Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 December 11

= December 11 =

Wikipedian photographers by location
Is there a list of Wikipedian photographers by location (e.g., Wikipedian photographers in New York)? It's not in Category:Wikipedian photographers and I think there might be one in a project page. -- Jreferee (talk) 03:16, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I found one - Wikipedians/Photographers. -- Jreferee (talk) 03:19, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There's also Category:Wikipedians in Manhattan and her sisters and her cousins and her aunts, though it doesn't specify which of us are Wikiphotographers. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:37, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding categories
This article has not been added to any categories. Please help out by adding categories to it so that it can be listed with similar articles!

Many thanks. AdonisGalloway (talk) 04:07, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I've added a couple. Just so you know, you can do this yourself.  Check the article history to see how I did it.  It's not hard.  I've also put a welcome message on your talk page that has some helpful links.  Dismas |(talk) 04:18, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I'm trying to find small articles to edit bit by bit so i won't ruin anything! I will look at how you did it. Thank you for the welcome! AdonisGalloway (talk) 04:24, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

edits and deletes
How can I become an auto editor so that i can make a contribution to a semi-protected page?

I have made contributions only to wathc them be deleted.--Artistador (talk) 04:11, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * According to the edit summaries of the editors that came after you, your edits weren't worth keeping and thus were reverted. I would suggest learning a bit more about Wikipedia and editing before you get concerned about whether or not you are auto-confirmed.  The links that are in the welcome message on your talk page are a good place to start.  Dismas |(talk) 04:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

[Solved] Is using a .css file possible in User Namespace?
I've been around Wikipedia since 2008, but have only done minor things. I'm looking to get more involved, and decided to properly set up my User page (which I more or less never really bothered doing before). I'd like to link all my subpages to a .css file (which I've already made here), but I can't figure out how to make all my other pages call on it for the css information.

It just seems like it'd be a smarter way of themeing the entire page/subpages than duplicating all my css on each time I call a h3 or table, and if anyone knows how to make it transclude the information for styling (but NOT actually printing it on the page itself), I'd greatly appriciate any help you can offer! k2trf (talk) 04:33, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I have a .css file at User:Dismas/vector.css, so it's possible... Dismas |(talk) 04:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm aware that certain .css and .js subpages can exist if one wants to modify the css/js of the skin for Wikipedia as a whole; what I'm looking to do is be able to define the background, foreground, text color, etc. for each element on my User page in one .css subpage (or as a subpage without an extension, if that would work instead), so that instead of having  each time I want to specify a box to put things in, I can do it globally via one file/page & a transclusion.


