Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)/Archive A

Section headers and the use of #
I'd like to link to the Ethnic Groups in the Union Army section of the Union Army article, but the author has used == rather than === for main headers - understandable, because the == headers look more prominent than the ===s. However, it seems as though when both == and === headers are used in an article, direct links with # will only function properly when pointing to a === title. What can be done about this? I agree with the author of the article's assumption that == headers are more suited to be "main" headers rather than "sub" headers because of their appearance. Ground 13:01, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Does this link not work for you? Union Army. It works for me. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 15:52, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * My, it does on this computer. How interesting. Ground 22:02, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clean up ambiguous links to civil law
Civil law has a lot of links to it, many of which should go to civil law (legal system) instead. However, there will certainly be some pages which actually want to link to civil law, so an automated process is not desirable... I would appreciate if someone (or two) would help me go through What Links Here and fix the >100 ambiguous links. (It's late, so I'm going to have to start on this in earnest tomorrow) -- Jacius 03:26, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PS: It might be nice to have bot status so all these silly fixes won't muddy up Recent Changes. Should a dedicated bot user be set up for this purpose, or would it be better to temporarily give bot status to an existing user (i.e. me and/or possible helpers) ? -- Jacius 03:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Categorization question
Per CFD, Category:Cleanup should be merged into Category:Wikipedia cleanup. However, most (if not all) articles in the first category are in it because of Template:Cleanup. However, the template has been updated to the new category, and the pages reflect this. Yet Category:Cleanup still lists numerous articles. Is there some way around this? Maybe a mass cache purge, if this is doable? I'm confused by it. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 22:13, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No Count Olaf page?
Why not? Kingfisher 22:06, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Simply because nobody's written it yet. Get on it, if you can! violet/riga (t) 18:22, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

minor copyvios in history of good article
Roy Wilkins seems to have some minor copyvios in its history, although the current article is apparently fine. I'm not sure how to deal with this and still stay within GFDL with reference to acknowledging contributors. Can someone with more expertise take a look at this? Between the article's history and talk, it should be possible to get a pretty clear picture of what happened. Thanks. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:52, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Editing war
Hello, I have just joined Wikipedia and have edited only a couple of pages. I am finding that one of the pages I have changed keeps being changed back again by someone to his preferred version. I feel that my version contains more information, is more accurate, and has more explanatory power. I have written a compromise between our positions but he doesn't want that either. What is the best way to resolve an editing dispute like this one?

Any advice would be appreciated.

user:SlimVirgin


 * If you will indicate what article, someone will certainly take a look at it, but there is no way to tell from what you've written here. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:53, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. The article is Pan Am Flight 103 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 The latest version of the page is the version I feel is more accurate. If you scroll to the end of the discussion page for that article, you'll see what the dispute centers around. The writer I am in dispute with is user:moriori


 * Not wishing to wade into something that has clearly got you both a little rattled, I'd say on balance that Moriori's position appears to be the fairer one. The only source available that can be relied on is what has been published - if there are private disagreements with the report's findings, that can be mentioned, provided you can cite your sources. Otherwise you'll have to stick to the facts as fas as they are known, officially. To be honest to an outsider the argument seems a little nit-picking, and it's unclear why either of you feel so strongly. Why not take a break from this for a while and then come back to it in a week or so - maybe a little time to cool it would let you reach a consensus. Graham 22:58, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Pectin found in yogurt?
I looked on a yogurt cup and saw pectin. Is that enough information for someone to add pectin as something in yogurt? Kingfisher 19:53, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Some packaged yogurt contains pectin, but it is not a necessary ingredient. And yes, an ingredients label should be a citable source. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:54, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, it makes the yoghurt set more, and set yoghurts have more of it. I could be wrong - I'm not a citable source :-) zoney &#09827; talk 23:53, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Links to a new category are still edit: links?
I created Category:Korean War veterans, but the links I have made to it remain red. They lead me to an edit form for a 'new' category, but the current category members are simultaneously displayed on the edit page. Ground 19:29, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * You need to create the page, putting it into categories itself (such as War Veterans or whatever relevant categories there are) and including a description of what the category is. violet/riga (t) 19:33, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Can I put a link to category page in my user page
I've tried to put a link to category:business in my page, but i don't want my page to be categorized as one of business article. Is there any other way to write the linking? Thank You...Roscoe x 16:29, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * use the url like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Business Geni 18:03, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * a better way is Category:Business which shows the link as Category:Business violet/riga (t) 18:36, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Adding whitespace around tables (I think)
Could someone smarter than myself please figure out how to add some extra white space around the last 3 (out of 4) pictures in the Nez Perce article? Unlike the first picture, which is the easy to understand "thumb" type and which seems to automatically preserve a nice amount of white space, the last 3 pictures seem to be embedded in tables, and the text of the articles bumps right up against them. 4 or 5 pixels of white space should be preserved horizontally, I should think. (And a link to a description of how to do tables (or, better, all Wikipedia-specific tags) would be appreciated.) Thanks. Tempshill 21:44, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I converted the images to Wiki syntax style, so they now have frames and whitespace and the original captions. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 01:15, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Looks far better, thanks. Tempshill 01:33, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Numerical sorting for categories
Is there any way to make Category:Florida State Roads sort properly, with 9A before the rest? Wow, I can't link to it or it puts this page in the category.--SPUI 21:15, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * For each article in the category, add the sort key after the categorisation. I've done this for 9A for you, just look at the diff of what I've done.-gadfium 21:25, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I saw that, but that puts 9A in with 9x, 9xx, and 9xxx routes.--SPUI 21:40, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I think I got it - I put the whole number including leading zeros after the category. This leads to the headings in the category page being almost useless, because there are so few four-digit roads, but it's sorted properly.


 * OK - I solved that too, except that there's now a mysterious A heading. --SPUI 21:48, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I think you must now understand how it works as well as I do. To link to a category without including the page in the category, use a leading colon in the link, as follows Category:Florida State Roads which appears as Category:Florida State Roads.-gadfium 21:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguation
How do you change a page from being simply a page with links to the meanings of that word to being an actual disambiguation page? Example:FFC


 * Just adding, which you've already done, is enough. A disambiguation page isn't marked as anything special in the database (unlike redirects), so there's nothing you actually need to to make it a disambiguation page. Angela. 19:05, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Bowen
Suggest Bowen (disambiguation) replace Bowen Thortful 05:14, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My daughter is 13 years old and attends a local dance school, she has been given a song to sing and I am trying to find the words and music as she has been told she is not singing it in key.

I have been told the title of the song is called Carnival(e), but no one can tell what film/musical it has come from.

Can anyone help, please?

Screwed Up "Bone" ... Could Use Your Help, Please?
I am wondering if someone who can run the Python Wikipedia Robot on their system could help solve a disambiguation problem I've created.

When looking at the entry for bone (I learned recently my father has bone spurs by one of his vertebrae), I noticed that the bottom of the article had disambiguation references to other 'bone' entries in Wikipedia.

I wanted to create a disambiguation page to handle these references, so I renamed bone as "bone (Human Anatomy)" and then made 'bone' a disambiguation page that contained the text of the disambiguation references that were at the bottom of the original entry, plus a reference to the new "bone (Human Anatomy)" reference. I think I also screwed up in that (Human Anatomy) was supposed to be all lowercase, wasn't it?

However, I then came across the part in the disambiguation reference that says, "You rename it, you fix the links." And bone has about umpteen-zillion links. (Well, 352.) I unfortunately can't invest the effort in visiting each of those pages manually.

Rather than plod through all of them using the web interface, since i have Mac OS X, I downloaded and attempted to run the solve_disambiguation.py tool. However, I learned when beginning the process that Mac OS X's Python can't use that tool, since it doesn't have the _tkinter module.

Can anyone who's successfully used solve_disambiguation.py on their system run it to fix my mistake? I'm getting rid of a couple books and DVDs ... if any of the titles interest you, I could send it to you as a 'thanks' for fixing my mistake. If you end up fixing my goof, let me know and I can discuss arrangements with you.

I apologize to the community. I did not seek to do harm, but actually inteded to do good. Lesson definitely learned on this one. I really like Wikipedia, as I like both writing and editing ... hope this doesn't get my butt kicked to the curb.

WCityMike 16:27, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * I've simply moved your disambiguation page to bone (disambiguation), moved the anatomy article back to bone, and added a link at the top of that page to the disambiguation page. As the human anatomy one is the most frequently used meaning (as evidenced by the huge nos. of links to "bone"), that should remain at "bone".
 * You could still skim through those links to see if some should be directed elsewhere - or else just wait for people browsing incorrect links to see the notice at the top of the page (and appropriately change the link they followed). zoney &#09827; talk 16:46, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you, very much, for the fix. WCityMike 04:17, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Need help with a locality in Florida
Talk:Lake Butler, Orange County, Florida should say everything relevant. Basically this is part of another town and the lat/long is right in the downtown area. But the statistics should not be simply deleted. -User:SPUI

Never mind, I figured it out. Lake Butler (still a typo on the Census site) is an area completely surrounding Windermere.--SPUI 15:52, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How far is it possible to read back?
I discovered recently that the article temporal masking was quite incorrect, and had been for over two years (though it used to be under Temporal Masking). After fixing it, I kooked at the history for Temporal Masking, where the oldest edit shown is for Feb. 26, 2002 and is listed as a conversion script's "Automated conversion". I wanted to check to see if the same person who had written Temporal Masking had botched anything else, but I can't seem to find the article's first author. Is there any way to see into the past beyond the conversion script? -- Oarih 11:02, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, no. See Usemod article histories. &#8212;No-One Jones (m) 12:18, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Can somebody with sysop powers please...
...delete the image Sinergy.jpg from the database? It's an irrelevant image of an article that I have now fully rewritten (Sinergy) and it was replaced by one with an image with more appropriate naming: Sinergy_(band).jpg --Sn0wflake 03:03, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Simply list it on Images for deletion, and it will be dealt with. andy 09:06, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Editing problem
I edited a few bits of the article on FLCL, just correcting a few things which I am 100% positive are true. But now, it seems someone has changed it back.

Can someone tell me what's going on?


 * You might want to discuss it with User:Garrett Albright, who reverted your changes as incorrect. RickK 00:27, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

When does trivia become nonencyclopedic?
How do we decide if something has just gone overboard into the area of triviality? I'm specifically talking about Beachwear, Dundas Square and Jeans. There is a lot of really strange information in these articles. RickK 07:08, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
 * Of those, the Dundas Square article seems to have the greatest quantity of triviality. The Jeans article has some borderline stuff, but may be okay. The Beachwear seems fine to me. I don't know really &mdash; one person's trivia may be another's golden memories or important details. Computer memory is getting cheaper every day, so I'm not sure I'd be too concerned about it unless there are legal issues, &c. &mdash; RJH 22:31, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * To me triviality is in the eye of the beholder. It's simple enough to ignore entries that don't interest you, and it's not as if we have to worry about fitting WP into a finite size like a printed encyclopedia. Graham 22:42, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Where is the article gone?
I got quite confused when I was checking the english reference of my german article about the National Unions of Students in Europe the article was disappeared. Without any comments or discussion?! The only thing left is an entrance from the author about copyright in the discussion section. It was a good article and there for about three weeks now, can anyone tell what happened to it? It looks like deletion but there was no VfD as far as I could see.... --Fairfis 00:36, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It was listed as a copyright violation on October 16th and deleted as via process. RickK 01:04, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

Is it possible to reinstall the former content? The President of the Organisation (which was also the author) wich was explained on the page confirmed that the information from the Web-Page of ESIB used in the articel is under GNU-Licence and usable for any purpose. Also already several other pages refer to this article. Fairfis

Graphic for
The Tutorial menu template has been revised to look like. Now it just needs a gnifty graphic like the FAQ's. Are there any graphics people willing to take this on? Amgine 03:19, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * How about this: Image:WikipediaTutorial.png? I went ahead and stuck it in the template. Feel free to edit. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 02:32, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bubba Cola.
When I looked up Bubba Cola I found nothing. Where is the information on Bubba Cola? Clownfish 18:13, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Can't say I've ever heard of it (and Google has only 219 results). There certainly isn't a Wikipedia article about it so you could create one.  With such a low Google rating though is it really that well known and deserving of an article? violet/riga (t) 20:39, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I know Bubba Cola! It's the store brand distributed by Save-A-Lot. And it's just a store brand of cola. There's nothing special about it that I know about. Tastes more like RC than Pepsi or Coke, for what that's worth. - RedWordSmith 03:22, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

helphelphelphelp
I FOUND bilingual dictionaries, did not register the address (I know, I know, smart) & now cannot find them again.

So Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez where can I find them, as well as speciaized dictionaries and all the other neat stuff?

Many thanks in advance

crazyjane


 * There are none associated with Wikipedia, but there are a good number of bilingual dictionaries on the Internet. What languages are you concerned with? -- Jmabel | Talk


 * is Wikimedia's dictionary and many of the pages there include translations and words in other languages. See Frei or English for example. Angela. 22:18, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

Animations
Out of curiosity (not knowing what it meant)I had a look at the section Mills mess a couple of entries above. I am awestruck by the animation there showing the movements of the ball. How was this done? I can see many applications for this technique in demonstrating simple mechanical movements relating to technology articles. Just having a 2D reproduction of an image is not always very useful, whereas a moving simple wireframe outline would get over the action much better. I am thinking of various configurations of steam engines, and pioneering textile inventions such as the flying shuttle. Are there any more Wikipedia pages which have this? Apwoolrich 15:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I can't say for sure how it was done but there are numerous programs that allow animated GIF images to be created. Perhaps you could ask Gtabary (go to the talk page) which method was used. I do agree that it's fantastic to see animations rather than still images. violet/riga (t) 16:38, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * According to the french copy of the image, it was made using Juggling Lab. - 17:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC) Lee  (talk)

Some templates I would like to see
I am looking for the following templates. If they exist, please let me know. Otherwise, I plan to create them: --Jiang 05:57, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * tag section as npov disputed (as opposed to entire article)
 * tag text in article as outdated
 * See Accuracy dispute. It's not exactly what you're looking for, but it might be a good place to start.  Also look for the page which discusses "As of {year}" phrases; I think that's used to deal with outdated stuff...  Finally, when you do create the tags please set up a page explaining them, explaining how to add them to pages, and providing a link to a category(with description that links back to the explanatory page) which lists the items with the template on them.  You should also add it to the various lists of collaboration resouces.  (I'm currently working on cleaning up these lists, so this may change in the near future.) JesseW 08:20, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Move page
I need an admin to move a page for me, the page is Mills mess which is incorrect as it is a title (the name of a juggling trick, which is sometimes called just 'The Mess') and should be listed in Title Case, unfortunately, due to my thorough job of redirecting, Mills Mess is a redirect page. Apparently deleting the content of the page does not delete the page itself, so I need an admin to use their superpowers and either

delete Mills Mess

or

move Mills mess to Mills Mess

thanks. sorry to be a bother.Pedant 04:12, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)


 * This is now moved. I noticed Boston mess is still in lower case though. Should that be moved too? Angela. 13:37, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

Latin Union
I edited Latin_Union a while back and recently edited it again after having found that its most recent wiki had incorrect information. I decided to start a Talk:Latin_Union about it hoping the anonymous person editing the wiki and myself could resolve it. However, this proved to be futile as the person has edited it once again (under 'Member States', last 2 paragraphs), which actually details information that is contradictory to what is cited at the official Latin Union website. Since I'm somewhat new at this I've been led here by a fellow Wikipedian to ask for assistance, so what exactly do I do from here? Thanks in advance. --Erehtsti 04:01, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the most recent edit, but this needs further attention. (dynamic IP, false information, multiple reverts, no discussion, no attempt to reach consensus) block this user ?Pedant 04:35, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)
 * It's apparently an ISP cache proxy so can't be blocked. If it continues, you can ask for the page to be protected at Requests for page protection. Angela. 13:32, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

6 men with the same exact name
I made a disambig page for John Chambers (I just randomly picked him from the most requested articles page). There are seven different men I've found named John Chambers, and only one of them has a middle name. Is there a standard for how I should title the articles for the other six?

So far I've just used their professions, like John Chambers (politician) and John Chambers (bishop). - Lifefeed 19:13, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * That's more or less how it's done, yes. Carry on. &#8212;No-One Jones (m) 19:19, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * If you know which John Chambers these links should point to, please fix those when you make a disambiguation page. Angela. 13:39, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

Setting Article Start Page.
Hello, I'm relativly new to your site and I would like to know if there is a way to set where your main focus is once you login to the Wikipedia site. For instace; When I logon I would like to go to the technical articles section. If this is posssible please get in touch with me with instructions on how I can complete this task.

If not, thank for your time, and, this is agreat informational site.
 * You can bookmark (add to favourites) the page of your choice and go straight to that article. You can't, however, change the default page you go to when typing in www.wikipedia.com. violet/riga (t) 17:52, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * You can make the page your home page though. In internet explorer its like tools>internet options>general. just copy the url from the address bar and paste it in. or maybe better, you can put any links you like at the top of your user page... your user page is one click from anywherePedant 09:43, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

King fisher.
Where did the king fisher come from? Kingfisher 20:59, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Not entirely sure what exactly you're after. Have you looked at the Kingfisher article? violet/riga (t) 21:10, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I believe they are from Africa originally. NOT SURE, though... Pedant 09:46, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

How can I edit my signature to get a link to my talk page?
Since some of you posting here have this after your user name, I presume this is possible. What is the trick to do it? --Rfgdxm 20:25, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I have:


 * violet/riga]] [[User_talk:violetriga|(t)


 * Notice the lack of opening and closing ]] and violet/riga (t)


 * Basically it automatically adds " " before your nickname and "  " at the end. violet/riga (t) 20:37, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * For whatever reason, that trick isn't working for me. :(
 * --Rfgdxm 21:14, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Try adding:
 * Rfgdxm]] [[User_talk:Rfgdxm|(talk)
 * into the Your nickname (for signatures): in the preferences. Hopefully that should work for you. violet/riga (t) 21:19, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * OK, I cut and pasted that exactly, and it accepted that as my nickname. Let's see if it works.
 * --Rfgdxm (talk) 21:28, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Hooray!

List of songs with the name of a musical act in their title
Hello. I would like to draw attention to what has almost descended into a reversion war between myself and BladeSteve.

BladeSteve created the page on List of songs with the name of a musical act in their title, it was put on VfD - Votes for deletion/List of songs with the name of a musical act in their title.

I proposed that the page should be kept, but it needed clear restrictions. Having been bold and included these restrictions, BladeSteve has ignored and changed them to include his own choice of what should go in the page.

He has also removed the vfd notice from the page on several occasions, at the time I am posting this, the vfd notice is absent.

He directed abuse at another Wikipedian on the vfd page. "Siroxo.. I think you should learn to spell correctly before criticizing other people's work."

I do not want a revert war, but I do not know what to do in this situation. That is why I am hoping to gain support from administrators and hopefully also, other ordinary Wikipedians.

It is mine and some other people's opinions (see vfd entry) that if we add songs in the way that BladeSteve wants, the list will become meaningless and unmanageable.

SimonMayer 23:09, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm reluctant to get drawn in really, but having reviewed the page, I do agree with you. Listing titles that simply contain words that accidentally happen to be the name of a musical act is rather pointless. How can I help? Graham 01:13, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How can you help? .... By keeping out of things. Below is a quote from you or have you forgotten? BladeSteve

"Well, I've been footling around here for a few months now, and a couple of things have struck me. First, it definitely pays not to get caught up in other peoples' controversies. Life's too short! If you can't settle the Arab-Israeli conflict in real life, you ain't gonna do it here. So I'm trying to make it a personal policy to simply keep out of it - I usually have an opinion, but it's not worth more than anybody elses, so I'll keep it to myself"

http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~links/PHPbb/images/smiles/rant2.gif


 * Sorry to disappoint you Steve, but that's not the way things are done around here. When you've been here as long as I have and have made as many contributions as I have you might be in a position to criticise, but by then you'd also have realised that just ain't how it works. Simon asked for help. I reviewed the article in question and I agree with his viewpoint. You can argue your point, but telling someone to keep out of it when they were invited in a public forum is seriously bad form. I suggest you review Wikiquette and also a number of other pages regarding resolution of disputes on the community pages. I see you've only been here since the 28th October this year (at least with this login) - I think you need to get used to things a bit before throwing your weight around. Many WP contributors suffer fools gladly; I'm not one of them. There are many even less tolerant, so I respectfully suggest you watch your step. Graham 02:40, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * And I'll stick my nose into this too. First, if you edit an article, your IP address is part of the edit, so you aren't as anonymous as I suspect you think you are.  Second, what you post on wikipedia can be read for a long time to come, by virtually anyone in the world, so it can be embarrassing and difficult to live down a flagrant display of bad manners.  Third, This particular page is sort of like the town square.  If you are going to act like a jerk, this page is the perfect place to do it... if you want everyone to notice you acting like a jerk.  Remember, this is a community, not just something that pops up on your screen when you press the magic button.  Even in an anarchy, there are consequences to antisocial behavior.  And rewards for community service.  Which way are you headed? Pedant 10:07, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

How to advertise a policy issue?
I have proposed a Wikipedia Simple Guide to indicating pronunciation. The proposal has been:
 * described in the Wikipedia space, Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American);
 * listed on Category:Policy thinktank.

Are there any other ways of advising language-oriented Wikipedians of this proposal and eliciting their advice and participation? --NathanHawking 21:37, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)
 * right here is a good place. you can also look through the history of related articles for editors that seem to be what you are looking for, and send a message to their talk page.Pedant 09:52, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

Need admin assistance on Michael Badnarik
Hi, could someone please copy the source of this edit and place it at the end of the intro to Michael Badnarik, if you feel it is NPOV and justified? Due to edit warring the page is protected, but consensus on Talk:Michael Badnarik is that we'd like to get the results into the article. I will not make the change since I'm involved in a dispute related to that article. Here's the text:


 * According to USA Today, as of 3:52 p.m. November 3rd, with 99% precincts reporting, Badnarik received 377,199 votes, or 0.33% of the popular vote. He did not win any states' electoral votes.

Thank you in advance. Rhobite 21:06, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * Worth noting, Rhobite insisted on making the change himself initially until he was reminded it was another abuse of power in his new administration. Rhobite is unfit to administer Wikipedia. Reithy 21:13, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * That is a lie. I changed the tense of two verbs but never planned to make a substantial change myself. I was in the process of writing my request when you began harassing me about perceived "abuses of power." Rhobite 21:19, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * Worthwhile checking the history of the Talk page where Rhobite first proposed to make this change. He clearly intended to do it himself until held to account. He had already made some changes of this highly contentious, protected page. It is a classic abuse of power. Now he is throwing around personal attacks, even calling me a liar as above. The facts show otherwise. Reithy 21:27, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Need Sysop assistance against vandalism
The page 2004 U.S. election in progress is undergoing a current wave of vandalism from more than one IP address. TimothyPilgrim 17:49, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Template:Influential Western Philosophers
Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Influential_western_philosophers has the same problem as the previous template. Does anyone have some kind of removal text robot or something that makes the removal of certain text easier? (I don't know what kind of tools admins have access to... just asking...) [ This could be sent to cleanup. ] --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 10:20, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I believe I deleted them. They went through the normal tfd process. I've listed them at Templates_for_deletion so they can be orphaned.--Jiang 05:51, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Template: Contemporary Philosophers
The Template: Contemporary Philosophers was deleted but was not cleanly removed. Many articles that were using this template still have the template in place.

Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Contemporary_Philosophers

I do not know if the template was deleted just because or something else, but if it did go through a tfd process, then I would think that the template would have been removed cleanly. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 10:06, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * As I said to the above question, look at Deletion_log, find the entry for it(if it's there) (and find info on it at WP:VFD also, if possible, and post it here. That will help people understand what happened.  JesseW 11:23, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Hemel Hempstead
I may be wrong, but I could have sworn there was a Talk:Hemel Hempstead page a few weeks ago. Am I going mad? Is there a way to check if there ever was such a page, and if so, why it go deleted?Graham 05:02, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Look at the Deletion_log and it's archives... JesseW 11:21, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fair Use
I have a copy of the Socialist Equality Party platform, which has a biographical blurb on Bill Van Auken and Jim Lawrence. Is it okay for me to copy it directly if I state the original source?

Oh, and while this question is being answered, could anyone tell me if it is possible to change the case of my username to all lowercase? "Lvlarx" just gives the wrong idea... lvlarx 03:23, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * No. Wikipedia text has to be GFDL, and fair use doesn't qualify.  Read the bio, take notes on the salient points, and write it up in your own words.  &mdash;Steven G. Johnson 03:14, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)


 * It would be better to use a range of sources rather than relying only on the SEP bio to avoid the likelihood of bias.
 * You can't change your name to lower case on the English Wikipedia. All pages and user names start with a capital letter. Angela. 11:14, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Restore History pages
The site Kultur was changed to a title and then rechanged. I created the page but I don't see my name in the list. Can an admin restore or add back on the original history page of the article. Thanks.

And also the site anarcho-syndicalism. I know that I added quite a few things to the page but the history does not show it. I beleive it was first called anarchosyndicalism not anarcho-syndicalism. Can those two histories be merged also. WHEELER 00:35, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think I found spam, but am not sure. Help.
In Prostitution in Nevada, I think I found some spam. But I dont realy know what it is. I want to bring it to your attention. It was made by user Special:Contributions/68.70.45.158 and here is the revision in which that user added it http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Prostitution_in_Nevada&diff=6509923&oldid=6509892. I dont know what to think of it, but it seems some kind of add or spam or PR statement or something. I am semi-new to wikipedia, so can someone also tell me where I should post this kind of stuff (group/public opinion if it is vandalism/spam or not?)? also what is the wiki way with link to link to old revisions or histories? Patcat88 23:02, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Definitely spam (they added it twice, too). Might someday be notable, but isn't now and if it were we wouldn't cover it in such a promotional manner. I've deleted it.


 * You did a perfectly good job here of linking the change. If you want to link a particular version rather than a change, just bring up that version and copy the resulting URL. -- 23:47, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

Jeans
Could somebody take a look at Jeans? An anon has been spending a lot of time adding weird information about "jeans and water rescues". It seems like more User:Glogger weirdness. RickK 21:39, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

Article needs a language-oriented British-English speaker or two

 * Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, British) needs a language-oriented British-English speaker or two to convert the very nice American beta version copy of this I've placed there as a foundation. Needs someone willing to watch it, too, especially after other articles begin to reference it.--NathanHawking 07:32, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC)

when do changes appear?
I've tried adding a link to a page in "Jainism". After saving the page, my new link (to a page that does not yet exist) does not appear in blue/red.... Is there a delay before this new link is updated?? Thanks
 * The link you tried to make is not valid wiki markup. You did this:
 * jain temples--derasars shows as jain temples--derasars
 * You might have meant one of the following, or something similar:
 * jain temples derasars shows as jain temples derasars
 * jain temples (derasars) shows as jain temples (derasars)
 * jain temples (derasars) shows as jain temples (derasars)
 * Basically the derasars part makes derasars italic and stops link from working. Hope that helps, if not you could try the help pages. violet/riga (t) 22:38, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents list for page
Hi, I'm new to this but have done some minor edits on pages others have put up & done a few pages of my own.

I'd like to do a contents list for one of the pages Chew Valley Lake which has several sections. I've looked in help etc & can't work out how to do this.

Any help appreciated.

Rod
 * When an article has 4 headers it automatically puts in the Table of Contents at the top. I've added ==Location==" near the top and this has put in a ToC for you.  For your information the article may be a little "Point Of View" at the moment (describing things as beautiful where some may disagree) but I'm sure someone will change anything they feel needs it.  Thanks for your contributions - they're very welcome. violet/riga (t) 11:32, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Pronunciation guide? Need UK heteronyms, too.
I've begun a List of heteronyms, words spelled the same which have different meanings when pronounced differently. Several issues: --NathanHawking 22:32, 2004 Oct 29 (UTC)
 * 1) In the list, showing pronunciation is essential. I can locate no standard Wikipedia guide to indicating pronunciation, though. Know of one?
 * 2) I've split the list into American and UK-derivative English, because I expect substantial differences in the list. I don't want to be U.S.-centric, but risk inherent bias by listing the common-to-all-English examples in the U.S. list, and the ones unique to non-U.S. English in another list. Avoiding this will require one who is familiar with two or more idioms, or collaboration--and different category names, I suspect. Suggestions?
 * 3) To get the list going, if you know any often-used non-U.S. heteronyms, drop over and add them, please.


 * I wrote a simple pronunciation markup guide, referenced on the List of heteronyms page. I also created a British version (Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, British)) using the American version as a foundation, but it needs to be extensively edited. (See below.)--NathanHawking 22:35, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC)

Search does not find "Mr. Natural" but it's on the R. Crumb page
I tried to search for "Mr. Natural" and got zero results even though the character is mentioned in the R. Crumb article. Is there a way to insure that a search for "Mr. Natural" will get a hit on the R. Crumb page? Dennis (talk) 21:33, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Searching for "Mr Natural" (no .) finds a few articles, but "Mr. Natural" doesn't. It would appear that the "." causes problems in searches. violet/riga (t) 21:38, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

John Cleese information. The cheat from home star runner.
When will their be more John Cleese information? The cheat has a gold tooth. Clownfish 19:13, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Getting Started?
How do I get started? Clownfish 18:41, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Hi and welcome! Take a look at the Tutorial for details of how this all works, or just dive in and be bold editing some pages that take your fancy. Any questions you have, well you're in the right place already! violet/riga (t) 18:46, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

help finding author / photo copyright (subject: Ritter von Leeb)
I am trying to determine the copyright status of the photo of Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb on the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Ritter_von_Leeb. I would like to use the photo in a book I'm publishing, but I am not certain if the photo falls under Wikipedia's copyright rules. I can find neither an author nor any photo copyright information in the article. Can anyone help me with this?

Thanks very much,

Geoff Megargee gpmega@yahoo.com
 * The photo is listed as public domain - take a look at that article.
 * Extract:
 * While copyright was designed to give a (financial) incentive to the creator, works in the public domain just exist as such. The public have the right to use and reuse works in the public domain without financial or social burden.
 * violet/riga (t) 11:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Can we use Images from other Wikis?
I'd like to use in the English Wikipedia some images that exist in the German and Dutch Wikipediae. I've tried various constructs, but nothing seems to work. I'd like to use, for example Afbeelding:LocatieTexel.png from the Dutch Wikipedia on the Texel page. How can I do that? StanZegel 23:05, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * You have to save them and re-upload them to the English Wikipedia first, but you can use them, assuming that they are public domain or GFDL or whatever (and if they are being used on other wikipedias, then they probably are). I think there is a common area for images being set up, but I don't know if it is working yet. Adam Bishop 04:34, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * See Commons. You can't link to commons images from other projects yet. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 07:00, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)


 * The Commons is now active -- any Wikipedia can use any image uploaded there. See the site for more detail.  [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 04:59, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moving Kitesurf
Could an admin please move Kitesurf to Kitesurfing, it's much more common, and in line with Surfing. Kitesurf should be a redirect to Kitesurfing. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 14:43, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

(--note:this has been solved by someone. &#9999; Sverdrup)

Adding sections to a Template page
How an editor sets parameters when invoking any template is poorly documented, and only after spending several hours searching and experimenting, was I able to figure it out. To save time for others, I tried to add some material (now located in Template talk:Book reference) to Template:Book reference, the main page for the template I wanted to use, but when I saved my edit, it (1) spawned several repetitions of itself onto that page when displayed, and (2) caused a table of contents on the page, and (3) also spawned all of the comments (repeated several times) on any Wikipedia page that made use of this template. Naturally I removed my additions from the Template:Book reference template page as quickly as possible, and have put them into Template talk:Book reference for safety and the information of others.

Sooooo... how can one put examples and other help onto a template page so that an innocent user looking at that page can take advantage of it, without that additional matter affecting the operation of the template itself? StanZegel 07:41, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Headers which are embedded in templates, etc. cause problems in later editing, in that section editing tends to edit the wrong section. It's usually not a good idea to embed headers in embedded text. RickK 08:20, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Template:CompactTOC2
Can we get an admin to fix this template? The NOTOC reference doesn't actually do anything. The problem has been documented on Template_talk:CompactTOC2, but no response. Thanks. &mdash;Mike 05:18, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

WP:CFD cleanup needed
WP:CFD has gotten about a month behind on its cleanup procedure, and the page is getting rather long and unweildy as a result. I just did a first round of cleanup - mostly a large number of very small, quick things. The cleanup process is well documented - the instruction page is linked from the top of the page. In this case it mostly just requires you to judge the outcome of the various discussions and then move them to the appropriate place. It can actually be kinda fun; it just requires someone to sit down and devote some attention to it. -- Beland 03:22, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I did some, until the combination of controvesy and lack of voting or explation wore me down. But don't let that stop you, new person! JesseW 11:15, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia has been deleted
Encyclopadia has been deleted, can somebody please revert it, and point me to the instruction on how its done. Its about time I learnt how. Apwoolrich 18:12, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Found the info on the Help page and fixed it. Case of reading the manual! Apwoolrich 18:21, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

