Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 November 20

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November 20

The picture of Jimmy Wales

Hi there,

The personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is making me want to never visit Wikipedia again.. his almost smile and scary care bear stare gaze is burning into my very soul. Is this picture some sort of punishment for all the funny looks he supposedly received 10 years ago? Why punish us with a frightening impersonation of John Travolta? Why?

You can get rid of the banner you know... I did. Get rid of this image and I may consider donating. Until then... someone hunt Jimmy Wales down and slap him upside the head and scream "FIX YA FACE.. IT FRAKKIN CREEPY!" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.159.14 (talk) 02:59, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a question about how to use Wikipedia? This isn't the Ombudsman's department... --Jayron32 03:03, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

that ugly face

How can I permanently stop that ugly face asking for money from popping up above the page. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.109.116.152 (talk) 05:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

If you create an account you can tell the advertisement to go away in Special:Preferences. If you don't want to create an account, you might be able to block it with something like Adblock Plus (I don't know as I haven't tried that). --Teratornis (talk) 05:11, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

You don't even need to go into your preferences. There's an X to close the ad in the upper right corner of the image. That did it for me. Dismas|^(talk) 05:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

My daughter wants to become a doctor

Dear Sir,

My name is Kamel M. AL-Shubbar. I am from Saudi Arabia. My daughter has finished High school recently and applied for government scholarship.

She has received a scholarship from Saudi Government to study Medicine in Holland in Europe.

Lately , the Saudi Government has changed her scholarship from medicine from Medical doctor to Medicine Science specialist .

Her scholar ship was changed due to available seats in Europe. The Euorpian countries gave our Saudi Government only 200 seats, where Scholarship was granted for 5 000 student.

Therefore the Saudi Government is trying to send her to USA to study Medicine science, not a medical doctor . She wants become a Doctor.

My daughter dream is to become a medical doctor.

My Question :

Do you allow her to study medicine and she will be a doctor in future if she joins your university ?

Is Medical doctors are only for US citizens or any person not a US citizen will be able to study medicine and become a doctor.

Please, this is very urgent to determine her future to accept this scholarship from Saudi Government or if she is not going to be a doctor , she may cancel this scholar ship due to change of major to study science and become medical specialist to perform X-ray or other medical science which she does want.

She wants to be a DOCTOR.

Your reply to this e-mail is very important to help my daughter to become a doctor.

Kamel M. Al-Shubbar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.147.0.172 (talk) 06:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over three million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Test edits

how do you make an edit on a wikipedia page but have it so its temporary so you can only see it so you can put whatever you want(without geting a ban put on my ip) and still have it look like the real wikipedia page just to show your friends just to get a laugh out of it? never mind i just found the sandbox or whatever and i dont know how to delete the question —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.170.37.145 (talk) 08:10, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The Sandbox is provided for learning and testing. I expect the occasional joke edit wouldn't hurt too much, though that looks like a mis-use to me. Please note that even in the Sandbox you must not post anything that is copyrighted, offensive, or libelous. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Now that I've remembered to look at your talk page - please do not use the Sandbox for edits similar to those you've been making earlier today. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Pictures of Jimmy Wales

Can you please change the picture of Jimmy Wales that we now get served on every pages. Come on do something about that. Personal attacks redacted GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 10:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.16.168.107 (talk) 08:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to respond to your comments, but you can make the picture go away, at least temporarily, by clicking the X at the top right corner. If you create an account you can tell the advertisement to go away in Special:Preferences. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:02, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I've redacted part of the comment which appears to be a personal attack against Jimmy Wales. I'm sure he's used to it by now, but it's nevertheless inappropriate. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 10:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

DONATION TO WIKIPEDIA

HI I am from india. i am very very happy with wikipedia. i want to donate but in INDIAN RUPEE. As such there is no ready symbol of INDIAN RUPEE available alonwith doller, pound,..etc. In dia is huge populated & with better literecy rate. Most of the indian donors disappointed due to such treatment to INDIA. Myself and many indians will be very glad to donate some fund to wikipedia. Provided the name 'INDIA' and the symbol for currency should appear on your donation front page alongwith other countries. thanks. ........... ghate-mumbai —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.178.209.76 (talk) 08:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest in donating to the project. I'm sorry that Indian Rupees are not listed in the currencies accepted by PayPal. Information on other ways of giving is available at this link. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Editing

