Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 January 5

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

January 5

How to add a search term to an already existing article?

Resolved

 – Corruptcopper (talk) 19:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

Is there a way to add a search term to an already existing article?

Eg: User searches for "abc", and there are no search results. The full name is "xyz: abc", but the short/common name "abc". I want to set up a redirect to "xyz:abc".

--Agamemnus (talk) 02:39, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

See WP:Redirect. Algebraist 02:41, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Bahia Honda MO or MOE giant hammerhead shark Florida Keys

New to wiki Not sure how to categorize ask for stories etc. sorry if I am in the wrong place. please redirect. Thanks for your help - I am not very good with the comuter since my seizure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moebh (talk • contribs) 03:11, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

It's somewhat difficult to understand what you are trying to find. Wikipedia has articles on various words you used in your question heading: Bahia Honda Key, Hammerhead shark, Florida Keys, and even Bahia and Honda although I doubt you are looking for those last two. We have disambiguation pages for MO and MOE but I'm not sure what you are getting at there. If you are looking for news reports, try Google Search, Wikinews, or ask on the Reference desk. You can try googling for your question heading:

• Bahia Honda MO or MOE giant hammerhead shark Florida Keys

--Teratornis (talk) 05:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, there is, or was, in the Bahia Honda area a large hammerhead that folks nicknamed Moe (see this page, for instance, about halfway down). It doesn't seem to me to be notable enough for an article, but Moebh could try creating one if s/he can supply enough reliable sources to support notability. Alternatively, s/he might submit the article idea to WP:RA and see if anyone else can put together an acceptable article. Deor (talk) 14:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Pages fading

Do the pages of Wikipedia ever fade away? I was looking at a page today when for a brief moment(2 seconds) the words started to blend in with the white background. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wcmainz (talk • contribs) 04:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you running Windows Vista? I've seen all sorts of weird behavior on my laptop computer that runs Vista. Almost enough to make me give up and install Linux. But not quite. --Teratornis (talk) 05:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

printing of an article on E.C.T.

When printing this article it dose not print out some of the content. it stops at (roughly estimating a ___) under Administration and then starts up again at (physicians in its prescriptions___). this is just one example,Im I doing something wrong? I checked my printer and everything was working correctly. please help me resolve this issue. thank you <e-mail address deleted> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.164.140.191 (talk) 04:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you trying to print the printable version, accessed by clicking the appropriate link on the left hand side of the article window? – ukexpat (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Barack Obama image on United States presidential election, 2008

I'm getting a weird rendering, for which I have no explanation: On United States presidential election, 2008, in contrast to all other pages on which the exact same version of the portrait image (File:Poster-sized portrait of Barack Obama.jpg) is being transcluded, the image appears jolted, i.e. the aspect ratio is not the same as the source image (height is reduced disproportionately).

I've confirmed this by taking and comparing screenshots and I get the same result using both FF3 and IE6 on Windows XP. I'm at a loss what the problem might be. AFAIK, this should be technically impossible to achieve in MediaWiki, and nothing in the markup of Template:Infobox Election looks in slightest suspicious. Moreover, in the same article and infobox, John McCain's image is being rendered perfectly normal with truthful aspect ratio. 78.34.140.1 (talk) 04:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, purging the cache resolved the problem. 78.34.140.1 (talk) 05:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Editing a title page

Hi everyone, how can I edit the title of a page? For example, the page named "Even in My Dreams" has been written with a lower case "m" in "my" instead of "My". How can I do it? Thank you very much. LisaSmithNY (talk) 06:17, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

In order to change the title of a page, the page must be moved. New users are not allowed to move pages due to vandalism. I will make the change for you. My mistake, I was under the impression that your account was fairly new. You should have the move tab up at the top of the Even in my Dreams article. Dismas|^(talk) 06:31, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and moved it, since I wanted to do a bit of cleanup to it. Deor (talk) 14:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Dhimmi

Could someone who is more familiar with the correct formatting of a lead section please look at the Dhimmi article? It starts out with "A dhimmi (" but that parenthesis is never closed and I'm not at all sure where it should be closed. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 11:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a crack at fixing it (actually, I think it was a different, internal parenthesis that wasn't closed). There was a missing closing quotation mark as well. Deor (talk) 13:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Dismas|^(talk) 01:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Category Talk

Which speedy deletion template should I use on a category talk page(eg. Category_talk:Palestinian_Eastern_Orthodox_Christians with only a few words?Jamie Shaw (talk) 11:19, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Why is it necessary to delete that? It seems to me that someone has stated that they don't believe that someone should be listed within that cat. They could have worded it more clearly, I'll grant you that, but it seems relevant to the content of the page. Dismas|^(talk) 11:29, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

editing

Dear friend--after I've logged in to edit I'm sent to a page of news and the like, and when I navigate back to the page needing editing I've been logged out. How do I get from the article with an error, to the log-in, and back to the error? Thanks for your help! Clay2 (talk) 13:35, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• Did you hit the "remember me" button when you logged in? - Mgm|^(talk) 13:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

If you navigate back with your browser's "Back" button, the browser may reload its locally cached version of the old page, which will show you as logged out when you really aren't logged out on the server. To see if this is the case, refresh the old page in your browser (on some browsers, you can do that by pressing Ctrl-R). --Teratornis (talk) 20:31, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

editing templates

For a template I created I copied and edited an existing design. Now I have attempted to add an extra year to the template and although it is in the template it will not show up on any of the templates which are embedded on the pages. Also the editing and viewing links link to the original template. How do I solve these issues the template is Template:UK Rock Chart and it is on page UK Rock Chart. --Hammard (talk) 14:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The year 2009 is showing up for me in the transclusion on UK Rock Chart, and it links to the appropriate page. Cache problem on your end, perhaps? Or perhaps the change just had not completely propagated when you were looking at the page. Deor (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Template gone wonky?