List of Number 1 singles (UK) split
With the size of List of Number 1 singles (UK) approaching 80k (though yes, lists are partially exempt from the size limit) it's time for this article to be split. I'm not sure how well the edit history would survive, however, and that's why I haven't done a manual move/copy/edit/etc.. I'd appreciate it if someone could split it into: List of hit singles (UK) would be a disambig page (with List of Number 1 singles (UK) being a redirect to it). My plan is to write an overview of the main hits of the decade with the number ones being the main aspect. Any discussion prior/in objection to this would be appreciated. violet/riga (t) 22:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * List of hit singles from the 1950s (UK)
 * List of hit singles from the 1960s (UK)
 * List of hit singles from the 1970s (UK)
 * List of hit singles from the 1980s (UK)
 * List of hit singles from the 1990s (UK)
 * List of hit singles from the 2000s (UK)
 * I made a page just for the 1950s. Will that work? &mdash; RJH 22:20, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * It was mentioned to me that the name should be List of Number 1 singles from the 1950s (UK) (&c.) to preserve the original intent. (That differs from "hit singles", which may not have been at number 1 on the charts.) So I moved the page and updated the links on List of Number 1 singles (UK) &mdash; RJH 17:43, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * If that's what you think but, as said above, I planned to expand the list into an article mentioning other major singles from each decade - smash hit singles that didn't get to number 1, or memorable or mentionable songs from that era. violet/riga (t) 22:41, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Problems with User:Vitaly
Hi, I recently added some independant comments to an argument that was getting out of hand at talk:Translation. I know find that User:Vitaly has a paranoid theory that everyone who criticises him (or her) is working together and has published a 'press release' on pretty much every page he has had anything to do with (see his user page for a copy). What can I do about this? I am not happy to have my name used in this libelous fashion, but I know that if I simply remove the press releases it will only make matters worse. Should official action be taken against this user? --HappyDog 18:08, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * It may be just me, but I think the 'press release' is worded in such a way that most Wikipedians will view it as unjustified libel (wheather or not it is). I wouldn't worry about it too much.  JesseW 10:50, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Cheers. Luckily, Vitaly was reasonable enough to modify the press release and remove me (and others) from it after I left a message on his/her talk page. --HappyDog 11:08, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Alternative medicine
I was trying to archive the talk page but I could only move very small sections. The result is that the page looks very silly, a lot of stuf only exists in the page history and I can't revert the page for some reason. HelpGeni 04:18, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Israel
A filibuster is going on in Talk:Israel. I don't know how to end it. I don't know how to convince someone who is convinced you are wrong. I don't think it is in any way controversial to call the "Occupied Territories" the "Occupied Territories". I don't think I will ever get User:Jayjg to agree. I do think that if some other Wikipedians come in and state their view, that will get jayjg to stop reverting. Palestine-info 01:57, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * You can end it by actually making some valid points for a change that are actually backed up with evidence. Jayjg 19:34, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * User:Jayjg's POV prevents him from accepting the internationally recognized term "Israeli Occupied Territories". He and his cohorts censor all information regarding the Israeli occupation because the extremist Israeli POV is to describe the territories that Israel occupies as "disputed territories" thus leaving open the possibility that the Jewish state will annex these Arab territories as they have illegally annexed territories in the past. It doesn't matter how much evidence is provided that these terms are widely accepted and internationally recognized. The extremist Zionist POV pushers cannot accept it. They do not want to admit that Israel has illegally occupied territory that goves Palestinian militants a reason to resist Israeli aggression and expansionism. They continuously deny Israel's crimes and atrocities, see Hasbara and Zionist Revisionism for more information. These partisans have created pages entitled Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt and Occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Jordan but they refuse to acknowledge any page resembling Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and redirect the Israeli occupation of Palestine to Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the issue is not discussed. --Alberuni 00:18, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Um, nice speech, but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Jayjg 00:31, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Sure it does. Your promotion of pro-Israeli propaganda on Wikipedia is the problem. Just look at your User page.--Alberuni 01:14, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * My User page discusses an on-going attempt to fight extremist anti-Israel POVing of Wikipedia, of which you are a primary exponent. Jayjg 01:55, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Sure, what would Wikipedia do without you? You are a self-appointed defender of Israel and promoter of Zionist POV on Wikipedia. Naturally, you perceive anyone who does not agree with your efforts to bias articles with your extremist vision to be someone who is promoting an anti-Israel POV. You are not the only political extremist and religious fanatic here. There are about 10 like you, and some of them like User:Lance6Wins and User:MathKnight, are in your little gang pushing your ugly agenda, denying Israeli atrocities, smearing critics of Israel, using Wikipedia rules to deceive and distract readers from truths you would rather see concealed. It is repugnant behavior. --Alberuni 05:58, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * See Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Alberuni and the corresponding talk for Alberuni's ad-homs, Holocaust denial, anti-Israelism bordering with anti-semitism, etc. BTW, why still there's no action taken there?  &larr;Humus sapiens&larr;Talk 07:32, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Slank
The article on Slank claims that they're one of Indonesia's largest rock bands. I checked allmusic and Ultimate Band List, but no hits in either of them. Nevertheless, the name gets many google hits, plenty in foreign languages. I don't know how to verify this article, and the somewhat fannish writing worried me. How are we to know if these guys are really notable? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:44, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * Look at the Indonesian Wikipedia. . [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 00:59, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Not logged in when submitting an article

 * Hi there all, Wikipedia newbie here. I wrote the article on LogicaCMG, expanding it from a stub. I worked on it over a few hours, between doing other things. Anyway, when I submitted it, I was not logged in. I would like it listed in 'my contributions', how can I go about doing this?
 * Also, if anybody has any comments, suggestions, please feel free to impart them.
 * James
 * Log it at Changing attribution for an edit and they'll get around to it.violet/riga (t) 14:50, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Question
I did an edit before I signed up for a user name which ended up being kept on the page - is there any way I can get this added to the "my contributions" bit of my account in retrospect? Fairly insignificant edit, but it would be nice! Thanks. --Jaimzc 09:22, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * See Changing attribution for an edit. There's usually quite a backlog though since only developers can carry out this task, so if it's just for one edit, it might not be worth the effort. Angela. 13:37, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Wikijunior
I have heard that people are discussing the new Wikijunior project. This is very different from the current Wikipedia model, and is more of an example of how we can use the abundant information we have here to serve various diverse audiences. For more information, see here. We're just getting started, and any and every bit of help is needed to make this a wonderful project. Danny 11:45, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Gary Sheffield article

 * If anyone has any time can they please check my Gary Sheffield article for grammer mistakes and things like that. Thanks a lot. I'm still in the works of writing it. Spatel2 22:57, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Looked pretty good already. I just tweaked a few things, like moving his pic to a more standard location, adding links to BB terms, other teams and players, and TSN, and fixed one or two typos. Oh, and I added his position and make his birthplace less US-centric. I'm not a big baseball fan and haven't editted many (any?) baseball player bios, so someone who has might be of more help in terms of things like whether it is written in a style consistent with other BB bios on Wikipedia--of course, if you've read or editted several you probably already have that down. Niteowlneils 00:06, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * You might want to try Peer Review. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 15:40, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Petit bourgeoisie
Would someone please help me to move Petit bourgeoisie to Petite bourgeoisie and set up a redirect from the old name to the new one? I tried to move the page, but something went wrong. Shorne 20:53, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * --fixed. &#9999; Sverdrup 21:20, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Shorne 21:36, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Images are not displayed after installtion of mediawiki
I have installed mediawiki with wikipedia content. The basic stuff works and the pages are displayed. However, I am unabel to see any of the images (e.g. country flags). I have downloaded the commons image bundle but do not know if/how to use this along with wikipedia content. What needs to be done to display the images?

Deepak, 26-Nov-2004

Reporting loss of article history
What's the proper way to report an apparent loss of article history? I believe this has happened to the Lil Jon article. Gazpacho 04:13, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * It was deleted. Discussion about it being undeleted is on WP:VFU. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:56, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reciprocity Theory Deleted
I traced back a hit on my Theory of Reciprocity website to Wikipedia. Saw someone had posted 'Reciprocity Theory' which had text in violation of the copyright on my site. Tried to look up the article ( I don't really care if others distribute my theory ) and found it deleted 11/24. It's 11/25 - is there any way to see what the article said?

Thanks

Libshoppe 02:32, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * It was a straight copy/paste from . The article has not actually been deleted yet, and previous revisions are available through the "History" tab, which should be at the top of your screen. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:51, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Gunnm is about to be slashdotted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnm

Is about to be slashdotted. Please lock page.

142.177.19.221 22:03, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * We don't usually lock for slashdot, and we usually do fine. At worst, we have to revert some junk. At best, someone who knows more than we did adds useful material. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:11, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Multiple acounts required for multiple langauges?
I just found (I think) that in order to add an article to sv.wikipedia I had to create an account there, rather than use my existing one on en.wikipedia that I am posting from now. Is there some trick to give me a login across all the servers? Thanks Dan Shearer 19:53, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)


 * There's no trick. Single sign-on has been a requested feature for some time, but there's various problems with trying to implement it with a large existing user base. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 22:14, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * You may find it useful to link your user pages on the different-language wikipedias, which can be done just like any other interwiki link. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:12, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Spliting a large page?
Hi, I was curious about what the policy is for splitting up a large page, in this case List of Pokémon. I want to split it into three different lists, like I said on the talk page, but I'm unsure if copying and pasting sections is the right method. I think that's how it was done in a couple other articles I'm watching (like Metroid series), but... I just thought I'd check first. Can someone help? --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 19:09, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Finding out the day it was when you were born....
How do/would I go about finding out what day Nov. 10th was back in 1974?--24.8.232.17 19:51, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Try Doomsday algorithm, or this recent Slashot discussion

Viewing symbols and other icons
Hello,

I have been browsing wikipedia for some time now and i have recently started to notice that I am unable to display a lot of the symbols and icons on wikipedia. All I get are little boxes. Any ideas on how I might remedy this?


 * If by symbols and icons you mean things that are encoded as images then it sounds like your browser is having trouble loading images. Perhaps your internet connection is giving errors. If on the other hand you mean "characters" then this is because your browser does not have a font installed that can render the particular character on the page. See UTF-8 and Unicode (recent featured article), If this is the case you may need to get some fonts installed. Since you dont say what browser/OS its hard to go further. Nicholsr 23:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Is there any way to write conditional wikitext?
I'd like to conditionally display text on a page if a given cookie is set in the user's browser. Can this be done? I envision some kind of template, like this:



Is any such conditional wikitext possible? &mdash; franl ([[User_talk:Franl|talk)]] 15:04, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Nope, can't do it. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 16:26, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bad article title: Lam%E9%27s_Special_Quartic
This article title is somehow categorized under Category:Mathematics and I can't get to it to fix. Ancheta Wis 13:26, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Very odd - seems to be an escaped version of Lamé's Special Quartic, which doesn't exist, presumably referring to Gabriel Lamé and his super ellipse. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:27, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

asking for copyright licence for photo
I'm not an editor, just a new contributor. I'd like to add the photo from http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/about/director/ to the Jeffrey Sachs page.

Is this clearly fair use, or should I contact them for permission? Clubmarx 23:23, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * I see NOTHING fair use about those images, though I could have missed something. On the other hand these folks are easy to contact, you have their web site,  so I'd sure ask them before using any of those images.  Carptrash 00:52, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK - I thought the main image might be in a press package and copying the image is actually the point of having it. I also didn't know if a wikipedia editor needed to do the contacting.. Clubmarx 01:24, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * Everyone is a wikipedia editor. Go for it. See Boilerplate request for permission. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:16, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Derek Fisher page.
I started the page. More people can add more information if they would like to. --Tigerscout 18:17, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why did you delete it? --Tigerscout 18:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't see that there was ever a page called Derek Fisher. Did it have another title? RickK 23:21, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Help needed with vandals
User:Mogrady and his sock puppets (User:AshIey Y, User:Kris45, User:Xlogold, User:Jello042, possibly more) have been vandalizing Sideburns, Afro, Mullet (haircut), and other articles by repeatedly adding incorrect information and reverting others' edits. They've been doing this for the period of a couple months, have not responded to our attepts to correct their behavior (usually just blanking what we tell him from the talk pages), and have made no actual helpful edits. Would an admin please deal with these trolls? -Pyrop 17:09, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Jew
Hey can someone fix the Jew site!

there is a link to jewwatch in the first paragraph and I cant see any way to get rid of it. SHould the Jew page not be protected from that kind of malicious editing?

jucifer 15:40, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hey can someone fix the Jew site!

there is a link to jewwatch in the first paragraph and I cant see any way to get rid of it. SHould the Jew page not be protected from that kind of malicious editing?

jucifer 15:40, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * If you look into the editing history of the article you'd see that those bad edits were reverted within minutes - so maybe you just got the bad version from the cache, while the current version was fixed already. Especially the Jew article has quite a lot of people watching it, as it is a popular target for POV-pushing vandalism. And it's quite hard to protect an article from malicious edits only - we can only protect it completely and then only admins can edit, but protected articles are the exception and we try to avoid to protect articles if possible. And as I said, as Jew is well watched the normal malicious edits there will be fixed quickly. andy 13:14, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Need URGENT help with research project
Redirected to WP:RD. Mark Richards 23:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Estate planning
Hi, I started an article on Estate planning. I have left it very general at first because I wanted to know if that is an established term or practice in countries outside the US. Does the practice or term used for it in British or other common law systems differ dramatically from that in the US? Do civil law countries have similar or the same thing? I am fairly familiar with the intricacies of estate planning in the US, but wanted an idea of how it works in other countries before adding too much. Thanks - Taxman 17:33, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Modifying links in talk pages
I moved the article "Septum (brain)" to "Septum pellucidum." I wanted to change the links that pointed to the old article; however, one is on Cleanup/September. Should I change that link too? Is it inappropriate to modify someone else's comment? I did add my own comment underneath it of course, and the old Septum (brain) page does link to the new one. Thanks &mdash; Knowledge Seeker 09:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Make a comment below that link explaining what you did. That will resolve the problem.  RickK 20:36, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

timing on 89 pontiac sunbird
if anybody knows where one could find information hopefully with pictures of how to set the timing or where the marks are pls respond. A desperate mom and her young daughter are countin on u since we cant count on our mechanic.TY.


 * It is a shame that you can't count on your mechanic, perhaps you should try another one? Alternatively a shop manual like the Haynes [] would probably tell you what you need to know. Mark Richards 12:38, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Science of Value
Could somebody who understands this stuff take a look at Science of Value? Is this original research? Is this a recognized field? Is this a copyright violation? RickK 20:09, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

I've replaced it with another article, for now at least. Gene Ward Smith 09:22, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I may have started an edit war. I looked at the article, which was utter nonsense about a crank by another crank, and wrote another one after doing some research. Of course, this was reverted by said crank. His version of the article is unacceptable for an enecylopedia, which should not be a forum for telling the world that the earth is flat, etc., even if you happen to think it is. Gene Ward Smith 21:12, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree it is a questionable article and certainly fails NPOV obviously in many places. I don't know enough to be able to verify it is pseudo science, but it sure has all the hallmarks of it.  We don't want to bite the newcomers so we'll have to be tactful.  I have left a message on the user's talk page asking him to collaborate with instead of ignore other users.  If he continues to refuse to, then other steps may have to be taken. - Taxman 13:35, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Help! Francis Bacon
I'm afraid I've made a mess of things at this article. What I meant to do, was to turn Francis Bacon into a disambiguation page, directing to three different people. I moved the information about Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan Philosopher accidentally to Francis Bacon (playwright) instead of Francis Bacon (philosopher). The I found out the latter was already a redirect to Francis Bacon. Right now there is no Francis Bacon article, except in histories. Please pardon me for messing this up, and help me clean it up properly. Francis Bacon should be a disambiguation, but the Elizabethan Francis Bacon was not primarily a playwright but a philosopher. --Woggly 08:05, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I sorted this out. For future reference, in a case where one person of a certain name is clearly the primary meaning, it's better to create a separate Name (disambiguation) page and link to it from the article with . (If you're not sure which person should occupy the place of honor, Special:Whatlinkshere should help; if one person has many more incoming links than all the others put together, as is the case here, he should probably get the main page.) &#8212;No-One Jones (m) 08:16, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Thank you, and apologies for the mess. I have a friend who once turned in a paper on the wrong Francis Bacon. But the current setup is good enough for me. --Woggly 08:20, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Login problem
I'm user: Gene Ward Smith but no longer seem to be able to log in under that name.


 * Why can't you? Have you forgotten your password or is there some error message? Have you tried clicking the "send new password" button? If that doesn't work, and you can persuade a developer of your identity, you can ask for a new password at Non-development tasks for developers. Angela. 13:50, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

My password no longer seems to work, and my attempt to get a new one via "send new password" was a failure--no password was sent. If someone could create a new one for me that might fix the problem; I'll see what the link you provided turns up. user: Gene Ward Smith 130.65.26.98 04:04, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've managed to log in. Gene Ward Smith 05:37, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article sandbox?
Can I create a temporary article to serve as a working space, so that when I finish it I can just port the content to the main article? I am planning a full rewrite with NPOV and more content, but I can't salvage much from the original article.

The question is: can I create an article such as BAND NAME (Sandbox)? --Sn0wflake 00:05, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can create a page called User:Sn0wflake/BAND NAME. This will be in your own user space while you're working on it. RickK 00:09, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip, man. --Sn0wflake 00:25, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Easily create a related other-language page?
I've looked in some places but can't find instructions for creating a page in language X which is related to (or a translation of) the current page Y. Presumably the mechanism for doing so can add some links before I start, check categories in language Y with common links, etc.

Thanks,

Dan Shearer 19:53, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)


 * To create the page in a different language, you need to go to the Wikipedia in that language and then follow the same procedure you would to create a new article here. See Help:Starting a new page. To link that to the English version, you type the language code followed the page title, at the end of the English article. For example, Accueil would link to the main page of the French Wikipedia. I'm not entirely sure I understood your question. Is this what you meant? Angela. 20:52, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)


 * Sorry for being unclear. You have answered my question. I was hoping there might be a special trick for saying "I want to make a new page in some other language which will be partially filled in already with links back to this one and categories already done for me" because of it being such a common case. Nevevr mind, I'll do it the hard way like everyone else! Thanks.

Dan Shearer 07:18, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Can't edit Cracker Jacks
I can't seem to make any edits to this page "stick." (I was trying to add .) Any ideas? &mdash;tregoweth 19:24, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)


 * I've had this problem before with redirects. Putting the template on the same line as the redirect seems to be more successful than putting it on a line below. Angela. 20:47, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Why won't this redirect work?
User talk:Sgeo --Sgeo | Talk 16:59, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * At a guess you can't have redirects containing templates. The only solution I can see is to manually update the redirect at the start of each month. violet/riga (t) 17:06, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jihad
User:134.22.70.218 has added several copyright violations to this page in the last four or five days. Unfortunately, several users have edited this page since he/she first started editing it. Unless someone objects, I am going to revert the entire page to just prior to 134.22.70.218's first edit. RickK 08:45, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Baseball card page a little weak.
You should add some stuff to the page. It looks a little bare. --Tangos 20:56, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * So add it! -- Jmabel | Talk 00:17, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Help
I was testing an idea for my talk page, and I accidentally added a few articles to the wrong namespace...( Special:Contributions/Sgeo) --Sgeo | Talk 20:20, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
 * I've deleted the two articles you created. violet/riga (t) 20:27, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Need help fighting a vandal
209.66.200.63 messed up my article on Tribes 2 and I don't know how to revert it (I'm a newb). He also seems to be messing with some other articles... -Cookiemobsta
 * Looks like Ahoerstemeier took care of this. By the way, for the future, Vandalism in progress is the place to take this. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:18, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

How to Clear search history
Please tell me how to clear my search history.

Thanks,

Cindy
 * Forgive me if I misunderstand what you are asking for, but your search history isn't a feature of Wikipedia but your web browser. If you simply want to delete an entry in the drop down box that appears from the search field, move down to it with your arrow keys and press Del (in Internet Explorer) or Shift+Del (in Firefox). If you want to delete an entire line from the address bar in your browser the same thing applies there. Hope this helps.Wålberg 19:33, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please ban VeryVerily
NEW: VeryVerily has now reverted Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004/Candidate statements three times within the past two hours, in clear violation of the arbitration committee's injunction against him. Please impose the twenty-four-hour ban immediately; he is wreaking havoc on numerous pages. Shorne 12:08, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Project page, not article, which Shorne was attempting to restructure without anyone's permission, creating a new /Discussion page and cutting-and-pasting the old endorsements page there, which had been placed on user subpages by earlier decision. Very Verily 12:34, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * There was no "decision", and you clearly violated the injunction. Shorne 12:39, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Two of us posted the following complaints to an incorrect location and were asked to bring them here instead. Would someone please block VeryVerily in accordance with the injunctions (by the arbitration committee) against him? Since these complaints were written, he has also deleted Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004/Candidate statements/Discussion three times, all without discussion. Shorne 11:43, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * VeryVerily has violated injunction #3 at Requests for arbitration/Gzornenplatz, Kevin Baas, Shorne, VeryVerily/Proposed decision. It says "Enacted 3) Shorne and VeryVerily are banned from editing any article having to do with the Cold War or communism whilst Arbitration is on-going. Sysops may use their discretion in determining what falls into these areas, and are hereby authorized to enact 24 hour blocks for violations of this."  Yet he not only editted, but just reverted changes that me and Ce garcon had worked on  pertaining to the very Cold War Gwangju massacre (with the South Korean dictatorship claimed had been instigated by North Korea and so on).  It appears this is breaking the temporary order but the arbs would know best. Ruy Lopez 11:01, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * VeryVerily has violated the injunction below (#2) by reverting Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Gzornenplatz, Kevin Baas, Shorne, VeryVerily/Proposed decision three times in twenty-four hours (actually, only one hour). Please impose the twenty-four-hour ban that the injunction specifies. Shorne 10:25, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Shorne is spamming this on a bazillion pages, and sigh I'm replying again and again on them. (a) History of South Korea is not by any stretch a "Cold War" article, unless all our 20th century articles are. (b) The injunction applies to articles, not project talk pages, and at any rate I don't think anything I did more than once constituted a "revert". Very Verily 11:51, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * North Korea and South Korea are still at war, and the US has tens of thousands of soldiers stationed there against a "communist state". Sounds like communism and the Cold War to me, which is why I refrained from editing that article and instead discussed my points on the talk page.


 * VeryVerily has also thrice deleted Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004/Candidate statements/Discussion. Even his deletions were not done in accordance with policy. Shorne 11:54, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * See my comments about Kimchi on /Evidence. Or better yet just ignore this troll. Very Verily  12:07, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

how do I get on a chat in here?
how do I get on a chat in here?


 * There is no "chat" as such on the site. There are related non-official IRC channels and each article and user has a talk page. Were either of those what you meant? Angela. 07:03, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Combine Child Sex Offender Articles?
As I said on the votes for deletion entry for Tammy Imre,perhaps the best solution is to combine this,Debra Lafave,Mary Kay Letourneau,and any other such "case histories" into one article that recounts their histories in the context of their offenses and the phenomena they represent.Celebrity deriving from the sensational nature of a crime is a strange animal and you can't tell how long it will linger,but the offense itself is something whose analysis is of more enduring significance.

Thoughts?--Louis Epstein/12.144.5.2/le@put.com

No. Each article stands on its own merits. RickK 07:25, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Baen's Bar
I think Baen's Bar should be merged with Baen Books, and I plan to do that, but what to do with the first article's GIANT images? Can they be made smaller? Do we really need both? Opinions? Joyous 02:15, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)


 * You can make the images smaller using Extended image syntax. See this diff for an example of how its done. Angela. 06:59, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

customizing my signature?
Is there any way to customize my automatic signature? I see many signatures that include a direct link to the users talk page, but my does not. I have searched in vain for some way edit my signature. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks. --Jjhake 01:23, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Go to Special:Preferences. In the User data section, look for the field "Your nickname (for signatures)" and enter your formatted signature there. &mdash;tregoweth 02:16, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --[[User:Jjhake|Jjhake (talk)]] 03:18, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Someone examine these edits to Jihad?
Someone who knows more than I about the subject (read: nearly anyone) might want to take a look at a series of recent edits to Jihad. NPOV? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 21:32, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Performance theory
Could someone check the new Performance theory article. I am not sure it makes any sense, but perhaps it's just me. It was also contributed by an unregistered user, whose IP was used next day to vandalise Wikipedia, which makes it somewhat suspicious. Paranoid 12:50, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * a quick googling of "Performance theory" brings up a lot of stuff. It seems to me that the 't' in theory should be capitalized. but perhaps if the article becomes a stub it will be improved? Carptrash 17:51, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What to do about Blinky5?
So what is the best thing to do about Blinky5? Carptrash 09:25, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Redirects for deletion Gdr 10:45, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)


 * Deleted it. violet/riga (t) 11:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Transfer Images
I found an image in the French wikipedia that I'd like to use. Is there an easy way to transwiki, or do I have to save it locally and upload? Help appreciated. The Steve

No way to do it easily at the moment. The best thing to do would be to upload it to http://commons.wikimedia.org under the same name. Then it can be deleted from the French wikipedia and used on all wikipedias using the same syntax as if it was locally available. Paranoid 13:24, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Do not delete the original image (that you are downloading and re-uploading to commons) if there have been modifications by several people. The edit history in that case must remain for author attribution. On the new image page, simply note where it came from (as with images from anywhere). In this case, provide a link to the French image page location. It's probably good netiquette to note the original author also. zoney &#09827; talk 18:03, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Error in Alexander_the_Great
The page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great

shows His three-year campaign against Bessus and his successor Joseph Goebbels took him through Media, Parthia,

Obviously Joseph Goebbels is an error (or a malicious entry)

If somebody reads this - so that it can be corrected.

Please excuse if I am in the wrong section. I am new to this collaborative effort, so I have not yet to study the proper method of communicating an error on a page.
 * Added a header to the discussion. JesseW 01:59, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Fixed the error. Thanks.  BTW, you could also have corrected it yourself, by using the "edit this page" button at the top.  It seems to have been added by an anon on 12:52, 16 Nov 2004, so we caught it by 02:09, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC), a difference of 14 hours.  Not too bad. JesseW 02:09, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Medical Stub
I'd like to ask if somebody would be kind enough to put together a Medical Stub category for pages like "Exercise-induced anaphylaxis"? Thank you. -- RJH 23:04, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * There is a   template and medicine-stubs category. I'm not sure that covers it properly though or if renaming the template "medical stub" rather than "medicine stub" would be better. Angela. 07:13, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)


 * Ah, okay... it looks like it was just created Nov. 13th. Sorry, I must have missed it. Thanks!

Fixing up a category of numbered links
I started fixing the links to Category:United States Highway system so they would sort right, but I don't have the patience to finish. Is there some sort of automated tool to do it?

Adventure International & Pornography
An anonymous user keeps adding a link to a porn site to the Adventure International article. I have reverted it once, but don't want to get into an edit war. There is an argument for its inclusion, as it is apparently run by Alexis Adams, who was involved with writing some of the later games, however I feel that the link is inappropriate, and not relevant to an article on this pioneering Adventure Game company. Am I right? And if so, how do I remove it so that it stays removed? --HappyDog 14:32, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * You're correct - it's not appropriate. The link may be appropriate on the Scott Adams (game designer) page (more appropriately an Alexis Adams page, though I doubt that there is a call for that) but Alexis' site is not relevant to the Adventure International company.  I've removed it and will monitor the page for any other changes. violet/riga (t) 16:54, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Editing the navigation on my own Wiki
I run a Wiki at http://www.chronocompendium.com and I would like to either edit 'navigation' or create a separate sidebar entirely that lists several topics and links to listings. I'm not sure how to accomplish this.


 * I think this is covered in the MediaWiki FAQ. If not, the mediawiki-l mailing list might be a better place to ask than the vilage pump. Angela. 07:10, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Mongoose name for a bike? Please Help.
A type of bike I think is called a Mongoose? Anything on that? Maybe add some information? Kingfisher 22:51, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A quick search on Google yields this as the first link. – Quadell (talk) (help)  19:54, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

link spam
Do you consider these link additions to be legit or spam? Clearly they are doing it to promote their site but I guess the question is whether or not these are good for the Wiki. Is there a help page or faq about recognizing/reporting spam? I couldn't find one. Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=203.134.7.48


 * There's no FAQ and no real policy about spam other than what is at External links. Perhaps we could do some more guidance pages on this, but until then, you'll need to use your own judgment on whether to revert them. There's a   template that can be used on the talk pages on offending users. Angela. 07:08, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate categories
Category:Ireland-place stubs and Category:Ireland-related stubs. These need to be fixed. The more common used like category is "Category:Country-related stubs" --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 08:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Nope. These are not duplicates. We have delibrately created a generic Ireland-related one, and an Ireland-place one (for towns etc.). There are too many Irish stubs to lump in one category. Please see Wikipedia talk:Irish wikipedians' notice board. zoney &#09827; talk 19:46, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Actually, the place stub should be "Ireland-geo stub" or such, as it is replacing "geo-stubs", but it's probably too late now unless someone uses a bot to change the messages. zoney &#09827; talk 19:48, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Giving photos white backgrounds?
What techniques do people use to give photos pure white backgrounds? I can do it for simple objects like video game cartridges, but how is it done for more complicated things like a Monopoly game? Eurleif 06:28, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Professional photography studios actually use white tables and backgrounds (this was taken to an absurd extreme in The Matrix -- that blinding white background of the staging area wasn't a CGI effect). Otherwise, make friends with photoshop.

It's much easier to do a normal photo on a white background (as white as you can make it), then use selection by color in your favourite image editor to select only the object, delete the background (using smooth/soft selection border if necessary and some other tricks) and add artificial shadow like it's done for the monopoly. If you need help doing this, ask me on my Talk page. Paranoid 13:23, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Cat skinning
Could anyone with the Power, please delete this: Talk:Cat skinning it's left-over from a deleted article that's now a redirect. Thanks Pedant 19:40, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)


 * It should be kept, like all other VfD discussions are now, in case someone wants to create an article on cat-skinning in future and needs to see the reasons why it was removed in the past. Angela. 12:17, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Legal smoking ages
(Moved to Reference desk by JesseW 01:54, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC))

Information on Carbola Chemical Company
It is necessary, if possible, to contact former employees of the Carbola Chemical Company at Natural Bridge, New York that were at Carbola in the 1940's and 1950's. Would be very interested also of location of any archived Carbola records during that period of time. Anyone that can assist - Please contact Ron Draper at infosysc@email.msn.com

Thank you, and appreciate any assistance and communication from former employees. Ron

Þjóðarbókhlaðan
Some wag's just started an article called Þjóðarbókhlaðan. It's an orphan and I can't see anyone typing its name into the search box. If someone knows what to do with it (it's not a VfD issue), then please link it in/rename it as appropriate. (I'm asking the contributor this too.) jguk 23:09, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Perhaps move to National and University Library of Iceland, with a redirect at the Icelandic spelling? --Whosyourjudas (talk) 03:50, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * This is now done.   – Quadell (talk) (help)   19:53, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Article titles
How do you change the title of an article? I ask this as an article about a shop named Bon Voyage in the TokyoDisney Resort is named Von Voyage by someone who obviously thought this was the correct name.


 * If the name you want to use isn't currently in use - use the 'Move this page' feature. jguk 23:09, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Deletion
While looking at Scott Peterson (murderer) I saw that the word prosecution didn't have an article for it, so I created a stub with basic content. But the article actually links to Prosecution's for god knows what reason, so now I have created a useless article.

Delete: Prosecution's

Thanks. --Sn0wflake 22:29, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

User:Jgferris
Is making unwikified and mostly unencyclopedic contributions on the Ferris family line (I'm not saying they couldn't become encyclopedic, but they're not now). I don't rightly know how to deal with this; I don't want to scare off the newbies. Tact isn't my strong point. I don't want a run on VfD entries either, though. If someone with more social grace could nudge him or her in the right direction? JRM 16:06, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)
 * Update: only one entry in the contribution list so far, but I've seen earlier edits that must have been under an anon IP.

comment
There are some changes which I think could improve a basically good article. Before making them off my own bat I'd like to get reaction from the author(s) and other interested readers, if any. In other words, TALK! I get as far as the discussion tab, then use alt+ to get a comment field, type my comments, and then - what? I "preview" my comments, and they till seem worth raising, but do I "save" them? If so, where are they saved to? Who will or may get to see them? What have I missed? Jeremy


 * Yes, you use "save page". They will be saved on the discussion page. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:19, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Undoing a page move?
Recently, User:Arunreginald moved the article Tank to Tank: Armoured Combat Vehicle, replacing it with a disambiguation page linking to: the now-moved article, and a mostly-content-free article on Tank: Pakistani North-Western Town. I feel that this move is inappropriate and should be reverted, but I don't know how to do so. --Carnildo 09:53, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * This has been fixed.   – Quadell (talk) (help)   19:48, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Printing
How do I print an article? zuekeenie


 * That's a function of your browser. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:19, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

a model Wikipedia article?
Is there a "model" Wikipedia article that contains examples of most every Wikipedia style rule? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 23:53, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * There is no article of the sort. That would be a Platonic ideal. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 00:02, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking of a quite contrived article that would perhaps have small value as an encyclopedic entry, yet would serve as a sandbox for exhibiting the application of all the style rules in concert. We have plenty of one-rule-at-a-time examples in the guides, but apparently nothing to show the whole.  I'll start constructing one, perhaps as a sub-page of the Manual of Style. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 15:47, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Why don't you make one at, for example, Article_containing_all_Wikipedia_styles? JesseW

Multiple Search Term Hits
I just created my first Wikipedia entry Office of Force Transformation. You can find the article if you type in the full title. How do you add another search term to the article. Say if you wanted to pull up the article as "Force Transformation" choice in addition to the full title?

Also when I first created the article I spelled the work Transformation as Transnformation. I ended up just creating a second article to fix but how would you fix the first type of error? I saw that you could edit the content but not the article title? Is that only a sysadmin function?

Thanks!


 * For "another search term" you build a redirect page that points to it. In this case, I'll do it for you. For getting rid of the page, I believe your only reasonable choice is to put it on WP:VFD, but someone may have a better suggestion. Can this be speedy-deleted? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:13, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

List of United Kingdom-related topics
Sigh. User:Wikiuser has determined that England, Scotland and Wales should not eb listed as subjects under the heading "Nations and states of the British Isles" in the article List of United Kingdom-related topics. I've RVd his edits twice, whichs seems to be my limit for the night. Over to anyone else who happens to care. You will be called a racist by WikiUser, hence the sigh. --Tagishsimon (talk)
 * This seems to have cleared up as of now. JesseW 02:26, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hobbit
User:Corvun has taken it on him/herself to move the article on Tolkien's Hobbits to Hobbit (Tolkien), apparantly to clear out the Hobbit page to make a disambiguation page ... all this, I think, because our User:Corvun wishes to grind some sort of "Tolkien did not invent hobbits" axe.

Disambiguation at Types of disambiguation rule (3)states that "Primary topic" disambiguation: if one meaning is clearly predominant, it remains... which in this case, suggests that Tolkien's Hobbits should, sensibly, stay at Hobbit and any disambiguation should live at Hobbit (disambiguation). Given that we're dealing with page moves & preseving history &c, would an admin like to sort this out, please. --Tagishsimon (talk)


 * He helpfully moved the original page and then did a cut and paste move of the disambiguation page, turning it into a redirect. Reverted. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:33, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hate the Co-Opting of Alt-F -- Way to Disable?
I am a keyboard guy, and every time I go to Alt-F to access the File menu in my browser, Wikipedia grabs it and throws me in the search button. Is there a way to disable it? I really could do with never using an Alt key in Wikipedia. Alternately, can someone direct me to the proper forum to suggest that this be an alterable preference for registered users? 68.165.155.78 19:49, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * As a workaround, you can press ALT, F -- that is Alt followed by F without pressing them at the same time. Mdchachi|Talk 21:33, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Album covers- Fair Use or Not?
Am interested to know whether album/CD covers are generally OK under fair use for copyright ? I suspect they are but I looked at fair use guidelines and they seemed not to be. Any thoughts? Reithy 02:05, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * My guess is yes if used here at Wikipedia. I'd be shocked that the record companies haven't waived copyright in the case of non-profit use of this sort. For them, it's free advertising of the product if an album cover appears on Wikipedia. However, selling posters with the album cover would be a different kettle of fish.
 * --Rfgdxm (talk) 03:13, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Depicting an album cover in an article about the artist or album, or something closely related, is certainly fair use: newspapers and magazines do it all the time. Using that album art in an unrelated context is probably not fair use. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:32, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Albums decided a long time ago that album covers used an an article about that artist or album is fair use. The {{albumcover)) template should be added to the image description page to make these easy to find and filter.  [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\{{sup|talk}}]] 05:14, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The fair use rules may change significantly (in the US) if HR 2391 passes. Not sure about the implications WRT wikipedia. -- RJH 22:53, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Forgot username and password
Sorry for this newbie-ness... I created a user name and password, and successfully logged in and edited a couple of articles. Now I am unable to log back in, I don't remember the login name.

Some data: my name is Gonzalo Diethelm, and my e-mail addresses (under which I would be registered) are gonzalo.diethelm@aditiva.com and gonzalo.diethelm@diethelm.org.

The likely usernames would be gdiethelm, gonzalo.diethelm, gonzalodiethelm, gonzo, gonzus.

Please help by replying to my e-mail address. Thanks,

Gonzalo
 * Have you tried the "email a new password" button with all of the above usernames? If not, please try that.  JesseW 11:19, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * If you've tried emailing yourself a password and that didn't work, ask if a developer can help at Non-development tasks for developers. You'll need to be able to prove you really are that user though. Angela. 11:09, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * Another easy way of doing things is to go to an article you remember editing, look at its history, and see what name made the edit you remember making. :-) Well, moderately easy, anyway -- as easy as proving identity to a developer, methinks. Jwrosenzweig 22:12, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Request for Sysop, re blocking repeat vandal
207.70.141.194 is currently vandalising a number of pages, and I can't keep up to revert new vandalisms. Its been reported on the current vandalism. The IP user was warned in August. Fifelfoo 22:26, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Are double redirects forbidden?
I'm considering moving a article that presently has redirects to it. Since the move will leave a redirect from the current article to the new article, this will create double redirects. My questions are:

[[User:franl|&mdash; franl (talk)]] 16:05, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
 * Are double redirects forbidden?
 * If they are not forbidden, do they cause excessive load on the servers?
 * If they don't cause excessive load on the servers, are they acceptable?


 * They simply don't work. If A->B->C and you try to visit A then you will end up at the B page. Thue | talk 16:23, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The reason they don't work is because if they did then there'd be the possibility of an infinite loop. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 20:45, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * And the "move" process prompts you to check whether there are any double redirects so you can edit the second (and higher) levels to direct to the new name for the article. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:19, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Say's Law
Could someone move this to Say's Law to Say's law (lower case L) ... I cannot get it to move over the existing redirect page. The majority of Laws of this sort have lower case - see links from List of eponymous laws. Thanks --Tagishsimon (talk)


 * You could add it to Requested moves and add the template to Talk: Say's Law. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:15, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text pollution in nelson mandela article
hi, as a visitor i noted an unusual addition in the article on nelson mandela, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela. in the chapter 'early history' it says 'amir is the coolest man on earth' in the second sentence. (i am aware i could probably edit this myself, but for now i won't become a wiki participant due to heavy lack of time)
 * For what it's worth, you can feel free to fix vandalism like this without any expectation of becoming a more active part of the community. (It's actually quicker than dropping a note here.) The radically open nature of Wikipedia means this type of vandalism happens all the time. It has a pretty short half-life (maybe 5 minutes in a major article), largely because it's just as easy to fix as it is to do. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:53, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Massive merges and clean-up needed for over 10 articles
We have a bloody mess in large body of articles pertaining to WWII and specifically to issues of forced migration and persecution - mainly in Polish-German lands. Below is a list of articles on the subject. I included redirects also to provide you with broader perspective as those redirs (note double, non-functional ones) are result of edit- and revert wars, admin interventions and general havoc.

The subject is generally as follows:
 * 1) Ownership of lands that were handed to Poland (and Czechoslovakia to much lesser extent) after WWII
 * 2) Forced migration of Germans from territories east of Oder-Neisse line
 * 3) Treatment of Germans in these lands after WWII (real mess where issue of German natives and converts are thrown together and labeled (or not labeled) alleged (or not alleged) traitors.

These three topics intermingle to form array of following articles:
 * 1) Historical Eastern Germany (rd: Ex-German Eastern Territories)
 * 2) Expulsion of Germans after World War II
 * 3) Eastern Germany (dab)
 * 4) Evacuation of East Prussia (rd: Prussian Holocaust, Soviet ethnic cleansing of East Prussia, Emigration of Germans from Eastern Europe)
 * 5) Organised persecution of ethnic Germans
 * 6) Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
 * 7) Pursuit of Nazi collaborators (rd: Persecution of alleged Nazi collaborators (rd: Persecutions of Nazi collaborators, Treatment of alleged Nazi collaborators))
 * 8) Recovered Territories
 * 9) German exodus from Eastern Europe
 * 10) Nazi-Soviet population transfers
 * 11) World War II evacuation and expulsion

Note that majority of them remains in disputed state for long time. Some seem to be answer to other ones - eighter other POV or fork to introduce NPOV to article possessed by uncooperative extremists bent on forcing their POV. I think that whole topic could be stated in perhaps 3 articles not over 10. I'm sorry for emphasis, but present state of things is a kind of insult to several policies: from NPOV to dispute resolution ones.

While this is topic for complex arbitration that belongs elsewhere, I'd like to introduce the issue for community review to obtain some comments and perhaps to open discussion on how to deal with extremists in Wikipedia. This case clearly shows that our standards and policies are easily thwarted by any sufficiently determined radical that wants to put his cause into broader audience.

For unaccustomed with subject: only small percentage of Germans supports nationalist content found in many of mentioned articles and their cause is dismissed by general German populace. In contrast, on Polish side there is widespread fear and outrage caused by claims, historical amnesia and threat of German legal actions. So German parliament and general public opinion were surprised and shocked when Polish parliament in response to these marginal threats passed bill that ordered the government to refute the claims and pursue war reparations from Germany. In the end debate scaled down (both IRL and on Wikipedia) but mess remains nonetheless in both places.

The problem is that this marginal cause supported by few dedicated adherents caused so much turmoil here. Several edit and next revert wars issued and many sound Wikipedians (Polish, German and other European) attempting to resolve this were tied up with pointless struggle with radicals. This prevented them from making other useful work here and occasionally even gained them ill reputation when they've lost their temper. In the end majority of them just resigned and eighter left Wikipedia in disgust or moved to other topics leaving mess behind.

Result: see above list of messy articles. Also several policies proven ineffective and Wikipedia made a propaganda tube for radicals. Please provide some assistance on what to do with it.

-- kind regards, Forseti 16:05, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the matter needs to be cleansed and the articles merged to 3 or 4. I'm one of the people who took part in their (mostly painful) creation and as such I might be biased. Moreover, I decided not to touch the topic of Polish-German relations and I'm sure my psychiatrist (if I had one) would appreciate that so I'm afraid I won't be of much help here. I only hope there's someone both dedicated and imparcial enough to spend a night or two on cleaning this mess.


 * First question that should to be asked is how many articles should be there. I believe that the following would suffice (note that the titles given are only for the purpose of this discussion, I do not support them or anything):

--[[User:Halibutt|]] 04:37, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Teritorial changes of Germany after 1945
 * 2) German population abroad during and after WWII
 * 3) Historical Eastern Germany and Recovered Territories as two concepts that should be described, but perhaps could be shortened

Several questions
Is adding a page about a band you like considered NPOV? I know one of the members, though we rarely talk, and the band hasn't had a commercial release. (They have their stuff on iTunes, but I think anyone can do that and sell albums on their site)

Anyways, I don't plan on doing an article praising them, or plan on linking to their site (Unless it's nessecary to cite my sources), I was just going to do a write up on the history of the band as a whole, some minor info on each member, and a list of songs they've written. (Short, since they only have one LP so far)

I doubt this is allowed, but I figured asking was worth a shot.

Secondly, is there a guide to citing sources, laying out a page on wiki?

Thirdly, is there a place I can store my article on wiki so that I can test the formatting?

Fourth, I'm an amateur(sp?) photographer, and have a small collection of clip art composed of pictures I took. Does wiki want this type of work uploaded, if it's relevant to the article being posted?

Sorry for the many questions, the navigation on this site is very unique, normal geek intuition(sp?) isn't helping much.

GregNorc 02:40, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend against writing an article about a band with no commercial releases unless there's something else you can say about them. There's so many bands like that out there that have tried using Wikipedia for self-promotion that people have a bit of a "shoot first, ask questions never" attitude when it comes to them.


 * For citing sources, see Cite sources.


 * Articles in development can be stored as subpages of your user page (eg: User:GregNorc/Article). Alternately you could just put it in the article namespace where other people can help fix your formatting.


 * As long as you're willing to release your uploaded images under the GFDL, or a license that is reasonably compatible with the GFDL (like public domain or certain Creative Commons licenses), you're welcome to do so. Just try not to overwhelm articles with images. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 04:17, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the help. GregNorc 21:43, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Extremely complicated talk page
The article with the fastest growing talk page in Wikipedia is probably

Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus

we need serious help to sort this page out, and prevent the talk page expanding exponentially.

Editing an article/Trenton, NJ in particular
Hi, I've been reading Wikipedia for a few years now (I love it!), but today was the first day I signed up for an account. As usual, I did a couple of random searches, including one for my home city, Trenton, NJ.

And in the article, I noticed a minor inaccuracy (which probably wouldn't matter to anyone who lives outside the city); and I noticed a particularly damning morsel of information, without any citation to back it up.

Wikipedia is great, and I'm glad that anyone can contribute, but after reading through some of the other Village Pump posts, it seems to me that egos can be bruised. So I was wondering, how can I find out who authored a particular article? After that, is it possible to email/message that person to discuss? I don't want to go in and simply delete the sentence (about the worst section of town, which happens to be the neighborhood in which I reside)...I'm hoping to find out if the original author has a source to back up that statement. I just moved to the neighborhood, so of course, my gut instinct is that I don't agree with the statement. But if s/he is correct, I want the source of the info so I can find out more!

Forgive me if I've asked some silly questions...I'm new to this!

Thanks! 01:44, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)Ottseetotsee ottseetotsee  november 29, 2004


 * If you know a piece of information is inaccurate, be bold and fix it by clicking the "edit this page" tab. As for finding out who authored an article, probably many people have contributed.  Go the the article and click on the "history" tab at the top, and you'll see a reverse-chronological listing of every edit that's been made.  To leave a message for someone, click on their username link.  Once you get to their userpage, click the link that says "discussion" and leave a message there.  If you have any other questions, feel free to ask here, or at my talk page.  Happy editing!  Joyous 03:13, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Photo alignment
I recently wrote an article on Steel Square. I read a lot of stuff and studied what other people did. My picture alignment is a little sloppy and needs to be fine tuned a little. I know about |thumb|right| and |thumb|left|  and |px 50....etc.| How do I fill in the blank spaces? I can not figure out how to do this.


 * Often when you have many pictures for one article, using a table is the easiest way to acheive even spacing and placement of multiple pictures on a single line. You can see how I formatted your article as an example.  As it is Wikipedia could benefit if it was more flexible in its design layout options. &mdash;Mike 05:55, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Moving section of talk page
What is the proper way to move a section of a Talk page to a new location following an article split? I created List of Cornellians from Cornell University, and I imagine the first section of Talk:Cornell_University should be moved. I could not find this in the documentation, only admonitions not to move via cut-and-paste operations.&mdash;choster 18:18, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of any way to "move" part of a page without cutting and pasting either the bit you are moving or the bit that is left behind - the attribution will be in the edit history, so it should be OK so long as you include a reference to the original article (i.e. "moved from X "). -- ALoan (Talk) 18:56, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I think this answers my question, too, the one about splitting large pages. --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 23:44, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Remote Viewing - psuedoscience/protoscience as established fact...
Hello. I'm working on Remote Viewing, and having a hard time editing the article to reflect the majority mainstream scientific view. I'd love to have some stats people and, perhaps, some scientists take a look at the article as it stands and help us place the "New Age-ness" out of it, or to place the "alternative" views into a secondary role. I had placed the article into NPOV dispute, but I'd like to figure out a good way to bring it into compliance. There are also sooo many links to "paranormal" hucksters in this article that it could become a hazard for gullible customers. I could easily see this article being used as a "reference" by charlatans to "prove" Remote Viewing exists and part more people from their money by inducing them to order the various "Remote Viewing" kits and courses available. As it stands, this article, and others in a similar vein, really give Wikipedia a bad name. Thanks in advance! --NightMonkey 22:38, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * But that's just the problem. Saying that Remote Viewing researchers are charlatans and hucksters is not a NPOV.  It's at best strong POV, and at worst libel.  Whether one agrees or disagrees with the conclusions, it's a field of research with published and examinable results.  --Cortonin 03:35, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Saying that the scientific community regards them as frauds, however is a different thing entirely. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 03:52, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Such a claim should be documented. On a controversial topic we can't just make up things and attribute them as opinions of the "scientific community" without actually referring to specific polling or reports of consensus opinions.  --Cortonin 04:05, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I have a strong POV, sure. Everyone does. Wikipedia doesn't want people who have no opinions on anything, just that there be a strong effort to write good Wikipedia articles, using the policies available here. It is obvious that Cortonin and I differ on our opinions on this subject. The problem is that we aren't making good progress on reshaping this article to be a good one, and it's not a balanced article. What can be taken from the research available doesn't add up to the use of unquestioning language and terminology presented in the article. That's why I'm asking for outside help here. I mean, this article is three times as long as the article on Kepler. Does this subject merit that kind of coverage here? --NightMonkey 06:59, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
 * One other thing we differ on, is that I think the article is in good shape, and describes Remote Viewing pretty well. It evolved for 2 years before you put it into dispute last month.  An encyclopedia article shouldn't be a diatribe about its topic, it should instead seek to describe it and provide information about it.  I favor incremental changes to the article, as a good deal of work has been put into it already.  Several such incremental changes have occured over the last month, and I think the product has been good, and shows good neutrality.  --Cortonin 08:12, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As an impartial observer in this debate I just looked at the article and the recent edits and I think that the two of you are doing a great job in building a NPOV article together. I'm pretty new to wikipedia but one of the things that made me want to get involved was seeing articles like "Hamas" and "Israel" which are being edited by people who sympathise with opposite sides of a war, a real war, not an edit war and yet together they build articles which have NPOV (well most of the time). Its amazing! If we can have a NPOV article on Hamas, surely we can have an NPOV article on Remote Viewing. Just keep citing references XYZ organisation said this [ref] XYZ report found this but was criticised in XYZ way by ABC and you will. Keep up the good work. Nicholsr 21:43, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * See my long comment at talk:Remote Viewing. --user:Ed Poor (talk) 14:45, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Images of old paintings/maps > 100 yrs old
I just want to check I have interpreted the image copyright rules correctly. It seems that if I find on the internet any image file which depicts a map/painting etc which is more than 100 years old then this image is, by definition public domain and I can freely copy it into wikipedia regardless of any copyright notice on the website. Have I understood this correctly? Nicholsr 22:39, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I doubt it. In the EU copyright normally exists for 70 years after the death of any author. I'm no lawyer, but I'd guess this is also true for paintings. Also, English law has ruled that "what's worth copying is worth protecting". A good photograph of an old painting or map would, presumably, fall within that category. jguk 22:51, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that the person who takes a digital picture of an old painting is regarded as an author and protected so that the digital photo is protected for 70 years from the date it is taken? Thanks Nicholsr 22:54, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I read somewhere that, at least in the US, a 2D representation of a public domain 2D image cannot be copyrighted. It was probably somewhere on Wikipedia. --SPUI 22:59, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I am a new user. I was really surprised not to find this spelled out really clearly in the FAQ. I would have thought this issue would come up all the time. All I found was a statement that if you copy something thats public domain then the copy is public domain....it didnt say whether this applies to digital photos of old maps and paintings. I guiess this comes down to whether a photo is regarded as a "copy". Nicholsr 23:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I've had a quick look at UK legislation. Section 1 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 provides that "Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with this Part in the following descriptions of work&#8212; (a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,....". S.4(1)(a) defines "artistic work" as including: "a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage, irrespective of artistic quality,". Looking at this, in principle I can't see why an original photograph of a painting cannot fall to be protected by copyright. The duration of copyright here is 70 years from the author's death (subject to a number of exceptions (See: s12, as amended by SI1995/3297).


 * The good news for UK Wikipedians is that s.62 provides that "(2) The copyright in such a work is not infringed by&#8212; (a) making a graphic work representing it, (b) making a photograph or film of it, or (c) broadcasting or including in a cable programme service a visual image of it. (3) Nor is the copyright infringed by the issue to the public of copies, or the broadcasting or inclusion in a cable programme service, of anything whose making was, by virtue of this section, not an infringement of the copyright." Note that there are also numerous UK provisions dealing with copyright and certain overseas countries too.


