue pages

I heard that it was possible to lock pages that contain controversial information or that was written on a controversial issue to prevent an unending editing war between both sides. Is this the case, and if so, how would someone go about doing this? For example, information on the Brady Campaign and gun violence in the United States have contained inaccurate statements, and there is a worry that correcting such inaccuracies will lead to a constant back and forth between people on either side.

Lbrooker (talk) 18:33, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Administrators can protect pages. You can request that a page be protected here. Scottydude _talk 18:36, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Using Expressions With Variables In Templates

Hello, I'm actually very new to wiki formatting, or to be honest, any kind of formatting. And perhaps I'm already stretching my limits, but I can only see one thing I want to do and there's no better way to learn than through practice, right? Well, anyway, my goal is to make a template for a table that I expect to be used quite commonly to collect data on a certain subject, and rather than asking that users update certain fields such as "Total" or "Percentage", I hope to use expressions to have it calculate such values automatically.. As such, I've been dabbling and reading on various guide and FAQs almost non-stop for about a day, but I still seem unable to grasp the required knowledge. My template will have 17 numbered variables, and then in the final column I want to use he expr function to find the total of the variable by adding each of these variables together. Then, in the next row down, I want to use the expr function to find the percentage of each user-entered variable in comparison to the total, which is calculated in the aforementioned expression. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could let me know how I might go about this, or if it is even possible. Thanks! Kallnohae (talk) 18:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

First of all, template editing is near the top of the difficulty scale on Wikipedia, which makes it hard to explain how to edit templates to someone who is new to Wikipedia editing. It's like someone who has never played baseball asking how to play in the World Series - usually that's not where a person would start. We would basically have to rewrite a kazillion manuals, because template editing involves a large number of subsidiary editing skills that a user would normally pick up over months of lower-level editing on Wikipedia. First you have to learn the basic markup, then the trickier stuff like categories etc., and then learn to edit simple templates like navigation boxes, before moving up to templates with intricate syntax. The question you are asking is pretty open-ended, and thus is difficult to answer briefly. (Note that my reply is coming an hour after you posted your question, which is a pretty long delay for the Help desk.) You omitted details necessary to let someone understand what you are trying to do, and whether the approach you are choosing is the best one:

• Where did you "dabble"? Your contributions show no edits that look like templates.
• What is the "certain subject"? See How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.

The only way to discuss templates is with examples, and we can't do that conveniently on the Help desk. We have to create some actual templates somewhere. The best way to pose a question about template editing, to make it answerable, is to create a test template, get it as far as you can, and when you get stuck, give us a link to your test template so we can look at it and get you un-stuck. To answer the question the way you asked, someone would need to write the template for you. That would be easier than trying to think of exactly which friendly manuals you would need to read to write the particular template you need. (With template coding, we can't easily imagine all the steps and predict exactly which manuals we will need until we actually start writing the template.) The first step is to make some user subpages where you can practice and take notes. It's easier for me to edit your (currently non-existent) user page a little for you to set this up, rather than try to explain all the steps. So I will do that now. (If you don't like what I put on your user page, you can change it to whatever you like.) The second step is to search the Template: namespace for some existing templates that are similar to what you want to do. I'll put notes on a user subpage (User:Kallnohae/Templates) telling you how to do that. --Teratornis (talk) 20:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, now you have a user page and some sandboxes to play with. I'm putting some instructions on User:Kallnohae/Templates to get you started. Wikipedia is pretty rugged, so you don't have to worry about breaking anything important when you experiment on your sandbox pages. --Teratornis (talk) 20:30, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Now you have a test template in User:Kallnohae/Sandbox2 that sums two named input parameters. User:Kallnohae/Sandbox transcludes it. When you understand how that works, you can then play around with those sandbox pages to develop a more complicated template that does what you want. When you have a template you like, you can document it and move it to the Template: namespace. And hope nobody deletes it. --Teratornis (talk) 20:57, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

My immense thanks to you, Teratornis, you've put more effort into helping me learn this than I would have ever expected. I certainly hope that my failed attempts at deciphering all of the information you've left for me aren't too disheartening, as I did learn a fair deal. I simply have yet to find when the correct times to put such bits of knowledge to use are correct. I've gone as far as I can on the sandbox pages you've created for me, and unfortunately I hadn't seen your latest reply until after I had gone ahead and experimented. At this point, I'd love it if you or anyone else could take a look and tell me just how horrific of a monster it is that I've created. Thanks again, all is much appreciated! --Kallnohae (talk) 21:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Removing a section from the Table of Contents

