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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 86.21.74.40 (talk) at 21:57, 17 February 2008 (→‎Ogg files: +r). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

    Welcome—ask questions about how to use or edit Wikipedia! (Am I in the right place?)


    February 13

    Column summation

    I have a table with a column which consists solely of numerical values. Is there any way to define a footer row which calculates the sum of that column's cells? Specifically, I wish to automatically calculate the sum for the "Minimum" and "Maximum" columns (respectively) in the Template:Project Chanology protests, February 10 2008 table. Thanks in advance! CounterFX (talk) 03:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    One way would be to put the values in an array, so that they can be used for display and for computing the sum without putting them twice in the wikitext. Another way might be with JavaScript, like is used for sorting.--Patrick (talk) 12:26, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm... I was hoping for a predefined solution like for sorting, but I don't think there is one. Thanks. CounterFX (talk) 12:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    And on second thoughts, I don't feel that the summation should be given for that particular table, since the entries only give figures for protests which the press happened to cover, and should not be taken as representing any "global total". CounterFX (talk) 13:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Direct find and replace function for Wikipedia editing

    Is there any program anyone knows of that would allow me to do a find and replace function directly for Wikipedia articles using internet explorer? Sure, I can cut and paste text into an external editor but that intermediate step is a big time waster when you're trying to do somewhat robotic edits. To be clear, as an example, after I have disambiguated a movie title from "Name (film)" to "NAME ([year] film)", I want to be able to go to an article that pipes the link five times and in edit mode just replace all the "Name (film)" to "NAME ([year] film)". If no one knowns of scuh an add-on for Internet Explorer (which I'm pretty married to), can you tell me if any other browers allow you to do this directly? Thanks in advance.--68.237.2.101 (talk) 03:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I believe AutoWikiBrowser is what you're looking for. Of course, it will require you to create an account to use it. Good luck! GlassCobra 03:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I appreciate the link but a new browser is not really what I'm after (if it exists). I just want to search and replace in my normal browser, just like ou would in word with the find and replace function. It seems like it should exist. All browsers have find, someone should be able to make an add-on to make it find and replace.--68.237.2.101 (talk) 04:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, Firefox users can do this with wikEd. Noah 04:26, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Incidentally, AWB is not an entirely new web browser, it's a program that automates various Wikipedia processes in conjunction with Internet Explorer. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Also see WP:EIW#EditSoft, WP:EIW#Bot, and WP:EIW#Tools. Unfortunately, a Web browser is a thin client by design, and typically has only a very simple built-in editor. This should eventually change as the Web 2.0 idea of mass collaboration catches on. (Wikipedia of course is a leading example of this.) The first 20 years of personal computing were all about companies like Microsoft making ever-thicker desktop applications with more more features, but they typically suck at sharing information with other people, so the common interchange format has traditionally been dead trees. Wikis are great for remote collaboration, but in the early going you have to give up the gazillion thick editor features many computer users take for granted now. I don't suppose fanatical Emacs users have this problem, since they can do everything in Emacs, including browse the Web. --Teratornis (talk) 19:26, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    part page transclusion

    Is it possible to only transclude part of page, and not the whole page, for example to pull a sentence or two out of another article ? I have tried, for example, {{page#id of span tagged text}}, but it still pulls in the whole page. Pee Tern (talk) 03:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    No, you can't, although this isn't the first time it's been suggested as a feature (in fact, there might still be a similar query higher up on this page). What you can do is mark one part of the page to not appear when transcluded (by enclosing it in <noinclude></noinclude> tags), and/or mark a part to not appear when you visit the actual template page (by enclosing it in <includeonly></includeonly> tags). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. Yes I am aware of the only/include tags but I wanted to have multiple different bits of text in an actual article transcluded, so they do not help unfortunatley. Pee Tern (talk) 06:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    article sub pages

    Are article subpages completely banned? I had just created one and it got deleted almost immediately (because someone thought I was testing by accident, and did not ask first, and has since apologised). I wanted to use it to create a separately editable block of material without a section heading by transcluding it back into the main page with its own edit link. So, is it okay to do this, and if so how do I stop it being deleted by enthusiastic people. I do not want to protect it because it needs to be "normally" editable? If not, is there another way to do it? Pee Tern (talk) 04:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    As per Wikipedia:Subpages, no you're not allowed to use subpages in article space. In fact, article subpages have been turned off in the software, so that (for example) OS/2 is an article entitled "OS/2", not subpage "2" of the article "OS". In your case, you're just going to have to let the material be directly included in the article. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. Sorry, I should have read Wikipedia:Subpages not so quickly! C'est la vie. Pee Tern (talk) 06:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The page does ntot exist any more and I cannot find it referenced in the delete log. Is this normal? Pee Tern (talk) 07:12, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The only registered deleted edit by you is the creation of /othertermdefn which is in the deletion log: [1]. I assume you wanted to use it for Law enforcement agency. If subpages were turned on in article space then it should have been at Law enforcement agency/othertermdefn to be a subpage. Page names starting with / are special. I used [[:/othertermdefn]] to make a link here from Wikipedia space where subpages are turned on. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If you only want to use a piece of text in one article then I see no good reason to create it on another page. If you want to use it in more than one article then you can make a template in template space (starting with Template: ). PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Folks, Thanks. Still learning the ropes I am. I was searching the log using 'Law enforcement agency/othertermdefn' and 'Pee Tern'. I am not sure how I created the page starting with a '/'. I used [[/othertermdefn]] on the page Law enforcement agency and then followed the link. I was trying to create a block of text with its own edit link that was not a section. For what it is worth, have a look at User:Pee Tern/Sandbox#Under Development where it seems to work exactly as expected. Cheers. Pee Tern (talk) 21:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Starting a link with / gives a subpage in your user space because subpages are turned on in user space. They are turned off in article space, so if you write [[/othertermdefn]] on an article like Law enforcement agency then "/othertermdefn" is simply the page name you get. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    References

    I was copyediting 10th Guards Uralsko-Lvovskaya Tank Division and tried to amend the References section but it only shows references/ in the edit box. How/where do I find the reference page? (I've tried the help section on references but couldn't find it.) LuckyThracian (Talk) 04:07, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    With the <ref></ref> function, you place the references in the body of the article. When saved, where you see them is in the references section, after the reference markup such as references/ (or {{Reflist}}). Use the find function on your computer (cntrl+F usually) while in edit mode and search for <ref>. Each footnoted reference will be found this way. In that article, there is only one.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:12, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    See more at Wikipedia:Footnotes. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Okay, got it! Thankyou both. LuckyThracian (Talk) 02:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Album Cover Fair Use

    I uploaded a copy of an album cover I own where the article had the picture missing and I have tried to understand what I have to do to show it as fair useage but have drawn a blank. Is there a simple step by step function I should be taking? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Simmouk70 (talkcontribs) 10:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Give WP:FAIRUSE a read through, perhaps? Hope it helps. ScarianCall me Pat 10:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Or maybe ask your question at the Wikipedia:Image copyright help desk... you may be able to get a more detailed response? ScarianCall me Pat 10:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I see User:Nanonic has added a pro forma fair use rationale. The only problem is that the image is at far too high a resolution for the rationale given to apply. You should reupload it at 300x300 px or so. Algebraist 12:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Quantity of edits and editors

    We would like to know where we can view numbers of edits of each individual article. We would also like to know where it is possible to see the number of number of unique editors (number of individuals contributing to the editing process) of an article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.47.89.75 (talk) 13:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Every article has a page history which is accessible by clicking on the button labeled "history" at the top of the page. Using the history, you can see every editor who has edited, the number of edits, and it allows you to look at how the article existed at every point in its history and what each person did by comparing diffs. There are also various tools which draw statistics out of this function which you might find easier to look at for a broad overview. Enter an article name at this site.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Linking to an image page

    Hi, does anyone know the syntax to link to a wikipedia image page? I can do it with an "external" link to to the full Wikipedia URL, but I imagine that shouldn't be necessary. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Surot (talkcontribs) 14:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    For any page you can insert a colon at the beginning to have it appear as a link rather than as (e.g.) an image. This works for Images, Templates, Categories. So [[:image:your image]]. Sbowers3 (talk) 14:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Great, that works just fine. Thanks for the quick response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Surot (talkcontribs) 14:26, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Tomeraider 3 is shut down every time I look up words beginning with the letter "z"

    Dear Sirs I visited your web site and downloaded wp-En-ppc-txt.tr3 (1.1 Gigabyte file) but I can’t look up words beginning with the letter “Z” because an error message emerges and the program is obligatorily shut down. The rest of the dictionary is usable but the above problem occurs when the words beginning with the letter “z” are entered to be looked up. Could you assist me solve this problem? Thank you for your hints. Sincerely yours M. Shamsara

    my email address: <email address removed to protect privacy> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.165.26.81 (talk) 14:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over two million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free 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 left hand side of your screen. If that is not fruitful, we have a reference desk, divided into various subjects areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck.
    However, I suggest that you may wish to visit the TomeRaider website for assistance. Thanks —Travistalk 16:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Help regarding merging an Article

    I want to inquire something regarding merging an article. Previous month i proposed merging of the article Risalpur Airbase to Pakistan Air Force Academy . I stated the merge proposal here and added merge template to the article Risalpur Airbase [2]. After about a month(24 days) was gone, i merged(Selective Merge) Risalpur Airbase into Pakistan Air Force Academy. And stated all that at the merge discussions [3]. Now a user reverted all the merging and said "Note that you cannot merge if you don't get a response. You didnt place the {{merge}} on either of the pages to show that a merge has been proposed." and also issued me notice {{Uw-notvote}}. So i want to ask that what one should do after that much time if still no one has responded to the merge proposal? --SMS Talk 16:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Merging is just a kind of editing. You don't need permission to merge any more than for any other kind of editing. It is a good idea to discuss on the talk page before any editing that might be controversial - not just merges. It is common to suggest a change on the editing page, wait a bit to see if there any comments, then proceed with the proposed edit or, in this case, a merge. I would ask the other editor to explain why he thinks that your edits are wrong - not in terms of the procedure you followed but in terms of the content. Sbowers3 (talk) 17:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure! Thanks a lot! --SMS Talk 17:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Suppose I had ===Swordmaster Style=== several times in one article, and I wanted to make a link on another page to the second occurence of this. How would I do that?Not even Mr. Lister's Koromon survived intact. 16:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The first occurrence is linked to in the traditional manner – simply specify the page name, a #, and the section name (all without intervening spaces). Example: List of most popular given names#Male names. To link to subsequent occurrences, use the same notation as above, but add the occurrence number after the section name (with an intervening space). Example: List of most popular given names#Male names 2 for the second occurrence, List of most popular given names#Male names 3 for the third, and so on. I would recommend you to use piping to make the links better presented. Hope this helps! CounterFX (talk) 16:47, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It does, thank you. But to remove ambiguity, would I be able to use List of most popular given names#Male names 1 for the first occurrence as well?Not even Mr. Lister's Koromon survived intact. 17:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    All section linking can be piped For example:
    What the code is What it gives
    [[List of most popular given names#Male names | Foobar 1]] Foobar 1
    [[List of most popular given names#Male names 2 | Foobar 2]] Foobar 2
    [[List of most popular given names#Male names 2 | Foobar 3]] Foobar 3
    ...and so on. Hope this helps! --omtay38 17:42, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    From empirical tests, adding a 1 for the first occurrence (e.g. List of most popular given names#Male names 1) does not work. If you're familiar with HTML: Only one named anchor tag is generated for each header – in the case of the first occurrence, it is <a name="Male_names" id="Male_names"></a>; for the second, it is <a name="Male_names_2" id="Male_names_2"></a>; and so on. Since for several situations (think talk pages) the lower sections would have been added chronologically after those above them, changing the anchor name for the first section would cause links already established to it (without the 1) to break. If you wish to give a consistent appearance, you could use omtay38's recommendation for piping. CounterFX (talk) 18:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Why is there a link to the Wikipedia page for "Say Anything (band)" at the top of my firebox browser? And a Log in/Create account? I don't want them there. I didn't think wikipedia was into that unclassy kind of internet bullying. Tell me how to get rid of it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.117.108 (talk) 17:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Under the default Wikipedia style there is always a link in the top-right corner to Log in / create account (unless you log in, of course!), but I have no idea why there should be a link to an article about some random band. When you say it's at the "top of" Firefox, do you mean at the top of the Wikipedia page, or on a toolbar or bookmarks bar? It's possible you've inadvertently dragged a page to the bookmarks bar and saved a link to it. Or maybe somebody else used your computer and bookmarked a page. If that's so and you want to get rid of it, right-click on it, and click 'Delete'. • Anakin (talk) 18:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    For the past several days PoncaPortal has repeatedly posted an external link that violates Wikipedia's policy on advertising and conflicts of interest on external links.

    What is the next step for handling this type of issue if it continues?

    Best Regards,


    Reservoirhill (talk) 18:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    First you would warn the user following the instructions on that page. Then, if the behavior persists, fill a report at Administrator intervention against vandalism. Hope this helps! --omtay38 18:26, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


    Thank you for the guidance. Reservoirhill (talk) 18:30, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Error

    Every time when i logged into wikipedia I cant found my user page, instead of this i found:"Error, Setup.php must be included from the file scope, after DefaultSettings.php". If i not logged in, this time it also happens.But all other pages e.g. talk page, watchlist are okay.Everytime I've to purge. Without purging page is not showing. Clearing cache (both browser and server) is not solved the problem. What should i do? Tanvir che (talk) 19:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I had not heard of this error before. We can search the Help desk for: setup.php, but that finds nothing. We can search the entire Web:
    which finds some mentions, but these all seem to involve people who get the error on their own wikis that they set up by installing MediaWiki themselves. I can browse to Tanvir che with no obvious problems. Are you sure are actually browsing to your user page on the English Wikipedia and not on some other wiki? Maybe someone else can give a better answer. --Teratornis (talk) 19:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I got that error a couple of times today. I am not sure what it is abour. I got it when I tried to edit user talkpages. I simply refreshed my browser (accepting the resubmittal of postdata) and it worked fine. You might want to ask your question over at the technical village pump. Regards. Woody (talk) 19:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I found another Wikipedia user who reported the problem:
    so I guess it is possible to get this error from Wikipedia. The questioner mentions that the error also occurs regardless of being logged in. That seems to rule out any involvement from the user's Preferences. I have noticed that having an intermittent connection to the Internet can cause Wikipedia pages to download incompletely, and that can cause all sorts of weird problems, although I haven't seen this particular one myself. --Teratornis (talk) 19:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you for your response to my earlier question, but it isn't the type of copyright that has me stumped so much as HOW to insert copyright information. I do not understand the use of the templates, and cannot see how to retro fit copyright info onto the finished Agriculture in the Classroom page. Thanks --Akaitc (talk) 19:01, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I have had to delete an article you significantly contributed to, Agriculture in the Classroom. It was a violation of the copyrights of i.a. [4]. Articles on Wikipedia have to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License. If you want to know how to release the now deleted content, please read WP:COPYREQ. AecisBrievenbus 19:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    You should edit the image description pages, Image:AITC-IL-Germination.JPG for example, and insert the tag corresponding to the license you have been granted. --teb728 t c 21:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Question on verifiable sources.

