Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 February 16

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February 16

Recreating a previously deleted article

Hello. I logged in to create what I thought would be a new article for the Benmore Peak Observatory only to discover that there have been at least three previous articles and they've all been deleted. I don't understand why, even after reading what I could of the related debate. The Benmore Peak Observatory is one of the more important astronomical facilities in New Zealand. Should I even attempt to recreate the article? BigFatJAFA (talk) 06:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

WW II vets? .. suddenly I feel young again! ;) — Ched (talk) 06:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

blame it on the bifocals. (see below) — Ched (talk) 06:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably the 2 biggest reasons I see articles deleted (other than blantant spam and self-promotion) are:

• WP:COI - which is to say that a person who works for a company/place/thing writes an article. Since that person has a vested interest in the article they are writing about - it's difficult to keep an objective, dispassionate, and neutral tone in the writing = article is deleted.
• WP:ADVERT - meaning that the article was written as an advertisement (such as a travel brochure).

In this case, I've found Benmore Peak. Perhaps that would be an article which you could edit with the information you wanted to add. Keep in mind to keep the information written in a neutral tone, and make sure it is notable. Good luck ;) — Ched (talk) 07:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Oldest/youngest

1. Who is the oldest person to have made an edit to Wikipedia?

2. Who is the youngest person to have made an edit to Wikipedia? JCI (talk) 00:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Obviously with IPs, it's impossible to know. Grsz¹¹ 00:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

There is probably no way to tell. Wikipedia does not collect personal information; some editors may provide it on their user page. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not even seeing an easy way to examine Wikipedia users' self-reported ages. See for example Category:Wikipedians which lists a number of self-reported user characteristics, but age does not seem to be among them. Also see Wikipedia:User categories. --Teratornis (talk) 00:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I have seen good-faith IP edits from very young editors, probably six years old or younger. for vandalism, it's hard to judge the chronological age. I have seen useful edits from editors who appear to be about nine years old, and we have had multiple highly productive editors who self-report as twelve years old. At the high end, we have editors who self-report as WWII veterans. -Arch dude (talk) 03:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

WW II vets? .. suddenly I feel young again! ;) — Ched (talk) 06:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC) (at least until I screwed up the posting - see above) — Ched (talk) 06:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Some users post personal information on their userpage; some use template {{Infobox user}}. There are userboxes that identify as teens, students, veterans and many other categories. If you are really interested, I an 50. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

One Wikipedian from Singapore reported to have been 91, and may currently be 96, although he was previously listed on WP: Deceased Wikipedians. I've seen plenty of young Wikipedians as well. One constructive registered user was 9 years old upon registration, another Wikipedian became an administrator at age 11 and a bureaucrat at age 13, and yet another Wikipedian became an admin at age 13, and I've seen at least two or three Wikipedians who were 12 about one or two years ago, and if you must know, I'm among the younger contributors here. ~AH1^(TCU) 17:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Project Page for Educational Project?

I am beginning an educational/college project (which I will list on the School/University list tomorrow), but I can't figure out how to create a "project page"?

Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NRG

Thanks.

AEG English4994 (talk) 01:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)AEG English4994

You may want to read Wikipedia:School and university projects, which has some models to follow. If you see a good project with its own page, create your own page and use that one as a template. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I know that. I just literally don't know how/where to create a "Project Page" even though I see that there is a template for the format. Is the "Project Page" creatable when I list it in the School/University list? Is it a page created from my Userpage? I think this question has an obvious answer, but I can't figure it out. Thanks.

