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Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 November 7

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November 7

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Possible Confusion

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How do I add a page/article to Wikipedia to be viewed by all? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nkechiokoye (talk • contribs) 00:01, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Nkechiokoye: I've added a welcome message to your talk page. That should provide you with some helpful info. Of particular interest would be Wikipedia:Your first article. Dismas|(talk) 01:55, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Appearance of Discussions in other Language Wikipedia

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I recently came across a French Wikipedia talk page and noticed a difference in appearance from English Wikipedia. The background color of indented lines alternated between white and blue, making it somewhat easier to notice new lines. This also seems to be in Portuguese Wikipedia] as well.

  • How is this accomplished?
  • Where would be the appropriate place to discuss a change to something like this on English Wikipedia?
  • If it cannot be changed for all of English Wikipedia, can I create the same affect using a skin or css?

Thanks. Becky Sayles (talk) 02:00, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), your idea would best be put at Bugzilla. Dismas|(talk) 02:08, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Bugzilla reference also says, "configuration changes should have gained a consensus." I would consider this a configuration change. It's also worth noting that many shortcomings of the current talk system will be addressed by Flow, and "automatic threading" is one of the stated improvements. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 02:15, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a server configuration change requiring a developer. It's a local css change and discussion would belong here at the English Wikipedia. It's done with for example the "COLORATION INDENTÉE" code at fr:MediaWiki:Vector.css. I copied it to my common.css [1] and see it now on talk pages (not this project page). Our own MediaWiki:Vector.css can be edited by administrators. The css pages have talk pages for discussion but a change of this magnitude should be discussed at a more general place like Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). PrimeHunter (talk) 03:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This has been discussed somewhere. I have the CSS at User:Gadget850/talkhighlight.css. We are supposed to get Flow for talk pages one of these days. --  Gadget850 talk 13:58, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Gadget850/talkhighlight.css finds a 2011 discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 70#French-style talk pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:13, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strange search results

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Dear editors: I was curious about how many pages are in draft space, so I typed "Draft:" into the New Search and selected "containing..." I got 620 hits. I tried using a prefix search and got the same answer. I did this some time ago and the answer then was about 11,000. I know that there are more that 620, because Category:Pending AfC submissions alone has 'way more drafts than that. Have I overlooked something? I am still able to get a reasonable number when I search "Wikipedia talk:" (about 70,000). —Anne Delong (talk) 02:50, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Pending_AfC_submissions says 2,588. But looking at the individual drafts, many do not start with "Draft:". Still adds up over 620 though.Becky Sayles (talk) 03:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and there are thousands of drafts that have been declined, not yet submitted, or which are not part of AfC at all. I can't figure this out - but it's happened before that I've overlooked something obvious. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:54, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The page at Wikipedia:Draft suggests using Special:PrefixIndex/Draft: to look for drafts. The search gives a lot of results but it's not obvious how to count them. Judging from the number that begin with 'A' there must be at least several thousand drafts to be found this way. I can't explain why the "containing.." search only gets 620. EdJohnston (talk) 04:42, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Search results show the date of the revision indexed by the search function. For all searches in the draft namespace I only get pages which were edited November 5, 6 or 7. I don't know why. For example, a search on draft:arcade finds Draft:House of Targ and Draft:We Hate Movies but not Draft:5 Arcade Gems. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:57, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I tried going back to the old search, but it bugs out ("An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error:"). —Anne Delong (talk) 05:15, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's a temporary consequence of a change discussed at Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Draft namespace added to ContentNamespaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:43, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is date according to wikipedia's servers wrong?

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Articles about Typhoon Haiyan and the talk page are showing dates in the range 10-14 November, but my local time is 01:53 Fri Nov 7 so there is too much difference. --24.165.86.189 (talk) 09:14, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Typhoon Haiyan happened in 2013. Maproom (talk) 09:19, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My error--dates in question are 2013--misread current news stroies that were actually about anniversary of the storm, not current events. Sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.165.86.189 (talk)

editing the title of the page

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There is a spelling error in the title of the page/entry that I created. How do I change it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Womaninarena (talk • contribs) 13:37, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Womaninarena: Your account is too new to change titles. I have moved Howard Country Poetry and Literature Society to Howard County Poetry and Literature Society. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:53, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image thumbnail overlapping text in article

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This glitch is happening here. I went to fix the problem, but couldn't figure out how to. Just in case this glitch appears differently for different people, here's how I see it. Can someone more knowledgeable than me please fix this? NealCruco (talk) 19:48, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  Fixed in this edit by swapping the positions of the image code and the quote box.--ukexpat (talk) 20:21, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Pushed down a little bit more to avoid the collision altogether (probably resolution dependent). Should be OK now. GermanJoe (talk) 20:26, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, you two! NealCruco (talk) 20:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Template:stack can also be useful for this. --  Gadget850 talk 20:53, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Anchors

