Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 September 21

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September 21

Sort order

Category:Women chemists shows Melanie Sanford at the beginning of the category, but the article has {{DEFAULTSORT:Sanford, Melanie}}, and the talk page has {{WikiProject Biography|living=yes|class=start|listas=Sanford, Melanie|s&a-work-group=yes|s&a-priority=low}} Why is the sort order in the category wrong?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 00:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I have removed a bad sort key.[1] See Help:Category#Sort order. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester

Totally got the url wrong and mucked up this citation. So Sorry - Please fix and leave in page number 115.70.161.50 (talk) 00:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

 Done This was carefully explained in the earlier thread, yet the clear instructions were not followed. Eagleash (talk) 03:07, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Index of births in U.S. states

Is there any online index for Nebraska and Oklahoma like there is for California? --LLcentury (talk) 01:13, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

LLcentury hello and welcome. Could you please clarify your query further? Which online index of California are you referring to? That might help give an appropriate response. Lourdes 15:10, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

<de-lurk> LLcentury, you may be looking for something like Nebraska Public Records or Oklahoma Birth and Death Record Searches. Good luck. >MinorProphet (talk) 02:23, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Crazy web design/formatting

My original problem is the following. If I go to Special:Notifications Wikipedia formats this page in a crazy way -- the content width is approximately 1.5 times wider than my screen. I don't know who made such a "genius" design/formatting, but it should be fixed.

As a side-effect, trying to report this bug, I have found other problems.

1. In "Contact Wikipedia" there is NO link to report the problems/bugs with web-design/contact web developers. 2. Even in this form here (where I was redirected from volunteers email) it seems that the user is supposed to have a question. It is not supposed that the user can simply report a problem. I don't know who designed all this, but this assumption is wrong. Please, provide "Report a bug" link (nothing to do with content).

P.S. I usually have very bad opinion about companies/sites that make N problems our of initial single one just on the way to report it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EdwardGoldobin (talk • contribs) 07:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

• EdwardGoldobin, maybe the header at Wikipedia:Village pump/Technical can point you to the correct place of posting. I will grant you that the "backstage" parts of the site are hard to navigate for newcomers.

As for your post scriptum, you are definitely entitled to a full refund of any sum spent browsing Wikipedia (internet data usage not included). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 09:50, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@EdwardGoldobin: I have reported it at Wikipedia talk:Notifications#No line wrap. I assume you have the same problem of no line wrapping and the longest line determining the width. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:46, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

New here

• User:Torsten Lang/sandbox (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I did write an article about Dwayne S. Milburn. I did the German one too. But I heed help here... I would need someone to bring the english one in the right form!?(Torsten Lang (talk) 13:08, 21 September 2016 (UTC))

Hi Torsten Lang, welcome to English Wikipedia. I have dropped one of our standard welcome messages on you, with lots of helpful links. Please be aware that our policies and guidelines may differ from those on German Wikipedia, as each Wikipedia sets their own rules (although there will be many similarities). Wikipedia:Your first article may have some useful information for you, and I think it would probably be best if you submitted your draft via our Articles for Creation process. That's our official channel for getting a proposed article reviewed by an editor who is familiar with the issues around new articles. Please do ask more questions here. Murph9000 (talk) 13:26, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

No Talk Pages on Mobile View

Hi, I've recently joined the modern world and got a smartphone. When I was using wiki on it, I noticed I couldn't access the talk pages. Is there are tab I've not noticed or is talk page access computer only? Red Fiona (talk) 14:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Redfiona99. I can't find any link straight to it, but I can certainly put "Talk:" on the front in the search bar, and get to a talk page that way. --ColinFine (talk) 14:40, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

There is a talk page tab at the bottom of every page, but only for logged-in users. - NQ (talk) 14:42, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Taking a quick look at WP:HD (just for example) on the mobile site in a desktop browser, there's a "Talk" button down at the very bottom of the page (bottom left). I'm not certain I'd choose to put it there when people are used to it being at the top, but whatever. Murph9000 (talk) 14:45, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all. I suspected I'd been looking for it in the wrong place (and I was logged out, which probably didn't help). Red Fiona (talk) 14:52, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Using search

Hi, I have been trying to make use of Help:Searching#Parameters without success. For example to search for a term in a specific category, do I just need to type : "Search term, incategory:categoryname" in the searchbox above? --77.126.28.101 (talk) 15:22, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "search for a term in a specific category". ammonia incategory: German_chemists will search for pages which both contain the term "ammonia" and are a member of Category:German chemists (but not if the page is only in a subcategory like Category:German biochemists). The search for example finds Rudolf Günsberg which contains "He wrote about the ammonia-soda process" and is the last page listed under "G" in Category:German chemists. If you still have problems then try giving a real example you are looking for. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:18, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. --77.126.28.101 (talk) 21:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Copyvios, reverts

Here are so many pages refering to other pages that I don't know where to put this. User:Irbox adds copyvios and re-adds them after they have been removed (by me). He deleted my note about this on his talk page (and later re-added it after I complained), so he most likely didn't do anything by mistake. So, what to do? --92.73.28.106 (talk) 21:23, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

After a certain number of progressive warnings in a reasonable time period, usually 4 but can be less, the user can be reported to the vandalism noticeboard for administrator action if he keeps adding copyvio content. Now if he keeps removing notices to hide his tracks, then that needs to be brought up at the administrator noticeboard for incidents as it is slightly different. RegistryKey^(RegEdit) 07:22, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I removed clear copyright violations (film reviews) he had added to several articles. He has since then re-added at least one of them. I don't have time to deal with this, I'm about to be away from my computer for a couple of days. So I hope someone else can issue the necessary warnings etc. Maproom (talk) 08:53, 22 September 2016 (UTC)