Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 January 6

= January 6 =

Where to post for help on a dodgy-looking edit
I'm a bit concerned that this edit may contravene Wikipedia guidelines by linking to inappropriate material. Where's the best place to report it please? Thanks Rjwilmsi  22:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That is very concerning. Post at WP:AN/I, where administrators can deal with it and report to the proper authorities. Xenon54 23:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Have done that. Rjwilmsi  08:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Check edits, please
Could someone check the edits of this user. I'm at work right now and given the subject of the articles that they're editing, I'd rather not check the external links that they're adding (spamming?) while on a work computer. Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 01:25, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Looks like spam to me. Just links to Celeb-O-Rama.  Reverted and warned. -Seidenstud (talk) 02:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Dismas |(talk) 02:25, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Text scans on Commons
What's the point of having scans of pages and pages of text on Commons? Especially if they're never used. Dismas |(talk) 03:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You may have to ask on commons:Commons:Help desk. commons:Commons:Project scope explains what belongs on Commons, and I'm not immediately sure how the file you mention fits into that. You could also try asking the uploader what he or she intends to do with that file. Maybe it appeared somewhere once upon a time but the containing page got deleted or someone edited out the image. Maybe someone plans to use these text scans in a reCAPTCHA-type of scheme, who knows? --Teratornis (talk) 06:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll check those pages. There are hundreds (thousands?) of these pages on Commons.  Dismas |(talk) 08:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Table height problems
On User talk:SpecialWindler/Sandbox4/test, I have a trancluded template. You'll notice the height of the rows do not wrap around the text, and seem to be a particular height. Why is this and how do you get rid of it.

The template code is on User talk:SpecialWindler/Sandbox4/test

Thanks for your help in advanced.   The Windler      talk   04:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * See my reply to the next question about substituting the template instead of transcluding it, so you can see the resulting wikitext. Whenever you are having trouble getting a template to generate a table with a particular appearance, you should first manually create a sample table that looks the way you want. Then you have the table wikitext that you want the template to generate, giving you something to compare against the result of substituting the template on your user sandbox page. As it stands, you are trying to compare a mental concept of what you want the template to look like, against the complex code in the template. That puts you one level of abstraction away on both ends from what you really want to be comparing. Do you follow me? If you have the table code that you want the template to generate, then you have turned a very vague problem into a very specific problem. --Teratornis (talk) 06:59, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I've experiemented, and to its simple level, what I want is User:SpecialWindler/Sandbox4/test/expierement/what.


 * But when I put into a template, (The code here), it dosen't work in the height factor.


