Help Page Patrollers are a group of Wikipedians who patrol the help desk and help users who have placed the {{helpme}} template on their talk pages. The patrol is an optional service. Patrollers can come and go, and there is no official sign up process.

Regular patrollers may add {{User HPP}} or {{user help desk}} to their user page:

This user is a help page patroller

This user volunteers at the
Wikipedia Help Desk.

What helpers can do

Make sure all messages are formatted correctly,
Answer questions,
Check the Help Me Category and answer questions from users,
Check archives

Patrollers

Add yourself with

#~~~ (Joined ~~~~~)

and if you are not using the userbox, add yourself to the Help Desk Patrol Category.

List

Levonscott User talk:Levonscott User:Levonscott (Joined 07:38, 21 August 2011 (UTC))[reply]
StewieGriffin! • Talk 07:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC) I'm Back Founder of the HPP[reply]
RyRy5 (talk) (Joined 00:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Hersfold ^(t/a/c) (Joined 21:41, 19 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Soxred93 | talk bot (Joined 19:57, 19 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
...... Dendodge.Talk^Help (Joined 09:34, 20 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Alexfusco⁵ (Joined 14:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Bauani (talk) (Joined 22:31, 20 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Kerotan ^{Leave Me a Message} Have a nice day :) (joined 06:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
::Manors:: talk to me (Joined 15:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions|Guest)} (Joined 02:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Teratornis (talk) (Joined 06:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) (Joined 01:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Mr. Green^{Hit Me Up}Userboxes (Joined 16:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Josh Powell (talk) (Joined 14:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
-- ShinmaWa^(talk) (Joined 19:47, 28 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
-- Natalya 22:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Active earlier this year, hope to regain that. Rudget (Help?) 13:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ChristopherJames2008 (talk) (Joined 13:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Iamzork (talk) (Joined 11:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Cedarvale1965-08 (talk) (Joined 02:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC))[reply]
:-) Stwalkerster [ talk ] (Joined 16:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC), but have been doing this for ages)[reply]
–thedemonhog talk • edits (Joined 18:13, 15 June 2008 (UTC); made twenty-three edits to the help desk page prior to joining the patrol)[reply]
IaM7DeadlySins (talk)
Scottydude _talk (Joined 02:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC))[reply]
TermyJW - The One and Only (Joined 13:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC))
Eric (mailbox) (Joined 04:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Etineskid (talk) (Joined:18:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC))[reply]
ukexpat (talk) (Joined 15:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Lego K^ontribs T^alk M (Joined 00:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Chamal ^talk _work (Joined 15:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC), but have been contributing to Help desk long before signing up here.[reply]
Genius 101 ^Guestbook (Joined 22:28, 18 October 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
-Porchcrop ^{(talk|contributions)} 04:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
$\xi ri\pi i\vartheta \alpha \xi$ (Joined 09:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC))[reply]
Unionhawk ^Talk ^E-mail 18:16, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
LbB (Joined 14:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC))
Mysdaao ^talk (Joined 15:50, 18 November 2009 (UTC))[reply]
Enti342 (talk) (Joined 21:30, 20 January 2010 (UTC))[reply]
-- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ (Joined 07:04, 3 April 2010 (UTC))[reply]
œ ^™ 23:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Bobby122 (talk) (Joined 15:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC))[reply]
Sainsf--Sainsf<^> (talk) 15:58, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Imagine Wizard (talk • contribs • count) Iway amway Imagineway Izardway. (Joined 13:43, 27 August 2010 (UTC))[reply]
John of Reading (talk) (Joined 22:01, 4 November 2010 (UTC))[reply]
—ASPENSTI—TALK—CONTRIBUTIONS (Joined 17:38, 2 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
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Boomer Vial^{Holla! We gonna ball!} (Joined 20:50, 24 February 2017 (UTC))[reply]
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November 4

Script display

I using explorer 7. Two days ago wikipedia started displaying in script. How do I change it back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.115.109.149 (talk) 00:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

--Space Channel 5: Macy Vs. Purge (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Searching Reference desk archives

Is there something like the HD archive search, for the RDs? Louis Waweru Talk 04:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives "Searching the archives". Grsz ¹¹ ^→Review! 04:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, the answer is there. Louis Waweru Talk 04:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

wrong Indian flag. today featured article

today featured article. in this article of barrack obama on home page, links to attack on sydney harbour in BELLIGERENTS indian flag displayed is wrong while other countries flags are right ones like JAPAN,U.S.A. please rectify.seen today 4 NOVEMBER 2008 10:15 am in maldives 123.176.5.68 (talk) 05:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The flag shown for India in Attack on Sydney Harbour is that of the British Raj; at the time of the attacks, India was under British rule, and so the flag used (while clearly not India's current flag) is correct. --saxsux (talk) 20:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

mw-textarea-protected

Anyone know how to get the edit box on a fully-protected page to appear white again? .mw-textarea-protected {background-color:white;} didn't work. Thanks, WODUP 05:30, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is now defined at MediaWiki:Sysop.css (took a bit of searching to figure out where it got moved to). It is now .mw-textarea-protected, .ns-8 textarea { background:#FFDBDB; }. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your answer. Unfortunately, I can get other styles (such as a thick lime green border) to work, but I can't change the text box's background color. WODUP 00:16, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please remove the picture.

Hi there.

Please remove the picture of Prophet Muhammed (SAW) from the following link as it is against the religion of Islam. The link is as follows :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.148.217.126 (talk) 06:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Wikipedia is not censored. Wikipedia does not remove pictures which are relevent to an article merely because some people may find them offensive. If viewing such pictures is offensive to you, please see Wikipedia:Options to not see an image. Cheers! --Jayron32.talk.contribs 06:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This comes up frequently on the Help desk:

Search Help desk for: Prophet image

Please read Talk:Muhammad/FAQ. --Teratornis (talk) 06:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, this is regarding Telugu language..

Hi,
When I browse I am getting "Telugu" language option only for few pages. Even this is not that much clear like Telugu web links..can you check and update..

Regards, Nethaji Reddy P. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nethajireddy (talk • contribs) 06:36, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you are asking about Interlanguage links, only some articles on the English Wikipedia have Interlanguage links to the Telugu Wikipedia. This is partly because the English Wikipedia has many more articles (6,933,315 in English now compared to 38,125 in Telugu in 2007), and partly because editors who read both English and Telugu must add the interlanguage links to English Wikipedia articles by hand. --Teratornis (talk) 06:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you find some interlanguage links from the English Wikipedia to the Telugu Wikipedia that are incorrect, then someone may have added incorrect links here originally, or the links may have been correct at first but later someone moved or deleted the article on the Telugu Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation has no automatic method to validate the interlanguage links as far as I know. If you find one that is incorrect now, you can fix it, by locating the correct article on the Telugu Wikipedia and editing the link to point to it. If you don't understand this answer, you should find an experienced multilingual Wikipedia user to help you. One way to find such users is to check the history of articles such as: Telugu. For example, User:Bsskchaitanya claims fluency in an impressive number of languages. --Teratornis (talk) 06:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Shortcuts for user space pages.

Hi, can I create shortcuts for my user space pages? I mean can I create a shortcut like WP:GP/S for User:Gppande/Sandbox? --GPPande talk! 08:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That probably wouldn't be a good idea simply because there are a limited number of possible WP namespace shortcuts and they are meant to redirect to policies, process pages, or essays about wikipedia or wikipedia process or policies. As such, having your own personal WP namespace redirect for your sandbox would probably just end up deleted. After all, if every user could have such a thing, we'd need shortcuts as long as their usernames are to fit them all. You could make a shortcut such as User:Gppande/S which points to User:Gppande/Sandbox, though. ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 08:42, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Shortcut. It would be best to add a link to your user page like Special:PrefixIndex/User:Gppande to show all of your user subpages. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 08:51, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget850's solution Special:PrefixIndex/User:Gppande seems quite good. Is there any skin or monobook in which I can put this page link just besides existing WP links for my user page, talkpage, watchlist and contribution and logout? --GPPande talk! 09:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I took the liberty of adding it to User:Gppande/Navigation Bar. Revert or modify as desired. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:40, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. :-D --GPPande talk! 11:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can also display the links directly with {{Special:PrefixIndex/User:Gppande}} which produces the below. {{Special:PrefixIndex/User:Gppande/}} would omit the user page itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changing Article title

Ive just created a new article but ive mispelt it. How do i change the title of the article? Pattav2 (talk) 08:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved it to Blake Shinn, hope that's OK (I had a quick Google first).

To answer your question... there's (normally) a tab marked "move" alongside the "edit this page" tab and others. It isn't always available, though, if I remember correctly - it may be disabled for editors who only recently registered.

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 09:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, users who are not yet autoconfirmed, (10 edits + 4 day old account), but that was not at issue here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

about an new article.

I started writing an article, I had to go out so I thought to complete the article the next day. Suddenly I had a doubt Can I countinue the incomplete article? --Krishnapriya kamalakshan

It would help if you gave us the article name; your contributions do not show that you have edited anything by this Help Desk. Normally you can save incomplete work and come back to it. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incompleted articles often have issues and it's a good thing not to drop them with the other articles immediately. Instead make a subpage on your userpage like User:Krishnapriya kamalakshan/Sandbox where you can work on your article until it is finished. That way it doesn't get accidentally deleted. I found no contributions under your username. Feel free to continue your work, but I can't help you retrieve what you started. (There are also no deleted contributions on your name) - Mgm|^(talk) 11:29, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IMAGES

Can I add new images in wikipedia articles? how can I do it? Then, can Iadd images in my account

--Krishnapriya kamalakshan (talk) 11:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Images and other uploaded files; also in order to be allowed by the software to upload, you need to achieve autoconfirmed status (see this page), which requires 4 days and 10 total edits. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 12:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To add an image to an article all you have to do is type [[Image:Example.jpg|50px]] which will produce

(You have to replace example.jpg with the name of the image you want to insert) To add captions and resizing the image, you have to add values, as shown. See WP:IMAGE and WP:Picture tutorial for more information. You can add images to your userspace if they are not fair use images. Cheers. Chamal ^talk 12:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a web link to one of your pages

Hello and Good day,

My name is Matthew Rothwell, I am contacting you on behalf of the CDT (Comité Départemental du Tourisme), for the Ardèche Department, south of France. I would like to enquire about adding a link to your tourist information website for our official regional website www.ardeche-guide.com. It is currently under construction in both English and German versions, in addition to its current French base. I have found a potential location for this addition ……….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardeche Please have a look and let me know what you think. Thankyou for your time, yours gratefully

Matthew

Matthew Rothwell

Comité Départemental du Tourisme de l'Ardèche

English Promotions —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.2.96.146 (talk) 14:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi and thanks for posting your question! First of all, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, not a "tourist information website" as you mentioned. However, if you have a link that qualifies as an appropriate link, please feel to add it! Simply click on the "edit this page" tab at the top of article. Make sure, however, that it is not advertising, or it may be removed. TN‑X-Man 14:42, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

new question

Resolved

How do you add that skip to bottom, back to the top buttons to a page.
Like the one on this page.
Thanks--Adrian 1001 (talk) 15:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To add "skip to the bottom", include this code: [[#footer|Skip to the bottom]]. I'm not sure about a "return to the top". Cheers! TN‑X-Man 15:29, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See the source of Wikipedia:Help desk/Header for how the links were given the special placement on the Help desk. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I use them on my User and User talk pages too. – ukexpat (talk) 16:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reporting a personal attack?