I am working at WP:WPTC/A and I want to stop the subsections of section 5 from appearing in the table of contents. Does Wikipedia support this? Plasticup ^T/C 18:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Here is the link I think you need. [1] I don't understand a word of it, but there it is. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 19:03, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

That's on a per-wiki basis. It can't be used randomly in an article. Some experimentation would allow you to format some text to look like a heading, but that's all I can think of. DendodgeTalk^Contribs 19:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

See also Help:Section#Limiting the TOC for a possibility which applies to the whole page. You could change the headings to level 4 and use {{TOClimit|3}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw that feature. The problem with that solution is that the headings are part of a widely-used template, so I can' reduce them willy-nilly. Thanks for your help, I'll try to incorporate that into a work-around. Plasticup ^T/C 23:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

user acct in one language only?

Hi I am user PGes (on the English pages) - I want to contribute something to the French section but my PGes acct doesn't appear to be valid there- do I have to create a separate user name to contribute to a French article? PGes (talk) 20:22, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

See WP:EIW#SingleSignon. --Teratornis (talk) 20:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Broken Link

Hi there.

I attempted to do this myself, but I am not sure how.

On this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equus_(play), there is a broken link in the section labeled "references."

The first reference is a broken link. Here it is in full: ^ "Equus by Peter Shaffer". Penguin Reading Guides. The Penguin Group USA (2008). Retrieved on 2008-06-18.

This line links to a page and reading guider on PenguinGroup.com that is no longer available. Please remove this citation.

- Ponline —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ponline (talk • contribs) 20:48, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I have replaced it with another link with the same content.[2] See Wikipedia:Dead external links. I found the old content in the Internet Archive and searched it with Google to find a replacement link. Footnotes are edited in the section the little up arrow in the references section points to. See Wikipedia:Footnotes. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:36, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

DELETE

Hos do I delete a post that I just submitted? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gmarchiori (talk • contribs) 21:20, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

It's already been nominated for speedy deletion under criteria A7 - non-notable company. Just wait an hour or so for a admin to come round and delete it. You could blank the page and place {{db-g7}} at the top (G7 is author requested deletion) but there's really no point as A7's are usually given higher priority. Xenon54 21:27, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Gma images was deleted at 21:25 while Xenon54 wrote the reply. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:39, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Renaming

I want to change my user name to "mSilica Inc." It is currently "MSilica"

I tried chaing it from the page but the wrong format still keeps showing. I need to get this fixed asap since my company is waiting for me to upload content.HELP!

-shefali —Preceding unsigned comment added by MSilica (talk • contribs) 22:32, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's username policy dictates that you cannot use an account to promote any sort of company, organization, or group, non-profit or otherwise. That means that you cannot have a company name in your username, especially if the account is going to be acting on behalf of that company (that forms a conflict of interest with Wikipedia, which strives to create a neutral encyclopedia). For future reference however, the venue for requesting a change of username is Wikipedia:Changing username. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 22:49, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, MediaWiki always begins user names and page names with a lower-case letter. You'll see that the link to User:raven4x4x just points to User:Raven4x4x. As far as the software is concerned those two names are identical, but the name will always be displayed with an upper-case letter at the start. The same applies to page titles. Raven4x4x (talk) 11:40, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

{{lowercase}} can change how a page title is displayed at top of the page, but it has no effect in some other places. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:46, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

A hoax?

I have not been very active for several months, and I am afraid that I forgot most of the procedures relevant to controversial content. Now, just today I've randomly found this article Derry Brownson, which seems a great joke to me, or am I wrong? If so, it is very sad that many editors contributed to such a childish game.--Doktor Who (talk) 23:44, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, he definitely does seem to exist, according to Google. However, given that he isn't on Google much, I added a {{notability}} tag. — The Man in Question (gesprec) · (forðung) 00:55, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it was a victim of vandalism, I reverted it back to to last version that appeared to have good faith. There may have been some information loss though, that I don't plan to uncover.

Louis Waweru  Talk  01:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your edits, I have to "study" again how this site works. :-). --Doktor Who (talk) 20:18, 21 October 2008 (UTC)