Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 April 30

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April 30

Template or Category?

Which would be better for schools that fall under a specific school district, namely the Boise School District? Either a template that lists all the schools at the bottom of the page or just a category? Beantwo (talk) 01:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You can use both, they serve different purposes. – ukexpat (talk) 01:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) See Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. In general, the various navigation methods are not mutually exclusive. You can use more than one method. Each has its pros and cons. They don't really get in each other's way. Usually people put articles in categories before someone puts the same articles into navigation templates, because categories tend to require less thought, and it's OK to have few articles in a category, whereas a navigation template might look funny if it has very few links. --Teratornis (talk) 01:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I think I'll start easy with a category but end up doing both then. Beantwo (talk) 01:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

r n field

what are the most important three majoe technology used in this field? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.117.171.247 (talk) 04:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for in the article about Registered nurse. If you cannot find the answer there, you can try asking your question at Wikipedia's Reference Desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except about how to use Wikipedia, which is what this help desk is for). I hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sources

There are sources I want to use in an article but I cannot access them because they are locked in online newspaper archives and can only be viewed by payment. If there is anybody on wikipedia who has access to these documents, how could I find these people? --Lost Fugitive (talk) 04:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Most archives like this prohibit subscribers from sharing their login details or copying the archive contents for others, but you might be able to find someone who could verify the content for you. I'd suggest the talk pages of the relevant articles as the best place to ask. Alternatively, you might find you get access to these archives for free if you join your local library. Gonzonoir (talk) 15:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If all you want to do is cite the article, then use one of the standard formats offered in WP:CITE and ignore the online aspect entirely. It can't be said enough: there is no obligation to provide an online link to any non-Web citation you provide as a source. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

South Liverpool FC

Dear Sir's,I am trying to find out some details on my great, great, grandfather, a Mr Henry Johnson who use to play as the goal keeper for South Liverpool FC. It would of been around 1910 or a little earlier & upto about 1914. He along with all his team mates voluntered for france during the great war where I know he was killed in action.So if you can advise any information or where I can obtain some it would be much appreciated. Many thanks S.Harding —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.9.41 (talk) 06:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't look like we have an article about this Henry Johnson. Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Viewing images problems

Hello and good day, please i cant view any images in wikipedia since three weeks, everything was going smooth and suddenly viewing images is not applicabl any more even the thumbnail in the article appeared as X with text inside,

thank you for your support and time,

tarek —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.137.247.10 (talk) 06:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Does the problem affect only Wikipedia, or all websites? If it's all websites, you may have turned off image loading in your browser. If you're in Internet Explorer 7, go to Tools > Internet Options and on the Advanced tab, scroll down to the "Multimedia" heading, and make sure there's a check in the box next to "Show pictures". If you use Firefox 3, go to Tools > Options and on the Content tab make sure "Load images automatically" is checked. If you have another browser, or if the problem only affects Wikipedia and lets you see images from other websites, let us know, and we can provide more specific information. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Article on hold for several days

I am sorry to ask this as I am sure it is quite common but I am new to this and your instructions are VERY confusing.

I wrote my first article last week. Two people made comments and one put the article on hold. I was asked for further third party sources which I provided. Nothing has happened since last week and the article remains on hold. Could something please be done about this.

This is the article below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Professor_David_R._Brown

Please can someone do something so this article can be created.

thanks --Gonkstem (talk) 07:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I've commented over at the talk page for this submission. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Number of laws in the united states

what is the total number of laws in the united states? Federal,State,County,City and so on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.231.24.240 (talk) 07:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps.

Since you haven't yet asked at the reference desk yet, I can answer that as a a subject matter expert because the answer is easy. No one knows. No one has even a clue. Just figuring out the criteria to answer would have people arguing for a year. Every city, town, district region has their own statutes, regulations, ordinances; laws are on the books that are invalidated by caselaw. Laws are repealed and enacted every day. You could count the laws of the federal United States Code I suppose. That's about as far as you'd get get for a quantifiable answer.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It's possible that someday, computer technology (and the resulting social organization, which tends to lag technology by 30 years or more) will advance far enough to address questions such as this one. A person cannot exactly count the laws that exist in the U.S. today because, basically, the community of lawmakers has not fully embraced computers. Most if not all members of that community probably use computers, but they are a long way from figuring out how to computerize everything they do. Thus they have lots of information that exists only in forms that are difficult for computers to access and process: information on printed paper, and information that exists only within the minds of particular people. This is a problem because computerizing a task tends to increase efficiency and reduce costs by large factors. However, as Niccolò Machiavelli observed, even when a change would benefit most people on balance, small but powerful groups of people may thwart the change because they profit from the inefficient status quo. Another barrier is the need for multiple skills - among the people who have sufficient domain knowledge in a given non-computing field, only a tiny minority will also have sufficient computer programming skills to know how to computerize what they do.

