Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 January 29

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January 29

Breaking news about fusion power

Wow, has anyone seen this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8485669.stm ? It seems fusion power will become a reality. I added a line to the article of it, but I don't know how to contribute to it being displayed on the news of the main page (of course, if you think it is notable enough... but I still don't know how and where to add it at least as a suggestion) --131.188.3.20 (talk) 00:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for the in the news section of the main page are made at WP:ITN/C. Algebraist 00:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Fusion power has been a reality since 1952 in thermonuclear weapons. Achieving ignition in a laser test facility is an important step, but many engineering hurdles remain, and a commercially viable nuclear fusion power plant is almost certainly decades away. By the time fusion power begins feeding the grid, it may have taken 100 years to develop, given that work started in the 1950s. Also note that while the fuel for a fusion reactor is plentiful and cheap, the cost of delivered power might not be. Wind and sunshine are even cheaper fuels (they cost nothing), but the equipment needed to convert them into useful work is not cheap. Thus a wind farm has zero fuel cost but the resulting electricity still costs a bit more than electricity from coal (if we ignore the external costs of burning coal). A nuclear fusion reactor has the potential to be very expensive because it will require lots of high-tech equipment, which will become damaged by neutron flux, thus requiring frequent replacement. The energy density of plasma may be low, forcing the reactor to be very large (and thus expensive) to produce commercially viable amounts of power. If you want to call attention to a current event, the first step is to see where it is already getting attention on Wikipedia. Read the Fusion power article and the articles linked from the {{Fusion power}}, {{Fusion methods}}, and {{Fusion experiments}} templates. --Teratornis (talk) 22:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Italicizing non Roman characters

I'm working on an infobox that provides an option to display the name of the mountain in the local language. For example if the mountain is Mount Fuji then 富士山 would be displayed on as a sub header (see test cases). So would it be good practice to display 富士山 as 富士山 {bold) or 富士山 (italic) or 富士山 (bold and italic). The question is what do those who read non Roman alphabets, including Arabic, find readable. –droll [chat] 02:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

For example Persian فارسی, پارسی, دری {normal} or فارسی, پارسی, دری {italic) or فارسی, پارسی, دری {bold) or فارسی, پارسی, دری {bold and italic). All opinions are welcome. –droll [chat] 05:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you keep it just plain text. "Text in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek or Cyrillic) should not be italicized at all—even where this is technically feasible; the difference of script suffices to distinguish it on the page." This is from the guidelines at Wikipedia:Italics#Foreign_terms. Also, "It is technically possible to bold Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, but this should be avoided." Anyway that's my interpretation based on the Manual of Style. Copana2002 (talk) 05:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Although your question concerns any of a great number of scripts, your example is of Japanese script. For Japanese script, the suggestion Copana2002 quotes not to use "italic" (which would mean oblique) or bold is very valid. Japanese script rendered bold and/or oblique is hard to read and one of the sadder results of word processing technology. Japanese typography has other, entirely different methods to do the kinds of thing that italics and bold are used for in English, but as they're likely to be specific to Japanese this isn't the place to describe them. -- Hoary (talk) 11:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

chaya someswara swamy temple pictures

I would like to add photo graphs of the said temple to wikipedia. But not able to do so. Please help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Psv.alekhya (talk • contribs) 08:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you read Wikipedia:Picture tutorial? -- œ^™ 08:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

printing pages with equations in them

Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodetic_system does not print correctly. Particularly, some of the equations are misprinted or disappear altogether. I imagine it might not be a wiki problem, but I doubt I am the only one to have this problem. Any ideas? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.59.43.240 (talk) 10:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking about the 'printable version' linked in the sidebar? Have you tried the 'export to PDF' link instead? That gives me a perfectly good PDF which I assume would print alright if I tried. Olaf Davis (talk) 11:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

arranging the legitimate inclusion of artwork by a living artist

resolved I have tagged the image in question for deletion as a replaceable non-free image and provided an explanation for the uploader on their talk page. --Nick—^Contact/_Contribs 17:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

.... "resolved" template removed; with apologies for tampering with another writer's message, but please see the explanation below. -- Hoary (talk) 03:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyright or -left is not my strongest point. Is the advice I have given here good? Even if it is, can it be improved?

Perhaps somebody who's knowledgable can write directly there, as well as here. -- Hoary (talk) 11:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

No, not resolved at all.

Please note the title: not "photo of" but "artwork by".