What is the correct way to report an editor who is making personal attacks? Thanks. --Captain Planet (talk) 17:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:No personal attacks. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you're referring to your talk page, I invoke God. TN‑X-Man 17:26, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say Godwin is a bit of a reach. The comment in User talk:Captain Infinity#Incessant vandalism accusation does not compare an individual to the Nazis, or even an individual's views to the views of the Nazis, but mentions the Nazis' hard work to prove that one's having worked hard on something is irrelevant to whether one should have worked on it at all. The fact that the Nazis worked on what they did has no bearing on whether we like what they did (and, incidentally, lots of people like some of what the Nazis did, such as develop superhighways and jet engines which remain widely popular today). Similarly, on Wikipedia, thousands of people pour thousands of hours of hard work into creating articles, only to have other users mercilessly delete those articles for failing to comply with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, which clearly seem convoluted and unintuitive to many people who are encountering them for the first time (usually after they violate something unwittingly). The fact that people worked hard and meant well is just completely irrelevant in a deletion discussion. The idea that one's hard work automatically has value to other people is a common fallacy; it's a form of self-serving bias. It is true that often hard work is a necessary condition for creating value, for people who weren't just born with special talents that make life easy for them, but hard work is by no means a sufficient condition. 206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)One could just as well make an analogy with someone who works hard to get ready for a date with someone who doesn't find him attractive. The jilted suitor might feel, in his own mind, that his hard work means something, but it means nothing to the woman who LJBFs him. Similarly, an athlete could work hard to get ready for a big event, but if he breaks the rules, his hard work turns from an asset to a liability. In highly competitive environments like dating, sports, or editing on Wikipedia, working hard is far less important than working smart, and working smart begins by studying what the "customer" wants. In the case of Wikipedia, the "customer" is the subset of the user community which understands and enforces the policies and guidelines. The point is that when we argue about whether something belongs on Wikipedia, "we worked hard on it" is not an argument one should mention at all. Working hard does not cause the rules to bend. Not even slightly. One should only discuss whether the content in question complies with the rules. If one did work hard on something that one doesn't want to see disappear, see Wikipedia:Alternative outlets. --Teratornis (talk) 18:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I might add that everyone who has worked hard on Wikipedia has watched some of their work go poof. Wikipedia is a MMORPG where the objective is to figure out what you can write that other editors will not delete. You win some, and you lose some. Even if you win a content dispute, the fact that a dispute arose at all means you did not anticipate it and edit preemptively to avoid it. --Teratornis (talk) 19:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Everything of mine has been deleted??

I created this account a couple of months ago, spent massive amounts of time trying to figure out how to set all options and preferences available with this strange and annoying software system, etc., and added everything I edited to my watch page, then I lost access to a computer for a month and a half. When I logged in today, my contributions were "0", nothing was on my watch page or about page (in which I had saved some drafts under the hidden command), and no preferences had been set - I just had to re-enter the "display name" of my signature which is the only setting I remember specifically that I had set and what I had set it to. Uh... what happened? Rayvn (talk) 20:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you are on the same account? It looks like you are editing from Rayvn7, and that account has no contribs OR deleted contribs. Perhaps you made the contributions you remember from a different account? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 21:07, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I never said anything about deleted contributions. I said "my contributions were listed as '0'". Since the watch page had been deleted, I have know way to know what pages I had edited, and therefore no way to check whether the edits I made were still there or not, not to mention you can't really do that anyway since others will edit it again.Rayvn (talk) 02:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See [1] for other user names starting with Rayvn. Note that each Wikipedia language and Wikimedia wiki has its own accounts (but see m:Help:Unified login). This is only the English Wikipedia. Maybe your account was elsewhere? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:20, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your right, it was the "wrong" account, but I don't really see how this is possible since I only remember creating one account and I only use one e-mail address to create accounts on websites. I have already left a message for a user with this account; is it possible to have that edit moved over to my "real" account?Rayvn (talk) 02:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Signatures

I've seen some signatures with different fonts than the "automatic" font. How do I do this? QuackOfaThousandSuns (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to know how something on Wikipedia is done, just edit the relevant page and look at the wikicode used. Algebraist 22:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or, in more detail, have a look at some other people's signatures, for example, mine in code is [[User:Foxy Loxy|Foxy Loxy]] [[User talk:Foxy Loxy|Pounce!]] then goto Special:Preferences and in the Signature: section, tick the box that says Raw signature and then paste your signature into that box. Then your default sig will be replaced with what you put in that box. This sig should include a link to your userpage and user talk page. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 22:35, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SIG and WP:SIGHELP have tips to you get started as well. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 22:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

mobile wikipedia

Pardon me if wikipedia already has a mobile download, I at least don't see it. I have trouble using wikipedia on my mobile phone, I have a Palm Centro and it would really be nice if you guys could set up a format for mobile web access. On my phone the requested page becomes super huge and the writing is vertical instead of horizontal and almost impossible to read fluently. Please let me know, my email is (removed for privacy). Thanks!

Veronica D. Figueroa —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.113.3 (talk) 23:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Mobile access. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

November 5

Tagging images

In the article fictitious force, several gif diagrams have been added recently. I found that they are incorrectly depicting fictitious forces. Although the discrepancies are subtle, they end up conveying the wrong concept. I have posted this on Talk:Fictitious_force#Possible_errors. But how do I tag the individual images to get the attention of the creator or Wikipedia editors? Help will be appreciated. --Fatka (talk) 01:10, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Over-referencing

What are the general guidelines on over-referencing? Is it okay to cite up to 6 references for a statement which is controversial, and is likely to be challenged by large organizations? ←Spidern→ 03:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quantity does not trump quality. You can use 6 references from not-so-respected websites. That doesn't make the statement valid. Having 1 reference from a respected website does make it valid (in Wikipedia's view). Also note that it is common for one website to make a false statement and others to pick it up. So, you need to ensure that the extra references are valid. For an example, see Nude Bowl. There are dozens of sites that claim the name comes from it once being a nudist colony - but they are mostly blogs and such. It would be pointless to have 30 references when having a couple respectable references does the job nicely. -- kainaw ™ 03:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with every proviso kainaw wrote. However, there are places where multiple reliable references for a controversial statement are warranted and even necessary. An example is where you are attempting in include a statement in an article that immediately appears to be POV in the absence of multiple cites. For example if you are going to say that someone is "widely considered one of the greatest _____ of all time" (see e.g., Jean Balukas).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, phrases like "widely considered to be..." should be avoided and replaced with "considered by _____ to be...". The second form makes it clear who is making the consideration as there are no "widelies" making comments about anything. -- kainaw ™ 04:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where the blank in your example is "all people who know the subject area," the original phraseology is warranted.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:29, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your responses. For the record, the page in question is Scientology, three paragraphs down. If you have any context-specific comments on the situation, this is a good time to make them. ←Spidern→ 04:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hauntings

How can Wikipedia address haunted sites and legends? Grsz ¹¹ ^→Review! 05:35, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By having articles on the notable ones. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:46, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would you be willing to check out the section at Livermore, Pennsylvania and let me know if it's okay? Thanks, Grsz ¹¹ ^→Review! 14:48, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't check whether the sources are reliable but if they are, I think that section is okay. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Umm...

Why do people who have been blocked for a long time, rarely edit once they are unblocked? 121.219.2.201 (talk) 06:08, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, hopefully they've created new accounts and are now contributing constructively. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or have gone away and quit bothering us. Algebraist 11:40, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

images

Hi, i tried to put a picture on my page but i couldn't.How do I?--Elementwaldron (talk) 07:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read Wikipedia:Picture tutorial? - 131.211.151.64 (talk) 07:54, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that you included a link to a picture, instead of the picture itself. To upload pictures, your account must be four days old and you must make at least ten edits. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 14:58, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Running/Downloading exe batch file from article

I would like to add an executable batch file to my article that uses another 3 files to run. How do I add these files so that the reader can click on a link and either run the exe file within my article, or else download all the 4 files to his own computer and then run the exe file? —Preceding unsigned comment added by SSDrocks (talk • contribs) 07:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since executable files are prone to virus infection, you cannot add such files to an article. The best thing you can do is link to a download site where people can look at the files and choose to download them. Don't point to them directly. - 131.211.151.64 (talk) 07:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your super fast reply! —Preceding unsigned comment added by SSDrocks (talk • contribs) 08:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming all readers use the most commonly used OS is not very wise, IMHO. Probably a web-based or platform independent attachment will be a better solution. [[::User:Fatka|Fatka]] ([[::User talk:Fatka|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Fatka|contribs]]) 18:54, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi

I was wondering. Should Barack Obama make reference to the fact that some people call him Barack Osama? Also what do you need 6m bucks for? Thank you please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.137.156 (talk) 11:00, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Chamal ^talk 11:08, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nope u've been of absolutely no help at all. nm, dont give up the day job! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.137.156 (talk) 11:16, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you can't expect your every question to be answered at the help desk can you? As I said, you'll have better luck at the reference desk. That's why there are two places; one for help on Wikipedia and one for other questions. Chamal ^talk 11:23, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Questions regarding financial support to the Wikimedia Foundation are addressed here. Your question about Barack Obama is also inappropriate for the Reference Desk. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:29, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Raise your first question at Talk:Barack Obama. —Tamfang (talk) 17:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted article

I published an article about Telenor Cinclus, a Norwegian-based company, this morning and after just a couple of minutes it was deleted with the comment "blatant advertisement". I don't quite agree and I can't see how it differs from many other articles about companies. But of course I would like to edit the article so it's not perceived as advertisement anymore - it was never meant to be. How do I do? Can I just publish a revised version of the article? Thanks in advance.— Preceding unsigned comment added by EriKarl (talk • contribs)

Short answer: yes. Please take a look at WP:CORP and make sure it meets our notability guidelines for companies. Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms may help you to write an article that doesn't appear to the majority of our editors as advertisement. Darkspots (talk) 11:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is already an article on Telenor. —teb728 t c 12:08, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need Guidance re Vandalism

I am new to wiki. In an article I am following, an editor, who, perhaps, recently had drunk too much wine, added comments in Discussions which are, to say the least, inappropriate. Does Wikipedia's management (including its monitors) have any role in what does or should happen next? The only Wipipedia "rule" I have found so far on this topic is below, but it seems to say that we are on our own and that Wikipedia declines any proactive role. Please let me know how all of this is supposed to work out in actual practice. In addition, please let me know why a robot has tagged this insert as presumptive vandalism merely because it requests guidance about vandalism. Thanks.

"How to respond to vandalism. If you see vandalism in an article, the simplest thing to do is just to remove it. But take care! Sometimes vandalism takes place on top of older, undetected vandalism, sometimes other editors make edits without realizing the vandalism occurred, and sometimes bots try to fix collateral damage and accidentally make things worse. Check the edit history to make sure you're reverting to a 'clean' version of the page, or if you can't tell where the best place is, take your best guess and leave a note on the article's talk page so that someone more familiar with the page can address the issue. If you see vandalism on a list of changes (such as your watchlist), then revert it immediately. You may use the "undo" button (and the automatic edit summary it generates), and mark the change as minor. It may be helpful to check the page history to determine whether other recent edits by the same or other editors also represent vandalism. Repair all vandalism you can identify.For a new article, if all versions of the article are pure vandalism, mark it for speedy deletion by tagging it with {{Db-g3}}. To make vandalism reverts easier, you can ask for the rollback feature to be enabled for your registered Wikipedia account. Intended for use only for reverting vandalism and other obvious disruption, this will enable you to revert recent edits with a single click. See Wikipedia:Requests for permissions‎.

Having identified a user as committing vandalism, you may also check the user's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen). If most or all of these are obvious vandalism, you may decide to report the user immediately. Otherwise you may leave an appropriate warning message on the user's talk page. If a user continues to cause disruption after being warned, report that user at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. An administrator will decide whether to block the user."— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stwiso (talk • contribs) TN‑X-Man 12:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am posting this question from Talk: Help Desk. TN‑X-Man 12:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not really pre-emptively act on vandalism. A user may be blocked if there is evidence that all/most of their edits are vandalism. If you think an account is only being used for vandalism, you can report them at this noticeboard. If a user has only made one or two bad edits, drop them a line on their talk page. Maybe they're just confused on how Wikipedia works. If you have any other questions, please let us know. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 13:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IP address check for admins

Hi, I have an own mediawiki. How does IP check work? With other words, as an admin, how can I find out, if user abc at 4:02 pm what IP adress used? Google did not help at all so far. Thanks. --Muki123 (talk) 12:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Help Desk is intended for specific help with Wikipedia, rather than MediaWiki - if you want help in the future, you'd be better off looking here. Anyway, to answer your question, that functionality doesn't exist in MediaWiki by default. You'll need to install the CheckUser extension, after which you can find which IP addresses have been used by a specific username, or vice versa. Hope this helps. :) --saxsux (talk) 14:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, you'd need to give yourself checkuser rights after you've done so to be able to use the extension. - 131.211.151.64 (talk) 15:29, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!--Muki123 (talk) 16:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for article

How come when I search for the article I posted, it does not show up?

Djproducts (talk) 17:54, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can check your contributions list to see all the edits you have made. Simply click the "my contributions" tab at the top of the page. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:00, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note- This account was blocked five minutes after this post as a promotional account. TN‑X-Man 18:02, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that may have been a little harsh. What happened to WP:AGF? This might be nothing more than a new user who hasn't read any of Wikipedia's friendly manuals yet, and made a well-meaning mistake. Note to User:Djproducts: you should read our business FAQ carefully before doing anything else on Wikipedia. More than likely, someone who buys a product from DJ Products will need to get some training before trying to use the product. Wikipedia is similar in that a person cannot just guess how to use it, one has to read our manuals and understand Wikipedia's complex and unobvious rules. --Teratornis (talk) 18:08, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It may have indeed been harsh, but I'm not familiar with the details. The blocking admin may have more info on what was going on. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 18:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He would have been blocked on the user name policy anyway: you can't use a company name as a user name. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is true. But a block seems contrary to User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles: "Newcomers are always to be welcomed," when we don't know that the user meant any harm. I'd think a more welcoming solution would be to contact the user and arrange to rename the account, although we probably aren't set up to handle that conveniently, so we use the rubber mallet welcome method. --Teratornis (talk) 07:39, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do I make a wiki version

In the guiness world record book 2008(c) it says there are 250 wikipedias, how do I make one!!!!!!!!!!!! BY:Jordan

Suggest one at http://meta.wikimedia.org but it's not all that easy. For a new Wikipedia edition to be set up, you need to show that there's enough interest in it and no problems and we only get different editions for different languages. All the major ones are already represented. A better bet would be to set up a new version of another wiki project that's a lot younger. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:51, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the title of your question, I'm also guessing you're making the mistake of mixing up wiki and Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a special type of wiki. Wiki is the general name to describe this sort of publically editable website. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:52, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Following on from Mgm's response, if you want to set up your own wiki (not Wikipedia) there are a number of different ways to go about it. The software that powers Wikipedia, known as MediaWiki, is freely available, and is fairly easy to install if you have a web hosting account or server with PHP and a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. There are also plenty of other wiki software packages, if you'd prefer something other then MediaWiki. And if you don't have much technical knowledge or a webhosting account, you can always set up a wiki with a provider; Wikia, for example. --saxsux (talk) 16:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

copy/paste ogg theora files

I have tried in vain to copy and paste or drag and drop the ogg theora file but, I can find no way to copy/paste these files. Can you help me with this issue.

Where is the file and where do you want it to go? =- Mgm|^(talk) 20:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The ogg theora file is topsy.ogg, it's Topsy the Elephant, it has it's own webpage. I am trying to copy it to HP Image Zone. I can't copy and paste any of these ogg files. These are the only files I've run into that I can't copy paste, can't drag and drop. It will not allow any right click command to do anything with it. Thank You

"Donate now" button

Could someone please make it disappear on all Wikipedias? It's freaking annoying. BTW I always donated to WP in past fundraisers but it's a principle of mine never to respond to ads that are so up in my face... – Alensha ^talk 20:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Preferences → Gadgets → Suppress display of the fundraiser site notice. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:21, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised the notice isn't in the wasted space in the left sidebar below the toolbox. It would still be visible, but not competing with the edit box for scarce vertical space. Most computer displays are wider than they are tall, so banner ads are more annoying than sidebar ads. --Teratornis (talk) 07:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I copied the gadget stuff to Hungarian wikipedia where I'd need it, but it still doesn't work... – Alensha ^talk 15:30, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to bring the recent changes to the main page of wiki?

206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

=='Special:Recentchanges'== along with curly braces. This shows the contents from recent changes.

is there way by which i can show the group of recent changes in main page?

Many Thanks in advance.

This Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. mw:Project:Support desk is for questions about administering your own MediaWiki wiki. Your question is also somewhat vague; the Main Page on Wikipedia does not show all the recent updates to Wikipedia, but rather only a tiny sample of them. If you want to customize your wiki, read all the links under WP:EIW#MediaWiki, especially mw:Manual:FAQ. --Teratornis (talk) 07:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Many thaks for this.

I will go through the link you have mentioned. Mean while how can i show tiny sample of updates on main page of the wiki?
Is there any possibility of doing the sorting while displayig the recent updates on main page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamsy (talk • contribs) 15:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this Help Desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. You can ask your question about your own wiki at mw:Project:Support desk. _Gb^T/c 15:26, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NTOC

206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC) What did I do wrong here? Assuming you agree NTOC is a good idea, here, can someone fix? AndyJones (talk) 21:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You missed by one letter. The appropriate code is __NOTOC__ not __NTOC__. I have corrected it for you. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 21:17, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

same answer as last year: Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2007_November_10#NTOC.3F.3F.3F Sssoul (talk) 21:19, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. My question last time too! I'll go and hang my head in shame. AndyJones (talk) 21:22, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

== ogg theora file ==206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried in vain to copy and paste or drag and drop the ogg theora file but, I can find no way to copy/paste these files. Can you help me with this issue.

Where is the file and where do you want it to go? =- Mgm|(talk) 20:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The ogg theora file is topsy.ogg, it's Topsy the Elephant, it has it's own webpage. I am trying to copy it to HP Image Zone. I can't copy and paste any of these ogg files. These are the only files I've run into that I can't copy paste, drag and drop, or get any right click command to do anything with it, I can only copy the mpeg file of the shot on screen, not the video file. Thank You

You should right-click the blue link underneath the video and click "save file as" or whatever phrase your operating system uses, to copy the file to your harddrive. From there you can try copying it elsewhere. Anyway, I don't know HP Image Zone, but you probably end up making screenshots, because I don't think they allow video uploads based on the name "Image". - Mgm|^(talk) 23:02, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your time206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC) Dennis[reply]

In Album, creating a band section?

Hi

I've bin looking for lots of music albums lately on Wikipedia for different kind of informations. I've never edited a topic or post some information here, so i don't know how you've define the standard to use. So i guess perhaps my suggestion here would be appropriate.

Would it be possible to create a section in the "albums window" that shows whos the band... I mean for exemple, Gwen Stefani album, we all know her as the singer, but whos playing guitar for exemple... i have no idea...

I can find the type of music, the writers (sometimes), even the producer and the background crew, but it's not usual to find the crew member and what they do in the particular album/song.

I mean if someones knows enought to write down the producer, i think he or she should have enought knowledge to write down each person in the band...

That would be my suggestion.

Thank you.

The formatted box commonly added to the top of articles are called infoboxes. I think the reason band members aren't included is because it can be far too lengthy in a lot of cases. If it is known such information is commonly included in the article text itself or the article on the band. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

== New Widget ==206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to suggest a widget or something that could prevent anyone besides the user from editing/creating said user's userpage(s) besides the User Talk page. --Melab ^±1 23:00, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since Wikipedia is an open project, we tend not to lock anyone out of pages unless it's really necessary (for example cases of heavy vandalism). We can already protect pages from being edited by non-administrators and if we have to, we can build bots to revert any authorized changes, but right now, we just don't need to. Any specific reason you are suggesting this? - Mgm|^(talk) 23:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A little while ago it was proposed that we semiprotect userpages. Past discussion here. Algebraist 23:14, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why are our external links being deleted?

Hello,

I have noticed that all the external links that I have added to certain persons, that have been interviewed on The Kathleen Show, have been deleted. I realize that you may think we add them to get people to visit our website, the real reason is that the external links I add are to very good interviews and guest pages, with pictures and information about these persons. Kathleen is an award winning filmmaker and health advocate and interviews many interesting people. As a matter of fact, WE use/visit Wikipedia ALL THE TIME to get insightful info about our upcoming guests and topics and MANY times, the most insightful components are the external links to external interviews...which provides greater perspective on the person/topic as a whole. Due to this and the fact that the goals of our own interviews are to glean a unique/interesting/provocative point of view from the guest about their career or the topic, we think that the interviews from our show ultimately give WIKI searchers a rich and valuable resource about the person/topic being discussed.

Don't believe us? Take a listen to any one of the interviews we have added to Wiki in the past: Dave Ramsey, Jean Chatzky, Rodney Yee, Elliot Scheiner, etc. If you listen, you will HEAR what a great resource we provide searchers about these people. I think any searcher would agree that the interview links we provide are VALUABLE information. Why are our show interviews blocked, but not shows like Larry King, NBC, CBS and a whole variety of other television, radio, and print interviews? How do you suggest our interviews can stay a valuable addition to the relatively small percentage of WIKI people/topics we overlap on? Any help you can give us to remedy the above would be appreciated.

Many thanks, Danishroots (talk) 23:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They were probably removed because it looks like you're advertising the show. Instead, you could try to find interesting facts in the interview that are not yet in the article and add those to the article and THEN add the link as a reference. That's the way most interviews are used. In cases where interviews have been added as external links the people working on the article discussed it and agreed it was a useful link to keep. We can only keep a limited amount of links. If we were to add links to everything abuot a specific person, it would get messy in the external links section. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:22, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:EL clearly mentions conflicts of interest when linking.