 * Seen here User talk:SpecialWindler/Sandbox4/test/expierement, notice the height of the tables is too high. Why??   The Windler      talk   23:06, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, I have fixed it myself.   The Windler      talk   03:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Help with a template in development
Can someone help me with a template I'm trying to develop. You can see it in action here. As you can see there is some extra white space on those rows which do not have a description and I'm having a devil of the time removing it. The inclusion that should be edited can be found here. Any help would be much appreciated. -- Deadly&forall;ssassin 04:38, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * One template debugging trick is to substitute the template into your user sandbox page, and save your edit. Then edit your sandbox page and you can see the wikitext code that results when Wikipedia expands your template. Otherwise, if you only transclude the template during your testing, it can be very difficult to imagine what your template code is turning into, since you never see the intermediate expanded wikitext, only the final HTML rendering in your browser. You can also try looking at the HTML code by viewing the page source in your browser. Occasionally that might also give some insight, but usually the real information comes from substituting the template and looking at the wikitext you are getting. --Teratornis (talk) 06:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip, when I subst it looks like it's not working properly - the true expression of the #if statement doesn't get through to the substituted page.  Could this be a bug in wikimedia, or a problem with my code? The substituted page is here -- Deadly&forall;ssassin  07:05, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Now you're getting warmer. See my response to the question above yours - the next step is to manually create another test page with a table having exactly the structure you want the template to produce. Also, I suggest making another set of test pages with the smallest possible code example that isolates the problem you are having with the #if statement. Currently the problem is somewhat hard to see inside a large amount of surrounding code, which I gather you think is working OK. A basic debugging strategy is to isolate the problem by making the smallest code example that elicits the problem. This is always necessary before you conclude you have found a bug in the MediaWiki software - this software gets a lot of use, so it is unlikely (though not impossible) that you are the first person to run into a previously unknown bug. First you must rule out a coding error on your part. If simplifying your template makes the problem go away, then the problem is likely to be something else in the template that is gumming up the code where the problem manifests itself. See How to Ask Questions the Smart Way which elaborates on how to demonstrate problems so others can fix them. Basically, you want to show other people only the problem, not the problem buried in a bunch of surrounding code which will only distract people and make it harder for them to see the problem. Read and re-read every friendly manual page which relates to the problem: Help:Table, Help:Template, Help:Magic words, and Help:Parserfunctions. If you cannot identify and fix the problem with these debugging tips, you could then present your well-posed examples on WP:VP/T, where there are more users who specialize in the technical side of Wikipedia. Good luck. --Teratornis (talk) 23:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks alot for your help.  I managed to solve this by nor allowing whitespace and newlines to be stripped from the parser functions. -- Deadly&forall;ssassin  10:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of this article
What criterion for speedy deletion would best apply to this article? Does it even qualify for speedy deletion? The closest of the criteria would be A7, but it is still pretty vague, as the article is not a bio, company, or band, and no specific template stands out. --- RCB talk 05:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't think it meets any speedy criteria as books are exempt from CSD#a7. Prod or AfD it if you want it deleted. -- Unpopular Opinion ( talk ) 05:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It doesn't seem to be a book though.--- RCB talk 06:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the article says nothing about the media it was published in. Assuming it was a series of comic books or comic strips in some newspaper, a7 doesn't apply. Article doesn't assert notability but still it doesn't look like a speedy candidate to me. -- Unpopular Opinion ( talk ) 07:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * However, it does appear it is a clear candidate for WP:AFD. Make sure you read the relevant policies and guidelines before nominating. Especially WP:BEFORE - Mgm|(talk) 10:20, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've tagged it as no-context. It should be noted that there are actually historical comics by the title Jo-Jo and Jojo; this is none of them. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  15:08, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean its a hoax? It isn't a short article though. I fail to see how would apply sorry :/ -- Unpopular Opinion  ( talk ) 15:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually if you strip out the listcruft, it is short. – ukexpat (talk) 15:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Messages
HELLO?!?! this had happened more than 10 times

after visiting many articles in wikipedia, the next day i will have a new message saying that I was vandalising an article. OK, so i went to see which article it was, and to my surprise, it was a article that i never see before. and something ironic, I NEVER gave a sh!t about editing any article and didn't even edit anything before. so wad the heck are they saying when they sae that i was vandalising when i DIDN'T EVEN GAVE A SH!T ABOUT EDITING ANYTHING!?