AEG English4994 (talk) 02:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)AEG English4994

Since you mention the School/University project list, I assume that you ate aware of the various problems we have had with school projects and that you intend to avoid them. If not or if you need help, please come back here: we want you to succeed. The example page, Wikipedia:WikiProject North of the Rio Grande, is in the "Wikipedia" namespace rather than the "mainspace." The only difference for editing is that the name of the page starts with "Wikipedia:" (Note the colon, it's important.) To start your page, create a redlink to it on you user page: [[Wikipedia:your project]]. Click on the redlink to get teh edit page, and start editing. -Arch dude (talk) 03:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much. That is very helpful. I knew project page creation would be more than obvious once I could see how it would be like any other page creation. I have been reading A LOT on the School/University project pages for a couple of months (and reading other articles, listening to podcasts on teaching via Wikipedia, etc.), including all the prof reflection on the North of the Rio Grande project. But this is my first attempt at a class project, so I'd be happy to hear any warnings you'd like to point out to me here as I'm beginning to work with my students. Thanks, and thanks in advance for the offer of help and your best wishes for my/my students' success. AEG English4994 (talk) 03:50, 16 February 2009 (UTC)AEG English4994

You may already be past the material I put on User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers but it can't hurt to look. --Teratornis (talk) 04:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the material/Tips for Teachers. I appreciate all help as I start the project. AEG English4994 (talk) 12:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)AEG English4994

Thanks so much for the help, everyone. I'll have to do more work on the page tonight and tomorrow, but it's created and I couldn't have done it without your help! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:English4994_The_World_Split_Open_-_Contemporary_Women_Essayists AEG English4994 (talk) 19:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)AEG English4994

Help me

Hi,

I am trying to edit the Bedford Group page and in the text box, I want Max Dyason to sit beneath Colin Dunsford but when I move it, it's not sitting where I want it to.

I also want to add some dot points, but there is no option for me to do this. How do I insert dot points into the main body of the text?

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.29.98 (talk) 02:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

To add the dot point format you place *'s at the start of the line, see below for example.

Main text

• Dot point one
• Dot point two
  • Dot point relating to dot point two
  • Dot point relating to dot point two
• Dot point three

Main text resumes

I Grave Rob (talk) 02:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• Max Dyason is now sitting under Colin Dunsford. If it is still not working for you then there may be problems with your browser. :) I Grave Rob (talk) 02:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Warnings

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 03:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there a feature to enable a user to receive warnings when something happens as I wish to receive warnings when I forget to fill in the edit box, I apologise prematurely if this is something widely known as I am not a longtime user of wikipedia. I Grave Rob (talk) 02:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If you mean the edit summary box, it's in the editing section of Special:Preferences. Algebraist 02:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I had looked there but was baffled that it was so short, after looking again after reading your comment I looked again and realised I hadn't seen the extra tabs due to scrolling down straight away. I Grave Rob (talk) 02:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Repeat Offender - Can Anyone Help??

Resolved

 – Speaker1994 blocked indefinitely. Xenon54 (talk) 02:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The user "Speaker1994" has a long history of adding offensive remarks, locking, rewriting or just blanking articles. Including Talk pages. I've read through his list of contributions, and want to point this person out to whoever might be able to help. He/She is not a random IP address (like I imagine mine will be, sorry). He/She is a registered user. Someone, PLEASE check into their contributions for yourselves, and see if this doesn't constitute SOME kind of action? Wikipedia isn't about the freedom to express being a jackass and it's impeding the flow of information for those of us who actually read these articles. I apologize if this is not the proper forum. Thank you. (contribution URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Speaker1994 ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.97.154.132 (talk) 02:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I've reported them to Administrator intervention against vandalism as an evident vandalism-only account. Thank you for bringing this user to our attention. It's surprising that they haven't been reported already. In the future, if you come across another user with similar behaivour, you can report them yourself. Xenon54 (talk) 02:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

And as soon as I filled Twinkle's report form, the user was indefinitely blocked. Xenon54 (talk) 02:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

:

When I used the search box to search for : thinking that it would automatically redirect me to comma I saw that it wasn't linked. I found the link to create it as a new page and clicked it, after waiting I was shocked to find myself redirected to the Wikipedia main page, I went back and searched for : again and hovered my mouse over the link and it was trying to link me back to the main page.