Hi. For some reason the (not particularly widely used template) {{Subscription}} is no longer doing its thing, which is to say "subscription required". It says, "Unrecognised language code": (subscription required). Unless it says something different for you, in which case the problem is clearly on my end. :) Can somebody fix this or direct me to a similar template that works? I figure there must be one, or there'd be more transclusion than there is to that one. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:19, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that it works by calling a totally inappropriate template, which has now been rewritten such that the hack no longer works. I've changed it to display as it used to without the silly transclusion. Algebraist 15:18, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:20, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Making a photo visible in an article but unavailable for copying

Resolved

I'm preparing a biographical article and would like to include a photo in it. However, the people who provided me the photo have asked if there is any way we could display the image while preventing the general public from freely downloading the image and using it for unrelated purposes. For example, some people might use the photo but forget to include the credit to the photographer under the image. We realize of course that Wikipedia and HTML in general are open-source and that content is generally available to all users. But we have seen simple javascripts and other apps that can make content visible to viewers without actually embedding the material in the HTML. Are there any Wikipedia-compatible techniques for presenting an image in a Wikipedia article, while limiting the options for free downloading of the image? Thank you for your advice! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Propagator (talk • contribs) 15:58, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

That goes against Wikipedia's copyright policies. Most images on Wikipedia are released under a free license (GFDL/creative commons/Public domain) and everyone is allowed to modify and distribute. Fair use images are allowed if they satisfy the criteria, but anyone can still download it. Also what those people are asking is technically not possible on any wiki as far as I can tell (Even if it is, its use will definitely be frowned upon by other editors). If they wish to provide images for Wikipedia, they must be provided under a free license through the OTRS system. See also Wikipedia:Image use policy--Unpopular Opinion (talk) 16:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this. You may be able to add an external link to a photograph on another website. Kittybrewster ☎ 16:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Wikipedia accepts free licenses that require attribution of the photographer. But even on Wikipedia the attribution goes not under the image in the article but rather on a separate image description page.—teb728 t c 21:02, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• We allow pictures that require someone to give credit to the original source, but not allowing someone to copy an image at all because they could forget is against the principle of Wikipedia. Sorry. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:11, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

You should be aware that what you are asking is not possible on any website, wiki or no. If a user can view an image, they can download it. The techniques you refer to can make this more annoying, but cannot make it impossible. Algebraist 01:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all this help! I'm new to Wikipedia and totally impressed with the quick and thoughtful responses. When I shared your advice with the owners of the photo, they agreed to let us post the image without protection. Propagator (talk) 03:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Deleted article still not on Deletionpedia

I created an article about Patrick Dunnevant, an American Christian apologist who makes his opinions known through blogging and online videos, and it was deleted eight days ago. However, it has still not been uploaded onto Deletionpedia, and I'm not sure why. I certainly didn't say anything malicious, and I don't think I wrote anything against copyright - all I did was put in one quote from a social networking site. Could you please tell me why it hasn't been added yet? Jprulestheworld (talk) 19:28, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Deletionpedia is not a related project, you will have to ask on their site. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:35, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

This is Deletionpedia's page explaining why a deleted page may not be on their site. – ukexpat (talk) 20:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Everything Channel Posting Deleted

I posted an overview of Everything Channel that was deleted by your staff. It is a media company in the technology. And has a similar business model to the companies listed at the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrester_Research, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usa_today, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techweb and their information is still posted. Can you help me get this information reposted, please?Delllatitude (talk) 20:36, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

It was deleted as blatant advertising, please see WP:Spam. Also take a look at WP:YFA and WP:CORP. – ukexpat (talk) 20:52, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

And see WP:BFAQ and WP:PEACOCK. On Wikipedia we do not have "staff" in the usual corporate sense. Instead Wikipedia has thousands of volunteer editors from around the world who coordinate their efforts by following a complex set of policies and guidelines. The more effort one puts into reading and learning the rules here, the more productively one is able to edit. Creating new articles from scratch that "stick" is one of the most demanding editing tasks on Wikipedia. Most users will need to accumulate perhaps 1000 edits to existing articles before they know enough to reliably create new articles that won't get deleted for running afoul of one or more of Wikipedia's arcane rules. In other words, Wikipedia can be pretty tough on new arrivals who assume they understand how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia is very different than anything most people have experienced before. It takes time and effort for most people to grasp. If you're serious about editing here, you might want to read the book Wikipedia - The Missing Manual, which pretty much explains what you'll need to know, and presents it in a logical order. All the same information is in our free online help, but it's hard for a newcomer to find a logical order to read the online help, which can overwhelm with its gigantic tangled ball of hypertext. --Teratornis (talk) 23:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)