Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 May 24

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May 24

Logging in to wikipedia

When I log into wikipedia/wikimedia commons it logs me into all of the other wikimedia wikis. I do not wish for that to happen, as I have Sushiflinger on wikipedia and Goldblattster on all the other wikis. Is it possible to be logged in as different accounts on different wikis? --Sushiflinger (Goldblattster) (talk!) 00:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Would this be of any assistance by any chance? It's all I've been able to find so far. — Ched :  ?  01:09, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

That is sort of the way it works. Accounts are global across all the wikis (assuming no conflicting usernames). Prodego ^talk 05:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

capitol of california

why was sacramento chosen as california's state capitol?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.229.93.86 (talk) 06:40, 24 May 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. hmwithτ 07:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Legislators always like to be as near as possible to the loot. Deor (talk) 18:48, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Flag of the Kingdom of France (1814-1830).svg

Why am I unable to see File:Flag of the Kingdom of France (1814-1830).svg? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:11, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You can: it's white, I believe, which was apparently used at that time in certain situations. Normally had some fleur-de-lis semé on it though. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 07:47, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I assumed that someone had uploaded a bad version over over the image, but when I go to its description page on Commons, I see nothing but white when I view any of the three versions of the image, including the original one. Perhaps that's just the flag. hmwithτ 07:49, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

FOTW think that File:Pavillon_royal_de_France.svg is a better version for the national flag (plain white appears to have been a naval ensign), but at least it confirms the original is just white. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 07:55, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not much of a flag, is it, just plain white? Anyone hanging a sheet out to dry anywhere across Europe could have been thought to have been flying the French flag. And it must have been hopeless in battles: everyone would have thought they were surrendering the moment they showed up! AndyJones (talk) 09:51, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Barbara Hillary (North Pole)

I originally asked this at the talk page of WP:RM but there haven't been any responses in the six days that it has been there. So, I'm bringing it here...

I came across the article Barbara Hillary (North Pole) and feel that there should be a better disambiguator for the article. The one it has now seems strange. I'd take this up on the talk page but the article is an orphan and it likely doesn't get too much attention. So, I'm bringing my question here... What would best suit the article? Should it be "Barbara Hillary (explorer)"? "Barbara Hillary (businesswoman)"? Any ideas? Dismas|^(talk) 08:25, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

It should definitely be changed. Explorer sounds like a good option. hmwithτ 09:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome to perform noncontroversial moves yourself, of which I would consider this. hmwithτ 09:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

She sounds more like an adventurer than an explorer to me. I think it takes more than travelling to a rarely visited place to be an explorer, and for explorers it seems irrelevant whether they were the first person with that race-nationality-gender combination to travel there. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

questions

how or where do i find the answer to a question asked yesterday? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.113.136.61 (talk) 18:53, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Scroll up. It should still be on this page. Xenon54 (talk) 18:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

This assumes the question was asked on this page. Wikipedia has a lot of pages where questions can be asked. What was the question about? Your post here is the only Wikipedia edit by that IP address. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:04, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Request deletion of 'lack of references' box

I significantly updated the Wikipedia entry for "Tracy Stafford," a biographical page for a former member of the Florida House of Representatives. A large text box was placed above the page stating that I did not have enough references. As a result, I've added 17 references, most of them to newspaper articles in the Miami Herald. However, I don't know how to request that the 'not enough references' box now be deleted. Please help. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ejwii (talk • contribs) 19:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You can simply take it off yourself :D weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:29, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone, including you can delete that tag. Just remove the {{BLP sources}} from the top of the article and it'll be gone. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 19:30, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I Want To Include An Image Of Myself In The Stye Page.

Resolved

How can I provide an image of a right eye infection that I have? —Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiPsycho (talk • contribs) 20:27, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

See Help:Images and other uploaded files and Commons:Commons:Patient images. If you upload the image of yourself to Commons, you can categorize it into Commons:Category:Eye diseases. --Teratornis (talk) 01:41, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Referencing question

I have given this question a header to diferenciate it from the one above. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:04, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I have inserted a couple of paragraphs and provided a reference. When I saved the page, I got an error message saying I need to provide a tag. I cannot find anything about tags in the instructions for referencing. Can you tell me what to do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drfiddler1 (talk • contribs) 21:01, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to do three things. First, you need to move all the text you added to a new line above the "see also" header. Then, place the reference at the end of the text. Finally, create a new "References" header and place {{reflist}} underneath this header. Xenon54 (talk) 21:06, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Diff

Pretty basic question, but when im doing a summary in a talk page and i want to rferencea 'diff' how would i do this? ( or a past version of an article) Thanks Ottawa4ever (talk) 23:19, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at Help:Diff. – ukexpat (talk) 00:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The trick is to think of a link to a diff, or a linki to a prior version of a page, as simply being an external link . The format for an external link is either:

1. [url], which displays as something like [1], or
2. [url text], which displays as "text" (without the quotation marks, of course)

So, to create an external link, the challenge is to obtain the url. You get that by going to the prior version of the page (click the time/date link) or the page that shows the edit/diff (click the "prev" link). Then the url is in your browser window, ready to be copied.

Finally, as a general rule, format #2 is preferred to #1, as long as you provide a good description. For example, you might say "Editor A [url_of_the_diff removed the entire section], then, when that was reverted, the editor [url_of_the_diff deleted the citations], and now he/she [url_of_the_diff is trying to change the text so that it doesn't match the sources cited]." -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:04, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Great, thanks for your help :) Ottawa4ever (talk) 14:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC)