Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 December 10

= December 10 =

Login question
DearWik I have done everything the login page asked me to yet I cannot create a new account, which I am. It always says there is a login error with the confirmation code. What the heck is the login code? and how do I put the right one in? I have copied the phrase well. What's wrong? Garrett P Edmands —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.142.10.100 (talk) 01:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Directly above where it asks for Username, there is a text box. Above the text box is an image containing a distorted word.  If you have images blocked for any reason, you will not see this image.  You must view the image and type the word into the box.  This is not anything unique to Wikipedia.  See captcha for an explanation of what it is and why it is used. --  k a i n a w &trade; 03:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Make sure you have scripts and anything else enabled that could make the login code not appear.

Ertemplin (talk) 04:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

New messages
Hi, I use internet explorer 7 on a windows computer and whenever it says that i have new messages on the main page, it won't let me click any of the links in the orange box. I can click "my talk" and get there, and I can click within the orange box on other pages, but not the main page. Thanks, Hazelorb (talk) 04:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That happens to me too. Top  Gear  Freak  19:45, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Template date autoformatting
At Elmer Gedeon, cite news is doing some autoformatting while cite web does not. Thus the Elmer_Gedeon section looks inconsistently formatted. Is there something that can be done?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Official links in infobox and external links
I frequently wondered if it really is the intended practice to have the official site of a company / product / institution linked twice in the same article: Once in the infobox and once under "external links". I personally (coming from a DMOZ editors point of view) consider that duplicated information without added value. I read WP:EL and some of the linked documents, but could not find what I am looking for.

See for example Eudora_(e-mail_client) or Google. --Windharp (talk) 07:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In a typical infobox almost everything duplicates information elsewhere in the article. I am not a fan of infoboxes for this reason, but the consensus is in favor of them. —teb728 t c 08:18, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not just done with companies, but also in infoboxes of places (if they have a website) and people. - 131.211.211.61 (talk) 08:51, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, so that's intentional. Thanks TEB --Windharp (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Bar with buttons missing
How come I can no longer see the edit buttons above the edit box? I figured that perhaps the images were broken, but I can't click there either. Also, I have an extra button.js running. But that only removes buttons if it actually works... Any ideas? I'd like my citation button back in particular... =- Mgm|(talk) 09:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you tried restarting? I think that happened for me a while back, and that solved the problem. Best, Peter Symonds ( talk ) 09:30, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I haven't, but I'll try it. - Mgm|(talk) 09:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, didn't work. I guess I'll have to use another machine in the future then.. - Mgm|(talk) 10:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You might try checking your preference settings. Go to the link "My preferences" at the top of the page and then click "Editing" tab in the box. Make sure the box before "Show edit toolbar (JavaScript)" is checked, then save. This will probably solve your problem. You might also check to be sure your Java is enabled and updated. (I updated this answer once but apparently lost the change in an edit conflict. Wildhartlivie (talk) 11:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

right aligned thumbnails push down table
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I could not find a solution. This page shows my problem. A list of thumbnails (aligned right) I created in the first heading pushes down the tables in a following heading. How can I solve this? Thank you. Merikilpikonna (talk) 11:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Basically, you need to tinker with sizing, placement and alignment of the images and text in the article. You may need to use a gallery table for the images. At present, they are overwhelming the rest of the article with their size vs. the size of the content before the table. If the software works like it does here, you can experiment with font size in the tables as well. Wildhartlivie (talk) 11:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * thank you for the quick answer! I would like to have the thumbs just run down on the right all the way, because they are supposed to show chronological progress of the design. Is that not possible or not advisable? If not I will have a look into the gallery thing. However the person who set up the wiki did not even include simple classes like wikitable, which is a bit of a pain. Merikilpikonna (talk) 11:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I figured it out. Your comment on font size gave me the idea of taking out width=90% and that helped. thank you.Merikilpikonna (talk) 11:18, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. I just happened to stop in. It looks much better! Wildhartlivie (talk) 11:24, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a quick point: the page in question is not a Wikipedia project. While we are always happy to help where appropriate, projects other than English Wikipedia are technically outside the scope of the Help desk. – ukexpat (talk) 14:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's technically true, but it only starts to matter when a question requires work to answer. If someone would have to actually lift a finger to answer a question, well then it had better be for Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 09:27, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, the Wikimedia Foundation gives away the MediaWiki software, and I believe Wikipedia stands to benefit if MediaWiki becomes a widely-used software standard. Potentially millions of people could learn MediaWiki editing and administration skills on other wikis, and then come to Wikipedia and make some contributions. As long as the "other wiki" questions don't get too far out of hand, I don't see the harm in entertaining the low number we get on the Help desk. However, the fact that other wiki users occasionally come to the Wikipedia Help desk illustrates how critical a user community is to a wiki's success. Those other wikis should have their own Help desks, and when they don't it's probably because their user communities are small. Only a low percentage of users would have any interest in staffing a Help desk, so it takes an enormous user community to translate that low percentage into a viable number of helpers. The English Wikipedia has registered user accounts, and probably only a few dozen of them monitor the Help desk at any given time. Those of us who answer questions here must be some pretty unusual people. --Teratornis (talk) 09:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Help finding a template
I'm just looking for a template I've seen used before. It is placed on the talk page when news/newspapers/magazine/etc. prints a mention of a Wikipedia article on a subject. I've seen it before, but I'm not finding it anywhere. Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 11:12, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Onlinesource is the general one, also see High traffic. Nanonic (talk) 12:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much. Wildhartlivie (talk) 12:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

See also, press or pressmulti -- GateKeeper(X) @   12:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Request lost in limbo?
No one has helped me with my request posted on this page, most likely because my request is lost in limbo -- too current to be archived, but not current enough to still be posted on this page. How is anybody supposed to help those of us who posted on this page during the first week of December? Minaker (talk) 14:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay! What was your question? We'll do our best to help. Cheers!  TN ‑  X   - Man  15:18, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The page for article expansion has been archived and more or less abandoned. So if I think there is an article that needs help, where do I post such a request? Minaker (talk) 15:34, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If there is an article due for deletion that you think can be rescued you might want to see the people over at Article Rescue Squadron..-- intraining  Jack In  15:41, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I can see your previous question as a diff and it is archived here: Help desk/Archives/2008 December 3 but for some reason Help desk/Archives shows no link to the month of December yet. To respond to your last comment, of course a person cannot usefully contribute to an article he or she knows nothing about, which is why I said it's fun to contribute to articles I initially know nothing about. On Wikipedia, the whole name of the game is finding reliable sources. We don't write articles based on our knowledge of subjects, because that would tend to become original work. Instead, we try to only write what has already been published elsewhere. Thus on Wikipedia it is often more fruitful to start with some sources and find articles to add them to, rather than pick some arbitrary article and try to improve it. To give a concrete example, I am interested in Wind power, so I browse and search the Web for reputable articles on the subject, and when I find some interesting well-sourced fact, I look for a suitable article on Wikipedia where I can plug it in (with a footnote citation). This is, of course, backwards from the way most people approach things, and that is one reason why Wikipedia can become frustrating for some people. If you get locked into the idea of improving a certain article, and you don't know how to do it, that's like fixating on any sort of unattainable goal. It doesn't make sense to do on Wikipedia when there are so many articles that you are able to improve. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit on Wikipedia, no matter who you are. Just learn how to do one thing, for example to clean up sloppy references and put them into citation templates. Then you can browse around articles at random and apply that one type of fix. When thousands of people do that sort of thing, each one focusing on a few things they like to do, then collectively the whole encyclopedia tends to improve. This untargeted improvement is the great strength of a wiki, and it is the opposite of traditional, institutionalized, top-down, command-and-control thinking. --Teratornis (talk) 10:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Teratornis: I certainly appreciate the time it must have taken to write such a long response. But the whole point that I brought up is that I came to Wikipedia to learn about a topic, and I was thwarted by the lack of information. All I want to know is where to post a request for improving an article, since the place where people used to do that no longer exists. Right now, as far as I know there is no way to get the general Wikipedia community to find out about an article that is sorely lacking information; my only recourse seems to be to try researching elsewhere, which is fine, but doesn't say much for Wikipedia. Your suggestion to try improving unrelated articles seems to have nothing to do with this dilemma; it certainly doesn't help me at all, and really seems to be a tangent if not an outright change of subject. Minaker (talk) 10:50, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Have you tried posting to the talk page of one of the several wikiprojects listed on the article's talk page? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not changing the subject, I'm attempting to change your assumption about what Wikipedia is and how it works. When a question goes unanswered on the Help desk, there is always a reason. Something about the question put off every one of the dozens of people who monitor the Help desk. If you want to get some of this free help, you have to know the right way to ask for it. Wikipedia has a lot of inertia. If you see something on Wikipedia that needs improving (we have a lot of articles like that), the easiest way to make it better is to do it yourself. Wikipedia probably does not have many people who sit around with nothing to do until someone pops in and tells them what their priorities should be. The people who slogged through the friendly manuals and figured out how to contribute usually did so because they already had a list of things they wanted to do here. All the skilled editors here have a big backlog. They don't need more people to give them even more things to do, they