Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 August 24

= August 24 =

Joan Hinde
Tried to up-date references but when opening to edit, there is nothing there! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.10.195 (talk) 16:08, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * When you are reading an article and see a references section near the bottom populated by a series of numbered citations, you might think that if you edit the page, you will see those citations typed in that section and be able to edit them. However, normally what you will see is code similar to this:     ==References==     or  " for example, to sort the value of 10 properly in a list of numbers up to 999). You would need to decide on how many digits your column will have, and apply this to all numbers that have fewer digits. BigNate37(T) 19:25, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It is literally mindboggling that in 2012, we have to use crude workarounds to sort.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  19:46, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I fixed one of the tables, more work than it is worth.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  20:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks all. I thought this might have been fixed. I think I remember some Bugzilla request about it. Rmhermen (talk) 22:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Phantom categories
Does anybody have any idea why on the Template messages/User talk namespace/Single-level templates page there are four hidden categories that cannot seem to be removed? I have tried purging, null edits, etc.; nothing has worked. There is no option to remove them with HotCat, and they are not manually listed in the source text. The cats in question are Category:User talk pages with Uw-affiliate notices, Category:User talk pages with Uw-bizlist notices, Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues, and Category:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices. Thanks in advance. NTox · talk 21:22, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * They are written into the templates that are used on that page. So, for instance, you can have an infobox for lute players with a category written into it that puts the article automatically into Category:Lute players.  The category doesn't show up in the source for the article but it does show up in the infobox template source.  Dismas |(talk) 21:36, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. You might call this a facepalm moment. For some reason, I was under the impression that transclusions of templates did not automatically include the categories that were written into them. Thanks, again. NTox · talk 22:10, 24 August 2012 (UTC)