And yet humans are making millimetrical progress. See for example Wikipedia which is arguably a leading example - if not the best example - of how to exploit computers to tackle the problem of writing encyclopedias. Maybe the example of Wikipedia will inspire the lawmaking community to organize its efforts along similar lines - someday. Don't hold your breath, though, as the lawmaking community contains small but powerful groups of people who are busily retarding human progress with the overzealous extension of intellectual property law, which works against the type of social organization that would let us count the number of laws in the U.S. --Teratornis (talk) 19:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

Who said this "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hades' Apprentice (talk • contribs) 08:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd tell you to ask at the RefDesk, but they'll tell you it's Henry David Thoreau (see also Wikiquote) :) Gonzonoir (talk) 08:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

And then of course someone at the refdesk may note that "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way". --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

...when an article is already on Wiktionary?

Just wondering what the official policy is for something like Of that Ilk which is just a dictionary definition and has a (better) article over on Wiktionary. Do you set up a redirect to Wiktionary or what? Le Deluge (talk) 10:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a reasonable enough article - you could allways add {{wiktionary|Of that Ilk}} to the article to give . Pedro :  Chat  10:13, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

But it's not "a reasonable article" - it's a badly-written Wiktionary definition masquerading as a Wikipedia article. Turning it into a redirect to Wiktionary would seem to be the most satisfactory solution, but I wasn't sure if redirects to other projects were an unspeakable sin, or quite normal. Talking of which, I suspect there's a few other articles in Category:Phrases which are in the same boat, although some obviously deserve encyclopedia articles. Le Deluge (talk) 10:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You can always create a soft redirect if you feel the article is no better than a dicdef, but I think there's enough there to justify it being on Wikipedia to be honest - okay it will never be much more than a stub but even so. Pedro :  Chat  11:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You could also use {{wi}}. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Cheers both - I'd already found it Zain. :-))) Pedro - it's not so much taking a view on the (then)current content of the article, more on the nature of the subject. OK, it didn't help that even with a reasonable knowledge of the subject I couldn't work out what the second half of the article was trying to say, but if there is something coherent to be said there, it would equally fit as an alternate definition in Wiktionary, and I'm a big fan of having one half-decent article rather than two poorer ones. So {{wi}} it is.... :-) Le Deluge (talk) 11:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

menu for Commons images on English Wikipedia

If we go to any file page that is linked to a Commons image, like File:Stellar aberration.JPG for example, one of the menus on the top of the page shows "Create this page". I understand that Commons images are not editable on en.wikipedia, hence we don't have the "edit this page" menu when we view it here. But "Create this page" is totally confusing when we're already seeing the page. Is there any meta article which describes this menu item in more detail? Jay (talk) 10:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

I do not have a computer of my own and surf from friends computers if some one vandalises the site will the username be banned or the IP ?--Narendramodi1 (talk) 10:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It could be either, depending on whether vandalism is committed by the IP or by a logged-in user (plus some considerations about the status of the IP - is it dynamic or static, for example). If a sockpuppet investigation shows that a user is also vandalising under an IP, or it becomes clear that a user is editing under an IP as a means of block evasion, they could both be blocked. Gonzonoir (talk) 10:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You mean a singe Ip can have multiple accounts Thanks--Narendramodi1 (talk) 11:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That's right, if the IP is shared; but a single person must have only one account. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Not quite true, a single person can have more than one account provided they are not used disruptively. – ukexpat (talk) 15:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Apologies; you're right of course: the OP could consult WP:SOCK#LEGIT. Gonzonoir (talk) 15:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Be sure you always log out from your Wikipedia account when you finish a session on anyone else's computer. And make sure their browser is not remembering your username and password to automatically fill in the login form. You should not let anyone else edit Wikipedia from your account, even if their intentions are constructive. --Teratornis (talk) 05:22, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Renaming images

I'd like to rename File:Imagesource.jpeg to something more useful (and probably salt that name to force some thought on uploaders). As an admin, according to Wikipedia:Image renaming, I can technically do it but how? Is it still with the rename media template? But is there a bot still working on these? If not, isn't Category:Media requiring renaming just going to expand forever? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

File renaming was enabled for a short period recently before a bug was found; it should be enabled again when it is fixed. Until then, you have to re-upload under a new name or wait. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

pictures

im trying to upload a picture onto a page called "the naugatuck river valley" but i dont know how to do it. also why do my editing changes keep getting deleted on that same page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary.farrar (talk • contribs) 13:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The same questions you asked earlier were answered. See the archives for April 23 for your several posts. Jay (talk) 15:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

microbiology

what deisease is caused by Staphylococcus epidermidis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.230.10 (talk) 15:13, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. But we won't do your homework for you. – ukexpat (talk) 15:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Also see our article on Staphylococcus epidermidis. TNXMan 15:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

problem getting a picture

ive upload the same picture twice and i dont know how i get that picture from commons to the page i want it on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary.farrar (talk • contribs) 15:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Same as for an image on Wikipedia, see WP:IMAGE. – ukexpat (talk) 16:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, you appear to be involved in a minor content dispute with other editors of that article. I strongly suggest that you attempt to reach a consensus with respect thereto on the article's talk page, before this ends up in an edit war. – ukexpat (talk) 17:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia store complete page for every version or just the difference?

When we edit a page on Wikipedia, Wikipedia software maintains version control by saving every version of the page. Does it store full page data for every version or just the difference between the previous and the current version? --Amol.Gaitonde (talk) 15:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe I stumbled across the answer to this question a while ago, but I can't recall it exactly right now. The answer is probably somewhere in the MediaWiki Handbook's section for administrators, for example start with mw:Manual:Database layout. In the worst case, you could install your own Wiki on a stick, edit a page a few times, and then do some MySQL queries to examine MediaWiki's raw data for the page. --Teratornis (talk) 19:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, MediaWiki stores the latest revision in full, and maintains a list of differences for every revision (sort of a reverse diff; delta encoding). When you load an old revision, the software first loads the latest one, and then incrementally applies the diffs - from newest to oldest - until it reaches the revision you want. (I might be wrong though.) --grawity 19:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

pictures

ok. ive been trying for days now on getting a picture on a certain page. why cant i find the picture? where do i even got to get the picture? im on the editing page and what do i click on next???????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary.farrar (talk • contribs) 17:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

See my reply 2 posts above. WP:IMAGE has the details.  – ukexpat (talk) 17:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I added the an image thumbnail to Naugatuck River Valley using the code [[File:Naugatuck Valley.jpg|thumb|250px]]. If you want to add a caption the code is [[File:Naugatuck Valley.jpg|thumb|250px|captionhere]].  – ukexpat (talk) 18:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

title

when a title of a book is in my paper do I underline or put into quote? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.7.31.94 (talk) 18:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you're looking for the reference desk. This page is for question on how to use Wikipedia. However, I can answer your question. You put books in italics if typing (underlined if physically writing). hmwithτ 19:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Height of a table (April 9)

Hi,
I would like to know if it's possible to fix the height of a table (or a cell) without filling someting inside the cell ? Thanks. — Riba ^(talk) 20:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• For me it usually works to include & nbsp ; in the empty cell (a non-breaking space)? Get rid of the spaces and you should have an empty cell with the same height as the one next to it. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• adding something like style="height:100px" to the table/cell markers should do the trick. Example (table forced to 200 pixels, first raw to 100 pixels):

Table

Equendil Talk 21:04, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank! But I want to do is to put a table in another table and to fix the height of the little one at 100% of the space of the cell. As if in this table I wanted that the cell "a" took all the place :

a

b

c

— Riba ^(talk) 21:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

There is no HTML or style to do it . . . but you can make it look like it is happening, for example(?):

Table
Inner Table a1 a2 a3 a4	b1	c
	b2
	b3

If you cannot get the above to work in your context, create some more explanation here and I will see what I can do. Peet Ern (talk) 13:24, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, what I want to do, is to create two types of box inside a another. You can see my sandbox. There is the caption to understand my explaination

• The cell D contain a transparent cell inside. I want that this transparent cell take all the space of the cell D (eg. height=100%)
• The difficulty is that I can't add new columms in the row A-B-C.

Thank very much! — Riba ^(talk) 18:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Basically, you want to set the height of your inner table to 100% of the height of the cell but the height of the cell itself is undefined, so it's ignored, and I don't think there is any clean way around that problem. What's wrong with Peet Em's suggestion above ? Looking at your sandbox, it seems appropriate. Equendil Talk 20:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand how to use the suggestion of Peet Ern with my problem. Basically, for my cell D, I want to create two full blue columm (one one the left side and one on the right) without using a colspan in the cell A. For now, the columm are not full. Thanks. — Riba ^(talk) 21:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Then your only solution as far as I can tell is to force the height of the inner tables, 'em' unit to make it somewhat proportional. Equendil Talk 22:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist Question

Resolved

What does the (-28) mean in the following: 13:34 Talk:2009 swine flu outbreak? (diff; hist) . . (-28) . . 172.162.132.23 (talk) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe it means that 28 bytes (or characters) were removed from the previous version. — Ched :  ?  19:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Exactly right. And +n would be the number of bytes added. – ukexpat (talk) 19:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

No image preview appearing on image page

On the image pageFile:Blue dsi smooth.svg, no image preview is appearing, however when you click on the image, the .svg appears. Why is this happening? --Goldblattster (talk) 19:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

