Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2006 December 10

= December 10 =

Remove Picture
How do I remove a page and Picture I created? the page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Copy_of_RM_Logo.jpg

WCJohnston 00:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Simply place on the page you would like to be deleted. &mdash; Seadog 00:24, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have deleted it for you. In answer to your original question, only administrators can delete pages (and images), but you can request a page be deleted by adding to the page as described above. Happy editing!  Prodego  talk  01:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Changing an Article Name
How do I change the Name of an Article from Envision high school to Envision High Schools? MacDude415 03:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You can click on the move button at the top of the page. However, you will need to have been registered for at least 4 days in order to complete this function, and you have only been registered for a day in a half. Someone can complete this for you, if you'd like. You want the article at Envision High Schools? Patstuarttalk 03:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. -Patstuarttalk 03:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Parameter values through nested templates
Hi, i'm testing a template A which uses a parameter M to specify a value Z. Inside this template A, I also use a parameter N through which I call a template B. Inside this second template, i specify other parameters but also the same parameter M from the parent template. But i don't know how or if it's possible to "pass" the parameter M's value Z, in the parent template (A), to this child template (B). Have i made myself clear? I hope so... Could anyone help me? Parutakupiu  talk 03:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I think you are refering to your template experiments in your sandbox. You could try subst: which copies the code across (though you may not want that). I'm going to point you to Category:User template coder which is full of people who can code templates well. Sorry that you're getting told to go all over the place. :S James086Talk 04:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Not at all! Thank you for redirecting me. I just want to solve this. Parutakupiu  talk 04:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm... you forgot to point me to where i could find help, after all, lol. Parutakupiu  talk 05:04, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * For some reason, it didn't display when he tried to link to "Category:User template coder". Just search for that and see if it helps. -- Kesh 06:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's because he used, which added the Help desk to that category (now fixed by making the link Category:User template coder ). Confusing Manifestation 12:04, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Oops, I thought I had put the colon in there. Sorry for the inconvenience. James086Talk 12:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Funny enough, i noticed and found strange that category link on the bottom of the page and i thought it would be the easiest way: to ask a pro on the subject. Thanks again, people! I'll be visiting this page more often ;) Parutakupiu  talk 19:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

New article
I'm attempting to write a new article (linked from my userpage), and have found multiple sources concerning the company in question. One is a "local" newspaper article, while two others qualify as a national newspaper. There's also two other references in a pay-for database, which I have identified (but I don't yet have access to their article.)

These articles are unique. However, the primary focus is around a current event involving the company's bankruptcy and it's impending buy-out - there is notability asserted by stating that the company is large and significant (i.e. third largest).

I still think that something is missing from my sources, even though it can survive a speedy or prod - can you think of anything offhand? --Sigma 7 04:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Turning URLs into sources
Hi. I'm working on an article and I need to start sourcing it. I'm crap at links, and the tutorials (which I'm sure are great, it's my problem) make my head swim.

What I need to do specifically is take a URL and have it appear as "PBS article on subject", and so on with three URLS.

Also, I'm still a little confused about citation. Currently there isn't anything in there that I believe would be controversial, but doesn't it lend credibility to the article to through in some citations?

Thanks for your time, NinaEliza 04:22, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, as for the links part, if I understood well, you want this – [http://URL PBS article on subject] – correct? Then, all you have to do is this:

[http://URL PBS article on subject]
 * Don't forget to leave a blank space between the URL and name). Parutakupiu  talk 04:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * But if you are doing these for references, sometimes when you try for an FA or GA the reviewers will get picky and ask them to be made using Template:Cite web. Cbrown1023 04:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Great thanks to you both. This could be an featured article or a good article someday, so I'm going to try the Template:Cite web. Pray for me.
 * NinaEliza 05:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Success! I did five of them, and the look too cool for school. Thanks again!NinaEliza 06:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