Nick(W557) seems to have conflated two matters (and perhaps Nicky3000 has done so too). Nicky3000 seems to have had an optimistic view of "fair use", which has got her (him?) into trouble over the reproduction of a [conventionally] copyright photo of a living person, one who happens to be an artist. Nick has ably and I think correctly addressed this. (It's not something that I'd attempted to address. I thought I should, but my energy wasn't up to it.) Additionally, Nicky3000 asked about the possibility of including images of artworks (themselves of course copyright) within the same article. That was the question that I addressed. Unless I'm very mistaken, anything beyond a simple (and mistaken) "No you can't" is a bit complex. I tried to go beyond this but perhaps got it wrong. Nick (or somebody else who's knowledgable about copyright), please take a second look at my answer on this different matter. -- Hoary (talk) 01:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Convert Wikitables to Excel

I see there are several ways to convert from Excel to wikitables. (Wikipedia:TOOL#Importing (converting) content to Wikipedia (MediaWiki) format). Is there an easy way to go the other direction, converting an existing wikitable into Excel? This would be useful when trying to add a significant amount of new data to a large existing wikitable. (I could not find this question asked in the FAQ's or archives.) Thanks. --BaronLarf 12:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Copy the table directly to excel :). It doesn't include all the features but it seems to work. Kayau Odyssey HUCK FINN to the lighthouse BACK FROM EXAMS 14:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Just keep in mind that I have seen previous concerns regarding this not working properly in Firefox. If you are using Firefox and have trouble copying tables into Excel, try Internet Explorer for that purpose. --Nick—^Contact/_Contribs 17:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Patrickneil

Resolved

 – Under discussion at WP:ANI. – ukexpat (talk) 15:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

As you can see here [1] User patrickneil is showing me to the community as a racist person. I am frustrated by this big fault and lie. I need help. I want an excuse. Racism is a big big problem and noone can say i am racist. Thank you. MULAZIMOGLU (talk) 12:51, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

This is already being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Alanya_help. It's generally best to keep discussions in one place so nobody misses any part of the conversation.--BelovedFreak 13:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Why can't non-admins view deleted edits

I'm just curious to know... Not that it's anything important, but why is the viewing of deleted edits limited to admins? I'll be happy if someone can put it briefly here and link to the project page and/or discussion that's related. Yours curiously, Kayau Odyssey HUCK FINN to the lighthouse BACK FROM EXAMS 14:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages says "Only administrators can view the content of deleted pages. This is considered necessary because deleted pages may contain copyright violations, personal information, libel, and so forth, and making such material publicly available could be problematic." Bencherlite^Talk 14:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The question shouldn't be "why can't non-admins view deleted edits" it should be "why can even admins view them". The answer is so they can be reviewed for restoration. The reason they can't normally be viewed is because they were deleted for a reason, specifically so they wouldn't be seen. This leads to the question why was the edit deleted, but that depends on which deleted edit is being referred to. RJFJR (talk) 15:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

To take a Zen perspective, if everyone could see them, in what sense would they be "deleted"? Gonzonoir (talk) 16:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I saw a poster in a computer room that said:

• If you can see it, and it's there, it's real.
• If you can see it, and it's not there, it's virtual.
• If you can't see it, and it's there, it's transparent.
• If you can't see it, and it's not there, it's deleted.

However, Wikipedia's "deleted" articles are "there" in the database, so it would be more technically correct by the above definitions to call them "transparent" articles. I guess. And note to the original poster, Deletionpedia lets the world see some of Wikipedia's deleted articles, those which Wikipedia deleted only for being unsuitable for Wikipedia, not for being unsuitable generally. --Teratornis (talk) 21:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there some kind of discussion whatsoever that makes the decision to restrict the viewing of deleted edits to admins? Kayau Odyssey HUCK FINN to the lighthouse BACK FROM EXAMS 01:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

If there is, you might find it in one of the links under WP:EIW#Delete. If you are trying to see a particular deleted article, and you know the title, see Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. --Teratornis (talk) 03:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, Wikipedia does not restrict the viewing of deleted articles to anyone. Wikipedia merely obscures the fact that many deleted articles remain accessible on sites such as Deletionpedia and archive.org. This can be annoying when you are looking for an article that you know you saw on Wikipedia before, only to discover that you have to waste a bit of time to work around Wikipedia's token attempt to stop you from seeing the article. A discussion that might be worth having would be about displaying links to the deleted article's alternate location(s) when someone searches for it on Wikipedia. In some cases, someone might have mentioned transwiki'ing an article in its deletion discussion, but a huge weakness of Wikipedia's deletion procedure is that not all the interested users will have been notified before the discussion closed. Thus the transwiki'ing may occur later, but we aren't allowed to update the archived deletion discussion with a link to the article's new home. That's an ergonomic defect we could discuss fixing. (And I'm still trying to figure out where deletion fits into Jimbo's "sum of all human knowledge" idea. Does Jimbo imagine a world without deletionists?) --Teratornis (talk) 06:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

This isn't an appropriate page for what has turned into a debate, right? Dougweller (talk) 06:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There are links to some discussions at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Deleted pages should be visible. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Q: How does one re-set an article as a "primary page"?

