Wikipedia:Help desk

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NOTE: This is not a page about specific factual questions (e.g., Who was the first Pope?). For that type of question, see Wikipedia:Reference desk.

Welcome to the Help desk! This is a place to ask questions about Wikipedia and get help with editing problems. It's mainly for newcomers and users who don't yet have an account, but anyone is welcome to ask a question. Remember to check this page again (how about a bookmark?) to see if there have been any replies.

If your question has already been covered in one of the help pages, you could get the answer you're looking for more quickly by checking the topical index.

If your question is not specifically about the Wikipedia, you'll probably find the Reference desk a better place to ask; if you want to start a more detailed and inclusive discussion, try the Village pump.

View old Archives
Archive 1 Prior to June 2, 2004
Archive 2 June 2, 2004 - June 18, 2004
Archive 3 June 18, 2004 - July 2, 2004
Archive 4 July 2, 2004 - July 18, 2004
Archive 5 July 19, 2004 - July 31, 2004
Archive 6 August 1, 2004 - August 18, 2004
Archive 7 August 18, 2004 - September 5, 2004
Archive 8 September 5, 2004 - September 25th, 2004
Archive 9 September 26, 2004 - October 15th, 2004
Archive 10 October 16, 2004 - November 6th, 2004

Post a question here!

Is there an RSS feed for the main page?

I have looked for one and can't find it.

Every day I get news, history and general knowledge from the wp main page. Would love to have all the factual articles (not meta content) available in an RSS feed.

Apologies if it already exists and I've missed it.


Votes For Deletion

God. EVERY time I try to nominate something for deletion I manage to screw it up, and I DONT understand why because I follow the instructions to a t. I have no idea how to fix my recent nominations (all Spongebob related.) Could someone go there and fix the, and then leave me a message to tell me what I did wrong? Pacian 18:55, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actor photographs

Can a case for fair use be made for the use of portfolio mugshots of an actor? Could I simply use a still from a movie that's spread amongst the press? Or should I simply wait for a reply from the actor in question? I'd like the pic to be added fairly quickly, but I don't want to break copyright laws. Any comments welcome. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 22:42, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

If you have a publicity shot that is typically given to the press, it should be fine. They are meant to be circulated and are not copyrighted because if they were, every publication that wanted to use them would have to call the publicist. Incidentally, I would think your best bet would be to get in touch with the actor's publicist. They typically send out autographed photos to anyone who writes in. Skyler1534 20:47, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
No case for fair use could be made if the picture is under copyright. Skyler1534 20:47, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
Being under copyright is a necessary precondition for fair use, as fair use is a limitation on the enforcement of copyright. — mendel ☎ 05:03, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

How do you not show links within articles? The whole page is filled with links and they are distracting.

There is an option in your user Preferences under "Misc settings" that lets you turn off underlining links. I find that that helps readability. Martyman 02:15, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What article is it you aree talking about? Maybe it needs some de-wikifying.... [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 11:44, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
You can also add this to your user CSS. User:YOUR_USERNAME/monobook.css
a {text-decoration: none;
   color: inherit;}
—[[User:MikeX|MikeX (Talk)]] 04:12, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
But, do be aware that if the number of links is not excessive, different coloured links will help with readability. [[User:MikeX|MikeX (Talk)]] 04:13, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

How do I add a page to a category?

I created an article last night: Toasty. I'd like to add this page to Category:Computer and video game terminology, because that is a term that has been used since the 1990's. But I don't know where to start or request such a thing.

What should I do?

I am getting a message to "stop adding nonsense," but I have not done anything!

Why do I occasionally get this message (look between lines of dashes):

User talk:198.81.26.46 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has now been removed. Please use Wikipedia:Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. Hadal 03:20, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Please stop adding nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.

I have done nothing on this site, except to find myself constantly browsing around on it with admiration! Some weeks ago, I did start one of the "learn to edit" pages, but did nothing with it.

At one point in my session today, all the characters on each page started displaying as small squares. I reloaded the site, and the problem stopped.

I am not trying to hurt the site, really. I can only be accused of spending too much time while I should be doing laundry!!

Thanks for your note -- the comments you're talking about almost certainly aren't aimed at you. If you look again at that talk page, you'll notice a note in italics that many Internet users share IP addresses (i.e., when you dial up to the Internet, you're accessing through a server that others also use for access). Unless you sign up for a Username, the site only sees you as an IP address. Apparently, occasionally you connect to the Internet through an IP that has been used by someone else for vandalism -- the warnings are for them. Sorry for the inconvenience -- I'm afraid the only thing to do is either ignore the warnings or else get a username (which is free and quick -- click the link at the top of the page that says "Create an account") so that you'll only see messages intended for you. Good luck, and sorry for the confusion! Jwrosenzweig 20:26, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fix redundant capilisation in a title

I created Estate Agent (United Kingdom) from a sketchy page on deadpages called Estate agents. As you can see I inadvertently capped the second word. I tried moving it to a page with the capping fixed but to no avail. Is there a simple way to do this (ie am I being thick) or would someone be kind enough to do the honours? Icundell 01:20, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't know what the problem was, but I tried moving it and it worked. It's now at Estate agent (United Kingdom). - MattTM | talk 05:10, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks Matt (for the record, it kept teling me the page already existed) Icundell 09:55, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Prejudicial report on current court-case?

Hi. I'm a new user and haven't yet mastered all the policies but found this new page Tammy Imre which seems to concern a ongoing court-case and is quite possibly prejudicial. Not especially notable, I wouldn't have thought (althought it's sad to think that's the case...) Thought the safest thing might be to flag it up and move on. Cheers, Mattley 13:26, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion that page is a news article, not an encyclopedia article. I have listed it for deletion; its entry is here. Isomorphic 15:41, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't usually do images, but I have a drawing I want to upload. The drawing is originally from a book published in Austria in 1918. The copyright should have expired by now, right? Isomorphic 15:43, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Under U.S. federal law, which I believe is extended to other friendly countries by a number of treaties, a copyright does not expire until 70 years following the author's death. If the publisher is still around, I would contact them for permission. If not, I would say it's pretty safe as being pretty darn close to "public domain", but it's not clear-cut. I'm finding more and more that copyright law is really never clear-cut, so err on the side of caution. Personally, though, I would say you are pretty safe. Skyler1534 16:50, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • I thought anything published in the U.S. before 1922 was in the public domain and that the new rules apply to subsequent works. PedanticallySpeaking 17:22, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
You're right. Works published prior to 1923 outside of the U.S. are now public domain. Thanks, PS. Isomorphic, you are good to go. Skyler1534 17:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Image uploaded and added to Zvartnots. Isomorphic 22:45, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What, if any, is the one true way to link to categories that do not properly fall within the scope of a category, but I consider it rather likely that people will want (ie. wrong from the database POV, right from the navigational concenience POV)?

Example: In Category:Proof_theory, I'd quite like something along the lines of: 

Possibly you wish to find material from one of the indirectly related categories:
Category : Heuristic | Proofs

to appear just between the catmore template and the main listing of category contents ---- Charles Stewart 09:24, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To refer to a category, all you need to do is put a colon in from of the name in the wikilink, for instance [[:Category:Proofs]] displayed as Category:Proofs. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 14:45, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, this solves the technical part of my question. As to the other part, is this idea of a template for indirectly related categories something that sounds reasonable stylewise? ---- Charles Stewart 16:04, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Why not - go ahead and make one, and we'll see if people use it. You should probably mention it on Wikipedia:Catagorization, the Village Pump and other places when you do, so people will know to use it. JesseW

editing issue

I've managed to screw up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexology_chart The links to Sciatic and Appendix both reference the edit page, not the actual Wiki entry. Is this some bug related to the use of tables, or is there something else I'm missing?

Found the problem - The actual wiki entry didn't exist.

category question

I tried to create a category Category:Archives in the United Kingdom. If you follow it, it lists the articles, but also says that the category doesn't exist. I couldn't locate what I've done wrong at Wikipedia:Categorization. Mattley 11:59, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, that link won't work. I'm more confused than ever now. But you can get there via Modern Records Centre, which is in the phantom category. Mattley 12:09, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(I've corrected the link. Add :Category to go to the category itelf. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 14:42, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC))
I don't think you've done anything wrong. The Category exists, but hasn't got a page to go with it. The page is really just to explain what the category is, and to link to other categories that this Category is a sub-category of. You don't neccesarily need an explanation, but in any case put the Category in at least one other category, as you would articles. You can edit the page as you would any other article.Silverfish 14:24, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There: that's looking a bit more healthy. You now need to see if there are any other similar articles that can become subcategories of Category:Archives by country! [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 14:42, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Making a contribution marked with my IP to be marked with my username

I started an Article about my project New Millennium Orchestra, but I forgot to log in. Can I make it to my username instead of showing my IP?

Thanks!

(Question moved from top of page, notice left on User talk:Rockslave.)
See Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. Note that these requests may take a long time to be filled. —Triskaideka 16:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Resolving NPOV disputes

Take a look at George W. Bush. User:Patriotic is making edits that people widely disagree with, and I've been trying to explain NPOV to both him and myself. My question is not about this specific case, but more general: is there any place I can go to to ask people to help? It's nice that Patriotic and I are talking, but one of us will go away sooner or later, and I'd like to keep the fire burning (and not have everything degenerate into edit wars again). This is the first time I'm in a dispute like this, so pointers are appreciated. JRM 17:28, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Maurreen 17:47, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That's exactly the link I was looking for. Thanks. JRM 17:52, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Wikipedia reverts to "old" format when I login

Hi, sometime in the last few months, Wikipedia got a wonderful new look/format, with a nice modern sans-serif font, and with the very useful tabs along the top edge of the article, etc. (was this the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.3?) Anyway, Wikipedia stays "modern" only while I'm anonymous; when I login, Wikipedia reverts to the old/less-attractive format, with the Times/NewRoman font (?) etc. - ugh! I have searched around the helpdesk, FAQ, etc., to no avail. Oh yeah, this may be significant: I use the Opera browser. Help? Harris7 19:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Could it be that your skin is set to something other than the default? Try going to Special:Preferences and changing your Skin to "MonoBook". If you've already tried that, I'm not sure what to suggest. As long as you're successfully logged in, as far as I can tell, the server should be giving you the skin of your choice, so I don't think it could be a problem with cookies or JavaScript. I don't know, though, maybe it could—what version of Opera? Tried upgrading to the latest? —Triskaideka 20:19, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Bingo! My skin preference was not set to anything; setting it to MonoBook did the trick. Thanks Triskaideka!!! Harris7 20:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Chemical Notation

I see there is a section in the help desk already on creating a chemical structural formula using ASCII art, but in a lot of the articles on various chemical groups people have used pictures, which look as if they have been created by a program. Is there a program somewhere that does this, or are these just pictures that have been nabbed from elsewhere?

Akchizar 04:47, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, there is ChemDraw, but that program is by no means free...I mostly nab them from other places, too little creativity in the pictures to be copyrighted. I doubt you can copyright a picture of a chemical structure. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 09:15, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Looks like I'll stick to using ACII art then. Akchizar 03:43, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I was considering suggesting an article for featured status, and wondered if the presence of links to as yet non-existent articles is considered a no-no in featured articles. Apologies if this is not the right place for this question, but the "Featured article candidates" didn't seem the place for a question about general principles.

Harry 13:34, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Generally, the best place to start a discussion on something is wherever it will be seen by the people who would be interested in the discussion. In this case that would be either Wikipedia talk: Featured article candidates or Wikipedia talk:Featured articles. Really general discussion can sometimes go to the Village pump. The Help Desk rarely spawns much discussion; most topics here are simply a question with a single response. Isomorphic 18:48, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, but I wasn't aiming to start a discussion. I imagined this would be very much in the "simply a question with a single response" category. Perhaps there's no hard and fast rule about this which is why I haven't found one. Harry 11:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I would think that if the red-linked article is to an article that Wikipedia should have (at some point in the future) then this is completely fine. — Matt 11:46, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Red links aren't a bar to a featured article, but you sometimes see people complaining about. They can be an indication that an article isn't sufficiently developed - anyone with the knowledge and background to write a featured article can usually at least write appropriate stubs for most of the related red links. Wikipedia:Peer Review is intended as a stepping stone for an article you are grooming for 'Featured article candidates'. In particular you could ask for input on red links there. -- Solipsist 11:56, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Formatting tables

In wikicode tables (the whole {|, |-, |} thing), is there any way to (1) control the width of the columns and (2) to specify the horizontal alignment of the contents of certain data cells? — Matt 18:02, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:How to use tables#Setting your column widths, and elsewhere on that page it shows how to use 'align=center' (where the alternatives are left and right). (Note the AE spelling of 'center'.) More table help can be found at m:Help:Table. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 22:28, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

help with sorting out kinnaur copyvio

I'd like some advice about sorting out the Kinnaur copyvio. I've checked and sufficient amounts of the article are copied word for word that I believe that it's a coypvio. At the same time, those who wrote it are not being cooperative (they delete requests for clarification from their talk pages e.g.[1]) , so I can't expect their help.

The biggest problem is that there is a reasonable amount of original material, but that the edit which introduced the first copyright violation is quite old [2]. I'm a bit unhappy to revert to the previous version to that. I may try going through the article and editing out apparently copyright material, but without cooperation it is very difficult to tell what is what.

Any suggestions?? Mozzerati 20:27, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

no instructions, no clue

This is about the most confusing site I've been on. I simply want to vote against deleting the Election 2004 discrepancies article but there is absolutely no clue as to how to do that, as invited at the top of the page. It is a valuable collection of links and information and should be retained. I guess one must be a computer programmer to post on this site.

There are a lot of instructions. (See Help:Contents, Wikipedia:How to edit a page, etc.) However, there may not be instructions on doing what you are trying to do. One reason for this is that generally voting on deletion is only done after an editor has some expierence, so basic guides have not been felt to be necessary. VfD(Votes for Deletion) is a major point of controversy for Wikipedia. Since all text(unless it's a copyvio(copyright violation)) is under the GFDL(GNU Free Documentation License) if you are concerned that the text of the Election 2004 discrepancies article will be lost, I suggest you copy it to another Wiki. There are many that specifically request articles that may be deleted from Wikipedia. Among them include(off the top of my head), Infopedia, Disinfopedia, etc. As long as the text is saved, the article can be put back if necessary. JesseW 01:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If you want to add your vote to the debate, simply follow the link at the top of the article to Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/2004_U.S._Election_controversies_and_irregularities, edit the page and add your vote. Voting is so easy it doesn't need instructions. Just vote 'delete or keep and give your reasons. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 13:15, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Dundas Square

I've run across an article in Wikipedia that reads like it was written by a marketing hack for a Toronto landmark called Dundas Square. Is there a protocol for vetting this kind of information...this is beyond a rewrite. It really does need to be examined and done away with, IMHO.

I've given the article Dundas Square a quick read and it seems to provide proper info on the square. Can you give specific examples of things you see as marketing? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 13:03, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Diebold Message

Is anyone else seeing the message "Breaking news: Walden o'Dell, CIO of Diebold arrested for rigging the Ohio election results! Kerry recognized as the rightful Present Of the United States!" It was at the top of WP:RD but when I went to edit it out it wasn't visible in the source code, then it vanished from the display. Likewise, I found it atop the Wikipedia:Cleanup but it wasn't in the source code. How could something show up on a page and not be in the source code? Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 16:03, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

By being in the wikisource to a template the page included. The vandalism was to Template:Shortcut, and can be seen in its history. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:36, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to encourage someone to check a fact?