 * International copyright law is complicated - lots of different rules apply in different countries. IMO the FAQ's should say to assume something is copyrighted unless you know (and can show) that it is not. jguk 19:50, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corporation --SPUI 16:09, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Have a look at Reproduction fees Apwoolrich 19:08, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * mmm, interesting. An exact photographic replica of a 2D painting doesn't itself have copyright. Of course, a 100 year old painting may still be under copyright depending on when the artist died. And a photo of the work that does contain any degree of originality would have copyright protection (though I doubt we'd want one of those on Wikipedia anyway). jguk 19:42, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to vote for an article to be retained (not deleted)
I recently discovered Wikipedia and I love it. I have so far found 2 articles which I think are superb and valuable but which some persons apparently wish to delete.

I would like to vote to retain these articles but I can't seem to find my way through the system to be able to cast a vote to retain.

Could someone give me very clear simple instructions on this? Thank you.


 * Yes, this is a common problem. You need to go to the 'Votes for Deletion' page wp:vfd, and edit the section below the title of the page you wish to keep to indicate your intent. Mark Richards 16:14, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * There's another way to navigate to the voting page which is often easier. On the article page in question, look in the box titled "A request has been made on Wikipedia for this article to be deleted.".  There should be a link named "this page's entry" which will take you straight to the right place to vote.  You need to be logged on and sign your vote. --R. S. Shaw 03:58, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

host files as discussed on sundays show
I am using win 2000 pro and want to know how to clear the host files as was mentioned, and restore the files I want. fredb1277@yahoo.com thanks for your help

Vandalism on userpage
Well, I'm not sure if it was vandalism or a newbie who was testing something out, but by user page had some random text added to it, which managed to screw up the formatting of part of the page. Is there a place I can post the IP, in case any more incidents happen, it can be seen they've done this before? (I'm not sure how to contact him, or I'd send him a link to the sandbox) GregNorc|[[User talk:GregNorc|Talk]]
 * If you think it is vandlism, try vandalism in progress. You can look in the history of your user page for the IP/name of the user, so you can get his talk page. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 20:13, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Chuck F
Having had the ArbCom case against him closed for reasons which escape me (w/o saying anything about the temporary injunction), User:Chuck F is now back in action waging POV edit wars, including breaking the three-revert rule on Libertarianism. I'm getting tired of dealing with his nonsense alone, and am about to run up against the three-revert rule myself, so if others would like to look into the matter and offer their assistance, that would be useful. RadicalSubversiv E 08:13, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

looking for answers to advertising slogans
''Moved to Reference desk. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 20:09, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)''

Unprotecting Atheism
I've edited a bit over the last year, but I'm basically new. The Atheism article was "protected" on Nov 8, apparently because of a dispute about what dispute headers should be on it !! This protection was actually a reinstatement of an earlier protection which had been briefly lifted. I have asked several times why the article is still protected, who it is protected from, and when I might expect it to be "unprotected", but there haven't been any replies from the sysop who protected it. The discussion page still has some activity but it seems to have more or less petered out. I would like to edit this article. I edited it anonymously more than a year ago, and much of the current structure is due to my long-ago edits. (Of course, it has significantly changed also.)

Is it normal for an article to be protected this long? What is the correct procedure for this article to be returned to a "normal" editing regime? Where do I go to get these questions answered, if not here? BM 02:37, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Have you made a request on the WP:RFPP page? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 06:54, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

trojan horse
I am getting Security Alerts that state "attempt to connect to local computer using the NetBus Trojan Horse detected. Time: 11:06PM Date:  11/19/04.  Then it has a Protocol TCP Inbound and a remote address.  What does this mean?  I was not on my computer at this time. I have seen this message at different times, all of which I am not at the computer.  I have Norton Anti-Virus.  Also I am on DSL.


 * You're getting portscanned. Don't worry about it, literally every PC on the Internet gets scanned by would-be hackers. There's nothing you can do about it and unless your PC is infected with a trojan horse, it's in no danger. Rhobite 19:25, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Things to be moved to Wiktionary
This page has backlogs of items from over a year ago. I would like to help move things, but I don't know what procedure to follow. The directions at the top of the page are very vague. What exactly is the procedure to follow? I suspect that many users have not moved items to Wiktionary because there are no clear directions at the top of the page. A more specific and clear-cut procedure is found on Duplicate articles. Perhaps a procedure as clear as that one can be written for Things to be moved to Wiktionary. &mdash; J3ff 04:57, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I've been doing a lot of transwikiing lately, and I've even tried automating the process (see "automation script" link on my sig). [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 08:06, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Move request: City Hall to city hall
Could a sysop please move City Hall to city hall? Thanks. &mdash;User:Mulad (talk) 02:35, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)


 * Moved - but you don't need to be a sysop. In this case a simple cut and paste was all that was needed. Graham 02:45, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Uh, but doesn't that go against the concept of keeping page history?   &mdash;User:Mulad (talk) 02:49, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, yes - but in this case the history is short and my comment indicates what happened. If you look at the two histories it's pretty clear. For a more long-standing or thoroughly edited article, this wouldn't be a good idea, but in this case I think it's OK. Graham 03:20, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * There's no way to move the "City Hall the movie" content and not move the "City hall the big building downtown" content without a cut and paste. Although I'd have preferred to keep the history with the building, as it's an actual article. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 03:42, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help getting my article back
I would like help with un-merging Global War. For some reason it was merged with World War and I can say my article is about more than one war. I am totally un-happy about this situation. If it is not resolved, I will ask for a deleation and will then start the article over.

Time Travler


 * The article is not gone (i.e. deleted), it's just been turned into a redirect. Follow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_War?action=history, click on the date of the last "good" revision (here the one by Shimgray), click "Edit", and save that page without modification. Make sure to include the word "revert" in the edit summary. See also How to revert a page.


 * Make sure you use the Talk page to explain why you think the page should not have been merged, otherwise you'll just confuse and anger people. Also note that when merging, no information is usually lost, just copied to the other article. Explain clearly why you think two separate articles are warranted. JRM 19:34, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Chuck F and 208.62.52.1
Could another administrator please block User:Chuck F and User:208.62.52.1 for violating the three revert rule on Libertarian League and McJob?
 * 208 IP is Chuck F as is evident in the histories of Libertarian League and McJob.
 * 208 IP says "Revert radical's harrasment of me", Chuck commonly uses this edit summary:
 * User:172.188.198.168 should also be blocked but unfortunately it is an AOL IP address and blocking would affect other users.

Thank you. Rhobite 14:53, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, please disregard this request - I checked the block log and Chuck has already been blocked. Rhobite 20:19, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

Legal issue - No use of GNU FDL on a project - Possible?
Hi there,

i´m part of a team of german authors, we publish the german role-playing-game "LodlanD" (Sci-Fi-Roleplaying Game). Till now we have published four books and one game-masters-screen, further information on www.lodland.de (all text in german).

Now we want to add a service to our customers and host a LodlanD-Wiki. We are only in the stage of thinking about the project, nothing has happened till now. But several questions occured:

1.) Is it possible within the Wiki-Software to give only some users (the authors of LodlanD) the right to create new / edit old articles? No technical answer is required, only the information if it is capable of doing so.

2.) Important: when we use the MediaWiki-Software, is there a possibility NOT to use the GNU Free Documentation License (or another Free-License) so that no one is allowed to copy the text from the LodlanD-Wiki without our permission? This is important because possibly we would transfer the text from the Wiki some years later into a book, wanting to sell it for money and when the text in the Wiki would be under FDL (or a substitute), that would be impossible ("royalty-free-license"). So: is it possible to use the MediaWiki-Software WITHOUT a FDL (or a FDL-substitute), instead prompting that "without any written permission it is not allowed to copy the text in the LodlanD-Wiki".

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Jan-Tobias Kitzel Author of LodlanD --80.143.20.81 13:20, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * For question 1, the answer is yes. You could prevent anonymous users from registering or editing.


 * For question 2, the answer is also yes. You can use any license you wish - if Mediawiki imposed this restriction on its users, it wouldn't be in the spirit of free software. However, I don't know if your reasons are valid. If you license something under the GFDL, that doesn't mean you're giving up your copyright. You can still sell it in book form, although people may buy fewer books because they know that the information is also available for free on your wiki. The GFDL doesn't make it impossible for the copyright owner to sell content as well as distribute it for free. Rhobite 15:02, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * I believe that in the default MediaWiki install, it states that everything is under the GFDL. This is merely an artifact of MediaWiki's use on Wikipedia. Anyone installing it will want to change the various references to the GFDL to whatever terms they are using. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 15:51, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for your answers.
 * @Rhobite: The problem is (when my understanding of the GFDL is right), that EVERYONE can take the published material in the the wiki and put it in a book for selling it, not only the LodlanD publishing company. And that is not, what we have planned. ;-)
 * Our planning was, that we collect LodlanD-material (alphabetical sorted) in an online-lexicon as a free service to our gamers. But if they like we would think about publishing it in book-form. The point was: only our publishing company should have the right to publish the material in the LodlanD-wiki, not everyone (as mentioned in the GFDL, if my understanding of it is right).
 * Jan-Tobias Kitzel; Author of Lodland
 * --80.144.27.236 17:08, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * You can use any license you like for the content, including none if you prefer. Please feel free to change the default GFDL license text to any text you want to use. I think that default license may be removed in 1.4, in part to address concerns like yours. Jamesday 18:05, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image alignment help
I might look like a complete novice for asking, but I've put some images into Gruy%E8res, and the page-layout is all over the place. Any chance someone could reccommend the correct image tags so that it all looks nice and neat?

Ojw 17:16, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Not sure what you mean by "all over the place". It looks ok in my browser (Safari). &mdash;Mike 00:51, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
 * Near as I can tell, it only looked bad on IE (mozilla, firefox, netscape7 and opera were all fine). User:Moverton fixed it. Niteowlneils 21:14, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personal photos on user pages
So I just registered the other day mainly so I could post images, and a couple of days later, I decided to give myself a user page -- with a photo of myself, of course, now that I could put one up. But then it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't supposed to clutter Wikipedia's servers with personal photos. So who's right? Me circa yesterday or me circa now? I clicked through to a bunch of personal pages and nobody seemed to have a photo, which makes me suspicious.

If it's not allowed, how would I go about deleting it? --Masterofzen 18:00, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Many people have self-photos on their user pages. See here, and here, and here and here just to name a few.  Also check out the Facebook.  Joyous 18:20, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * Well! Many thanks for the reassurance. --Masterofzen 19:48, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Just don't abuse to host a personal photo gallery and you're okay. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 23:04, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Alignment issues
Is there any way to make the TOC appear to the right of the first image on Pulaski Skyway (if it will fit), but have Introduction below the image? Thanks for any help. --SPUI 13:52, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Since there's already a big honkin' table on the right, I think stuffing in an image as well is overkill. Also, articles really need to start with a short definition paragraph outside of any section. I've moved things around a bit; let me know what you think. JRM 14:30, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)
 * Eh, I see your point. I like where you put the image; it definitely makes sense in the trucks section. I guess my main concern though is that on bigger screens the text will end up being shorter vertically than the pictures, and nothing will match. Though I can make the pictures smaller... why not? --SPUI 14:47, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Porting work
Not many people may be aware of this, but we have a lot of work to do moving information to Wikipedia. While browsing the Alphabetical index, I noticed three pages displaying the porting status of three free information sources:


 * Status of the porting of U.S. Dept of State info
 * Status of the porting of the CIA World Factbook
 * Status of FOLDOC import

I'm sure there are others as well. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 06:48, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Template:TV Listing
I am trying to create Template:TV Listing but the link isn't working properly. This is possibly a technical error, but I need someone to look it over. I'm using Yahoo! TV Listings, which allows me to avoid specifying a timezone or a cable station or sign up for that matter. By far, I think it's the least intrustive. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:40, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I think it may just be too ugly for the MediaWiki URL parser. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 07:38, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Creation vs. evolution debate
talk:Creation vs. evolution debate. We are having some major NPOV problems on this page, and any help would be appreciated. Also, user user:Ungtss just violated the 3 revert rule and has admitted in the discussion that he has been being a troll. I don't know how to find a sysop to enforce the rule, but anyone who wants to check out the discussion page would be welcome. Bensaccount 21:59, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Ungtss may have violated rules, but on the appropriate content of the article, I believe he is entirely correct, so I, for one will not block him for this. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:19, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Just for the record, Ungtss has admitted to trolling in the discussion and should not even be writing on this article considering he has admitted to being biased toward one side of the debate. Bensaccount 23:06, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Remember that, while being biased is one thing, consistently injecting your bias into articles is another. It's possible to write from the NPOV regardless of your own bias. &mdash; Matt Crypto 23:18, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

With that in mind, look at the history of Creation vs. evolution debate and note that user:Ungtss stands out as the most major contributor. Bensaccount 23:39, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

stolen Wikipedia material
I remember at some point seeing a page that listed abuses -- Wikipedia material elsewhere on the web that was stolen wholesale and not attributed to Wikipedia at all. I found such a site:

http://www.e-para%6eoids.com/s/st/stranger_in_a_strange_land.html

The material on this site about the Robert Heinlein book was stolen word-for-word from Wikipedia.

I want to report this problem however I now cannot find the page where I'm supposed to report it. Help!


 * If you'd read the article till the bottom you'd find: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Wikipedia. Thus it's just one of many mirrors of Wikipedia material, and already listed on Mirrors and forks. Note that it's perfectly legal to copy Wikipedia material provided you give credit to your source. andy 23:07, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes, thank you. Mirrors and Forks was the page I was trying to find, I remembered seeing this page or possibly the (now outdated) "low compliance" page before.  Actually I did look on the e-paranoids page for the reference to the GDFL and link to Wikipedia but somehow missed it even though it was right there in the footer.  Thanks for your help.

Big Bertha.
The index has the words Big Bertha and this brings up articles on the large gun used by the Germans during the 1914/18 war.

There is, however another Big Bertha which was the nickname given to a steam locomotive with a 0-10-0 configuration and used as a banker on the Lickey Hills south of Birmingham. How do I get that new page started???

Jack Hill 09.12.04


 * Just click on Big Bertha (locomotive) to get it started. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 21:39, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * There's also a well-known saloon racing car called Big Bertha, though perhaps more famouse in its later Baby Bertha form. I've been planning to write these articles for ages, but haven't got around to it yet (actual proper research required). So eventually we could need a Big Bertha dismbiguation page - maybe bear that in mind.Graham 23:54, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The word "bristle"
Look at the index and the word bristle only brings up the town of Bristol relating to the mode of speech

This seems rather strange as of course bristles are things used in brushes of all kinds So how does one start a new page dealing with bristles per se. ????

Jack Hill


 * You are redirected to the page "Bristol". At the top of the page is a line saying (Redirected from Bristle). Click on the link to go to the "Bristle" page. And edit that as usual. Be sure to change the redirect there in a link to Bristol. Something like:
 * This article is on bristles. For the British city, go to Bristol. and keep that line at the top of the page.

-- [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 11:31, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Removing 'spam links' from external links
I recently started contributing to a few areas of Wikipedia. I noticed on one of the pages the external links where pointing to sites very low on content, full of pay-per-click ads and scraped data from the DMOZ.

I know for a fact that this topic has a particularly high concentration of listings in the DMOZ so there are a huge number of high quality resources associated with the region.

Obviously half the answer is to put up the quality links but what about removing the spam - I realise this is a relatively subjective desicion but at some point, someone has to make the decision.

Suggestions on protocol? --Surfgatinho 09:34, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * External links should be the best the web has to offer. If an article is linking to low content sites, then they should be deleted. I suggest you just be bold and remove them, noting the reason in the edit summary, but if you want to be careful you can move them to talk for discussion. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 11:16, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

How start Wrap-around?
Currently when I start a new article, all of my sentences stretch out to the right for miles! How do I install "wrap around" so that my line fits within the six-inch wide box, and then automatically goes to the next line? Can someone post a FAQ regarding this matter, please? --Flagman


 * The behaviour of the edit box is solely down to your browser. Which browser are you using? Maybe it has a setting somewhere to alter this, though by the sound of it it's just a bug. Try using an alternative browser and see if the problem remains. Graham 04:43, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Assuming you mean when you are writing an article, go to Special:Preferences, click on "editing", and set the width of your edit box appropriately. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:34, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about when you Save/Preview, don't begin any lines with a space or a tab (see Chaim Bar-Lev history). Niteowlneils 22:13, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pliny 1883
I am interested in a conversation with someone who has done the research for the entry on Pliny the elder. I am interested if a pendant I have with Pliny on one side and 1883 on the other has value. JFKoplin 12/8/2004  jfkoplin@comcast.net

Assistance from a Greek speaking user needed
Hi. I have started this article on a Greek person. As it is standard in Wikipedia when writing articles on people/places/etc. whose native alphabet is not the Roman, I would like to add to the article the name of this person as it is written in Greek. Most unfortunatelly for me, I don't speak Greek, and thus I'd like to request the assistance from a Greek user. If someone who speaks Greek would be so kind as to visit the article and add the Greek form of the name, I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks in advance. Regards, Redux 03:38, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * You might contact one of the people listed at Translators_available. I doubt they monitor the Village Pump. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:31, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, if you're lucky someone might just happent to read your request! Just added his Greek name. Adia 06:42, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

help for poetry page!!!
Somebody messed up the poetry page. it now says somethings about roses and violets and "poo". please, someone, help get the old poetry page back!!! THANKS
 * I've fixed it. You could have fixed it yourself, see How to revert a page to an earlier version.-gadfium 23:49, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The movie called Harlan county U.S.A.
I am looking for a copy of the movie "Harlan County U.S.A. I have had no luck finding this movie.  Any help on where to get it would be great.  If you can help  email me at hotrod701802@yahoo.com


 * Wikipedia isn't meant for this purpose, but three minutes on Google turned up: and on Amazon: . You have heard of Google, right? Graham 00:16, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Suppressing certain items in user CSS
How can I suppress certain items in my user CSS file? Specifically, I would like to stop seeing certain obtrusive metadata templates, especially, that tell me things I can already see at first glance. (On the other hand I would still like to see important warnings like and  &mdash;I can't necessarily tell if an article is biased or inaccurate.) If it's at all possible, how would I go about hiding anything wrapped in, say,  ? &#8212;No-One Jones 12:54, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Like this:

/* hide anything inside  ... */   #cleanup { display: none; } /* hide anything inside  ... */   .cleanup { display: none; }
 * &mdash;AlanBarrett 14:14, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Many thanks. &#8212;No-One Jones 15:17, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Who has the time to update the offline reports?
Unfortunately we seem to be short on users with access to the database. I'm asking for someone to update the offline reports against a recent version of the database. (I can't do this because I have a slow connection and have other Wikipedia tasks to do.) [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 07:03, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Help with possible copyvios
I'm a bit out of my depth on this one. I wikified the article Davy Spillane which was contributed by User:Ogg, and its style made me wonder if it had been copied from elsewhere. I mentioned this on user talk:Ogg and Ogg readily admitted that it was originally copied from another site, though in comparing the two it has been changed quite a bit in the details, though retaining much the same style and structure as the original. As far as I can see the original text (on ) is not copyright free. Ogg also contributed a number of other biography articles which seem to show a similar style and lack of wikification that suggest they were cut and pasted from elsewhere, but with changes. I just don't know if these violate WP's copyright policies or not - my feeling is that they do. Could somebody a bit more au fait with the issues take a look at the pages (and the discussion at user talk:Ogg) and see whether anything should be done. Thanks Graham 22:29, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I guess after three days with no response, it means nobody cares. Fair enough, I'll drop it. Graham 00:09, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Muslims took over all Islam-related Wikipedia content
I believe the greatest strength of an encyclopedia is its NPOV. However, all Islam-related Wikipedia pages (Islam, Muslim, Infidel, Islamophobia, Qur'an, et al) are edited and by rabid Muslims with strong POVs. I am not religious, and I'm deeply saddened by this fact. Not really sure what can be done about it. As an example, it's a well known fact that Qur'an prescribes killing infidel, but none of these pro-Muslim sites will allow you to learn this, rather important aspect of Islam, and instead are ranting about anti-muslim intolerance, etc. no end. I am just one man and I can not spend 100% of my time sitting on Wiki and fighting these bigots who use this great site to advocate religion, so I'm asking for your help. User:68.107.102.129


 * This anonymous user has been systematically vandalising articles about Islam, but don't take my word for it look at the contributions:
 * Islamophobia: Islamophobia is the fear of having your head cut off.
 * Infidel: Islam calls for the killing of infidels, which may be the reason why Muslim countries rarely live in piece their non-Muslim neighbors.
 * Qur'an: The Qur'an is the training manual for terrorists.
 * That should be enough evidence, but there is more. I think the user has it backwards, they are the source of the problem. Edward 12:47, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not vandalizing anything. I'm trying to correct the POV articles.
 * Muslims should not be allowed to edit Islam - they have a POV and that's why they are Muslims (Just like Christians should not be allowed to edit Christianity).
 * For example there is a fella policing Islam-related content who calls himself 'Mustafaa' - he says on his user page his POV is about some finer aspects of Qur'an, while it's still obvious he's a Muslim with a huge POV (he's religious.... hello?)


 * P.S. Stop deleting what I'm saying here. I have a local copy. Information wants to be free. Truth wants to be heard. User:68.107.102.129


 * People with strong opinions should be prepared to sign their name on their postings. Maxx 14:03, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * It is daft to say that somebody with a religious view is not allowed to edit the associated article - they know things about that topic (more than most because it's their religion) and should therefore be allowed to continue editting them. It does not mean to say that their edits are POV.  As for your comments being removed I think you'll find that you were reverted for removing comments against you. violet/riga (t) 13:59, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * There are plenty of scholars who study Islam and know more about it than religious fanatics. (I know a thing or two about Islam, having studied it in college, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert). Anywho, the ratio of non-prejudiced (academic, say) scholars of a religion like Islam to Muslims is too low, and if Muslims are allowed to continue policing Islam-related wikipedia content (which they do with a religious fervor, of course), Wikipedia will never have a NPOV on these issues. IOW it is daft to say that someone with a religious view is allowed to edit the associated article if NPOV is the real, not imaginary, goal. User:68.107.102.129


 * Is this what you learnt in college - ? What college did you go to to learn that? -Xed 14:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Terrorists destroyed the WTC. Don't let them take away our freedom of speech! (I realize that freedom is probably an empty sound to people who call themselves subjects as opposed to citizens )


 * This has nothing to do with free speach. You vandalised that page. Wikipedia is not a soapbox for your opions. You are always free to download the wikimedia softwear and start your own wiki. I also fail to see the relivance of the britsh constitutional system to the topic uder disscussionGeni 15:25, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * It's speech, not speach; Relevance, not relivance; opinions, not opions (And to "Londoner", 'Edward', it's islamophobic, not islamophic). It's clear that you are all a foreign horde out to destroy our western freedoms.


 * You'll have to explain what you mean by your bracketed comment. - Xed 15:27, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ffs, it's just a troll. phobia: commenting typos as "you are all a foreign horde out to destroy our western freedoms". I say. ignore him, or block him. dab 18:41, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

i am sick of the troll from 68.107.102.129; all s/he does is deface entries and still refuses to show his or her face to the community by even bothering to register. why is s/he still around? sometimes it might be appropriate to BLOCK someone. em zilch 20041128 1517 (EST)

Clearly this is trolling. We don't have (or want) articles suggesting on the basis of Leviticus that Jews and Christians are out to kill people for wearing poly-cotton slacks, either. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:45, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

I have been working on the Islamic articles -- I'm a Buddhist. Yes, there have been a number of editors (usually anonymous IPs) who try to turn the articles into religious brochures. There are also anonymous IPs who try to deface the articles and turn them into anti-Islamic rants. The current complainant has vandalized the Islam article twice within the last hour. Zora 21:31, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * if you are a Buddhist, as you say, how do you explain your obsession with Islam-related articles? I simply don't believe you. To the readers: I tried adding the following to Islam, which is 100% verifiable: " The Muslims are unique in that their holy book tells them to kill members of other religions  " Please check the references. Both of them support this FACT. (There is no opinion involved). In Quran, see verse 8:12, and don't let Islamists lie to you about "context". See for yourself, what the context is. There are dozens of verses like that one in the Islamic holy book.


 * in response to your query, anonymous from 68.107.102.129, i am a buddhist & i am interested in islam-related articles. you obviously aren't a muslim - what's your excuse? your other comments here and elsewhere demonstrate you are about as far from a neutral point of view as you can get & you keep defacing websites. why do you feel the need to do this, and can't someone block this troll? em zilch 20041210 1805 (EST)

Talk:Bombing of Dresden in World War II
There is a straw poll taking place on Talk:Bombing of Dresden in World War II please read what has been written and vote if it interests you. Philip Baird Shearer 20:19, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism by 202.156.2.171
202.156.2.171 is vandalising computing articles. I've been reverting his changes as soon as I see them. But I'm going out now. Could someone do something about this guy. AlistairMcMillan 11:14, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=202.156.2.171 AlistairMcMillan 11:17, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Syrup
Hello fellow Wikipedians.

There is a discussion/debate going on on the Talk:List of words having different meanings in British and American English about whether or not the Cockney rhyming slang word 'syrup', meaning wig or hairpiece (coming from 'syrup of figs - wig), should be included in this particular list or not.

I WLD would like some further opinions as the current four contributors to the discussion WLD, violet/riga, Necrothesp, and Chris Q are in disagreement, but no group is in the majority.

Please accept my apologies if this is the wrong or inappropriate place to ask. WLD 09:50, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * violet/riga pointed out this should have been in WP:RFC. I have put an entry there.  Sorry for going to the wrong place. -- WLD 23:43, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Coloured text
How does one change the colour of text with the Wiki Markup? And, can this be done on signatures too? Please reply on my talkpage. Thanks, --Gabriel (please reply on my talkpage!!) 13:38, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Check with User:Aranel who made her signature red on purpose, because she likes the color. Mgm|(talk) 09:33, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Complex templating stuff
Wikimedia support I guess, rather than wikipedia, but...:

Is it possible to create a template which takes a page-name as its argument, and inserts the wikitext of that page into the output?

I'm trying to create a collaborative document, with each chapter/section etc. on its own page.

To obtain the final document (for printing, etc.) I'd like to include the text of each document's chapters, into the document itself.

(The reason it can't all go into one page, is that each section may be included by reference in several documents)

I can create a template "subDocument" which links to other documents, creates the right titles, etc. but I can't seem to "include the wikitext of the linked document here ".

(I've been though everything I can find on the help/templates page, and I'm trying this with the most recent development version, not the wikipedia itself)

thanks,

Ojw 19:07, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how far this applies outside Wikipedia, but check out my user page. The boxes on there are included from a subpage of my user page, so I think that simply using template syntax " " is likely to work if a template by the same name doesn't exist on the wiki you use. Mgm|(talk) 19:38, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)


 * Just use the regular template syntax, but add a colon before the page name to override the default "Template:" namespace. For example,  .  Or, if you really wanted the wikitext (as you said) rather than the result of interpreting the wikitext (as I suspect you meant), then use  .  &mdash;AlanBarrett 07:38, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Author Request
Why is it that you do not have a listing of the author on the article window? I ask this because I was hoping that you could tell me who wrote the article: "Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic". I would like to write to him a question I have.

According to the history page at the top of the article the author is User:Oystertoadfish. The reason we don't list the authors directly in the article window is because this is a wiki. Anyone can edit and listing all authors within the article can become quite problematic for some of the more popular and some of the older articles. Mgm|(talk) 19:54, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Additions for Seattle
Moved to Talk:Seattle, Washington

taking credit for changes
I posted an edit to a page, but I forgot to sign in before making the edit. As a result, the IP address shows up instead of my username. Is there a way I can replace that IP with my username after the fact?

Thanks --Kendrick Hang 16:28, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Changing attribution for an edit. Note that this can only be done if you're still using the same IP address as you were when you made the edit, and also note that there's a bit of a backlog on that page. &#8212;No-One Jones 00:37, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Norman Lowell & Impe_rium Eur_opa and racist theories
Hi, This is about the fresh page Norman Lowell referencing Impe_rium Eur_opa. Please do a search on that without underscores. It seams that it's a racist organisation. From front page : A Europid bond forged through Spirituality closely followed by Race, nurtured through High Culture, protected by High Politics, enforced by the The Elite.

I don't see anything regarding promotion, referencing, of racism in the WP. Should something be done about that ? Is there a clear policy in such a suspicion case ?

Personaly I would shocked to see even indirect passive promotion through WP. Gtabary 15:11, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * the policay as always is NPOV (the imperium Europa article currently fails on this) there are articles on the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and jew watch amounst others. As always we apply NPOV. No I don't like these organisation but I don't like Nazism either but I thinmk you would agree we should have an article on itGeni 15:55, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * (via edit conflict) We have all sorts of articles on racists and racist organizations. I mean, if there were dictates against writing about any form of racism or any racists, there would go the articles on Adolf Hitler and Nazism (for starters). As long as the articles are NPOV, verifiable, and reasonably noteworthy (of enough importance that a Wikipedia article would not significantly raise the subject's public profile), I don't see the problem.
 * If your question is about linking to racist sites, it makes sense to link to them in the proper context, i.e. articles about racists and racism. Links to racist sites inserted into articles on, say, Judaism or Martin Luther King, Jr. (as people try to do every so often) are invariably removed. &#8212;No-One Jones 15:59, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for precisions. I understand and agree there can be articles on the subject of racisme. In this case I have the feeling (only IMO) that article is just there for the sake of an extra link to a site. In other words: article is not really worthy, it's a kind of cheet just to have one extra link. Because it's not openly saying "this is a link to racist theory stuff" I am suspicious about good faith. Maybe a clean-up or a vfd ? Gtabary 17:29, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * cleanup if anything.Geni 18:03, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Spam filter
While trying to revert vandalism to Paris Hilton, I keep getting my edits refused by some "Spam Filter", a feature I've never run into previously. Can someone fix it? &mdash; Matt Crypto 18:29, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Announcements. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 20:47, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Interesting, but this doesn't help. I'm having the same problem, the URL www.1stop-penguins.com is being blocked because it begins "www.1stop-". This is silly. How do I contact a Meta sysop? I've looked around the meta site, and can't find an equivalent of the Village Pump there. I could pick one at random, but that doesn't seem the best way of doing things to me. They might be on holiday. I have put a note on the meta:Talk:Spam_blacklist page. That should be linked from the Spam warning page that you get when an edit is blocked, if that is the proper conduit. Linking to a list of administrators is unhelpful.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 12:26, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Also, the spam filter should not block edits to talk pages. I will raise this on bugzilla.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 12:27, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The World at/At War
A nice person turned The World at War into a redirect to The World At War, declining to merge the two articles. The "at" title is arguably the correct one (and has more history and had more content), so I'm tempted to just revert the redirect, merge content from "At", and make that the redirect. Is that the right thing to do? Thoughts from the floor? Any policy niceties to observe? -- Avaragado 21:42, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * In this case it is more preferable to merge the data before redirecting to an appropriate title. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 22:28, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)


 * Why? I'm not sure I understand. The appropriate title is the one with all the history and more of the content: the one that's just been blanked and turned into a redirect. -- Avaragado 09:14, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * In that case, what you suggested was the right thing to do. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 20:00, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Question about what is suitable for Wikipedia
I am a member of a community of scenario designers for a variety of Real Time Strategy games. Many games (RTS's especially) have a "Scenario Editor" included which allows users make custom scenarios (essentially miniature games). Examples are computer games like Neverwinter Nights and Age of Mythology. Anyway, a friend recently linked me to wikipedia.com and suggested that it was an ideal resource for us. Scenario design usually has little to no developer support, so it's almost always up to the community to help out new designers and compile information on the subject. The suggestion was that for the next game our team moves to, we should start a wiki which allows people to combine together information on design and make it easily accessible. This won't be for just over a year, so there isn't a rush, but I'm not sure what course we should pursue to make it a reality. A couple ideas:

1) Dedicate a section of the Wikipedia encyclopedia to it. I'm not sure if computer game information like this is worthy of an encyclopedia, though.

2) Find some other public wiki which is dedicated to the correct type of information

3) Start our own wiki. We might be able to manage it, but this would be totally community run, so money is nonexistant.

Again, I appologize for my mistakes and inability to follow proper wikipedia protocols. Like I said, I've been here for only a few hours.

--68.147.162.246 06:59, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks, our sister project, is a better alternative than Wikipedia. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 08:03, Dec 12, 2004 (UTC)


 * There's also http://www.wikicities.com/ Wikicities, which is operated by Wikipedia's benevolent dictator, Jimmy Wales. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 18:40, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * This project is most definitely not suitable for Wikipedia. But there are bound to be better alternative. Check out the SwitchWiki, a more or less complete list of all public wikis. There might be one for you. Otherwise, if you don't find the wiki, but are serious that you need one, check out http://wiki.taoriver.net or any other WikiFarm. On a WikiFarm you can have your own Wiki for free or for a relatively small hosting fee (I am sure you can afford $100/year or something like that). Just look around. Paranoid 19:58, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Creating a template
I wish to create an End Spoiler template to show the end of a spoiler. However, it can be seen that I was not terribly successful. Can anyone help me? Thank you very much, Y0u 13:43, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)


 * Follow-up- I managed to make this by copying and pasting the spoiler template and changing some text in it...how is it? To see how I used it, go to the page Grandia.  (If you played the game, you would see why that was a spoiler.)  Thank you!

I'm confused by redirect from page Nicholas Lemann
to a stub page for one of his books (The Big Test). I was thinking of editing an article on Lemann to include other things besides that one book. If the redirect is in error, how do you edit a redirect? (Whenever I go to the page Nicholas Lemann, I am redirected...). Thanks. Morris 23:41, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)


 * Go here. For future reference, when you see "(redirected from foo)" at the top of the page, you can click on "foo" and edit the redirect. grendel|khan 23:43, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Special:Recentchangeslinked/Special:Whatlinkshere
What is meant by Special:Recentchangeslinked/Special:Whatlinkshere? --Sgeo | Talk 21:40, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Template:Google
It seems that Template:Google has been used in the past, but the seems to indicate it couldn't have been used at the dates they were used... --Sgeo | Talk 21:13, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * It was created on July 12 and deleted and deleted at the end of October. It was listed for deletion on October 20 at Templates for deletion. The archive can be found at Templates_for_deletion/Log/Deleted. Everyone voted for deletion. (Apparently it was deleted without removing all references to it, however.) -Aranel (" Sarah ") 21:47, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Since the re-creation seems to be exactly the same thing, perhaps it should be deleted? --Sgeo | Talk 22:18, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

The Use of a Picture
I am writing a book on the Bible as a literary masterpiece. In the book I refer to Rembrandt's painting Nightwatch. Is it possible to use your digital picture within the book? Do I need to obtain copyright privileges from someone.

