Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2006 December 12

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December 12

Cant reply

how do i reply to another persons post?

Just click 'edit this page', or the 'edit' button next to the relevant section heading, and type your reply. Sign your post by putting ~~~~ at the end. For example, to reply to this post, click 'edit' at the right of where it says 'How?' in large text. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 00:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) If you mean on a user talk page, all you have to do is click the + tab you see up at the top and fill it out with what you want to say. If you mean on a regular article talk page all you have to do is to either start a new section (+) or just reply underneath someone else's comment. See WP:TALK for more info. — Seadog 00:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Do IPs have a plus? | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 20:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

How to find the number of articles in a category

How can I find out how many articles there are in a category? I want Category:Orphaned articles to have a progress graph like Category:Category needed, but I can't just add one without knowing the article counts in the monthly subcategories. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Derlay (talk • contribs) 00:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

Special:Mostlinkedcategories lists all the really big categories (it's updated about once a month if I remember correctly), but it won't help for categories sorted by month. In practice, such situations are normally counted by bot, because it's too difficult to do by hand. --ais523 13:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Template

How do i add and artical to a template? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Noneboy (talk • contribs) 00:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

Articles aren't added to templates, it's the other way around. Templates are put in articles. To use a template in an article, simply put {{templatename}} in the article where you want the template to appear. Dismas|^(talk) 01:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

new category

i've "created" a new category by inserting it on the relevant pages but the category's not been created.

when I go to edit, it lists the pages that link to the category. how do i turn this list into the actual category page?

or is this just a matter of waiting until the database updates

cheers

Ashlar 00:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Click on that category in one of the pages that links to it. When the edit box comes up, put in a description of the category similar to "This category is a listing of people/places/etc who... blah blah blah". Then save the page. It will then be blue instead of red. Dismas|^(talk) 01:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Last Approved Revision

Hey, not sure where to ask this... Oh well.

I'm looking for a feature or assistive software of some sort to make Wikipedia easier to use. I have all these articles on my watchlist and I sort of "approve" those revisions in my head... Then, I want to walk away from Wikipedia weeks at a time and all I want to know is the differences between the revision I last approved and the current revision. I realize that if I edit the page, I can just press curr, but sometimes, I approve edits that I don't make. How far back into do I need to go? Sometimes I can't remember. I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about... Does an answer to this dilemma already exist?

It'd be similar to a "last read" function on a message board or forums reader. --Htmlism 01:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's an on-wiki solution to that; it would be difficult to write, because there isn't anywhere obvious where the approval data would be stored. --ais523 13:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Web TV

A friend of mine uses Web TV and is having trouble getting Wikipedia pages onscreen. He can view the main page, but whenever he looks up an article, only the top of the page and the left side appear. He cannot view the articles. Is there anything he (or you) can do to help.

User: Fredstang Fredstang 02:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Perhaps it's a layout fluke. Did he try to scroll down to below the left menu bar. - Mgm|^(talk) 05:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

(top)

In my contributions, I noticed that on many of my edits, (top) was listed next to it. I'd just like to know what this means- thanks in advance, CattleGirl ^{talk | e@} 02:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It means that it was the most recent edit to that particular page. Cbrown1023 02:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

That's cool, I had always assumed it meant the top header section. Guess I was wrong. --Mäx Talk (add) 07:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

How hard is it to get someone to second my complaint about an admin?

Please see my complaint. The admin who abused his power doesn't even bother responding to any of my concerns, and the overwhelming majority of his peers disagree with his decision, but it doesn't look like anything's gonna be done about it. Xiner 03:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Have you posted anything at deletion review on the matter? That may be a more appropriate forum, unless I'm missing a greater trend. Luna Santin 03:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

There is actually a deletion review on this matter open right now. Newyorkbrad 03:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

I need to know how to do a re-direct, but I'm afraid if I go through the help pages are start wandering around (like I usually do) and lose focus. Can someone give me a quick tutorial? Thanks!NinaEliza 03:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Simply type #REDIRECT [[The page you want to re-direct]] — Seadog 03:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Seadog (and for the note on my talk - very helpful).

I realize now where I went wrong in asking this question. I want (a) to redirect to (b) where (a) doesn't exist. So I think I need to actually create a page, but I...hmmm...I think I might know how, but I'll what for the answer.NinaEliza 03:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you can redirect to a non-existent page, I wouldn't see why you would want to however. I am understanding this correctly. — Seadog 03:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It's the other way around - the society I'm writing about has another name, and I want that name to redirect to the article. NinaEliza 04:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I created a page with the alternate named, put the code you gave me on it with the main article title, and that worked. Thanks and sorry I didn't get it.NinaEliza 04:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Proofreaders needed

I'm creating a tools page at Wikipedia:Tools/Optimum tool set on the most useful tools and techniques for getting stuff done on Wikipedia. I'd like to make sure that it is easy to understand, even for new users. Please proofread it and leave comments for me on its discussion page pointing out anything you didn't understand. Then I will do my best to make it clearer. I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.  The Transhumanist   05:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Done - just off to leave a message on the talk page. Squeezeweasel 14:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Another page for my userpage

If you look at my userpage, you can see that it is very long. I want to create another link for my following articles that can be found in my userpage: "Independence Day 2" & "The Amazing Race Singapore Season 4". I know I can create a new page for my articles but I am afriad that it will be marked for deletion. Can you help me please?Aranho 07:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Pages in the User space, unless they're solely for use as some sort of personal free web space, shouldn't be deleted. If you want to create a subpage you can create a link on your current user page to something like User:Aranho/articles. Clicking on that will give you the edit box to create the "articles" sub page. Dismas|^(talk) 07:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank for answering my question and thank you for solving my problem.Aranho 07:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Italics

How does one put text in italics? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DingleGhost (talk • contribs) 08:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

• Use two single quotes on either side of the text like this: ''this text is in italics'', which renders as this text is in italics. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
• Also try Wikipedia:How to edit a page. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

satelite pictures

how to see actual satellite pictures

• Try Google Maps or download Google Earth. I'm sure NASA has a lot of them too. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Accused of vandalism!

