Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 January 23

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January 23

SVG image only shows background in detail view, bug?

So the second image in this edit has actually a background, but it does not show up in the article view. Is this a strange feature or maybe a bug? Thanks. prokaryotes (talk) 01:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

@Prokaryotes: Yeah, I see the same thing, no background when viewed in that revision of the article, but the background is there if you click the image to view full size, or view it on Commons. The background also disappears if you click on one of the various links to smaller sizes on the Commons page. It might be a good idea to take this to Commons:Help desk, as the issue seems to be a Commons issue rather than WP issue, and the folks over there are presumably much more used to dealing with this type of issue. Murph9000 (talk) 02:13, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

It's not just the background that differs between the version visible in the article and the version on Commons. The former has black text, the latter, white. (Personally, I think the starry background is misleading, and should not be used - the stars shown are fictitious and unrelated to the solar system.) Maproom (talk) 09:01, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok i was just about to post at commons, but this is a good argument by Maproom. What do you suggest? Options include using transparent background, which is imho bad for reading and no need for that, or use the earlier image. it's based on? prokaryotes (talk) 13:51, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Two possibilities (1) use Planet_Nine_Orbit_(without_background).svg] (2) modify the current version to have a solid black background. I have no preference between them. Maproom (talk) 15:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Category already exists

Hi, I wanted to know what can be done about redundant categories. Specifically, Category:Naturalised citizens of Mexico and Category:Naturalized citizens of Mexico. The 'Naturalised' category was created recently and only had one page which I recategorized. I was going to turn it into a redirect, but the help section suggests not to- so I'm assuming the new one needs to be deleted. AuroralColibri (talk) 02:22, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Either I've missed the help section you're talking about, or you've misunderstood the help section I've read. While the correct way of redirecting CONAPRED is to place #REDIRECT [[National Council to Prevent Discrimination]] as its code, using similar code on categories is bad because of the way they work. However, we have a technical tool to redirect categories: just place {{Category redirect|name of target category}} on the category that you're redirecting. Creating new categories as redirects is sometimes a bad idea, but in a situation like this one where both categories existed for quite a while, obviously both of them are likely places for other people to use. This is a great situation for a category redirect, so I've redirected "naturalised" to "naturalized". Nyttend (talk) 02:42, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. This is the help section I read BTW. AuroralColibri (talk) 02:59, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome; you missed the thing I read and I missed the thing you read :-) That's talking about the technical difficulty of using #REDIRECT on categories, and what I'm talking about is one of the category redirect templates mentioned by that page. Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Just to address the issue of what happens to categories that have had all their items removed: According to Admin Liz such categories are removed after being empty for four days, I think. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:18, 25 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me

text not left-justified after nested tables

At User:Mandruss/sandbox4 is a problem we are scratching our heads over. The question is why the second section heading is not left-justified as it should be. The problem is somehow caused by the table above. Apologies if we are missing something obvious. Zero^talk 08:24, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

That's odd. If I had the time and patience to try to understand it, I would do ctrl-U to see the source code, copy the entire source code, adjust its stylesheet includes to pull in the stuff it needs, and then tinker with it. For instance, what are all the dd and dl tags doing? Maproom (talk) 09:22, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Appear to be related to the indentation. There are four colons and four dl-dd pairs. Then at the end of the page there are four /dd-/dl pairs, apparently undoing the indentation. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:59, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

The dl-dd pairs are not remarkable on their own. Colon is the markup for dd (and semicolon for dt), which will open a new dl when required, not for indentation. It just happens that default style for lists does indent, and they can be nested, so we all just routinely abuse description lists as a convenient way to indent on talk pages. The issue appears to be the parser failing to close off the lists at the expected point (first blank line after the tables), apparently getting confused by the nested or complex tables. I've scanned the tables backwards and forwards a couple of times, and can't spot an obvious flaw in their markup. It certainly appears like a parser bug, but I wouldn't entirely rule out some flaw in the table markup triggering it. Murph9000 (talk) 10:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Should be report a bug somewhere? Zero^talk 10:43, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I found a work-around at least. Surrounding the table (in the wiki markup) by <div> ... </div> does it. Zero^talk 10:47, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

