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Having difficulty getting new article approved

Hello, I've tried a couple of times to get the following new article submission approved but it has been rejected both times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Leonard_Jacobson_%28spiritual_teacher%29

The latest criticisms are

1. That it needs a range of independent, reliable, published sources. (I feel that I've met these criteria. Could you please tell me why I received this criticsm?)

2. Declining submission: submission is not written from a neutral point of view (Would you please point out an example of what is not written from a neutral point of view, and what is an example of a "peacock term" used in this article?

Any suggestions or insight you could offer, which will help me get this article approved would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Thesevan (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

create a profile?

Good Afternoon, Im looking to add my husband on here. He is a singer/songwriter and I have no idea how to do it. Any help wld be great xxx. 4fingaz (talk) 14:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello 4fingaz and welcome to the Teahouse. Before going on to create a page about this subject, I would recommend having a look at these two pages.

1. - Conflict of interest - As you have mentioned you are the husband of the person you wish to create a page about, it may be pertinent for you to have a look at the
2. - Notability (music) - You need to make sure that the subject is notable under these guidlines.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a line at my talk page. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 14:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Recommended format for an author who is "editor"

Hi Newby here; currently updating an article and wish to include a bibliography; this is fine for works written by my subject but is there a recommended format for works of others edited by my subject; ie Volume 42 of The Summa Theologiae written by St Thomas Aquinas edited by Anthony Ross and P G Walsh? Any suggestions? Portnoy58 (talk) 14:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Dissident Prophet's We're Not Grasshoppers, 1995.jpg)

Thanks for uploading File:Dissident Prophet's We're Not Grasshoppers, 1995.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hazard-Bot (talk) 04:26, 22 December 2012 (UTC) Firstade (talk) 10:42, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

change the name of a page

Someone wrote an article/page on the Reel Shorts Film Festival and called it "Reel Shorts Film Festival (Grande Prairie)". Grande Prairie is the location of the festival but it's not part of the name. I'd like to remove "Grande Prairie" from the title of the article. How can I do that? Tscerbak (talk) 02:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tscerback, and welcome to the Teahouse! You can change the name of a page by moving it. It's pretty easy. As long as you've been autoconfirmed (10 edits and registered more than 4 days ago), you can click on the dropdown triangle next to the star button and click on "Move". Then you just fill out the form with a reason why and the title you want to move it to, and it's done! I hope this helps, if you need a hand or some more explanation please feel free to ask! Best, Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 02:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

However... note: there also is a Reel Shorts Film Festival in Chicago - the parenthesis are generally used for disambiguation, although there doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia article for the Chicago one. There should be some sort of clarification in the lead for Reel Shorts Film Festival. ←This link goes to the 'Recreation and culture' section of the Grande Prairie article. It looks like there needs to be some recombobulation - which is beyond this IP's current ability. ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 05:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Two people with the same name

I recently came across the article Carlos Urrutia, about a Peruvian diplomat. The article lacked references, so I tried finding some, and discovered that there is another Carlos Urrutia, who is also a diplomat, but from Colombia. I created a new article about him (Carlos Urrutia (Colombian diplomat)), but not I'm not sure what more I should do. I've seen disambiguation pages, but I'm not sure how to create one. Also, should I change the name of the first article to specify that he's the Peruvian diplomat? Thanks in advance. Keihatsu ^talk 01:18, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

You're on the right track. I'd now move the existing article to Carlos Urrutia (Peruvian diplomat), using the move tab. Then edit the redirect this leaves behind (or don't create a redirect) and make Carlos Urrutia a disambig. See WP:DISAMBIG, but broadly you just list the linked articles and then stick this as a footer:

* [[Carlos Urrutia (Colombian diplomat)]]
* [[Carlos Urrutia (Peruvian diplomat)]]

{{disambig}}
[[Category:Human name disambiguation pages|Urrutia, Carlos ]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Urrutia, Carlos }}

Tag the talk page for the diambiguation WikiProject too.

{{WikiProject Disambiguation}}
{{WikiProject Biography
|living=yes
|class=Dab
|listas=Urrutia, Carlos
}}

Finally, go through Special:WhatLinksHere/Carlos_Urrutia and fix up the links on all the relevant pages (mostly those from the main article namespace). Andy Dingley (talk) 01:36, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

If the above sounds daunting then you can also just add this to the top of Carlos Urrutia so readers can find the other article:

{{For|the Colombian diplomat|Carlos Urrutia (Colombian diplomat)}}

It produces this hatnote:

For the Colombian diplomat, see Carlos Urrutia (Colombian diplomat).

Hatnotes are often used when there are only two articles to disambiguate between. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Notability

Hi! I was just wondering, do you think this is notable enough? Thanks, Jakob 00:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The OP probably intended to link to User:SpeedReader/sandbox, rather than the redlink to User:SpeedReader/sandbok in his question. - David Biddulph (talk) 01:46, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

How do I respond to a notice that "it has been suggested that this article or section be merged" into a longer article when I prefer that it stay as a separate page?

I put up a very short page (stub) on the Reel Shorts Film Festival in Grande Prairie, Alberta months ago and someone merged it into a short entry on the City of Grande Prairie's page. Yesterday, someone else put up a longer, more complete page on the Reel Shorts Film Festival at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel_Shorts_Film_Festival_(Grande_Prairie) but again a notice appeared at the top that "It has been suggested that this article be merged into Reel Shorts Film Festival" which is the short mention included on the City of Grande Prairie's page. I've edited the page, making it more objective, and I've added references. Is there anything else I should do to keep this page as a separate page on Wikipedia? The City of Grande Prairie has nothing to do with the production of the film festival, and there are a lot of other festivals of similar size with their own Wikipedia pages, so I'm not sure why someone has suggested merging it. And when I click on Discuss, there is no comment to respond to, and I haven't figured out how to add my own comment. It's all quite confusing. Thanks for any insights you can give me on the process. Tscerbak (talk) 00:32, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I didn't really see a way to easily merge the article, so I went ahead and removed the tag. Personally, I think both articles could still use some work, but they can't easily be merged together without losing some information. There is still the issue of if the festival meets our notability requirements on it's own, as all of your references seem to be from one person, or from the festival itself. It'd be better if you can find sources from major newspapers (try news.google.com for that) or from any major news outlet such as CNN, BBC, ABC, and others. If you can find more sources I can't see anything really big wrong with the article. Thanks! gwickwire^talk_edits 00:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

helping

Is there a way that i can help on Wikipedia? I am currently working on Wiktionary's requests for photos, is there something i can do here? Venomxx (talk) 00:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Venomxx! Welcome to the teahouse. Pictures are very needed here, too, and if you upload them to commons they can be used in both places. Other areas that always can use help are copyediting and possibly AfC, if you feel confident enough to review new articles. Gtwfan52 (talk) 00:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, is their a page for me to start? Venomxx (talk) 01:03, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, there are lots of things you can do. See Wikipedia:Requested pictures but all help is welcome. The interaction box to the left has a link to Wikipedia:Community portal. Wikipedia:Maintenance has more. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again, I know all help is welcome, but I work best with pictures. Venomxx (talk) 01:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I checked the hyper-link out and it wasn't on my level i am old/new to Wikipedia helping i wanted a black and white list Venomxx (talk) 01:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there any zero-width non-breaking space character that can be used on Wikipedia?

I was looking at the article on hiragana, and I noticed that my browser inserted a line break between two characters in the text. I thought that this was undesireable (as it is one single word), so I tried inserting a zero-width non-breaking space between them (with '⁠' or '⁠'). This didn't appear to do anything, but I copied the text to somewhere else to examine it further, and saw that the character was indeed there, it just did't do anything. I tried putting the character in an html document to see if it was my browser that was causing the problem, but this worked just fine.

Now, am I doing something wrong, or does this character simply not work on Wikipedia? If it does work, how do I insert it properly? If it doesn't work, are there any other characters that do, that can be used instead? I tried using ' ', which worked, but obviously inserted a space between the characters.

And also, if there is any character that I can use, should I insert it between all the japanese characters in the text? (I guess not everyone will have the line break at the same place.)

Xwayj (talk) 21:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Xwayj, and welcome to the Teahouse! ~ You can use the {{nowrap}} template. Simply put the text after the pipe | in {{nowrap|your text here}}. ~I hope that helps, ~E :modified:74.60.29.141 (talk) 21:46, 7 January 2013 (UTC) 74.60.29.141 (talk) 21:44, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks.

Xwayj (talk) 23:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

There's also the zero width joiner, ‍, which may be what you're looking for. Yunshui 雲‍水 23:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Make "multiple issues" box go away

I've been fixing the "multiple issues" in my new article Douglas Messerli.

Now how can I get the "multiple issues" list at the top of this article to go away (partially or completely)? Any suggestions for how I could further improve this article are welcome. Thank you!

Pcaabplroa (talk) 17:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Pcaabplroa, welcome to the Teahouse. The first tag - inline citations - can go as the citations are correctly formatted. The last about the lead can probably go to, but the second needs to stay for the time being. There are only three citations for the entire article and the entire biography is only supported by one citation; there need to be a lot more for a section this long. I'd also be tempted to remove all the links to his works on the greeninteger site - as this is a commercial site these links could be considered as spam. NtheP (talk) 17:51, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for contributing a new article! Creating a new article in a suitable form for Wikipedia can be frustrating, but seems to be a rewarding endeavor. The main concern regarding the Douglas Messerli article is the lack of verifiability. A reader needs to be able to find the sources for the information in an article. This is especially true for biographies of living persons. The lack of inline-citations also raises another concern; when reading large sections of text that is well-written and consistant in tone (and lacks proper citations), one may suspect a possible copyright violation. Again, inline citations to reliable sources would alleviate this concern. ~Thanks again, Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 18:45, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks NtheP and Eric F for your help!

Pcaabplroa (talk) 18:57, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Page

Hi there! I am working on a GLAM WikiProject page for the George Washington University's Special Collections Research Center. Does anyone have any tips or can anyone point me to previous posts with suggestions for creating a page? I can't figure out how to add tabs to the top of my page, or how to add the "Article quality assessment" box. I'd also be interested in creating a Special Collections badge for volunteers.

Any assistance would be much appreciated. I'm fairly new to Wikipedia and feel like I have a lot to learn, so I'm open to all suggestions!