You should avoid linking to a website that you own, maintain or represent, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked. If the link is to a relevant and informative site that should otherwise be included, please consider mentioning it on the talk page and let neutral and independent Wikipedia editors decide whether to add it. This is in line with the conflict of interest guidelines.

Post to article talk pages and allow other editors to decide if your links are worth including. --GraemeL ^(talk) 23:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind, as well, that the removal of the links should not be interpreted as a comment on the interviews themselves. As stated above, we cannot list every interview, link, or clip relating to a subject. If you feel that one of your interviews can be used as a reference for new or existing text, bring it up on the talk page and see if other editors agree. However, this would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. --Ckatz^chat_spy 23:36, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Peruse some randomly selected featured articles on Wikipedia. (Featured articles have earned the highest quality ranking from the Wikipedia community of all our articles.) Most of them have lots of footnotes, but comparatively small sections of external links. One way to think of the external links section of an article is as a temporary holding area for links that we haven't edited into footnotes yet. As articles progress toward featured status, they should have progressively fewer external links. To learn about making footnotes, see WP:FOOT, WP:CITE, WP:CITET, and WP:RS. Properly formatted footnotes are less likely to get deleted from Wikipedia than bare external links, but of course footnotes are subject to all the same limitations on what we can link to. Also, the name of this wiki is not "Wiki", but "Wikipedia". There are thousands of wikis; the English Wikipedia is merely one of the most well-known. --Teratornis (talk) 07:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Self-updating table

List of the verified oldest people updates itself automatically. Does anyone know how it does that? It doesn't appear to be maintained by a bot. Thanks Louis Waweru Talk 23:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Click "edit this page" to see how a page does something. It uses {{age in years and days}} and {{age in days nts}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see, I see...thank you. I was looking at the source earlier, but I only viewed it for the deceased. I guess it would only be used on the living. Louis Waweru Talk 00:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

November 6

Are welcomes?

Scrolling user's talk pages it makes me wonder: Are welcomes automatic or not?, because I don't have one.--National Security Agency Special Agent (talk) 00:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, they are not automatic, but you now have a welcome. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you tell me why you were concerned with my name?--National Security Agency Special Agent (talk) 01:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because the cat walked on my mouse and clicked on a WP:Twinkle warning. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing nav box

How? Wehrum, Pennsylvania. Thanks, Grsz ¹¹ ^→Review! 01:24, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, let's see. If you want the navbox to always be collapsed, I believe that adding the parser function |state = collapsed to the template header ought to do it. If you just want it to be collapsed when you view the page, then I am not sure. My template editing skills aren't so hot, so let me know if this helps. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 02:52, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought . . . don't do that. I'm looking into it further. TN‑X-Man 02:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Upon further review, some things are readily apparent. The first thing is that navboxes and templates are really complicated. The second thing is a useful page that may have the answer can be found at Help:Collapsing. The final thing that I've realized is that I should have learned my lesson when I got a D in computer science. :-( Anyways, best of luck. TN‑X-Man 03:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As Tnxman said, it's a parser; |collapsed_state = collapsed will do the job. I added it in for ya. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 04:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Missed it by that much. Thanks MoP! TN‑X-Man 12:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Our new support Wikipedia banners

I don't know if this is just me, but on my browser, the new banners float underneath the protection icon, featured star, and all those other icons. I find myself pushing EXPAND instead of the lock icons. Can this be fixed? ←Signed:→Mr. E. Sánchez ^{Get to know me!} / _{Talk to me!}←at≈:→ 02:26, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you could disable the donate banner. Go to your preferences, gadgets, and check the "suppress etc." box. Then clear your cache. That should help. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 04:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Four Five questions about unified login

I've started merging my username(s) across several projects, and although the process is mostly straightforward and the fundamentals (at least) are well-documented, I find myself with several questions:

incomplete

The merge process is telling me it's incomplete, because there are matching logins on several projects I haven't merged in yet. I know: they're not (yet) mine. Do I have to go through the Bureaucrat-mediated usurpation process on each of those before unification will be "finished" and useful to me? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, incomplete means it will still work, it just isn't done. But then again, I might be wrong... Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed! It is working. I've logged in once, and now I'm seeing my name in the tab list of wikis I've never used. Cool! —Steve Summit (talk) 04:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

where to start?

Is there a master login page? Or do you just log in to any project, and have your login (from wherever) follow you around to all the other projects? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Currently there is no master login page, logging in to any wiki with your SUL-enabled username should log you in to all the other wikis you've merged with (there should be a bar at the bottom with the logos of all those wikis). That login should follow you around, and auto-create new accounts for you if necessary (if you go to a wiki that doesn't have your username registered, it should create an account for you automatically). Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed! It is working. I've logged in once, and now I'm seeing my name in the tab list of wikis I've never used. Cool! —Steve Summit (talk) 04:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

usurp-with-rename?

On projects where my unified login name is not under my control, where I might need to usurp that login name, what's the right thing to do with the other name I might be using on that project? Is it asking too much to have the edit history from that other name transferred to the usurped, unified username? Is it a good or bad idea to have the edit history from that other name transferred to the usurped, unified username? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bureaucrat etiquette

If I need to usurp all the extant matching names before unification can be complete, I'm going to need to ask Bureaucrats on projects in languages I don't speak, such as French and Chinese. How rude is it to go to a Bureaucrat on one of those projects and ask, in English, for a rename? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you can try meta if you need stuff done on wikis you don't speak the language of. I've never done it though... (you could also try searching the wiki for a page specifically for English-speakers, like an English-speakers help desk, most big ones have them, I think). Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Primary" project?

I did the merge starting at en.wiktionary, and it said it was making that the "primary" project, or something. It said I'd be able to change it later. But I haven't seen a tool for doing that. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:58, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think having it as your "primary" project simply means that the email address and password of your extra accounts by updated to match that of your primary account as you merge them. Maybe the bit about being able to change it later just meant to you're able to change your email address/password? I'm not sure. --saxsux (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

geography

where is Karomb, Russia or Karomb, Ukriane, possible Black Sea area —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.132.157.6 (talk) 06:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can try asking on the Reference desk. This Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. When you ask, give some more information about what you think this "area" is: a city? A park? Etc. And where did you hear about it? If you have the name wrong, telling some more clues about what you are looking for might increase your chances of getting an answer. --Teratornis (talk) 07:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Education.

What are PG,UG,Diploma,IB Courses in Goverment & Private university of Singapore? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.169.93.42 (talk) 08:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Knowledge questions such as yours should be asked at a section of the reference desk. However, we do have an article on the National University of Singapore and the following link will take you to that university's official site. I'm not 100% sure if this is the university you are referring to, but I get no results searching Google for "Government & Private university of Singapore".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:52, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

another case of the "preferences" bug

Resolved

this has been reported by some other editors here and here and now i'm among the afflicted: i followed the instructions for "supressing the donate-now banner" by going into "my preferences/gadgets", but after ticking the "supress" box and "save", i get a box telling me my password is too short. clearing my cache didn't help; has anyone figured out what does work to fix this? Sssoul (talk) 09:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

okay , i found the answer here: WP:Village_pump_(technical)#Different_password_for_saving_preferences.3F: using firefox, you gots to clear the "old password" field on the "user profile" page before saving your changes. Sssoul (talk) 10:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Bloomberg entry: please add his $375 million contribution to tobacco control

Dear Sir or Madam, I am trying to add to New York City Mike Bloomberg's page that he has donated $375 million to a six year program of tobacco control for the world's poorest countries: He had donated $125 million in 2006 and that was increased an additional $250 million on or around Sept 11, 2008 http://www.mikebloomberg.com/index.cfm?objectID=53303E81-1D09-317F-BB11D44FCD1043D5 along with a $125 million Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donation.

Your system is much too complicated regarding how to be able to edit this information. Otherwise, keep up the good work.

Thank you, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dfumento (talk • contribs) 13:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article is semi-protected due to vandalism. Since you have an account now, edit pages that aren't protected for a few days and then you'll be considered a normal user and you can edit semi-protected pages. -- kainaw ™ 15:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Btw, does his website count as a primary source? Even if it does, I still think this is okay. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 15:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources are perfectly fine and reliable for adding information to articles whose subject is already notable. The biggest two restrictions on primary sources are:

Primary sources should only be used to reference the facts that those sources report, and not to interpret or analyze those facts.
Primary sources can usually not be used to establish notability (i.e. a scientific experiment could not prove itself notable by merely citing the journal where its results were first published); however once notability is clear, then one can and should use those sources for appropriate purposes...

Cheers! --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:47, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Images and OTRS

Hi, Image:Davidcullen.jpg has been released to the GDFL by David Cullen, who contacted User:Bigpad to notify him of the desired licensing. Bigpad forwarded the message to me, and I know something has to be done with the OTRS to document David Cullen's email authorizing the image under the GDFL, but I'm not sure how to do this. Can anyone point me or Bigpad in the right direction? Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 13:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User-defined colour names

Hi, if I have a table with colour-coded cells, is there any way to assign user-defined names to the colours once at the top, associating the names with their RBG values, and then use these names throughout the table? I'm thinking of something like this:

Sorry, Mediawiki doesn't support that. You'll need to specify the hex code at each position, because "blue" and "yellow" will just return the basic definitions (#0000FF and #FFFF00, respectively). Also, don't forget to sign your username on discussion pages such as this, by adding "~~~~" after your post. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:36, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Hersfold. Just to be completely sure we're on the same page ... I'm not bothered specifically about redefining "blue" and "yellow" if they have pre-assigned meanings. Perhaps they were bad examples. Any old names will do, like "MyFavouriteBlue" or whatever. But you're saying there's still no way to do it, right? 21:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.47.106 (talk)

You could create a template called Myblue which contains style="background:#728FCE" and just wikitext the table row as | {{Myblue}} | blah blah, or perhaps Myblue which contains #728FCE and use | style="background:{{Myblue}}" | blah blah, but it is probably not worth the effort and the over head, nor a good use of templates . . . . If the table is going to be in a template itself, then you can get a bit more elegant, but unless you are going to use the table in several places, it would not be worth it either. Peet Ern (talk) 04:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thank you both. 86.138.105.106 (talk) 14:47, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to define most colors, because they are already part of the standard. See Web colors for a list of defined colors by name. If you need anything not on the list, then you will need to define it by number. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion & Google Search

I have two questions that I can't find the answers to. The first is that I created a page under my user name and then ended up restarting (and finishing) it as a separate page. I'd like to delete the original user page, but can't figure out how.

Secondly, why does the page I created not show up when I search the title in Google? —Preceding unsigned comment added by We6er (talk • contribs) 16:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, add {{db-user}} to the user page in question. Secondly, google hasn't caught up yet. You'll have to wait. Algebraist 16:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) If you would like to have a page deleted (and you are the only contributor) simply place {{db-g7}} at the top of the page. An admin will be by to delete the page shortly. As for your second question, Google's webcrawlers may take a while to index your article. It could be a matter of minutes, hours, or days. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 16:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And let's not forget that we are here to create an encyclopedia. It is not a Google popularity contest, so whether or not the article appears in a Google search should be irrelevant. – ukexpat (talk) 18:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why are my college students experiencing complete DELETES for a project they're doing?

To overcome previous English teachers negative approach to Wikipedia, I have my college students develop a sign on, do research on a famous educator and evaluate the process.

Why are my students experiencing complete DELETES of all their hard work??? It is becoming very frustrating to them and I may have to pull the graded assignment if this keeps happening.

Help, Liberal Arts College Professor —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edprofessor5302 (talk • contribs) 16:47, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because wikipedia is an encyclopedia and is subject to rules. I suspect that your students were creating articles that didn't conform to WP:BIO. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 16:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it's because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a scratchpad for course work. If someone saves a page that's not an encyclopedia article, yes, it's likely to be deleted. But, I could give you a better answer if you could supply the name of some of the pages that have been deleted, so I could look at them. Right now, I'm only guessing. If you want a general-purpose educational tool, check out wikiversity. Friday (talk) 16:52, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Have you got a list of articles affected? Articles can be deleted for a number of reasons, usually because they meet one of the speedy deletion criteria, commonly regarding notability. If we had a specific article, we could help you a bit further. Have you read the welcome pages on your talkpage? Regards. Woody (talk) 16:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You should also read Wikipedia:School and university projects. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to answer without a list of your students, but the most likely possibility is that your students were creating articles that didn't clearly explain why the person was notable or cite reliable sources. In general, before doing a project on Wikipedia with students, it's a good idea to invest some time editing here yourself, so you're familiar with the rules and can guide your students in following them. The link above has ideas for good school Wikipedia projects, and people who are interested in helping make those projects good experiences for teachers and students. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 17:07, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

-Greetings, Liberal Arts College Professor, you are probably better off if you do not use Wikipedia for this purpose, that is, unless part of the assignment consists of documenting the process (and potential frustration) associated with having content modified significantly (including, but not limited to complete deletion) with little or no prior notice. That is simply a foundational aspect of how the site operates. All of the Wikimedia Foundation projects are inherently subject to this kind of contingency.

The most appropriate alternative is probably for your school, college or department to host a private copy of the MediaWiki software itself, and have your students work from that instead.

Prior responses in this thread discuss some of the rules, but investigating them will be pointless unless you first recognize there is no guarantee that your students' work will be preserved in a manner consistent with your expectations and grading requirements. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 17:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also see my page of notes about just this situation: User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers. As a professor, you are used to learning from books, so get this one: Wikipedia - The Missing Manual. Without knowing the content of that book, an instructor who tries to use Wikipedia for coursework is likely to come to grief, because Wikipedia isn't at all designed to fit the sorts of assumptions a naive instructor would likely bring to it. Incidentally, I was just reviewing some notes I wrote in 2006 when I first began editing on Wikipedia, and I had a good laugh at what I had written - when I first arrived on Wikipedia, several of my initial assumptions about Wikipedia's purpose and function were spectacularly wrong. Fortunately for me, I'm a cautious type, so before I plunged ahead I spent many hours reading the friendly manuals. I still made my share of early mistakes, and even some late mistakes, as every Wikipedian does, but I gave the manuals a chance to correct some of my severe misunderstandings before I boldly acted on them. --Teratornis (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

troubles

Hello. Im a German User (woman). My Userpage is blocked from an administrator,it`s the second time now and I think it was really unfair. Please tell me: Where could I file a complaint? I can write in English, but I´d prefer to write in German. Do you have the right address? Thank you for helping me. Greetings! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.219.254.112 (talk) 16:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC) Yes. I´m sorry. I forgot this. Today it's not my day. 79.219.254.112 (talk) 16:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean by your userpage being blocked. I have checked your block log and there's no blocks listed there. Your talk and user pages haven't ever been deleted. Are you perhaps talking about how, when you click your IP address, it takes you to your contributions instead of your userpage? Are you talking about another account/IP? --Skunkboy74 (talk) 16:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

i'm just guessing, but could she mean her registered account has been blocked, which is why she posted this as an IP? if that's right, i reckon it would help if let us know whether she's talking about an account on the English wikipedia or the German one - then maybe someone could tell her the procedure for requesting to be unblocked and/or for protesting an admin's decision? Sssoul (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Could you please provide your username? Also, if you are blocked on the German Wikipedia it would be better for you to discuss this there. Scottydude _talk 19:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adult contemporary music

A few days ago, I asked someone to move the adult contemporary music article back where it was in the first place. The article had been renamed "adult contemporary formats" and I said that was wrong. The person did what I asked, but now, there is no article. You can't even find it in the history. All it does is redirect to itself.

There must be something an adminstrator can do. When an article is redirected, I realize it has no history prior to the redirect, but the new article, whatever that may be, must have that history stored somewhere.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:07, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um. I can't find the article anywhere. I'm just seeing a bunch of redirects. TN‑X-Man 17:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As an addendum, I can't find the article in any of the redirects that link to the one you originally mentioned. Maybe an admin can see a deleted contribution somewhere, but from what I can see, it's ceased to exist. TN‑X-Man 17:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhere in all the moving and unmoving, the history got deleted. I restored the whole history and put things back in order. Everything looks OK now... You may want to check for double redirects and stuff like that, but it looks fine now. If there's anything else you need done, let me know... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not going through

Why is my User:Yellow Evan/Sandbox/1990 not going through? Leave Message ,Yellow Evan home ,Sandbox[ 17:24, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean. Going through where? TN‑X-Man 17:26, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When i save it the page is not complete of what i typed. Leave Message ,Yellow Evan home ,Sandbox[ 17:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you cleared the cache and refreshed the page? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gotcha. You had a </ref> tag that was missing the <. This causes the rest of the article from that point on to be hidden. I have corrected it for you. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 17:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Link page not working

I was sent a link page for the page I am editing. When I finished and clicked on the Link Suggestions page, it does not upload. Help. Thanks (JoeManelli (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)).[reply]

i gather you mean the Lawrence Leritz article (it would've been good to specify that right away - oh well, next time!) and the link in question is "www.LawrenceLeritz.com"? you need to create an "external links" section for it (by placing ==External links== above it), and then the link should be formatted like this:

[http://www.lawrenceleritz.com/ Official Lawrence Leritz website]

that's purely technical advice, mind you, leaving aside any assessment of the value of the link ... in future you can find out stuff like that by looking at other wikipedia pages - find one that has a feature you want (eg an "External links" section), click on edit and study how it's formatted, then imitate it on the page you're working on. and/or you can consult pages like WP:Markup. have fun Sssoul (talk) 18:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you refer to the 3rd box at Lawrence Leritz which has a link to http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/suggest-links/suggester.php?page=Lawrence_Leritz. I have not used that tool before but just tried it. When I select some random links and click "Preview with Added Links" it seems to work fine: I'm taken to an editing screen with a preview where the chosen links are added. You then have to click "Save page" to save the page with the chosen links. Please describe more accurately how far you get and what happens. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

yep, PrimeHunter's no doubt sussed out what you were inquiring about - my advice above is about something else, but you still might want to take it into account!

meanwhile, i've never seen that "link suggestions" gizmo before either - i'm also curious how it works out. (wonder why it's missing George Balanchine, though?) Sssoul (talk) 18:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Its not: start from http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/. There is a problem in that particular article that keeps it from working though. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, it works fine for me. I have Internet Explorer 7.0. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

it worked fine using firefox 3 as well - it's a bit weird in a few ways, but it worked. Sssoul (talk) 10:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Multilingual Sourcing

I was just looking at the German version of a Wikipedia article, and found what appears to be a reliable secondary source. However, it is in German. My question is, is there any convention for using international sources when writing an article in a different language than the source? I'm not sure if this is generally accepted or whether it's out of the question. ←Spidern→ 18:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I looked in the Editor's index because I remembered reading about this in the past, but I did not find a clean link to the page I thought I remembered. So I used {{Google custom}} to search the Wikipedia: namespace:

Search the Wikipedia: namespace for: foreign language sources

Several of the search results pertain to the question. --Teratornis (talk) 19:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Such as:

Wikipedia:Reliable sources and undue weight#... but it's not perfect (an essay, which ranks lower than a guideline)
Wikipedia:Try to verify#When you add content (marked as "inactive")
Wikipedia:V#Non-English sources - WP:NONENG (this appears to be the definitive policy you seek)

--Teratornis (talk) 19:18, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The basic rule here is to use an English source if you can, but German sources are totally acceptable. Just make sure you mention it in the reference note. - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 19:35, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IE/FF inconsistencies

On this page IE processes the 'Wikipedia' section (the area with the four show/hide boxes) differently from FF and breaks it. Can somehow a fix be made without making it look awkward in FF? (i.e. some breaks will fix it but there'll be some space in FF). -- Menti sock 19:35, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to be working properly in IE Tab. What exactly is the problem? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It might be related to your screen resolution. What is the size/resolution of your monitor? - Mgm|^(talk) 21:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

About 1024x768 but you can still notice the difference (since the two browsers parse the page differently on all monitors) or you can use http://thumbalizr.com which shows IE's broken version. -- Menti sock 09:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator Abuse

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Resolved

– obvious WP:SOCK violation blocked. zOMGADMINABUSEDRAMA averted. Carry on.

How do we deal with admins who abuse thier powers/authority and want to be a Big Brother of English Wikipedia eg. User:Luna Santin & User:Theresa Knott ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by VolcanicBasalt (talk • contribs) 21:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The best way to deal with administrator abuse is to get the help of other administrators at WP:AN or WP:ANI (the administrator's noticeboard). They have the power to undo incorrect actions. But a lot of claims of administrator abuse are not well-documented. When you report it, you should provide as much evidence as possible. Linking to history diffs. Finally, administrators are people too and they are prone to making mistakes. Before reporting them, you should make an effort to discuss the issue with them. Good luck. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you by any chance related to/aware of User:Nitinrai, who was blocked for the adding the same material as you? TN‑X-Man 21:52, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)

If you really want to pursue this as admin abuse, you can take it to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, but you would be better off following the steps at Wikipedia:Mediation.

