Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 September 4

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September 4

Is Wikipedia slow?

Has Wikipedia been horribly slow for the last several weeks, or is it only happening to me? Pages take 30+ seconds to load - if they load. About 25% of edits fail to save. Etc. Bubba73 (talk), 04:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I've also noticed that pages take a while to load for me. It might just be our use of browsers. Asking at Wikipedia:Village Pump might help. Thanks, RyRy (talk) 04:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Zooming articles problem

Ok, so my eyes arn't what they used to be. I use CTRL+Scroll Wheel to zoom just about every site i visit. But when i zoom Wikipedia it immediately causes the text to run off the monitor and i have to slide the page to read. It's not a problem if there are pictures on the right side of the page, as they help keep the text in bounds. Unless there is some way i'm not aware of to overcome this issue, i'd like to suggest wrapping text inside some sort of boundary so that it's not an issue for those of us who like to ZOOM. I'm using a 22" Widescreen so it's not a monitor issue. I'm sure i'm not alone as one who would benefit from some change made here. A quick example is Circuitcity.com site (happen to be there now) where you don't need to resort to sliding the page to read no matter how big you make the text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RockJohny (talk • contribs) 05:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the problem you describe when I zoom the text on Wikipedia. I'm using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.16 on Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy). When I zoom the text, a scrollbar does appear at the bottom of the browser window, but the page is only slightly wider than the visible portion, and I can see all the width of paragraph text. That is, when I zoom the text on this Help desk page. Maybe there is different zooming behavior on other pages. Can you give us an example of a page which has the problem you describe? You may have a problem that depends on your browser; what are you using? For general information about browsers and Wikipedia, see: WP:EIW#Browser. For information about accessibility, see: WP:EIW#Ability. --Teratornis (talk) 21:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, you're right. I've been using IE but when i use Firefox the problem is fixed. So browser issue, thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by RockJohny (talk • contribs) 12:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Uploading image/logo

Hi,

I'm sure its an easy question but I'm not that tech minded and I find myself getting lost in Wiki looking for the answer. How do I upload an image? Can I drop and drag into the sandbox and then go live?

Thanks,

Simon —Preceding unsigned comment added by Simonking67 (talk • contribs) 05:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Simon. I taught myself about images by finding an article with an image and then selecting "edit this page". If you do the same you will quickly see the text that accompanies the image. Copy that text and then paste it into the Sandbox or your User page or wherever you want it to go. Dolphin51 (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Upload and Help:Images might be of help ... good luck! – Thomas H. Larsen 07:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Language problem

I have this problem in using the site in Arabic language every thing disappear And the page become white Can you help me with this problem And finally thank you for your help

I'm really sorry about this, as I'm sure there must be a glaringly obvious way to do this, but 15 minutes of searching hasn't helped: so - I live in Norway, and have hitherto always had English as the default when I hit my bookmarked wikipedia.org However, the last couple of days, the default is set to Norwegian, for some reason! How do I undo this? I want the default to be English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.87.53.32 (talk) 09:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you try changing your bookmark to http://en.wikipedia.org? That leads directly to the English site, while http://no.wikipedia.org goes to the Norwegian site. Xenon54 10:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Same in Sweden, why did you change? It sucks.

If you are referring to the default language that you see when reading en.wikipedia.org, make sure that you have English selected as the default language in the user profile tab of your preferences. – ukexpat (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Have you checked your language preference?—Noah 22:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Two requests, if possible

I gather this is unfixable?

And... does anybody know how to make this have an option allowing you to decrease the width etc.? Thanks. -- Mentisock 11:08, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking at {{PGP top}} with IE8 and don't see a problem. I will check IE7 later. As foe the second, I would use {{navbox}} which has all sorts of options including width. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. And actually the browser having a problem is IE6 (many computers still use that version...). -- Mentisock 11:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at PGP top, there is a better way. Use {{navbox}} and wrap the key in <poem>...</poem> to retain the formatting. This is just a prototype, I can sandbox a template latter. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No way besides using other templates? -- Mentisock 11:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

You can certainly roll your own. I'm not really a software guy, but I can read instructions and do real good copy and paste. Using navbox is convenient, as it already has a lot of features built into it that will allow me to turn the example above into a finished template pretty quickly. It will be a separate template, as PGP top is a two part template, using PGP bottom and this will be a single template. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I knocked out {{PGPkey}}. If it needs tweaking, please discuss it on the talk page. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. (But what about discovering what makes navbox work and fix pgptop with that?) -- Mentisock 15:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Navbox is a very intricate template and uses sub-templates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Occasional "Advanced search" option