Thanks! - ChloeCraub (talk) 16:17, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Chloe. I suspect that the easiest way to develop your project pageS is to copy one of the existing pages like Wikipedia:GLAM/SIA to your sandbox and then modify the text and code to meet your needs. Start by creating your sandbox pages with suitable names such as User:Craub/sandbox/GLAM/GWUSCRC. Just type in a space or a single period and save to create the page. Do the same for sub-pages like /GWUSCRC/Participants and /ToDo using the existing pages as a model. Then click the 'Edit' at the top of each of the model pages and, rihgt-click your mouse at the top of the page and copy-and-paste the contents into your sandbox. Chop out things that don't yet apply like the other project's awards and such, then start building your pages by writing your project's information over the old information.

Be sure to advertise the project with locals at WP:Meetup/DC and WikiMedia DC! Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·cont) Join WER 20:49, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Help with submission

I have created a submission for Sharp Nine Records. I am being asked for citations. I cited an article contained in the Sharp Nine Website. Other than this I don't know what else to cite. I am submitting this on behalf of sharpnine.

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sharp Nine Records Ednaedel (talk) 14:15, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I have cited the article in URL: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=25119 is that not adequate? Ednaedel (talk) 14:35, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ednaedel, welcome to the Teahouse. There is nothing wrong with the link but if that is all you can find the notability of the company has to be questioned. From the general notability guidelines "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article" Note the plural of sources, multiple sources are expected to support the notability of a subject - if these can't be produced then the article will continue to be rejected. Also I see you say are submitting this on behalf on sharpnine, in which case you should read the guidelines on conflict of interest before proceeding too much further. NtheP (talk) 18:18, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd disagree with NtheP in his statement on "there is nothing wrong with the link", as we really don't like articles by or on the company's own website. What you really need is an article in a respected newspaper, or a respected music magazine, or even just some proof that they have been put into the lineup by a national music constortium. Sorry, that's for bands, not for corporations like this. That basically means that a company that owns radio stations (Clear Channel for example, but not TuneIn online or other online-only radios) has accepted the band's song as acceptable for a live/on air DJ to choose to play it. If you can find that, the band passes our notability guidelines. I do however agree with the rest of NtheP's statement. Thanks for keeping at it, and I'm sure you'll get it eventually! gwickwire^talk_edits 21:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit: I mistook it for a band, but it's a record label, sorry for that! If I remember right, the record label needs to be covered in major sources, such as having articles in major magazines, etc. Also, this is its own label, right, and not an imprint of another label? For example, Cherrytree Records was an imprint of Interscope. gwickwire^talk_edits 21:08, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

help

i am a musician mentioned several times on bands pages and i wanted to ensure my name appears as a blue link to a new page. how the heck do i start? many thanks in advance86.138.239.150 (talk) 08:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi IP editor, and welcome to the Teahouse. As an unregistered editor, you can't create new pages (although you can start a page at Articles for creation, where it can be reviewed before being created). However, even if you register an account (click the "Create account" link in the top right of your screen to do so), you should not create an article about yourself. The reason for this is that it's very difficult to write objectively about oneself (the conflict of interest is considerable), and since Wikipedia has to be written in a neutral voice, we strongly discourage people from writing autobiographies.

If your work as a musician has been reported on in reliable sources (such as newspapers, magazines or books), then you may well merit a Wikipedia article - if so, you should add a listing at Requested articles, together with links to any useful sources, so that an uninvolved editor can create the page for you.

Hope this helps. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:17, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

ok many thanks, my work is well known so i will take your advice. many thanks for your time. best wishes, rich.86.138.239.150 (talk) 10:31, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused.

I submitted feedback saying that I was confused and couldn't edit anything... I got an answer but it didn't really make a lot of sense... FlourpowerMP (talk) 01:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to the Teahouse, FlourPowerMP. What the user in question is saying is that, until your account is four days old and you have made ten edits with that account, you will not be able to edit pages that have been protected against vandalism. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 01:15, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! FlourpowerMP (talk) 01:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Strange

I've tried suggesting edits to 'alternative medicine' but an IP editor is moving my comments around, asking other editors to watch me and making insinuations on my talk page. Is this to be expected when editing controversial pages and do I have to just ignore it ? Aspheric (talk) 00:46, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Aspheric and welcome to the Teahouse. This doesn't sound like acceptable behavior, but I haven't seen it. I can say that moving other people's talk page comments is not acceptable if there's not a very good reason. You don't need to ignore it, but I don't want to give you the wrong advice because it's certainly not time for the dispute resolution noticeboard. If you follow the directions for dispute resolution, you may be able to solve the problems without getting administrators involved. Good luck.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:04, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The SuggestBot templates didn't work?

Hi fellow Wikipedians. I tried to add {{User:SuggestBot/suggest}} on my talk page, but it didn't work. How will I know if it works? Thanks. JHUbal27 00:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

If I remember rightly, it may take a while for the bot to do its rounds. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 01:09, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

When/who should remove the 'issues' box from the top of an article?

Hi, a question regarding this article about the Australian Diabetes Council (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Diabetes_Council). After the page was created, a couple of issues were highlighted that required attention. These related to concerns that the article 'appears to be written like an advertisement, 'a contributor has a close connection to the subject', and a lack of sources or references. I was asked by the original creators of the page to help rectify the issues (they are no longer involved in editing to eliminate the conflict of interest). I have gone through the article and removed anything I thought could be considered self-agrandising or self promoting, and I have added in sources where required. Does this now mean I can remove the 'issues' notifications at the top of the page, or does this need to be done by someone else after the changes have been assessed? Thanks for your help! Discopantsman (talk) 22:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey Discopantsman, welcome to the Teahouse. If you have believe you have solved the problems indicated by the issues box, then you can go ahead and remove them yourself. Just make sure to indicate in the edit summary that you have solved the issue and are removing the tag as a result. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 22:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Just to add, although there are now references they are all from the ADC's own website and non are from independent, reliable sources so although the {{unreferenced}} tag may no longer be applicable, it could easily be replaced by {{refimprove}} instead. NtheP (talk) 22:56, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

VWbot - Copyright violations

Hi, I appear to have fallen foul of the copyright rules. When writing the article for the Kandahar Ski Club, I took some copy from the club's website. This caused VWbot to flag up the similarities. I have subsequently edited most of it. However, I am unsure whether there is still an issue with. Can I request it to run another scan? I do not believe that there is a copyright issue with the club's website as the webmaster is aware of what is going on. I do not want to incur anyone's wrath - bot or human. What should I be doing? Graham Stephen 19:59, 6 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamstephen (talk • contribs)

Hi there Graham! Welcome to the Teahouse. I took a look at your sandbox and did some reviewing about the copyright violations. It appears that your updated version is still problematic because it's close paraphrasing. For example:

• Your sandbox version: "From the beginning the Kandahar treated racing as an activity for all members, not just for an elite."
• Website version: "From the very beginning the Kandahar has treated racing as an activity for all members, not just for a specialist elite."

Paraphrasing means you *practically* copy and paste with the change of one or two words. Here is my advice for you. Completely rewrite the article and just keep it simple and short and to the facts. That sentence i used as an example isn't really encyclopedic, so I'd just remove it. I'd keep it to the cited facts (preferably NOT from the resorts website, which is a primary source and not reliable) and not even use the ski club website if you can. But, even close paraphrasing can cause problems. So, it looks so far, the sandbox content isn't ready to be on Wikipedia due to the close appearance it has to the original website.

I hope this helps. Also, please don't forget to "Sign" your posts when you make them. You do that by simply typing four tildes after you are finished posting on talk pages, or here at the Teahouse. Just type this: ~~~~. That way we know it's you :) SarahStierch (talk) 20:32, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Sarah, I will have a go at redoing it. Incidently I did use four tildes. It seems to add another bit after the "signature" Graham Stephen 20:42, 6 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamstephen (talk • contribs)

The article that I was referring to was in the one on Wikipedia not the one in my sandbox. After getting the message that there was a copyright issue, I had rewritten parts of it. But it was deleted despite my having posted a message in the talk as requested. Is there anyway of recovering it so that I can work on it? Graham Stephen 21:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamstephen (talk • contribs)

and why does it keep saying "Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamstephen (talk • contribs)" when I put four tildes at the end? Graham Stephen 21:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamstephen (talk • contribs)

Hi Graham Stephen and welcome! I know the reason why it is saying "unsigned". Did you go to your user preferences and change your signature? You need to include links to your user page and talk page. When you go back to your preferences, don't forget to check the "Treat the above as Wiki markup" box. Or else, it would be treated as your nickname. Here's how you do this. Feel free to copy and paste what I write.

[[User:Grahamstephen|Graham Stephen]] ([[User talk:Grahamstephen|talk]])
,which produces
Graham Stephen (talk)

That should fix it. See Wikipedia:Signatures for tips on how to customize your signature. Hope this helps! JHUbal27 01:19, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Different Language Wikipedia

Hi There, I'm trying to double bracket someone in an article so that their name, in blue, will lead to the article. The problem I have is that the article, on the said person, is on another language Wikipedia only. Can I still get it to work? thanks SamCardioNgo (talk) 19:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome to the Teahouse!

It can be done, but I'm not sure if it would be proper. Perhaps a better option would be to use an 'explanatory foot-note' or something similar. See: {{efn}} and {{notelist}} (?) You could put the link in the footnote, and explain that this links to [whatever language] Wikipedia. ~Just a suggestion, ~Eric F :modified:74.60.29.141 (talk) 20:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi SamCardioNgo. The rule of thumb is that if the English Wikipedia could have an article on the subject (i.e. he/she meets the en-wiki notability requirements) then the correct approach is to add a red link (enclose the name in double square brackets as though creating a regular wikilink) to show future editors that an article needs to be created. If the subject hasn't received enough coverage to sustain an article on the English Wikipedia, you can create an inline interlanguage link - the format is [[:language code:foreign wiki article title|display text]]. Thus, to create a link to the French article on the poet José Velarde, I'd write [[:fr:José Velarde|José Velarde]], which produces this: José Velarde. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:42, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the feedback SamCardioNgo (talk) 09:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Bilocation: one person or two? And subquestion.

I wanted to improve the article on bilocation but ran into a problem when trying to create an account.

Subquestion: After twice entering the same accepted Username but failing to read the distorted text correctly I got an error message saying my Username was too similar to one in use.

Instead of using distorted text to show that the reader is a person rather than a non-person, what prevents a simple arithmetic question like: 2 + 17 = ?

But I'm more interested in bilocation. 68.110.104.155 (talk) 17:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome! Although there are a number of reasons why you might want to sign up for an account (another editor will probably provide link explaining this) - you can help improve Wikipedia without an account, just go ahead and edit. (See: Be bold)

As for the 'Captcha' - Annoying, but necessary I guess. You should be able to give it a 2nd try without having to start over (not sure about 3rd try). ~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 20:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Follow up question: You can see if the exact name is in use; but- is there some way to find out if your intended Username will be rejected because it is "too similar" to one in use? - (Without going through the registration process) ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 21:29, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Joining a WikiProject

Is there any special procedure for joining a WikiProject, or do you just add your name to the list of participants? And is there any rule about who can join a WikiProject?

^King Jakob _C 17:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi King jakob c,

I can't speak for every single Wikiproject, but every one that I've looked at simply allows anyone to join. If there are any exceptions, the requirement should be spelled out on the page asking you to sign up, but even then, I can't think of an example where restrictions would be allowed.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't the name of "Ted Brown" should be included in the article linked below?

RE: Article at: WBBR

In the above-linked article, it says: "A radio institution throughout the majority of the 20th century, WNEW is known for its music selection as well as its staff of radio personalities including Martin Block, Dee Finch, Gene Rayburn, Gene Klaven and William B. Williams. WNEW is credited with pioneering the role of the disc jockey... "

Shouldn't the name of "Ted Brown" be included in the list of names above? Ted Brown was a radio personality on WNEW and he used to sign off by saying: "Put on the coffee, Mama. I'm coming home."

PS-Below is a link to the Wiki article about Ted Brown:
Ted Brown (radio) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

It says: "Ted Brown (May 5, 1924-March 20, 2005), was a charismatic radio personality who worked at several stations in New York City including WMGM, WNEW and WNBC during the 1950s and 1960s, the golden age of AM radio."

Terry Cagney (talk) 16:43, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps. But he is mentioned in the '50s and 60s' section. 74.60.29.141 (talk) 16:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

My reply: William B. Williams is in the list. So Ted Brown should be there as well. They were both on the air around the same time. ---Terry Cagney Terry Cagney (talk) 17:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC) Terry Cagney (talk) 17:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

A little research is in order, since that section refers to when it was WNEW - not sure what the call letters were when Ted Brown was there. (I linked his name to his article) ~:74.60.29.141 (talk) 17:16, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

[I tidied things up a bit: removed underscores, convert external links to Wikilinks]

 Added ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

P.s.: Welcome to the Teahouse! Just a note: you can link to an article using Wikilinks by putting brackets [[ ]] around the article name - or use the link button on the toolbar (looks like a chain). Disambiguations, such as Ted Brown (which goes to the football player) can be resolved as follows: when selecting the name and pressing 'link', you can press the down-arrow ↓ to generate a list of articles beginning with that name, then go down and select Ted Brown (radio). Also, to put a line in talk, use 4 dashes at the beginning of line: ---- (as below) -but this is generally discouraged. ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 18:01, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

---

I'm pretty sure Ted Brown was on WNEW. That's the only station I remember hearing him on. I listened to WNEW all the time when I lived in downstate NY back in the 40s and 50s. IIRC, he alternated with William B. Williams on WNEW. The two names are linked in my mind. ---Terry Terry Cagney (talk) 00:24, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

PS-I see that Ted Brown's name has been added to the list in question. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

I wonder if his "sign-off" words might be included at his Wiki page. As I said above, he signed off with: "Put on the coffee Mama. I'm coming home." That was memorable!

BTW, I hesitate to add anything to the Wiki articles. I just don't feel competent enough to follow all the instructions about adding items to the articles. (Thanks for trying to teach me.) I'm 78 years old and am barely keeping up with the technology. Terry Cagney (talk) 00:37, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Newbie alert - can't seem to edit my own AfC!

Hi there. Sorry to be such an annoying newbie, but somewhere along the line I've missed something *really* obvious! I've started an AfC, read through the 'Starting an article' guide, and all was going well. I sat down to add some text today and now can't edit it. Have linked the page below. I can't find an 'edit' link for the text and info box above the 'References' section. When I click the edit link which appears to the right of References, the editing box only shows the text from 'References' down. The two paragraphs and info box I added aren't there.

What have I done? Help!  :)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Nicholas O'Neill (composer) Dylsim (talk) 14:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Dylsim, welcome to the Teahouse. You haven't done anything wrong, it's just that there isn't an edit button for the first section of an article. To edit the first section you need to use the edit button in the tabs at the top of the page. You can enable an edit button for the first section by going to your Preferences page, the Gadgets tab and clicking on the option "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" in the Appearance section. NtheP (talk) 14:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your help, only just spotted your reply!

Dylsim (talk) 14:44, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

protocol/manners for near trivial language corrections

[Besides clicking "minor edit"] Is there a special recognized and especially polite phrase to use in the "description of changes" for near trivial language corrections? Along the same line, is there a "lower threshold" for bothering with them? For example, I was reading a page with a single instance of something with a missing "s" on a plural, which hardly seemed worth correcting, but I happened to notice. Beside the idea of it seeming petty to another sincere editor, it also creates extra "information traffic" which may have more consequences than I realize. JimHill 14:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC) PS: I always sign anyway, but I really like the fact that it is required here! JimHill 14:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Jim, welcome to the Teahouse. I just use brief edit descriptions like "typo", "grammar", "formatting" for small things like that and I try and remember to mark them as minor. There is no lower threshold for edits - the criteria being that they improve the article. Improving the standard of English is an improvement.

PS are you actually signing your posts on talk pages with ~~~~? If you are then your signature is wrongly configured as it is not including at least one link to either your user page, talk page or contribution history as is required by WP:SIGLINK. NtheP (talk) 14:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!

I'll check about the configuration for signature. I get around to this sporadically, so I tend to have to re-learn a lot of stuff once in a while. JimHill 14:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ImJimHill (talk • contribs) 14:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Referred to teahouse by Live Chat: I need help. Twice we were asked for more reliable sources, which we have supplied. We have hard copies of all sources (newspapers, magazines, etc.)

I was just on live chat. They referred me to the TEAHOUSE. My question: I need help. Twice we were asked for more reliable sources, which we have supplied. We have hard copies of all sources (newspapers, magazines, etc.)

Their answer: [08:44] <+MartijnH> what's the link to your article, I'll have a look Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Paintu12/sandbox 08:47] <+MartijnH> paintu12, i've been out of it for a bit, and it seems possible that something changed in our policies that I'm not aware off [08:47] <+MartijnH> let's see if there is another helper who can help with that [08:48] <+MartijnH> !helper for paintu12 maybe? [08:48] <+MartijnH> if nobody comes around in a short time, I'll find an alternative place to get help for you paintu12 [08:48] <paintu12> Thanks 70.193.195.113 (talk) 14:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Paintu12, welcome to the Teahouse. I don't see any problem with the references. There is no rule that sources have to be available online, just that they are identified enough that they can be located if someone is tempted to look. Online is good for this but if these documents only exist as paper sources then so be it. If any of them are online, then adding a link would be good. There are some improvements that you can make to the formatting of the article, I'd suggest

• adding section headings
• deleting all the external links you have in the text.
• deleting the Additional articles and information section. If these aren't being used as references then they don't have a lot of part to play in the article.

NtheP (talk) 15:01, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, NtheP. How do I solve the problem that I am being denied acceptance with the given reason: "This submission is not adequately supported by reliable sources," when the resources are acceptable? 70.193.195.113 (talk) 15:14, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Tidy it up first (it could be that the last reviewer mistook the additional articles as the references) then submit it for a further review. You could ask one of the previous reviewers to have a look by leaving a note at their talk page. NtheP (talk) 15:24, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch. 70.193.195.113 (talk) 15:27, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Why did a receive a message from DPL bot?

I received a message on my talk page from DPL bot, saying that I had added links to disambiguation pages rather than directly to articles. This was useful information, because as a new user I probably wouldn't have clued in to this distinction. However, the links didn't look familiar, so I checked my contribution history and found that I had only changed a bit of grammar on that page and not added any links. Should someone else have received that message? —Anne Delong (talk) 13:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Anne, I only surmising but as DPLBot ignores unregistered accounts and users with less than 100 edits, I wonder if it sends the message to the first editor who meets the 100+ edit criteria after the disambiguation links are added. The place to ask if you are curious would be at the bot's talk page. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it. NtheP (talk) 14:20, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

New Article: Azeem Azam

Hi there, I've been working on a new article and I was just looking for a bit of early feedback as to the tone and style of this proposed entry as well as the strength of the references. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:G2003/Azeem_Azam ThanksG2003 (talk) 12:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

• Good morning, G2003, and thanks for dropping in. I know nothing about (non-American) football so I'm going to limit my comments to matters of style and formatting, rather than content.

1. The article needs a lead, which is a bit of text summarizing the article that is placed above the first section.
2. References go after punctuation ("foo,<ref />" not "foo<ref />,").
3. The tone is more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. You'll want to remove words like "magical" when describing people.
4. I'm concerned about your use of references. For example, you have a direct quote "I can't ever imagine beating that feeling" but the link doesn't contain that text as best I can tell. There are also a few other places where you are summarizing what the subject said: be sure to cite those. It may look a little strange to have a citation per sentence, but that's perfectly fine. If all the cites in a paragraph are to one source then you can put a single cite at the end of the paragraph.
5. The references need some more detail and formatting. Take a look at template:citation for one way of handling this. For example, you definitely want the name of the reporter and the last-accessed date. Using a template for this information will handle the formatting automatically.

Hope that helped! GaramondLethe 13:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that's really helpful. I'll have another go at cleaning it up and fixing the tone and style.G2003 (talk) 18:46, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

syntax for interlanguage template and image?

Id like to use some templates and images from german wp (de.wikipedia.org) for my user-page, for example…

Benutzer:Davidshilling/Vorlage:Beitrittsdatum|7. November 2006

or

Bild:Rhvbrutus01.jpg

…what is the correct syntax for that?

--.rhavin (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, rhavin, welcome to the Teahouse and enwiki! The normal syntax is to enclose the name of the page in double curly braces: {{Page to be transcluded}}. But I don't think it's possible to transclude pages on a different wiki. I think it only works on pages in the local wiki. That's the whole point of Commons, if I read correctly: the files on Commons are available to every WMF wiki, so files that are useful to multiple projects don't have to be uploaded separately to each wiki. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 06:44, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi .rhavin. Files on Commons can be used on English Wikipedia, but templates cannot; and you can't use files and templates dirctly from German Wikipedia. de:Bild:Rhvbrutus01.jpg appears to be free licensed; so it could be uploaded to Commons. If it were on Commons it could be used directly just by changing Bild to File. As for templates, {{User de}} and {{User en-2}} (and possibly some others) have equivalents here, but the other templates would have to be uploaded to English Wikipedia. The only syntax change would be changing Benutzer to User. —teb728 t c 07:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

text problem

Hi, The text in my article runs in one continual line whilst editing, and now I can no longer get to the edit section Van Derek (talk) 04:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Van Derek, welcome to the Teahouse! This is happening because your line in the edit window starts with a space. A line of text that starts with a space gets interpreted by Wikipedia as a preformatted bit of text, which makes it look the way it does. If you want to indent the margin of a comment, begin the line with a colon (:) instead. I don't know why that is, but I didn't make the rules; I just (proverbially) work here. Anyway, hope this helps! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 04:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello Van Derek, and welcome to the Teahouse. This is caused if you begin a paragraph with a leading space. Make sure that, when you write the article, the first character of any paragraph isn't a space. Does this help? --Jayron32 04:52, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Van Derek! We are glad you brought your question to us! To show a paragraph break, just put a white space between the paragraphs by hitting enter. Gtwfan52 (talk) 06:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Article for submission sabotaged

Hello, I submitted an article Middlemores Saddles and it was turned down as being like an essay, which I didn't think it was but accepted this and also the point about neutrality, I agree that on a couple of minor points it would have seemed so. Anyway I went through the whole piece, changing the layout, condensing the facts, making it as unessaylike as possible, sorting out the neutrality points. I then submitted it and after agonising days of waiting I find someone called Pratyya has rejected it using an exact template copy of the previous reviewer, as though they didn't even bother to read it, because it is now not like an essay at all and nothing is non-neutral. I was wondering if I could possibly have it reviewed again straight away by a trusted reviewer. If it genuinely needed to be rejected again I would accept that, no problem, but I will never accept what just happened as valid. Thanks Middle More (talk) 04:11, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

What's the article in question or where is it residing at or resided at? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 04:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

• Hi Middle More, and thanks for dropping by the teahouse. I took a look at your article [1] and I have to tell you, it still reads like an essay. Perhaps you should take a look at a similar article and mimic that format. Indian (motorcycle) might be a good start, but there are hundreds of others. In particular, you should have a lead which summarizes the article and several short subsections with headers (generate headers—and, automatically, the table on contents—using markup like this: ====Section Name====. Hope that helps, and don't hesitate to ask more questions here. GaramondLethe 04:29, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, it is called "Middlemores Saddles", I have resubmitted it again to afc. Middle More (talk) 04:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

• Hi Middle More. It looks like the article was declined again with the specific recommendation that the article requires a lead. You've done most of the hard work already; there's a just a bit more left to make the article conform to what encyclopedia articles look like. GaramondLethe 06:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Garamond Lethe, thanks for the comment. Do you think it is worthy of being in Wikipedia as subject matter, apart from the lead situation? (It now has a lead)

Middle More (talk) 14:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Middle More, I'll take a closer look and respond on your talk page. GaramondLethe 22:23, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks guys, problem sorted. As a newbie the whole editing thing is still a little overwhelming, I'm a big Wiki fan and hope to participate with useful contributions in the future, cheers, VandoVan Derek (talk) 22:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Referencing

Hi! I have a draft for an AFC here, but I don't think it will pass as is. Could someone help me find some more references? Thanks, Jakob 00:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Jakob and welcome back to the Teahouse! I would say that the subject fails the notability guideline because more reliable sources are needed. Also, the critical acclaim section fails the neutral point of view guideline because these reviews are bias. I tried a Google search and I couldn't find any reliable sources, but as I was browsing through Wikipedia, I found this. In one paragraph, this explains how to find sources for cookbooks. Hope this helps! JHUbal27 19:52, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Jakob 17:44, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Perplexing message in my e-mail

Hello! Today in my e-mail I received a notice from WikiPedia that User:talk Marshallnorth had been created. I had left a message last week on the talk page for an article that Marshallnorth was submitting for creation. Is this normal? I left plenty of other messages, and I haven't received other notifications. I am worried that there may have been a mistake and that I was notified instead of Marshallnorth, who may be waiting to hear about his submission. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:42, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

That may be because you have it set to email you every time a page you watched has been changed (that's assuming that you have watched the page). --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 02:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anne, welcome to the Teahouse. You created User:Marshallnorth (with a post which should have been on User talk:Marshallnorth). I guess the page was placed on your watchlist and you have selected "E-mail me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" at Special:Preferences. A talk page and the corresponding non-talk page are always watchlisted at the same time. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that I have put my comment about the Backgammon page in the wrong place. The comment is obsolete now; my suggestion has been followed even though he may not have read it. Should I just delete it? I didn't mean to mess up someone else's user page.

—Anne Delong (talk) 05:33, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Either deleting it or moving it to the talk page would be fine. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

External URL link in new window

Is there a way to force an external URL reference to open in a new window? InsightPub (talk) 16:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, InsightPub, welcome to the Teahouse! If you're trying to find a way to write an external link such that it opens in a new window for everyone, then no, there isn't a way to do that. Usually for the best, anyway; it's better to let each user decide for themselves what they want to do, rather than force a behavior other than the normal one. If it's just for yourself, though, there are a few ways to do it, depending on your browser. On Firefox, I just hold CTRL while I click on a link if I want it to open in a new window (technically a new tab, but close enough). Hope this helps! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)InsightPub, welcome to the Teahouse. Yes you can, it's a setting in your Preferences. Open these and go to the Gadgets tab. In the Browsing section you'll find and option to Open external links in a new tab/window. Check this option and save and you should be fine thereafter. NtheP (talk) 17:00, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. Explains why I couldn't find it in the help files.InsightPub (talk) 16:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I have added it to Help:Link#External links. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Another method (that I use) is to right-click on a link, which opens a context menu which includes: Open link in new tab and Open link in new window - among other options. This works in Firefox (and possibly others). ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 01:32, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Piter

Hi, I'm having problems with trying to create an article for the novel "Piter". There were two legitimate complaints as to why it shouldn't be created from a more experienced member who has reviewed it twice. Those complaints were regarding sources. After a number of modifications, I've added some sufficient references with sources to the text. It seems that this worked, but now a different member has come up with another argument - one of notability. I had a look at the page about notability for books (the one that the statement on the article-in-review links to), but I'm not quite sure what I should add now to put this article up on Wikipedia. Could someone please give me some advice, perhaps leave a few suggestions that are specific and can be applied directly to my new page? The link to my article is: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Piter

Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 16:18, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, the difficulty is finding two or more reviews or other suitable coverage from suitable sources. These reviews need not be in English. Rich Farmbrough, 18:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Thanks for the reply. So basically, I need to add a section called "Reception" and write how the book was received by critics, readers and if it got any awards, etc. But back all of that up with reliable sources, yes?

Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 19:24, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

That'd definitely help. --Jayron32 03:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Creating a graph in wikipedia

Is there a way to create a graph ? a 2d XY graph in wikipedia itself, so that i could use it in an article ? Also, is it possible to upload an image file of a graph ( i believe the graph is from a book ), and i am aware of the source ? Can i use that graph in a Wiki article ? i guess no. so what are the options in front of me ? Anandtr2006 (talk) 14:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Anandtr2006. Welcome to Wikipedia.

We responded to your question on IRC. If you have any additional questions, feel free to drop me a note on my talk page or reply to this message. Good luck! ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Make a comment!} 15:03, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. It's worth adding here for anyone else with a similar question:

1. Graphs from books are likely to be copyright protected, so you can't upload them
2. You can crate a graph using any suitable tool (a spreadsheet or graphing software for example) and turn that into an image, which you can upload.
3. You request graphs to be made, if you supply the data. I'm not sure the best location for this.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 16:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

depends on the graph type. the <timeline> tag supports histograms see H:ET and also History of the Jews in Bulgaria for an example. BO | Talk 16:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Problem with wiki table

Hey guys, I really have no idea where else to go and ask, luckily I found this nice and quiet place called teahouse :) I am quite experienced user and I never needed any help, but now I have this problem with the wikitable. In this article, Boxing at the Summer Olympics, there is a table explaining history and evolution of boxing weight classes at each Olympic games. What I'm trying to do, is to change the size of the brackets in the last column, 2012. I am trying to make the "Welterweight" window larger and take over part of the "Light-welterweight" window, while making the Light-welterweight window smaller and giving its upper part to Welterweight window. The table itself is extremely difficult and I didn't find any logical system in it. I'd be very thankful if someone could help me. Thank you. --Novis-M (talk) 09:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Novis-M,new or old all are welcome at the Teahouse. What this table lacks is a Y-axis showing the weights to put the table into context which as I understand it is to show how the weight limits for each division have changed over the years. If you're seeking to change the boundaries of two divisions, what are the changes you want to make and if my understanding of the table is correct (possibly a big if) why? NtheP (talk) 13:10, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Well first off, thank you very much for your response and for your time. My goal is to expand te welterweight window in the very right column to the upper part of the light-welterweight window, thus to make light-welterweigt window smaller and welterweight larger. It is just a cosmetic issue :) But I feel that it would respond to the previous weights better. So pretty much just to change boudary between the welterweight and light-welterweight - to double the welterweight window in size and expand to the upper part of the light-welterweight window. Sounds simple, but I wasn't able to do that and figure that out. Thanks. --Novis-M (talk) 18:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is that the scale is variable. So we have 4, 5 and 6 kg bands of (rowspan=) 4, 4 and 5 rows. If we made them 4, 5 and 6 that would be nice but ewe woudld need to fix the light middleweight in the previous column too, and so forth back to column 1. Then you need to make sure that the rows only contain boxes which should start on the same row. That's my understanding anyway. Good luck! Rich Farmbrough, 19:17, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Hello, Novis. HTML tables (which is what Wiki tables are) are good for displaying tabular data, but it is hard to make them do this sort of thing. You can set the height or width of boxes in terms of the number of rows or columns of boxes they match but not in absolute units or even in lines of text. The person who made that table has used this feature to get the boxes to not line up, but there is little control of the amount by which they will not line up. To do what you want to do, you have to change the "rowspan" parameter for each of the boxes, increasing one and decreasing the other accordingly; but you also have to move the lower box entirely from the table row where it now starts to the table row where it should now start. So if, for instance, you were decreasing the upper "rowspan" by 2 and increasing the lower one by 2, you would have to move the box contents and its |rowspan up to 2 rows earlier in the table. I hope this makes sense to you. --ColinFine (talk) 21:47, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

At what point does one ask for article to be assessed?

I have created a page James Essinger which I still have citations/references to add to, but I think it's beginning to be quite complete already. At what point should I request someone review it/ grade it? Thanks Annelisa02 (talk) 12:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

As soon as you put the references in. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 12:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The page is already chocca with references, links and citations. I'm simply adding to them as I find them, so it might be considered ongoing. Should I ask for a review already then? would someone mind having a quick look and seeing if they think it's ready? (I understand if you're too busy :-) ) Cheers Annelisa02 (talk) 12:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I can take a quick look at it if you want. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 13:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I'd appreciate it! :-)

Annelisa02 (talk) 15:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Math Diagrams

Hi there, I'm creating an article on Archimedes' Equilibrium of Planes and would like to include some basic diagrams in a discussion of his proof of the The Law of the Lever. The question is, "What app should I use?" The things here are lines, letters, dots, and some indications of weights. Thanks SamCardioNgo (talk) 12:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Sam, welcome to the Teahouse. I'd suggest that your diagram should preferably be in SVG format or PNG as next best option as these formats perform better when scaled up or down. There are a number of tools which support creation of SVG drawings including some freeware. NtheP (talk) 13:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Consider using Inkscape which is great for creating diagrams and uses SVG as its standard format! BO | Talk 22:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Trying to translate the article

Hello, I'm trying to submit the article, which is actually a translation of the Russian Wiki article. Is there any special way of doing it, cause my article has been rejected for several times already.JGarm (talk) 10:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The important thing is to make sure you have references to at least two reliable sources discussing the band (WP:GNG). Also for copyright reasons you need to use an attribution template for the Russian Wikipedia. Name of template anyone? Rich Farmbrough, 19:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

{{Translated page}} might be what you're thinking of Rich. NtheP (talk) 19:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Merging articles

I've been finding articles via the Random article button and have noticed that some of the articles in the "Historical race" section are only about a paragraph long. I would like to merge these articles into one longer article. Do I need to ask others about this first and how do I go about doing this? I'm new and the process is a little confusing! The Giant Purple Platypus (talk) 03:33, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. You don't need to ask others first, but it's a good idea before doing a merge. I'm not sure what you mean by the "Historical race" section. Can you explain a little more, maybe give an example? Rich Farmbrough, 19:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Unwanted TOC

"Ask a question" keeps putting my questions at the bottom of the page. Anyway, check out User:RiverStyx23#Other_stuff. I'm transcluding another page - don't wish to subst it. How do I prevent a TOC from showing up? Note that I already have __NOTOC__ on that page. RiverStyx23{_submarine^target} 02:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Since the page you were transcluding had a forced TOC, it overrode your NOTOC. Since I didn't see any need for that page with more than three headers to have a forced TOC, I removed it, which should fix your issue, unless I'm reverted.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

An alternative is to enclose the transcluded forced toc in <noinclude> tags. Rich Farmbrough, 18:57, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Translating parameters to another language

Hi. I'm having difficulty searching for steps on how to edit English parameters to another language. For instance, I'm editing the 'United Kingdom' article for the Tagalog Wikipedia: http://tl.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

In editing the Country Infobox, I'm using English parameters on edit, and it will be translated automatically to Tagalog on save. How should I edit the terms that were automatically translated?

Geraldinho108 (talk) 01:52, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Geraldinho108, and welcome! Templates are created and used locally at each Wikipedia, so you'd need to figure that out at the Tagalog Wikipedia; that is what their infobox templates look like and what the syntax is. You can't just copy a template from one Wikipedia to another and have it work. You might want to try to find their equivalent of the "Help Desk" and try asking there. --Jayron32 01:58, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

How can I fix unclosed ref tags and parse failures?

1) What is an "unclosed ref tag," and how can it (they?) be found in a rejected article? 2) I am unable to obtain parse failures for my rejected article using Opera, Firefox, or Chrome; there are 4 "Failure to parse (lexing error)" errors using Internet Explorer. I was informed, though, that "This is not browser dependent, but a server side error on the parsing." What is a "server side error" and where I can find information on fixing this particular kind of error?

The first two parsing errors when using IE are due to it not accepting a multiplication sign and they could be fixed by using a lower-case letter x instead. But two later IE parsing errors are due to something else that I can't determine. Would someone please help me with the two types of errors mentioned above regarding my rejected article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Rodger%27s_Method HamiltonRoberts (talk) 21:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi and welcome to Wikipedia. A unclosed reference tag is when there is no "</ref>" at the end of the citation. A citation in Wikipedia is like HTML; the same tag to open and close, but the closing tag has a slash. Hope this is of help for you. ~~Ebe123~~ → report 22:10, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, but something other than that was apparently caught by the reviewer. There are 14 references in my article, all of which start with an opening ref tag and end with a closing /ref tag. Since the number of opening tags are matched by closing tags, the objection raised by the reviewer necessarily has to be to some other problem than this. Can you (or anyone) see what the error is that the reviewer commented upon?50.65.38.132 (talk) 22:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed the unclosed reference. This was because as well as using <ref> </ref> you were also generating the references by using <references> </references> and it was one of these that was unclosed. If you use <ref> </ref> and spell your citation out between the tags the use of <reference> </reference> is unnecessary. Can't help you with the parsing errors as I've no real experience of using the <math> </math> markup. You might need to ask over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics for assistance with that part. NtheP (talk) 23:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to NtheP, too, for finding the source of one of the objections raised by the reviewer. I do appreciate the help both of you have so quickly offered. HamiltonRoberts (talk) 23:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

You might also try asking at the math section of the reference desk. For what it's worth, probably little given my unfamiliarity with Math markup, by sheer brute force of looking at removals that take way the parsing error, the problem may be with "=\ _1\mbox{δ}_3"--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks also for this third suggestion. For anyone who might be interested in getting rid of some forms of "failure to parse (lexing error)" errors that I was only able to see when using the Internet Explorer browser (they did not occur on any of my computers when using Opera, Chrome, or Firefox), using the multiplication sign, and the Greek symbols for delta and sigma caused these (rarely encountered) problems. The solution was to replace the three (single-character) symbols with a blackslash and a spelled-out word (specifically, \times, \delta, and \sigma). These changes permitted IE to join the three other browsers in correctly rendering my article.

Thanks, again, to all three of you for the proffered assistance. HamiltonRoberts (talk) 04:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Immediate Help

Hi, I am new in Wiki. I am creating articles and putting photos to articles. Now I want know one thing, that is, whom should I ask any kind of emergency help while creating articles ? How much time will take normally the process of reviewing an article ? As am new in Wiki I need support to move.Mydreamsparrow (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Mydreamsparrow! Welcome to the Teahouse and to Wikipedia. We are glad you are here and encourage you to continue with your efforts. You do need to understand, tho, that everyone (that means everyone) here are volunteers. So, generally, expecting an immediate response for anything is somewhat unrealistic. We try here at teahouse to respond as promptly as we can, but it may not on an "emergency" basis. We say here in wikipedialand that there are no deadlines, so really your request isn't an emergency. If you don't get your answer now, just go have a cup of tea or walk the dog and hopefully you will have it when you return. If not, Wikipedia isn't going to go away. You can continue with your work once you get an answer. To answer the specific question you posed, AfC (Articles for Creation) is one of the busiest places on Wikipedia. It may take as long as two weeks to get your article reviewed. Now, just to give you a helping hand, if you have a specific article that is waiting for review, let us know here. Many of us are reviewers and we may be able to take a look at it for you. If you have any other specific questions, by all means bring them here and we will do our best to help you. Thanks for joining the corps of Wikipedia editors! Gtwfan52 (talk) 21:21, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Mydreamsparrow,

We are building an encyclopedia, not operating on a patient, so there aren't many examples of emergencies. Did you have something specific in mind? You can always ask general questions here. For technical questions, there are a variety of better places, such as wp:MCQ for image copyright. You can leave a template {{Help me}}, followed by a question on your user talk page. Many editors watch for those, and will respond fairly quickly. I hope this helps, but if you identify what types of situation you had in mind, we might be able to give more specific answers.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:28, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Mydreamsparrow. Wikipedia does operate some chatrooms in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) where someone may be able to help you quickly. There's information at Wikipedia:IRC. As with any chat rooms, their usefulness depends a lot on the friendly-to-troll ratio, but you should get the quickest response there of anywhere. --Jayron32 00:41, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the support and guiding.122.179.62.175 (talk) 06:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

seperating references into references into two categories

Hi there. I have submitted my first article 'James Essinger'. There are a lot of references, and I'd like to seperate the main article from the writer's own book references (which I don't wish to place in the main body as it would make it too cumbersome). Is there a way to have two seperate types of reference? Thanks Annelisa02 (talk) 20:09, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Annelisa! There really isn't a way to split references, however we do have what are called external links which may work for what you're talking about. Go Phightins! 20:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your speedy reply GoPhightins! Thing is, I have an editor saying it looks like a lot of the references are too close to the author (ie references using the author's own work as a source), and would like to have the references that refer to the articles/news items he's mentioned in prioritised. It seems that might not be possible apart from, as you say, using the 'external links'. Would the latter still be considered 'good sources' if they are in external links rather than under 'references'? Or perhaps it doesn't matter? Annelisa02 (talk) 20:35, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the article as is, I think what you've done is fine...external links would be something like a biography from his company website or something of that nature. I think that he does appear to be notable, based on the sources from the Wall Street Journal, Times Literary Supplement, and Engertainment Weekly, but if you can find anything else, that would help refute a claim of non-notability. Prioritization in sources isn't really necessary, before an article can be deleted or anything, multiple people will look at all the sources, and when they do, I'm pretty sure they'll be fine with the subject of the article. Nevertheless, the more sources the merrier. I'm heading out and will be gone for the weekend, so I would appreciate if a fellow Teahouse host could handle any follow-up. Thanks! Go Phightins! 20:42, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Go Phightins. YOu've been really helpful :-) Annelisa02 (talk) 21:00, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