for the last time, I DO NOT TOUCH AND NEVER EDIT ANY ARTICLE'S CONTENT. :) SO PLEASE. i dun wanna receive any more this sh!tty messages —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jovicci (talk • contribs) 07:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You have a shared IP address. Someone else used that IP to vandalize articles, and when the IP was allocated to you by your ISP, you received those warning messages. Just ignore them :) -- Unpopular Opinion ( talk ) 07:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Now that you have an account, you won't receive those notices if you are logged in. Dismas |(talk) 08:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * And just a friendly word in closing -- please do not be so confrontational and please do not use offensive language, albeit thinly disguised. You are much more likely to get helpful responses if you just chill a little. – ukexpat (talk) 14:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know, George Carlin made a lot of money off the Seven dirty words, which isn't to say profanity is equally lucrative in less-skilled hands. As Help desk volunteers, part of our puzzle is to determine how much a questioner knows about Wikipedia. Use of profanity and CAPSLOCK indicates that the questioner is probably very new to Wikipedia and hasn't yet learned the customs here. This can be useful to help us determine how to tailor our response. One needs to address a Wikipedia expert differently than one addresses a newbie who doesn't know "SH!T" about Wikipedia, so as not to insult the expert's intelligence, or befuddle the newbie by talking over his/her/its head. --Teratornis (talk) 19:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I must just be old-fashioned fuddy-duddy, but a polite, measured approach is more likely to elicit a response from me. – ukexpat (talk) 20:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sure many if not most Wikipedians would agree with you, but it seems even the least refined supplicants on the Help desk get a response from someone, suggesting we have enough eyeballs aimed this way to assure that a few are connected to some pretty AGF brains. I guess it's all in how one looks at it. When I see someone venting rage on the Help desk, aimed at no one in particular, I tend to feel relieved to know I'm not the only one who feels victimized frequently by the collision of high technology with my boundless ignorance (one can virtually equate "serious computer user" with "swears a lot" - especially when they hear someone say "Get a Mac"). Now if someone were to light up my talk page with vituperation aimed directly at me, I might react a bit differently, but even then I would feel mildly embarrassed if someone were to catch me in a weak moment and derail my sangfroid. In any case, there is a lot of perhaps unintentional yet rather high-handed officiousness in the structure of Wikipedia, reflected in such dubious statistics as the thousands of articles we delete every day. Many of those articles are the work of well-meaning but naive newcomers, who got suckered by Wikipedia's way-too-welcoming Honeypot user interface, which demonstrably encourages lots of people to follow their dreams only to discover after losing hours of work that their dreams did not correspond with our stupefyingly complex and unintuitive rules. It's pretty clear that Wikipedia's design is optimized for people who are experts at using Wikipedia, which is hardly surprising because only expert users know enough to write all the friendly manuals and so on. There aren't enough people taking a hard look at Wikipedia from the rank beginner's point of view. What is it about Wikipedia that systematically and repeatedly encourages waves of newcomers to waste their time creating articles that don't have a snowball's chance? Our response is to continually improve the efficiency of our deletion process, rather than address the actual problem, which is the wrong message we send to some fraction of new users. (Ultimately, some of these problems may be unfixable until computers pass the Turing test, which I suspect may be just a few months before computers realize they don't need humans any more.) --Teratornis (talk) 04:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete article
I created an entry today and would like it to be deleted, can you tell me how to do it?Esperance10 (talk) 09:05, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Edit the page and put this tag: -- Unpopular Opinion ( talk ) 09:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Too late for that now, other editors have been working on it. – ukexpat (talk) 15:53, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Image placement guideline
Quite some time ago I read a Wikipedia guideline (or was it a policy) about the placement of images in articles. In particular, it was suggested that having images both left and right (like in this question), was undesirable and should be avoided if at all possible. Unfortunately, I can't find it any more. Would someone be able to provide me with a link to that guideline/policy? Thanks. Astronaut (talk) 12:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It's part of MOS:IMAGES - "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other." Nanonic (talk) 12:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * If you have too many images to fit in a section, consider using a gallery tag. --Teratornis (talk) 19:20, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Anderson
Hi, Im writing an article on my band and i just published it. It is unfinished, but is at a safe point to stop and i intend to add to it over the next few days. I recieved a message stating that something is wrong and it will be deleted?

Please can you help?

Ollie

the page is 'anderson (band)'

thank you

Funky0 (talk) 14:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It appears that your page Anderson (band), has been tagged for speedy deletion. This happens when an article does not show why the subject is notable. My suggestion is add reliable sources that provide in-depth indepedent coverage of the band. Cheers!  TN ‑  X   - Man  14:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Added section title. Astronaut (talk) 15:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It also appears your (possibly autobiographical) Oliver Chanter article is getting no love. You appear to be approaching Wikipedia in one of the most difficult ways, by trying to create new articles from scratch before you have spent much time editing existing articles and reading the friendly manuals. That would be like me walking into a yo-yo competition (with no training) and attempting to go up against the champions. Before one is ready to perform at a high level, one must first master the fundamentals. On Wikipedia, that means making many small edits to existing articles, and observing what other Wikipedia users do to your edits. That is, you try editing something, you watch the page you edit, and when you see another user changing what you added, you try to understand that user's action in light of what the manuals say. See also WP:WWMPD, WP:LAYOUT, and WP:EIW. If you like to read books, get: Wikipedia - The Missing Manual. --Teratornis (talk) 19:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

