Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 April 21

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April 21

Getting my account back

Resolved

 – discussed on ANI told to try the unblock template and stop evading blocks Toddst1 (talk) 16:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Until today, I was a somewhat-regular contributor to Wikipedia. After engaging in a civil conversations on a talk page, however, User:Toddst1 decided it was a good idea to delete my user account. I (now) seriously doubt his sanity (yes, this is a personal comment as deleting my account is a ridiculous and power-hungry thing to do; definitely NOT the behavior I would expect out of an admin). As I was a member in good standing for quite a while, I would appreciate my user account (User:Mrmerlot) being reinstated. I doubt Mr. Wales would condone this type of malicious and unfriendly behavior on the wiki. (sorry, I would sign my comment, but my user account was deleted). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.231.42.8 (talk) 00:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't think that referring to the blocking admin as insane, powerhungry, or malicious would be the best way to start. I can mention it to him though. — Ched :  ?  00:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Your account was not deleted; it was blocked indefinitely for committing personal attacks. Your account was blocked from even editing its talk page because you responding to the block by committing yet more personal attacks. Since you then decided to come here and mischaracterize the situation instead of offering an apology or even an acknowledgement of the actual situation, now your IP is blocked to. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Gotta say this could have been handled much better, if you want to get someone pissed off, that was a textbook example: user was issued a nasty sounding "only warning" on first offense - we don't even treat vandals that way - followed by an indef block and further punishment by an admin who was involved. Equendil Talk 10:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the particulars, so all I will say is: if someone feels that an administrator has acted improperly, the place to bring that up is at WP:ANI — Ched :  ?  14:17, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I do have difficulty seeing a section headed "Note to Wiki Nazis" as being part of a 'civil conversation'. Responding to a warning with "Thank you for the kind words JACKASS. Your admonition has been noted and SHOVED UP YOUR ASS..." (with the edit summary "buttmunch") isn't exactly classy, either. I'd say it goes a bit beyond 'irked at a (potentially) unnecessarily heavy warning' and crosses well into 'deliberately seeking trouble'.

For that childish tantrum, he received a well-earned 24-hour block entirely in line with policy. He followed up with "Thank you for showing me just how much of JACKASS ALL Wikipedia gardeners are. I mean, I'd heard stories, but you guys really SUCK. See ya...lost another Wikipedia editor...", under the edit summary "FUCK OFF". That, in turn, led to the indef block and talk page protection.

Incidentally, I don't see a record of Mrmerlot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) being a 'member in good standing for quite a while'; his first edit was almost exactly one month ago (creating his user page), and his second edit didn't happen until five days ago. To be fair, his first article-space edit was to recreate an article on the open-source project Concrete5 with the edit summary "starting page with more "objective" (e.g., non-sales) verbiage". I suppose it's possible that this is the same person who created the first two deleted-as-advertorial versions of the article. (Created in September 2008 and February 2009 by Franzcmaruna (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Frzm (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), respectively, both editors who have no non-deleted contributions. Coincidentally, Franz Maruna is the founder of Concrete5.)

My first thought is to note that the indef for talk page venting is probably beyond our usual response. Except in the most clear-cut cases, it's generally not advisable for the same admin to issue the initial block, the escalated block, and talk page protection without seeking review. There wasn't any abuse of the {unblock} template, nor was there a warning that talk page protection would occur. That said, Mrmerlot hasn't exactly demonstrated before or since that his continued presence would be an asset to the project. He has only made edits in a single, small area. He was revert warring over a COI tag on the article he created. He has engaged in multiple personal attacks. His complaint here contained a number of distortions and omissions, along with another personal attack. His aggressive, unpleasant, adversarial, insulting approach doesn't incline me to suggest an unblock. (In any event, WP:AN/I would be the appropriate venue to consider such a proposal, not the Help Desk.)