need more people to start contributing. If you don't want to improve some article yourself, then you will need to find someone who knows how to improve it, and would be motivated to improve it, but for some reason hasn't already found it. Fans of team sports are familiar with the low percentage play - that is, a play which has a low percentage of success, such as the Hail Mary pass. The way you are approaching this problem makes it a low percentage play. (I didn't make this news, I'm only reporting it. Most of the other Help desk volunteers simply ignored your question - what does that tell you? I would rather try to help you, and the first thing you need help with is to change the way you view Wikipedia, from seeing it as a place to get things, to seeing it as a place to give things. When you focus on giving rather than getting, then other users will notice and become more likely to give you things in the future. This is something you work toward indirectly, not something you dial up on demand.)
 * If someone was going to improve a particular article, their first step would be to find some reliable sources. Finding sources is the primary limiting factor on Wikipedia. If there are no suitable sources anywhere on some topic, then Wikipedia cannot have an article about it. Everything we do depends on finding sources. If you want to get an article improved, it will improve faster if you can come up with some sources. Everybody who looks for sources uses basically the same tools: search engines and libraries. You can use these tools about as well as the next person. If not, then you can ask for help on the Reference desk. Tell them you want to improve an article, and you're having trouble finding sources. Other Wikipedians are more likely to help if they believe they are working with you rather than for you. When you ask someone else to do something, they are more likely to help if you show them something you are doing for them. To see this in action,, a user who frequently asks for help with articles he is editing. Since he is an active contributor, lots of other Wikipedia users are willing to help him, because he takes whatever he gets and puts it into improving Wikipedia. He doesn't ask other people to do everything for him, he just asks for help with the parts he gets stuck on. --Teratornis (talk) 00:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Teratornis, your replies are a lot more frustrating than getting no reply at all. Hello, Wikipedia is supposed to be an information resource -- you know, an encyclopedia? As it says right there in the logo? As in, a place where you find information? The fact that you think my philosophy is skewed because I came to an encyclopedia looking for information is bizarre. And your suggestion that I simply don't know how to ask for something is condescending in the extreme, and overlooks the fact that I've gone to the proper place to ask questions about Wikipedia, and have asked for the same thing in plain, concise language three times now. Where do I post a request, where do I post a request, I keep asking, and you keep ignoring the question in favor of lectures, "oh ho you silly man, you clearly have no idea how to view Wikipedia with the proper philosophy!" But not once do you actually attempt to answer my straight-forward question, with the exception of referring me to the Wikipedia Reference Desk, which of course refers me back to here. Maybe people aren't getting involved with this discussion, not because I don't know how to ask a question, but just because they see all the space your lectures are taking up and falsely assume that you've already attempted to answer my question. Which you haven't. Then you have the nerve to boast about how nice you're being by pointing out that unlike all the other editors, you've chosen to grace my questions with a response, and if your response makes no attempt to answer my actual question, well, that's just because in your judgment my need to re-shape my "philosophy" far, far outweighs my need to actually improve Wikipedia by knowing the answer to a specific how-to question. If you don't know the answer than either admit it or move on. If you're simply uninterested in answering because you're too busy standing on your soapbox, at least stop scaring away all the people who might have been able to add something useful to the discussion. Either way, cut the "I'm so much wiser than you" attitude. You've already made it clear this is your only real message. At this point, I'm inclined to disagree. Minaker (talk) 09:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * As Zain Ebrahim said above, you could post to a wikiproject. You could also post to the article talk page. And there are some this-article-needs-work tags that you could post to the article itself—perhaps someone knows where there is a comprehensive list of them. —teb728 t c 10:53, 12 December 2008 (UTC) And as for Teratornis’s posts, yes they are too wordy, but if I understand him correctly he is saying the opposite of your interpretation: He is not claiming to be wiser than you; rather if I understand correctly, he says nobody is wiser than you or has more responsibility for editing articles than you. —teb728 t c 11:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