Hi I am a regular user of Wikipedia, and would like to edit a page. The only trouble is I do not know how to edit the content's bar. Please help, I am tearing my hair out! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bus 4000 (talk • contribs) 14:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by the "contents bar". To what are you referring? TNXMan 15:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) It sounds like you want to move the page. You cannot edit the table of contents, it changes automatically when you add more sections to the page. Xenon54 (talk) 15:05, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bus 4000 (talk • contribs) 15:24, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Chevy Cruze

Sable232 is out of control read the post about his talks with other users. Sable232 is blocking users because they do not meet his view points. He has also removed information which is true an accurate such as Chevy Cruz is the replacement for the Saturn ION. One can go to GM and find the replacement match for their Saturn counterpart and the car is the Cruz, Sable232 has removed this information. I have received a warning from him and if I edited anymore I will be blocked because of vandalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.123.72 (talk) 14:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, you're only going to dig further into your own Wiki-grave by accusing others by being "out of control" and making unfounded assertions. You wouldn't tell Britannica to "go to GM" to find information, and neither will you tell a Wikipedia editor to to the same. You are adding the information, so you must prove the information is valid by citing sources. Until you do so, Sable232 is correct in reverting you. Xenon54 (talk) 15:05, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not the only one accusing Sable232 "out of control" read the rest of the people who edited pages auto pages. Paper work one receives from GM states that the Chevy Cruz is the replacement for the ION. Sable232 never said that he/she removed it because it was not referenced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.123.72 (talk) 22:44, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

It may very well be true. But unless and until you provide a reliable source for the information you add, anybody is entitled to remove it. --ColinFine (talk) 00:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

can i copy and paste info out of wikiPedia and paste into my company website?

can i copy and paste info out of wikiPedia and paste into my company website? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.174.233.141 (talk) 16:16, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, as long as you properly attribute Wikipedia as the source of the content. See WP:Reusing Wikipedia content. TNXMan 16:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Hotmail

Is this message that i have attached really from HOTMAIL.COM and for real?

Thank-you, <blanked>

CONFIRM YOUR WINDOWS LIVE ACCOUNT SERVICES. VERIFY YOUR FREE HOTMAIL ACCOUNT NOW !!!

Dear Account Owner

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We send this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

• Full Name: ...............................
• Username: ...............................
• Password: ................................
• Date of Birth: ............................
• Country Or Territory: ................

Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Sincerely, The Windows Live Hotmail Team —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.211.61 (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

No and no. Please ask further computing questions at the Computing reference desk. Xenon54 (talk) 16:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Any mail that is really from somebody who provides you a service (bank, ISP, whatever) is going to do whatever they can to show you that they are real, by addressing you by name, giving (part of) your account number, etc. If it's not addressed to you personally, bin it. --ColinFine (talk) 00:47, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The poor standard of English in the message should be a huge clue that it may not come from an official source. Not all scam emails contain glaring errors of spelling, grammar or punctuation, but official emails from reputable organisations have generally been proofread. And asking for your password is a dead giveaway. Karenjc 18:04, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

References

Resolved

 – Ganellia has fixed the article John of Reading (talk) 18:36, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Francesca LeBrun Refs tag is in draft but doesn't show up in preview or saved page. Error warning says it is not there.

And several parts of article are missing in preview and saved page. Editor has never had this problem before. Ganellia (talk)

I see that you've reverted your edit. You had only made one slight error; one of your "<ref/>" tags was missing it's final bracket. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Instructional video?

Is there an instructional video or something of the kind to learn how to design a page in wikipedia (I mean how to align a table, manage colums, and places of pictures in a wikipage). ThanksDenizCc (talk) 18:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

There are no videos that I know of. However, there are help-pages (with tutorial/examples of various options and their resulting display) for each of those topics. See for example: Help:Table and Wikipedia:Picture tutorial. DMacks (talk) 18:43, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The 'Signpost' (Wikipedia newsletter) mentioned some Wikipedia videos in this issue, but there don't seem to be many in English yet. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, new question, how do I post a picture that is not already on wikipedia or its affiliated pages, or upload a picture from my computer? DenizCc (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Uploading images. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

How to remove that "personal appeal"??

Im tired of seeing that message and that photo!--User771 (talk) 22:44, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Click the X in the upper right corner. The banner may come back unless you go to Special:Preferences, click the "Gadgets" tab, select "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner", and click Save. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Where can I request an image?

Does anybody know where I can get this image uploaded?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

This is the actual URL of the image. After you save the image, you can upload it at Wikipedia:Upload, although you may want to check out Wikipedia's Image use policy first. (Hopefully I understood your question correctly.) Guoguo12--Talk--  02:11, 21 November 2010 (UTC)