Twice yesterday, this newbie noticed facts in articles that may or may not be correct. I can't find out the correct version myself, but someone should. What's the correct way of dealing with things like that?

Specifically, the article on Camille Pissarro claims both that he died on 12th November and 13th November. And the article on Ellis Island used to say that it closed on 12th November but now says that it closed on 29th November. In both cases, I tried to find out the correct date from other web pages, but I found both versions were stated about equally commonly.

I tried posting on the articles' talk pages, but I'm not sure if anyone reads those. Is that the correct place, or is there another location where I could usefully post such questions?

Thanks for any guidance. Stephen Turner 14:38, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • The talk page is indeed the first place to start as anyone who has the underlying article on his watch list will be alerted to the presence of additions to the talk page. Be sure that you give it an edit summary that will prompt someone to read your query, something like: "Two Contradictory Death Dates in Article" or some such thing. Another good place for this is our reference desk at WP:RD, which is seen by a lot of people who know about many topics. I'm copying your question there now. Glad to have you aboard. PedanticallySpeaking 15:10, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your helpful answer, PedanticallySpeaking, and for posting the specifc questions to WP:RD. I'll keep an eye out there for any answers. Stephen Turner 18:15, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How do I handle transient information??

What do I do with information that is likely to change in the future? For example, in the Chartered financial analyst article, I wanted to mention how many there were, and wrote "as of 2004...". For another example, the article on Barak Obama starts: "Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician, and U.S. Senator-elect from Illinois." which is clearly only applicable for the moment (as he will soon be a senator, not a senator-elect.

Is there some convention for this sort of thing? I did not see anything on point in the style guide page.

As of is indeed the proper way to handle it., but if at all possible try to avoid time-sensitive sentence constructions alltogether. In the senator-elect example you could mention when the elections he's standing for are. That way future readers will know whether he's still an elect or actually a senator. Also, try to update as soon as new info is available. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 15:43, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Hide the blue question mark?

I am very new to Wikipedia. I am trying to post some literal code. Parts of it, for example the text:

textureMap ":SubFolder1:SubFolder2:MyTexture.jpg"

Keep getting a blue "?" inserted in the text (treated as a WikiWord). Is there any way to supress this?

Also does Wikipedia have an equivalent to the HTML pre (pre-formated) tag, or is there a way to force the use of raw HTML?

The site I am trying to post to is not the main Wikipedia site, but seems to be some sort of sub branch, and does not use the formating bar. the site is:

http://www.poserpros.com/wiki/PublicWiki/PublicWiki

That site isn't a sub-branch of Wikipedia — rather, it's an unrelated website running similar wiki software, so things will work differently in both places, especially since Wikipedia differs from the programming-wiki standard in a few important respects. In this case, the two important differences are that on conventional wikis, links to other articles appear in CamelCase, and links to articles that don't exist get the blue question mark you're seeing.
As for the "how to avoid", the help links at the bottom of the pages on that wiki are the best place to start. Their TextFormattingRules suggest that [= this syntax =] is what you're after (under the "Escape sequence" heading there).
Of course, since it's an unrelated website running different software, you'll probably find more help on that wiki should you encounter further problems there. — mendel ☎ 05:27, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

2 vandals on my IP. Help!

(Mirrored on Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress)
User:Bobberton and User:Kuetipo use one of the same IP addresses as I do. This is because we live in the same house, because we are related. I seem to be the only one given to constructive edits, and I am fairly sure the other two are eventually going to get banned based on my conversations with them IRL. When they do get banned, I do not want to go with them, so I would like to know if there is any way to distance myself from them so that the IP we share is not banned, or that I am in some way still able to access the Wiki. Thank you! Suntiger 23:59, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, registered users can have their name banned so other people with the same IP still have access. Maybe an admin on the vandalism in progress page can help you with that. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 19:09, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Creating a User Page - description about onesself

As a newly registered user, how should I create a user page? If I just click on edit, whilst at my account it says on the edit page:

Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy).

So this cannot be right, becasue I am not allowed to create an article about myself on that page. So is there some special way of setting up these user pages? And when it is set up, how do I get it to appear upon the structured lists (i.e. alphabetical, country) - is this a separate edit of some kind, or are they linked in some way? Zylek (sig added by User:Ambarish)

The user page isn't an article — articles are in the main namespace, and user pages are in the User: namespace. So you can happily create User:Zylek, but you shouldn't create Zylek about yourself. — mendel ☎ 01:17, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
To create your user page, click on your user name in the top right corner of the screen, next to the human head icon. That will take you to a new page where you can edit and add a description of yourself. To add yourself to the various lists, just go to list pages; find the proper part(i.e. what country you're from) and type ~~~(while logged in); this will create a link back to your User page(which you just created by following my instructions above). JesseW 02:04, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Text of language on interlanguage links

Per Template talk:Wikipedialang#Sanskrit, I'd like to change the text that appears for the interlanguage link to the Sanskrit wikipedia from संस्कृत to संस्कृतम्. I've changed the text on Template:Wikipedialang, but I suspect something more needs to be done. What? Ambarish | Talk 00:44, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Handling of Dates in Articles

What is the protcol for handling years mentioned in articles. For example, if I write in a biographical article that someone "... did something in 1965 and did something else in 1966..." is it supposed to be "[1965]" and "[1966]"? I ask only because I notice other contributors putting in the [1965] syntax and I wonder if I am missing something.

Personally, I don't see much value to linking to the 1965 page, but does the link serve any other useful purpose?

Morris 02:33, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Well, for dates it allows users to pick a date format. Check the help on Preferences for more info(I think). And, it should be [[1966]], not [1966]. Single brackets are external(full url) links, double brackets are internal(various shortcut) links. JesseW 02:48, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Linking a date like April 12, 2003 like this: [[April 12]], [[2003]] allows for dates to be formatted according to a user's preferences. Loose years should only be linked if whatever someone did had a certain impact on a country, sport, etc. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 10:20, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

How does the size of wikipedia compares with other encyclopedias?

I know that it would not measure quality, but I was wondering if anyone had any rough measure in terms of either number of articles, or number of megabytes, etc. Morris 02:33, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Size comparisons. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cache problem on main page

I've updated Did you know and formatted some Main Page sections to wrap text around pictures and make sure the selected anniversaries stay within the table. After I purge the cache it looks fine, but when I went to look at another site and came back, I got the old version. All my changes are still intact when I look at the separate templates, what happened? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 10:17, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

  • Edit: I never had cache problems with this machine before. Now cleared my cache, no problems so far. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 12:01, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Against Deletion

An article I wrote is on the votes for deletion and I want to challenge the call for deletion. How do I effectively do that? Please provide specifics, thank you.

The best way to do this, is providing others with reasons why it is not against wikipedia policy to include it. If it's a small article, maybe you could incorporate the info in a larger article. What article are you talking about? I might be able to be more specific if I know. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 10:45, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
If you happen to be talking about Tard Blog: Websites should have a certain popularity before being included. The Alexa ranking mentioned on the deletion page shows it's not popular enough. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 10:50, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Main Page Tables

The left table on the main page is pushing the right one away. Can someone fix it? I can't find the problem. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 12:42, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

That's easy enough: the left table is set at width 55%, the right one at 45%, hence the difference. (I'm assuming you're referring to that, I can't find any other problem in either Firefox or IE). AFAIK, only an admin can fix that, if indeed it's something that should be fixed. JRM 12:58, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

I guess it's a problem combining 800x600 screen size with an odd Internet Explorer on a Mac. The right table is no more than 30% of the screen in what I saw. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 13:16, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Timestamps

How do people generate the nice, neat "00:29, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)" style dates? Is there a tag you can use to automate timestamps to discussion entries?