 * I'm just not sure if what I'm trying to do can be done through MediaWiki, or if it has to be a page or .css (I've got it as a .css right now, and am stuck at getting other pages to transclude & call on it, but not actually print it. k2trf (talk) 07:36, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Any styling you set up in a personal .css file will only take effect when you look at your user page. Instead, you could move your start-of-table and end-of-table markup into templates named User:K2trf/Start table and User:K2trf/End table. In the "start table" page, stick  as a placeholder where the table header text should go. Then, on your user pages, you can replace the start-of-table styling with   and the end-of-table styling with  . -- John of Reading (talk) 07:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Ahhh... that's what I thought might be the case. Thanks for the point in the right direction! What I was looking to do is centralize all such css information so I can recolor/reskin my Userpages easily when I want to chenge them - is it possible to grab just a portion of a page during transclusion? If it is, I could just put in the headers for everything somewhat similarly (though not quite as neatly), and accomplish approximately the same effect. k2trf (talk) 07:44, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * YES! It seems I can, if I RTFM! XD Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction and telling me that I could not accomplish such a thing with a .css page - I wasn't sure if I could or not! k2trf (talk) 08:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Magic word DISPLAYTITLE not working?
I would like to ask for help because I used the magic word DISPLAYTITLE to display the title of my user page but it does not seem to be correctly displayed. Click "Edit" to see the source code. If you answered, please notify me on my talk page. --Huang (talk) 09:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I had this same issue myself a while back - turned out you can't use DISPLAYTITLE in userspace to display the title as alternative text. You can use it to italicise your username, or change the font, but the text string has to be the same. You'll need to file a full change of username request if you want that to be your username. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  10:06, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I wonder why other Wikipedias like the Chinese Wikipedia allows it but English Wikipedia doesn't. --Huang (talk) 10:58, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I couldn't say - presumably their equivalent of DISPLAYTITLE is coded differently. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  11:04, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You can use User:One/Title to make a pseudo-DISPLAYTITLE.&#32;~HueSatLum 12:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * So you can. That's a useful tip, thanks! Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  13:03, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * mw:Manual:$wgRestrictDisplayTitle is true by default but set to false for the Chinese Wikipedia and some other wikis at http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:44, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi
Where is a good place to start if you are new? And can I start fixing mistakes right away? Thank you -  SCARECROW  09:57, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Iamthescarecrow, welcome to Wikipedia. The best place to start is probably the tutorial, although you might enjoy the recently developed Wikipedia Adventure. As to mistakes - if you see 'em, fix 'em! There's no waiting period; you can start editing straight away. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  10:02, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Welcome to Wikipedia, Iamthescarecrow. If you are fixing spelling, grammar, etc., that's great. If you are correcting information, though, be sure to include a citation to a reliable source so that others can see how you know that your information is correct (see WP:Referencing for beginners if you aren't familiar with citations).  Good luck!  &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 18:06, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you Yunshui and Anne. Both of those links are helpful. -  SCARECROW  23:26, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Creating "bulk" pages
I'm in the process of moving an extensive personally researched database of atomic testing information onto wikipedia. I've done the most (but not quite finished) of the American data onto the appropriate pages (such as Operation Emery and Operation Castle); this is mainly the tabular data on these pages, and looking at the history before and after my edits (as "SkoreKeep") will demonstrate the sort of changes I'm doing. Having done most of the American data, I now must plow into that of other nuclear countries; the USSR is where I'm starting that. There is an existing page List of nuclear weapons tests of the Soviet Union which is a start of a list as it says, but it is only about 25% complete and its not obvious it will ever be completed. At any rate, I'd like to delete that page and introduce a series of about 40 pages, similar in number to the equivalent US pages, except arranged by year rather than "test series", which was just an American way of naming fiscal year nuclear testing programs. To begin with the pages would be stamped out by a database output program so they would be cookie-cutter similar, though they could/would be later hand-edited like all other pages in wikipedia.

I'd like to establish them in bulk rather than trying to go through the sandbox/registration route for each page. I don't have deep experience with wikipedia (particularly the administrative end), so I don't know if it is possible or whether there is a way to do it established. Some pointers from said administration, a procedure perhaps, would be greatly appreciated. If needed, I can stamp a typical year out for looking at, with a day's notice.

One other thing - I am sometimes out of town and cannot get on the internet, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time, the curse and enjoyment of retirement, so have patience if I don't get back immediately. Please park a copy of the reply on my talk page, if the normal page archives itself away in less time than that, or tell me how to handle it. I've been communicating with the copyright people, and the regular posts there get archived and disappear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SkoreKeep (talk • contribs) 18:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, we cannot accept your original research. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  21:26, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Pardon me, but where in the above did I say or intimate that the data is "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist."? I have added nothing to the data that I hold except for database structure, research to verify the data in the database and maintain the trail of evidence as it exists. I have hugely expanded the references on the pages I've edited.  The data in the database was, almost without exception, created by other sources.  I've only changed its media.


 * Perhaps, something on the original question that I've raised, if you please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SkoreKeep (talk • contribs) 03:44, 12 December 2013‎ (UTC)
 * Hi, I think TRPoD saw the sentence "extensive personally researched database", which made them think that you were talking about posting original research. To clear that up, I've got one question.  What sources are you planning on using for the articles you make?  Howicus (Did I mess up?) 18:44, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I can understand the confusion. I'd be glad to demonstrate. Open the page "Operation Cornerstone", which I edited this morning. A before/after of my edit shows the extent and feel of the edits, and the references show what I've added in that department.  In actuality, there are perhaps 3 dozen different "lists of worldwide nuclear tests" on the internet, most of which are interchangeable, differing only in the amount of detail. One of the things I do is search for discrepancies and try to research the most probable correct answers to minor, obscure points; the references I site tend to be the better ones for that: government/official" lists.  In particular, for the Soviet tests, a typical list might include (pardon me, not yet formatted for wikipedia):


