Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 August 20

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August 20

How to reply on a talk page

As a new editor on Wikipedia, I have absolutely no idea of the proper format for a reply on a talk page. Could somebody please either show me here the proper format or direct me to a tutorial/template? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luthien22 (talk • contribs) 01:48, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Luthien22: This is a good example of a reply. You should usually being your response with a colon (:), which indents the response, so it is easier to read. I have done that in this reply. At the end of your response, put four tildes (~~~~), which puts your username and time, so others can easily see who posted the response. You may want to click edit on this post, so you can see the formatting I used. It is really quite simple. You may want to read WP:TOPPOST for some more formatting guidelines. Thanks π♂101 (talk) 02:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Piguy101: Thanks so much! Luthien22 (talk) 20:14, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Splitting rows in a table Help

I am working on making a bunch of elimination tables look a lot nicer for many Big Brother articles and I am having some issues with making a table go from having... well , I guess I should just show you what the problem is

Evicted		Teddy Most points to evict	Edna Most points to evict	Phil 11 of 15 to evict	Erastus 7 of 15 to evict
					Rene 6 of 15 to evict
		Wayoe Most points to evict	Maggie Most points to evict
					Paloma 2 of 15 to evict

Its hard to explain, but I would like the table to look as though Teddy and Wayoe's cells are the same size, each taking up half of the row, while at the same time, I want Phil's cell to take up that whole row, and I want Erastus, Rene, and Paloma's cells all to take up a third. This is the closest I can get to to making it "even", even though Teddy's cell is bigger than Wayoe's. Any help would be appreciated! Thank you! BlueDevil54 (talk) 07:54, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, Wikitable only deals with whole rows. You have an odd number of rows so the cells won't be equal in size. You've told it to rowspan wayoe 2 rows, but there aren't enough rows in the table for it to do that. - X201 (talk) 09:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hre's what happens when you add an additional cell to the end column.

Evicted		Teddy Most points to evict	Edna Most points to evict	Phil 11 of 15 to evict	Erastus 7 of 15 to evict
					Rene 6 of 15 to evict
		Wayoe Most points to evict	Maggie Most points to evict		Paloma 2 of 15 to evict
					Mr EvenRow 2 of 15 to evict

- X201 (talk) 10:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this what you want?

Evicted	Teddy Most points to evict	Edna Most points to evict	Phil 11 of 15 to evict	Erastus 7 of 15 to evict
				Rene 6 of 15 to evict
	Wayoe Most points to evict	Maggie Most points to evict
				Paloma 2 of 15 to evict

The row heights aren't very even in Internet Explorer because it ignores the height css, but it works well in other browsers. I vaguely recollect there is a workaround for IE, I'll dig around for it. SpinningSpark 10:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes! That's exactly it! I didn't even think to mess around with row heights like that. Thank you very much! BlueDevil54 (talk) 18:01, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The key to it is not so much setting the row heights, but getting the number of rows right (the lowest common multiple of rows in each column is needed) and hiding the dummy ones. SpinningSpark 19:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:MOSTABLE should only be used for information that is valid in column and row form, and the trivial content in the those articles is not even valid for an article let alone worth being table format let alone being in complicated table format! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 04:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Images

How do you insert an image? — Preceding unsigned comment added by James882 (talk • contribs) 09:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

• If you want to upload an image from your computer for use in an article, you must determine the proper license of the image (or whether it is in the public domain). If you know the image is public domain or copyrighted but under a suitable free-license, upload it to the Wikimedia Commons instead of here, so that all projects have access to the image (sign up). If you are unsure of the licensing status, see the file upload wizard for more information. Please also read Wikipedia's image use policy.
• If you want to add an image that has already been uploaded to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons, add [[File:File name.jpg|thumb|Caption text]] to the area of the article where you want the image to appear – replacing File name.jpg with the actual file name of the image, and Caption text with a short description of the image. See our picture tutorial for more information. I hope this helps.--ukexpat (talk) 14:39, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Direct Links to Portuguese Wikipedia

When is it appropriate to do a direct link to an article in another language wikipedia? Specific example: Sérgio Rodrigues was just made a finalist for the 2014 São Paulo Prize for Literature. He is an established Brazilian author, and the prize nomination helps boost his notability status. An English Wikipedia article does not exist for him, but there is an article in the Portuguese Wikipedia, Sérgio Rodrigues. On the English Wikipedia Sérgio Rodrigues is a disambiguation page. I added a red link for Sérgio Rodrigues (author) on that page and on the São Paulo Prize for Literature page, but would it be better to just link directly to the article in the Portuguese Wikipedia since an English article doesn't exist, and if so, how do you best designate it as such? There are several Brazilian authors on the São Paulo Prize for Literature page to whom this same situation could apply. Translating every author's article would take a lot of time, and the base articles aren't always high quality. Vojen (talk) 17:15, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Another Wikipedia, like this one, is not a reliable source. There is no reason you couldn't create a stub, a bare skeleton of an article, for each of these authors, with proper stub tag(s) and the statement (with sourcing, of course, that she or he is a winner of that prize (that being the requisite assertion of notability). I will leave it to others more knowledgable of Brazilian literature to judge whether a mere nomination constitutes sufficient notability. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:38, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Finalists might not be notable, but winners should be. There are plenty of reliable sources that can attest to the facts of who won, as well as several that single out individuals for greater coverage of their work. It's really just the wikifying that I'm wondering about. Is it really better to create a bunch of stubs rather than direct link to an article that already exists in another wikipedia? I feel like creating a stub is just asking for a deletion debate (which I don't really want to get involved in), but creating a decent article takes too much time. Vojen (talk) 18:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Vojen. It is perfectly acceptable to make a Wikilink to an article in another language, if there is not an English article available; in fact, there is a template for it: {{ill}}. This will produce a link to the foreign article until such time as there exists an English article of the same name, and thereafter link to the English article. --ColinFine (talk) 20:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

That's looks like a useful template. Thanks for the heads up. Vojen (talk) 21:32, 20 August 2014 (UTC)