What page is it not showing up on?, or more accurately which page isn't it showing up properly on? — Ched :  ?  20:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

wow ... looking at the file, I'm guessing it's massive size may be part of the problem. Just a hunch though. — Ched :  ?  20:13, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

ok thx --Goldblattster (talk) 22:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you want me to try reducing the file size? I probably can do a code cleanup or revectorizing. ZooFari 22:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Unified login

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 13:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I've unified my login across the projects, yet the number of edits isn't unified. Is this normal? Thanks! dottydotdot (talk) 19:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think only the login information is "unified". --grawity 19:33, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Correct, just user names. I am sure if you ask at WP:VPT one of the developers would be able to tell you if there are plans to unify any other features. – ukexpat (talk) 19:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thought it might be, thanks! dottydotdot (talk) 19:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• I'm actually glad edit counts aren't unified, because edit counts count edits and if I am searching for a particular edit, I don't want to thrawl through the edits I made to all projects and languages. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:31, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I wish my modern language skills were such that I had that problem! – ukexpat (talk) 13:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced edit buttons

This was put on my talk page - it's something to do with the images, but I don't know how to fix it. It's a pretty common problem too. "The page Figueira da Foz has the edit buttons for first and second section at the the end of the second section and I'm unable to work out how to put right." So, what makes this happen and how do we fix it? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 20:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to fix it, but I do know where you can read more about the problem - WP:BUNCH. I tried to fix this on another article and ended up causing more problems. :( TNXMan 20:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes a gallery tag can cover a multitude of sins. --Teratornis (talk) 05:10, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I moved the picture down the article where there was room, that should fix it. Equendil Talk 22:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I'll try WP:BUMCH out next time I see this. Dougweller (talk) 07:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

photos not displayed

When I download articles on subjects of interest, the boxes where accompanying photos should be displayed, remain blank. I've been unable to find troubleshooting locations where I can get information to correct my problem. What software do I need to activate, in order to download and display photos with articles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.16.13.48 (talk) 20:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

By "download articles", do you mean saving articles on your hard disk and viewing them there later? Your browser probably has a feature to save the complete page inclucing images. Which browser are you using? Or do you mean that you don't see images when you view articles online? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Are you printing articles? Can you give us examples? --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

PR-motivated article vandals?

I've noticed that many articles have criticism/controversy sections and in the more popular articles, these sections are completely missing or have no currently relevant or substantial information. An example can be seen in the Nintendo DS Lite article, where multiple accounts of cracked hinges are found in the discussion page but have absolutely no mention in the article itself. This type of information (strucutral failure) is undeniably relevant and therefore looks as if it were purposefully omitted. The article reads more like a product lineup and sales fanfare than an unbiased and purely informational article.

What kinds of moderation methods are there (if any?) to control editors that try to hide information that is relevant to any number of significant parties (notably towards consumers) yet may put an article's subject in any unfavorable light?

Perhaps the problem is that there are no reliable sources cited on the talk page. Individuals who report problems may know something that others need to know, but to be mentioned in the article, the problems should be documented in reliable sources, such as product reviews. Editor misbehavior is moderated by other editors and administrators, but I am too new to say very much about that. Do you have any other examples of articles with the kinds of problems that you are concerned about?--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:37, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

It might be possible that such information has been purposely removed, but there's also the fact that Wikipedia doesn't use original research. Even if ten thousand people all claim to have had the same problem, if no one can find a direct reference, it doesn't get added. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 13:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Page

I added various photographs to the page which were subsequently removed despite me having listed clearly that they were photos taken by me with my own digital camera Can someone please undo this mistake, reinstate the photos and ensure they are not deleted again. Thanks: bibi999 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.3.146.73 (talk) 23:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello Bibi999. You added a prose statement on the image pages that you created them and indicated that they were in the public domain. You didn't make an actual explicit statement that you release them, which really should be positively stated. In any event, you got caught in the crosshairs of a bot, which goes around tagging images for deletion that do not have a standard license tag (the one you wanted to use here was {{PD-self}}). Bots are dumb machines. They can't take a look, read your statements on the image pages and discern your intent and that you didn't know the exact procedure. What they will do, is leave you standard messages notifying you that the images have been marked for deletion. Your talk page is chock full of such notices. However, I can see from your contribution history that you never made an edit again until after the images were all deleted (quite a few days later). So you were provided notice, but you didn't return in time to take care of the issue.

In any event, I have restored all of the images and placed the licensing for you (see [[Please note that for any future images, you must provide a tag, and if they are not free, please follow the instructions carefully at Wikipedia:Upload, and if they are free images that you are releasing into the public domain, don't upload them here! Upload them to the Wikimedia Commons instead, so that all wikimedia projects have access to the images. Signing up there will take you seconds, and the images you upload can be used here just as easily and in the same manner as images uploaded here. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)