Thank you.

--64.24.190.36 16:19, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * If you click on the image in the article on the Night Watch (painting), it takes you to the image description page for Image:RembrandtNightwatch.jpg. That page states that the image is in the public domain in at least part of the United States.


 * However, in many jurisdictions, the Rijksmuseum may be able to claim copyright on their photograph. If you're seeking international distribution, I'd consult with the publisher or an attorney before committing to the use of that version of the image. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 16:57, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ghetto I need assistance with...
I need assistance with the article Ghetto. Specifically I need a list of white musicians who were born in Ghettos, especially, non black-american ghettos (Not eminem). Heh, sorry, all my knowledge of artists from the ghetto are black americans. :) (please respond in my talk page and in Talk:Ghetto thanks. Project2501a 15:53, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Question about licensing photographs of artworks
I was helpfully prompted by User:Denni to add a licensing tag to a bird photo I uploaded. I did that, but then thought of the image of a mosaic I uploaded for the article on Eversholt, Bedfordshire. I placed the following text there:

"I took the photo of this mosaic and would be delighted to release it under the GFDL. However, the photo is of an artwork that is part of the structure of a building in the UK. The artwork was commissioned by an ad-hoc committee that no longer exists, with money raised by donation and grant. The artwork was physically constructed in 2000 by not only the artist but also about 100 villagers. The artist is still alive. The building is administered by another committee, but who actually owns it is not clear to me. Given all this, am I violating any reproduction rights by photographing the artwork? I have no idea."

If I take a photo of an artwork, and am not clear whether I violate anyone's intellectual property rights by doing so, and then publish the photo on wikipedia, what license can I grant in good faith on the wiki page? Thanks! Emrys2 09:46, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd say the best you're going to be able to do is fair use. As the work was constructed in 2000, the mosaic itself is still most definitely under copyright unless explicitly disclaimed. Your photograph is a derived work of the original, and in the US (where the servers are) may not even qualify for its own copyright (Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corporation).


 * Given that it's a map of Eversholt, made for public display in Eversholt, and used on the Eversholt article for educational purposes, the fair use claim is probably fairly strong. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 17:03, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ah, that takes me on a trail! Fair use is a US concept which does not apply in the UK. Fair dealing is covered in UK law by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48) which says "Representation of certain artistic works on public display. 62.—(1) This section applies to— (a) buildings, and (b) sculptures, models for buildings and works of artistic craftsmanship, if permanently situated in a public place or in premises open to the public. (2) The copyright in such a work is not infringed by— (a) making a graphic work representing it, (b) making a photograph or film of it, or (c) broadcasting or including in a cable programme service a visual image of it. (3) Nor is the copyright infringed by the issue to the public of copies, or the broadcasting or inclusion in a cable programme service, of anything whose making was, by virtue of this section, not an infringement of the copyright." So, I guess that I am not violating copyright when I photograph a mosiac on the side of a building in the UK, and "broadcast" that work in wikipedia. If I am not violating copyright of the artwork, then I own the copyright of the photo, the image that I have made [I hope]. That means that I can grant reproduction rights under GFDL. Yes? Emrys2 21:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Website hacked
It seems that some individual with nothing better to do with their time has hacked a few pages.. primarily my NS economy.. also and even the dealing with vandalism link has been defaced.. AS we speak, my region disappeared. Any help?


 * I'm guessing that by now things have been dealt with, but the relevant page for vandalism to Wikipedia is Vandalism in progress. This kind of stuff happens all the time. But you seem to be pointing to pages not on Wikipedia; that would be more of a Reference desk question. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:37, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Template:Google
How do I make Template:Google work for search terms of more than one word? --Sgeo | Talk 02:53, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * Not, just use a manual link. See Template_talk:Google. &#0xfeff; --fvw * 03:34, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)
 * Err.... I made Template:Google, and was wondering if it would be possible to fix it. --Sgeo | Talk 21:06, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Not Copyvio?
Can someone please check that Megaesophagus isn't a copyvio? --Sgeo | Talk 02:24, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC) (Yes, I know it's my article, ...)


 * Um...shouldn't you be able to answer that question? -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:35, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why does this work?
Talk:Sollog/fullarchive. I saw the same trick being used with the VP, but I thought that == == was the highest level usable. --Sgeo | Talk 22:35, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * = = exists but is discouraged. -- Nigelj 01:59, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Incorrect blocking
I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, since I'm brand new here. I just created an account, and when I made my first effort at enhancing an article, I got the response that I had been blocked by AllyUnion for "vandalism, pov edits." I tried to E-mail this person by using the link but got the response that it was an invalid address. Since this is my first time here, AllyUnion's block must be a mistake. Can someone help me? According to the block, my IP address is 64.12.117.8. Thank you. TheLastWord 18:31, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing that some anonymous individual was using that same IP address and was indeed guilty of "vandalism, pov edits." We should be able to fix this. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:34, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * There were some edits which were vandalism on various articles, which had deleted entire sections of the article. It was only a 24 hour block.  I already unblocked it, so I don't see any problem here. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:46, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Spamfilter: "go see the cabal, bye"
I thoroughly despise this. I understand the need for preventing spamvertising, but I have serious issues with the procedure. Basically, I'm thrown to a page with admins, and then what? Should I pick someone whose handle sounds nice? Should I mass-spam talk pages?

Rubbish. Create a separate page for posting admin requests that can be monitored. Remove completed requests. Also remove dubious requests and respond on the originator's talk page. Something like that.

In particular, I got this message while editing Chinese room. This existing link was spit out in disgust by the filter: acheteeteepee://members.aol.com/wutsamada/disserta.html. Yuck, an AOL site! High probability of spam, so go away. Thanks for editing Wikipedia.

Unblock this particular link, and streamline the procedure. Or else make the spamfilter less conservative, but force people to confirm external links instead via one of those nifty human-only authorization thingies (I forget what they're called). Anything. Just not this. I'm basically blocked from editing this article because someone thought that all AOL members are spammers. Je ne suis pas un happy camper. 82.92.119.11 13:19, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The spam filter is still new and it's bound to have some bugs. If you want something changed, please visit http://meta.wikimedia.org where the list is being maintained. BTW, according to my browser the linked site doesn't exist. Mgm|(talk) 13:27, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * *groan* That means both me and the spamfilter are being stupid, but since the spamfilter is a program, it gets to be criticized more harshly :-) I don't consider any of this a bug, just misfeatures. I don't have time to go discuss on meta. I edit and I'm gone. This is my first, last and only post on the spamfilter. I'm the antisocial bastard who tells you everything is wrong and then does nothing to help people out. I do apologize for this, but will not mend my wicked ways. :-) Keep up the good work, y'all. 82.92.119.11 13:31, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Yeah, for the time being the spamfilter is definately more hassle than it's worth. A Luckily, %-encoding a few letters of the URL generally helps (which the spammers will probably find out soon enough too, but for now it's useful). The spam filter is seriously fucked right now by the way, it's blocking imdb and geocities! &#0xfeff; --fvw * 13:37, 2004 Dec 20 (UTC)
 * The link works for me. IN response to 82.92.119.11, your comments are appreciated. I am often being that antisocial bastard too. :) But this time I actually tried to help and organise the Talk page for the spam list. The spam filter is a new thing and initially I didn't like how it was handled, but together we can make this relatively painless. BTW, can anyone really change the spam link template so that it's more helpful, explaining, why the spam filter was added (Google spamming), apologise for the inconvenience (particularly with existing links), clarify how to request the particular filter expression removed. And it should also point to the meta:Talk:Spam_blacklist. And add a suggestion that the link be temporarily added as plain text. Paranoid 13:49, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:Book reference
I'd like to start using the Wikipedia Template:Book reference. It looks like this: {Book reference|Author= |Year= |Title= |Publisher= |ID=ISBN }}. I am currently using it on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and there is a problem with it's rendering. The last reference simply comes out of the database as "Template:Book reference". I have stuck the references in a template themselves so I could put it in other places more easily and see if the problem occured there as well. This is Template:MBTI citations The problem only happens in the article on the MBTI. Further, the database spits it out properly on preview; the problem only occurs after save. I will put the template here so we can see how it should render. Have I reached a maximum limit for database queries or some other problem? This doesn't seem to be it as I can add as many citations as I want and it is only the last one that doesn't render properly. I even tried changing the order of them, and it always simply does it to the last one! Here it is then:, working properly:

Thank you --Alterego 00:21, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I recall that there is a limit on the # of one template usable within a page. If I remember correct, the # is five. Does that have to do with this problem by any chance? The page currently is calling multiple other pages, and it is hard to review everything quickly, but my guess is that there are some other part of the page using the Book reference tag.


 * One way you get around it, if that is the case, is to create something like Templace:Book reference2 with the same content. From the sixth template on, you use this second template. If you need to use more than 10 book references, well, you can make Book reference3 template. Hope it helps. Tomos 13:19, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment Tomos. I'm going to do a quick test, inserting ten templates (at a tiny font size) to see if this is the issue:


 * In preview it looks like like the issue of five is the culprit! Let's see what happens when I stick the  in again:


 * I am now trying your solution of creating Template:Book reference2. It is hard coded, but it appears that the method might work.  If so, the first five of these next ten citations should work:


 * Tomos you are positively brilliant! :) Thanks for your help -- [[Alterego &#9786; ]] 20:30, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the big praise :-) . I'm glad that it helped. Tomos 22:37, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Can this article be salvaged?
Someone named Mustaber has arrived at Wikipedia to propagate the Ahmadiyya variant of Islam and has created an article called:

Sacred writings of Mirza Ghulam Ahamd of Qadian The Promised Messiah & Mehdi

which is nothing but quotes from the founder. My first thought was that this article was a blatant violation of NPOV and should be proposed for deletion. Then I started to wonder if I was too quick on the draw and if there were any way that it could be salvaged. Advice?

The same user has turned the article re the founder of the religion into hagiography, but that can be fixed. Zora 22:59, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it should be transwikid to Wikisource? Jayjg 23:31, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * How does one go about doing that, or suggesting that to the powers that be? Zora 02:52, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Simply copy and paste it to wikisource and post a redirect from that page to the wikisource page. (You can do interwiki redirects). -- [[Alterego &#9786; ]] 20:17, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Need help looking up scientific articles
I'd appreciate if someone with access to scientific publication databases (anyone working or studying in a university is likely to have it) could look up some papers relevant to the Polyphasic sleep article. If anyone could either summarize them for the article, or just copy their text somewhere so that other users could acquaint themselves with these papers, that would be really splendid! The titles of the papers are (from Talk:Polyphasic sleep):


 * Sleep inertia. Patricia Tassi, Alain Muzet, Sleep Medicine Reviews, Volume 4, Issue 4, August 2000, Pages 341-353
 * The effects of a 20 min nap in the mid-afternoon on mood, performance and EEG activity. Hayashi, M. / Watanabe, M. / Hori, T., Clinical Neurophysiology, Feb 1999
 * Effects of sleep interruption on REM-NREM cycle in nocturnal human sleep. Miyasita, A. / Fukuda, K. / Inugami, M., Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, Aug 1989
 * Attempts to modify the sleep patterns of the rat. Webb, W.B. / Friedman, J., Physiology and Behavior, Apr 1971
 * Pre-sleep cognitive intrusions and treatment of onset-insomnia. Sanavio, E., Behaviour Research and Therapy, Jan 1988

Thanks in advance. Paranoid 11:42, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks to Brian for helping. Paranoid 13:51, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Search logs at Wikipedia?
I am a researcher at a university institute. My team conducts research on next generation search engines. I'm seeking assistance on this question: would it be possible to obtain search logs from Wikipedia for non-profit research purposes, i.e. whatever strings people have entered in the "search" box. This would not include IPs or anything like that, only the search strings. Who could I contact about this? Search logs are used e.g. to analyze queries and conduct realistic search experiments. Wikipedia would naturally receive full attribution in case the logs were used. MakyoDetector 16:33, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Hi MakyoDetector. I don't know how you would obtain those logs, (or if they are kept), but you may be interested in the search referral log as well. Here it is for October. Warning, that's a ~50MB mostly text file. --Alterego 01:16, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That looks like a search log to me. Thank you! --MakyoDetector 10:47, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Eh, that looks like a log of what strings typed into search engines have gotten people to WP. --SPUI 12:35, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Apothecary article missing
There used to be an entry for Apothecary (it is in the Google cache) but it no longer exists. I don't understand how this has happened and why? --mervyn 16:37, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The contents was apparently transwiki'd to Wiktionary, as the article was just a dictionary definition of the word. You can find it now at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Apothecary. andy 22:44, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * It's a pity it wasn't copied to Wikitionary, with the stub left to be expanded. Am I missing a reason why this is not a better option? -- WLD 23:40, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Apparently it was speedy-deleted. It should not have been. I will restore it. I can't stop anyone from putting it on VfD if they disagree, but if you flesh it out a bit, it will probably stay, or at worst be subject to a redirect-and-merge. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:23, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)


 * There is a very interesting account of the history of the Apothecary in Britannica 11ed, so readily available for downloading as the basis for expanding the article. It looks very reliable and was based on a history published in 1905. Also check if the Apothecarys of London have a web page. As a London Livery Company they still exist. Apwoolrich 12:02, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * That would be Worshipful Society of Apothecaries --Henrygb 09:50, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Links in the Toolbox
Would it be possible for a user to add links to their toolbox using their user js file? Could those links refer to custom functions in that file? -- 17:53, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * Look at User:Kate/myskin.js, the top part adds several new links to the sidebar. (Copy it to monobook.js rather than myskin.js if you use monobook).   &mdash; Kate Turner | Talk 17:59, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)


 * Thanks, although I am having some trouble with it. Thanks though -- 18:23, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * You may need to take some of the CSS attributes from User:Kate/myskin.css. I've also only tested it in Mozilla...   &mdash; Kate Turner | Talk 18:29, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)


 * It works now, thanks! -- 21:19, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Special:Search
Someone messed with Special:Search -- 23:13, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
 * Um.. could you be more specific?  &mdash; Kate Turner | Talk 03:21, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

Someone is slandering me
My online name is timotheus4 and someone keeps posting bad things about me here. Can something be done about this?


 * Could you point us to the pages where this slander is posted? I don't see any mention of your online name on this page, or in a Google search of the wikipedia domain (but references may have been added since Google last indexed us). You can remove any statements you feel slander you, or you can ask us to remove them, and you can also ask us to block the username or ip address of anyone posting such statements. It is unlikely that any reference to your name on Wikipedia is appropriate, although references to the Athenian general are valid in articles about Greek history. By the way, I'm also an Alpha Centauri fan.-gadfium 03:44, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I ask for assistance? (with writing)
Queries here seem to relate to "what should I do", "how do I", and "what is", so I'm unsure if this request is appropriate. I'd like to ask for assistance in bringing a set of articles up to a better standard of wikipedianess. The articles relate to computer and video games.

Please see the following if you are interested: --Slike 10:31, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Computer and video games
 * Talk:Computer_and_video_games
 * Talk:Computer_and_video_games
 * Talk:Computer_and_video_games
 * Category talk:Computer and video games


 * WikiProject Computer and Video Games and Gaming Collaboration fo the Week are good places to find like-minded people to help you. Mgm|(talk) 11:10, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you. --Slike 11:55, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oops! I made a boo-boo while uploading a picture.
I accidently uploaded a picture under the wonderfully undescriptive title of image:120_2004.JPG. (This is the filename given to the file by my digital camera.) I tried to move the image to a more descriptive filename, but it doesn't seem possible. Is there anything I can do?--Clipdude 02:49, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Re-upload with a better name and ask an admin (like me) to delete this one. Mgm|(talk) 08:18, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * I've deleted it now. Mgm|(talk) 08:23, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Sorry about that.-Clipdude 21:34, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Many reportedly minors edits by a user: don't what to do.
Hello. I noticed an edit of Holocaust by 17:05, 23 Dec 2004 User:SpookyMulder. I don't see the differences but... the diff shows many paragraphes are different. The edit is marked as "m"inore. I found that strange and had a look at user contribs and then... well I don't know what to think. Many many "minors" edits, which are shown as huge diffs in the diff visualisation, and I fail to see the diffs. All that at a pretty important speed. Is there something strange going on there or do I just not understand what it is ? Thanks for time. Gtabary 17:35, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * It looks like the edits are just removing extra spaces. Goplat 18:08, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Silly isn't it? I just did not see the diff! So I was wondering whether that was some bad stuff going on (vandalboot). Thanks for quick look. Gtabary 19:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Convert transparency color to white in image
Help! I've not got a sophisticated image program and I need some help with changing Image:Btrieve windows client arch.png's transparent color to white. Can someone do this and upload it for me? That would be great! - Ta bu shi da yu 04:07, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Done. &#0xfeff; --fvw * 04:12, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

Hmm...
Wasn't there supposed to be validation? --Sgeo 03:25, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're doing a very good job, everyone likes you, you look wonderful today. Apart from that I think the only validation we were supposed to be getting was unicode validation, and as en: is still on Latin 1 we don't see that. &#0xfeff; --fvw * 03:35, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)
 * I meant since the test wiki has(had?) article validation (test:Special:Validate), I thought 1.4 would have it. --Sgeo 03:47, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * It is part of 1.4, but it is disabled by default because "it's untenable, a hacky proof of concept that won't work at all in a sustainable fashion" according to Brion. Angela. 05:07, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

v