If there isn't, it'd kick ass if there could be one. If there is, I'd have been better able to find it if wikipedia:time, date, and/or timestamp had redirected to mention of it. [User:MrZaius]

( test: 20 October 2024 19:54, 20 October 2024 UTC [refresh] 20241020195425

The current date and time in Help desk is Sunday 20 October, 19:54.[1]

Hmm... that's weird. the DATE template exists, but not one for the whole unix time? Surely I'm missing something. )

23:48:56, Venezuala/Houston/Chicago/Evansville-time

Use ~~~~ to generate the timestamp and name for discussions. - MattTM | talk 05:56, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
Try Wikipedia:Timestamp now... (It really should have a better link for more information; someone please fix this.) JesseW 07:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category errors & NPO

Category errors & NPOV?

There is an article under the category Ethnic Groups: African labeled "Bantu". However, there is no such ethnic group as "Bantu". "Bantu" is a term created by convention among European linguists, and dozens or hundreds of different ethnic groups speak languages categorized as "Bantu" linguistically. The Bantu-speaking peoples collectively share none of the features one might use to define an ethnic group; the ethnic groups who speak Bantu-languages vary widely along all of those features.

This is an issue of definition. It is comparable to writing Ethnic Groups: European: Indo-European. Indo-European isn't an ethnic group, and neither is Bantu.

Yet obviously someone has thought otherwise. I understand the basic idea of NPOV and don't have a problem about working with it within an article.

However, to have something that seems to me to be a factual, definitional error built into the very organizing structure of the information seems to pose a different sort of problem.

Is there a convention for dealing with this sort of difference of perception? How much leeway is there? I assume an article Animals: Fishes: Whales would not be permitted to remain, except perhaps to point out that this is a somewhat common error. Is that assumption correct?

Ndlovu

I looked at the entry in question. It looks like the article itself makes it clear that "Bantu" is a linguistic and (to a lesser extent) cultural term, not an ethnicity. I suspect that it was categorized that way because even though Bantu is not an ethnicity, the ethnic groups who speak Bantu are not represented in individual articles yet. It's a way to make what information we do have on those peoples easier to find.
However, if you feel that having the "ethnic group" label is misleading readers, it's easy to recategorize it. You simply edit the article and add or remove category tags. In this case, you would remove the tag [[Category:Ethnic groups]] from the article code. Isomorphic 16:03, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moving Page Help

Help! Someone moved Bosnian language to the less common, more POV name Bosniak language. I tried to undo the move, but moves didn't work the way I though they would. See talk:bosniak language#naming for more info. Can someone help? - Key45 18:19, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your move would have worked if you had left the redirect in place, because if a redirect created by a previous move is left alone, then a move back will work. As it is, you will have to get the Bosnian language redirect deleted by an admin, by listing it on Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 20:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Numerous questions

I have put a number of questions in my User page because they seem too long to foul up your Help desk with. The questions are listed in a part of the user page with a header shown as "November 16, 2004 -- questions to all." I'm really starting to become concerned I should remove my edits and stubs because I'm not sure I'm conforming to some of the standards listed in the citation citing discussion, verifiability, and perfect page discussions, though I'm giving accurate info. Also concerned about the "original research" and "neologisms" discussions I just read. I wonder if someone could answer in my user talk page or if I need to write a long list of questions here? I'd have uploaded a photo or two by now also but I found the copyright discussion too hard to understand. For instance, if I am directly given a photo image by the photographer, who only asks that I put "copyright" and his name on it but approves it to be used, is that not good enough? I don't really understand how to upload images. I don't understand how to make a new page for a historical figure with the same name as a currently existing page also. That issue has slowed me up some. Then if my information is directly from inquiring about birth/date/fact info from the person or their survivors, that might be thought "original research." I'm totally stymied at this point and fear I should remove my entries and edits. I have only been editing and writing about music figures in an area of my specialty in every case, except for a phrase or two related to an entry. Also, should I find a way to put my contributions list links into my user page so someone can go and tell review what I've done and tell me what I need to work on, my flaws? Bebop 20:23, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think most of my questions above are being answered at my user page, thanks. Bebop 16:31, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Spacing between paragraphs

I have discovered today with the Stax entry that someone felt the spacing I added between paragraphs to make them readable was superfluous and removed them. I find it very hard to read articles from a design standpoint if you don't properly space between paragraphs. The only way to do this is to hit Enter three times between paragraphs instead of twice. However, no entries besides the ones I've worked on do this. Therefore, regardless of what I think about the readability issue, I should go back and remove the spacing I added from all entries I've edited, correct? This is also a question in my user page. thanks, Bebop 20:25, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the same standard formatting should be used on all pages. Putting a single blank line between paragraphs makes the <p>...</p> HTML tags that surround paragraphs work correctly. Putting an additional blank line adds an extra <br /> tag, which is superfluous, at least from an HTML perspective.
If you don't like the amount of space between paragraphs, you can try editing your personal stylesheet (User:Bebop/monobook.css if you're using the default skin, Monobook) to your liking. Try adding this line:
p { margin: 1.5em 0em }
Make the number 1.5 smaller for less space between paragraphs, or larger for more. In order to see the results of your change, you'll need to follow the instructions on that page to clear your cache after you save the change.
Part of the reason you want to be consistent about style issues like the number of blank lines between paragraphs is so everybody can tweak their stylesheet as they prefer and achieve uniform results. If you insert those extra spaces manually, you're forcing a certain style on everyone. HTH—Triskaideka 21:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, I have edited my stylesheet according to the above and am now going to renew the spacing on all entries I edited that way to be the one line space. At least I didn't edit anything only to do spacing and nothing else though. Bebop 21:35, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

edits

Is there a way to transfer only certain information from one article to another?

By hand, usually -- copy it out of one, paste it into the other, then remove it from the first. Unless I misunderstand what you mean — mendel ☎ 03:47, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Contents tab

I did a large bibliography section for Boris Vian a while back, and since I had to use different headers for poetry/dramatic works, Wikipedia automatically added a Contents tab right after the article text! I thought it looked very wrong, a CONTENTS tab AFTER the article, covering the bibliography section only.. is there a way to remove it? -- Jashiin 18:11, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Placement_of_the_Table_of_Contents_.28TOC.29. You can put the text string __NOTOC__ anywhere in the body of an article to suppress display of its table of contents.
Another option is to put a section heading close to the top of the article, so that the TOC shows up in a more sensible place. For example, in Boris Vian, you might start a new section called "Life and works" immediately after the first paragraph. Whether that's a better option than __NOTOC__ is a matter of personal opinion, I suppose. —Triskaideka 18:28, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks a lot!! I used the NOTOC option, since I'm planning on expanding the article and don't want to edit its header structure right now :) -- Jashiin 18:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Personally, I think having a proper header structure is far better: only a short introduction should be outside all headers in anything but the smallest article. And then, of course, people can actually make use of the ToC to access the other parts of the article. I'm going to do that now - you can, of course, revert, tweak, edit or whatever if you disagree with how I've done it, or because you're expanding and rearranging it in general. - IMSoP 18:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Actually, yes, this looks better.. I think I'll leave it like that for a while, until I have a good cohesive text ready for the article. Thanks for your help! :) -- Jashiin 21:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Adding images to article

Help! I have this image of David Holmes (Dream Job Season 2 Winner) that I want to put into my article on him, but I don't know how to. Here's the link: [3]Mike Hackney 21:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia:Image use policy, Special:Upload, and Wikipedia:Extended image syntax for what to upload (beware copyrights), how to upload it, and what to do with it then, respectively. - IMSoP 22:04, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That image is copyright either ESPN or the guy whose name is on the image itself. Please don't upload it, we have enough images claiming to be fair use already. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:18, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Inappropriate links?