education
is there any free education courses  to study? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.201.18.15 (talk) 16:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe Wikiversity would be a better place to look. BigDunc  Talk 16:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Everything on Wikipedia is both free and educational, so you have articles to choose from here, although some articles are better than others at the moment. You can start from Portal:Contents or type something in the search box. If you would like more specific advice, you could tell us the subjects you would like to study. Note that Wikipedia is a do it yourself system - we don't rely on human teachers to spoon-feed knowledge to students. Wikipedia users will answer well-posed questions, but in general most people who learn about and from Wikipedia do so by reading the friendly manuals (and reading the friendly articles). --Teratornis (talk) 19:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Legality of Palin email screenshots
I would like to include one of the many screenshots of Palin's Yahoo! inbox on Sarah Palin email hack, but I'm not sure if it would be legal. Are the images in the public domain, or are they considered the personal property of Palin? They have been published by several websites, but not by any professional media organizations, so I'm a little weary. For instance, Wikileaks has copies of the screenshots. --beefyt (talk) 18:10, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Copyright issues aside; although the email issue is public, posting screenshots of the email interface might be considered invasion of privacy WP:BLPPRIVACY. I guess that's why the images were not published by the media. Wikipedia is not hosted by PRQ after all. -- Unpopular Opinion ( talk ) 18:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Internet Based
Which is the main internet storage? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.68.57 (talk) 18:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * [[Image:P computing.svg|20px]] This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Computing reference desk. They specialize in answering computer questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try  for an article related to the topic you want to know more about.  I hope this helps. -- Unpopular Opinion  ( talk ) 18:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I keep mine in a box on top of the wardrobe. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Viewing Images
For some reason I can no longer view images on any of the pages I go to. Is there any way to fix this problem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.245.132 (talk) 20:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Does this happen on all websites that you visit or just Wikipedia? If it happens on all websites, check your browser settings to make sure that image display has not been disabled. – ukexpat (talk) 20:03, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

This only happens on the Wikipedia. and as far as i know, i haven't changed any image display settings on my browser. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.245.132 (talk) 22:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a setting in some browsers to block images from particular sites. Occasionally we get reports on the Help desk from users who have somehow accidentally activated this setting for Wikipedia (I'm not sure exactly how, maybe by bumping some hot key combination, all I know is that it seems to be possible to get this setting without consciously asking for it). If you tell us what browser you are running, someone could tell you exactly where to look in your browser settings. --Teratornis (talk) 10:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm using Mozilla Firefox. thanks

never mind. i found where to change the browser settings so that the images are no longer blocked —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.245.132 (talk) 23:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

New to Wikipedia editing and would like to add personal photos to expand on my edit topic.
When trying to upload pictures, to illustrate a text that I have added, I am blocked. How do I go about adding such images that I, myself have taken? - dstein2484 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dstein2484 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You must be autoconfirmed to upload images. That means you have to make ten edits and stay here for four days before being able to upload. It's a security measure of sorts.  bibliomaniac 1  5  20:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) In order to upload images, your account must be autoconfirmed. In other words, your account must be active for four days and make at least ten edits. You are eight edits and three days away. Cheers!  TN ‑  X   - Man  20:13, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You can still upload those images to commons and use them here though. Commons doesn't have such a restriction. -- Unpopular Opinion ( talk ) 20:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

need address
for:

Hanesbrand Warehouse Hometown, Pa

Need phone number

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.43.47.194 (talk) 21:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over two million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen. If that is not fruitful, we have a reference desk, divided into various subjects areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck.  TN ‑   X   - Man  21:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Or, you could Google it! Adammw (talk) 17:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

FInfo Tool - 403 Forbidden Error
Hey, was trying to use this tool just now: http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/flinfo.php

It's giving me a 403 Forbidden error, and I'm not sure who to contact about it. -- Scarpy (talk) 22:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The blue link on the 403 page is a mailto link to the server's postmaster, so I would start there. – ukexpat (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikiblame on the same server is returning the same error. DuncanHill (talk) 23:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I emailed postmaster at ramselehof dot de about both FInfo and Wikiblame. -- Scarpy (talk) 02:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Help and FAQ's aren't helping me
I have been round and round this site reading and linking and have yet to find out how I can upload an article to be read, edited, or anything. I have spent the past 4 hours here and have drawn a complete blank. All the links that say they will describe the process, do not. My article would fit a blank spot at Wikipedia and I believe it would be helpful to many. But I cannot find out how to send it, where to send it, or if it can be sent at all. I have written the article using MSWord and converted it to HTML with MS FrontPage. It has been published to my own web site so I know it works. My question is, Can an HTML article be sent to Wikipedia at all? If I have to convert it I will, but where do I E-mail or FTP the file?