    My question is what TRULY consititutes a verifiable resource. It seems several people seem to ignore the "rules" on this when taking over pages. The idea that certain people are in charge of certain articles creates a cronyism that doesn't gel well with the concept of Wiki's. FOr example, I have been fighting an uphill battle with the folks over on the "BIG BROTHER 9" page who post things that haven't happened yet by using a "live feed" as a source... of course this is NOT VERIFIABLE, so they should be removed. However hte cronyism comes into play, and the people who claim this page win out. This is what will be the downfall of Wikipedia - when people stake claim on articles without thinking of the overall good. RMThompson (talk) 20:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    We do have a guideline against ownership of articles - I'll take a look and issue a notice to the other editors if this is the problem. However, you are correct - live feeds are not verifiable or reliable sources. Hersfold (t/a/c) 21:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    After reviewing the article (I didn't really know what Big Brother was until now), it seems the other editors do have a point. Since this is an upcoming show, information may appear that isn't immediately available on something that is considered reliable. I know the while The Amazing Race is running, the article will be updated several times before the end of the show, before the verifiable results are posted on the website. Once the show begins, more and more verifiable sources will be present, and you will be able to confirm the information currently present with those sources. As was explained on the talk page, that is the purpose of the blue ambox message. Whenever an ambox is present on a page, it's a notice to the reader that information may not be 100% reliable, due to an issue that either needs to be corrected or will be corrected in time (as it is in this case).
    If you're still not sure about things, you may want to open a request for comment to get some other opinions on this. First, though, I'd recommend trying to talk it over with the other editors. If things get too heated, step back and calm down for a while. There's plenty of ways to get this sorted out. Don't worry about it too much. I hope this has helped some. Hersfold (t/a/c) 21:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I just feel that the live feeds aren't verifiable and therefore cannot be used. What's happening is that an editor is watching the LIVE FEEDS and then changing the information based on what they see. However CBS has changed information in the past, so until something AIRS, I don't think it should be considered reliable. Im not concerned with information that will be available, but information gotten early, from watching the live feeds, and then leaked onto the main page. The main page is about a TV SHOW and the live feeds are NOT a part of that show, they are an option. The show has started, its not an upcoming show... Your example was Amazing Race, well what if someone posted results that hadn't happened on the show yet and therefore were unreliable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RMThompson (talkcontribs) 21:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Closing

    Can someone point me in the direction of the closing templates so that in future i may close discussions? Simply south (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The template to use differs for the type of discussion. WP:DPR contains the code needed to close deletion discussions, although as you are not an admin, you should ideally only close snowball keeps, and also not close discussions in which you were involved. Allowing admins to close other discussions makes the process run a bit smoother. Hersfold (t/a/c) 21:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Not all discussions are deletion discussions. There are moving discussions discussions over issues etc. It is okay to do non-admin closures. What about closures where the person withdraws?
    And thank you for that link. Simply south (talk) 21:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Creating an account; forgotten user name

    I'm interested in becoming a contributer, so I looked into creating an account. However, I already have accounts on dozens of websites, and I figured I might have already created one here years in the past, but the standard way for me to check that is by entering my email address, and the website checking if there are any usernames connected to that email address. I found no such option on your site. What should one do if (s)he's forgotten his/her user name? I could create a new account, but OCD is causing me great worry over redundant accounts. Is it a problem to have multiple accounts? If so, or even if not, is there a way for me to regain info about an account (that is, username and password) using only the email address? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.238.147.221 (talk) 22:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You can try Special:Listusers to see if you created an account. Enter a name and if it appears as an exact match, then it exists. Unfortunately, if you didn't set an e-mail for your account, you have to create another one. On Special:Userlogin, you can enter your username and click "E-mail new password", you can try that if you have in fact created an account here. XENON54 | talk 22:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Annoyingly it isn't possible to email a new password without knowing the user name. But I would say - try not to worry about it if you try a few names at Special:Listusers and still cannot find any old account. There are over six million registered user names, the vast and overwhelming majority of which have never been used (I reckon). Unused accounts are harmless and can be ignored, being nothing more than a name in a list. • Anakin (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Note: I filed bugzilla:13015 earlier, asking for lost username retrieval as a new software feature. No guarantees on it being implemented, or how long it would take, but it's there. • Anakin (talk) 03:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    that you for the quick response —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.238.147.221 (talk) 05:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    References

    Is it more appropriate to use <references/> or {{reflist}} on an article? F*L*RAP 22:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    From Wikipedia:Footnotes: "It is common when there is a long list of references (as a rule of thumb, at least ten) to replace the basic <references /> tag with {{Reflist}}, which reduces the text size to 90%." Hope this helps! --omtay38 23:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Numeric accuracy

    I've come up against an editor who is fixated on writing percentages with 4 digits of accuracy, which I think is ridiculous. For example:

    Boris Tadić won 1,457,030 votes or 35.39% in the first round. In the second round on February 3 2008, he faced Tomislav Nikolić. According to final results Boris Tadić won the election with 50.57 % or 2,257,105 votes. [1]

    I think this is silly for an encyclopedia article, and rounded the percentages to three digits of accuracy (personally, I think two digits would be most suitable),

    Boris Tadić received 1,457,030 votes (35.4%) in the first round. In the second round on February 3 2008, he faced Tomislav Nikolić and won the election with 2,257,105 votes (50.6%).[2]

    but this editor reverts my edits. Is there anything in Manual of Style about this? Other guidelines? Thanks. --RenniePet (talk) 23:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The only policy I can find is at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Percentages. I'd say either bring it up on the talk page, or just let it go. As long as the percentage is accurate, edit warring isn't needed over one digit. --omtay38 23:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    (ec)Not really. MOS:NUM#Decimal places states:

    The number of decimal places should be consistent within a list or context (The response rates were 41.0 and 47.4 percent, respectively, not The response rates were 41 and 47.4 percent, respectively).

    and that is all it really mentions about your problem. WP:WPE&R (WikiProject Elections & Referenda) does not have any standards when it comes to the number of decimal places. XENON54 | talk 23:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks to both of you who answered. OK, I'll just let it go. But he really does irritate me - in another article he had written

    On January 20, 2008, Nikolić won the first round with 39.99% of the vote.

    I changed that to

    On January 20, 2008, Nikolić won the first round with 40% of the vote.

    and he promptly reverted me. I think it looks crazy, and makes people wonder about Wikipedia. --RenniePet (talk) 23:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Scientifically, and simplifying a bit, the number of significant digits is determined by the accuracy or level of error in the measurement. If the count is believed to be accurate to within 100 votes out of 1,000,000 then the percentages can be plus/minus .01%, so 4 significant digits would seem to imply that the count was accurate to within 100 votes in every 1,000,000 counted. If the count was only accurate to within 1000 votes in 1,000,000 then the the percentage should only be to .1%. But yes I too would think nn.nn% is a bit over the top! Pee Tern (talk) 00:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    February 14

    Why are level 5 section headings minute?

    When using a level 5 section heading it is only half the size of normal text, not bolded. Is this correct? Or is Internet explorer playing up on me? Pee Tern (talk) 00:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    To me it looks like the size of normal text... Do you mean a 'section heading' as in the equals signs? ScarianCall me Pat 00:41, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    That is level 6, not level 5. Level five is just bolded text (for all intents and purposes). Prodego talk 00:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The section headings between =s as in

    ======A Section Heading======

    It is 6 =s which is level 5 because level one starts with 2=s?

    It looks more like a page footnote than a section heading. Pee Tern (talk) 02:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Two equals signs is a level 2 heading. One equals sign (level 1 heading) is what's used for the page titles (and, against W3C guidelines, on long talk pages like this help desk for separating dates). Thing is, I don't see how a level 6 heading could be styled as anything else that would still be different and more diminutive than a level 5 heading, but different to normal text. But if any article needs that many levels of headings, I think it needs some serious restructuring! • Anakin (talk) 03:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Levels 1 to 6, a ha! Okay. I have toyed with the level 6 heading a few times and gone back to it a couple times as the better option. However, please feel free to have a look, at Law enforcement agency, and offer any me suggestions (it is still a work in progress). Cheers. Pee Tern (talk) 07:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    WHAT HAPPEN?

    No images are loading for me on WP... what's going on? Is there something wrong on my end or did the server get raped? Ziggy Sawdust (talk) 01:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Your browser may not be loading images automatically. I can't say much for other browsers, but if you have Firefox just go to the Tools tab, click Options, and access the Content tab. You should see a checkbox that says "Load images automatically"; if it isn't checked, check it. Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 01:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems to me that this question has been coming up strangely a lot the last few days, so maybe there is something up with the servers. There was a very similar question to this earlier: #Images not being displayed, where I suggested making sure there wasn't any software, or the web browser itself, blocking Wikipedia images. • Anakin (talk) 02:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Is there a way for a picture to include a hyper/wiki-link?

    I want to be able to click on a picture and it take me to the website that shows my edit count. Is this possible? Thanks, PGPirate 01:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    There are two ways (that I know of) to do this; first, you could use a {{click}} template. However, that template is a bit messy when it comes to certain code/browsers. Another alternative is the imagemap extension. More instructions on how to use each can be found on the respective pages. Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 01:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    A Userbox

    Where can i find the userbox stating that a user is going to be away due to mental illness? Thank-You. Yeltsinfan (talk) 01:58, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You could just create one using {{userbox}}. For example;
    This user is away due to a mental illness.
    Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 02:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Banning

    Does Wikipedia IP ban users such as "Physics Magazine Guy" a.k.a. Yeats30 who repeatedly post homework questions or break other such rules.(Anyone that looks at the science or math ref desks much will know who I'm talking about). It just seems something should be done. Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 03:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Nope. From Wikipedia:Blocking policy: "Users may be blocked from editing by an administrator to protect Wikipedia and its editors from harm." Posting to the WP:RD doesn't really cause harm. It may be a nuisance, but not harm. --omtay38 03:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Why not? Zrs 12 (talk) 03:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Because blocking is a last resort, and should never be applied freely. We only use it for blatant vandals and people who are being disruptive; minor things like this warrant a note on the editor's talk page, not a block notice. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 03:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah yes, I see. However, this user has been notified on his talk page. Yet he has still done it. This is a repeated, blatant violation of the reference desk rules. This does not cause harm per se but is still a blatant violation. And yet they still can't be blocked? Zrs 12 (talk) 03:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Couldn't this be considered trolling?--Sunny910910 (talk|Contributions|Guest) 03:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    In my opinion, I would consider it trolling. Directly from the article: "Trolling is deliberate violation of the implicit rules of Internet social spaces." However, this is not an official Wikipedia guideline page. Zrs 12 (talk) 03:39, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think considering this trolling would be a stretch, but is a possibility. I have warned the user another time because he/she had asked another question after the previous notice. I'm not sure the course of action to be taken if this pattern of behavior continues. --omtay38 03:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, Omtay. However, I think there should be (or maybe is) a guideline to deal with situations such as this. If there is not though, should a consensus try to be reached as to the action following another of these posts? Zrs 12 (talk) 03:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If the user continues and pays no heed, then that's stepping into the realm of disruptive behaviour. If they do so, I'll warn them with something sterner. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 04:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Another approach would be to simply answer the question(s)... incorrectly.(sorry, I couldn't resist the smartass remark) Jauerbackdude?/dude. 04:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No need to call people trolls behind their back! When people ask obvious homework questions at the RD, just explain that it isn't for homework questions, and ignore it. They won't keep posting if they get no answer. • Anakin (talk) 12:55, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not necessarily trolling, although I suppose it could be construed that away after warnings and attempts at communication have failed and gone unanswered. However, all this behavior requires is a stern warning and a walk away. And as per above, label it a homework question and move on. Wisdom89 (T / C) 16:39, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Valentines Day

    Does this have anything to do with St Valentie ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.212.193.204 (talk) 03:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Please see Valentine's Day for more information. In the future, remember to use the reference desk to ask questions about specific knowledge; the help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. Thank you, Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 04:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Orignator of request for new article?

    In Wikipedia:WikiProject Law Enforcement/Requested articles there is a request for a new article, Evidence Storage Unit. I thought I would do the article, but soon realised that the request could be for a either a 'physical container' (from a box to a room), or the 'organisational unit' which is responsible for evidence storage. How do I find what the requester intended? Or do I have to do both and disambiguate them!? Pee Tern (talk) 07:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Well, those are the possibilities... they can all fit in one article surely? Why don't you write about them all? Make sure they're all properly sourced and verifiable though! :-) ScarianCall me Pat 09:44, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Just my opinion, but I don't think it would be appropriate to put those different things into one article. (Go ahead if you disagree with me, though.) That would be almost like having one article called "mouse" that talks about both the animal and the computer thingy.
    You could ask the requestor on their user talk page and see if you get a response. Or, you could just use your judgement: which do you think would make a useful Wikipedia article? Fly with it as if it's your own idea. Or possibly even have two articles, if you're inspired to do so and if the topics are notable: something like "Evidence storage unit (container)" and "Evidence storage unit (organizational unit)". (Or one of them could just be called "Evidence storage unit".) However, before creating such articles, check whether there are enough reliable sources that the topic(s) can be considered notable. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:20, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    In my view they are definitely two different subjects. However, I might end up doing one article on evidence management, and have, amongst others, two sections for containers and org units. There are PhDs on this stuff, so references will not be a problem, and have a disambiguation page or two for the possible "entry points". Pee Tern (talk) 23:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Examination of the page history shows that it was one of many additions made by Skysmith in [5]. The user is still active and can be contacted at User talk:Skysmith. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course. Thanks. Pee Tern (talk) 23:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Be bold. Add the disambiguation page and add both articles, since you and at least one other editor feel that we have two legitimate separate subjects. If you don't have time to expand both articles, leave one as a stub. -Arch dude (talk) 03:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Getting approval to use some one else's images?