This sounds nuts but???
I just checked my contributions and an edit of the John T. Scopes article appears for 16:52, 7 December 2006. that I did not do. This is a problem as this article I'm sure is controversial and I do not wish to associated with this edit. --Droll 05:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Try WP:RFO. Cbrown1023 05:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah. HELP!!! --Droll 05:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you managed to revert a year's worth of work too. D'oh! (I've reverted) Patstuarttalk 05:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

The point is that I did not do it!!!!!!!!!!!! I think some on spoofed --Droll 05:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe you want to change your password. It's a possibility, I guess. More likely, it was a server hiccup, or you accidentally did it. The fact that it has an accurate edit summary makes it look like you did it. Do you use any software like VandalProof? One of those might have goofed. Patstuarttalk 05:47, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a I took it to WP:RFO--Droll 05:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I would have thought this would be for the Check Users so they could see if more than one IP was logging in as him. Of course the people with Oversight often have Check User Priviliges aswell so they would likely help anyway. If you want to try the Check Users go here: Requests for checkuser. Hope it helps. James086Talk 06:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

What Does &   Do?
Danke.100110100 05:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well you can basically see. It breaks your sentences/edits. &mdash; Seadog 05:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It is HTML code that forces a new line. In a wiki it is not usually used but it comes in handy for poetry where you do not want a list or a new paragraph. For example:

This is line one.

This is line two.

--Droll 05:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Notice that the preferred syntax is

div
What exactly does  do? I only seem to use it when adding references down the bottom of a page.

†he Bread 06:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * To put it bluntly; it ends certain codes. The fact that it contains the "/" means it is closing the tag so there will be a  (though it may be or ) further up the page. You are probable using it to "close" references like this

in the address bar of your browser, but replace  with his user name.
 * 1) If none of these gets you the image you want, try Special:Prefixindex. Set the dropdown to look at the Image namespace, then type the first few letters of the name of the image you are looking for into the box that says "Display pages with prefix:". That way, if you made a small mistake in the image name, you could still find it.
 * Hope this helps! FreplySpang 19:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Add Jackpin to Wikipedia
I need to know if you can add David "Jackpin" Jackson to Wikipedia?

He is the man who started the Woman's Combatative Sports Association (WCSA) and hosted 3 international Women's Wrestling Conventons (WWC) 98-2000. These Conventions drew Combatants, Companies, and Fans from all over the world to see the only true Women's Wrestling Convention. Amatures to Professional attended and made "Herstory". Jackpin is known world wide for this event and for his work to open the doors for women who compete in combatative sports.Jackpin 16:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)Jackpin


 * Anyone can create an article, so you can too! Just search for the name you want the article under, and click on the red link that comes up on the search page. However, make sure the person is notable. You need to find sources to cite which show this person is well-known enough to include in an encyclopedia.


 * Also, it's very bad form to create an article about oneself. Noting your username, if you are David Jackson, it'd be a bad idea to create your own article. Instead, just put all your personal information on your own userpage. Hope that's helpful. -- Kesh 17:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be a WP:COI if you created it yourself. Cbrown1023 17:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Ongoing problems with wikipedia?
I'm interested in reading about ongoing technical, administrative, and philosophical concerns within the Wikipedia community.

For example, the current discussion mechanism, i.e., users leaving messages on each others talk pages, is quite awkward and makes conversations difficult to follow, particularly if more than two people are involved. I think it needs to be replaced with something that streamlines communication and surely these types of issues (as well as many others) have been examined before.