If this is for use outside talk pages, you should really ditch the colons and div, and just add suitable style="margin: whatever;" CSS to the outer table. If it is for conversations within talk pages, you've got your reasonable workaround. Should it be reported? Personally, I wouldn't report it without doing a little more testing, with a simpler table, etc, trying to narrow down just what is triggering the bug, check that it is actually supposed to work (HTML5 considers table inside dd to be valid, but I'd need to do some checking to confirm that it is valid usage for MediaWiki), etc. Murph9000 (talk) 11:05, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Eden Rock, St Barths and Pippa Middleton

please check ref number 3 on this page - the date is wrong I think. ref 62 is all wrong on the Pippa Middleton page too. Thanks 101.182.146.167 (talk) 11:44, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

 Done You really should fix your own typos... Would point out that tabloid papers aren't generally considered WP:RS. Eagleash (talk) 12:20, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

How to move an article from general User: to personal userspace?

Dear all,

I have the following article which I would like to move from User: into my personal userspace Orschiro:

Could someone please explain me how to do that?

Thankfully,

Orschiro (talk) 12:34, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I've moved it to User:Orschiro/Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative. You may want to ask for the redirect to be removed as WP:CSD#U2.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:52, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I have deleted the redirect at, User:Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative. -- GB fan 12:55, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Melise de Winter

Hi, can I start it my articel Melise de Winter? Refrence are her site with character images. same with Kate Bristol website. and voice/over demo reel. in the demo voice reel she mention it which character she voiced and the serie name.--Maxie1hoi (talk) 16:13, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I suggest that you create a draft as described at WP:AFC and submit it for review. Also note that content taken from other websites is almost certainly copyright and cannot be used on Wikipedia.--ukexpat (talk) 16:53, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello, Maxie1hoi. You can start an article, certainly. But if you want to make sure the article will be accepted, you need to base it on sources indepednent of de Winter: nothing on her site will contribute in any way to establishing that she is notable, so you need to find independent sources and base the draft on those. Wikipedia has hardly any interst in what anybody says about themselves. --ColinFine (talk) 16:54, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Hawaii Five-0 article mistitled Hawaii Five-o

The title of the Hawaii Five-0 article looks like Hawaii-Five-o. Why is the zero uncap-tall instead of cap-tall? Can this be fixed? How does one edit a title? (This question is about the 2010 reboot, not the original Hawaii Five-O.)— Preceding unsigned comment added by DanMargoliash (talk • contribs)

Because per the lead para the new series is "Hawaii Five-Zero" unlike the original which is "Hawaii Five-O" (letter O).--ukexpat (talk) 16:57, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The third sentence of the article explains this, and it has been discussed on the article's talk page. You should not move it (which is how you change a page title) without establishing a consensus to do so. There is no such thing as a capital zero - Letter case is a property of letters, not of digits. How tall a zero appears is a property of the particular font used, and Wikipedia only has a limited control of the font which users read in. --ColinFine (talk) 17:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

do gadgets affect computer speed / performance?

I've looked at the list of available gadgets and most of them seem pretty useful. Is there any downside to checking a bunch of them -- specifically, does the number of gadgets enabled have an effect on the speed/performance of my computer? Thanks. Summertime4 (talk) 17:01, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

It's conceivable but unlikely. Back a few years ago, I was briefly stuck on a ten-year-old laptop when my desktop failed. The Visual Editor was pretty sluggish, but I've heard it's gotten better. If you're using anything from the past few years, I doubt it could be affected by Javascript performance. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 16:58, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

teahouse "ask a question" box appears partially off my screen to the left, so I can't see what I am typing in it.

re: Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions

I clicked on "Ask a Question" and a box popped up for me to type in, but about 10-20% of the box was off my computer screen to the left, so I couldn't see what I was typing.

I am using the modern skin and my screen resolution is 1366 x 768.

1) any ideas about what I can do? 2) is there a place to report this sort of graphical problem?