There are many links that contain : in them so why can't this one be made? I tried to substitute : into another pages create link but it kept coming back with a bad title.

Does anybody know how to fix this? I Grave Rob (talk) 02:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

We have a Colon (punctuation) article if that's what you are looking for. You probably cannot use the colon by itself as an article title, because the colon has syntactic meaning to the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia. It is the delimiter which separates the namespace prefix from a page title. This is not apparent with articles because articles are in a special "main" namespace which has no visible prefix and thus no colon delimiter. Don't expect this to make sense before you have read all the pages I linked to, several times probably. Wikipedia is very complicated. --Teratornis (talk) 04:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Article titles cannot begin with a ':'. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Colon. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, but we do have a redirect with the title ":". I'm having trouble believing my eyes. --Teratornis (talk) 04:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The title of that redirect is '：' and not ':'. The former is a special character and not a normal colon like the latter. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

There are more colon-like redirects at [1]. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

As for what a delimiter is: it's like when we read we need spaces between the words to be able to tell them apart (for a computer, it need not be a space, it can be a character like the colon). A title of : is like, to the MediaWiki software, seeing a document that's all space and no words. No wonder it doesn't make any sense! ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 20:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

How to measure a distance of a light year?

How do you measure a distance of a light year, i.e. how is it determined the a distance is a light, or two light years or 5 billion light years?

§ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Littlebuddy1 (talk • contribs) 02:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for in the article Astronomical distance. 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. Algebraist 03:02, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Changing Username

How do I change my user name? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.3.93 (talk) 03:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If you have not made very many edits, the best way is usually to register a new account. If you would like to retain credit for the edits you've made, see this page to request a username change. TNXMan 04:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Adrienne Bailon

• I asked a question about Adrienne Bailon photo in her talk page,but the a user keep revertin my comments and sayin that my question is unneeded and a distraction , without answer my questin what shall i Do ?--Prof.Sherif (talk) 06:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• If I understand that last message you posted correctly, you named everyone on the picture except the girl on the left (which the article claims is Bailon. That girl is not African American, the lighting may be playing tricks on you. If you believe the picture to be inadequate, try to get someone to release a better picture under a free license. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Undoing link removal to my 4shared page:- "Spam blacklist" ?

Greetings,

I have a 4shared filesharing webpage which contains a public lecture audio-recording from 1976. The speech is not copyright.

The lecturer -during his speech- turns on a cassette player, which contained an excerpt of a speech by Robert Thieme. (The Robert Thieme Wikipedia page is where my link is/was)

Today, in the Revision history of Robert Thieme, I came across the following:-

12:57, 2 February 2009 Kanonkas (Talk | contribs) m (21,956 bytes) (Removing external link: 4shared per spam blacklist)

I do not understand why my 4shared page has been marked as "spam blacklist", and cannot find anything through Wikipedia describing this blacklist.

The link had been up on the Robert Thieme page for some time.

I would like to "undo" this link deletion, if permissable.

Note: I did see this post in the questions section on Feb. 12th:-

Title "Legitimate website blocked by Wikipedia's spam blocker"

"Only code that actually produces a link triggers the blacklist. If you leave out the http://, you're fine. Algebraist 01:12, 12 February 2009 (UTC)"

Q. Could I "undo" the change, if I leave out the "http://" ?

or can I just "undo" ?

Please help me understand why my 4shared page has been noted as spam, and if I can "undo" the link deletion.

Thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryangiggs11 (talk • contribs) 06:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed removals from the blacklist can be made at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#Proposed removals. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 06:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

In answer to your specific questions, you can’t undo the edit because nobody can save a link to a blacklisted site. Typically the reason sites are blacklisted is that users have added spam links to the site (not necessarily your page). Only an admin can remove a site from the blacklist. —teb728 t c 07:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It is possible for an admin to "whitelist" a page within a site that is otherwise "blacklisted." However, It's a hassle all around, and we cannot trust 4shared (or any web site) to remain stable forever. If you can document the fact that the recording is not copyrighted and the original Robert Thieme recording is not copyrighted, then you can add the recording at Wikisource instead. This is usually a better idea, since Wikisource is likely to remain stable and valid as long as Wikipedia does. How do you know that these recordings are not in copyright? - Arch dude (talk) 10:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Arch dude explained this pretty well. I'd like to remind you to please see this. Also, please don't try to evade the spam blacklist. You can propose a whitelist by following the instructions at the spam-whitelist. --Kanonkas :  Talk  10:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Administrator help required to rename a page

Hello, I see if a building has a specific name(such as Aiwan-e-Sadr or Rashtrapati Bhavan) then the article is created under that title instead of a generic name. So I request an administrator to rename Accra Presidential Palace to Golden Jubilee House if they deem it appropriate.Thank You —Preceding unsigned comment added by Magic.Wiki (talk • contribs) 08:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• There you go. By the way, every autoconfirmed user can move a page. You don't need an admin for that. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• Here are the details: Help:Moving a page. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

ACC

Resolved

Hey folks, how ya doin? .. anyway, I recently got approved for account creation - when I go here and try to login, I get the following message:

• I'm sorry, but, your account has not been approved by a site administrator yet. Please stand by.
• Account Creation Assistance Manager by The ACC dev team. Bugs?
• Designed by Charlie Melbye

I've read through Wikipedia:Request an account/Guide, and I don't understand what I'm missing. I did attempt to create the account, with a different password than my en-wikipedia.org password (I saw on one of my pages) - and yet I don't seem to be able to access this area. I've tried logging in with both passwords too. What am I missing here? — Ched (talk) 09:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• A toolserver account requires verification from a real human before it works. I'm assuming no one got arround to handling yours yet. When did you request it? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  • couple days ago - I'll wait a bit and see if it changes. Thanks for the input =) — Ched (talk) 12:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Ahh... I see Rjd0060 dropped me a note on everything getting through the proper proceedures, so I'll tag it as such, and say thank you very much to RJD, MGM, and Peter - I appreciate your help, and trust greatly. Have a great day folks. — Ched (talk) 19:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Request For A Particular Article entitled The Tide Of Life: A Summary

Where do I can request for a particular article. I am looking for a summary of the novel entitled The Tide Of Life. I hope you can help me on this thing. Thank you and more power! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anonymous122893 (talk • contribs) 09:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Try WP:RA. Good luck! Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If you just need a plot summary quickly it might be worthwhile looking at reviews of the more recent TV miniseries, such as those over at Amazon, where the plot is laid out in reasonable detail. However, if you really feel you can make a case for the book deserving its own article (and if you check out our article Catherine Cookson you will note that none of her other books appear to have one, although some TV and film adaptations of her work do), then you are welcome to write it yourself. There's plenty of guidance on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels project pages on how to write an article about a novel. Karenjc 13:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Query

If a user adds in an elimination date for a person before they are eliminated, does that fall under NPOV or Vandalism? I Grave Rob (talk) 10:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Elimination date? That suggests all kinds of bad things (to me). But as far as the death of a person, I think WP:Crystal at the very least and vandalism as the more likely. Depending upon the context of the question, WP:NPA comes to mind, but in line with WP:AGF, I'll assume the question is in regards to a BLP, and there is the possibility that health issues might cause the "elimination" so to speak — Ched (talk) 10:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'm gonna assume they're talking about an elimination from a reality tv show. But it really doesn't matter what it is specifically. If someone is not yet eliminated, the information is not verifiable meaning it has no place here. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

(*sigh of relief*) - ok, after looking over the edit history, I see you're referring to contest type of eliminations. Yea, WP:Crystal would be the link you're looking for. — Ched (talk) 10:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Some questions from Litherlandsand...