I searched the archive but could find no answer to my Q.

In searching for an article on the world famous Spanish playwright Lorca (30 000 hits a month) I am directly taken to a page about the tiny Spanish town of Lorca (2000 mistaken hits a month). How can I re-set the Federico García Lorca page to be the primary page that appears on searching for "Lorca" and set the others as "disambiguation" pages?

Thanks Spanglej (talk) 16:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's not the way page naming/titles work. An article title is usually the common name for the subject, so Lorca is the article about the Spanish city and its hatnote directs you to Lorca (disambiguation) for other uses of the term, including the playwright. To change the Lorca page into a redirect to the person, you would have to make a very strong case that just "Lorca" is the name by which he is most commonly known. – ukexpat (talk) 16:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

rowspan usage in a table

Resolved

At User:TonyTheTiger/Antonio Vernon, I am unable to properly format rowspan in a hidden table on the left side. Can I get some assistance.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I have reformatted so that columnspan is the problem. I still need help.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 07:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It's called colspan. Is [2] what you want? If not then please say which table you want changed and how you want it to be formatted. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:57, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Thanks.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

changing a section header without affecting prior linking from other pages

When I change a header, how can I protect prior (existing) links to that section (from other pages)? E.g., if the section's old name was "Able and Baker" and I change it to "Able", then existing links to Code Names#Able and Baker would no longer go to that section (although they would still go to that page). I looked at Help:Sections. Thank you. Eagle4000 (talk) 19:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Would the {{Anchor}} template help? – ukexpat (talk) 19:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

User Page & User Sandbox appears in Google external search

I know that there has been an extended debate on policy about this topic which I do not wish to enter here. I'm simply trying to confirm what should happen on the live Wikipedia today. As I understand it from a recent answer in this forum Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 January 11#Personal Sandboxes and Making My Page Less Visible User space (and this includes the user's sandbox) is by default not searched by Google. However, I was surprised to see that both my User page and my Sandbox appear in a simple Google search. I have not used any tag to deliberately change default behaviour so why should this be? Inspeximus (talk) 19:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Why it is happening I don't know, but you can prevent it manually by adding the __NOINDEX__ magic word to each page (double underscore each side). It may take a few days before the Google index catches up. – ukexpat (talk) 19:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll make the manual changes and wait for the index entries to disappear. Meanwhile a lot of other contributors are presumably under the impression like me that their pages in user space are by default un-indexed by search engines. Would it be appropriate for me to publicise the present apparent state of default behaviour - and if so how would I do this? Inspeximus (talk) 20:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Odd in the extreme - my user page is showing up too. Maybe the technical section of the Village Pump is the place to pursue this further. The magic word is also in the {{NOINDEX}} template and it is on my user page. Maybe Google's bots are ignoring it for some reason. – ukexpat (talk) 20:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I have raised it at WP:VPT. – ukexpat (talk) 22:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you kindly sir. Perhaps I'll not bother to insert those tags just yet after all . Inspeximus (talk) 22:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

As said at VPT, Wikipedia does not exclude user pages from Google indexing. Use {{NOINDEX}} if you want it to be excluded. You misunderstood Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 January 11#Personal Sandboxes and Making My Page Less Visible. I wrote about Wikipedia's own internal search: "By default userspace is not searched." This does not apply to external search engines. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all the advice; I had been basing my assumptions on the table in the article Wikipedia:Search engine indexing#Proposal which I read as stating that the current default status of User Pages is NoIndexed - presumably this table is wrong or I've read it incorrectly. I followed the pointer on VPT to the more recent discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User page indexing but I find the outcome of this debate, which extended to 8 differing proposals, difficult to decipher. The outcome of the discussion on these proposals in summarised on the talk page where it indicates that all bar one failed, such that the status quo be maintained, although it is not very clear to me what this was at the time. Anyway, the one exception was: Proposal 6 to "Include a mandatory and obvious warning on all user and user_talk pages and subpages, such as a different background or a textual warning that informs the reader they are not looking at an encyclopedia article". Looking at my own User Sandbox it seems to me that no such different background or warnings appear, so presumably this idea was later rejected or perhaps is still in the pipeline?

Currently then viewers of Wikipedia are not made aware of differences between the status of "experiments" on User Sandbox pages which they may find listed on Google search results pages, as opposed to the main articles. At the same time, the very extensive article at Wikipedia:User page makes no mention of indexing of user pages by external search engines one way or the other. So it seems to me difficult for newbie contributors to Wikipedia to know that they need to make their own arrangements to secure their User pages in general and Sandbox pages in particular from external indexing. However, given that I have no desire to re-open the wider debate, I shall now endeavour to employ the advice on VPT in order to have them excluded from Google and in the meantime implement my own warnings about the status of my Sandbox pages. Inspeximus (talk) 12:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)