The smart thing for him to do here would be to cut his losses, go back to one of his other accounts (or create a new one), edit in some other areas for a while, and be a model of civility and courtesy in the future. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello Community, this is mrmerlot back for more abuse. Very interesting conversation here and I get a much better understanding of the positive side of Wikipedia's admin & gardening side. I can see now that I was on the point of a begrudging admin for some unknown reason. I would have placed responses on the pages mentioned, except my IPs (home and work) were blocked so quickly, I did not have an opportunity. Here's the rest of the story: I've been a Wikipedia editor for a long time (albeit infrequently). I recently merged accounts which apparently does not merge edit histories. So yes "mrmerlot" is only a month old, but my editing history goes back a few years. I also donate to the MediaWiki, though I'm reconsidering that based on the abhorrent treatment I've received here. I can admit that my temper flared a bit more than it should have (the quotes above are all true), but to be fair, User:Toddst1 was repeatedly placing banners on pages I created without any explanation or thoughtful discourse. In fact, he refused any sort of dialog on the talk page (there is no conflict of interest, mind you). Building a quality page takes time, as you all know, and to arbitrarily mark it for deletion irked me. This matter has actually helped me reconsider any involvement I have with Wikipedia. I am a busy man with a job, a family, and other interests. If my contributions are so flippantly disregarded by the superusers within the Wikipedia community, then I want no part in that. In conclusion, if some kind admin would like to reinstate my mrmerlot account, I would sincerely appreciate it. As I do not intend to do much editing from this point forward, you can rest assured that I won't be going on any more tirades like this one. In case that account cannot be reinstated, I have created a new account for my infrequent editing purposes. Thanks for those who took a more balanced stance in this incident. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.125.4.210 (talk) 12:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Saving entries

I'm looking for someone to point me in the right direction. Since I started editing I've been focusing mostly on new page patrols and tagging problem entries. I've also done some work with AFDs. I'm looking to try something new, and would like to try my hand at saving some entries. Where would be a good place to start? Is there a specific list which I can search for entries in need of specific help? Also, any guides or how-to articles to which you can point me would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. Wperdue (talk) 00:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)wperdue

Hm. Well, if you want to see a list of articles that are in need of improvement, I suggest you check out Category:Articles needing additional categories from April 2009, Category:Orphaned articles, and category:Articles that need to be wikified. There are lots of other categories, but those are the ones that first come to mind. Also, there are some useful how-to articles that explain how to fix problem articles, for instance: Wikipedia:Style guide and Wikipedia:Copyedit. Hope this helped. tempodivalse [☎] 00:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

If you want to save entries from deletion then check out Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron and their Category:Articles tagged for deletion and rescue. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, I somehow missed your "saving some entries" comment and misunderstood that to mean that you wanted to see articles that needed improvement overall. Sorry about that. Yeah, Category:Articles tagged for deletion and rescue is the place to go if you want to rescue some articles. Also, you can check out Category:Proposed deletion. Cheers, tempodivalse [☎] 02:10, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Images from google street view

Is it permissible to use images obtained from google street view? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lost Fugitive (talk • contribs) 01:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Google's images are almost all copyrighted. They can be used, but will require a fair use rationale. See WP:FAIR USE. At best, they could be used if no free image is available. Matt Deres (talk) 01:13, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

For images from Street View, a free alternative will almost always available (since anyone could go to the same road with a camera and take a picture of the same thing). Algebraist 01:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The largest source of free images I have found so far is Flickr, but only a fraction of Flickr's images are free enough (i.e., licensed under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA) to upload to Commons. You can search within just the free images with the {{Flickr free}} template. For example, suppose you would like to see some images of wind turbines (and who wouldn't):

• Search Flickr for images with the keywords: wind turbine under these licenses: cc-by or cc-by-sa

Flickr is a consumer-grade photo sharing site, so don't expect to find images easily. Many, perhaps most photos on Flickr are not geotagged, and the photo descriptions exhibit the usual synonym disease. Lots of people take photos during random travels and they don't always record (or possibly know) what they were photographing or exactly where they were. Thus of the subset of Flickr photos that are free, only a subset of those are findable. When you find a Flickr photo that you want to upload to Commons, you can use a tool called Flinfo. See Commons:COM:EIC#Flickr. I looked at some other photo sharing sites (see my notes in User:Teratornis/Notes#Panoramio and following sections), but I haven't found a site with as much usable free content as Flickr. The other photo sharing sites don't seem to have heard of the free content movement. One exception is Geograph British Isles, but unfortunately it only covers the area its name suggests, and it only lets you download a rather limited photo size. --Teratornis (talk) 04:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I could add that many if not most people who upload photos to a photo sharing site do not seem to have a clear understanding of free content licensing. Thus they may allow the photo sharing site to (sneakily?) restrict republication of their work. It's as if most of these photo-sharing sites fool some people into contributing their content to a corporation (crowdsourcing) rather than to their community of peers. Nonetheless, the photographer retains copyright in his or her work. If you see a photograph you want to re-use, and it's under some restrictive site-wide copyright or license, you could try contacting the photographer and asking him or her to consider licensing his or her work freely. See for example:

