Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 September 28

= September 28 =

Yo wassup peoplez
pooop pooop pooop, here me now, tyrantinaway, respect to mah brotherz n ho's, i was wonderin weather i gots any chance to become an admin or woteva innit and how can i aply? safe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.128.46 (talk) 03:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * See WP:RFA. -- k a i n a w &trade; 03:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * IPs cannot become administrators, only registered users with accounts with community consensus to make you an one during an WP:RFA will make you an administrator. -- RyRy  ( talk ) 01:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

How can i report signbot?
He keeps being rude to me. he/she is disrepspectin me and when i said hi just ignored me f*king pr*ck —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.128.46 (talk) 03:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * User:Sinebot's a WP:BOT, it can't respond. --erachima talk 05:24, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Help with a timeline
I have been unable to get the timeline in 1994 Pacific hurricane season display properly. And then Hurricanehink says that "I just tried kicking the timeline (by changing one of the values by a very small bit), and it worked for me in the preview mode. When I clicked save, it disappeared again." Titoxd I was directed to seek help here at the HD. So please help there. Thank you. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 05:22, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind. Hurricanehink just fixed it and made it display. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 05:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

New Article: Seven News Melbourne
I have my concerns about the usefulness of a new article on Seven News Melbourne page. It's an exact copy of what is from the Seven News page, and in my opinion is completely unnecessary. What should I do to voice my concerns about its usefulness? ThanksAlltrainzfan (talk) 06:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * After a small amount of Googling, I can't find non-trivial references to Seven News Melbourne so I have some doubts about the notability of it. (But note: I don't know if I'm being fair as I have almost no knowledge of media outside Europe.) The one external reference in the article is to yahoo.com/news which makes no explicit mention of the the subject. So perhaps you could nominate the article for deletion via the Articles for deletion process to see what others think.--92.40.118.29 (talk) 08:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have redirected Seven News Melbourne to Seven News. – ukexpat (talk) 15:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist not updating
Well, I appear to have broken my watchlist somehow. It hasn't updated since 05:45 UTC today and it's currently 08:18 UTC. In an attempt to rectify this, I have tried / investigated the following things:
 * I have refreshed the page (several times).
 * I have made changes to pages that I know I am watching.
 * I have come across pages that I know I'm watching which other uses have changed–still no update.
 * I have chosen to watch pages which I wasn't watching before. They aren't showing up.
 * I have gone into my preferences and fiddled slightly with the preferences and saved–just to see if it would "jog" it.
 * I cleared cache, history, cookies, etc.
 * I signed out and back in again.
 * I have already read about the upwards limit of ~98000 watchlisted pages breaking the watchlist, but I only have about 177. I'd say it's not that! ;)
 * I've read that a problem can render the watchlist blank. My watchlist isn't blank, it's just stopped updating.
 * I've checked Special:Recentchanges and note that it seems to be working ok.

Is it just me? How do I fix it? Maedin \talk 08:26, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Not working for me either, suggesting a system bug perhaps. These things usually get fixed quickly though. PeterSymonds (talk)  09:06, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * See Village pump (technical)/Archive 126. __meco (talk) 09:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the answers. All working again :)  Maedin \talk 12:22, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

New protection layout
Hello everybody, i have seen from the past few days there is a new protection layout when an admin protects a page as to what shows up eg. this recent one to this one which was the old style. What has changed and where can i find more info. about this? I just dont like it when wikipedia changes like this and they dont even tell us, i personally dont like change and want everything to stay the same way. Its like when they added the "search in history" to the page history of a page. Ta kindly 211.30.19.204 (talk) 12:06, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The new version gives the expiration by default. That's a good thing. Also, the programmers do that sort of stuff, it has little to do with the community. --erachima talk 16:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It's most useful for indefinitely move-protected pages, such as WP:AN, WP:ANI, etc. Sometimes admins will need to semi-protect these pages to prevent large floods of vandalism. However, before, there was no way to keep the move protection enabled, so if an admin specified an expiry, the move protection also expired. Now this problem can be avoided more easily. :) PeterSymonds (talk)  16:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Translating articles
I haven't found the answer to my question on Translation (or maybe, I missed it), so I pose my question here:

When I want to translate a, let's say, German article into English for the English-speaking Wikipedia, is there a template or something like that saying "This article is a translation of ...". Or it is sufficient to leave a note on the discussion page of the English article? TIA and greets, --Darev (talk) 16:12, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe it is sufficient to leave translated page on the top of the talk page. But translated can be used as well on the article page. EJF (talk) 16:28, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much! :) --Darev (talk) 16:45, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Template transclusion update lag - bug or just me?
I've changed a template today in order to point incoming links from it directly at a particular article rather than at a dab page. However, the old, unchanged version of the template is still displaying on all pages it transcludes to. Cache clearing and bypassing has no effect, and a "What links here" on the offending dab page still picks up all those transclusions in their old, unamended version. It seems the only way to fix it is to make a null edit to each page displaying the transcluded template; this manually updates it to the new version and the dablink is instantly fixed. It's a while since I went through this process, but I'm sure that in the past the change to a template has shown up immediately in all its transcluded appearances. A bug, a cache problem my end, my faulty memory, or what? Ka renjc 17:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This lag is normal. Give it time, and it will update on the pages where the template is used. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:21, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about your change to American conflicts to list 1838 Mormon War in place of Mormon War, then that change is showing for me in articles containing the template.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:25, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've updated most of them manually now, but if you're seeing the whole lot updated then the problem is probably with me. For the record, yes, the template is American conflicts and the dab page in question is Mormon War, which for me is still bringing up some results with the unchanged template when I do a "What links here".  Thanks for checking :)  Ka renjc 17:35, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * When you find yourself making null edits to a page, you might want to try the method in WP:PURGE. I had a similarly odd problem when I updated the Template:Google custom/doc page, and my changes did not show up for some time on the Google custom template page (which transcludes the /doc subpage, per the guidelines in WP:DOC). So I purged the template page and that caused the document changes to appear. --Teratornis (talk) 17:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Everything should eventually be updated automatically but the time varies. See mw:Manual:Job queue. The current job queue length is at Special:Statistics. Null editing increases the server load. Just wait for the automatic update unless there are special circumstances requiring a faster update. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:46, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. There were only special circumstances in that a fixing run on a dab page linklist is pretty difficult unless the fixed dablinks actually do disappear from the list as they are fixed!  However, I shall have a nice cup of tea while I wait. Thanks all the help, and thanks Teratornis for the purge hint - that's a good trick to know.  Ka renjc 17:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Image License
What license will be if the image was taken in 1942 at United States? Aquitania (talk) 23:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That depends on what license the photographer (or other copyright owner) released the image under. What makes you think the image is licensed at all? Maybe the owner has not released it under any free license, in which case we can’t use it (except under the highly restrictive Non-free content criteria). —teb728 t c 01:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)