Why do some pages, such as University of Nîmes, have an advanced search link (just above the search box), whereas most don't?--85.158.139.99 (talk) 12:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure i understand, i went to that page but there is no advanced search link above the search box. Monster Under Your Bed ^(talk) 12:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Very odd. I opened the page again and it that link was still there (just below random article). I did a Control-F5 and it disappeared. Some caching oddity I suppose (even though I'd never before visited that page). Thanks anyway.--85.158.139.99 (talk) 12:45, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, they recently added it but then decided against it (after all it's mostly redundant) so you must have had your browser open before it was removed. -- Mentisock 15:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes a little more sense - but only a little! I actually came across this intermittent feature by clicking on random article a large number of times and noticing from time to time it displayed that new link. I've just now tried opening another 7-8 random articles, and the advanced search option appeared twice. Quite odd.--85.158.139.99 (talk) 15:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I've tried about ten random articles and none of them still had advanced search... some caching oddity I guess, like you said, or you might try purging server cache (maybe advanced search is still retained in some articles on the servers) by inputting http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=articlename&action=purge - I'm sure that will make advanced search disappear for good. -- Mentisock 15:43, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The discussion about whether to have this is at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Advanced search is hard to find. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

And it was removed again from MediaWiki:Sidebar in this edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

E-mail addresses in infoboxes

I've an inkling that it's against something, possibly just WP:UCS or WP:SPAM, but should e-mail addresses be included, or avoided, in organization infoboxes? Is there a policy or guideline about this that anyone here knows of? See this version if you're looking towards the specific page; I've already removed the e-mail in a subsequent edit. WLU (talk) 16:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Privacy of personal information is a policy against doing it for individuals. It shouldn't be done for organizations either but I don't know a guideline specifically mentioning it. Linking the organization website is enough. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree. If the person or organization puts contact information on the web, then we don't need to replicate and maintain it. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I would remove it as promotional - why else would you put an e-mail address in an article about a company if not to solicit? – ukexpat (talk) 17:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That sounds about right to me, but it's odd that there's no policy or guidelines anywhere. Very much common sense I'd think. WLU (talk) 18:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

WitteBros Exchange

Yesterday's 9/3/2008 content was deleted. Is there a way I can get it back. I am just trying put WitteBros as a Headquartered company in MO. my email is <redacted> Mkern45 on wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkern45 (talk • contribs) 17:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It was deleted because it violates policy on external links, namely spam-linking. – ukexpat (talk) 17:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't a spam link. We are LTL CDL trucking firm in Troy, MO. We also run a truck driving school. This is a good company.

SlimBrowser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlimBrowser does not look too neutral too me so somebody with info should fix it.

thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.32.243.193 (talk) 22:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Turn external links green

I'm trying to create a css file to turn any external links green, or in particular autonumbered external links, in order to easily distinguish between inline external links, and links to references (created using ref tags), as quite often the former are attempts to produce references, and so should use ref tags.

Anyway, here is my attempt: [1]. What I wanted to happen is for members of the "external" class to have the colour set to green, which should cover external links, which seem to have the class "external". In particular it should turn the link to my css file green, as the source code (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Silverfish/monobook.css" class="external autonumber" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Silverfish/monobook.css" rel="nofollow">[1]</a>), indicates the classes "external", and "autonumber", but it is just displayed in the usual blue. Can anyone explain what is going on? Bear in mind I am fairly new to css, although I am fairly familiar with html. I have refreshed the cache, by the way. Silverfish (talk) 23:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Try this:

a:external {color:#00ff00;}

Haven't tested it yet, but I think that's the proper code for CSS... I use a similar snippet to make all of my visited links the same color as the unvisited ones. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 23:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, that doesn't work. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here)

I kludged together a snippet of css that seems to work, try this: #bodyContent a.external { color: #008000 }

--- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that does the trick, and it's a pleasant shade of green too. I am still not sure why my version doesn't work though. Silverfish (talk) 10:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

FYI: If you want to experiment with different color codes, I have some documented here, or there's a useful color wheel available for determining color codes. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

We have a nice article on web colors. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice. I should've known it would be here somewhere. I'll need to bookmark that one. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)