• File:BD-propagande-2 (en).jpg

It seems the free content movement is almost the victim of its own complexity. Probably the vast majority of people who buy digital cameras and just want to upload their photos somewhere do not understand how to make sure their work benefits the people they really want to benefit. They (probably) just upload to the first photo sharing site which is simple enough for them to figure out how to use. This is why the Wikimedia Foundation might consider setting up its own Flickr-like site, something that is completely easy for non-technical users (i.e., the opposite of Commons), where people can share their own photos of any quality, without much fear of deletion, and everything by default gets licensed freely. Thus the WF might build up its own stockpile of billions of freely-licensed photos, from which we might harvest a few million photos of encyclopedic quality and relevance. Since we would control the Flickr-like site, we could simplify the process of copying quality images from there to Commons. --Teratornis (talk) 17:59, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

IP Address Woes

Is it possible, after registering, to have your new username retroactively appended to your previous contributions, rather than your IP ADDRESS? If so, what if you've used more than one IP address when contributing previously? Radiohead40540057 (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It used to possible, but is no longer. See this page for the former process. Edits can be reattributed from account to account, but not from IP to account. TNXMan 19:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

A couple things I've been meaning to figure out...

I've been here since mid 2008, but there are a few things that I haven't been able to figure out myself. Help with these would be appreciated:

1. How do I create a link in an edit summary? (yes, really...)
2. How do I vertically center text in a box? I have this template at Commons, where the text is vertically centered, but when viewing it on an image page at Wikipedia, the text falls to the bottom. Same goes for this, which I stole from a user at WikiSource. At WikiSource it centers vertically. Here, not so much.

Thaaaaank you. ~ ωαdεstεr16_«talk^stalk» 05:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

1: Same way you make a normal link... unless you mean an external link (those, for some reason, are banned in edit summaries). 2: You could use a 1 cell table with the pseudo-HTML attribute "valign" set to "middle". Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 05:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

External links are disabled in edit summaries to prevent the creation of irremovable links to websites there should be no links to, for whatever reason. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See Help:Edit summary#Rendering of wikitext; URLs. Note that you can use interwiki links in edit summaries. If you want to link to some external site for which Wikipedia has no interwiki link prefix, sometimes you can find an article or page about the site on Wikipedia that you could link to instead. --Teratornis (talk) 18:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

access wikipedia programatically

Is there any way/API to access wiki articles from my application and/or add articles if they do not exist on wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarangpatrikar (talk • contribs) 05:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Could you access the article's URL directly? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

We have an API. Algebraist 13:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

There are some bot programs that add new articles automatically. For example, pick a random U.S. County such as Petroleum County, Montana, and look at its history to see the first contribution. That leads to User:Ram-Man who says he created thousands of such articles with his rambot. You may also find useful information under these Editor's index entries:

• WP:EIW#Download
• WP:EIW#Query
• WP:EIW#Research

--Teratornis (talk) 18:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Biographical page

Hi, i'm looking for someone who can help me complete a biographical page for a professional US drummer. I am his manager, and im quite confused on how to navigate around wikipedia. is anyone willing to help?

Nilest (talk) 06:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Is the drummer notable enough to warrant his own article? If so, you could write an article about him but there is a siginificant conflict of interest so I would advise against it. If you think he meets the notability requirements, you can request the article. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

how to make a suggestion about an article

in the article on mathematical logic, formal grammars and category theory aren't mentioned. To whom can I suggest that they be mentioned and how do I do that —Preceding unsigned comment added by DJSlater00 (talk • contribs) 09:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

A couple of options: you could make the suggestion on the talk page of the relevant article, where users interested in the subject will see your comment and may be able to add the relevant material. For more about using talk pages, see here. Or, if you know about this area, you could be bold and add the information yourself - just make sure to cite your additions to a reliable source. Gonzonoir (talk) 09:24, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Before you edit any article, I suggest finding where Wikipedia already covers these topics:

• Search Wikipedia with Google for: formal grammar
• Search Wikipedia with Google for: category theory

Perhaps not surprisingly, Wikipedia already has the articles: Formal grammar and Category theory, along with many other articles that mention each term. You would do well to read some of those articles to get a feel for how Wikipedians have structured this type of knowledge elsewhere. The more you know about what Wikipedians have already done, the easier it is to extend their work to areas they haven't gotten to yet. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics which has detailed guidelines for editing articles on mathematics. If you don't get any response when you suggest changes on Talk:Mathematical logic, you might next try suggesting your changes on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. See Wikipedia:Talk page and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines for more about how to communicate with other Wikipedia editors. --Teratornis (talk) 03:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Missing

My son Siddhartha Rajesh Gupta missing from 05:09:2004 Sunday at about 16:00 hrs His date of birth 04:10:1982 birth time 23:30 hrs birth place Nagpur Mahrashtra Kindly tail me about his future and they will come back after hoe much time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.100.111.69 (talk) 09:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

We are the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia. We are not fortune-tellers, and have no way to answer your question. Sorry. Xenon54 (talk) 10:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Coded Arms Assault trailer

Resolved

 – Wrong venue. Please ask your question at the Entertainment reference desk, as the help desk is intended for questions related to using Wikipedia only. Thanks. tempodivalse [☎] 15:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

I am in need of your help regarding Coded Arms Assault, the game for the PS3 that was cancelled a little while ago. There is a trailer for it on Youtube, and over that trailer a song is played which I simply cannot place, and I was wondering if your website was able to figure it out for me. I know this seems a silly request, but I have been reading from your website for months now on many different subjects, and if anyone knows anything, it would be you guys. Many Thanks

DaddyJut —Preceding unsigned comment added by Daddyjut (talk • contribs) 11:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried the Entertainment section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

How can a page be found with more than several search alternatives

Say, I called a new page "Genetics". How can I make it happen that the page can also be found when typing "Ginetics" or "Genetic" etc.? What do I place on top of the page to reach this effect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.135.136.10 (talk) 11:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You can create pages at the titles you want to redirect to genetics and place #REDIRECT [[Genetics]] on them. You cannot make a redirect by editing the target page. See more at Wikipedia:Redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:34, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I knew about REDIRECT, but was hoping there would be a shorter way in the target page itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.135.136.10 (talk) 12:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Blatant display of bias —vandalism or not?

Is blatant display of bias like this12 considered vandalism? This is not the simple "X is gay" type of vandalism but the edits are still highly inappropriate. I just want to know if I will get into trouble if I revert such edits and warn the user more than three times? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ZenerV (talk • contribs) 12:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is concidered vandalism. Now as far as 3RR goes, Reverting obvious vandalism cannot be held agaisnt you. Sephiroth storm (talk) 12:13, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

3RR doesn't apply to when you revert vandalism, according to WP:3RR, so you should be okay. tempodivalse [☎] 15:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

If we assume good faith, I wouldn't say that 2 is vandalism, but it's indeed a very biased comment. The sentence could be rewritten in a more neutral way in the "criticisms" section provided that sources exist. Laurent (talk) 16:06, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It is very likely the actual (strong) opinion of the writer, who did not write it merely to mess up the article, but because he/she believes that viewpoint should be included. Make the language more neutral, try to include the sentiment where possible.--Levalley (talk) 01:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems impossible to know whether the user was kidding or being serious, with either edit. One would have to know a lot more about the user to be sure. Fortunately, the sincerity of the user is not an issue, because both edits make the objective error of stating a controversial claim as a fact, rather than attributing the controversial claim to some verifiable source. For example, compare these two statements:

• The earth is flat. (states a controversial claim as fact)
• The Flat Earth Society's official position is that the earth is flat. (attributes a controversial claim to a verifiable source)

The first claim is controversial, since many people would not agree that the earth is flat. The second claim, in contrast, is readily verifiable; there really does seem to be/have been a Flat Earth Society, and its official position really is/was that the earth is flat. If someone "vandalized" an article by declaring the earth to be flat, we might actually be able to make the claim encyclopedic by turning it into an attribution of the claim as in my second example. --Teratornis (talk) 03:20, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

partial printing

I want to print @ one page of an article that was skipped on the first try,but can't see how.How can I print ONLY the desired portion-@ 1 page-without having to re-print the entire article-@ 10 pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.204.76.254 (talk) 12:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Assuming you are using Windows, when you hit Ctrl+P, it should bring up the Print dialog box. In that box, there should be a group of radial buttons under Page Range, you want to click the button that says Pages: and just type in the page number you want. Livewireo (talk) 13:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See also Help:Printable#Blank pages in Internet Explorer. I don't know whether Internet Explorer 7 can print a previously blank Wikipedia page with Livewireo's method. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:36, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Event

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am the Trustee of FSTC [ The foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation ], which is a charitable organisation to promote awareness of the historical contributions that Muslims have made to science since the beginning of time.

We have an exhbition which has been used in Manchester, Cardiff, birmingham and Glasgow and attracted over 350,000 attendees.

In December we wish to launch a global exhibition with sites in the USA and Middle East, but we want the global launch to be in London ie at Ste james's palace.

We shal have heads of state from all over the world attending and St James's would be THE IDEAL venue for such an event. We would like to rent the Palace for 1 week to celebrate the opening. We were invited to exhibit in Parliament in December 2008 and the Minister for Education and The Mayor of London attended.

I have attended 5 Queen's Awards ceremonies at St James's, and hope that yoou can and will accommodate such a prestigious event.Cost is NOT a problem but clearly permission and access is.

Please let me know if you will consider this event.

any thanks.

Yours sincerely Peter Raymond MBE Council Member of The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. Trustee of FSTC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.200.125 (talk) 16:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 2.8 million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen. If that is not fruitful, we have a reference desk, divided into various subjects areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. TNXMan 16:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello!

There is a certain image [1] that I'd say would be quite good for the article on the Mi-17? I think it's possible, but I'm unsure about all this image, copyright, etc. stuff. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peace keeper II (talk • contribs) 17:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

We can't tell the copyright status of an image just by looking at it. Can you provide a link to the page on which you found the image? Algebraist 17:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

http://www.defenselink.mil//WeekInPhotos/WeekInPhotosSlideShow.aspx?Date=4/15/2009 Hope that is of some use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peace keeper II (talk • contribs) 17:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

And: [2] might help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peace keeper II (talk • contribs) 18:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

As clearly indicated on those pages, the image in question is in the public domain. Go to WP:UPLOAD and click 'A work from a U.S. federal government source'. Algebraist 18:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

If the image is in the public domain, then you should upload it to Commons instead, so that the image will then be able to be used on many different wikis, not just the English Wikipedia. Direct link to Commons upload: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload. Hope this helps, tempodivalse [☎] 18:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Article activation

I can only get to my article by logging in. Can people who aren't logged in get to it? ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by RainbowMary (talk • contribs) 19:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I can get to Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:06, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Everything works fine for me. Unlogged-in users should be able to view that page. tempodivalse [☎] 19:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I logged out and I could still see it, of course. btw, RainbowMary, you might like to cite sources for your statements re WSJ and BBN. Thanks. --AndrewHowse (talk) 19:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

photos

A friend of mine mentioned that there are photos that can be used as long as you credit the contributor, is this true? and where are they?

Tony —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.228.28.107 (talk) 19:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Most photos on Wikipedia or on Wikimedia Commons are freely licensed, which means they can be used as long as you comply with the license, which typically involves little more than naming the license and crediting the author. You can click on any image to find out who holds the copyright and what terms you can use it under. Algebraist 19:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Still picture when video clip isn't playing

When a video clip isn't playing it shows a still picture from the video. Is it possible to change the still picture to another still picture from the video? Fanoftheworld (talk) 20:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It might help if you told us which clip is dysfunctional. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 21:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It is regarding this clip: "File:S T E I N W A Y - The eight letters.ogg".