What is Wikipedia's official policy on inappropriate links?

Specifically, there is a page about an actor with an external link leading to his nude pictures. Is this allowed?

Whether a link to nude pictures of an actor is appropriate depends on the particular actor. You're going to have to actually tell us what article you're talking about if you want a specific response on whether the link belongs. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:23, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
And if you're going to keep the link, at least put in a warning. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:21, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Templates and Categories

Is anyone here really good with Wikimedia templates? We're trying to think of a way to set up the {{delete}} template so that the template can contain the category tag but be sorted in the category list so that it is separate from all of the actual CSDs. I feel like there must be a way to manipulate the pipe trick and template parameters for this effect, but I don't have a lot of experience with templates. Look at my suggestion at Category talk:Candidates for speedy deletion#Cluttering and see if any of those ideas will work. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:59, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

You could use {{subst:delete}} to include the text from a template on the pages in question and manually delete the category. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:18, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Search Question

I created a page, the Battle of Watling Street. In the search engine, it will only come up when I type in the exact pharse "Battle of Watling Street". Is there anyway to allow another search item to be linking to it? (e.g. by typing "battle of watling street" will bring the page up)

I'm not sure why the full text search isn't picking the article up under "Article title matches" when you search for "battle of watling street". I suppose it's possible that it was not indexed properly, but only a developer can know for sure. One workaround would be to create a redirect from Battle of watling street to Battle of Watling Street. --David Iberri | Talk 22:56, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
This is the same problem I posted about here a couple of weeks ago. Your search isn't finding the article because it would appear that the wikipedia search index is only getting updated on an occasional basis. Last time I was looking it took a month for my pages to show up in search. The reason the full article name is working is because you are using the "Go" funtion not the "Search" button. I would appreciate a comment from the developers as to whether this is the normal state of affairs. Martyman 23:03, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Are you perhaps thinking of the external search (choice of Google or Yahoo!) which is used when the "real" site search is disabled for performance reasons [which is all too often]? Being external search engines, those will only update when they periodically trawl this site along with billions of others; I can't imagine any reason for the internal search not to index pages as they are created/edited - unless, I suppose, the indexing is also disabled during busy periods... - IMSoP 18:53, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

disambiguating

I have just put up an entry for Robert Palmer (author/producer) to help sort out a conflict in other references, such as at the RL Burnside entry, to this Palmer being confused with the British singer by the same name. I have a couple of questions. First of all, there seem to be more than one way to do this disambiguating process. Some, as with Al Green (musician), involve making a disambiguation page and specifying what each person was known for. Obviously Al Green, the musician, is much better known than the politician mentioned on that page. Another place in the faqs here discusses just putting a notation on the top of the more famous individual's page and having the search lead straight to the best known individual. For some reason they chose to have a search of "Al Green" lead to a disambiguation page instead of to the musician. So for a search on "Robert Palmer," which method would you suggest be used to disambiguate? I feel it should go to a disambiguation page and have one that is Robert Palmer (British singer) and one that is Robert Palmer (author/producer) because both are famous. Would the problem be that there are too many already-existing links going to the british singer's current Robert Palmer page? I suppose I could try to make a project of looking all those up in a Google wikipedia search and correct them myself if someone was concerned about that. I am worried about how to complete this disambiguation correctly Bebop 23:23, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Like everything else in Wikipedia, disambiguating is done according to what each editor considers to be best practice -- and different editors write different guidelines, I'm afraid. We do TRY to be consistent and come to consensus on these things, but disambiguation is one of those things that really must be judged on each individual case. For the most part I support using a "disambiguation block" of one sentence or so at the top of the "most famous" person, but that's always subjective. I don't think the Al Green page was strictly necessary, but the creator was probably thinking ahead, since both "Al" and "Green" are very common names and there may be more Al Greens out there becoming notable as we speak. (Still, I prefer to deal with present realities -- it's very easy to change something to a disambiguation page in the future when it becomes necessary.) That said, I'm also the one who created disambiguation pages for John Taylor (33 entries!) and a few other common names...
In your case (and as one of the contributors to the current Robert Palmer page), I'd have no objection to moving it to Robert Palmer (British singer) and leaving a disamb page there -- although I'm not as familiar with the other Robert, he certainly seems equally notable to me. In my personal opinion, you might consider moving him to Robert Franklin Palmer, though; with such a multitude of talents, it seems cleaner to me, and it's easy enough to use a "piped link" such as [[Robert Franklin Palmer|Robert Palmer]] so that the middle name does not display in the linked text.
Already existing links are not an obstacle to moving or renaming a page, though they do create some work for the editor. (Accuracy is more important than ease!) Each page has a "What links here" link in the sidebar. If you move the existing RP, it would be your responsibility to use that link and go to each article that mentions RP, and fix the link in that article text so it pointed to [[Robert Palmer (British singer)|Robert Palmer]] instead of the new disambiguation page. You might even find a few more that should link to RFP as well!
Have I rambled on enough....? [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 00:23, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
He was never known by anyone but his mother by his full name, I hope no one tries to change it to "Robert Franklin Palmer." He was always known as "Robert Palmer," as that was his byline and his production/musician/author name. I don't see anyone wishing to call the British singer by his full name which is also written on his Robert Palmer page as "Robert Allen Palmer." Anyway, I have tried to disambiguate and had great difficulty. I have finally done it, with help from the Requested moves desk, but lost all the list of "what this links to" links. I did change a number of them prior to making the move, but I'll try looking in Google to find the rest. Thanks a lot for the comments. Bebop 02:21, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If by that you mean the list of pages that link to Robert Palmer, what's wrong with going to Robert Palmer and clicking on "What links here"? --Paul A 02:37, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It seemed that I lost a number of the "What links here" items that I saw, which was a very long list, including numerous "Talk" pages, when I made the switch. I don't know why. They do not appear in the What links here area for that page ever since I moved the page, and I feel I should have changed all the links before I made the switch. Anyway, I have made a good faith effort to find and change links intended to link to the British singer's page and will continue to change more if I find them. Everything seems fine now, thanks. Bebop 05:29, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Not to worry, Bebop -- it's likely that since this was a public discussion other editors helped to fix the "What links here" links. [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 03:02, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How should I handle Martin Luther King and his son with the same name?

The most well known of the Martin Luther King clan is Martin Luther King Jr., (the one who delivered the "I have a dream" speach, etc.)

I am thinking of writing a short article on his eldest son, who I believe went by the name "Martin Luther King, III". Should that be the title of the article (with the comma and the roman numeral 3)?

Is there another way to handle this? Some use the custom of dropping the "jr." etc. when only one is alive, but that is probably not wise in this case, as he is so well known.

