Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2017 September 3

= September 3 =

Sophie, Countess of Wessex
Ref number 5 - in RED. Please alter and improve. Thankyou in advance101.182.23.36 (talk) 02:08, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This has been fixed. You left out the equals sign. however, the ref. is to a blog and therefore not really a reliable source. Eagleash (talk) 05:41, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Reference won't work
I tried one going to one of my references that is in my sandbox (or the draft in my sandbox), but when i try to go to it while in my sandbox, it doesn't work. Maybe it'll work here instead. If you want to find it the normal way, go to google chrome, type in "drl info". it should be the second to last one on the page, if you can't find it, look for a title that says part of this "The Drone Racing League (DRL) Announces International Partnerships For 2017 Race Season, Close Of Series B Investment Round"--Ramesty (talk) 03:31, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi, the reference link does work. However, as it is a press release, it's not a preferred source and is an unreliable source, per WP:NEWSORG. Thanks.  Lourdes  03:37, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok. I myself tried it here, but did you try it on the draft, because it seriously did not work. It's the third reference.--Ramesty (talk) 03:42, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Never mind.--Ramesty (talk) 04:06, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Brackets
Can you define the brackets on the arricles of WIKIPEDIA. Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by Souxie01 (talk • contribs) 03:38, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Can you be a little more specific, like is there an article your reading this from?--Ramesty (talk) 04:08, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Just a wild guess but if you refer to source code of form  then it's usually template calls. See Help:A quick guide to templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:56, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I like to write about few politicians and entrepreneurs who do not have pages on wikipedia yet
Dear sir/madam

Please help me for'I like to write about few politicians and entrepreneurs who do not have pages on wikipedia yet — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.98.139.202 (talk) 05:17, 3 September 2017‎ (UTC)


 * If these people have already been written about in independent WP:Reliable sources, then I suggest that you start the articles in WP:Draft space so that you can work on them to get them right before publishing to main space. Your articles should summarise in your own words what you find in the sources.  You might like to read WP:My first article, WP:Referencing for beginners and WP:Biographies of living persons for some guidance before you start.  You might also wish to create an account so that your edits are attributed to your account.  Ask again here if you need further help.    D b f i r s   06:45, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Historical page versions
How can I see a historical version of a page, prior to recent modifications from the community, and how far back is this accessible?

Thanks,

Chris — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.225.64.66 (talk) 07:17, 3 September 2017‎ (UTC)
 * You click on the 'View history' tab at the top right of the page. This allows you to search through and examine every single edit made to the page, with the 'previous' and 'current' versions for each edit, back to the page's initial creation, with a few exceptions from early in Wikipedia's history where the earliest versions and edits may have been lost. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 09:56, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Click the timestamp to just see what the page looked like. See more at Help:Page history. Note that the current version of templates and images will be displayed and not the versions at the old time. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Changing categories on a userpage
Hello, I was looking at some categories, and I found this userpage on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Djkrispy

I can't edit this page, so I don't know where to ask or who. I'm putting that here, if you can help me. Nyaa~ (talk) 11:53, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * 's only edit has been to create their own userpage and put it in some inappropriate categories, with the edit summary "Created article". I'm confident it does not belong in those categories, so I've removed it from them. Maproom (talk) 12:05, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Can I create an anime episode list using episode titles and airdates from Anime News Network?
I would like to create an episode list for the anime Jibaku-kun. Can I copy the English and Japanese episode titles and Japanese airdates directly from the Anime News Network episode list?


 * link here: http://www.animenewsnetwork.cc/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=115&page=25

Is it OK or is it copyright violation? Is Anime News Network a reliable source?

If I can do it, naturally I would change capitalization in page titles e.g. instead of "PERFECT YOUR DREAM TECHNIQUE!" I would write "Perfect Your Dream Technique!"

I asked first at Reference desk/Entertainment but they suggested asking here instead. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:00, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * If there is only one way to write a thing (common information with no original authorship), it's probably ineligible for copyright and in the public domain. See List of Pokémon films for an example. I can't answer to whether Anime News Network is a reliable source or not, not being an expert in that area. See also WikiProject Anime and manga and Manual of Style/Anime- and manga-related articles. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 14:27, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Marking an offline external link
Can someone fix the article called M.U.G.E.N for offline external link. Also, this user named CobraSA has disruptive behavior and warns me for marking an offline link.Kurt R. (Zirukurt01)✉ 12:08, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:3RR and BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. WP:LINKSTOAVOID is also relevant. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 14:20, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Withdrawing from RfC question
Hello, I requested an RfC a few days back and I want to withdraw from my question. Do I remove the RfC tag and the whole section or just the tag? Thank you. Tarook97 (talk) 14:22, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually you should do neither. At this point it is an active RFC and it should run so people can contribute. You can state you will not be participating but you don't control the discussion going on. ~ GB fan 14:30, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Book creator
Hi, I tried to render Book:Presidency_of_Donald_Trump, but both variants PDF (A4) and PDF (Letter) failed. How come?--Tuchiel (talk) 14:38, 3 September 2017 (UTC) Rendering failed Generation of the document file has failed.
 * The warning shown has all the information you need, including instructions to download the PDF. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually the warning says nothing:

Status: Rendering process died with non zero code: 1

Return to Book:Presidency of Donald Trump and the pdf download functions don't work either. I think wikipedias book functions got rubbished somehow and they haven't fixed it yet. A Guy into Books (talk) 21:15, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think you missed it. That's not the warning, it's the error output. The top Warning was added by User:Moxy with diff 792134751. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 02:28, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I presume you mean this:

WARNING: The Book Creator software has had significant limitations since it was rebuilt in 2014. An alternative open source is available please see MediaWiki2LaTeX. For Help with downloading a Wikipedia page as a PDF, see Help:Download as PDF. Now i tried MediaWiki2LaTeX, but since I don't currently have a linux server setup, I was left trying the web interface, which crashed after a hour of 'processing'. and Help:Download as PDF does not contain any information on how to download a book, following the instructions given will print the index page only. Now I may have missed something, but I can't see any way of getting the PDF without doing it manually (download all the pages separately, then collate) or getting a copy of MediaWiki2LaTeX running on local hardware. My assumption is that the book is simply too big, there are clearly limitations to these tools. A Guy into Books (talk) 08:25, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I am the author of mediawiki2latex. In deed the server kills the rendering process after one hour of processing time and displays the error message you saw. The only work around is to use it from the command line on Linux (Debian or Ubuntu). Also make sure your Linux Server got enough random access memory --Dirk Hünniger (talk) 13:03, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

I now tried on my computer with the latest version of mediawiki2latex from the git repository on sourceforge. dirk@dirk-All-Series:~$ time mediawiki2latex -u https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Presidency_of_Donald_Trump -o dirk.pdf -k -c tr mediawiki2latex (1504633544.276248035s): finished

real	200m39,554s user	192m41,492s sys	62m54,168s

dirk@dirk-All-Series:~$ ls -lh dirk.pdf -rw-r--r-- 1 dirk dirk 446M Sep 5 19:45 dirk.pdf So yes it works and I got a pdf file. It's 446 MByte in size. The generation needed nearly 30 Gbyte of ram and its 1385 pages long. It took a bit more than 3 hours to create. If you got a place where I can upload that I will happily do so. Otherwise I could write it to disk and send it to you by classical mail. Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 17:52, 5 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Needs 30GB of ram o_0... This is good to know, because I was wanting to 'bookify' some law articles and I will see if I can get this onto my server at work since its would chronically overload my PC with that kind of usage. Personally I upload things to [aws.amazon.com/s3‎ Amazon] but this was for so i'll see what he says. A Guy into Books (talk) 19:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I got it on google drive now. Good Luck https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7brAIwN1-kXVVpPNzFYQUtBc2c/view?usp=sharing  --Dirk Hünniger (talk) 09:06, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for your efforts! But in fact, I just wanted to try the book function and chose this one by chance. Now, wouldn't the whole matter actually be a case for Phabricator? (I don't know how things work there, though...) Warmly--Tuchiel (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Probably not, unfortunately I suspect this is a matter of cost rather than code development, as Dirk Hünniger has already built working software for this process, it just needs to be hosted on better hardware, I suspect the WMF simply doesn't want to foot the bill so so much computer time. (consider at AWS spot prices, rendering that example book would cost about 25 cents (USD), what if 100,000 people wanted to do something similar? That's $25,000. A Guy into Books (talk) 13:57, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I think from my side I can not do anything more. I made a tool open source with which everyone can create his/her pdf version on his/her own computer, for a price a few cents per book (roughly 1000 page). The price increases roughly quadratically with the number of pages. Its in deed still too expensive in terms of memory and CPU usage to use it globally. But I believe that only an employee inside Wikimedia can come up with a solution that is cheap enough for global use, since it needs to be very specifically tailored to Wikimedia current IT-infrastructure. So what we need is a decision of the Wikimedia foundation to invest human resources into the project. This might be possible by enough pressure from the community, which I don't know how to create.Dirk Hünniger (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * (after EC) Well, in this case I suppose – speaking from an amateurish perspective – I'd recommend to then either simply scrap the whole function or modify it appropriately – in any case instead of keeping it the way it is and thus misleading unsuspecting users that way... What do you think?--Tuchiel (talk) 15:29, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I think we should keep the mediawiki2latex. For now we can generate results for single article and book with approx 300 pages or less on the current webserver. With better and still cheap hardware we might reach 2000 pages or even a bit more. And I think a PDF with even more pages is not really useful. Still its a lot fun as a technical challenge to work on so large PDF files. Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Using multiple image
I am trying to use the images File:Rashida Jones at 2017 MIFF.jpg and File:Michael Schur 2012 (cropped).jpg on Nosedive, but cannot get them to both display properly with multiple image. The problem is that the bottom half of each of the images is cut off. The current code I am testing is: Can anyone see what is causing the problem? — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 15:22, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * You swapped the height and width. Images are always described as width × height. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:37, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ahh, thank you very much. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 15:43, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Maybe the answer also lies in the documentation: Do not use both total_width and width. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 15:40, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I didn't. I used  and  . — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 15:43, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Unable to get a mixed rowspan & colspan table to display yes/no templates (cell styling), renders the pipe instead
In article Void Linux, there's a table named Void Linux live image matrix. I've probably made a syntax error somewhere, and now I'm unable to get the last five rows to use Yes and No. When I attempt to use the templates, the pipe is rendered.

For demonstration, here's a simplified table:

Now the same with templates:

Can anyone spot the syntax error for me, and what can I do in this situation? 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 15:35, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * no and yes add the pipe so it must be omitted when they are used.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Void_Linux&diff=798744042&oldid=798741759] They have to add formatting code before the pipe and "no" or "yes" after the pipe so it would be impossible for them to not add the pipe. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:46, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Template:Campaignbox Sheeba Farms conflict title
I am not completely sure whether this is the right place to post. However, the template in question is related to the 2000–06 Shebaa Farms conflict. The correct spelling is Shebaa (see Shebaa farms and this material, for example). Therefore, the page should probably be moved to the following title: Template:Campaignbox Shebaa Farms conflict. The move can, however, only be performed by an extended confirmed user (see the arbitration case. Best regards, --188.167.141.68 (talk) 16:34, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your report Noyster (talk),  16:09, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks.--188.167.141.68 (talk) 17:41, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Faulty underware
I bought a set of 2 T-shirt bra's a week ago in South Africa and took it with me back to Namibia. Once at home when I pulled the two apart the one bra strap is worked on twisted. unfortunately we are not allowed to return underwear and this was a very expensive purchase I am sad to say that a brand name should have a quality check as part of their distribution line. I am not able to wear this garment. Any suggestions?

Louise — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.188.197.147 (talk • contribs)
 * You could try asking this question on a site where customer service questions are actually relevant, instead of here. This is a page where people ask for help for using Wikipedia (which is an encyclopedia, not a forum).  Ian.thomson (talk) 18:48, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you could contact the store you purchased it from? I have no idea why you are asking here, this isn't the 'answer any question in the world desk' it is the Wikipedia help desk. A Guy into Books (talk) 21:05, 3 September 2017 (UTC)