Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 August 30

= August 30 =

Non-Notable Site
How do you make an article notable, or how is it determined. I created an article about a site that I do not own, it was not an ad, nor biased but it was denied. It is a well known site in my area, and I was not even given the chance to discuss with a moderator. I posted a talk page and added the hang on tag, but it was deleted within minutes anyways. Also, I referneced the site directly, like there about us page for refernece, so it was verifiable. Just looking for some guidance or assistance.

BeigeLamp (talk) 16:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Website notability is hard to pin down. Which site was it? You may also want to read WP:WEB, that may give you an idea of what notability means in regards to websites. Also remember that Wikipedia isn't really for things well-known in your area, it's for things well-known all over the world, or at least are very notable. --Alinnisawest,Dalek Empress ( extermination requests here ) 16:59, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course, if you haven't already, you may want to begin by simply taking a look at WP:N. Miquonranger03 (talk) 06:59, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

All Mixed Up
Here is a sentence from the article Devon Island. The numbers in this sentence are going in circles.

"The highest point is the Devon Ice Cap at 1,920 m (6,300 ft)6,299 ft/1,920 metres which is part of the Arctic Cordillera."

What should appear? metres followed by feet, or vice versa?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 00:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, generally you'd want to follow the same format in the rest of the article. In this case, it appears the the other measurements have metric first, then American measurements. So I'd say it should be just 1,920 m (6,300 ft). --Alinnisawest,Dalek Empress ( extermination requests here ) 00:53, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have removed the duplicate height. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:55, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Relisting AFDs
How do I relist AFDs? Schuym1 (talk) 01:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It depends on what you mean by relist and what has already happened to the AfD. Which AfD do you have in mind and what do you want to happen? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I mean relist AFD nominations so that concensus can be reached. I want to know how to do it so I can relist AFDs in the future Schuym1 (talk) 01:24, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If an AfD has been listed for a full five days and there is not enough discussion to form a consensus (e.g. only one person commented), then it will be relisted for another five days by an administrator. However, if you are talking about Articles for deletion/Dinosaur Island (2002 film), that was closed as "no consensus" - that means there was a sufficient amount of discussion but no clear consensus to delete the article. Re-listing the same article after a recent AfD on that article has closed as "keep" is not a good idea. Xenon54 01:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I wasn't talking about that. I was talking in general. I didn't know that only admins could do that. Thanks for the response. Schuym1 (talk) 01:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

How to undo an archive?
How do I undo an archive? A talk page I have been involved in has been edited recently to include an auto-archive setup for MiszaBot, and the bot has come along and done it's archive thing. However, the article is about a TV channel which closed a couple of days ago and I believe the level of activity on this page doesn't really warrant an archive at all (only about 19000 bytes were moved to the single archive). Is there a simple way to reverse the effect of the archive (ie. put the archived discussions back in the main talk page and delete the archive sub-page)? Astronaut (talk) 01:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, yes. You can revert the page to the version before the bot was added (this version), manually add in the two subsequent edits by User:Hmr (these edits), and ask for the archive page to be deleted by tagging it with, for example, something like . However, there is no hurry to do this. I think a better course of action is to first talk to the user who added the archive bot request to the page, Andrewcrawford, and discuss the matter with him. Many users would see such action to reverse something they had done, without at least a polite note first, as rude. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:12, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

User contribs
I have a few questions about using this; ♫Deathgleaner 03:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Can you view how many edits a user has made by just looking at the contributions list instead of having to manually count? (I know this is available for your user account at Special:Preferences)
 * 2) Can you check a user's milestone edits (e.g. their first, hundredth, millionth, etc.) without having to manually count?
 * Yes, here's a link to several edit counters that are available. If you view the "user contributions" page for a user, there's also a block at the bottom of that page with links to some of the more useful/popular of these edit counters. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

regading my health
i do not know whether i am having pile problem or not. i got checked up with surgeon doctor but he is saying no. but sometime blood is going while passing stool. kindly advise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.243.0.130 (talk) 05:33, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Like it says at the top of the page: "...we cannot, under any circumstance, provide medical, legal, or any other sort of advice that is normally regulated by governmental authorities." The best advice is to go to your doctor.  Doctors have had many years training at med school and therefore are people you can trust, rather than the non-expert opinion of us Wikipedia volunteers.  Astronaut (talk) 09:47, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * See also Medical disclaimer. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:17, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wanted to create new article and could not ...
Hi - I wanted to create an article about an American astronomer, Paul Herget, who was a pioneer in the use of computers in astronomy. There are several existing references to Herget on Wikipedia - I did a search on his name, followed one of the links to the page for the Minor Planet Center, then clicked on the red "Paul Herget" link. This took me to a "Paul Herget" page which read, in part:

"Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name."