Also to add to this person's question, I'm curious about what house style is on "Jr." and "III" because some style manuals prefer people to not include a comma before "Jr." The only times I've left them that way so far is when I saw someone spelled a name that way already. P.S. Mpearl asked the above question, not I. Bebop 05:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'd use Martin Luther King, Jr. for the the son and Martin Luther King, Sr. for his father. Those are the names most people will know them by, so that's the name wikipedia should use. His son Martin Luther King III should be without a comma, I believe. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:13, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Hi again. I'm going to focus my reply here about the comma issue, whereas of course Mpearl (who didn't use a signature) brought the MLK topic at hand up. I am still interested in the comma issue after reading the above answer. For consistency, one would normally punctuate both III and Jr. the same way. Modern styles I've seen, such as A.P. style (and I also think Chicago Manual of Style) usually don't include a comma for either one. I didn't use one in Robert Palmer (author/producer)'s entry where I mention his full name and father's name, for instance. And if I learn of a final house style on this (and an example of which style you guys are basing the comma decision on), I could adjust any entries I've seen with commas in them (like Al Jackson, Jr., an entry which by the way is redirected strangely to a name he didn't use professionally, since I think all his recordings said "Jr." on them, but I'll study that further) or adjust anything I've put without a comma to have one, if need be. I did have a reason to not use the comma though, as I didn't see a style rule here and therefore went by house styles I'm familiar with. Maybe I should be talking about this in the talk page for the house style entry? I have experience discussing house styles, as I've written one before, so please excuse my interest in this tedious detail. Bebop 15:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A quick glance around the style and naming pages suggests to me that this has been raised a couple of times, but has never "taken off" into a proper discussion and consensus. E.g. this discussion didn't get very far, while this one amounts to "people generally use with-comma style at the moment". Maybe you'll have better luck getting people's attention ("advertise" the discussion on the village pump if you're really bothered), but, unfortunately, maybe not. It's the kind of detail a lot of people just put off thinking about; of course, you can always Be bold and start systematically changing things - then if anyone is bothered either way, they'll start complaining. ;) - IMSoP 00:50, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello, i am very new here, actualy just arrived for the first time... Long story short, My first action here was to put a defenition on a link that lead to nowhere (no description or article on the subject) Since i am very new i was wondering how i did and how i could make my article better; so i went to peer reveiw. However, i got hoplessly lost because i cant tell where im supposed to put up a question there (i tried to start a topic but instead i kept being brought e to a editing page of someone else's request) so i left. And i came here and i want to know: how do i navigate the community areas? i can barely tell where the questions stop and the responses begin. Thanks

Above is from User:Fledgeling, who created Fraser magnolia. (You can get these actions attributed to your new user name through Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit.)
You are probably looking for Wikipedia:How to edit a page, but my advice is just be bold. If you do something wrong, it is very likely that someone will come along and correct it. Most of the time, their actions may seem abrupt, but in general people will be pleasant if you explain your situation, as you have here. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 16:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Also, the lack of distinction between where a question ends and the answer begins is something of a feature of wikis - just like on this page, it's actually one long block of text, so a "conversation" is just a bunch of text. On many pages, including this one and Wikipedia:Peer review, the convention is that each conversation has it's own heading - which is created like the one above, with a line like "== This is my heading ==". So to start a new section, you just add a heading; it doesn't matter if it looks like its "inside" someone else's section, all the headings are exactly the same. And, as Noisy says, if you're not sure, do your best, and someone will probably correct it for you; if they're feeling particular nice, they'll tell you what to avoid next time... - IMSoP 19:04, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

failed edit - lost the page completely!

Tried to edit an entery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_sardine

with my somewhat expanded text (below):

The Tanganyika sardine is really two species (Limnothrissa miodon and Stolothrissa tanganicae) both of which are small planktivorous pelagic freshwater clupeid originating from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. They form the major biomass of pelagic fish in Lake Tanganyika, swimming in large schools in the open lake, feeding on copepods and potentially jellyfish. Their major predators are four species of Lates which are also endemic to Lake Tanganyika, and are related to (but not the same as) the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria. All of these pelagic fish have suffered from overfishing in the last 2 decades.

The local names are Kapenta in Zambia or Dagaaor Ndgaaelsewhere. Limnothrissa miodon has been successfully introduced in both natural and artificial African lakes. Large kapenta fisheries now take place in the Kariba Dam and Cahora Bassa in Zambia.

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories:Fish, Lake Tanganyika, Fisheries


But it said it lost the page and the old ID no longer exists. What now?

To the person above who wrote about their problem without signing their user name, I am not an admin, I'm a newbie, but I just now have gone in and fixed it by the following procedure: I clicked in the History file on the time and date of an older version, clicked on the Edit tab and added into it your edits above, then hit Enter and it worked. There is helpful information in the Revert faq. There seems to be a bit of a confusing editing duel going on in the page at issue, by the way. - user Bebop

Red linked contributors

How come I can see new pages being added by people with red-linked IDs?

The red-linked user name means they have not created a user page yet. This is the default state for all new user accounts. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:22, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clarification on copywright rules- verification

I really.. um... anyway.

I have been told by some people (my writing teacher, parents) that putting up someone else's ideas or information that you learned from that book/person/website is OK, as long as you correctly cite your references/sorces. I have been working by this premice (specificly, leaf leinghts and species distribution- i cannot find species distribution by going by myself out and surveying an extensive area alone- not copyinf and pasting whole articles, just peices of information that i could not obtain elsewhere) Recently i have been told by others that THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Since the site articles on copywright information did not answer my question, i wish to verify trough a third party if either side is correct, because i am getting coflicting reports. Who's correct?

User:Fledgeling,

IANAL; but I'll tell you what my understanding is: in general, facts are not the subject of copyright - so something like the average length of a rowan leaf is probably fair game. However, copying the detailed results of a piece of research verbatim is likely to breach copyright; researchers generally want their results to be known, but the journals they publish to make their money from controlling who reads and copies the full text. I'm not sure where the line would be drawn, but I imagine it is analagous to quoting passages of, say, a short story: a few appropriate quotes, properly credited, is going to be OK, but if your quoting ends up being most of the original content, you're risking it. Obviously, anything that can be considered "general knowledge" is not going to be copyright (as long as you put it in your own words); so reading someone's website to get a better understanding of, say, Einsteinian physics, doesn't mean you mustn't write E=mc2 ever again.
In general, putting someone else's conclusions in your own words, backed up with referenced quotations, is just good practice; but if it's a truly new and ground-breaking idea, then going too much further than a summary, so that you're paraphrasing almost the entire paper, might attract raised eyebrows. But as long as you're not passing the ideas off as your own, and distinguish between direct and indirect quotation, no major harm is being done. - IMSoP 00:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The amoung pages i have done so far that i am wondering about is Fraser magnolia - specificly the scentence((Magnolia fraseri) is a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree of the southern Appalachians with narrow, auriculate-lobed leaves.)- i found that out in a book i listed in references. If thats ok then i havent been copywrigting, but it is a direct quote, so im not shure. Mostly, besides one other scentance, its from my own knowlege and not taken from anywhere. One scentence is the same as on the internet reference (It grows best on moist, well-drained soil) but i already knew that because of its habitat (almost all plants found exlusively in that area require their soil to be like that) and because Magnolias virtually as a whole require that same requierment, so i assumed it was common knowledge

User:Fledgeling00:49, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC) P.s In the rowan section it should be noted that its also commonly called Mountain Ash

You should only use the exact words you read if you are using them as a "direct quotation" - that is, one with quote-marks round it, and a clear label of who actually said it, e.g.:
According to person X, the Fraser magnolia is "a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree..."
To clarify, an "indirect quotation" would be more like:
Person X describes the Fraser magnolia as small and fragrant, and notes that it is deciduous and basal-branching...
[hmm; this should be covered in quotation or somewhere, really]
Whereas what we want here is those facts, but in your words (or, I guess, mine); so, something like:
The Fraser magnolia is a small deciduous tree native to the Southern Appalachians; it is basal-branching and has...
It's not a big deal with individual sentences like that, but rewording everything you read is a good habit to get into, and it also helps you structure things into decent paragraphs when you're joining up information from multiple sources. - IMSoP 01:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There might be two different issues in question. When your professors say that using someone else's information is okay, as long as you have proper attribution (meaning citing your sources) they could be talking about meeting academic standards for research, and avoiding plagarism.
It is possible that something could be acceptable in a paper you submit for a course, and not acceptable in a commercial publication. For example, if I am doing a biography of someone, and I take a picture from his wedding album, and attached the picture to a paper, I should (for an academic paper) make clear that I did not take the picture myself. For a commercial publication (like a book being offered for sale) I would probably have to get permission of the person who took the picture (which would probably involve paying a fee if the person is a commercial photographer).
In my experience, people get made in two occasions, when they don't get credit for their work, and when someone is using their own work to compete with them. Even if you're technically in the right, having people get mad at you is not a good thing (in my opinion).
Morris 01:55, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Most of the facts i am stating would be obvious to an attentive observer, and i cannot go to, say, china, and back to comment on the leingh of the fruit myself. I doubt writers of text encyclopedias would have as well, because they cant go and do everything and be everywhere to the places and things that they list in their books; its simply not feasable. User:Fledgeling,