By the way, the clip is working fine, I just want to chance the still picture, which is shown when the clip isn't playing. Fanoftheworld (talk) 22:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Use the |thumbtime= parameter. [[File:S T E I N W A Y - The eight letters.ogg|thumbtime=3]], for example. --auburnpilot talk 22:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much.

When the video has played through, is it possible that the still picture could be shown again, instead of the black screen? Fanoftheworld (talk) 23:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Help fixing a page I screwed up

I attempted to "edit this panel" to add notes about a copyediting problem I'm having, and when I hit save, my notes showed up - but everyone else's had disappeared. I tried to undo what I'd done (this is why I stick to simple copyedits right now), but can't get it back to where it was before I messed it up. It's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors/Left_panel - the left panel of the Main Project page of my much-loved GOCE, so I feel like an arse. Can someone revert my edits? And then, give me someplace to go to read more about undoing???Levalley (talk) 21:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I've restored it to where it was before your edits. DuncanHill (talk) 22:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm going to go look at how you did it.--Levalley (talk) 22:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell you never deleted anything (except deleting your own addition when you reverted it correctly). Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors transcludes several pages. One of them is Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Left panel. Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors has a link called "Edit this panel". I guess you clicked that link. It edits Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Left panel and not Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors itself. After saving, you may have been on Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Left panel and no longer seen the other parts of Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. This could cause you to think you had deleted something. I think you should have added your section by clicking the "Edit" link to the right of the heading Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors#Requests for collaboration or help. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that - that's good. I may try and do it again. I'm a little edit-shy right now.Levalley (talk) 01:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't be, be bold, there is nothing you can do that cannot be undone! – ukexpat (talk) 02:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've discovered that there are some things one can do that only administrators can undo. Boldness should never substitute for reading the friendly manuals and understanding what one is doing. I think every user should be bold when it comes to creating lots of user sandbox pages for testing things. --Teratornis (talk) 03:09, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Password forgotten and e-mail address active at the time nolonger exists

I nolonger have access to my old e-mail address which was used when first registering on wikipedia and later with at least one pseudonym. Is it possible for someone to map my old e-mail address to my new one? Then I will get password reset e-mails from Wikipedia. What process should I follow to arrange this? K (talk) 21:36, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

If you have forgotten the password to an account and do not have access to the email address, there is no way for you to access that account. Algebraist 21:44, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Creating a redirect

Resolved

 – tempodivalse [☎] 22:59, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Could someone please create a redirect? Pontefract Cake should, ideally, be redirected to Pontefract Cakes. Thanks. 81.159.129.180 (talk) 21:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Done! DuncanHill (talk) 21:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. 81.159.129.180 (talk) 22:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Now fixed to redirect to the moved main article at Pontefract cake. – ukexpat (talk) 23:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Is there a way to check if a particular article is an orphan?

I know about Lonely Pages and the Orphan generator - but it takes a long time to get to the middle or end of the alphabet and the pages I'm trying to check for would be at the bottom of the list. Thanks.--Levalley (talk) 23:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with 'What links here' (in the left sidebar)? Algebraist 23:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

(e/c/) Go to the article and click "what links here"; the first link in the toolbox which is the second menu under the search field on the left hand side of the page.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm a sloow N00b. However, gradually, I'm progressing - thanks to so much help.--Levalley (talk) 23:45, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

On the same topic, when calculating whether something is an orphan, I know being on lists doesn't count as a link - but does being listed in the links section of another article count?

--Levalley (talk) 23:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Such links seem to be good enough by the criteria at Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage. Algebraist 00:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Speaking for myself only, I'd consider any article that doesn't appear on a navigation template to be kind of an "orphan". That's not a definition the community would probably use, though. But when you think about it, if an article isn't on a navigation template, then nobody has gotten around to grouping it logically with other articles in an explicit way. Categories work similarly, but they tend to be flatter and more fluid. --Teratornis (talk) 03:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)