Thanks PhaetonDriver —Preceding unsigned comment added by PhaetonDriver (talk • contribs) 23:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines which all articles should comport with. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite to reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.


 * Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.


 * If you still think an article is appropriate, see Help:Starting a new page. You might also look at Your first article and How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. Algebraist 23:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * HTML is of no use: you need to convert it to WP:Wikitext, and you upload it pretty much the same as you posted your question above. I have a concern, however, about the fact that it is already published on your web site: All text on Wikipedia must be licensed under GFDL. —teb728 t c 23:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I haven't tried it but see Tools and Help:WordToWiki. If you wrote it in Word then it's probable better to try to convert directly from Word to wikitext than going trough HTML. You add text to Wikipedia pages by inserting it in an edit box in your browser and click "Save page", like when you posted this question. You cannot use email or FTP. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:24, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It will come as no shock to experienced Wikipedians that your new article, Ponytail Canasta, has already collected a dated prod template for violating one of Wikipedia's many unintuitive policies and guidelines (in this case, WP:NOT). I suspect it is no accident that the instructions on how to create a new article are somewhat hard for newcomers to find on Wikipedia, because the mechanics of how to put some content on Wikipedia are the least of the aspiring editor's worries. Ideally, one should not find the instructions on how to start a new article until one has read and understood enough of the instructions detailing what an article should and should not contain. (That's a polite way of saying: if you have to ask how to create a new article, you are not ready to create a new article - unless you want to watch it get deleted.) For most users, an understanding of what Wikipedia is about doesn't start to really sink in until they have accumulated around 1000 edits. Once a user has gained that much experience, then he or she probably has enough skills to create a new article with a good chance of "sticking" - or at the very least, by then the user will be aware that Wikipedia deletes thousands of new articles by new users (that's a statistic which deserves more publicity than we give it). For best results, before a person dashes into a minefield, that person should at least be aware that the minefield exists. Knowing exactly where all the mines are hiding is even better. In the case of Ponytail Canasta, you may have more luck putting it on wikiHow, a wiki specifically meant for how-to guides. I removed your accidental red links so they don't show up on some requested articles page. I changed your red links into italics which is the proper way to emphasize text on Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 03:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, today seems to be your lucky day. Some experienced Wikipedia users have cleaned up Ponytail Canasta and (probably) saved it from deletion. You should study their changes, and try to understand why they did what they did, by reading their edit summaries in the history page and viewing the revision diffs. --Teratornis (talk) 10:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for the responses and the kind way you told me I didn't do enough reading and research before making my first post. I appreciate any and all non abusive criticism. I will look at the areas described above and I am very happy someone has taken the time to actually do an edit. I was sure it wasn't correct for this site but was hoping it would be a topic that would be read. I did read one persons request for the instructions when I searched the topic. If there is a better place for how-to's I wasn't aware of it. I am eager to read the edits and do what I need to do to make this article appropriate for this or another site. I have written a lot of technical manuals and am quite used to being shredded by editors, to the point that I don't even bleed any more. Thank you all again. PhaetonDriver (talk) 05:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I just went to the WikiHow site and read what that is all about, then searched for Ponytail Canasta and it took me to my entry. I like the things that were added very much. The only reference I was able to find anywhere was for Canasta and the best source was here at Wikipedia. So thank you again for adding the graphics and links (which I had not figured out how to do). In my original Word Doc I had several links to other areas within the article and some are again there. Thanks to all that helped these instruction to get posted here. Now I look forward to learning more and more about how this site works so I can contribute more and more. PhaetonDriver (talk) 06:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)