I've got some questions, and I'd appreciate the help if anyone could do so:

• Is my userpage acceptable?
• I haven't violated any policies posting my history of editing here?
• Is there anything wrong with the fact that I've mentioned that I edit from shared IPs?

--Litherlandsand (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong - full disclosure is a good thing I would think. Not like you're "outing" another user or anything. — Ched (talk) 11:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong but you would want to try and keep your other IPs under control :) I Grave Rob (talk) 11:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the help. As regards the other IPs being under control, well, what other people do on the computers isn't my business anyway, well, normally :) --Litherlandsand (talk) 11:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Archiving

Is there some way to archive those questions/answers earlier on the page? Because it was showing that the Archive from February 11 was being transcluded onto the page before I removed the {}'s from Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2009 February 11

Should I have done this, and can I archive other dates from the help desk? I Grave Rob (talk) 11:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Archiving is done by a bot automatically after a certain time period. There is no need for us to do it manually. I could not find the edit you are referring to in your contributions. Are you sure you made that edit? If an archive was transcluded here, it's likely to have been the result of some vandalism. Chamal ^talk 14:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Archiving is done by a bot (example) and it's deliberate that an archived day is transcluded. The bot operator once said the bot could fail if there is no transcluded date so I restored it. The bot sometimes runs with irregular intervals. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I Grave Rob removed it [2] in the same edit as the above post was signed (which was after the text had been saved). PrimeHunter (talk) 14:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)"...it's deliberate that an archived day is transcluded"

I didn't know that :P Sorry. And also not being able to find that edit... am I dumb or what? Chamal ^talk 14:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Lists of products?

Hi. An anon editor has re-added a list of (model railway) products to the Dapol page. Previously I removed this as 'unencyclopaedic', and commented on Talk page, since that was the consensus arrived at when handling (similar) lists of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise products, some time ago.

Rather than just delete the list again, I wanted to quote a suitable policy that stated why it wasn't appropriate. Now I could hit the editor with a tranche of "notability/verifiability/OR", but I was hoping there was something more specifically list-based that I could quote. (I have looked at WP:NOT and various list-policy pages, but could not see anything that addressed 'lists of products'.)

What is the best reason to give for removing the list? (or should it be allowed to remain?)

EdJogg (talk) 11:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

In general, I look at WP:NOT for this class of policies just as you did. In specifically, look at the WP:NOTDIRECTORY section. I think your list falls under "not a directory," with some taint of "not a sales catalog." -Arch dude (talk) 13:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

Hello! I added some content to infobox on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CITY_College,_Affiliated_Institution_of_the_University_of_Sheffield&action=edit, but it isn't shown when you got to article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITY_College,_Affiliated_Institution_of_the_University_of_Sheffield (for example: email, phone etc. ). Can you please help me and tell me what is the problem? Many thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Floropoulou (talk • contribs) 11:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Two things: A) Infoboxes only print information they are coded for. Adding random info to an infobox will have no effect. The un-coded-for fields will just be ignored. B) Wikipedia does not normally publish contact information (such a phone numbers, email addresses) for corporations or for persons. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 12:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

When you click "edit this page", the bottom of the window has a list of transcluded pages. Click on Template:Infobox University in that list to see the documentation for the parameters (not all templates have documentation). PrimeHunter (talk) 13:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Standard way to address links to wrong page with same name

A couple of times now I have seen a page that includes a link via some name to another page with that name, but the target is a completely different entity with the same name. A couple of examples might make this clearer:

• According to the article about Meshech Weare, he married Elizabeth Shaw, but the target page is a company, not a person. (There are two other pages with the same error.)
• An earlier version of the article on Boyup Brook had a link to the wrong William Forrest.