From there I followed the "Start the Paul Herget article" link, and landed on a page called "Unauthorized" which read

"This page is currently protected, and can be edited only by administrators."

Underneath that there is this not-very-helpful text

"The page title you have tried to create has been protected from creation. The reason given is: go away. You may also wish to check the deletion log."

As this page suggests I checked the linked "protection log" and found

05:01, 21 February 2008 East718 (Talk | contribs) protected Paul Herget ‎ (go away [create=sysop])

The deletion log contains

* 05:01, 21 February 2008 East718 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Paul Herget" ‎ (csd g3) * 09:10, 15 February 2008 Fram (Talk | contribs) deleted "Paul Herget" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)

I guess I can piece together what happened, but am confused why a page about a fairly obscure scientist would be the subject of this kind of lockdown. Perhaps there is another Paul Herget? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lesonyrra (talk • contribs)


 * The deletion log has the answer - someone created a page with that title (twice). It was considered vandalism both times and deleted. To prevent further vandalism the page name was protected so that it could not be re-created. You can request unprotection at WP:RFUP and when unprotected and assuming your account is autoconfirmed, you can then create the article about the astronomer. Before you do create it, please read WP:BIO and WP:YFA. – ukexpat (talk) 14:55, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Both deleted versions were a crazy made-up biography starting "Paul David Herget (August 5, 1989 - August 5, 2036) was elected President of the United States of America in 2036." I guess the author is or knows somebody non-notable called Paul Herget. The page name was protected to avoid further recreation of this nonsense, and "go away" must have been aimed at the creator. I have unprotected it so you can create Paul Herget now. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Colons in links
Am I correct in thinking that using a colon in a link will prevent that link from showing up in the "What links here" list? e.g. Foo Dismas |(talk) 16:29, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It appears not. I just went to Special:Orphanedpages chose one at random, Abbasov, and threw it onto my talk page, first linked as Abbasov, and then removed and linked as Abbasov] . In both cases, checking [[Special:whatlinkshere/Abbasov returned positive results. So it appears that, with and without the comma, it makes no difference. Moreover, the link above to Abbasov I displayed using a colon; clicking on the preceding whatlinkshere link, now that I have removed the test from my talk page, I expect will show this page as a sole link, as further confirmation.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep:--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:42, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, so what does it do then? Dismas |(talk) 16:46, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It makes sure that a link is displayed instead of something else happening in certain cases. For example, Image:Name creates a link to the named image instead of displaying the image, and de:Name creates a link to the German (de) Wikipedia article in that place instead of adding an interlanguage link in the languages box. There is no difference between Abbasov and Abbasov when Abbasov is an article. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * See more at Help:Link. Another example is category links. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:56, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The colon wikilink trick only works for media (don't display/play) and categories (don't place page in category). --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk  -  18:01, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * - And interlanguage links. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And templates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk  -  01:52, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Another example of leading colon trickery (but inside curly braces) is to transclude a page in the main (article) namespace as a template, rather than looking for a template page in the template: namespace. See Help:Template. --Teratornis (talk) 20:51, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all. None of these responses explains what I saw though. I went by some user's talk page today and saw that the previous section heading had something like ==History of Iran== I think it had been added by a bot but I can't remember for certain. Having not seen the colon used like that, I asked here. Guess I should have bookmarked the page or something. Dismas |(talk) 01:37, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If that's really what you saw, I don't think it does anything. Algebraist 01:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have seen it before, but it does not do anything. I suspect some editors may think it suppresses the backlink, but it does not. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk  -  01:52, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have mainly seen bots do it. If you always want to make a normal link then it's easier to make a bot which always adds the colon whether or not it changes anything in a given situation. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * See Special:Contributions/CSDWarnBot for an example of a bot which always adds the colon to a reported page name, whether it's needed (as for images) or not. Many warning templates do the same. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:39, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you! The explanation about bots adding a colon whether it be an image link or not clears up my confusion.  It would just be easier to code for the bot owner.  Thanks again,  Dismas |(talk) 02:50, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It doesn't have to have been a bot. Many templates contain automatic sections headers and those almost all use the colon because the subject may be a template or image or other thing which must not display. For example, most of the warning templates contain an option to place an automatic section header by using the parameter . For example, . --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

how can I delete the editing history from a Wikipedia page
how can I delete the editing history from a Wikipedia pages, as it contains senstive material or personal information already deleted from final article. Akpantue (talk) 19:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You can't, but admins can. If it's really sensitive, you should probably make a request for oversight, which will leave the information invisible even to admins. Algebraist 19:12, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Downloadable/Static Help Section?
I've already been answered about the sandbox, and have it set up (see EXE Sandbox above), but I also want all of the help pages so that I can actually read to learn about the stuff, and have a reference...