By prioritizing the sources not affiliated with the author, the editor most likely means that they wish for you to use more sources of that sout, and less of the author's own works. Generally here, we like everything to be sourced with something not by the author, or someone close to the author, but by things such as newspaper articles, some magazines, or news media such as CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, etc. gwickwire^talk_edits 22:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi! Yes you can split footnoted references, using "groups" For example

Blah blah <ref group="Essinger" >some stuff  here </ref>  some more stuff  <ref group="Others" >some more stuff  here </ref>

Essinger

{{Footnotes|group="Essinger"}}

Others

{{Footnotes|group="Others"}}

shows as

Blah blah   some more stuff  

Essinger

Others

Hope this helps. Rich Farmbrough, 19:33, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Formatting

How do I change the formatting on cataract causes/associated conditions from all bullet points, to a sub headings then then a single line of diseases in that categoryAspheric (talk) 15:09, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Currently each bullet heading starts with an asterisk (*). Replace it with a level-four heading. For example, change

*[[Single-gene disorder]]s

to

====[[Single-gene disorder]]s====

Make sure to use four equal signs on each side. -- YPNYPN ✡ 15:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Articles for Deletion - Linux distros

Hi, I have questions about articles for deletion, specifically with articles on obscure linux distributions.
I noticed a few articles on linux distros which seemed to lack a neutral point of view. How can one determine whether an article is merely lacking in neutrality to the extent which it can be improved, or is so much like a self-advertisement that it should be deleted?
Specifically with linux distributions, there is a high potential for those who create them to create pages on their distributions regardless of notability.
In particular, I noticed the page GendBuntu. Is this article salvageable or should it be nominated for deletion?
Didigodot (talk) 14:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Didigodot, in my experience NPOV issues and non-notability often go together. It often indicate that the text was taken from primary sources. However, if the problem is just a few promotional phrases, I would tend to remove/reword them. If the article lacks any evidence of significant, secondary coverage, I'd probably propose it for deletion at AfD. As you no doubt know, products require their own notability to deserve their own article. Sionk (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Help splitting articles

Hello!

I'm a casual author from german language Wikipedia. I found an article which I want to suggest for splitting. But things here work diffrent and don't know to go on. The problematic article is Chopper (electronics) and should have a split-up from the section chopper amplifier. This is a circuit which uses chopper technics, but is a topic of its own. Unluckily the chopper definition of differs from that of the german language, where the term Zerhacker on its own names a specific circuit.

Can some please suggest this article for splitting?

Best regards --Stündle (talk) 08:07, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Stündle, welcome to the Teahouse. I tend to agree with your reasoning, and I've proposed a split accordingly - see Talk:Chopper (electronics) for the discussion. I've also tagged the page with {{Split section}}, which will list it Category:Articles to be split and hopefully attract more discussion. Thanks for raising the issue. Yunshui 雲‍水 08:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Stündle (talk) 12:08, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of profanity...

There is a (quite famous) book, Professor Unrat, and the article states that the title translates as “Professor Garbage” - I changed that from "literally means" - because it doesn't. What it literally means is actually a minor expletive. I was wondering if it might be okay in this instance to use an 'abbr' tooltip : “Professor Garbage” ~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 04:22, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Note: that's the word used frequently in the English subtitled version of the German movie. ~E74.60.29.141 (talk) 04:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Why use a tooltip? This seems like something that can be cited to a reliable source and Wikipedia really is uncensored. I would imagine it would properly be stated something like "translates into English literally as "Professor Rat shit", with an idiomatic meaning equivalent to “Professor Garbage”". If I was interested in this subject and came to Wikipedia to learn more, I would appreciate the literal translation being provided and not in a hidden, easily missed way. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:38, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I think I'll just "fuhghetta-boudit", since a proper explanation would need to reference an obscure quote: "'Unrat' dieses lächerliche Scheusal ... hat doch einige Ähnlichkeit mit mir" - which would be an unnecessary side-track. ~Just leave well-enough alone, ~Eric _the Read 74.60.29.141 (talk) 16:57, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I found a userbox with profanity?

Hi Wikipedians! I probably ask so many questions, and now I have another one. (I know Wikipedia is uncensored.) I found a userbox with the code {{User:Vuerqex/userboxes/ferretlover}} which produces, "This user ------- loves ferrets because they are so ------- awesome!" The first step would be deleting it from where I found it, right? (I didn't delete it yet, as I'm waiting for clarification.) What do I do or where do I go from there? Thanks. JHUbal27 (talk) 03:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey again! Well, in this case.. This really isn't wrong in any way. You are right in that Wikipedia isn't censored, however that means there's going to be profanity. This is only one example of where it's not a bad use of profanity. It may not be in line with your views, but it's nothing that's against policy. If the profanity were directed at a particular editor, then it may be a violation of our policy on No Personal Attacks, but as it stands, it's pretty much going to stay put unless you start a MfD (Miscellany for Deletion) about it. I'd not suggest it however, as you are bound to just be bombarded with WP:NOTCENSORED in the discussion. Thanks for asking! gwickwire^talk_edits 03:56, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, what Gwick says is substantially right, maybe this should be changed to "This user absolutely loves ferrets because they are so incredibly awesome!" (expletives are for those with limited vocabulary) but the benefit is very slight and the time better spent elsewhere. Rich Farmbrough, 19:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

I'm confused, but okay. There are better adjectives to use. Oh well. Thanks for the answers. JHUbal27 (talk) 06:24, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Clarification of biographies of living persons guidelines

In editing the Peter Butterfield article, I notice that many of the statements about him have no verification or reference. For example, that he graduated with a music degree from McGill Univ. Do statements such as this have to be verified? If so, how? By contacting the university to get a message that the person did graduate? We all know that people, even famous living people, sometimes "pad" their resume in various ways. Then there's the statement that he attended another college, but did he graduate, and should he be listed on the page of graduates from that college? Thanks. Alibaba1000 (talk) 00:11, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hiya, Alibaba1000! Welcome to the Teahouse. Although biographies have to be sourced, not every single fact in them must be. However, if the veracity of any given piece of information is challenged, then it must be sourced. A person's CV or resume would never be a reliable source for anything. And contacting the university for verification of his graduation would be original research, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. Most schools publish a listing of degrees they award somewhere. That would be your reliable source for the degree he received. Gtwfan52 (talk) 00:18, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Since you read the policy you probably know this, but unsourced or unreliably sourced contentious statements of any stripe in a BLP should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. However, by this I do not imply the material you specified in this article should be removed. There's nothing about a statement that someone attended so and so school that is contentious on its face. If you have good reason to believe the statement is false, however, that would be a different matter.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:50, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

How to underline something on Wikipedia?

Hi fellow Wikipedians and I have a random question. I can bold something, and italicize something, and even do both, but how do I underline something? Thanks. JHUbal27 (talk) 18:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Underlining, which should be used sparingly and is generally frowned upon (read that as don't unless you really have to - see WP:BADEMPHASIS) is achieved by using the HTML markup <u> </u> around the text in question. NtheP (talk) 19:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm sorry for the extra question at the top, I tried to erase it. JHUbal27 (talk) 23:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Duplicate question ,no problem - easily removed :-) NtheP (talk) 23:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Changing "stub" status

I wrote an article a week or so ago, which originally was brief, and my intention was to expand it over time. Right away it was judged to be a "stub" with a suggestion to add more detail. I have done that, and the article is much longer now with lots of detail and citations. But the "stub" status is still there. I would think it's no longer a "stub," but I'm not really sure. How does this status get changed?

K828 (talk) 17:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

K828, welcome back. Mary Sands is most certainly no longer a stub article. To change that status, edit the article and somewhere near the bottom you find a template (in the {{ }} curly brackets) with, at least, the word stub in it. Just delete this template and the article will no longer show as a stub. Note this won't change the quality scales of the projects identified on the article talk page. Those will need to be manually amended when the article is re-assessed. NtheP (talk) 17:51, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your help.

K828 (talk) 21:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, K828! There are two Wikiprojects that consider the Mary Sands article part of their domain. You may want to go to those projects and find the place where you request reassessment from them. You will find links to the project's home pages on the articles talk page. Gtwfan52 (talk) 00:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll check that out.

K828 (talk) 03:32, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

How to Add Column to Table

I would like to add a Synopsis column to and write the synopses for Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. First of all, is this something that needs to be approved? Assuming that it's okay for me to go ahead with it, how do I add a column to the existing one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Alfred_Hitchcock_Presents_episodes#Season_1_.281955.E2.80.9356.29Grayline88s (talk) 16:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Greylin88s, welcome to the Teahouse. Adding a synopsis is fine, I'd just suggest that you keep it brief and try and make sure it's in your own words - it can be difficult to do both! As to the markup, it's not too difficult. First thing to do is add another column in the header definiton section. currently it looks like this:

! First aired
! #
! Title
! Stars
! Writer(s)
! Director

You need to add after the last line ! Synopsis, this will generate another column. It's then a question of adding the details for each entry. Each row in the table (after the header row) looks like this (this is the first entry)

|-
| 2-Oct-55
| 1x01
| "Revenge"
| [[Ralph Meeker]]<br>[[Vera Miles]]<br>[[Frances Bavier]]
| Francis M. Cockrell ([[Teleplay]])<br>Samuel Blas ([[Short Story|Story]])
| '''[[Alfred Hitchcock]]'''
|-

After the director entry - in this example Alfred Hitchcock add as a new line | and your text so the resulting code looks like this

|-
| 2-Oct-55
| 1x01
| "Revenge"
| [[Ralph Meeker]]<br>[[Vera Miles]]<br>[[Frances Bavier]]
| Francis M. Cockrell ([[Teleplay]])<br>Samuel Blas ([[Short Story|Story]])
| '''[[Alfred Hitchcock]]'''
| Synopsis of the plot
|-

If you don't have a synopsis at the moment for an episode just add the pipe character | for that row otherwise the table will be slightly distorted. NtheP (talk) 17:40, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, NtheP!Grayline88s (talk) 03:22, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

notability / self-promotion

I came across this article the other day: Revere (band)

There seem to be all sorts of issues with it in terms of notability and self-promotion; the subject is a small unsigned band, without a record label or much media attention, whose Wikipedia article is nonetheless 3,000 words long and full of enthusiastic language (the whole thing reads very much like a press release). On the talk page, a user says they've been asked by the band themselves to edit the article on their behalf.