Is there "standard" way to fix this, eg to rename the existing page and/or create a new one. Or (since I don't always have the time to fix it properly myself) flag it to be fixed? Eg, something like a ND tag? Mitch Ames (talk) 11:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• Instead of renaming the article, which is likely to cause more faulty links than it solves, you can do two things. I recommend trying to find the correct article. If you can't find it, change the link in the article to point to a reasonable disambiguated title. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Changing a redirect

I'm trying to wikify Multicultural Education. Per MoS the title should be Multicultural education - the subject is the concept in general, not a book title, film, etc. But Mult ed already redirects to Mult Ed. How do I make Mult Ed redirect to Mult ed? Thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I had fun with a similar situation on Fairway Market recently. I believe you need to get an admin to delete Mult ed, the redirect, so you can move Mult Ed there (preserving its page history); Mult Ed will then become a redirect. Add {{db-move|Multicultural Education}} to Mult ed and give a rationale on the talk page. Gonzonoir (talk) 12:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed - and  Done [3] for you. Pedro :  Chat  12:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

And there's no need to delete the redirect. It is possible someone will also miscapitalize this as you have, so having the redirect is a good idea. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 12:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

HOW TO SEARCH IN WIKIPEDIA

HI I CAN'T UNDERSTAND HOW TO SEARCH TOPIC IN WIKIPEDIA. PLEASE HELP ME —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.141.157.98 (talk) 12:05, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Turn caps lock off
2. Look on the left of the screen for a box with the text "search" above it
3. Type your topic into that box
4. Press the "Search" button.

Hope that helps! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 12:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

PLEASE STOP SENDING ME JUNK e-MAIL

Unresolved

Please can someone stop spamming my e-Mail's inbox with spam/junk from Wikimedia Commons.

I received a large volume of e-Mails from Wikimedia Commons Adminstrator and Wikimedia Commons Help Desk.

This occoured today between 0445 and 1230.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME JUNK e-MAILS FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS - I do not want my inbox full of Wikimedia Commons garbage.

--Peter Skuce (talk) 13:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This is the help desk for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The one on Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, is down the hall, to your right. Xenon54 (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are having difficulty with unwanted email from Wikimedia Commons, it's possibly because you have accidentally enabled this contact during your use of that site. Here is a direct link to their "Contact us" page. Karenjc 13:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you referring to the messages on your talk page? If so, please note that this is not email, but a talk page that is to be used for communications regarding your Wikipedia edits etc. Sometimes this is necessary, but if you want a particular user to stop contacting you all the time without any real reason, I suggest you tell them about it and ask them not to. Chamal ^talk 14:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

the problem occurred onhte Wikimedia Commons servers. The auto-notifier got stuck in the job queue, and when a system administrator unstuck it, it sent all of the e-mail from about the last month. The backlog has now been cleared, and the guys over there are properly embarassed. There was one poor botmaster who got thousands of e-mails. Oops. -Arch dude (talk) 19:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Selecting a random article

I'm doing a project investigating the biological accuracy of Wikipedia. I understand there is a random article link, but I specifically need to be able to select random articles from within the area of biology. Is there anyway I can do this? Thanks 195.194.178.188 (talk) 13:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You can't select what articles can be displayed using the 'random article' link. However, since these articles are within the scope of WikiProject Biology, you can find all the articles you need in Category:Biology and in the subcategories listed there. There are quite a lot of articles, though. Chamal ^talk 14:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AnomieBOT/RandomPage might be what you're after, but now I realise not. I would get a list of all the members of a category (use catscan), put one per line, generate a random line number and use that page. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

See WP:EIW#Random. --Teratornis (talk) 04:35, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

technical question

Is it possible for me to put a message at the bottom of my talk page that will stay there and make it difficult for editors to edit below that message? I'm not trying to restrict editing on my talk page, just to keep the message always at the bottom. jimfbleak (talk) 15:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I know that ukexpat has something that floats at the bottom of his user/talk pages. Are you looking for something like that, or a message that's forced to the bottom? TNXMan 17:02, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes, you mean the navbar that User:Gnorthup wrote. That really doesn't do what jimfbleak wants. The sort-of-standard message bar like mine at User:Ukexpat/messagebar at least gives users a shot at getting it right by simplifying the addition of a new message at the bottom of the page. – ukexpat (talk) 19:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You can create an editnotice at User talk:Jimfbleak/editnotice that will show at the top when someone edits the page; see Wikipedia:Editnotice. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