Nobody is saying you have to experience it all firsthand. And as mentioned above, the facts are not copyrightable. But the presentation is. Copyright is all about who gets paid for the work. Someone (author, publisher, journal, encyclopedia) gets paid to do the research to write "{Magnolia fraseri) is a small, fragrant, basal-branching deciduous tree of the southern Appalachians with narrow, auriculate-lobed leaves." Copyright says that (in theory at least) if they find that exact sentence, with those exact words and commas, in Wikipedia or any other work, they have the right to take legal action to punish us, because we "stole" the fruits of work that someone else has a legal right to be paid for. Now, if you rephrase the sentence, using the descriptive words necessary to convey the facts, but in a different order so that it is clearly a different work than the source where you found the facts (as Imsop did a nice job with, above), then the owners of the copyright have no basis for suing us.
Now, on the one hand, most of us here think it's a silly way to try to "manage" information -- saying a corporation "owns" a particular sentence is really frustrating if all you want is the information that sentence contains. (Otherwise we wouldn't be building a volunteer, open source, copylefted encyclopedia. On the other hand, much of the knowledge available to us so freely in books and on the Internet would never have been researched or written if there weren't a profit motive for the authors and publishers. Regardless of how you feel about it, the fact is that it is imperative that Wikipedia obey copyright laws -- otherwise the Wikimedia Foundation could find itself under petty legal attack that we really don't want to bother with.
We're really glad you're trying to understand the distinctions between research, plagiarism and copyright -- we need more people to "get it" so that we can spend less time checking for copyright violations, and more time writing (in our original words!) this wonderful 'pedia, which is going to be around for generations to come. [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 06:09, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Fledgeling, you're mixing up two things. One is the need to cite sources for information. That has nothing to do with copyright; it's to help readers verify your facts. Copyrights protect creativity, which in this case would be the words themselves. It is not a good idea to copy an exact sentence from anywhere without using quotation marks and attributing your source. There's nothing wrong with stating the same fact in different words. Isomorphic 20:13, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Okay, i think i understand now. Thanks everyone.User:Fledgeling22:35, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC),

Missing link, version problem

I've just posted another link on my page User:MacGyverMagic/Articles. However, while it shows in the source code and the history, the new link doesn't show on the page even after I forcefully empty my cache. What am I missing? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:47, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Do you mean the link to Justin Yoder? It shows up fine for me. Maybe it was just a cache issue after all; did you try purging the server cache? - IMSoP 19:05, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, and I got a message saying that User:MacGyverMagic/Articles&action=purge didn't exist, maybe it only works of title= is part of the link? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 21:30, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it does. Or, more precisely, a web page can have parameters added like ?a=b&c=d; that question mark has to be there, so en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MacGyverMagic/Articles?action=purge, I now realise, does work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MacGyverMagic/Articles is really a kind of shorthand for http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:MacGyverMagic/Articles, and since that's already got the question mark in it, you need an & instead, to seperate further sets of parameters. Hence http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:MacGyverMagic/Articles&action=purge
Meanwhile, does the link show up for you now? Because it was visible for me as soon as I visited the article. - IMSoP 22:12, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yep, shows up fine now. Thanks for clearing up how the parameters on a link work. :-) [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:43, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Viktor Yanukovych

Guys,

I tried to find a better forum for this but couldn't.

When you open the following link in IE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych)

it comes up with

[CLIP START]

Viktor Yanukovych From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

MY NECK, MY BACK, LICK MY PUSSY AND MY CRACK. Khia

[CLIP END]

where Khia links to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khia)

But when you open it up in Mozilla it comes up just fine.

It's a caching issue. There was a vandal who vandalized the page earlier today. In IE, trying hitting control+R to force a clean reload. →Raul654 07:57, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

problems with the wikipedia service

what is going on with wikipedia!! lately every time i search something i get an error page. the service is not working properly.

please fix!!!

  • Could you give a specific example? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 21:23, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

probably forgotten password

Hello every sysops at English Wikipedia,

I tried already to ask help from User:Meelar;

please help me to retrieve my password to login to English Wikipedia. I am User:JanJosef, and I am not sure, If I mentioned my e-mail jpospisil at cpoj dot cz

Now I am as User:194.228.18.42 (at my work) and you can check another wikis: Czech - http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Jan Esperanto - http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipediisto:Jan Simple - http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JanJosef

(I think, the IP should be the same)

May I receive a new password?

Thank you very much. Jan Pospisil

  • If you provided the wiki with your email adress when you signed up, you can go to the login page and ask for the system to send you a new password on that address to gain access to your personal pages. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 21:27, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
I'm afraid I can't help you. I don't have any special rights here and I can't check such things.

I suggest you try to see if a developer can help you. Otherwise, set up a new account, using a password similar to one of the other accounts you have so you don't forget, and have your old edits attributed to you. Good luck! [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:59, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I will do a new account, and I will note on the User:JanJiri, that I am now JosefJan, identical with JanJosef. Tanks many, and see you :-)

--194.228.18.42 16:05, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry

The occupying force on April 9 allowed more than 70,000 women, children and elderly residents to leave the besieged city, reportedly also allowing males of military age to leave. On April 10, the U.S. military declared a unilateral truce to allow for humanitarian supplies to enter Fallujah. U.S. troops pulled back to the outskirts of the city; local leaders reciprocated the ceasefire, although lower-level intense fighting on both sides continued. An Iraqi mediation team entered the city in an attempt to set up negotiations between the U.S. and local leaders, but as of April 12 had not been successful. The resistance forces capitalized on this 'ceasefire' to conduct the most aggressive counter-offensive of the cordon. Additionally, numerous weapons were found hidden in the humanitarian supply trucks that were attempting to enter the city. [2] (http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/04/12/rebels_smuggle_supplies_into_iraqi_city/)


the above is from the fallujah article.

The link is broken(the last line) and I did not know how else to tell anyone

In general, the best way to comment about an issue with a particular article is by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the screen; in the case of the article Fallujah, it will take you to Talk:Fallujah. In this particular case, I realised that the problem was that the ")" at the end of the link was being treated as part of the link. I've fixed this by using special numbered external links: if you type "[http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/04/12/rebels_smuggle_supplies_into_iraqi_city/]", it appears as "[4]". The old links look oddly like they were copied and pasted from the display of another page on the site, rather than the underlying code you see when you click "edit this page".
See Wikipedia:How to edit a page for more on how you can fix things yourself. - IMSoP 20:18, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)


I'm trying to understand all that a wiki is capable of...

I'm putting together a technology plan for an social benefit organization I'm working on starting, and I'm trying to figure out how the wiki tool can best be incorporated into the overall plan. Here are some of my goals and questions:

1. I want to have a series of webpages written by authors representing either their own ideas or those of an organization or group they represent. These authors will be identified, chosen, and recruited by members of the organization. Membership will be open to anyone who lives in the identified community and agrees to uphold certain core values and principles (as outlined by the members themselves) and to strive to behave according to a set of guidelines (also outlined by the members). What defines and unifies the group is that they all live within a defined community (with geographic boundaries) and share an intent to bring about a more just, peaceful and sustainable world in which the desires of the individual are not met at the expense of the needs of others throughout the world. This may not be the best description of the group, but I think you'll get the point.

