Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 July 23

= July 23 =

Editing the article, "Naphtha"
I am trying to edit a section (Air Sampling for Naphthas) in the article Naphtha, trying to clean it up. The "edit this page" presentation looks okay, but the page renders weirdly. It looks okay down to the subsection "Breathing Zone Air Sampling Procedures". After the bulleted list, in the article there is a section "Active Air Sampler Rate Verification". In the code, however, it is followed by:

"Break both ends of sorbent tube using sorbent tube breaker. Insert sorbent tube into the rubber sleeve of the adjustable low flow holder or tube holder. The arrow on the sorbent tube indicates air flow towards the pump. In the absence of an arrow insert the end of the tube with the smallest sorbent section into the tube holder. Connect the loose end of the flexible tubing into the pump inlet.

Active Air Sampling Method for Naphthas

 * Preparation & Calibration


 * 1) Prepare and calibrate the sampling equipment by charging batteries of the active sampler.
 * 2) Verify that sufficient varieties and quantities of detector tubes are available for air sampling......"

This stuff has disappeared.

Further down, in the references, things are fine until you get to reference 4. Then it picks up some, but not all of the missing stuff from the "edit this page" code and, mysteriously, creates a new table of contents.

The following material, while in the wrong place, seems okay. Then comes a paragraph:

""High humidity can severely reduce the breakthrough volumes of adsorbents like charcoal and silica gel." "

that is truly strange.

I figure that there is some simple error somewhere that causes all of this peculiarity, but I can't find it.

I am not a particularly old hand at Wikipedia editing. Help!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mherr (talk • contribs)


 * It's not strange, it's routine: someone forgot to close one or more  tags with a matching   tag, such as the   tag. See: WP:FOOT. It's not rocket science, but it is computer science, which is kind of hard too. --Teratornis 05:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks...Sprinkling in a few "/"s fixed it all. Mherr 13:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Article titles listed in categories
Is there a way to get an article to show up on a category page with a modified version of the article's own name? For example, here is something I came across, and to me it seemed confusing. At Category:National football (soccer) premier leagues, the pipe link is used to get the entries listed in order by country, rather than by their own names. Very good idea. But it leads to some uncertainty, because for many entries there is no indication of what country it represents, other than if it is under the "E" heading, it must be some country that starts with "E". My idea would be to use an alternate title, which would append the country name on those listings that are not immediately identifiable. For example, instead of just being listed as Premier League under "E" and Major League Soccer under "U", the list would indicate Premier League (England) under "E" and Major League Soccer (United States) under "U". But maybe there is no wiki coding to allow this. Is there? — Michael J  05:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * See: Help:Category. It looks like you're out of luck, according to this excerpt:
 * The displayed name is not changed, and, unfortunately, only visible on the edit pages of the members of the category.
 * MediaWiki's categories are a handy feature, but they are not as flexible as many people (you, for example) would like. Someday we may have more options if MediaWiki obtains semantic wiki features. --Teratornis 05:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Question about verifiability
I created a document about a year or so ago about an organization that I am in. Unfortunately someone deleted it and there is no way for me to retrieve that page. I am wondering if I create this page again will it be deleted because it can not be verified in an encyclopedia? There was quite a bit of information that was within that document and the person removed it without notifying me that he would be taking it down. Once they took it down they did not provide an adequate enough response to why they did it. If you search on google.com there is a chance you will see the same information in other websites because I am a member of this organization and I have written quite a few of these entries. So before I put in more work to let people know about my orgnaization I would like to know this information.
 * Read WP:COI, WP:CITE, and WP:RS. I think those may help you understand the situation, why the information was deleted, and what you need to do to avoid it being deleted in the future. Lara  Love  06:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Image galleries
On my user page, I have my barnstars arranged in an image gallery. I'd really like to have the barnstars be about half the size they are now and put the text in small tags. How can I do this? I'm pretty sure I won't be able to do it as a gallery, but possibly some sort of table instead. Any help with this would be appreciated. Lara Love  06:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Something like this, perhaps:

I know you can specify image size, with gallery tags, but I don't know how much more you can do. Feel free to take a look at this page's source code to see how I put that table together, you can play with image and font size as you please. – Luna Santin  (talk) 06:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Perfect. Thank you! Lara  Love  06:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Smart searching
I think it would be a good idea of Wikipedia could add a "smart search" function whereby if you enter a wrong search term, Wikipedia automatically comes up with suggestions that are close to what was entered. So for example, if you were searching for "Madonna" but entered "Madnona" instead, it would automatically ask you if you were really looking for "Madonna".

Many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.67.203.141 (talk • contribs)

i agree wikipedia should, wikipedia sucks with a smart search. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.96.245.81 (talk • contribs)


 * This is a perennial problem. Often your best chance is to search on Google with "site:en.wikipedia.org" at the beginning of your search query. Shalom Hello 13:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Help:Search admits that Wikipedia's built-in search capability is rather weak. This shortcoming has stimulated several third parties to fill the gap. See: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia. I find that Google Search on Wikipedia works pretty well and tolerates some misspellings. Google can also search parts of Wikipedia, such as the Help desk archives. You may wish to create links to your favorite searches on your User page, as I did here. --Teratornis 16:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

How to create a new page
How do I create a page about something that hasn't already been added?
 * See Your first article and Articles for creation. Shalom Hello 13:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Usha prevedna
introduction od this writer and her achivements —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kimimittra (talk • contribs)
 * Assuming you spelled her name correctly, Google Search on her name finds nothing, suggesting she hasn't achieved enough even to get her name on the World Wide Web somewhere. ( Even my real name shows up in Google Search, and I'm not notable enough for a Wikipedia article. ) It's fairly hard for a person who has done anything at all not to show up in Google, suggesting that Usha Prevedna's greatest achievement thus far may be that she somehow managed to keep her name off the Internet. --Teratornis 16:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Not so good vibrations
I have to identify sound vibration transmit from neighbor's speakers of the sound system (sound meter was measured beyond 50 dB). But others were unable to hear this sound vibration. I would like to find out why this happen to me.

I have been making reseachs and consultations to MD and others, but No one could find out this situation, so that the neighbor play stereo music all night through, and I hear sound vibration when ever the neighbor play stereo music.

I appreciate your reply to my e-mail address, 

Sincerely,

Ms. Hisae Sander —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.119.115 (talk • contribs)
 * Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here's the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit 12:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You might buy your neighbor an iPod and hope he or she will use the earbuds and enjoy music privately. Loudspeakers are incredibly inefficient for entertaining one individual, because only a tiny fraction of the sound output enters the primary consumer's ears. The remaining sound radiates into the environment as noise pollution. The invention of sound amplification has greatly harmed the ability of humans to live in close proximity, and this is actually a serious problem for urban planners who wish to combat urban sprawl and its associated automobile dependency. I read that in some densely-populated areas of Europe there are substantial penalties for people who disturb their neighbors with loud music and other entertainments. Also see: soundproofing. --Teratornis 16:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Collapsible templates always display expanded
On my home computer, collapsible templates always display in expanded form, with no show/hide link. I first noticed this phenomenon shortly after installing AWB (and .net). Note that they display correctly on my computer at work, which doesn't have AWB/.net installed. Any ideas? DH85868993 13:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I would suggest making sure that you have the newest version of AWB installed, and checking against any other Wikipedia-related extensions you have to see if they are causing the problem. If you can't figure it out yourself, I would suggest filing a bug report. You'd probably have better luck asking at the AWB pages anyway. Sorry. Hersfold (talk/work) 16:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

{ {helpme} }
How do i add a page to wikipedia?