Thanks.Summertime4 (talk) 17:13, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

@Summertime4: Technical problems (bugs and such) with the site are normally posted at WP:VPT. Dismas|^(talk) 22:24, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Sarah Palin

I have read that Sarah Palin was born in Idaho. Someone may want to research her birth state.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.196.142.241 (talk • contribs)

Have you read the article on her? It says she was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. -- GB fan 19:58, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Question about formatting of quotation marks

Is there an easy way to go through an article and change all of the curly quotation marks (these: “curly quotation marks”) to straight quotation marks (these: "straight quotation marks")? I tried and it won't seem to work. I did a copy-and-paste from the article edit space into a Word document. Within Word, I did a "find-and-replace". And when I copied-and-pasted that revised Word document back into the Wikipedia article's edit space, no changes were effected. Any ideas? Thanks. Use of the curly quotation marks is causing problems in how Wikipedia handles the text; whereas use of the straight quotation marks resolves those problems. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: In Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, scroll to 'Editing' tick 'wikEd', reload the page you're editing and wikEd gives you a find and replace feature. -- AxG / ✉ / 10 years of editing 02:10, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Let me try that. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope, that didn't work. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:40, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: Actually you just have to click advanced in the edit toolbar. A toolbar should pop up underneath that and at the far right of that toolbar you should see an icon with a magnifying glass and pencil on a piece of paper. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 05:22, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I didn't want to go through each and every set of quotation marks, one by one. There are dozens upon dozens of them. That will take forever. I wanted to know if there was a quick easy way to do them all in one fell swoop. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:46, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: WikEd (see docu) has a "search and replace all" button, that also works for curly quotation marks (just tested). Just select the whole text before you press the function button. GermanJoe (talk) 06:39, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried that. It didn't work. I just went in and changed them all by hand. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 07:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: The method I previously mentioned has a "replace all" function. You definitely don't have to do them one by one. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 12:12, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Joseph A. Spadaro. Two things. First, the regular editing toolbar provides a search and replace function that works fine. Click on advanced, and you should see this icon: in the far right of:

However, I have seen in the past that some users do not see this icon in the interface if they are using certain settings or browsers.

Second, I'm guessing that the reason you had no luck using Word is that you have your autocorrect options set to replace regular regular quote marks with "smart" ones – so replacing did nothing because autocorrect just "fixed" them back to smart quotes immediately. I don't know what version you're using of course but try something like: from the Tools menu → select Auto Correct Options → click the AutoFormat As You Type tab → unselect the replace straight quotes With smart quotes option in the replace as you type section → Click ok. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:15, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Which browser are you using? The search and replace does not work in early versions of IE, but does in IE11, and I seem to recall some versions of Firefox have a problem as well.
I use the search and replace to overcome this, and the use of guillemets or French quotes (« and ») quite often. They both need to be done in 2 halves.
Copy/cut an example of the "66" quotes into the "Search for" box (do not try and type them in, or you will be searching for "straight quotes") and type the "straight quotes" into the "Replace with" box, click "Replace all" and it should tell you haw many have been changed, then copy/cut an example of the "99" quotes into the "Search for" box and repeat.
Ensure you have no spaces before or after the 66, 99 or straight quotes, or your search may miss some uses, or it will add/remove spaces - requiring further corrections. - Arjayay (talk) 17:38, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, all. To answer some questions posed above: I am using the latest Word (I believe that it is 2013 or 2015?). And I am using Mozilla Firefox. The problem was not with the "find-and-replace all" function. If I wanted to find the word "cat" and replace it with the word "dog", everything worked just fine; it worked as expected. The sprecific problem was with the straight quotes versus curly quotes. I think some type of "auto correct" did occur, as someone above suggested. In the end, nothing worked. And I just went in and changed each quote mark manually, by hand, one by one. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Follow up question

On a related note, why would the Wikipedia "functions" -- (Is that what they are called? Or is it HTML?) -- work with the straight quotes but not with the curly quotes? My formatting was not working correctly and it drove me crazy to find out why it was not working. Finally, through some miracle of God, I noticed the distinction in which some entries used straight quote marks and some used curly quote marks. The entries with the straight quotes worked fine; they worked as expected. The entries with the curly quotes did not work at all. Why would Wikipedia allow that to happen? Does it not consider them the "same", for formatting purposes? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:55, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Format to name a page

What is the correct format to name a page for a person with variations of their name, for instance: A. Bob Jones, vs. Adam Bob Jones, vs. A. B. Jones, vs. A. Bob-Jones, vs. A.B.J. The person is an artist and is also referred to by their initials: ABJ ? You help is appreciated. These examples represent close approximation, although the example is fictional.InfoDataMonger (talk) 23:08, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

In short, the most commonly used, most recognizable, name should be the title of the article. See WP:COMMONNAME. Rwessel (talk) 23:30, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Resolved

 – InfoDataMonger (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)