That should be User talk:Jimfbleak/Editnotice - the leading E must be capitalized for it to work. – ukexpat (talk) 20:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I've already got a push-to-edit box at the top of my talk page, I'm just trying to make it even harder to get it wrong jimfbleak (talk) 06:51, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

deleting

I have aproblem,I cannot get the button off my computer,which is on about your sight.Can you help me to find out how to get these buttons off of my home page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.193.255.113 (talk) 16:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know which button you are referring to. If it's about a Wikipedia page then please give a link to the page. This help desk is only for questions about Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• If you accidentally set Wikipedia as your home page, simply setting another one will get rid of it. If you installed a toolbar which you don't like after all, you should go to the Control panel (in Windows) and uninstall the relevant software. Unless you get more specific, I have no idea which actions to follow. 0 Mgm|^(talk) 18:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

External Links

Resolved

Can someone point me to an article about Wikipedia's policy on External Links? I'm interested in what qualifies an external Web site to be listed in the External Links. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You can see it here. Best, TNXMan 17:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Shlom bayit

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 20:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I noticed that one or two people keep changing the name of this article from Shalom bayit to Shlom bayit, which is not a commonplace spelling, so I decided to open the matter to a consensus discussion on the talk page. As I have never done something like this before, I was wondering how many days to leave the discussion open, and how to determine a consensus and make the final decision. Thank you, Yoninah (talk) 17:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Yoninah. You have listed the article at requested moves, which is loosely a five day process. You do not take any action and thus do not need to worry about closing or determining consensus. Instead a neutral third party will review the discussion and make a determination. as stated in the introduction to the process page "Requests are generally processed after five days, although backlogs of a few days develop occasionally. If there is a clear consensus after this time, the request will be closed and acted upon. If not, the administrator may choose to re-list the request to allow time for consensus to develop, or close it as "no consensus"."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Great. Thanks! Yoninah (talk) 20:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Can someone come and help with Herman J. Mankiewicz, another editor has been adding incorrect information to the article. Now they are removing all the fact tags and saying they are coming for one reference book that can't be seen online. I suspect that the editor is just adding the ref link cosmetically. He already readded that Herman J. Mankiewicz's parents emigrated from Poland three times, despite my three references that say that the father was born in Berlin and emigrated from Hamburg. Another set of eyes would be welcome to help double check the facts, since there was already that one error in the article. Any volunteers? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This source backs up the German immigration bit, and may otherwise be helpful. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 19:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

red letter entries

Please explain why some information contained within an entry is shown in RED lettering. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.15.184.23 (talk) 18:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Red link. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

They are links to articles that don't exist yet. They are useful for editors which enable them to click on them to create the article. ZooFari 20:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

#ifexist

Can this parser function be used to determine whether an article by a certain name exists in a foreign-language wikipedia? It doesn't seem like it, but I just wanted to make sure... Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

No - ParserFunctions only work on a single wiki, unfortunately. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 21:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Image scrollbox

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 22:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

How do I make a scrollbox for a panorama image? Thanks, Grsz¹¹ 22:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Check out {{Panorama simple}}. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much! Grsz¹¹ 22:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

summaries of novels

where do i find an article about summaries of novels?Anonymous122893 (talk) 23:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If you mean a page about writing summaries in Wikipedia articles then see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)#Plot summaries and the links there. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:01, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

If you just mean a normal Wikipedia article covering the topic, there's some info at Summary, but not much. Feel free to expand it! -Elmer Clark (talk) 06:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)