Can someone point to the right place to look for such discussions? 141.154.220.74 18:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You're looking for the Village Pump. &mdash;  Da rk Sh ik ar i   talk /<sub style="color:#000088;">contribs  18:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Help Me My Template Doesn't Work
I made a template but it won't show up on my page. (More info - User_talk:Jake95) Jake95 18:54, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've looked at it, and the template you're referring to, template:user crgs, doesn't seem to exist. Do you have a naming problem, perhaps? Patstuarttalk 19:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was a typo that I corrected for the user. The template is actually located at cgrs, not crgs like the user was pointing to on the user page.  Metros232 19:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Weird redirect problem
I recently changed the following redirect article. Israel-Palestinian conflict (Recent history). previously, it pointed to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I changed it to point to History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, for about 12 hours, it contiued redirecting to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though i rechecked the code several times, and the redirect tag was still pointing at History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This seems bizarre in the extreme. how can a computer do something which it is not programmed to do? I just tested it, and now it does point to the "History of the..." article. So maybe this is all moot. However, I am still puzzled by this whole thing, and would like to ask about this. has anyone else encountered this problem? What causes it? Does it have to do with something like the memory cache? I did make sure to refresh all the pages repeatedly, when i encountered this problem. i would be grateful for any help or answers which you could provide. Thanks. --Sm8900 19:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This is often a caching problem - your web browser has saved the older version of the page, so when you go back to it the browser doesn't notice that the page has changed, and so shows the old version. See Bypass your cache for a little more information. Confusing Manifestation 10:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

moving
i made a biorgraphy on someone on wikimedia(META), but how do i put that on on to WIKIpiedia?

math rendering in Firefox
I have realized that recent versions of Firefox 1.5 (currently 1.5.0.8) display wikipedia pages containing math written in latex code just as that code. Ie not as png or mathml, etc, even when I log in and set any of those options in my preferences page.

No problem like this one eg with IE 6.

Should I go to Firefox 2? Any pointer?

Regards, Alejandro


 * Alejandro, in which articles are you seeing this. Using ff1.5.0.8 I'm looking at Hermitian matrix, Discrete Fourier transform, and Elliptic curve, all of which have a fair amount of math markup, and all of which render fine (as PNGs) for me. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

For example:

Fresnel_diffraction

Here, the svg image at the upper right (Diffraction geometry,...) does not show either. Only a box with the caption is shown.

The same problem with math rendering occurs with the pages that you mention.

On the other hand no problem occurs with Mozilla 1.7.12

Whether it is a configuration issue in ff, I do not have any idea. I do not see any other problem regarding the display of images (I am replying with ff and the wikipedia logo in this editing page shows fine, etc).

As you know, Firefox is updating automatically in the late times. And I do not look at wikipedia so often. So I do not know for certain when and for what version of ff this problem arose. For sure, there was no problem some months ago.

Alejandro


 * That SVG works fine for me. I think your problem is probably one of:
 * You're unlucky enough to have some bad images in your image cache (or in one of the caches between you and the image server). Try clearing your cache using the method described at Bypass your cache
 * Your Firefox installation (or, if your on Linux/MacOS, some library it depends on) is broken. A reinstall might fix that.
 * -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I will look at the cache. However, I would exclude the second possibility as the previous report was for Firefox 1.5.0.8 under Windows XP and now I have booted to Debian Sarge, and here, with version Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.5-0bpo1 I observe exactly the same problem. While no problem occurs, with Mozilla 1.7.8-1sarge3, or Konqueror 3.3.2. It would be very hard to belieive that these two completely independent installations could be broken.

I have bypassed the cache, cleaned the cache and disabled the cache, both in Debian Sarge and Windows XP without any improvement. I think that I will try installing Firefox 2.0

Finlay,

png images did not show because the option "load images from the originating site only" was chequed. Do wikipedia images originate from elsewhere?

Alejandro

Tagalog
Do you have a wikipedia in Tagalog?


 * Sure, at http://tl.wikipedia.org/ -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

FILM article
Hey I'm not a regular user, and I am not registered (and HELL, its taken me 20 minutes to find a single way of contacting someone directly - how AKWARD you guys are!!!) but on your article about film, a vandal has been messing around with the facts and I was hoping to use the article as a resource for my essay. I'm sure I'm messaging the wrong department, but if you made it easier I'd email the right people. is there any way you can restore the "proper factual" content for your article on Film?
 * Each article has different volunteer editors. To read them, just click the "Discussion" page at the top of the article, then the "+" button to add a comment. That's it! Notinasnaid 20:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * To answer the user's question, the article on film was vandalised, but the changes were reverted very quickly - you must have viewed the article at just the wrong time. In future, if you find vandalism you can revert it yourself, see reverting vandalism for instructions on how to do this. Hope that helps! &mdash; QuantumEleven 09:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Editing article on sister
My sister is a celebrity, with her own article on Wikipedia. From the content and the profiles of the writers of this article I assume it has been created by well-meaning fans. The text is fine, absolutely fine, but short and convoluted. I would like to tidy it up, expand it and add a couple of photographs. My question regards Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability. Part of the text I would like to add relates to my sister's professional beginnings. She has spoken about these in interviews over the years, so I have some references, but I will be citing facts for which I have no source to quote. May I proceed? Are there any caveats?