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What exactly is an "anchor" when one edits a Wikipedia article? What is it for? What is it supposed to do? Earlier, I was performing some edits on the following article: McStay family murder. And, in the "editing view", one of the article's headings reads: == {{anchor|Arrest}}Arrest ==. And there are several other headings similar to that. What is this all about? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:12, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Does WP:ANCHOR help?--ukexpat (talk) 20:25, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)
To editor Joseph A. Spadaro: Anchors are essentially "alternative section names". It is possible to link to sections like this: McStay family murder#Arrest. When a section is renamed, it's often a good idea to leave an anchor to the original name so that links to sections don't break. For example, the section "Reaction" was probably renamed from "Reaction to the disappearance". Someone may have made a link to McStay family murder#Reaction to the disappearance, and that would not work without the anchor. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 20:29, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Transcluding article sections

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I know that it's possible to transclude entire articles, e.g. this revision of the sandbox, in which {{:aunt}} {{:uncle}} transcludes both pages, and that it's possible to transclude pages in other namespaces, e.g. how my userpage ends up in this revision. But is it possible to transclude just part of an article or other page? At the moment, User:Nyttend/Ohio NRHP/Northeast transcludes several other pages in my userspace, each of which consists of a bulleted list and a table; I'd like to transclude just the tables if possible. I already tried just calling the sections (e.g. changing {{User:Nyttend/Ohio NRHP/Ashtabula}} to {{User:Nyttend/Ohio NRHP/Ashtabula#Not_visited}}), but it didn't produce a discernable difference. Nyttend (talk) 20:57, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nyttend, on the pages that you include on another page, put <noinclude> Text </noinclude> around any text you dont want to put in, or includeonly around the things you do want to include. All the best, Taketa (talk) 21:14, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See labeled section transclusion. --  Gadget850 talk 21:36, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proper use of "De" or "de" with surnames

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I am working on a family tree and have found that the use of "De/de" with a surname has caused a problem with sorting by surname when some records are entered without the "De/de". Example: Joan De Carew 1320 is the same person as Joan Carew; but, they sort in "D" and in "C". What is the proper method of using De/de with a surname? that allows for proper sorting. JRMRMCD1716 (talk) 22:08, 7 November 2014 (UTC)JRM[reply]

Hi JRM, it depends whether it is part of the name or not. This differs from country to country and person to person. For example, the Netherlands Dutch use the system that "de" is an additive to the surname and they order it like "Carew, Joan de", whereas the Belgian Dutch use the system that de is an integral part of the last name, and they order it like "De Carew, Joan". All the best, Taketa (talk) 22:55, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
i think there is some kind of a "sort by" template that will let you have a display and sort in the manner you wish. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:19, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
see if this helps you. Template:Sortname. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:22, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gray bar won't go away

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Hello, I'm editing the Bacterial Wilt of Turf Grass article and I can't get rid of this gray bar immediately under the Management subheading. I know it's not in the text because no matter how much text I remove, the first sentence ends up in that gray bar. Please help me get rid of this! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdubovis (talk • contribs) 23:00, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see a gray bar under the heading in Bacterial wilt of turfgrass. --  Gadget850 talk 23:37, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Me either, with Firefox 33 on a Windows laptop, in both the Desktop and the Mobile versions. If you can make it happen elsewhere, we can look for something in common. If not, it's probably not worth worrying about. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 00:56, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Mdubovis: It's caused by leading spaces on a line. I see you fixed it in [2] right after posting here. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:48, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lists

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Where do I find the WP Help on how to make a simple numbered and indented list, 1. 2. 3. etc? I can find how to do all kinds of complicated lists, but not how to do a simple one like this. ~ P123ct1 (talk) 23:30, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:List.
Markup Renders as 
# line
# line
# line
## line
# line

  1. line
  2. line
  3. line
    1. line
  4. line

--  Gadget850 talk 23:40, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tried that, but each line came out as "1.", not 2, 3, 4 etc. Why is this? ~ P123ct1 (talk) 23:58, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My SWAG is that you added a newline which restarts the list. --  Gadget850 talk 01:19, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Markup Renders as 
# line

# line

# line

# line

  1. line
  1. line
  1. line
  1. line

P123ct1 That was my guess as well, no linebreaks. See this simple alt example:

Markup Renders as 
:# line
:# line
:# line
:# line

  1. line
  2. line
  3. line
  4. line

You can use as many :'s as you wish to match indent level, but they all have to the same indent level for sequential numbering.~Technophant (talk) 01:30, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note that lists created using * or # markup are already indented.
Markup Renders as 
Text here.
# line
# line
# line

Text here.

  1. line
  2. line
  3. line
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