So my question is this, can a wiki be set-up so that a section of the page which expresses the information and perspective presented by the author (membership elected individual or group of representatives), is protected from edits by others? Then the greater membership could have access to a comment section of the page for continual edits, encouraging the author to continually re-evaluate his/her perspective and integrate their feedback into an ever-evolving article.

The goal here is to take academics and others who've developed a trusted reputation and give them a more public platform upon which to communicate, while also removing them from the "echo chamber" where they only hear from others with the same perspectives. A sort of virtual dialogue amongst those who are either members of the community which is impacted by policies and practices of which they speak or respected experts selected by the community to help formulate solutions which work for the greater good.

2. I don't know how the underlying wiki engine works, as I'm not all that technical, but I'm wondering if the engine could be further developed so that there are tags to represent certain kinds of data. I'm hoping for the ability to have a reference database of books, articles, lectures, videos, etc. that anyone could select from in displaying a list of references or suggested educational materials for a particular purpose. Kind of like a shopping cart of references. Say I'm writing an article about statements made by our president which relate to global warming. I could search the reference database and select those which apply to my article and at the end, I will have an automatically generated list of references. Or perhaps in the body of my article I want to list recommended educational materials grouped by category. I could simply select from the available reference database (adding those not yet there) and have the list sorted according to my specifications (by author, keyword, date, etc). Does this seem possible?

3. How does a non-technical person go about finding someone to help set-up and administer a wiki when there is currently no budget (it's my hope that once the community begins growing, member donations will support some paid staff)?

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I apologize if this isn't the right place to post these questions; if that's the case, perhaps you can redirect me to the correct place.

Thank you, Jennifer

  • If you're having trouble finding technical people to set up a wiki, you might want to start a free hosted on. Starting your own would require a server and some bandwith which can be quite costly. Anyway, I think you might like to visit this link on how to start a Wiki. Good luck and don't hesitate to contact us again if you need to follow up. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 21:38, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality

In the article Cultural and historical background of Jesus, Admin (User:Theresa knott) took sides by protecting page immediately after revert by Biased editor. Rather than protecting a pre-edit war version (the edit war goes back about 100 or so edits, by the way).

Is this allowed? CheeseDreams 22:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Without looking into the specifics of the situations, my gut feeling is that the answer is "yes", this is "allowed". Although the complaint that the version protected is the "wrong" one is a common one, it is an impossible complaint to uphold - even if you go back to before the edit war began, you are still "supporting" a particular version, which presumably somebody felt needed editing. Choosing which version to protect would, obviously, be taking sides; protecting whichever version happens to be current when the protection is carried out is in fact the only way to maintain neutrality.
This is why the message added when a page is protected includes the text "Protection is not an endorsement of the current version. To see other versions, use the page history." Queries and complaints regarding this point are frequently much less civil than yours [thank you], and are the subject of a parody on our meta-wiki entitled The Wrong Version. - IMSoP 22:48, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Falsely accused.

I

Wikipedia mirror?

Where would one report a Wikipedia mirror which was not citing Wikipedia? http://djpronto.com/ doesn't have any reference to Wikipedia that I can find, but uses Wikipedia content. - Vague | Rant 08:16, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks, low compliance →Raul654 08:18, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Starting a category for chicken breeds.

I'm looking at starting a new category (or finding an existing one!) for chicken breeds. I'd like to make sure my understanding of Wikipedia:Categorization is correct. Here's what I'm planning to do — I'd appreciate any feedback (positive or negative) that anyone would like to offer.

Would Category:Chicken breeds be a suitable category name, based upon the fact that there is already a Category:Dog breeds to do the same task for dogs.

Currently there's Category:Galliformes which includes chickens. It would make sense for the new category to be in a subcategory of Category:Galliformes. Is there a better subcategory instead?

Many thanks,

--pjf 08:36, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In line with Wikipedia's policy on being bold, I've created the category with a few articles and placed it as a subcategory in Category:Galliformes. However I'm still hoping for a thumbs-up/down from a more experienced Wikipedian to ensure I'm on the right track. --pjf 08:43, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks good to me. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 13:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia crashes Netscape

The Wikipedia homepage seems to reliably crash Netscape 4.79. This seems to be due to its use of Javascript on the homepage.

(If I turn off Javascript in Netscape it doesn't crash).

Javascript is *not* a standardized language and I should have a perfect right to use an old browser on an old computer because Netscape 4.79 is faster than modern browsers. Wikipedia should be able to accept and work with that -- they should not be overengineering their web pages to an extent that they crash browsers. Wikipedia is distributing *information*. The distribution of information does *not* require the execution of code on machines visiting a site. I do *not* friggen care about pull down menus or pop-up windows -- I care that the site works reliably in the browser and on the machines that I choose to use.

If anyone could inform me of *who* is responsible for the Wikipedia home page I would appreciate it. Because I want to give them a piece of my mind.

Thank you, Robert Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)

I too have problem with home page. I am using Mozilla 1.0.2. To e the main page does cause crash but the browser (and hence the whole computer) seat down for 1 or 2 minutes. I am experiencing the same problem also with very long and complex page (like this one). In particular the presence of not very standard character (like chinese) seems to give troubles to my computer. AnyFile 14:54, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia and its sister sites use an open source wiki engine called MediaWiki, the project homepage for which is available at http://mediawiki.org. For information on how to report bugs in this software generally, or in the setup of this site specifically, please see Wikipedia:Bug reports. A bug which causes the entire browser to crash will no doubt be treated with very high priority.
As someone who has spent a little time on the "development" side of things, I can assure you that the software is designed to conform as closely as possible to standards, and work with as many browsers as possible. Despite what you seem to be suggesting, this site uses very little JavaScript, and in fact one of its uses, I believe, is to make the site behave correctly in more browsers. There is certainly no use of JavaScript for pull-down menus or pop-up windows; the most complex pieces of script are probably those for showing and hiding certain information, so that the server can cache one copy of the page to serve to people with several combinations of preferences (this is necessary for the distribution of information, since without it the site would slow down to a crawl).
I am sure the developers will be much more receptive of your comments if, rather than "giving them a piece of your mind", you politely explain the exact circumstances of the problem. One thing I'm not clear on is whether this is an issue with the Main Page only, or with every page on the site (which would include this one). If it is just that one page, then it is unlikely to be a JavaScript issue, since no individual page can contain custom JavaScript, and the Main Page is not special in this respect. I gather that the Main Page has recently been edited to make different/more use of CSS, however, so maybe this is causing the problem? Perhaps, as suggested in this announcement, you should therefore mention it on this discussion page.
Once again, I'm sorry you have had such a severe problem with the site, and hope it is successfully resolved soon; thank you for pointing it out to us. - IMSoP 18:41, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

History: current and last

What is the meangin of the last link on the history pages? AnyFile 15:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It compares the selected version to the version immediately preceeding it. It essentially shows you the changes made in individual edits. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere not updating

I switched Template:New York so it links to Capital District rather than to Capitol District (see Talk:Capitol District). But Whatlinkshere:Capitol_District still lists all the pages that include Template:New York. Why? (It only bothers me because I'm trying to see if anything links to Capitol District, now a redirect page, and I'm getting all these false positive results.) —msh210 18:06, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Boilerplate Templates

Is there a special page that lists all template pages? I don't want to create new templates that duplicate the function of an existing one. Are there guidelines for what belongs in a template and what does not?

  1. ^ Calculated using parser functions. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.
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