But: If you are referring to Lund (disambiguation), I don't see any admin abuse per se. Admins are simply users who are trusted with a few extra tools, and those have not been used in that case. Have you tried reading Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)? You would find that dab pages are not articles, thus they have special rules. For instance, you don't pipe links except under certain circumstances— this is explicitly noticed in the edit notice at the top of the page when you edit it. I have to agree with the others on the talk page: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a translation guide. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The user was blocked as a sock. Read my talkpage for my conversations with the user. I tried to AGF and guide the user, point them to relevant policies, etc, all I got was "you are abusing your admin powers" and something about my paymaster Twinkle. Not an admin, and I wish twinkle paid me. Oh well. --Terrillja _talk 21:58, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, this need to go someplace else such as the article talk page. The Help Desk is not the place to air this out. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:06, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

206.213.170.10 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

i need help making a album page for a band

hello i'm trying to make an album page for a rock band called Panda its about one of their old albums and so i wanted to create it and upload a picture. so i created a page but every time i look for it on wiki i can never find except when i look in my contributions. if someone can help fix this problem and also help on how to make pages and for bands, albums, and anything else.

thnks any help would be greatly appreciated —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry3000 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing wrong. The page is there. It just isn't indexed by the wikipedia search engine yet. If you can make a link like this: Arroz con leche (album) and it is blue, the edit worked. If you want to make it easier to find for other editors, you should link to it from the band page for example. - Mgm|^(talk) 00:09, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have converted Arroz Con Leche and Arroz con leche to disambiguation pages. – ukexpat (talk) 16:14, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do I get an entry posted to Wikipedia

I have an account. I thought saving the information would get it posted to Wikipedia, but it is not there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.199.175.34 (talk) 23:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It may have been deleted, or saved in the wrong place. What is your user name? Here is some general advice about making articles:

Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines which all articles should comport with. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite to reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Help:Starting a new page. You might also look at Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you by any chance try to look up the new article using the search function? Or did you write the article in the sandbox? 0 Mgm|^(talk) 00:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

November 7

Making or requesting a "BOT"

How does one go about creating or requesting a "BOT" to go around and make specific changes? I edit a lot of music articles and have been encountering a lot of links to AllMusic that are written "http://wm06.allmusic.com ..." instead of "http://www.allmusic.com ..." -- the wm06 makes it into a bad link. A brief search shows a lot of these out there, I certainly don't want to go fixing it manually. No idea how long they've been there, either, just seems like I've been encountering it a lot lately. I've seen the "date/maintenance fix" bot and others, can we get one to do this repair? Thanks. Salamurai (talk) 05:16, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All Music Guide underwent a name change that already has at least one bot going around changing links. I thinkk you're best off finding whoever that was. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I saw that edit, since I come across a lot of music articles on a daily basis. - Mgm|^(talk) 07:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And if that doesn't work, try Wikipedia:Bot requests.--A bit iffy (talk) 08:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:J Milburn Bot is the one that replaced All Music Guide with Allmusic, but it did not change any links. There are over 300 links to wm06.allmusic.com. [2] --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Such prefixes are often names of specific servers. Is that server completely dead then? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- It returns "You are not authorized to view this page". Changing wm06 to www gives the correct page. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
thanks! Salamurai (talk) 03:15, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Signature Personalization & Tables

I read the help article on personalization but I am still not clear how to change the font and color of my signature.

also, I need help in making tables.

Can some please explain how to do all this right from the basics?

Torque3000 (talk) 10:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For me the personalization page was pretty clear. What is it exactly that you're not getting? Is it about where to do it, or about what markup to use to actually change your sig appearence? With regards to the tables: did you read Help:Table? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

i dont know what markup to use —Preceding unsigned comment added by Torque3000 (talk • contribs) 12:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Leave a note on my talk page (hit talk in my signature, and add a note to the bottom of the page) and tell me what kind of formatting you want to achieve on your signature. I'll help you write out the code and explain how it works. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editing using page to moderate far-right hate site.

I have come across an editor who seems to be using his user space to explain his decisions as a moderator on what appears to be a far-right hate site. As well as editing the wiki, I also donate to the foundation and object to my donations being used for people to contact business for off-site race hate sites. Is there a template I can use to ask them to stop? --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:16, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What user? --Orange Mike | Talk 16:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This guy - User:Ed Poor, I thought the site was some sort of parody to start with but it preaches hate against muslims, homosexuals, pretty much anyone who isn't white. What the guy wants to do on his own time is his business but I'd rather it wasn't done here. --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any references on his user page to another site. Maybe I'm missing something? TN‑X-Man 16:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He seems to be a moderator of www.conservapedia.com which I became aware of because of another forum I'm a member of and then ended up back here after looking at some of the pages. I thought it was a wikipedia parody to start with. Anyway the guy is a mod there and seems to be conducting business for that place here. Like I said, I don't care what anyone wants to do in their own time but I don't see why the business of the far-right should be done here. --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you're talking about now. The discussion is on his talk page. Personally, I don't see any real problems there, but if you are concerned, the best first step is to drop him a note on his talk page. If he doesn't reply, you can ask other editors to look at the issue and see if further steps are needed. TN‑X-Man 16:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) If anyone would like to know more, this issue is being discussed at ANI. TN‑X-Man 17:16, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've been claiming for some time that the various POV-pushing wikis out there such as Conservapedia and RationalWiki (which was started in direct opposition to Conservapedia) act as important safety valves for Wikipedia. I believe we want the various ideologues on the right and left and wherever else who find their way to Wikipedia to become aware of wikis catering to their views, because otherwise they will want to push their views on Wikipedia. If they think Wikipedia is the "only game in town," they will want to fight all their battles here. I think it is much better to show them wikis where they find everyone agrees with them. Most people find disagreement unpleasant, so the people who can't live with Wikipedia's rules will be much happier elsewhere, and Wikipedia will be much happier if they go elsewhere. I am aware that this might result in someone somewhere publishing something I disagree with, but that's life. Better that those opinions are on some obscure wiki than to have them soiling our paradise of neutrality here. Just my opinion. --Teratornis (talk) 18:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I might add that no less a personage than Jimbo Wales has expressed discomfort with userboxes on Wikipedia. However, getting rid of userboxes might cause more harm than good to Wikipedia, by discouraging some of the people people who donate labor to Wikipedia, for whom userboxes are a valuable reward. People can learn to contribute to articles with a neutral point of view, in brief spurts, and subject to constant correction by others, but nobody is actually going to be neutral. As long as Wikipedia can only be built by people who hold opinions, we have to make some allowances for them. However, we should and do draw the line against outright advocacy for any cause on Wikipedia other than Wikipedia itself. --Teratornis (talk) 18:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

comments & suggestions

where can i add comments & suggestions inoder to improve this beautiful world of knowledge & wisdom............my appreciation & gratitude to the people behind the scenes & to those running the show

Regards, R Carter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.5.151.66 (talk) 18:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It really depends upon the subject of the suggestion. Wikipedia has discussion boards all over for different subjects. I would say the closest thing to a centralized suggestion board would be the various boards of the Village Pump, but even there you are likely to be pointed to somewhere else more directly on the topic of your suggestion. - TexasAndroid (talk) 19:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are also invited to improve it yourself. We mean it. Jump right in, make any changes you want. If you screw up, don't worry, anyone else can fix it. Have at it! --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Before suggesting anything, study what others have already suggested. See for example Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. Newcomers to Wikipedia tend to form mistaken impressions about it, and some of these mistakes are stereotypical (that is, made by wave after wave of successive newcomers). I suggest that in addition to whatever you do on Wikipedia itself, you should keep some private notes on your computer about your initial impressions of Wikipedia and ideas for it. Then after you have spent a year or two editing on Wikipedia, you can go back to your notes and have a good laugh. That's what I recently did when I pulled out some of my early (and, thankfully) private musings about Wikipedia. My ideas weren't entirely ridiculous, but much of what I thought about doing was more applicable to doing on other wikis. Wikipedia is actually a very specialized wiki, just one of many thousands on offer, albeit one of the largest and most popular. Many ideas one might randomly have about what one could do with this technology are better suited for other wikis, some of which already exist, and some which might be waiting for someone like you to start them. --Teratornis (talk) 21:43, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question of the day

I would like to know how many gigabytes of information Wikipedia uses as a whole. Sorry, I'm a sucker for statistics :) Digital^Ninja 21:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:EIW#Statistic should keep you busy for a while. --Teratornis (talk) 21:44, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#How big is the database? for some old numbers. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

November 8

Help with collateral damage on French Wikipedia article

Hi. I'm currently editing this article. Especially if you have been involved with WikiProject tropical cyclones or you are good at timeline templates or you have an account on fr.wp, please take a look at the diffs and try to fix it. You don't need to have very good French because the table is based on an English version. The table on there is messed up, if you wish you can look at the tables below.

Original table before the addition of "Paloma":

Table after the addition of Paloma:

The problem is, the table now is missing all the labels. Can someone try to fix this, so "Paloma" is still present, but so are the labels? It isn't working on the English Wikipedia either it seems, see this article and its talkpage. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 01:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see any labels on either (FF2, Vista SP1, 16-bit, laptop) Dendodge Talk^Contribs 11:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some other users recently reported problems with timelines.

--Teratornis (talk) 18:29, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

editprotected tab via CSS

Could I modify my monobook.css to create a tab for adding an {{editprotected}} request? My idea is that it should be displayed on any page that is fully protected, and that I'd have a one-click shortcut for the usual procedure of going to the talk page, creating a new section and putting in the editprotected template. Or would someone have to write a script for that sort of thing? Everyme 05:58, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think adding tabs (especially tabs that add content when you click on them) requires a JavaScript script. I'm not sure if there already is one, you may want to look around. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 18:19, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This looks like you want to add {{editprotected}}, then start the discussion: this is backwards. You need to start the discussion and gain consensus for the change, then add {{editprotected}} to get the changes made. The only time you would do this without a prior discussion is where the change would be obvious: a spelling or grammar error for example. Many editprotected requests get declined because there is no discussion. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Details

Dear Wikipedia,

I need to post one article for A to Z superstore, am finding it diffcult to post such article. If you could please help me in posting one article which can be access thorught google and other related sites and also inform me about the articles are paid one's or free of cost.

Regards, A to Z superstore Mumbai —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atozsuperstore (talk • contribs) 08:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You posted the entry to your userpage. Right now it would have no chance of surviving as an article, because it is not written in a neutral encyclopedic tone. It also doesn't have any citations to reliable sources. If you want to learn more about writing articles, please read "Your First Article". - Mgm|^(talk) 08:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And read Wikipedia:FAQ/Business. Note that writing new articles from scratch which will survive deletion is one of the more difficult tasks on Wikipedia, and is usually one of the worst tasks for brand new users to try first. If you want to create a new article on Wikipedia and have it stick, you should read Wikipedia - The Missing Manual. --Teratornis (talk) 18:16, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unwatch link on my watchlist never works

The unwatch link next to the diff and hist links for an article never works for me – the article isn't removed from my watchlist. Opening the article and pressing the unwatch link there does. Any ideas? Thanks Rjwilmsi 09:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For ease of reference, here is the not-working javascript Rjwilmsi is using to create the 'unwatch' links:

addOnloadHook(function () {
    var query_prefix = "title=Special:Watchlist&action=submit&remove=1&id[]=";
    //var query_prefix = "action=unwatch&title=";
 
    if (window.location.href.indexOf("Special:Watchlist") < 0) return;
    if (window.location.href.indexOf("Special:Watchlist/edit") >= 0) return;
 
    var links = document.getElementById('content').getElementsByTagName('a');
    for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
        if (links[i].href.substring(links[i].href.length-15) != '&action=history')
            continue;
        var unwatch = document.createElement('a');
        unwatch.href = "/enwiki/w/index.php?" + query_prefix + encodeURIComponent(links[i].title);
        unwatch.title = "Unwatch "+links[i].title;
        unwatch.appendChild(document.createTextNode("unwatch"));
        links[i].parentNode.insertBefore(unwatch, links[i].nextSibling);
        // kluge to handle case where "diff" is unlinked:
        var delim = links[i].previousSibling;
        delim = (delim.nodeType == 3 ? delim.nodeValue : "");
        links[i].parentNode.insertBefore(document.createTextNode(delim.replace(/^.*diff/, "")), unwatch);
    }
});

Algebraist 10:47, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks. I hadn't realised that the unwatch option was a custom thing. I must have added it a good while ago. I've found an alternative script that works now. Rjwilmsi 11:21, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Old script was from Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Unwatch and is marked as broken. Rjwilmsi 11:29, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

content list & other things not working

I suspect I've changed a setting somewhere, but can't find what I did. These features aren't working with me -

When I click on a contents box, it doesn't go down to that section.
When the mouse hovers over a Wikilink, nothing now shows.
When showing my waych list, when the mouse hovers over "diff", nothing now shows.

I'd appreciate some help to restore these, please! Hogyn Lleol (talk) 11:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I seem to have now sorted this myself. It wasn't the settings in Wikipedia. I'm using Vista and it needs to run the page in "Compatability mode". Hogyn Lleol (talk) 12:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vista should not be a problem. I guess the problem is that you have installed Internet Explorer 8 Beta which still has some serious bugs. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changing My Preferences

If I try to change my preferences, it comes up with the following warning: "Your password is invalid or too short. It must have at least 1 character and be different from your username.". But my password is there, as usual, and it's certainly longer than 1 character and not the same as my username. Fribbler (talk) 11:39, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you try to change your password or some other setting when that came up? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FF sometimes autocompletes the 'old password' field with your password. You have to delete it to change any of your other preferences. Algebraist 11:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was Firefox's overzealous autocompletion all right! Problem is solved. Thanks. Fribbler (talk) 12:11, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rust

how do you get rust off of glass? My glass holders for citronella candles got rusty after being outside on the deck this past summer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.241.146.128 (talk) 14:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the massive notice at the top of this page. - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 15:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Searching the Web with {{Google}} for: how to remove rust stains from glass finds lots of results. --Teratornis (talk) 18:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some climate boxes I'm adding do not show up

I've added climate boxes to Phoenix, Arizona, Scottsdale, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, Clearwater, Florida, and a few others and they've all worked fine. But the two I've added to Miami, Florida and Tucson, Arizona -- the precipitation and temperature values simply do not show up. I cannot find anything different that I've done to those two articles' climate boxes than the others.

Any explanation or help would be greatly appreciated. Rko202 (talk) 16:08, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

on the Miami, Florida page it looks like another editor removed the chart you added because the page already has a climate chart. the chart you added to Tucson, Arizona shows up fine for me. Sssoul (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Valid citable sources??

I just created an article for Safri Duo's new album Origins. Their website gives no idea of the album's release date; however at least two online music stores (this one and this one, for example) state the date of release as 17 November 2008.. Can these sites be cited reliably on the article? At least until Safri Duo announce something officially on their site? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raghuvansh r (talk • contribs) 18:32, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There might be no final answer on something like this which every Wikipedia user will agree on. WP:V says:

Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed.

which I interpret to mean that if nobody challenges your claim of a release date for the album, your sources are effectively reliable enough. However, since we cannot predict what all other Wikipedia users will do, the only way to know if your sources are reliable enough is to throw them out there and see what happens. I suggest being bold by doing this:

Cite the sources you have.
Leave a note on Talk:Origins (Safri Duo Album) explaining the problem, what you did, and alerting other editors to look for some future announcement of the release date which is more official. That way you eliminate any suspicion of having tried to do something sneaky.
Send e-mail to the band or the label asking them to post an official release date we can cite.

Also see the links under WP:EIW#Source; it looks like Wikipedians have written just about everything there is to know about reliable sources and how we use them. --Teratornis (talk) 19:21, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've come across multiple instances where the release dates cited by online stores were not actually the correct ones. I would therefore by a little suspicious unless the band themselves or their management would make an official statement. Nevertheless, if it is the best you have, make sure you don't cite it as fact, but simply state that "multiple stores list the release date as....". - Mgm|^(talk) 20:13, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image size fix

I can't seem to get the main (first) picture on Brandon Roy bigger. Any help? Thanks in advance, A _talk 21:01, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You need to add |image_size= right below |image=. This will allow you to adjust the size of the picture instead of adding |240px after the image name. See {{Infobox NBA player}}. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 21:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! A _talk 21:46, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

November 9

Citation templates and archived/cached web sources

I've just come across an article I created a couple of years ago that now points to dead links because the cached google version I linked to is no longer valid. I want to solve this by using WebCite. To avoid this happening again, I would like to include a cache version of any references I make in new articles (so any editor coming across the article can fix deadlinks to sources). I thought there was a field for that in citation templates but I can no longer find that. Should I use HTML comment tags or did I miss something? - Mgm|^(talk) 00:26, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice tidbit: One of the suggestions they make to a student/programmer looking for a project with them is to: "develop a wikipedia bot which scans new wikipedia articles for cited URLs, submits an archiving request to WebCite®, and then adds a link to the archived URL behind the cited URL." If such an effort was made (and expanded to older pages), we would suffer a lot less linkrot. Only people removing their content from the archive could then interfere with link stability. - Mgm|^(talk) 00:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can I get an opinion on a few edits

This edit as well as some of the other recent edits to the Cindy Margolis article seem rather out of place. I don't recall any other article being quite so up front about who the subject's agent is. Am I the only one who thinks that this is a bit odd/out of place/unusual/etc? Or maybe a bit too much like advertising? The user even includes Margolis' agent's web site in the external links. Dismas|^(talk) 02:51, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct, the edits are a clear conflict of interest. I've restored the previous revision of the article and warned the user.

A few things give it away; check out User:Sparkato48's contributions. The account was solely created to edit this article. Also, this diff showing before and after the edits shows that there are several attempts to put the subject in a more positive light, eg "divorced" is changed to "separated". And yes, you noticed — the external link in the end. The user added Margolis' agent's name three times in their edits. Well done! Pretzels^Talk! 03:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MY question is incorporated with the space

As we know that when we leave earth the volume of air tend to decrease and we cant adhere to one particular position as we keep on floating in the space , so my question is when once the rocket is launched ,when it leaves the earth and enter the space orbit , why does it not float in air , can you reveal the scientific reason behind it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.104.81 (talk) 04:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what you're asking but I'm pretty sure it belongs at the Science Reference Desk and not here. Dismas|^(talk) 05:08, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page Format Missing

I recently came across this problem: Whenever I go to wikipedia I am missing all of the formating at the left and top of the page. All I get is the type going straight down the page. Can anyone help me with this issue? I currently use Firefox version 3.0.3. this does not happen with IE.

Thanks,

Dave Clark —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmeguy1 (talk • contribs) 04:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have the MonoBook skin at Special:Preferences in Firefox? Have you tried to completely clear the cache in Firefox? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Degraded image

Hi, I wonder if someone who understands these things could take a look at the image Image:Pole-south.gif as it appears at the top of South Pole. For me, it's badly degraded, as if it's been through a very poor scaling algorithm (compare a similar image at North Pole, which is fine) The strange thing is that I'm sure this image was perfectly OK until quite recently, and I don't see what's changed. Any ideas? 86.133.214.217 (talk) 05:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

The image looks fine from my computer, The problem could be with your browser. Have you changed any settings recently? and what browser are you using?.--intraining ^{Jack In} 07:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They look fine to me, too (if anything I'd say the South Pole image looks better than the North Pole image, but my eyesight is less than stellar...) however, there is a discussion on WP:AN right now about problems with GIFs - apparently the server-side scaling of GIFs has had to be switched off to reduce server load. I wonder if this could be the cause of the problem? I'm fairly sure I've looked at both the North and South Pole articles fairly recently, so it's quite possible I'm seeing "good" images because they're cached on my computer.

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 09:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Sourth Pole image is a GIF, the North Pole is a PNG. GIFs do not rezise well. Click on the image: it the original size is good, then resizing is the problem. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using IE7, with no recent setting changes that I'm aware of. "The server-side scaling of GIFs has had to be switched off to reduce server load" sounds to me very likely to be the problem that I'm seeing. The unscaled image is just fine. I don't really see why PNGs should be any less computationally intensive to scale than GIFs (or maybe they're scaled by the browser?), but if PNGs are still scaled OK (as they seem to be for me) then perhaps in an ideal world someone who has the time and the tools could convert the GIF to PNG. Pending that I've just changed the article to display the GIF actual size, which is not too bad. Thanks everyone... 00:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.30.51 (talk)

Interwiki account

Firstly, let me tell you the account that I actually registered myself: English, Indonesian, French, and Latin. I never registered for another Wiki account besides that. However this morning, I received a message (notified by e-mail) from Malaysian wiki welcoming me to their wikipedia. I am really curious, so I checked my Global account status. Surprise, surprise: I got account in Japanese and Javanese, all of the languages that I speak/understand (though I only have intermediate understanding in Japanese) - see my userpage babel. I intend to keep those account. but what makes me curious is the fact that I am not registering to use those. Is my account being used by someone else (I am using my own laptop). w_tanoto (talk) 09:41, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you access those new accounts with the password you use in the other accounts? - Mgm|^(talk) 10:22, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I use unified login. The first time I use unified login, there was 4 accounts that I created myself. Now, a total of 7 accounts are listed. Is this automatic things, because all of those are actually the language that is listed in my babel, though not all of them? May I know the IP, so I can compare it with my own IP. w_tanoto (talk) 10:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATES: I know the problem is. Once I visited wikipedia in other languages, I automatically became registered because of the use of unified login. Thanks for attempting to help me. Problem solved. w_tanoto (talk) 10:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

help me

why buying an existing business is a better option and compared to starting up one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.147.51 (talk) 14:00, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6.9 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. TN‑X-Man 14:07, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have a question

Which car should i buy? What's better a Toyota Avensis or VW Polo, cheers - matt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.145.90 (talk) 14:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. You might want to ask this at the reference desk. Not sure if they'll be able to help you though. If I were you, I'd try to find info on these vehicles from someone you can trust and really knows about them, since it is something important. Chamal ^talk 14:41, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

getting logged out while editing

I recently edited an article, taking over half an hour to do so. I started out logged in, and frequently used "show preview", but didn't save for a long time. When I eventually did so, I discovered I'd been logged out, so the edit appears under my IP address, not my username. How can I stop this happening? I never want to edit when logged out, but have done so accidentally several times now. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 14:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you check the "remember me" box when logging in?.--intraining ^{Jack In} 14:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that the "remember me" is related to automatically logging out, Theoneintraining? I'm not sure, but sounds to me like it might be something with his browser settings. Chamal ^talk 15:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Same thing happened to me some time ago; turned out I hit Ctrl+O (= "log out") by accident sometimes while I just wanted to preview my edits with Ctrl+P, because "O" is next to "P" on my keyboard. The solution was in adding the following code to the end of my Special:Mypage/monobook.js:

// Disable Alt+O ("log out")
ta['pt-logout'] = new Array(,'Log out');

HTH. - Erik Baas (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't been using "remember me". I'd not been doing that because I didn't want to be left logged in when I wasn't using my computer at all. But that's why explicit logging out is provided, isn't it. I have to admit I've never been logging out, since I relied on the system doing it for me. So I think that's the answer. I'll change my habits forthwith. Thanks, theoneintraining, we'll see if that works out better. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 15:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully that works for you, please come back if you continue to have trouble.--intraining ^{Jack In} 15:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Contacting non-English Wikipedians

The entry Boogeyman has a comprehensive list of versions of the creature in other cultures, but none of them are cited. Since tracking down citations in English will be well-nigh impossible, I was wondering if any native speakers of those languages could help me track down some sources. Serendi ^podous 14:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Most questions on the Help desk get some sort of answer a lot quicker than this one, suggesting that not many of the people who have been monitoring the Help desk over the past several hours know what to make of this. Maybe the following ideas will be better than no answer:

Follow the interlanguage links from the article, for example de:Butzemann cites a source (in German, naturally).
Examine the history of the Boogeyman article, see who added all that unsourced material, and ask them on their user talk pages where they got it.
Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination might provide some clues.
Go down the list in Boogeyman#Analogues in other cultures and see if we have corresponding WikiProjects. For example, the first entry is for Argentina, and we have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Argentina. Some member of that WikiProject may know a source for hombre de la bolsa or be able to find one.