 * RFNC-VNIIEF, 1996, USSR Nuclear Weapons Tests and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions 1949 through 1990, RFNC-VNIIEF (Sarov, Russia), on line at Analytic Center for Non-Proliferation Problems (The RFNC-VNIIEF is the Russian equivalent to the DoE/NNSA, formerly the NRC and the AEC.)
 * RFNC-VNIIEF, 1998, USSR Nuclear Tests, Hydronuclear Experiments, Plutonium Inventory, RFNC-VNIIEF (Sarov, Russia), on line at Analytic Center for Non-Proliferation Problems
 * Yang, Xiaoping, Robert North, and Carl Romney, Aug. 2000, "CMR Nuclear Explosion Database (Revision 3)," on line, SMDC Monitoring Research
 * Khalturin, Vitaly I., Tatyana G. Rautian, and Paul G. Richards, 2000, "Chemical explosions during 1961-1989 on the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan" Pure and Applied Geophysics, volume 158, pages 143--171, 2001.


 * Does this answer the question? I welcome any/all criticism, and will answer all questions.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by SkoreKeep (talk • contribs) 23:56, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright, that looks fine to me. I'm not entirely certain if there's a way to create pages in bulk like you want.  You may have to do it manually or copy/paste it from elsewhere.  WP:VPT might be better able to answer that question.  Howicus (Did I mess up?) 04:52, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Generally speaking, you would need to either use a semi-automated tool like AWB or enlist the aid of a bot operator (typically via WP:VPT). You could write your own bot, but I doubt you'd be here if you knew how to do that.  In any event, the golden rule is that you are responsible for any edits you make, even if they're accidental or unintentional.  If you use AWB, you need to clean up any mistakes you make and avoid making them again in the future.  If someone else agrees to run a bot for you, it will be their responsibility.  Note that you probably don't have enough edits to be approved for AWB yourself.  Finally, you mentioned a "sandbox/registration route," but you don't have to go through articles for creation.  You've registered for an account.  Just make sure you're logged in and you can create a new article from any non-existent page that isn't creation protected or blacklisted.  -- N  Y  Kevin   00:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

App vs browser
Hiya

My question is very simple (so has probably been addressed, and numpty here simply can't find what she wants, she's not well and it's affecting her brain). Why is it that I can search for a topic in the iOS app, come up dry, but find it immediately when I Google it (99% of the time the relevant article is the first result)...? Okay, I accept that some of the topics are quite obscure (bands I remember from my youth, and wonder if they're still around, for example).

How is it decided what topics make it to the app, and what don't...? I always assumed the app was simply a portal for the main site, evidently I was wrong in that assumption.

Seems to me that making it a portal would be easier, rather than Wikipedia Lite.

Is there any chance that, one day, it WILL reflect the content of the main site...?

Thank you

Sarah — Preceding unsigned comment added by Margolotta (talk • contribs) 20:47, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Our own internal search engine is quite poor, in the desktop version as well as the iOS. The consensus of the Wikimedia community is that we don't want to spend the money and programming brains we have available to us in reinventing the search engine. Instead, our programmers concentrate on things only we can do, like improving the user interface and creating more powerful anti-vandalism tools.
 * You are doing what most of us do: using an external search engine to search within Wikipedia itself. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  21:41, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

something Wikipedia can do that would generate funds
I have an idea of something Wikipedia can do that would generate funds.

Whom should I contact? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.36.0.199 (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Based on Contact_us_-_Donors, you should contact donate@wikimedia.org. RudolfRed (talk) 00:33, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * See also Fundraising. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:14, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Multi-page move proposal
My recent move proposal to move L'OuvreTemps to The Time Opener was closed as "not moved", because the album has not yet received an official English title (and by the looks of things, won't do so in almost a decade from now either). Now, out of consistency reasons, I want to propose that all the other Valérian and Laureline albums that haven't been translated yet should be moved to their original French titles. How do I go about doing this? J I P &#124; Talk 21:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * RPM, There is a section for multiple moves. C T F 8 3 !  00:58, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Christmas trees
hi my name is taylor

what are Christmas trees for — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.76.167.220 (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Mostly decoration. Please see the Christmas tree article.  And if you have further questions, the reference desk would be the better place for them.  This page is for questions about how to edit Wikipedia.  The reference desk is the place for general knowledge questions.  Dismas |(talk) 23:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)