I'm only a casual and occasional editor, so don't really feel confident about editing the article, given how much of it needs attention. Is there anywhere I can go to ask for help from more experienced editors, or should I just get stuck in and do what I can?

Smells like content (talk) 16:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

It does read like a press release, you're right. I'm new as an editor so this is just one opinion, however my initial feeling is that enough has probably been done to establish notability by way of references, but the style is not yet as appropriate as it could be. My guess is that you'll be encouraged to 'be bold' and trim some of the hype if you feel like giving it a go. It looks mostly like requiring excision of some superlatives, removal of unevidenced claims, and a little re-ordering of sentences which currently have rather too promotional or journalistic a feel. As an English grad you'll probably be great at that, but I'm up for collaborating if you'd like to take it section-by-section and use me (or another editor) as a sounding board. John Snow II (talk) 16:52, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

• Hi both of you, I have just taken a look and the band do appear to meet notability, but this is a very slick, overlong puff piece which makes for a high-profile cv of the band on Wikipedia and the Internet.
• I have totally removed the 'press quotes' section and the 'noteworthy performances'. If you want to work on the text it needs some serious pruning, removing all unsubstantiated claims (i.e. they were invited to record at Abbey Road) and all of the rubbish references, in general YouTube videos are *not* used as references. If you have doubts, ask more questions! CaptainScreebo ^Parley! 17:05, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thankee, Cap'n! All you say sounds sensible to me. Smells like content, over to you - if you'd like to work on it further, I'll pitch in too. John Snow II (talk) 17:16, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Caption formatting

In a gallery of images, most of the images have three lines of text under them, but there are a few outliers that have as many as six. I think I recall having read that there is a way to force a gallery to include a set number of lines of text under all images. If the text does not fit, a scroll bar appears. The benefit of that for my purposes is that it will prevent an entire row in the gallery from being made especially tall just to fit the text accompanying one image in the row (and thereby producing lots of extra white space). However, I have no idea how to do that. And, more importantly, I am at the brink of insanity trying to navigate Wikipedia's bewildering self-referential pages. Can anyone (1) explain how to do this and (2) tell me how a person could have located the answer himself on Wikipedia? (The answer to #2 is perhaps more important in the long-term, but I'd love an answer to #1 too.)ProfReader (talk) 15:21, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey ProfReader, welcome to the Teahouse. As far as I am aware, all the formatting language for pictures, including captions, can be found here at WP:EIS. I will have to do a bit more digging in order to answer question 1 :). --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 15:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I checked that page, but I don't see anything about the function I'm looking for. However, I did find a reference to the "line parameter" in an entry in Wikimedia Commons about galleries. It describes exactly what I'm looking to do (although it insanely does not actually offer an example showing the parameter in use). It is referenced in the Template:Gallery page on Wikimedia Commons. Perhaps that is where I remember having seen it mentioned, so perhaps there is no equivalent option on Wikipedia. But, if you happen to find a way to achieve this, that would be great. As to #2 above, can you tell me how you went about finding the page you linked to? If I were more self-reliant and assuming I did not already positively know of that page's existence, how might I have found it?ProfReader (talk) 16:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I simply did a google search for Wikipedia picture formatting. I will ask around and see if anyone can help you with your line parameter problem. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 23:41, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Just so no one duplicates efforts, I have answered a version of this question at the help desk, here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

As Fuhghettaboutit has helpfully demonstrated at the Helpdesk link, the |line= parameter will work with the {{Gallery}} template here on Wikipedia as well (you need to use the template rather than the <gallery> tag), so that's the formatting issue dealt with. As far as locating the answers yourself - well, that's not always the easiest thing to do here... A few useful tips:

• Start by searching for the topic you're after using the Wikipedia search bar at the top of the page (just as if you were searching for an article). Assuming that you don't immediately find an article (in which case, run the search with a tilde (~) in front of the search term), the list of results you'll get back can be sorted to return only "Help and project pages"; you may find what you're looking for in there.
• If you can locate a major policy or guideline relating to the issue, check the "Related pages" section at the bottom for potentially helpful links.
• Wikipedia's Missing Manual is full of useful information, and more importantly, gives links for further reading.
• Ask! There's no shame in asking for help if you run into something outside your experience - the Helpdesk, the Village pump, other editor's talkpages and of course the Teahouse itself all exist for editors to get assistance from others, and we all use them from time to time. Posting a request here, as you did, is often the quickest and most stress-free way to get a solution.

Happy editing! Yunshui 雲‍水 08:28, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that help. I've been using the <gallery> tag), so that is one problem explained!ProfReader (talk) 18:38, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Article creation?

When contributing to an online encyclopedia, it is likely that the number of articles on less "encyclopedic" topics will be greater than that of a print encyclopedia - by "less 'encyclopedic'" I am referring to articles on lesser known popular media, technical innovations with a smaller sphere of influence, etc.
How is the boundary betweeen encyclopedic and search-engine-like defined on wikipedia?

Didigodot (talk) 13:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Well yes. Putting entirely aside that what topics to write about is relegated to the masses and the inclination of a significant portion is to pen entries on popular, promotional and pet subjects, which feeds that proclivity, this is inevitable given the sheer size of Wikipedia or any encyclopedia, paper or electronic, that grew to the size we are right now. Encyclopædia Britannica, between its 10-volume Micropædia of short articles, and 19-volume Macropædiait of longer articles, apparently has 2,350 pages, listing 228,274 topics, together with 474,675 subentries. Wikipedia has 4,134,966 entries as of now or about an order of magnitude more. The size of Wikipedia, which is not limited to paper, is staggering; if in hardcopy it would comprise approximately 1,743 bound volumes of 1,600,000 words each. The best we have right now to try to keep out the "unencyclopedic", what you refer to as "search-engine-like" (which we've done a poor job at in my opinion which I could expand on at length and have), is the verifiability, no original research and various parts of the What Wikipedia is not polices, the notability guideline, and the deletion mechanisms that flow from them and others. But I don't mean that this stops or should stop addition of "lesser known popular media, technical innovations with a smaller sphere of influence" – subjects at a higher granularity level being added. Rather, these policies and guideline among others are a check on a level below them; we have kept out millions of articles on people's completely unknown garage bands, personal pets, résumés, and so on. We delete thousands of articles submitted every day but there are still many, many thousands of entries that should not exist but do, and even more that should exist but not in the state that they do.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:56, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletions in a biographical article appear to reflect the interests of its subject

An article on Rich Ross, formally chairman of Disney, has been substantially changed by a user who has made no other Wikipedia edits at all. All the changes are deletions of well sourced and (I think) relevant entries - deleting them appears to favour the subject's interests. Is it fair to revert these? If I raise it on the currently empty Talk page, will it be picked up? NeatlyTiled (talk) 11:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi NeatlyTiled, welcome to the Teahouse. Whilst it's important to be cautious with biographies on Wikipedia, from your description it sounds as though you would be correct to revert the edits. If the information is reliably sourced and relevent, it should be in the article. You should leave the new editor a note explaining your actions and invite them to discuss the issue on the article's talkpage if they disagree. Yunshui 雲‍水 11:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Citing Other Wikipedia Articles?

Hi! I was checking the references of an article and one of the sources was another Wikipedia article. I think I read somewhere how this isn't allowed, but I'm not certain and would appreciate a confirmation of this rule. Thanks! Bananasoldier (talk) 06:44, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Bananasoldier! You are absolutely correct. Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Gtwfan52 (talk) 06:50, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

how long will it take for an article to be published

I have sumbited two article, can you please let me know when they will be published.05:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rahif Hakmi (talk • contribs)

Hi Rahif. As stated in the submission template at the AfC pages regarding the timing for review: "This may take several days. The Articles for creation process is backlogged. Please be patient. There are currently 665 submissions waiting for review." There really is no way to be any more specific than that.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Rahif! What are the titles of your articles and I can go ahead and review them for you? They are probably located here. You can use [[ and ]] tags to surround your (exact) article name. For example, [[Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/More Machine Than Man]] produces Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/More Machine Than Man. JHUbal27 (talk) 06:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The two articles are:

and

thanking you for offering to helpRahif Hakmi (talk) 08:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Search list of keywords in Wikipedia

I have a long list of plants scientific names. Is there an automated way that I can search whether these species have an entry (article or stub) in Wikipedia instead of typing each name one by one? Or can you direct me to a specific group of people who are able to create this type of tool? Thanks. MKwek (talk) 03:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi MKwek and welcome to the Teahouse! I'm sorry it took so long for your question to be answered. I have two words of advice. The first is consider trying this article which lists plants by their common and scientific name. The other advice I can gie you is, if you already haven't, consider joining this WikiProject, where a group of editors share the same interest as you, in this case plants, and can help you. Happy editing! JHUbal27 (talk) 04:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt reply and suggestions. I've visited both pages but find them not the best solution I'm looking for. Forget about what are the contents of my list (plant names or others), say I have a thousands of keywords, i would like to know whether these subjects have already an entry in Wikipedia or not. It will be very time consuming by typing each keyword one by one in the search function. I'm looking for something like a bot or script which could read the list and search at the database of Wikipedia, then eventually generate a list whether this subject exists in Wikipedia or not. This is part of my research to assess the coverage of Wikipedia on rare plant species. Could you guide me to a research team/portal, if there is any, to discuss about this?MKwek (talk) 06:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry this didn't help, but I'm not that experienced of an editor. Is the list written down? If there is a script where a bot can read the list, then I think you would still have to type in each name one by one. I really can't give you anymore than that, so I'm sorry. JHUbal27 (talk) 18:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, yes this is an easy task.