--Teratornis (talk) 01:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fuck me boots

Why does Fuck me boots redirect to Kinky boots? FMB's are not always 'extreme' or 'kinky' they are just normal boots which girls wear, normally brown or black, which when worn with a skirt in particular send the signal to men that they are up for some fun, and when men see them they want to fuck the female in question even more than normal. nothing to do with kinky fetish boots i think u will find.

Kinky boots says: "A related term is fuck-me boots, which is, however, often used in a more tongue-in-cheek, humorous way. It is a term more common to the US."

If a subject isn't notable enough for its own article (or no editor has yet made an article), then it's common to redirect the term to a related article which may include mention of the term. I have added {{R from related word}} to the redirect. If you have a reliable source explaining the term then you can edit the quoted sentence and cite your source. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Help using same reference twice

Hi,

I am trying to use the same reference at multiple places in a paragraph. The way I am able to do it creates a new reference every time I add the reference again. I am trying to edit the "Vagus nerve stimulatiors and sleep apnea" section of the article Vagus_nerve_stimulation. If you look at the footnotes for that section, you will see what my problem is. I want to be able to use the same reference in multiple places without creating a new entry in the "references" or "footnotes" section. Thanks for your help.--Rishi Raj, MD, FCCP, DABSM (talk) 17:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Rishirajmd (talk • contribs) 17:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You use the same reference multiple times by putting a name="" attribute on one of the <ref>s (putting the name between the quotes), and then using it again by inserting <ref name="[name of the reference to reuse]" /> where you want to reuse it. This way, there are two links that point to the same footnote. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 17:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For the first occurrence do <ref name="source">rest of the reference as usual</ref>. for additional links to the same reference, use <ref name="source" />. Where source is a single word (I think only one word is supported) to name the source. --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:FOOT#Naming a ref tag so it can be used more than once for details. If you put quotes around the name attribute value, the value may contain embedded spaces (i.e., more than one word). --Teratornis (talk) 19:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

error in Wind power

Hi! I noticed an error yesterday when reading the "wind power" page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

The first sentence of the second paragraph on that page reads "The principle application of wind power today is to generate electricity." and obviously it should use the word "principal" not "principle." I registered an account, assuming that I could then make an edit to correct the word, but I can't seem to figure out how to do so, or perhaps I have to wait a few more days after registering to be allowed to make changes; I can't quite figure out all the rules here : )

Thank you, Julie Mandell (user name: juliemandell) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliemandell (talk • contribs) 18:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia!. The article is semi protected against vandalism. Thanks for pointing it out. I've corrected it. --GraemeL ^(talk) 18:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reccomendations?

Hello. I just started an article, Patellar Subluxation Syndrome, and would like your suggestiions. Is there anything that should be fixed? Does it have a chance of staying? Thanks.--Archeopteryx (talk) 20:07, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Try WP:PR --GPPande talk! 20:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keyboard short cuts.

Just like we have keyboard shortcut (not Wikipedia shortcut) to take the cursor to search box (alt+shift+f) do we have any for jumping to Usertalk page, user watchlist or contributions? I know of Wikipedia shortcuts which can save typing efforts in search box but want to know of any navigational shortcut keys that can be used for userspace pages. --GPPande talk! 20:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:30, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect. Thanks. --GPPande talk! 20:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are tooltips when you hover over the navigation links in wikipedia. Theses tooltips also contain hits for the hotkeys. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

am i qualified to edit wikipedia?

i know most ppl on here are like univeseity educated and all that so i was wondering if i is educated enough to edit also? i mean i only got 4 gcses and they were pretty bad, 2 c, 2 d, 1 u ,lol i know! and then after that i quit school so i dunno now if i can edit this or not. and u can tell me written english isnt really well good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.191.55 (talk) 22:19, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you're not a star in writing, perhaps you can contribute in some other way. There's plenty of articles that need free (non-copyrighted) pictures. And sometimes higher-educated people simply get stuck in what they know, making what they write hard to understand for regular people. You could drop by featured article candidates and peer review to share your view on such articles. In other words: I'm sure there's something you can do for Wikipedia even if it's not writing.- Mgm|^(talk) 22:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your English isn't amazing, but formatting and images are easy, and involve very little writing. Once you get used to being around here, you can contribute to discussions and !votes. It will probably help you learn as well. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 22:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you draw pictures? Can you take photographs? Wikipedia always needs more illustrations. Look up articles that are about things in the area where you live (bridges, parks, landmarks, etc.). You can photograph them and upload the photos to Commons. Anybody can point a camera, even people who can't spell. If you cannot write or aim a camera, you could give money. If you don't have money, you can't write, and you can't aim a camera, you could answer questions on the Help desk. I'm actually serious - to answer questions here, all you have to do is look up the answers and copy and paste the links to them, like this answer to your question:

See Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia.

You can add a lot of value to Wikipedia just by telling people where to look in the online help for answers to their questions on the Help desk. Learning how to look up answers in this way will make you an expert on Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 00:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the kinds of answers this guy got ! DOR (HK) (talk) 03:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Teflon: What happened to the original article? (pre: January 2008)

I just visited the page on Teflon. This is a page I have visited more than 10 months ago. Now I find that the current page was created in January 2008 and has precious little content. What happened to the original page?!? That page contained a great deal of information about invention of Teflon, its use on the NASA Shuttle as well as many other uses, including as a non-stick coating on frying pans. What happened to that original content? Was it deleted? Was it moved to a new heading. certainly, this page had a history prior to January 2008. Enquire (talk) 22:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's about the brand name 'Teflon' - there's a long word in the first paragraph that links to what you're looking for. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 22:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Teflon is a DuPont registered trademark for a number of products so the Teflon disambiguation page is correct. The most common Teflon products that you describe are made from polytetrafluoroethylene, usually referred to as PTFE. – ukexpat (talk) 02:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Text copying issue

I just ran into a problem in copying text from one article or external source to another Wikipedia article, or cutting a part of an article and pasting it into another part of the same Wikipedia article. Every time I try to paste an article, it shows the message "Text copying disabled". It is with my computer, your servers, or a combonation thereof. Please advise. Chris (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you try copying images? Sometimes it screws up if you do that.... Cheers. Imperat§ r^(Talk) 23:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

November 10

Archive box issues

Can someone please take a look at my talk page tell me what I'm doing wrong for all of my discussions to be archived in only one place? Archives 2&3 remain completely empty and Archive 1 only holds the first batch of archives, which means many more have been archived, well, nowhere. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 02:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

mobile skin

is there a skin for mobile phones (like the iPhone)?Portable101 (talk) 03:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:EIW#Mobile. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 04:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Made mistake by accident now need help to fix the error

While working on Chiang Kai-shek I made some mistakes at Chiang Kai-shek#Names. Could someone fix the problem for me?Arilang1234 (talk) 08:42, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It had a bunch of empty lines, which were screwing up the spacing. Perhaps the intent was to prevent the images from flowing into the next section. I removed the empty lines and added a {{clear}} at the bottom of the section. Is that what you wanted? —teb728 t c 09:16, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

registration confirmation problem

Hello

I registered with Wikipedia yesterday. I had to do so via 'Create an account', rather than the straightforward click-click-click process, because when I typed the confirmation text and clicked 'Submit', the next page said the confirmation text was incorrect. I'm writing this from memory, so the exact phrase 'confirmation text' may be wrong. What I mean is the wavy, fuzzy phrase in a box that I had to type out in a box below.

The fuzzy text was clearer than it often is in such boxes, and the phrases were plain English, such as 'trialrun', 'cleartext', and such. They were all lower case, with no spaces between the 2 words. I typed them that way. I tried 3 times, and was presented with 3 different phrases, and each time I failed. I also tried putting a space between the 2 words; that didn't work either.

So I'm wondering whether you've got a problem with the bit of code that interprets what a user types in this box; or whether it's a browser problem (I use Opera in WinXPPro). The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that I didn't mistype what I saw, and that what I typed was the exact string in the fuzzy-characters box.

Best wishes

Mary —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlordbernard (talk • contribs) 10:51, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Generating a list of most popular articles in a project

Hello. I seem to remember someone posting a link to generate a list of the most-browsed articles in the Theatre wikiproject a while back, but I can't find it now. How can I generate such a list? DionysosProteus (talk) 11:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Raibin

I am trying to resubmit this for review and addition to Wikipedia having now re-written and ammended it according to the Reviewer's instructions but can't see how to re-submit it for inclusion.

This is all factual and can be verified if you go to google so don't understand why it cannot be included.

Thankyou Amy Moosah

AFC SUBMISION P Nadia Raibin'is recognised as the manager and brains behind the worlds first opera band Amici forever which she formed in collaboration with Geoff Sewell- tenor of this multi platinum selling artist. Nadia Raibin signed the group which was originally known as Tenors & Divas before changing its name to Amici forever - in one of the largest recording deals for a classical artist to the USA - RCA Victor (SONYBMG). They went on to sell 2 million albums worldwide, had a No.1 on the US Billboard Chart with their debut CD "The Opera Band" and reached Gold disc status in the UK as well as charting at No.2 in the Classical Charts. They were recognised with platinum sales for their 2nd album DEFINED in New Zealand and Australia. The original Amici forever group comprised of Geoff Sewell, David Habbin, Joanne Appleby, Tsakane Valentine and Nick Garrett. After the release of their 2nd album Nadia Raibin was removed as manager and Nick Garrett then departed the group. Their recording contract was not renewed by Sony/BMG . Nadia Raibin was also the originator of the classical dueo Operababes, two sopranos Rebecca Knight and Karen England who were found busking in Covent Garden and who Nadia Raibin signed to Sony. Operbabes attained a Gold Disc for their debut album in the UK selling 60,000 units. Nadia Raibin most recently formed and signed a unique childrens choir to EMI Records called Kindred Spirits - which she formed alongside the New London Childrens Choir director Ronald Corp and who released their debut album in December 08..

Sources General news items from www.kindredspiritschoir.com; www.amiciforever.com; www.massmovement.uk.com; google for "Nadia Raibin", album credits on Opera Band, Defined, Kindred Spirits, Operababes, Russell Watson, Classical X website and other reputable press articles —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amymoosah (talk • contribs) 12:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You only gave global domain names for your sources and saying there are press releases on google is not enough. You actually have to point to them. If you can't find a direct link, just provide enough information so someone else can find it. (Title, author, date, publication, etc) - 131.211.151.245 (talk) 12:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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