Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 November 3

= November 3 =

Image fail
Why doesn't this edit work? (A new graphic has been created, but does not display ... even if I look at the page source, and copy and paste the link, the image won't display). What have I missed? Guinness (talk) 00:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There is currently a thumbnail display problem for some images, it seems. (See also this discussion: VPT) Intelligent  sium  00:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know why it fixed it but I tried reducing the number of pixels moderately and it works now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:38, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Odd, but thanks :) at least I know it's not something *I've* done ;) Guinness (talk) 00:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I hereby designate you as the sitewide scapegoat for all technical problems. You should apologize to each of our users.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll do Aaron A. Aaronson, but I'll ask him to pass it on to the next one :) Guinness (talk) 01:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * :-) Of course, User:!! is our first user, alphabetically speaking.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:57, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Qantity of Categories in english Wikipedia?
I am currently in the process of writing a paper about Wikipedia Categories. Ive done most of my research using Wikipedia API to get approximate numbers and to analyze categories structure. But i also want to know how many categories does Wikipedia has at the moment, and i just cant find this information. I could, of course, just install a previous Wikipeda DB dump and make a query to cout all categories, but that is an overkill. And using API for that would take too much time and strain Wikipedia servers.

So i am asking this question here: How many cartegories does Wikipedia have and is there a place where this info is posted or could be extracted from? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DSUmanskiy (talk • contribs) 00:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Normally, you would use the "magicword", replacing "name" with the namespace you wish to return, so you would replace it with Category.  However, this feature appears to be disabled, per this page.  You may be able to get the devs to activate it briefly, or possibly you could find other ways to do it.  Try asking at The Technical Village Pump, which is patroled by people who know how to do this stuff.  -- Jayron  32  02:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your answer:) I will look into that. The magicwords seem pretty awesome and i think they might do the job. If i figure out how to use them that is:) And persuade the devs to enable them. --DSUmanskiy (talk) 11:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Image problem with new page
I have created a new article Ignatius Cooper Grubb and uploaded an image File:Ignatius Cooper Grubb.jpg. I can't get the image to display appropriately in the article. 1) it is too large, and 2) it seems to have some extraneous info surrounding the image. I have reviewed other articles with images and tried techniques I observed (like |thumb|), but nothing seems to work. Appreciate some guidance, the article is otherwise about complete. LynnSGrubb (talk) 04:15, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅; by the looks of it, images placed in Template:Infobox officeholder do not need all that fancy coding around it. All you need to do is place the file name in the "image" parameter, and then specify the size in the "imagesize" parameter below it. Note that there seems to be some problems as of current that involve sized images not rendering correctly; for instance, when I re-size your image as 250px instead of 200px in the article, it causes the image to not show up for me. It's basically just a problem with the servers. This should be fixed in due time, I think . ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 04:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The usage of images in infoboxes can be idiosyncratic. Usually (but not always) the image = (or sometimes imagename = ) parameter is looking for the image name WITHOUT any brackets or the File: prefix. Secondly, the imagesize = parameter is optional sometimes, but in this case it looks like you need to enter a resonably small imagesize (i used 200px) to make it work in this infobox.  Like every other part of Wikipedia, infobox templates developed organicly and often independently, so often it isn't all that intuitive how they will work.  If you check how I fixed your problem, it will usually work on most infoboxes, but be prepared for it to get screwy once in a while. Trial and error and experience will generally get you good results (its what I did to fix this problem).  (post-ec) Looks like I editconflicted both here and at the article with SuperHamster.  We pretty much did exactly the same thing.  -- Jayron  32  04:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've removed the image, since it was taking up quite a bit of space!  Arctic   Night  07:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Persons of National Historic Significance
Does anybody know how to get an ' align="center" ' tag to apply to a whole column in a table? I would hate to have to keep typing that lot out every time I create a new row...  Arctic   Night  06:18, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * At Help:Tables there is a recommendation to use a template for "easy specification of a format for a whole column, such as color and alignment". So it looks as if there is no easy way to it at the start of the table definition as you'd expect. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:06, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If I read the documents aright, there is no way to set the alignment of cells per column in CSS. (You can do so directly in HTML, but styling attributes in HTML are usually avoided nowadays in favour of CSS). While it would presumably be possible to make the wikicode do something that can't be done directly in CSS, I don't think it is likely to be judged worthwhile. --ColinFine (talk) 00:07, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Religion of Firoz Gandhi
I want to ask was Firoz Gandhi "Muslim" by religion and later on he changed his religion? Please elaborate it. Thanks....... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.164.9.74 (talk) 08:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, I think the Reference desk would probably be the most appropriate forum for asking this question.  Arctic   Night  08:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

merging siren articles
I am trying to merge/redirect the following articles (all small and unable to advance): ACA P-15 ACA Cyclone ACA Hurricane ASC T-135 to the List_of_sirens_built_by_Alerting_Communicators_of_America article. Can anyone help me out with this? Everytime I try to redirect, it just doesn't work. --JustInn014 (talk) 09:09, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You've made one correct redirect, . What is going wrong with the others? -- John of Reading (talk) 12:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I wonder whether List of sirens built by Alerting Communicators of America meets Wikipedia's inclusion criteria and the requirements of WP:LIST? – ukexpat (talk) 13:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

rev list
my name is willem kroesbergen and i made a short page about myself. i tried to add a footnote, but i get the following error: Cite error: There are tags on this page, but the references will not show without a template or a   or others at Template messages/Cleanup. The template code is in the place where the box is displayed when the you view the rendered page, usually at the top. You can remove them manually when the issue they point out is fixed. The cleanup categories are added by the templates and will automatically disappear when you remove the template. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Also be sure to explain that you are removing the tag and why (if someone could question it) in your edit summary. -- D•g Talk to me/What I've done 22:54, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Assuming you were referring to the articles William James Lectures and Harold Garfinkel, I have removed those tags. You can see what PrimeHunter details above in my edit. Intelligent  sium  22:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

big png logo
Hi, I was trying to make this big logo Cork's 96FMa bit smaller and possibly because it was a PNG file I couldn't manage, I removed the brackets and added a imagesize = 180pxs field and the picture just disappeared. Please help. Off2riorob (talk) 23:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Some infoboxes take normal image markup and other do not because it is supplied by the template. So here, since it uses the normal markup, I decreased the size the same way you would for an image outside a template: by adding the  parameter right inside the brackets after the image name. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:00, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah I see, it would be great if we could standardize all the infobox markup...add the size in the brackets and not in a separate line, many thanks to you User:Fuhghettaboutit - Off2riorob (talk) 00:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You're most welcome. Standardizing would be good but it would be a pretty big project and you'd need consensus first on what the standard was to be. Maybe you have a new pet project?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)