1. Stick the list into your favourite spreadsheet
2. Create a new column that concatenates "# [[" ; <column 1> ; "]]"
3. copy the contents of this column # [[Keyword]] into your sandbox
4. Save

The blue entries exist, the red ones don't.

Rich Farmbrough, 19:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

This works. I copied the list of keywords (# keyword) into my sandbox and it does help me to identify the "red links". Thanks. MKwek (talk) 03:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hyperlink to Wikipedia entry where more than one exists?

Please answer this question. I added to an entry recently and included the name of a person who has his own Wikipedia page. I enclosed his name within double square brackets to create a link, but the resulting hyperlink connected with a disambiguation page because there were two separate entries for people of the same name.

My question is, how can I alter my text in order to hyperlink to the correct individual rather than the disambiguation page? Thank you.

Infoproofer (talk) 15:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Infoproofer, welcome to Wikipedia and the Teahouse! I take it you're talking about the link to Chris Leslie that you put into Master of Arts? The best thing to do here is a neat trick called "piping". What you do is put the name of the page you're trying to link first, then put what's called a pipe character ("|", typed with a shift+\ on a US keyboard), and then the text you want to display. So, if you want to link to Chris Leslie (politician), you can type: [[Chris Leslie (politician)|Chris Leslie]]. This will end up looking like Chris Leslie, but it'll point to the right article. Does that help? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:44, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, just so you know: I've gone ahead and fixed the Chris Leslie link above; you can see the change I made here. Thanks! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:47, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant, thank you Writ Keeper. That's a perfect answer and yes, it was Chris Leslie I was referring to. Thanks also for fixing the link. I'll take a look at it now.

Infoproofer (talk) 16:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It's even easier than that. The "pipe trick" saves you some typing. Just entering [[Chris Leslie (politician)|]] (watch out for that pipe right at the end) will automatically split the wikilink page name at the right place (save it in a sandbox and look again at it afterwards). This works for both brackets and also for commas, like [[Chris Leslie, politician|]] Andy Dingley (talk) 16:28, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks to you also Andy.

Infoproofer (talk) 16:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Other Wikipedias

Hello,

I am new to Wikipedia. I currently have an account only on the English Wikipedia. I would like to use that same account to edit the French Wikipedia. Do I need to create a separate account or is there any other way I can edit another Wikipedia?

Thank you!

TheMillionRabbit (talk) 23:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Currently, all new accounts are unified by default. Since your account is brand new, you should be already set up at all Wikipedias where your name is not already taken (which given its non-generic form, is not likely). See m:Help:Unified login. According to this you should be good to go right now. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:07, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your info! TheMillionRabbit (talk) 00:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Il n'y a pas de quoi!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:21, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

http://toolserver.org/~quentinv57/sulinfo/TheMillionRabbit says "There are no unattached account with this username." This means your account works at all Wikimedia wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:51, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

All project wikis anyway. Rich Farmbrough, 20:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Querying the Wikipedia database

Hi - is it possible to write queries against the database to find, say, all the article titles for migratory birds? I have SQL experience but don't know where to start. Thanks, Tod71.212.97.129 (talk) 04:26, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi and welcome to Wikipedia!

We don't generally allow people to run queries against the live production Wikimedia databases, for obvious reasons. However, there are a couple options:

• Wikipedia has an Application Programming Interface (documentation). You can find it at http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/api.php. With the right queries, you can get all of the information you would need.
• Toolserver (which replicates Wikipedia's databases) runs a query service. To request a query be run, follow the instructions on this page.
• I can run a query for you. Just drop me a line at User talk:Matthewrbowker with the details of the request, and I can run it against a copy of the database I have access too.

Hope that answers your question. Feel free to reply with any more questions. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Make a comment!} 04:54, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, because, as Matthew says there is a reluctance to run sql or other queries against the database, there is an extensive categorization scheme in place across wikipedia. As it is manually maintained there are bound to be numerous examples missed but Category:Migratory birds (Western hemisphere) and Category:Migratory birds (Eastern hemisphere) might be good places to start your search. NtheP (talk) 13:16, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

However, you can request a database dump of the entire website. It's massive, but it may well serve your needs if your hard disk can handle it. Nyttend (talk) 21:13, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Philosopher Seeking Sponser

Hello everyone, and happy New Year!

I am a philosopher and have spent my life invested into the most difficult subjects of our human condition. This year was spent practically explaining the theory behind our social problems historical development, and how we could flip everything by creating quality free education, distributed on the Internet.

I do not separate my "personal" and "professional" life. I am alone in this life and spend it travelling the world, studying society both theoretically and practically while standing outside of it. I then create films that attempt to receptively reinterpret wisdom into the actions of our society's individuals. I then distribute these films for free utilising most media distribution formats including many sources on the Internet.

I would assert that I am more closely connected with my work than anyone else in the world because my heart is all in it. I live the life of an anchorite. And when the relational qualities of the dots of our constellations become clear to me, I am thrown into inspiration and then very quickly create very moving productions that will stand the test of time.

My work is all about me. But I have conditioned my psychology over my life to be all about our human condition. Thus from the reflections of me, if the work is examined in its entirety, we come to learn that my work is all about each and every one of us. I have spent my life attempting to remove bias from my thought process. And I closely examine each and every detail within my existence and contemplate different methods to understand and interpret this "reality" in front of me.

I am seeking an editor that has experience in philosophy to work with me to be able to create the type of articles that Wikipedia desires. I have a great amount of work but have really only started creating professional audiovisual productions recently, so my old work would not need articles on them, but may be linked as references. I will not have a problem finding additional references for the articles because that is all included in my work anyway: I am a philosophy teacher.

Me and all of my productions that I would add to this site are EXTREMELY noteworthy and will one day be in physical encyclopaedias. I have given my life entirely to all of my fellow human brothers and sisters and one day they will realise what I have done.

I do want to mention that my work is extremely controversial according to our modern society. But when we shine light over the ghosts we always find that they were only sheets draped over a chair. Dionysus is my method and Love is my game.

Thanks!

Wendell Charles NeSmith www.imdb.com/name/nm5192719/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-0aaji0nU

Wcnesmith (talk) 00:06, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Wcnesmith, there is actually a Wikipedia Philosophy Project that exists, so why not join it and find out if there are any tasks you can help with. Bear in mind Wikipedia isn't really the place to promote your own work. That would represent a conflict of interest, which is strongly discouraged. However, if your work is widely known and has been discussed in reliable secondary sources, maybe you can find someone at the WikiProject who can give you specific advice. Good luck! Sionk (talk) 00:18, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

They deleted my question and ignored me. Wikipedia is losing an awesome scholar. Your loss.

Wcnesmith (talk) 03:39, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I also want to mention that I do all of this for free because I care about the state and people of our society, so COI is hazy. My interest is only to open source education by creating a huge collective bank of information through teaching others how to create professional productions on the topics closest to their hearts. I have never charged for anything that I do and I never received a cent for any of it.

Wcnesmith (talk) 03:42, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

They responded but are not interested. Like I said, your loss.

Wcnesmith (talk) 03:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

• Hello new user. If you are wanting somebody to work with and to guide you, you may contact me. I would be more than wiling to help you understand Wikipedia Polcies and stuff. But please note that "No Wikipedia user is above anyone else" and that the loss of any one does not harm the project more than the loss of anyone else.

That being said, if you are ready to work on Wikipedia, you may contact me and I shall try to help and guide you.

Cheers,

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 05:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello TheOriginalSoni. I can not figure out how to send you a message. I specialise in mythology and there is SO much mythology on this site that has ignored, incorrect, or overlooked countless metaphors and allegories. Me not clarifying these does hurt the project. Any competent person who does not assist with the development of this knowledge base hurts your project. Kantian enlightenment? Don't act like this system does not need the individuals who contribute to it. This project would not exist without quality scholars. Don't devalue potential quality posters unless you do not care about the quality of this project. Wcnesmith (talk) 08:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Answered on the talk page TheOriginalSoni (talk) 12:41, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind. I am not going to bother with this project. It is insignificant to my goal and I have not been welcomed here. But it is okay because you do not value quality posters anyway. Good bye Wikipedia. Wcnesmith (talk) 12:17, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to here that! From what I can see, your contributions at the WikiProject Philosophy talk page were met with offers to help, advise and work with you. Your question is still there. I think your one edit to Pygmalion (mythology) article was reverted because it was unsourced, so had no proof of its relevance to the article. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort with some basic rules and guidelines (one being the requirement for verification) so I shouldn't worry unduly. Disagreements on Wikipedia can always be worked out via friendly discussion. I can fully understand if you have already decided there are better places on the internet to promote your own work. All the same I'm sure your general knowledge and expertise will be very welcome on Wikipedia! Sionk (talk) 12:42, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I would love to contribute. Your mythology sections suck and I have spent my life in this field. I tested the waters with one edit on Pygmalion, and it is backed with an entire 155 minute film which includes sources, which I would have added with a more extensive evaluation over time. But I was testing waters and it became clear to me that you only want reinterpreted old work in TEXT, not audiovisual sources, and not from the source of the audiovisual producer (even though sources are throughout it). I am not trying to be insulting or anything else to anyone. But like I said, your mythology sections really sucks and I DO find it sad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wcnesmith (talk • contribs) 13:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Fare thee well. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 13:17, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Mr. NeSmith: What you appear to be seeking is a blog to disseminate your original research. Put your ideas out there and if they have merit, with a little luck people will reference your work and be influenced by it. That will, of course, take longer than 24 hours to assess if your contributions are being well received. Peace. ProfGiles (talk) 14:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Uploading fonts

I have seen in Wikipedia few languages have two names in two different scripts. I also wanted to do the same to Nepal Bhasa. Can I upload Prachalit script to Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia? -KrozanK. (talk) 06:29, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

What should I do if I edited anonymously, and when I create an account to make an AFD someone says I'm a SPA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarioNovi (talk • contribs) 07:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)