    I have found some images in a published article on the WWW with their use acknowledged back to the image provider, not the author of the article. These images might be very useful in an article I am working on. In approaching the image provider to ask if they would be prepared to allow me to also use them in Wikipedia, is there a formal standard set of information about Wikipedia and questions I should put to the image provider, so that they know about Wikipedia's copyright and fair use regime etc.? And, to make it easy for them to say yes! (The image provider is a Government organisation so I am assuming that there will be no commercial issues.) Pee Tern (talk) 07:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Although I haven't actually done so, I would advise informing the copyright holder GFDL. Wisdom89 (T / C) 07:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think WP:COPYREQ answers your question. --teb728 t c 09:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Excellent. Thanks. Pee Tern (talk) 23:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Changing table text alignment

    When a table cell is larger than needed for the text it contains, the text is automatically vertically center-aligned. Is there a way to change it so that the text is top-aligned instead? I'm talking about like in this table--I want the text in the "Oceania," "Africa," and "Asia" columns to start at the top of the cell instead of floating in the middle. --CrazyLegsKC 07:41, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See m:Help:Table#Vertical_alignment.--Patrick (talk) 08:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks! :) --CrazyLegsKC 08:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


    How do you read deleted articles?

    Resolved
     – It was a different article.

    There was once an article called 'chakrology' which described chakras more concretely than the chakra article, even though I clarified some things in that article. I would like to read the old chakrology article, and I think some of it should be returned or moved to 'chakra.' How do I find it? Dchmelik (talk) 10:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi, are you sure you got the name right? :) The page "Chakrology" has no deleted version, it is redirected to Chakra#Chakra_models, and relevant content has been moved there. ;) You could see the old version before redirection here. Hope this helps. --PeaceNT (talk) 11:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I am pretty sure I recall another more recent version of the separate chakrology page. Maybe it was 'original or unverified research.' It was about the number of chakra petals equalling the number of nerve pairs up to the vertebra of that number (I had found it to be very useful because it makes much more sense than petals having to do with vibration, which can vary much.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dchmelik (talkcontribs) 13:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Is this it? Petal (chakra). • Anakin (talk) 14:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, and I had just found that. Apparently someone removed the link from the main article; I will return it.

    it support

    what is the maximum number of employees in a company could be served by one IT technical support —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.139.87.226 (talk) 10:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    This help desk is for questions about how to use Wikipedia. You might try asking your question at the reference desk. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    And of course the answer would depend on the company, the employees' technical skill, what software and hardware they are using or attempting to use, the technical support person's skill, etc. Many open source products such as Wikipedia itself get along without any designated technical support employees whatsoever, because the users themselves help each other. (Some users take a liking to answering Help desk questions, and building tools to improve the Help desk efficiency, but we come and go as we please.) If you work in technical support or supervise a support department, you would do well to study how Wikipedia's Help desk manages to deliver technical support which is at least as good as commercial support, and without having to pay anyone to do it. This is not to say it would be easy to set up a corporate wiki and get the whole company to work as efficiently as Wikipedia does, but if you could do that, the results would be as wonderful as what you see on this page. --Teratornis (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Userbox

    How can I upload my userbox onto the list? On my userbox list it's the French Canadian one. Speedboy Salesman (talk) 11:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi, could you clarify which item you would like to add to that article? :) Userboxes are used only in userspace (i.e. your user page/talk and their subpages) Also, French Canadian already has an infobox, so I'm not sure which box you're referring to. Cheers, --PeaceNT (talk) 11:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Where is your userbox list? Where is the list you want to load your userbox into? (Please provide links.) I'm not sure if you mean userbox or infobox. Sorry for not understanding your question. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Under my userboxes, underneath the India and EU one Speedboy Salesman (talk) 14:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Ah, look like I misread the question. Sorry. :) Look, I assume you mean
    This user has French Canadian ancestry.
    doesn't exist, unlike other boxes of the same type (e.g Template:User Germany , Template:User Greek etc) You can update the userbox list by clicking the red link Template:User French Canadian, copy and paste your own code (on your userpage) there then add the category Category: Ethnicity user templates to your newly-made template; the last step (but not a required one) will be to add {{User French Canadian}} to the list Wikipedia:Userboxes/Ethnic groups. That would do! Again, my apologies if that is not what you mean by the question. :) Best, --PeaceNT (talk) 14:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Quickest way to undo a redirect

    I redirected Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House to Blackwell (historic house), which I thought was a more encyclopedic title. A user has redirected it back. How can I most easily undo the edit? The user is only editing articles related to tourism in the Lake District of England and doesn't seem to understand the difference between tourism promotion and WP. Thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    What a mess! Conflict of interest, using Wikipedia for advertising and promotion, violation of the username policy, and a cut and paste move. I've stuck a {{uw-coi}} notice on their talk page but I'll leave the rest of this for an admin to sort out! Thanks for reporting this, Itsmejudith! :) • Anakin (talk) 13:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Wow, that's bad. Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen is the right place to report this as far as sorting out the redirect/move mess is concerned. (Reversing a redirect is normally easy (just use 'move'), but it won't work in this case because someone cut-and-pasted the move across at some point, and both articles seem to have history...) --ais523 13:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

    Question about afghania

    i don t know any province with name of afghania in pakistan.kindly correct it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.69.77 (talk) 12:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not sure which page you're suggesting needs a correction. The page Afghania is a redirect to the page "North-West Frontier Province", which says "The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, who have a majority in the NWFP government, have proposed Afghania as a compromise name." and has a footnote to support this statement. It looks OK to me.
    If you see something you believe is wrong, you can be bold and fix it yourself by clicking "edit this page" at the top, or you can click "discussion" at the top and put a note on the talk page suggesting a change. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I expect they are referring to the Pakistan article. In this case it does not appear to be wrong. Perhaps the province is named something different in this user's language, but Afghania (North-West Frontier Province) does exist and is one of the four provinces of the country. • Anakin (talk) 14:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


    water pressure & surges

    In the middle of January 2008 I asked a question about water pressure & surges and received several answers.I would like to view this again but cannot find it. only the current two weeks appear to be displayed

                            robd.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.238.70.70 (talk) 15:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply] 
    
    Is this the question? Harland1 (t/c) 15:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Renaming images

    I uploaded Image:525678357 a1f505b489 b.jpg and I forgot to put in a more descriptive name. How can I rename the image to a more descriptive file name? Save-Me-Oprah(talk) 15:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You can't rename images. Just reupload it with a better name and request deletion of the original with {{Db-redundantimage}} or something. Algebraist 16:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Please see Wikipedia:Image renaming βcommand 16:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't figure out what that page does. • Anakin (talk) 18:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    its an automated method of renaming images, see commons:Special:Contributions/BetacommandBot for an example. βcommand 18:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Vandalism report

    User YismachYisroel is deleting places where name of the God of the bible is stated explicitly as "Yahweh" in english or hebrew or other languages. As far as I know, by the jewish religion it is forbidden to write it, and I guess this is why he does it. I undid his 2 edits. --Itaj Sherman (talk) 16:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I just want to see him come in here and delete "Yahweh" in my complaint. --Itaj Sherman (talk) 16:44, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If the user continues, please leave a polite message/warning (better if it's personal first) explaining your reverts. If it continues or escalates level up the warnings. If they continue without answer best to report them to WP:AIV. If they do answer and do not agree with you, then it's most likely a WP:DR. Best to bring it up on the article's talk page too. Wisdom89 (T / C) 16:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    New page

    i would like to add a word that is not in wikipedia. how do i do that? thanks <email removed, read top of page> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.96.37.173 (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The pages at Help:Starting a new page and Wikipedia:Your first article should have most of the information you need. Before you begin, please carefully read through our policies and guidelines on notability, citing reliable sources for verification, neutrality, and formatting and article layout, where many new users commonly make mistakes. You may also want to consider checking out what Wikipedia is not, the deletion policy and criteria for speedy deletion so you know specifically what to avoid when writing your article. Please note also that Wikipedia is not a place to post newly created words, or neologisms. We also are not a dictionary, however if you find a missing definition of a real word in our sister project Wiktionary, you are welcome to add a dictionary definition there. Hersfold (t/a/c) 17:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Slavery

    The first line of the entry pertaining to slavery is an inappropriate reference to Fredrich Douglas. How can this be corrected? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.88.8.253 (talk) 16:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It appears as though it has been. In most cases, you can correct errors or vandalism such as this yourself by editing the page - unfortunately, Slavery has been vandalized recently, so is semi-protected against editing by unregistered users. Hersfold (t/a/c) 17:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    What is the exact name of the page you refer to? I don't see signs that Slavery has mentioned a "Fredrich Douglas". Is it an indirect reference which doesn't mention him and requires knowledge of him? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It was vandalism of {{Slavery}}, which is transcluded at the top of slavery. Algebraist 20:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Printing wih hypertext

    I work at a media library and help folks out when they get stuck on a computer issue. One man came to me trying to print an article off of your site. Now you folks have made it very simple to print and it is great, except that this man wanted to keep the hypertext highlighted. He likes to read the articles in bed and go through quickly, looking at the hypertext as resources. But you guys have no option of printing with the hypertext still highlighted. I was hoping you might be able to make that a printing option in the future. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.12.118.155 (talk) 18:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    If you do not select the "printable version", you will end up printing the page as-is, which includes all the hyperlinks being colored and underlined. The drawback is that the little nav menu is on the left side, making a rather large left margin. If you create an account, you can choose different "skins" in the "my preferences" section. There are skins that put the menu in a better place for printing. -- kainaw 19:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    What browser are you using, Kainaw? I've never actually printed a wikipedia page, but going by the print preview, both Firefox and IE will default to printing the printable version, whether you've chosen that option or not. Algebraist 20:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    problems viewing image page

    I'm here on behalf of someone else who is having an image problem. I requested that a flickr user release a photo of Christian Bale under a free license (which he graciously did), but now he's having problems seeing his image credit page. I can see it fine by clicking on the photo in the article infobox, but he says "When I click on the photo in Wikipedia it tries to open http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Christianbale.jpg, which produces the following error: "No file by this name exists; you can upload it. For more information, please see the file's log." " This is strange, because when I go to that link I see the image page just fine. He sees the image when I send him directly to the commons page at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Christianbale.jpg . Does anyone know what could be happening here? I want to make flickr contributors happy and eager to help again. :) Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It was a server cache problem. It gave me the same error when I tried it while logged out, but I purged the page and two seconds later it appeared. Hopefully it will work for him now too. • Anakin (talk) 20:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Colours in signatures

    I've noticed that people have different colours in their signatures (rather than the usual blue), how is this done? Thanks, George D. Watson (Dendodge).TalkHelp and assistance 19:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    A good way how to learn how to do anything is to click the "edit" button, see how it looks in the edit window, then press cancel again. For example, if you clicked on "edit" on any conversation above involving User:Hersfold, you'd see this:
    [[User:Hersfold|'''''<em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers</em><em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold</em>''''']] <sup>([[User:Hersfold/t|t]]/[[User:Hersfold/a|a]]/[[Special:Contributions/Hersfold|c]])</sup>
    What that user did was to go to Special:Preferences, and in the User Profile tab (1) checked the box saying "Raw signature" then (2) added the text above, with all its HTML code and wikilinks, to the "signature" box.
    A cheap-and-cheerful way of doing this, without learning loads of HTML and wikimarkup, is to look for another user with a style similar to the one you want, to copy it, and to play around with the result until you think it looks good. AndyJones (talk) 19:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    That exactly what i did. I got the same code from another user and played around with the color and stuff untill i got a nice thing im happy with :) BonesBrigade 03:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    You might see also Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting Text for general instructions on formatting text (changing font, color etc.) :) --PeaceNT (talk) 19:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If a signature has red links then it's usually because the pages have not been created. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know what it is, but I'm certain that there is a limit to the number of characters you can put in your raw signature. So, keep that in mind if you want to create an obnoxiously annoying one with a lot of colors. -- kainaw 19:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    There are also other editors who will object if your signature gets to be too long, because when editing, it's hard to parse all of the signature code to get to the real encyclopedia. Corvus cornixtalk 21:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    uploading a file

    I am trying to upload Dr. George Waring's biography on Wikipedia. (and seems like i may have done it 3 times already) however, when I search his name on the main page, nothing comes up.

    Reading under "my contributions", it advises to tag a copy right.

    how do i go about doing this? how can i make this page searchable and readable.

    many thanks for your help.

    Fariba19 (talk) 20:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You have uploaded PDF files into what is supposed to be an image (e.g. a JPG). To create an article, read Wikipedia:Your first article. Sbowers3 (talk) 20:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I've tagged it as a copyright violation for deletion. The bio was taken from his web site. • Anakin (talk) 22:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    how to remove phantom subheadings?

    In Talk:Alice Miller (psychologist) you can see below the boxes:

    • 1 More complete than the German counterpart
    • 2 Rating: Start-class

    These are no equivalent subjects in the discussion pages. In fact, if you click on them they take you nowhere.

    I believe the "More complete than the German counterpart" is an old post. But it's a phantom right now. How can I remove these two items so that the page looks neater?

    Cesar Tort 20:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The sections you are referring to are hidden in the WikiProject Biography template at the top of the talk page. Click the show button at the right. Wisdom89 (T / C) 20:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Oh! I see. Thanks. Is it OK with policy to relocate those posts in the main talk?

    Cesar Tort 20:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    if you want, you could relocate them to the archives for the talk page. Just cut and paste them. Wisdom89 (T / C) 20:58, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    thanks! I'll do it. —Cesar Tort 21:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    HOW DO I QUESTION AN ARTICLES IMPARTIALITY

    How do I question an article's impartiality or neutrality as I see it? How do I question the accuracy or logic of an article? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nickyfann (talkcontribs) 21:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Bring up your concerns on the article's talk page. Click the "discussion" button at the top left of your screen and start a new section by clicking "edit this page". Wisdom89 (T / C) 21:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Verifiability. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    New Article

    How do you start to set up a page for a new entry —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghteach (talkcontribs) 22:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines which all articles should comport with. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite to reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.
    Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.
    If you still think an article is appropriate, see Help:Starting a new page. You might also look at Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. Algebraist 22:39, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Using non "cc" photos for info use

    We really appreciate the info in "Wiki". We do some printing work using various world countries. We use maps from other sources but find some of 'your' photos very helpful in illustrating and learning about the country. This publication is sold to those who are interested in learning about these countries. There are no web links to this project whatsoever. Can you give us some direction on how to go about this project. Thank you in advance for your consideration in this matter.


    Harlan <e-mail removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.200.59.59 (talk) 22:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi there! I believe you are talking about re-using wikipedia's content in other places. If so, you should take a look at Copyrights: Reusers' rights and obligations. Hope this helps! --omtay38 00:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    In general, the whole idea of Wikipedia is to let you use these images. However, we sometimes get into a mess because we also want to use images from elsewhere here in Wikipedia. So, for most images, we can use them, and you can also use them. For some images, we can use them, but you cannot. For each image, click on the image. This takes you to the image page. the image page has the copyright information for that image. Most images are copyrighted, but some are public domain. Most copyrighted images are under a license that permits you to use them subject to your compliance with certain conditions. Please read and comply with the conditions. You are a publisher, so you realize that copyright holders such as yourself have rights. Please honor those rights. -Arch dude (talk) 02:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    trying to correct an error

    I added a fact to a page (Corn Mo) and you construed it as vandalism and reverted it. That's fine, but you didn't remove the whole addition and left it as an incorrect partial sentence. I tried to re-add the info, minus the link, and was warned again. So I tried to delete the entire phrase, in order to revert back to what was originally there and received an immediate and threatening warning. I am not trying to vandalize, only trying to correct an initial (well-intentioned) mistake.

    The reverted sentence now reads "In April of 2007, Corn Mo & the .357 Lover performed as the backing group for Andrew W.K. in Denton, Texas at the anniversary/book release party." It should simply read "In April of 2007, Corn Mo & the .357 Lover performed as the backing group for Andrew W.K. in Denton, Texas."

    I don't dare try to correct it again. Please stop yelling at me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.100.163.146 (talk) 22:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    This might be a clear breach of WP:BITE, if you are indeed new at this. I would drop a message on the talk page of the user and explain that you absolutely are not trying to distrupt wikipedia. Wisdom89 (T / C) 23:15, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I left a comment on your talk page addressing the issue. If it continues, I'll drop the user a line myself. Wisdom89 (T / C) 23:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I've left comments on the talk pages of the three users involved: User talk:66.100.163.146, User talk:Scarian, and User talk:Jacksinterweb. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Okay, it's been a misunderstanding... I've explained myself on the IP's talk page here: [6] and removed the IP's warnings here: [7]. - I didn't really think much of this... I did honestly believe it to be just a spammer... Apologies for any inconvenience caused. ScarianCall me Pat 02:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I didn't fully understand the situation, and over-reacted. I've apologized to Jacksinterweb on my talk page; apparently I thought the user was referring to a different edit from the one the user was actually referring to. I had rebuked Jacksinterweb in terms which were too harsh for the situation in any case, even if I had understood it correctly, and I apologize again for the criticism. I thank Scarian for taking my (somewhat less harsh) message in good part. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    February 15

    USING PROMOTIONAL/ENTERTAINMENT PHOTOS FROM 1940'S

    I have several photos from the 1940's (a couple are from the early 1950's, prior to 1953) for illustrating my wikipedia entry, "Dixie Roberts", which i am currently working on. This is my first entry, i am VERY new at this.

    The photos I have are all promotional photos that belong to Miss Roberts, she gave them to me to use for this purpose. Most of the images are just of her. However, one image is a promotional photo for the 1943 Ziegfeld Follies and shows 4 dancers: Miss Roberts, Penny Edwards, Mary Ganley and Pat Hall. The front of the photo has a logo on it, "Murray Korman, NY", but no copyright insignia. I would love to be able to post this one, especially, because of its historical value!

    Some of the other photos are stamped on the back, such as"AL. HAUSER PHOTOS, HOTEL ABBEY - 149 W.51 ST., N.Y. CIrcle 6-9400"; or "Bruno's of Hollywood, Thanks for credit" including addresses in NYC and Boston. One of the Bruno's photos has a charming stamp on the back, it says "PLEASE CREDIT BRUNO OF HOLLYWOOD, WE MAY BE ABLE TO RETURN THE COURTESY SOMETIME."

    One photo i would like to use has the following stamp on the back: FOTO FERNANDEZ, ARZ. MERINA No. 51, CIUDAD TRUJILLO."

    I am reasonably sure that I can use these photos, I am just not sure how to catagorize them.

    Thank you for any help you can give me! —Preceding unsigned comment added by MimiBelle (talkcontribs) 01:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You are entering a nightmare. This is NOT a situation caused by Wiklipedia. Current copyright law in the US (where the Wikipedia servers reside) is consistent with the Berne convention on copyright: copyrights belong to the photographer and the copyright exists automatically, with no need for formal registration. For works published in the US prior to about 1987 and never formally registered, the work may have fallen into the public domain, but I have not a clue as to how you can prove that. Works published in the US prior to 1923 are clearly in the public domain. The situation is an evil nasty mess that we must live with. Good luck. -Arch dude (talk) 02:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Click Template

    In addition to what I'm doing on Wikipedia, I am working on another Wiki using the Media Wiki platform. I use the Template:Click here but would also like to use it there. Is there a way to export this template to the other Wiki? —Preceding unsigned comment added by CarverM (talkcontribs) 03:48, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Sure, just copy the template source. Make sure you have the m:ParserFunctions extension installed, though. Good luck! Soxred93 | talk count bot 03:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    mw:Extension:ImageMap is better. Prodego talk 03:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    In case you didn't know, Prodego, {{Click}} uses Imagemap now. That reminds me, CarverM. You need Imagemap installed as well as Parserfunctions. Soxred93 | talk count bot 04:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, I did not, thanks for telling me. Prodego talk 21:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikicharts

    Any word on when it will be working or why it has not been working since late January? –thedemonhog talkedits 03:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The error message I get (Couldn't select DB: Unknown database 'u_leon_wikistats_p') seems that the database for the tool is down. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 03:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Everything that uses the toolserver is down. :-( I hope they get it fixed soon. • Anakin (talk) 01:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Log in / 'remember me' problems

    I've just today begun experiencing problems being kept 'logged in' to wikipedia. It seems that whenever I close my browser now, and then open it again and navigate to wikipedia, I've been logged out, and I have never encountered this before. I keep the 'remember me' box checked at log-in, and although I have my browser (Firefox) clear my browsing history and cache upon exit, it retains my cookies, which has kept me logged in to wikipedia previously. Does anyone know what is happening with my account being logged out? Any help is appreciated. Thanks. -albrozdude (talk) 05:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    In firefox under tools, options, security, do you have remember passwords checked off? Wisdom89 (T / C) 06:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I have that checked as well. The strange thing is that this started happening suddenly although I haven't changed any settings on my end. -albrozdude (talk) 13:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Happening to me too, on IE6, starting this morning. Must be a bug. --barneca (talk) 13:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I noticed that it happened to me at work just now after upgrading Firefox to the latest version. Did you recently do this? Wisdom89 (T / C) 19:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Happening to me for Firefox and IE7. Only if I type "en.wikipedia.org" into the address bar though. If I click on a link in my history, it shows I'm logged in. The only exception to this so far I've found is if I click on the Main Page in my history. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 19:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    This is happening to me also. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Windows XP. I haven't upgraded the browser lately and I haven't changed any settings. — Mudwater 21:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, I've changed nothing (no browser upgrades, setting changes). It just started yesterday for me, completely out of the blue. -albrozdude (talk) 21:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Same here, Firefox 2.0.0.12 also, tried a number of things such as clearing history and deleting cookies. Glad I'm not the only one getting this. --Zikar (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Regarding my website

    I notice that my research (non commercial) website has been blacklisted. I am totally confounded by this and request an explanation. I am considered an expert in the field of Proprioceptive Stimulation (Researcher for 37 years, Research Fellow at the prestigious facility associated with the Italian Ministry of Health)- See Feedback from Other Experts http://www.rothbartsite.com/Feedback.html

    Waiting your reply.

    Prof/Dr Brian A Rothbart —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.14.11.72 (talk) 06:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Please see the external links guidelines for more information; generally, sources should be reliable. Also, please see the conflict of interest policy to avoid having a conflict of interest. Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 07:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the main issue here might be WP:COI since you are the author of the external site, which if you read WP:EL are links to be avoided. However, it seems the user's work has been published in peer reviewed journals, so this is a tough one to field. MoP, is there a way that you can request white listing so it could be used as a cite? Wisdom89 (T / C) 07:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't understand: which site has been blacklisted? Obviously not the one you link to above. --teb728 t c 08:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm confused, too. Professor Rothbart, can you tell us why you think your site has been blacklisted? It seems possible that someone has misinformed you. AndyJones (talk) 08:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe you don't know what blacklisting means. See m:Spam blacklist/About and Wikipedia:Spam blacklist. A blacklisted url cannot be saved so http://www.rothbartsite.com is clearly not blacklisted. Is your complaint merely that links to the site have been removed after they were added? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I found it on a revertlist for a new bot at User:XLinkBot/RevertList. It's sort of a limited blacklist which doesn't prevent saving like the real blacklist. I don't know how it got there. Maybe somebody added many inappropriate links to the site. You can request removal at User talk:XLinkBot/RevertList. Note that a listing only causes a revert in some circumstances. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Undo while editting

    I used to be able to undo some changes I was making while editting, but the last couple of days it stopped working for me. Is there something I should enable in my preferences? Thanks, Crzycheetah 07:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Some edits cannot be undone--namely those in the same place where the text has been changed by a subsequent edit. I wonder if that may be your problem. What happens when you try to undo? —teb728 t c 08:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I am not trying to undo an already made edit. I am trying to edit a page and while my edit box is open I add new information, then at that time, let's say, I accidentally delete some information in the edit box and I want to right-click and click "undo" or just press "ctrl+Z" to get back the information I accidentally deleted. I used to do that, but now whenever I press "Ctrl+Z", nothing happens. My problem is that I have to start over my editting because of that.--Crzycheetah 08:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    That type of undo is a function in your browser or operating system. Wikipedia does not control how you write text in the edit box. Which browser are you using? Have you changed anything around when the problem started? Does undo never work at all? Does undo work in other programs? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Urine drinking

    I won't want to drink my own urine,instead I drink my wife's, is the therapy effect same? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.21.155.92 (talk) 08:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6.8 million articles and thought we were 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 for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about 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. —teb728 t c 09:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Viewing images on Wikipedia

    Hi,

    I can't view certain images that people post on Wikipedia, mainly flags. Such as the Northern Irish flag Ulster banner. I've cleared my cache and even changed from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox and I still can't see it... Help??? Speedboy Salesman (talk) 08:57, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It's possible that you have anti-virus software turned on that blocks those images for you.--Crzycheetah 09:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Some images on upload.wikimedia.org actually contain /ad/ in the URL of the file name, which commonly causes them to be blocked by ad-blocking software (or did they fix this?), although the examples you gave don't. I can't imagine what could block them across browsers. Here's something to try though: If in Internet Explorer, right-click on an image that won't load and click "Properties". Copy the URL of the image and paste it into the address bar directly. Or in Firefox, right-click on the image and click "View image". This will give you the actual file displayed directly. If it's being blocked by anything, it will display the message there. • Anakin (talk) 01:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Re: Article "Departments of France"

    I would be interested to know why the above mentioned page takes an inordinate amount of time to load. I am running on a new PC with a 2.3 ghz processor, 2 gb ram, Windows XP, IE version 6. Mike —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.202.45.160 (talk) 09:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Probably because it has a ton of images - each one takes time to download separately from the article text. Sbowers3 (talk) 09:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    CPA

    What are the different matrices of CPA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.200.33.226 (talk) 10:29, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Ask such questions at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. —teb728 t c 10:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Public domain?

    Is it allowable to use an image when there is a resonable belief that is in the public domain? The image in question is [8], which is an advertisement from a magazine from 1926. The company being advertised has not existed since 1936. According to our article on the subject, a work from that era would have passed into the public domain before 1978 if the copyright had not been renewed. It seems resonable to believe that this copyright was not renewed considering that the company had long since ceased to exist. I can imagine some counter-arguments to this logic.

    I think the key question is, can the image be used if the public domain rationale is reasonable but not certain? ike9898 (talk) 10:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You might want to try Wikipedia:Image copyright help desk. Algebraist 12:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, moving question there. ike9898 (talk) 14:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    problem

    Hi,

    I was trying to submit an article about Thermilate products and the admin deleted it straight after. I am an employee of Thermilate and I have a permission to use the information about our products.

    I have had another account, called Thermilate, but was said that there is a a problem and I cannot use that name.

    Can you tell me why I can't submite the information and how are we going to solve it?

    Thank you for your co-operation.

    Kind Regards,

    Harshy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Harshy (talkcontribs) 10:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi Harshy, the problem with your account, User:Thermilate, is that we don't usually allow the names of companies in usernames as it can be seen as promotional. See WP:USERNAME.
    Another problem is that you've admitted to being an employee of the said company which is a conflict of interest. It's not recommended that any user who is directly or indirectly involved in a company make an article about their company (And/or make major changes to an existing article about the company). Wikipedia is not an advertising service.
    The reason why the article was deleted was because it was a copyright violation of the company's site. We cannot use copy righted material here at Wikipedia.
    A good place to read up would be at Wikipedia:Introduction. I hope this helps. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. ScarianCall me Pat 11:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    deleted page

    A page about Davy King was recently deleted. He is a published & broadcast writer & performer. His work is in the legal deposit libraries.

    I wish to get the page back so it can be added to & re-edited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Curiousexplorer (talkcontribs) 11:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Please send me the code or contents of the page. If Wikipedia doesn't want it, someone else might be interested in the information.

    Yours truly,

    curiousexplorer —Preceding unsigned comment added by Curiousexplorer (talkcontribs) 11:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hello Curiousexplorer, after looking at the deleted page quickly it seems as though it was originally prodded for being a non-notable subject and thus deleted. User:Rudget deleted the article a second time for being a WP:TEST article. Try reading Wikipedia:Introduction to get a better idea on how to write articles. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. ScarianCall me Pat 11:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I see you have now created Davy King. The former version with content was deleted by User:Tone who can be contacted at User talk:Tone. It appears from [9] that you are Davy King. Writing a Wikipedia:Autobiography is strongly discouraged. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Untitled

    hi, i was just wondering if when you edit a page will it become visibal to everyone who seeks the infomation?

    and will you be able to check if my 'Shes Britney Bitch' article is visible yet. you can locate my article if you search for Britney Spears and my article is the first.

    Many thanks, --Jordan Hale 12:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95jordan95 (talkcontribs) 07:39, 15 February 2008

    Yes, as soon as you make an edit it's visible to everyone instantly. Your "article", judging by the title, would've been deleted almost immediately. Please read Wikipedia:Introduction for a guide on how to use Wikipedia. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. ScarianCall me Pat 12:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    (ec)Yes, it does become visible immediately. And thanks for asking because it let me remove your edit quickly. The encyclopedia is not a place for personal opinion; it is a collection of facts from verifiable reliable sources. Before you edit another word of the encyclopedia please read WP:NPOV and perhaps WP:Introduction and WP:Tutorial. We welcome new editors but we do have our way of doing things and we expect editors to abide by our policies and guidelines. Sbowers3 (talk) 13:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    nation rural emloyment gaurantee scheme by indian govt

    knowledge about nation rural emloment gaurantee scheme by indian govt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.134.216.83 (talk) 13:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) or a Google search on "National Rural Employment Gurantee Act". Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Great Depression

    I was unable to EDIT the first part of - Great Depression.

    (GOP or R) should follow Herbert Hoover's name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lvken7 (talkcontribs) 14:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Great Depression is semi protected so if you were editing from an IP then you couldn't edit it, but your account is old old enough to edit it. So try again making sure that you are logged in. Harland1 (t/c) 14:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If the problem is that you don't know how to edit the top section, click "edit this page" on the top of the screen. All the other sections have [edit] next to the heading, but the top section doesn't so you have to edit the entire page. Sbowers3 (talk) 15:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    You can get an edit link for the introduction of a page at Gadgets in Special:Preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    And see: Help:Section#Section editing. --Teratornis (talk) 20:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Login Swelter

    Hello! I tried to login (User: Swelter) but I forgot the pass. The problem is I haven't left an email there. So I can't get a new pass. Can you please delete my user-profile so that I can create a new one? Or can you send me a new pass to <email removed>? Thanks a lot! Mirko Krimmel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.199.188.45 (talk) 14:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Unfortunately, there is no way to delete your account, nor is there a way for anyone to reset your password. You will need to create a new account for yourself, however you may edit your old user page at User:Swelter to redirect to your new one. Hersfold (t/a/c) 14:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Creating a new account is the easiest for both you and Wikipedia. If you really want to keep the user name then you can try requesting usurpation. I don't know what the response would be when there are 3 unused edits from 2006 [10] to a later redirected page. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia talk:Sandbox

    Why is this page always being blanked? :| I thought that only WP:SAND was the sandbox. D: ö 163.153.198.236 (talk) 15:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The talk page is also considered the sandbox, so people can test with talk pages too. If you want to bring up a concern about the Sandbox, bring it up at Wikipedia talk:About the Sandbox. Good luck! Soxred93 | talk count bot 15:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Many new users are going to use the Sandbox talk page for testing whether or not it's intended for it. Accepting this seems a lot easier than trying to use it as a real talk page where tests would have to be manually identified and reverted, and the page history would become a mess. You can use Wikipedia talk:About the Sandbox instead to discuss the Sandbox. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Commercial DVD as reference

    I would like to add information (filmography and additional facts)to an article about Darby Lloyd Rains that are from a commercial DVD. How do I cite the reference for that since the DVD is not "published" in the conventional way?

    Citclab —Preceding unsigned comment added by Citclab (talkcontribs) 15:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    There is a way to do it, actually. Check out the video section on the citation template page. Noah 15:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The link direct is {{cite video}}, but as Noah says, every citation template you could possibly need is in the link he provided. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 19:29, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    editing and then printing an article

    I am doing some research on the Book of Job and would like to print out your page to help me get started, but when I just hit Print, it prints the entire website picture, which contains only part of the edited article.

    How do I make a printer friendly copy of an article?

    o/o Carol —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carol251 (talkcontribs) 16:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Try the "Printable version" link that is in the left hand column (in the Toolbox section). Noah 16:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Logging in

    I hope this is the right place to ask...

    Every time I close IE or Firefox and then reopen one of them to come back to Wikipedia I have to retype my password, even though "remember my password" is checked. It started happening yesterday when I had Verizon put in. Before then I never had to log back in. From searching the internet I'm assuming it's something to do with cookies or a firewall, but I don't know how to fix it. It's a problem with Wikipedia only. With all other websites I'm logged back in fine. - Can anyone help please? -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 17:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See this section a little bit up the page. I'm guessing it's a bug. Oddly enough, doesn't appear to be a problem when I use IE7 on a different computer; either it's fixed, or it's browser-dependant. --barneca (talk) 18:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It's doing it in IE7 for me. The funny thing is, if I type "en.wikipedia.org" into the address bar, I have to log in. If I click on a Wikipedia page in the history (except for Main Page), it shows me already logged in. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 19:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I replied with this message above as well. I noticed that this happened to me at work just now after upgrading Firefox to the latest version. Did any of you recently do this? This might be the problem - kinda of a cache dump. Wisdom89 (T / C) 19:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No. But I did install software from Verizon yesterday as I just got a new broadband provider. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 19:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    That been happening to me too. I also just upgraded to the new firefox and its been only happening since then. BonesBrigade 03:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Being logged out. --hydnjo talk 13:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Creation

    Maybe I missed it but I have a few topics I would like to Add to wiki. How do I create a new subject definition? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edemardil (talkcontribs) 18:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines which all articles should comport with. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite to reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.
    Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.
    If you still think an article is appropriate, see Help:Starting a new page. You might also look at Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. —teb728 t c 18:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't forget either, that Wikipedia is a wiki, but Wiki is not necessarily Wikipedia. Soxred93 | talk count bot 22:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    How do I create a link to an image without actually causing the image to appear? There are a few explicit images that I want to report to WP:AN asking that they be added to MediaWiki:Bad image list, but I don't know how to add the links to the page without causing the images to appear.--Urban Rose 19:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Add a colon to the start of the link, thus: Image:Example.jpg. This also works with category and interwiki links. Algebraist 19:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    GFDL

    how do i apply or get license asap Henslee57 (talk) 19:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It’s not what you are asking, but I suspect that what you want is advice on how to avoid deletion of your article on the Guerilla Marketing Talk Radio radio program. Your article needs to demonstrate the notability of the subject with references in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. —teb728 t c 20:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If that was not it then please be more specific about what you want. Maybe GFDL, WP:GFDL or something at Wikipedia:Copyrights is of help. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Template

    Would i be fine adding this userbox {{User:Terra/Section 56/Userbox}} template, on Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia in section 10 where it includes user's own made userboxes, i was going to add it, without asking but thought it may be best to ask first. Terra Terra's talkpage 20:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It's hard for me to think of any objection, but the only way to be sure is to ask on User talk:Terra. You might as well, out of courtesy. I can't see any harm in asking. --Teratornis (talk) 20:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Why ask on my own talkpage when i would be the only one seeing it. Terra Terra's talkpage 20:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I've just added it to section 10 on Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia. Terra Terra's talkpage 20:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Oops, I misread the question. The phrase "this userbox" had me thinking it was someone else's userbox (ordinarily people use "my" somewhere to refer to something they themselves made or possess), and "to ask" (without the "where") had me thinking you were going to ask on that user's talk page. My last chance to catch my error would have been to pay attention to your signature, but I find I have a harder time reading customized signatures. All the different fonts and color tend to throw me off. Yeah, that's my excuse. Stupidity on my part may have also been an issue. --Teratornis (talk) 20:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    putting a picture into my draft article

    I want to upload my own pictures into an atricle i am drafting. These pictures are in my own computer, taken by myself, and I have no problem in putting them in the public domain. How do I get these pictures from my computer file into my draft user subpage?Adrian142 (talk) 20:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    • If you want to add an existing image to an article, type [[Image:File name.jpg|right|Optional caption.]] to the article – replacing File name.jpg with the actual file name of the image, right with the alignment of the image on the page and Optional caption with the caption, which of course, is optional. See our picture tutorial for more information.
    • If you want to upload an image from your computer, to put in an article, you must find out what license the image is licensed under. If you know your image is licensed under a free-license, upload it to the Wikimedia Commons, where all projects have access to the image. If you are unsure what license your image is licensed under, see the file upload wizard for more information. Also, please read Wikipedia's image use policy, because if you upload the image under a false license, you may be blocked.
    Hope this has helped. Xenon54 20:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The above (canned?) answer might be confusing to someone who created his or her own images. In that case, the user is the person who gets to choose a suitable license. (As an aside, this is another reason why I would like to modify the standard response templates so they clearly look like messageboxes, rather than looking like they are spontaneous replies.) --Teratornis (talk) 20:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    we use "cammed" answers because we are volunteers: There are only a few of us. To the original questioner: If you own it, then you may upload it under the appropriate license. After you upload it, you may it to any article.-Arch dude (talk) 05:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand why we use canned answers, and I don't use the term as a pejorative; I was one of the people who suggested organizing and expanding our early collection of these templates. I think these templates would be more effective if they clearly identified themselves as templates, for these reasons:
    • The Help desk must continuously recruit new volunteers to replace experienced volunteers who move on to other work. Since we have no formal training program for Help desk volunteers, they must educate themselves. We have a page of instructions, but I suspect the main training resource for new volunteers is the Help desk itself - they learn to answer questions by reading other users' answers. If standard response templates display themselves like ordinary human-written text, new volunteers may take longer to realize we have standard response templates.
    • People who ask questions on the Help desk are themselves potential users of templates. They may become Help desk volunteers eventually, or they may recognize a use for standard response templates in some other part of Wikipedia. If they don't recognize a standard response template for what it is when they see one here, we may delay their recognition of this useful technique.
    • Templates that look like messageboxes can use some helping templates that add links to make them easy to edit.
    • Wikipedia is for the most part a transparent system. Not only is it possible to see how almost everything on Wikipedia works, Wikipedia facilitates this by providing visible clues that encourage exploration. We are not being as transparent as possible if we substitute a template that looks like a human-edited reply. I don't see any benefit from trying to fool people. Showing people that we use standard response templates conveys important meta-information about Wikipedia:
      • Some questions come up so often that we have canned answers for them. We know this, but brand-new users might not. New users should realize they are on a well-trodden path, and a big part of learning Wikipedia is learning how to look up answers to questions.
      • We have an efficient mechanism for handling repetitive work. A new user might later run into some different repetitive problem amenable to similar methods.
      • Canned replies have to be general, and thus might contain some information not relevant to a user's situation. If the canned reply clearly identifies itself as such, the potential for misunderstanding decreases - we would be telling the user to use some judgment when reading the reply.
    Again, I don't see anything wrong with telling people we are giving them canned replies. Everyone who uses Wikipedia should realize they're not paying $100/hour for commercial support, we're doing it all for free, so we have to use every possible method to reduce our labor. And we have some pretty clever methods. I'm proud of our methods and I think we should promote them. Anyway, the least disruptive way for me to illustrate my point would be to make alternate versions of some of our standard response templates that look like messageboxes. Then our volunteers can use whichever style of template they prefer, possibly leading to an eventual consensus when we might choose to standardize our collection on style or another. Since we need all the volunteers we can get, the last thing I want to do is alienate anyone. --Teratornis (talk) 21:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Reporting bugs?

    With regards to the problems mentioned earlier here and here, is there a technical help desk to report Wikipedia bugs? -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 21:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The process for bug reports and feature requests for Wikimedia is described on this page. Noah 21:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I've got a question...

    I came across this (01:50, 5 February 2008 (hist) (diff) m Wikipedia:Non-administrator rollback‎ (Remove random line) (top)) and removed the phrase strike through text, but I don't know what stuff like this is about. Can someone tell me please? Andrew Kanode (talk) 21:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It was added by User:Random832 here, probably as a result of accidentally clicking the 13th button above the edit window. Algebraist 21:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe you are asking about the markup: If you add "<s>strike through text</s>" in the edit window, you get "strike-through text" in the article. —teb728 t c 22:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks! Andrew Kanode (talk) 01:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I had uploaded our U's logo. It is named University_of_Northwestern_Ohio_logo.jpg earlier today and it seemed to work. I went ahead and put it into the article and all seemed well there too. Now it is later and I wanted to add some more content. I noticed that the logo image was "X"ed out in IE. When I went back to the logo page, it was "X"ed out there too, the link was now broken, like the file wasn't there anymore. I'm not sure now how to fix it. I would like to upload a couple more pictures but I want to make sure that I'm doing it correctly. Can someone look at what I've done to see if I did something wrong so that I upload the other pictures correctly? Or, do I just need to upload and replace again?

    Thanks for any help you can provide.  :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by LeBlancJ (talkcontribs) 21:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It would appear Firefox does not like displaying the image or the server doesn't like serving it. I get this error when clicking on the link in the image page: The image “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/University_of_Northwestern_Ohio_logo.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors." You might try re-uploading it. Noah 22:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It doesn't look like it's uploaded properly. Image:University of Northwestern Ohio logo.jpg is a red "x". You probably saw it when you first uploaded because it was still in your computer's cache memory. Corvus cornixtalk 22:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    There is definitely something goofy with the version you uploaded. I was able to download it by right-clicking and doing Save As. I then opened the jpeg and resaved it (using Gimp), it went from 500kb to 8kb. I would recommend doing the same thing. Noah 22:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The second version you uploaded was somehow broken. I reverted to the first. —teb728 t c 22:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for you all's help! After looking at the image again, there was definately something wrong with it as it was given to me. I opened it in GIMP and resaved it. Now the file size looks correct. Maybe there was some artifact left in it from when the marketing guys were constructing it. Just uploaded it again. Hopefully all is well now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LeBlancJ (talkcontribs) 15:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Permanently block my IP address

    I am the tech administrator for a private school in California, and none of the edits from our shared IP addresses have been useful. To discourage these sorts of edits while still allowing access to wikipedia, I was wondering if there is any way to permanently block our IP address from anonymous edits. That way if someone wants to make a useful edit, they can do so using an account. Thanks!

    Ampersand17 (talk) 22:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See Wikipedia:Blocking policy. I don't know the IP's in question but we don't like blocks to hit innocent people. It can take a lot to block a shared IP address, and such blocks are rarely long. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    At my school, the IP adress is registered as something which makes people log in before they edit. When I forget to log in and try to edit, a Wikipedia page comes up with a template on it that states I have to log in to make a contribution. I will look on Monday and see if I can help. In the mean time, does anyone know what I'm talking about? Zrs 12 (talk) 00:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, in the event of shared IP addresses or school addresses, a "soft block" can be made that only blocks non-registered users. However, the blocking policy specifically states "IP addresses should rarely, if ever, be blocked indefinitely." Many people prefer to make anonymous contributions for various reasons, but still edit constructively. Those people cannot edit if their IP is indefinitely soft blocked. Admins also do not block on request of the intended blockee. Hersfold (t/a/c) 00:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, the best way to do this would be for you, as tech administrator, to block your computers (or network control point) from accessing URLs at wikipedia.org containing "&action=edit". That will stop all editing from your network, but sill allow reading Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Prodego (talkcontribs) 03:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    That approach would block logged-in as well as anonymous edits. —teb728 t c 03:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Well yes, but I assume that is the idea here, no? Block Wikipedia editing in general. Prodego talk 03:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Read the original post. —teb728 t c 03:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    "Reply here" talk page convention?

    I prefer not to have conversations split across talk pages. If a user posts to my talk page, then I prefer to respond there; if I post to another user's talk page, I ask them to respond there and I watch the page for a while. Explicitly stating this policy in every new conversation is tedious, and there must be other editors who agree. But I haven't found any standardized etiquette, convention, guideline, user talk page template, etc. that expresses it. Is there one? (Reply here, if you like. ;) Joshua R. Davis (talk) 23:30, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    {{Usertalkback}}, when placed on the top of your talkpage, will alert users to your talkpage procedures. See the template page for details on parameters - it can be modified to suit anyone's preferences.Xenon54 00:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    You might also find WP:MULTI helpful. It links to a single point within the talk page guidelines. CounterFX (talk) 12:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, both of you. Joshua R. Davis (talk) 16:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    flyordie was deleted

    one of the admins Andronic deleted this article because he said it was not important who <personal attack removed - Corvus cornixtalk 00:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Chip1990 (talkcontribs) 23:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Always WP:AGF. It was deleted under WP:SD I'm assuming. Those are tagged by users, placed in a category and then admins delete them if they meet the criteria for speedy deletion. What was the given violation on your talk page? Wisdom89 (T / C) 00:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually it was deleted for not asserting / indicating importance, not because it "wasn't important". See Wikipedia:Notability (web) for the criteria for web sites. • Anakin (talk) 01:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    And see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest if you are associated with the site. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:59, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    February 16

    Wikiquote template

    Do we have a mainspace template that basically says, "please consider moving this quotes section to Wikiquote instead." I'm pretty sure we have one, but I don't know how to find it.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 00:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes: Template:Copy to Wikiquote and Template:Copy section to Wikiquote. • Anakin (talk) 01:49, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 03:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Rename to simple redirect not working

    I just tried to rename "Yellow Fever (Hot Tuna album)" to "Yellow Fever (album)", per the guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums#Naming. I got a message saying "The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid...." The new name is a redirect page with no prior versions in its edit history, so I thought that this move should work. Thanks in advance for any help or insight. — Mudwater 01:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You can move on top of a redirect only if it is a redirect to the article you are trying to move. In this case only if "Yellow Fever (album)" redirected to "Yellow Fever (Hot Tuna album)". So you'll have to request a move. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I didn't know that. Thanks! — Mudwater 01:48, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No need to request it, I have done it for you. Prodego talk 01:49, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Editing Question

    I am a Master chess player and writer who is attempting, for the first time, to edit your excellent chess page, with a minor revision, in the post-1945 section.

    I make my changes, click save, but find that the entire section seems to be absent.

    Please advise.

    Thank you very much.

    Andrewjsacks (talk) 04:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The edits worked just fine; the changes are there: [11]. It might be a page caching problem: try refreshing the page. That said, the changes you've made so far seem to suffer from WP:PEACOCK problems; please glance over that essay briefly. The Evil Spartan (talk) 04:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Logging out everytime I close my Browser

    Everytime I close FireFox I log out...same thing happens with IE. I clicked "Remember me". I've never had this issue before...help! Knowitall (talk) 04:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hey there! Thanks for using the help desk. Hmm, sounds tricky. Try going to the Tools menu, then click Options. Go to the Privacy tab and make sure "Accept cookies from sites" is checked and "always clear my private data when I close Firefox" is unchecked. This should help. Good luck! Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 05:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm starting to experience the same problem using Internet Explorer. First it was just the French Wikipedia, then the English one started to do it. Now the German one has just started to. In all three cases they have started to forget my password within hours and, presenting me with my name only, expect me to put in the password manually, which they only did before on infrequent occasions (about once a fortnight, I seem to remember).
    Alternatively, I can re-enter my name, in which case my computer remembers the password perfectly easily -- so it's not that!
    As it doesn't apply to all pages, I imagine it might have something to do with the recent software upgrade. Could that be it? --PL (talk) 10:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    PS
    It doesn't apply, for example, to Simple English Wikipedia, which is working as normal. Moreover, if I enter the wrong password here, ignore the resulting error screen and simply press 'Back', I find that I'm unaccountably signed in, and able to edit and sign off as usual, just as I am doing now. And decreasing the privacy protection makes no difference!
    So it would seem that some kind of error has developed in Wikipedia's software. Who needs to be told? --PL (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I did what MoP suggested (the options were already correctly set), and this problem still occurs for me. I am also using Firefox. ~ UBeR (talk) 17:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Ditto except I'm using IE. As the problem occurred after the switch to the new server, I'd have to assume Occam's razor. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;dissera! 02:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I would (humbly) suggest that you all uncheck your various gadget options, maybe un-install your twinkles and AWB's, purge your browser cache, then manual-delete any cookies related to en.wikipedia (or anything-wiki-anything). Then reboot and try again before re-ticking any options. Go back to the bottom and try there. Franamax (talk) 02:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Uh, not applicable. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;dissera! 04:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Simple English Wikipedia is working fine, without any of that. So, curiously, is Wikipedia itself this morning (though not the French version). My computer and browser haven't changed: Wikipedia's software evidently has (unless the problem has now been solved). --PL (talk) 10:43, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Being logged out. --hydnjo talk 13:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks. Evidently it's not just me/us, then! Same thing in French and German, too. --PL (talk) 16:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    children on wikipedia

    Can you tell me what service you are doing by allowing people to view what's consider to be kiddie porn on wikipedia? I was horrified to see the controversial cover for virgin killer posted on wikipedia. When our kids are searching for different rock bands they've seen a link for they should never be subjected to any profane, never mind illegal, images! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.65.51.71 (talk) 05:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi! Please note that Wikipedia is not censored, and users should browse at their own discretion. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! 05:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't want my young children to see such images either (of course, at some point neither of us are going to keep them out of used record shops). However, I also understand why Wikipedia has the censorship rule. As a compromise I point my children to the 2007 Wikipedia Selection for schools. Noah 09:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If readers of this page are curious about past discussions about this particular image they they should go read Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_November_27. Noah 09:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Gonintendo Article

    Hello my name is DanJ and I am trying to create an article on a popular site Gonintendo. I was wondering if you could stop the people deleteing the article because the article is not small at all as they think. I even got permission from the guy who runs the site. I am not trying to be mean or anything but I just want to make this article but everytime I try to it gets deleted please help thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DanJ (talkcontribs) 06:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    According to the deletion log at Gonintendo, the page has been deleted a total of six times, most recently for WP:CSD#A7 and WP:CSD#A3. What this means is that the article did not establish why the site was important enough to be in Wikipedia, that is, its notability. In addition, it contained very little information, and was essentially a dictionary definition or entirely links to the site or other pages. If you would like more time to fully develop your article, you may do so on a user subpage such as User:DanJ/Gonintendo. As long as you are working on the article and remain active, that page will not be deleted, allowing you to work on your article until it meets the guidelines I've outlined above. Also, make sure that you write the article in your own words - text copied from another site will be considered a copyright violation and will be removed, even if the owner allows its use on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is mirrored elsewhere, so we cannot guarantee that the text will appear on Wikipedia only. For more help, you can check the links I've provided, or see our help page on writing your first article. I hope this helps! Hersfold (t/a/c) 07:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I want to change the title of a page i have created

    I have created the roses,kings,castle page and was wondering how i change that title? i was also wondering whay, with the current title roses,kings,castles you can only find the page when typing it in precisely corrent in the search engine? when other pages can be found more easily —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 11:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The page can be moved to a new location, but only by confirmed (ie. not-brand-new) editors. What page do you want to move it to? GBT/C 11:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    i want the title to be Roses Kings Castles (i.e. no commas) and i want it to appear on search results more easily (i.e. even if someone adds commas or whatever they can still find it..) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 11:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I've moved it for you . I'm not a great expert on the search function, so maybe someone else can help answer this one? In the meantime, I'm not sure the band meets the notability criteria - have a read of this page which sets out a bit more detail about what is required. GBT/C 11:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    oh thanks! oh i'm not sure about the notability thing. i've been asked to set this page up by adam ficek the musician. he's in babyshambles a major UK band (top 5 album and singles in charts) and his solo stuff is also used by the band on their Uk tours so its got a big fanbase. do you know how i can get the notibility thing so its not deleted? the help page seems pretty complicated —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 11:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Having taken a very quick look, I suspect it may squeeze in under Contains at least one member who was once a part of or later joined a band that is otherwise notable; note that it is often most appropriate to use redirects in place of articles on side projects, early bands and such.. If they haven't released any albums as yet, can you link to any independent coverage from reliable sources - newspaper reviews, etc.? GBT/C 11:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    yeah got a link here from NME magazine (one of the UK's biggest music magazine's) http://www.nme.com/news/babyshambles/32742 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 11:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Ok...pop it in the article, then. It all helps. GBT/C 11:48, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    ok thank you. it is still titled Roses Kings Castles.. yes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 11:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Nope, another editor has moved it back to Roses, Kings, Castles saying, in the edit summary, that that is the correct title of the band. GBT/C 11:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    ok. i'll ask adam later.. he should know what he wants it called! thanks for the help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 11:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    (ec)According to your source, the group's name is "Roses, Kings, Castles" (with commas). I have Moved the article to that name. It can still be found by Go-ing to "roses kings castles" (without commas and lower or upper case) because there are redirects from the other names.

    You have a reference to NME magazine. References are best if they are part of the article itself, not mentioned on a Talk page or here on the Help desk. Notability requires references from reliable sources. It is not a subjective personal judgment; it requires objective evidence in the form of significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. A link to MySpace, for instance, is not independent; a link to NME is independent and would help to demonstrate notability. Sbowers3 (talk) 12:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    so the NME article gives the page notability? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 12:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It's a start. A single reference doesn't show notability. Per WP:Notability: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." More than one reference would show "significant" coverage. Sbowers3 (talk) 12:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    ok i understand. Is the NME article + the fact that roses,kings,castles 'Contains at least one member who was once a part of or later joined a band that is otherwise notable; note that it is often most appropriate to use redirects in place of articles on side projects, early bands and such' enough to ensure the page wont be deleted? sorry about all the Q's, i'm very thankful for the help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 12:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Categorising a page

    having set up the Roses, Kings, Castles page, it says it is 'uncategorized'. is it necessary to categorize the page, and if so how do i do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenlovesam (talkcontribs) 13:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi Greenlovesam. There are links on that "uncategorized" notice directing you to Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Categorization FAQ. However, those pages on instructions are perhaps too much to take in at once (and I've never read through them in three years). Essentially, categorisation allows people to find articles much more easily, so what you (or someone) ought to do is add whatever categories you think the article naturally falls into. Try browsing through Category:Music to find suitable categories. When you find suitable ones, the syntax is "[[Category:Music]]", and they go at the end of the article.--86.149.54.221 (talk) 13:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.68.47.105 (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Changing/editing name of article

    How can I change or edit the name (title) of an article - in particular one that I, myself, have initiated? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.103.182.217 (talk) 16:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See WP:MOVE. Jacek Kendysz 16:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you first have to log in as a registered user. It's super-easy to register an account name (as long as you can think up a name that isn't taken yet!) Just click log in/register at the top right of the screen. See Wikipedia:Why create an account? and Help:Logging in. Once you're logged in, I think whenever you're at a page that can be moved, that is, almost any article, you'll see a tab at the top of the screen marked "move", between the "history" tab and the "watch" tab (which is another tab that appears when you log in). If you don't see these, maybe that's one of the things that you only get after you've had your login account for 4 days. Anyway, once you're able to see the "move" tabs, just go to the article and then click "move" and you can easily rename the article. Feel free to ask me at my talk page or ask here again if you have any trouble; perhaps I or someone else can move the page for you if you can't. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:ACCOUNT lists several editing features that only registered users have, and the only one of these the WP:ACCOUNT page lists as having a four-day waiting period is the ability to edit a semi-protected page. That suggests the new account immediately gains the ability to move pages. (Of course, it is possible for a help page to lag behind feature changes on Wikipedia. When someone changes a feature on Wikipedia, some time may elapse before other users update all the help pages to reflect the change.) --Teratornis (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Frequent Logouts

    Recently, I keep getting logged out of WP every two hours or so, even though I have checked "Remember me". The session usually does not expire that quickly. Any reason for this? --Schzmo (talk) 17:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm suffering from this as well, it's quite annoying. Knowitall (talk) 18:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    You two aren't the only ones. I think someone should report this. STORMTRACKER 94 Go Sox! 19:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm just making a wild guess, but could it have anything to do with autoblocks combined with switching from one IP address to another if you're using shared IP's? (I don't know if that's possible or not. Maybe an autoblock would necessarily mean you can't edit at all. I'm not sure. What if it's an autoblock that only keeps out non-logged-in users, if there's such a thing?) --Coppertwig (talk) 21:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not on a shared IP address, and I only use this account. There have been no blocks on my IP. This may be another problem. STORMTRACKER 94 Go Sox! 22:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Being logged out --hydnjo talk 13:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Being logged out, Wikipedia:Help desk#Logging in, Wikipedia:Help desk#Interesting log in problem, Wikipedia:Help desk#Logging out everytime I close my Browser, Wikipedia:Help desk#Frequent Logouts, and others I'm sure. --hydnjo talk 21:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Proper Band Templates

    I noticed that on the template for some bands, such as ABBA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:ABBA), they list all, or the majority of the singles that said band has released. However, on some other bands, such as Queen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Queen), they're left out. I'd assume they're suppose to be there but I'm not sure, can someone clarify this? Or does it depend on how big the template is already, etc.? 71.7.137.46 (talk) 17:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Template:Queen links to Template:Queen singles. I think it would become too large for a navigation box together. Template:Queen by itself is already larger than Template:ABBA. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Making an anchor and referencing it...

    Hi,

    I've tried doing this for hours, and no dice.

    I'd like to make an anchor beginning at a subsection--section 3.1 in The Holocaust. It is a crucial, reasoned section on how the # of victims can be estimated.

    There are so many disparate numbers floating around in so many articles, with so many different cites (if given at all, some with endless disputes) that it would be worthwhile to refer readers to a solid discussion.

    I would also need to know how to make the reference to that anchor :) ...

    Thanks a lot,---Shlishke (talk) 20:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    How about this:
    or this
    The interwiki version would be The_Holocaust#Victims_and_death_toll which you can make look better by doing [[The_Holocaust#Victims_and_death_toll|Holocaust death toll]] which creates this link: Holocaust death toll
    Noah 20:15, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    See: Help:Link#Section linking (anchors). --Teratornis (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that links to section headings will break if the section name changes (they work if the whole article is moved). You could create a redirect at Holocaust death toll with the text:
    #REDIRECT [[The Holocaust#Victims and death_toll]] {{R with possibilities}}
    If the redirect is later pointed to a new target or becomes an article then all pages using the redirect will go there. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I made the redirect myself. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Removing NFCC#10C warnings

    A user has the mistaken opinion that {{non-free logo}} by itself qualifies as a non-free use rationale, and has a habit for removing NFCC#10C warnings from images like Image:Euskal Herritarrok logo.jpg. I don’t want to get into a revert war with him. What should be done? --—teb728 t c 21:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Apparently you're talking about Sugaar and you've already had a discussion with the user via user talk page. I have a few ideas. Unfortunately I can't help you much because I don't feel I know much about fair use rationale policy -- maybe other help desk answerers can help. But one idea is for you to find a good fair use rationale for a logo, (or fix up one of the images Sugaar is concerned with: add a rationale yourself) and show it to Sugaar, so that Sugaar will know how to do it. Another idea is to try to get other people to comment. Maybe posting here is enough for that. Wait -- I just found a page which may be just what you want: try posting at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. I suggest you ask there whether the tags Sugaar wants to use are good enough (even though you already know the answer), then show the answer to Sugaar. You might want to wait a short while first to see if anybody else answers here. I hope this helps. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    As you say I could easily provide a rationale myself. But unless I monitor all of his edits, that does nothing about his disruption. This is not the only image he has removed warnings from. —teb728 t c 22:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Public barnstar: you guys who give help are the best

    I thought someone should simply put that as the entire message and subject heading.

    ---Shlishke (talk) 21:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks. I think it's great how everybody helps everybody else out here. The ones asking for help are also helping, by adding content to the encyclopedia. :-) Go Wikipedia. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks! Per above! --The Helpful One (Review) 21:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks! PrimeHunter (talk) 21:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Man, that would be a lot of barnstars to dish out if done individually : ) Wisdom89 (T / C) 22:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia's Help desk works as well as any technical support I have seen in 20 years of computing, and I have experience with commerial support as both a user and a provider. I'm amazed not by just the quality and speed of answers, but even more by the fact that it's all done by volunteers. In the corporate world, technical support tends to be such miserable work that few people view it as their career of first choice, and the burnout rate is high. But on Wikipedia, answering questions is actually fun. Also on Wikipedia, we can easily build tools to improve our efficiency at answering questions, such as the Editor's index, the standard response templates, search templates such as {{Google help desk}}, and other stuff we are going to think of. --Teratornis (talk) 02:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks! It's nice to occasionally get feedback like this. It helps prevent Helpdesk burnout. Helpdesk volunteers are entirely self-selected: anyone can answer questions. The best way to thank us is to stop by occasionally and answer questions here. -Arch dude (talk) 02:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    How to enter coordinates

    I was wondering how to enter coordinates of a small town in India,Anklav. The coordinates are 22°23'59"N 73°0'0"E. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.41.74 (talk) 22:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Have a look at {{coord}}. If that turns out to be too confusing, just give another shout. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Mat Roy Thompson

    Errors of fact in article on Mat Roy Thompson (and I can't figure out how to edit them).

    Matthew Roy Thompson was Mat Roy and Patience's third son, not the first. Mat Roy and Patience eventually had six children: Philip, born 1896; Ralph, born 1899; Matthew, born 1900; Hugh, born 1905; Patience, born 1910; and Maxine, born 1915.

    Source: Family history. I am Matthew's son, Mat Roy's grandson. email: <removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.217.117.215 (talk) 22:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Click "edit this page" at the top of the page to fix an error. Be aware that personal knowledge is construed as original research and your edit can be reverted. Xenon54 01:47, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    But replacing an unsourced assertion of fact with another unsourced assertion of fact is unlikely to cause problems unless somebody else objects. So yes, somebody might revert your edit, but it's not likely. However, we would greatly appreciate it if you can find a reliable source, and cite the source in the article. This requires a bit of explanation. Contributore sucyh as yourself are understandably affronted when we do not accept your expertise. However, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that "anybody can edit," and more than 6,000,000 people have edited. We do not have a mechanism to verify the identities of our editors, so we cannot hold our editors responsible for the facts they add. Therefore we try hard to have cite teh facts to sources that can in fact ve verified. -Arch dude (talk) 02:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    February 17

    Distorted signature

    Calling all tech pros! It's been brought to my attention that, only in Opera, my signature does an odd thing. See example A and example B. Does anyone know why this is? I can't figure it out. Thank you, нмŵוτнτ 01:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Opera and IE have problems with three-letter colour codes. Don't know if this will help, but try replacing the two instances of "color:#fff;" with "color:#ffffff;". Perhaps the folks over at the Technical village pump can help. Xenon54 01:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Haha, funny... they "made me" change my sig to make them 3 letters back in the day, and that's what's not working. Of course! Haha, нмŵוτнτ 16:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    last year i put up a link to my Official site for Mel peachey i see it was took down so i put it back up today but got a message that it was Blacklisted. Why Was it Blacklisted and BVy Who ? This really is Mel's Official Fansite. Please unblacklist my site. Thank you Write Soon.

    Rick01:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

    The Page is Mel Peachey

    The spam blacklist is a last resort to stop link spammers who continually add links that breach the external links policy. Only administrators can blacklist sites, and they should have a very good reason for doing so. Links to fansites are expressly prohibited by the external links policy, so it looks unlikely that the site will be removed. Requests for removal from the blacklist can be made at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist, shortcut WP:SBL. Xenon54 01:43, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Interesting log in problem

    I am having problems logging in that have not been answered elsewhere. Whenever I go come onto to Wikipedia after having my broswer window closed, I am logged off. Upon hitting "Log on", without hitting "log on" on the Special:Log on, my user buttons show up in the upper right as normal. This is just an inconveinence, though. Thank you, Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 02:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Its either a problem with your browser caching pages, or it's a problem similar to the one experienced by a few other people here, that they are getting logged off in sessions.---KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 02:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    This problem has just developed recently, and I have not changed anything with my browser. Is there anyhting I can I do if it is the latter? Thankfully I have never been logged off while I was editing. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 02:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Not that I know of, if you look up the this page, you can see the possible problem I am referring to.--KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 02:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I am so sorry, I did not see that. By the way, I think your user page looks great. Thank you, Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 02:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Being logged out. --hydnjo talk 13:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Why template?

    Can someone tell me what is the purpose of creating a table using templates? In particular this template: {{Electiontable}}. Im curious why dont we just build the table in the target article. Im thinking of making a new table, but i dont know whether its necessary to follow this style. kawaputratorque 02:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    To know the exact reason why someone used a particular template in a particular article, you would need to ask that person. (You can see who added the template by checking the history of the page where the template appears.) Possible reasons to use a template:
    • To standardize the style among a set of related articles.
    • To make the standard style easy to change for all related artices by editing one template.
    • (Maybe) to simplify the wikitext markup for each article (that is, if the code to call the template is simpler than the table code in the template, which isn't always true, since table markup is already pretty compact).
    Sometimes a template turns out to be inadequate for some new article in a series of articles, if the new article needs to show more information than the template accepts. If you want to change a template that lots of articles use, that can be trickier than changing just one article, because any change to the template will propagate through several articles and possibly draw the attention of many people. Thus a person may have to do some politicking to convince other people to accept the change. There is probably no hard requirement that you should use a particular template in a particular kind of article, but other users may see the article and decide to add the template if you do not. On Wikipedia, we cannot control what millions of other users do, so the best strategy is to try to figure out what will look best to the most people. --Teratornis (talk) 02:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I might add that consistent design schemes in related articles tend to carry some weight. That is, more people would likely agree that all related articles in a series should use common templates, than for all the articles to have different designs. If you want some opinions on the specific case you have in mind, you could tell us the page where you want to add the new table. Our opinions are not authoritative but they might be helpful. I see that you asked on Template talk:Electiontable#Query why this template exists. If you don't get an answer there, you could try asking on the user talk pages of some users who contributed to the template. --Teratornis (talk) 03:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    plant characteristics box

    are there other templates such as this one for other plants? i'd like to include one for the plant soursop. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boomgaylove (talkcontribs) 02:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Just to clarify the question further, the template you linked to is: {{Mycomorphbox}}; articles that use it are linked from here: Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Mycomorphbox. Unfortunately, the template page lists no categories; if the template were properly categorized, you could check the category page(s) to find related templates. So when we do find some related templates, we should categorize this one. One way to search for templates is to use {{Google custom}}, for example:
    I'm saving this partial reply before I get an edit conflict. --Teratornis (talk) 03:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    This question is a bit of a stumper. I looked at WP:PLANTS, WP:FUNGI, Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Resources#Templates, and WP:TAXOBOX, without seeing any clues. I don't know whether a template similar to {{Mycomorphbox}} exists for other plants. I also can't think of good keywords for searching the template namespace, since such a template could have an unpredictable name or wording. I suggest asking on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fungi and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants. Maybe someone more familiar with Wikipedia's botany articles would know of a suitable template. In the worst case, you could create one. Also, {{Mycomorphbox}} should be in at least one category. You can look for categories on Category:Wikipedia templates by subject area. Maybe: Category:Biology infobox templates would be suitable. --Teratornis (talk) 03:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    In the article about the Big Apple Convention, the name "Michael Carbonaro" is linked to an entry for a movie actor. The Micahel Carbonaro referred to in the article is not the same person, and does not have a Wikipedia entry yet. What can I do? Can I make an entry for the right Michael Carbonaro? How do I distinguish between one and the other in the link?

    Zorikh (talk) 03:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)Zorikh[reply]

    Make an article called Michael Carbonaro (artist) or something and the replace the link in the big apple convention article, with [[Michael Carbonaro (artist)|Michael Carbonaro]].make sure that article follows all the usual guidelines.--KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 03:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Hatnote. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, I think it would have been better advice to suggest that Zorikh creates a redlink. That's certainly what I do when I find a link pointing to the wrong person. To create an article which won't be immediately deleted involves having at least one reliable source as to notability available, and - indeed - the motivation to do so when you may have other priorities for your wikipedia time. AndyJones (talk) 10:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    My first template

    I've made an overlay for Vancouver neighbourhood maps that adds clickable targets so users can explore all the main neighbourhoods visually and discussed it here. Now I want to move my Franamax/Test2 template into the Template: namespace and apply it as shown in User:Franamax/Test3 for a few articles to see how quickly it gets shot down :)

    Here's my questions:

    • It does have to move into the Template: namespace, right?
    • What should I call it? Vcvr_nhood_map_overlay? Something longer but more explanatory?
    • Should I add some explanation? Someone just looking at the template itself will just see a bunch of X's. Should I put in a noinclude section to explain it?
    • Should I put it in a category? I used {{ottawa map}} as a reference and I see it is in a category. Should I try to find an overlay category, or will some helpful wiki-gnomes come along and do this for me?

    This is my first try at a template so all help is appreciated. Also, please don't do it for me, I need those edit-counts! ;) Franamax (talk) 03:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    MJ Morning Show

    Hi There, Could you please point me in the right direction? Over the past 2 months, the article MJ Morning Show has been subject to repeated IP vandalism, much of it containing defamation towards the host, Todd Schnitt. The vandalism is a result of a campaign launched by a competing radio host. I've been keeping on top of reverting the vandalism to remove the defamation, however, in light of Wikipedia's clear policies on defamation, I'm wondering whether there is something else that would be more proactive to prevent the continued IP vandalism to the article. I've requested semi-protection previously, but the request was denied citing not enough vandalism to justify at that time. Any guidance you might be able to provide would be most appreciated. Thanks, Ihateaubergine (talk) 04:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Aside from what you've already done and are doing, there's not really much else to be done. Looking at the history, this article does seem to be getting pretty constantly hit with vandalism. Should it continue, I'd request semi-protection again. The only changes to the article since the beginning of the month have been the addition or reversion of vandalism, with one or two exceptions. Sorry I can't be of more help. Hersfold (t/a/c) 04:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Spelling error in title

    The page I have created for a course in knowledge building I am talking has a spelling error in the title.

    How do I fix this problem?

    Thanks

    checkY I fixed it.   jj137 (talk) 04:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Search Help desk is fantastic! Why not put it (and an example for target change) up top, with the "read FAQ" boilerplate?

    See subject.

    I just found this template (is that what it is?) by accident in a recent help desk answer. Everyone should know about it, I think....

    Ciao, amici

    Shlishke (talk) 05:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Sounds like a great idea! I'll do it soon unless someone quickly thinks of a reason not to do it. Sbowers3 (talk) 13:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    checkY Done. Sbowers3 (talk) 14:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Deleting a user account

    I no longer wish to be member of Wikipedia. How do I delete my user account? [[User:Shane 42]] (talk) 05:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Due to the fact that Wikipedia content is licensed under the GFDL, all edits must be kept for attribution purposes, and so your account cannot be deleted. You do, however, have the right to vanish, which you can exercise by (1) requesting your user page (found at Special:Mypage) and/or user talk page (found at Special:Mytalk) be deleted, by adding the {{db-userreq}} template to them; (2) requesting to change your username to something that is unconnected with you (possibly a random collection of letters and numbers); (3) never logging in to your account again. If you do this, you are still free to register a new username if you wish to continue editing Wikipedia.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Log In Failure

    I've been unable to log in although I am quite sure I entered the correct information. User name Malcolm. Entered 2/17/08. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.13.71.2 (talk) 05:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Just in case, click that you forgot your password and it will be sent to the email address you signed up with. Wisdom89 (T / C) 07:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you have entered the wrong user name. User:Malcolm is an administrator on Wikipedia. Have a look at Special:Listusers?username=Malcolm to see if you can find out what name you registered with. • Anakin (talk) 15:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    User Name

    How do I change my user nameFritz hagenquasher (talk) 05:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC) It is Fritz hagenquasher now and I would like to change it to Fritz Hagenquasher - basically capitalizing the last name.[reply]

    This might help [12] - but if you want a quick and easy way (if your contributions are limited), just sign up again. Wisdom89 (T / C) 06:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The user tried Wikipedia:Changing_username but left out the "|" between parameters. Another editor corrected the formatting of his request and I suspect that it will be approved. Sbowers3 (talk) 12:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Creating a new account would not have worked in this case as it is too similar to the existing name. • Anakin (talk) 15:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Reliable sources, Facts and Perceptions

    I noticed that the following sentence in the Gun politics in the United Statesarticle is inaccurate: "Also, Kruschke describes incidents where public political perceptions have been shaped by a few high profile violent crimes associated with automatic and semi-automatic weapons, resulting in a relatively small percentage of the crime in absolute numbers, none-the-less have brought public focus on that type of weapon." The problem being that:

    1. Automatic and semi-automatic firearms are significantly different in their operation
    2. Crimes involving semi-automatic firearms in the United States are not "relatively small percentage of the crime" or notable in any way when they happen

    I am confident i can provide numerous reliable sources to back up those two points. The sentence could be made accurate by simply changing "automatic and semi-automatic" to "automatic" but then Kruschke could no longer be cited because that is not how he describes the perception. This is exacerbated by the fact that it is not exactly clear whose perception is being described. Any way, my "simple correction" now involves NPOV, verifiability, descriptions of perceptions, and reliable sources all in the context of a polarized political subject. My head hurts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyrus Vance (talkcontribs) 07:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Ah, you have found a nice non-controversial topic to work on <grin>. It seems the best place to work this out would be on the discussion page of the article in question. However, I think you have answered your own question: before you do any editing you need to find a new reference that will support the changes you wish to make. Noah 17:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Someone know what's wrong?

    Does someone know what's going wrong in the footnotes at the bottom of List of Jewish American entertainers? Or, more importantly, does that someone want to fix it? :) •97198 talk 10:03, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Some errors with the ref tags. Fixed now. :) --PeaceNT (talk) 10:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, doesn't that look nicer? My hat off to you. •97198 talk 10:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Adding a pointer to specific meaning to a page with template Wi

    I've just created a (stub) article Devised theatre, and I find from the reference I've used that in the US, the usual phrase for this is collaborative creation. I was intending to create a redirect from this, but I find that there is already a page there, but with the 'Wi' template, so I'm not sure how best to proceed. Should I just add some sort of dab template, turn the page into a dab page, or what? --ColinFine (talk) 11:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Looking at it, I think that "Wi" template should have been removed as soon as somebody added content to the page. However, the content there still seems little more than a dictionary definition and some common sense about collaboration in general. Personally, I'd go ahead and replace the article with a redirect - if someone wants to write a decent article for a different meaning, we can sort out the disambiguation later. - IMSoP (talk) 17:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I went at made an attempt at addressing the issues using the {{for}} template. Feel free to change it if you think a redirect will work better. Noah 17:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for your replies. Encouraged by both of you, I have indeed replaced it by a redirect. --ColinFine (talk) 20:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Checkuser

    Does checkuser reveal a MAC address? 91.104.19.93 (talk) 12:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    It seems not, but I don't know much about this stuff and may have misinterpreted m:Help:CheckUser. Algebraist 15:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    A checkuser request will list the username, the time period when they edited from a given IP/range, the IP address, and XFF information. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 16:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Future timeline of Earth

    Can I make a link User:Otolemur crassicaudatus/Future timeline of Earth in the See also section of the article Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 13:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    "See also" sections should only have links to Wikipedia articles. WP:SEEALSO --Silver Edge (talk) 14:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Can I put the page under Category:Futurology and Category:Earth? Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 14:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    You're probably best off not putting it anywhere that's considered part of the encyclopedia (rather than part of the structure and community of the site) if it's not in the main article namespace.
    In which case, the question you should probably be asking is whether that page belongs in the main article namespace - is there enough there to merit a new article, or is there an existing article to which it would make an appropriate addition? It seems like a nice summary to me, but we'd have to be careful about the criteria of what goes in there - what topics, whose predictions, etc.
    Perhaps you could attract more specific attention to the question on some relevant articles, Talk:Futurology or Talk:Future history, perhaps? Or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Time... - IMSoP (talk) 17:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Converting article into a redirect

    Where do I nominate Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight for redirection to Dallas Stoudenmire, where it is pretty much duplicated? It seems to me that it would likely be contested. Clarityfiend (talk) 15:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Redirection @ Wikipedia has information if the redirect is not controversial, but since you indicated it could be contested, it might be better to take it to WP:RFD. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 16:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think what you want is to merge the two articles. You would place merge-to and merge-from templates on the two articles and start a discussion. Sbowers3 (talk) 18:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    3RR versus IP socks

    Twice in two days I have been involved in edit warring over content where it is obviously just me against single purpose IP's that know how to WP:GAME using 3RR. What is the usual procedure to tackle this without violating 3RR? In both cases the IP's show no interest in using the talk page except to restate the two polar opinions, so there is no consensus for either version. MickMacNee (talk) 17:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    The right place to bring this up would be the 3RR noticeboard or possibly the Incidents page. Noah 17:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Those are quite sticky situations. I'd recommend taking a report to WP:AN/I, a lot of admins keep that page watchlisted and will take a look at what you say. If not, you can always ask an admin on their talk to take a look at a situation, I would be happy to look at it if you'd like. Keilana|Parlez ici 17:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Just wanted to know for the future is all. There seem to be a number of policies that cover it, I just wondered what most people do usually. MickMacNee (talk) 17:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    bilingual help in Spanish

    Hi, I created a page in Spanish and received a response on the page telling me the page needed to be wikified. However, I dont know what I need to do. Can you help?17:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)17:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

    This is the English Wikipedia so generally it's a bad idea to post articles in languages other than English. This does happen from time to time. When it does {{translate}} article tags that will usually get slapped on the article. Sometimes the articles will get translated (if a translator gets to them in time) but sometimes they get deleted. The best thing to do would be to translate the article before creating it. If you are worried about your translation skills you could create the article as a user sub-page and ask for help translating it. Noah 18:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I should have mentioned that I created it in Spanish for Spanish Wikipedia. However, I need a little help discovering what I need to edit on the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlosgg (talkcontribs) 18:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Ah. So you got the equivalent in the Spanish Wikipedia of "please Wikify this page"? To wikify is to link words to other articles. To do so, simply surround words that should be linked with double brackets. Example: [[Balkline and straight rail]], when saved will look like this Balkline and straight rail, and link to the article on that subject, already contained in Wikipedia, or if there is no article yet on the subject, the resulting link will be red. However, don't do this for every word you can. Please see Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context, which is, I'm sure, just as valid on the Spanish Wikipedia.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikifying is not just adding links; it's a few other things too. to make sure the format conforms to a usual Wikipedia article. See Wikipedia:Wikify and Category:Articles that need to be wikified, which gives instructions. It's pretty simple, really; like having no section heading before the first sentence; having the first sentence contain (usually) the same words as in the article title, and having these appear in bold type, etc. You can look at other Wikipedia articles to see what they look like, too. After you think you've wikified it, if you like you can post a message to my talk page with a link to the article (or its name if you can't figure out how to link to the Spanish Wikipedia) and I'll have a look at it to see if I think it's wikified. A link to the Spanish Wikipedia looks like this: es:Síndrome. Note that in theory I don't know any Spanish, though I know several related languages so I can kindof manage reading it a bit. --Coppertwig (talk) 20:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I believe this is the relevant help page on the Spanish Wikipedia: Wikificar. Noah 20:03, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    How do I "Send a Link" from an article to my email?

    Thank you, Faccia. Faccia (talk) 19:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not 100% sure I know what you're after, but tell me if this is responsive. Go to any page on Wikipedia. If the URL of the page is not provided in an address bar in your browser, right click somewhere in the article, choose properties from the menu that appears. In either case, highlight the URL. Copy that highlighted URL by either going to your browser's edit menu and choosing "copy," or click control+c, which does the same thing. Go to the email you wish the link to appear in. Paste the link into it, by either going to your browser's edit menu and choosing "paste," or click control+v, which does the same thing.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Sum and Limit Operators

    I was on the sandbox and just messing around typing in meaningless formulas and I typed this in. If you will notice, the limit and sum operators are not working. The limit should look like this and the sum, like this . Why isn't it doing that and how can I make it? Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    What you wrote:

    Same thing, but with \displaystyle inserted just before \lim:

    To force the display the way you originally had it, you can write \textstyle. I don't know how textstyle got activated; you could play around to see whether one of the operators you were using automatically turns on textstyle or something. Anyway, whenever that happens you can just insert a \displaystyle. Ah, I reckon it's the square root sign that might automatically turn on textstyle, so that the stuff can fit nicely under the radical sign. Just guessing. --Coppertwig (talk) 19:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks! Zrs 12 (talk) 19:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not the square root. Compare to . No \textstyle or \displaystyle were used. Being in a denominator is apparently enough to get the low-height format as default. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Putting a contribution list on a watchlist

    Is it possible to put a contribution list on a watchlist? I.e., a new contribution by that editor appears on the watchlist? Wanderer57 (talk) 19:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Not that I know of - as far as I know only pages can be watchlisted.   jj137 (talk) 19:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Same here, don't think that's possible. If you want to monitor a user's contributions (for wiki-protective purposes only - see WP:STALK), then I suggest placing the user page on your watchlist and the latest pages he/she has contributed to. Wisdom89 (T / C) 20:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Bug #470 is a request to implement such a feature, but in over three years no specific reason has been given for not implementing it. However it would have a huge potential for abuse and stalking by some editors, and even if used in good faith, may waste lots of editors' time watching others instead of doing something constructive. In short, it's not possible. I think it's actually better being not possible. • Anakin (talk) 20:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    How to "copy/paste" onto "search" line using a Widget?

    Dear Wikipedia Advisor,

    I have access to Wikipedia "search" using Widget on my Mac. How can I use the EDIT function "copy/paste," on my computer without the widget disappearing as I attempt to "paste?" Or, is there some other way to maintain fulltime access on my desktop to a Wikipedia's science glossary/dictionary? Currently, the only alternitive I am aware of, is to fully "open up" Wikipedia, which is awkward when I already have something else downloaded (from the internet).

    I appreciate any help you can provide.

    Loyde —Preceding unsigned comment added by Loydeyates (talkcontribs) 20:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Ogg files

    Many Wikipedia audio files are .ogg file types. What program opens them? My computer doesn't know. Thanks, George D. Watson (Dendodge).TalkHelp and assistance 21:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    See Wikipedia:Media help (Ogg), basically most media players can play them with the right codecs installed. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 21:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Vandalism of Wikipedia:Introduction

    Reverted vandalised page. Request putting a lockdown on all such pages (vide:[13]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarindam7 (talkcontribs) 21:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC) sarindam7 (talk) 21:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    1. ^ [14] Srbija izabrala Borisa Tadića
    2. ^ [15] Srbija izabrala Borisa Tadića