A recent attempt to attack your computer was blocked
'''See Village pump (technical) -please continue the discussion in that message thread. Thank you'''. – ukexpat (talk) 16:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Norton is whining that Wikipedia is attempting to download a "suspicious pdf," automatically blocks something, and says "An intrusion attempt by en.wikipedia.org was blocked." Whiskey tango? SDY (talk) 16:40, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Leaking info while in SSL mode?
While browsing SSL wiki, it includes lots of non-SSL images from upload.wikimedia.org (e.g. icons and images on the page)

When fetching those images, does the referer tag (and indeed, the image locations) mean you're sending unencrypted information about which pages page you're looking at in the SSL session? (data which would otherwise be hidden from anyone sniffing on your network) Ojw (talk) 18:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I think this was discussed before, probably on the Village Pump/Technical. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk  -  02:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

New Message message
Why isn't mine clickable?  Grsz  11  19:02, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You know, someone posted that above, but there were no answers. I'm not sure, as I've been able to click mine. Have you tried purging your cache, restarting your browser, etc.? Cheers!  TN ‑  X   - Man  19:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's been like that for a couple of days.  Grsz  11  19:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I must say, I'm at a loss. :( However, the village pump may be able to help (unless someone here know?). I don't see any relevant posts at the pump, so I'm not sure if this is something other editors are experiencing. Best of luck!  TN ‑  X   - Man  19:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What browser do you use? - Mgm|(talk) 19:23, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * IE. 19:24, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, works now.  Grsz  11  21:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Font Question
All of the font on Wikipedia got smaller, How do I increase the size of the font back to normal? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.87.212.247 (talk) 21:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hold control and use your center mouse scroll.  Grsz  11  21:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Edit went wrong...
Last night I made a couple of small updates to the article on Victoria Pendleton - namely I added her new pro team to the template. When I checked back on it today, it appears I inadvertently undid a few previous edits, which themselves had removed mistakes and junk information. If you compare 18:00 5th December 2008 revision to the 23:01 9th December one you'll see what I mean (it was only line 16 I intended to change).

I've undone my own edits again tonight, got it back to how it was before I laid my hands on it, then re-did what I set out to do, and it looks OK now. But I haven't a clue how I cocked it up yesterday. Can anyone advse before I do it again?

Thanks Iain Iainjones1980 (talk) 22:02, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Most likely, you were viewing an old version of the page when you clicked "edit this page"; I know that still happens to me occasionally. --barneca (talk) 22:23, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It looks like it was this version based on the diff. Note the warning at top when you edit an old version. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:28, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

First post just got removed, need guidance
Hi,

I'm the Web guy at Vision Solutions, Inc. I typed in our name to see if there is an entry and there was nothing. So to help, I copied the About Us text from our Web site, and put in some links to 3rd parties like the operating systems we provide products for (AIX, IBM i, Windows).

I got an email saying my post was bad and it can't be accepted. What advice do you have? Can you view the short content that I tried to post and tell me what's wrong with it?

I also noticed that there is no entry for the category of solutions we provide - Diaster Recovery software. So I started to create an entry for that, and planned to cross link back to our Vision Solution, Inc. page. I decided to bag it since I just got the notice that my first posting about Vision was denied.

This is my first posting, the information is helpful, so I'm already discouraged about the process. Please help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Visionsolutions (talk • contribs) 22:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi. You see, the thing is, Wikipedia is an enyclopedia. You have a declared conflict of interest which is a bad thing for an encyclopedia that presents a neutral point of view about things. Anything your company does is not necesairally notable and writing about it can be considered spam which is not to good. We can't empasise enough about this place being an enyclopedia, not the yellow pages or a list of what every company does. If you click the blue links that may help, as migh the links on this page although I appreciate the article on your company exists. Pedro : Chat  22:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Also (1) the text from the "About us" page of the website is almost certainly copyright material and adding it to an article on WP is in breach of WP's copyright policy; (2) you user name is almost certainly in breach of WP's user name policy; (3) if you want to recreate the article, please do so in a user subpage, where you can work on it in relative safety from speedy deletion. – ukexpat (talk) 23:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Vision Solutions, Inc. has now been speedily deleted per WP:CSD. – ukexpat (talk) 04:48, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There is a lot of good info at the Business FAQ. —teb728 t c 05:03, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

It should also be noted that this account has been blocked from editing Wikipedia because the name is that of a business (a forbidden thing) and all of your edits seemed calculated to publicize your company. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide impartial, unbiased verifiable information from reliable third-party sources; we do not provide an advertising venue. If Vision Solutions is in fact a notable company, somebody without a conflict of interest will eventually write an article about you. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  14:57, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a note Orange Mike, but the article on Vision Solutions had existed since the middle of 2006 and was not created by this (now blocked) editor. Pedro : Chat  15:07, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Help with infobox publisher
Originally I had posted a message here, but it told me to post on this page instead. Accordingly...

Is there a template wizard who can help me with infobox publisher? The country of origin parameter isn't showing up even though its filled out. Also, there were originally two documents - infobox publisher and infobox  P ublisher (capital P), I redirected the latter to the former, but lost some fields in the process (here is the diff and here is the previous version). WLU (t) (c) (rules - simple rules) 22:59, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The Country of Origin field responds to "country = ...", not "country of origin = ..." as it's currently listed on the /doc page. Xenon54 (Frohe Feiertage!) 23:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * lovely, thanks! WLU (t) (c) (rules - simple rules) 00:01, 11 December 2008 (UTC)