 * See Your first article and Help:Starting a new page. -- Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor  ( ταlκ ) 14:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

"If" switch on templates
Does it now force the text to start a new paragraph? Before it just "went with the flow" and just stayed on one line. For example, on Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball, what should display as "PF/C" displays as: PF /C Can anybody fix this? -- Howard  the   Duck  15:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, the problem was being caused by the tags - since they were on the next line in each of the position templates, the template was including the line break just before them. By putting the noinclude on the same line as the position link, the line break is now not included when the template is used. Hope that makes sense, if not, check this diff to see what I did. Hersfold (talk/work) 16:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, but it looked normal until a week ago. Everything should be fine by now. Wee thanks. -- Howard  the   Duck  16:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Updating references
How does one update references on a page?Dlomont 16:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You can add new references in an article by adding the citation at the appropriate place within the article, surrounded by tags. This will create one of those little numbers[1] which links to the citation at the bottom of the page, where you place a  (if, for example, you're trying to create a link to the article).  Barring that, most articles with diacriticals in their names have redirects in place for unaccented (and other variant) spellings.  For example, El Nino (in effect) redirects to El Niño. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

who are admins?? can they apply permission on pages??
Iiitkolkata 18:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)who are admins?? can they apply permission on pages??
 * Hello, Administrators are users on this site whom the community has entrusted with extra tools to help Wikipedia. See the administrator page for more info. Hope this helps. --Hdt83 Chat 18:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

aggravated burglary
what is it?


 * This is for Wikipedia related problems only, sorry. However more information maybe available from the article Burglary. &mdash; Rlest  (formerly Qst) 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Wrong page, knowledge questions go on the reference desk. However, since the question interested me, I checked the burglary article and found it has a section on it already: Burglary. Looks to be simply "burglary with a weapon". --tjstrf talk 19:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Changing Page Name
For Major Impact Wrestling (I'm a new user but have done minor editing for some time) I would like to know if the name can be changed to Impact Pro Wrestling Australia? Thanks

DaTruGunJack 20:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well pages can be moved using the "move" tab at the to of the article. However, users under four days old do not have that fuction. Also, before making a move, be sure that there is consensus to do so. I   (said)  (did) 20:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * For more information, go to Help:Moving a page. @pple 09:52, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Memory Alpha
I believe Memory Alpha belongs to Wikipedia. If a photo appears on Memory Alpha, can we use it on Wikipedia ?

Tovojolo 21:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Memory Alpha is hosted by Wikia, Inc.. That article says: "Wikia, Inc. is independent from the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and other collaborative projects. However, both use the same wiki software application called MediaWiki, maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikia also uses the GNU Free Documentation License for wikis it hosts, except for Memory Alpha, which uses a Creative Commons license."
 * I don't know details of photo licenses, but note that many sites (including Wikipedia who tries to avoid it) uses many photos that they are actually not allowed to use. And things like fair use means that some photos are only allowed to use in certain contexts. PrimeHunter 21:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Most images used on Memory Alpha are copyrighted by Paramount Motion Pictures Group or one of their companies. In order to use them on Wikipedia, you would have to determine the original source of the image (i.e., not Memory Alpha, but where they got it from) and justify its use here in accordance with Wikipedia's fair use policies. Be very careful when uploading copyrighted images, as uploading them improperly will cause them to be deleted and may result in a block. Hersfold (talk/work) 22:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Can I add more subheadings?
I want to add some information to a page but it doesn't seem to be relevant to any existing headings. How do I add one?

Look here.

Have a nice day,

The Rhymesmith 22:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You can add new headings to a page by clicking the button that looks like an "A" on your editing toolbar (5th from the left), or by enclosing the heading text in equals signs, like this:

== Level 2 headline ==

Level 4 headline

 * For more information, see Help:Editing. Hersfold (talk/work) 22:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * And see WP:LAYOUT. --Teratornis 00:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, to avoid making a mistake I just made: evidently the correct Wikipedia terminology for these headers is

== Level 1 headline ==

Level 3 headline

 * —Steve Summit (talk) 01:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)