I would also like your opinion on the user name I should use if you allow me to go ahead. I was thinking of creating one with my real name solely for this purpose, in order to give credence to the edit, but I realize it will be unverifiable and could have the reverse effect. What do you suggest?

Grateful in advance. Dennywuh 21:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, everything has to have a verifiable source (which means that in 10 years time some future wikipedia editor can go back and check a source out, and confirm that it really says what the original person added to wikipedia). So we do need everything to come from a reliable, verifyable source.  For the stuff that's in interviews (print, magazine, radio interviews are fine, as long as you can cite the publication with specific precision that a future fack-checker will be able to verify it without pulling all their hair out).  For stuff you know, but can't cite, that's more of a problem.  In that case I'd recommend you author some kind of press release, interview, or something like that - and release that in the usual way your sister releases info to the media.  So if your sister has an official professional website (most celebs do) then you can add it to there.  Then you (or ideally someone else) can use that as a reliable, verifiable source for the article.  I must, however, caution you that editing the article of someone you know (as with articles about yourself, your company, etc.) is inevitably something of a conflict of interest, which is (with the very best will in the world) going to hamper your ability to write objectively on the subject.  Personally I'd recommend you add your comments, citations, suggestions etc. to the article's talk page, but not edit the article yourself.  You'll generally find that, with reasonable supporting citations, the editors of that article will be very keen to improve the article with your help.  -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Aside: I thought to myself "hmm, I wonder who Dennywuh's sister is? I'll check his contribs". From that I've concluded that your sister is Keith Richards (although I confess my methodology may be somewhat flawed).  I for one look forward to seeing many photos of Keith Richards as a little girl :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! No, I've been careful never to edit her page. And now I'm not going to/don't have to. I will follow your suggestions, for which I'm grateful. Thanks a lot. Dennywuh 21:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Current discussion at Virtual classroom
At the Virtual classroom, we've moved on to assignment number three, which is a question and answer session on fighting vandalism on Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to participate.

 Th e Tr <font color="#9acd32">ans <font color="#FFCC00">hu  man  ist   22:24, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

See How the people who stalk me on line will not let me search your site?
Dear Wikipedia;

I believe I have been the victim of some idiots hired by the Government to slander and lie about me. They would call me the Anit-Christ, John the Apostle, John The Baptist and other things and rewrite the history to reflect me. John Anthony Yost the man who writes, "Your Life in Print." Only liars hide the content and will not let the victim in on the content they write. To the victors history can be written, well they lost and they cannot rewrite history. We all want the truth and the news reports how vandals on your site rewrite history at will and you have no expert oversight. You should not allow ameteurs to rewrite history it hurts people. You should have pages where your thoughts on the subject can be heard, not edited. Please tell me what Ceif means, they are stupid and drug addicts of the Governmet. I am a vitim of "directed energy weapons being used on me 24/7.

Signed Editor and Chief, John Anthony Yost


 * A fascinating case study. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

What is the approximate size of the entire wikipedia database?
Is it possible to locally mirror it and receive regular updates? 141.154.220.74 23:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You can get them from http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/  The zipped text of just the current state of each article comes to over 3 Gb - I don't know how big it is once you unzip that and load it into MySQL, but the last time I tried it took about a day to import. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Note that the 3 GB does not include images, just the text. While it's possible to locally mirror Wikipedia, you'd need a webserver running MediaWiki, which is not a trivial requirement. If you're looking for an offline version of Wikipedia, there isn't a complete one, but there are various CD versions out there (see ). &mdash; QuantumEleven 09:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)