My main problem however is that I have WOS installed (looking back WAMP seems a little easier, but heh...), and I'm not sure how to go about getting the help pages in there (I don't want the rest, just help... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pyrofyr (talk • contribs) 19:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * See the links under WP:EIW, WP:EIW, WP:EIW, WP:EIW, WP:EIW, and WP:EIW. The odds may be low that anyone who is answering questions on the Help desk just now has actually done what you are trying to, and would have the necessary experience to tell you an efficient way to copy all the Help pages from Wikipedia. What you mean by "all the help pages" is not clear. Wikipedia has (at least) two large sets of help pages:
 * The MediaWiki Handbook, which focuses on what is common to all or most wikis that run on the MediaWiki software.
 * The Wikipedia: (Project:) namespace, which contains many pages that document things specific to Wikipedia.
 * What you want depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to set up your own wiki, you would focus first on the MediaWiki Handbook. If you are trying to learn how to edit specifically on Wikipedia, then you need all the Project: stuff too. The MediaWiki Handbook itself says you can import the Handbook into your own wiki, but it only links to generic instructions in mw:Help:Import. Data dumps describes the dump files you can download. You might find it easier just to buy a book, such as Wikipedia - The Missing Manual. --Teratornis (talk) 21:11, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And note: this Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. The appropriate place to ask questions about running the MediaWiki software on your own computer or server is mw:Project:Support desk. See the links under WP:EIW to get your account to work over there. --Teratornis (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Hoping this is still seen despite being a bit up here now. In any case, I am looking for generic wiki information/help. It's mostly for syntax and the more advanced stuff, so that I can learn at my own pace. 65.11.205.172 (talk) 21:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

How do I do signatures?
I tried making one using Wikified HTML, but the link just came up as the whole lot as a link, with (talk) afterwards – as you will probably see when I tilde this. Basically, I would like small caps and a HTML Unicode entity (does this work for U+10000 and beyond?). &#91;&#91;User:Nonmuscascapto&#124;&amp;66030;&#93;&#93; &#91;&#91;User_talk:Nonmuscascapto&#124;&lt;small&gt;NMC&lt;/small&gt;&#93;&#93; (talk) 22:14, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Check the 'raw signature' box in your preferences. Algebraist 22:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Do you want to save this file, or find a program online to open it?
When I try to open the Subaru Legacy wiki entry (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Legacy) in IE7, I get a pop-up window titled "File Download - Security Warning", with the message "Do you want to save this file, or find a program online to open it?". The options or Find, Save, or Cancel. There is a help desk entry for "EFSA" which describes a similar problem, but with no resolution. Any advice would be appreciated. 68.116.199.190 (talk) 22:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Is there a file name? Does it only happen on that page? The mentioned help desk entry is Help desk/Archives/2008 July 17. I have never had this problem with IE7 at Wikipedia. Try restarting your computer and clicking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Legacy or Subaru Legacy. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe the file-name was "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Legacy" or similar, I can't tell for sure because I can no longer reproduce the problem after the following procedure:


 * 1. Created Wikipedia account and logged in
 * 2. Opened Subaru Legacy page (no pop-up window appeared)
 * 3. Logged out
 * 4. Opened Subary Legacy page (no pop-up window appeared)


 * It's possible that something on the Subaru Legacy page changed in the interim that solved the underlying problem, but I can no longer reproduce the reported behavior. Rebooting and returning to the page (via search or entering URL) had no effect when the problem persisted.


 * I found two additional references documenting the same problem, one of which was on de.wikipedia.org. Neither reference included a working solution.


 * IE7 version is 7.0.5730.1100 and OS is Windows XP Professional SP3. 68.116.199.190 (talk) 23:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I meant whether there was a file name for the file the pop-up window asked you about, but never mind now. I suspect this is an occasional browser problem and not Wikipedia's fault. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)