What do I do when I was accused of vandalism that I didn't do. I just got a message saying I vandalized the List of house types article, but I didn't even read the article. Can I get banned from Wikipedia if I get falsely accused enough times?72.244.116.214 13:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

You're probably on a dynamic IP; what probably happened is that someone else vandalised the article, their IP and your IP changed, and the message got directed at you by mistake. You can avoid such confusion by creating a username, as messages to usernames rather than IPs always go to the right person. --ais523 14:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The vandalism seems to have been on 23 November; therefore it's almost certainly a case of a message (from over a week ago) accidentally going to the wrong person. --ais523 14:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

To follow up on the banning question, yes with a but. Unless the vandal is sharing your internet connection (a classmate or coworker, or your sister on your home network) then as long as you have your IP nobody else can vandalise from it but you. If the vandalism is never in the same timeframe as you have the IP, then it's impossible you'd get banned for it and unlikely you'd get blocked other than perhaps for a day once in a blue moon. BigNate37_;(T) 14:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm looking at the change that was made, and it was a simple page blanking. You may have accidentally made the change yourself. But in any case, Wikipedia's block policies are extremely liberal, and even for blatant vandalism, an IP is usually only blocked for a short period of time, unless the vandalism is ongoing. -Patstuart^talk|edits 15:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think there's no chance that the person asking the question committed the vandalism. The IP is on a /15 (a very large range; they tend to be dynamic), the vandalism was over a week ago giving the IP plenty of time to change, and if the IP were static I'd expect more than just 2 edits from it (the user asking the question used a signature correctly). The fact that the message didn't even appear until over a week later would suggest that the IP isn't used to view Wikipedia very often (as opposed to the person who asked the question, who probably uses it more often than that on a dynamic IP). --ais523 15:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you elaborate as to what exactly that CIDR/15 range means? -Patstuart^talk|edits 16:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It means that the range consists of IPs with their first 15 bits all the same; as an IP is 32 bits long, this means that there are 17 bits that change and 2¹⁷ IPs in the range. Ranges that large are expensive, and normally only owned by large ISPs; from experience, IPs that can only be narrowed down to large ranges rather than narrow ones tend to be dynamic (I'm quite possibly completely wrong on this; if I am, please let me know). --ais523 16:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

how can i enter a new topic into wikipedia?

how can i enter a new topic into wikipedia? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.93.43.51 (talk) 13:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

See Wikipedia:Articles for Creation (as you don't have a username); read Wikipedia:Your first article. If you create a username, you can also create an article by following a red link to it (you can create the link in another article in the usual way if it isn't there already). --ais523 14:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

See also Help:Starting a new page. BigNate37_(T) 14:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Ariakkath MAna

dfgsalkdfnlsdkf sdfksdflks sdflksjdflksjdf sdfkjsldfkjsldkf —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.93.43.51 (talk) 13:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

Sorry, I can't figure out what you're trying to ask. You might find the answer you want in the FAQ. --ais523 13:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. As of today, January 5th 2007, when I accessed Wikipedia, using IE 5.5, the File / Save As command worked. On several other occasions it has also worked. It is aggravating for this feature not to work, seemingly at random.

This command is a basic component of IE, from version 4 at least. It doesn't seem likely that version 6 or 7 will change this feature substantially. In any case, there will undoubtedly be a future issue where the use of IE 7 will solve the problems of IE6.

OSM

Hi,

(I suppose this question goes here beause its to do with Wiki, kinda) I just got the Java version of OSM (open street mapping) which is a wiki 'product', iv created an account and iv received the email saying that they have done my account, but whenever i try to login it says h=that there is an incorrect username or password, Help!

thanks, --84.65.6.184 15:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It's probably worth asking this question at the computing Reference Desk; you're likely to find people who know more about the product you mention there. --ais523 15:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Link to e-mail address?

This isn't for wikipedia, but we use similar software for an internal corporate wiki. Anyone know the code for making an e-mail address into a mailto: link using wikicode? I couldn't find this anywhere. Like I said, I'm not going to edit a wikipedia entry and include an e-mail; this is for an internal wiki. Just need to know how it's done. Thanks. Edwardaggie98 16:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[1]. Patstuart^talk|edits 16:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Edward. Since you are a new user, Pat's code was [ mailto:foo@bar.com ] without the spaces. If I understand it correctly, it would look like this [2], using my own email. Click on the "page history" link at the bottom of the page and view the "diff" to see what the code I used looks like. Happy editing!NinaEliza 17:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, NinaEliza! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Edwardaggie98 (talk • contribs) 19:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

Italic text and signatures

The following is a contribution I made to whether or not something should be published.

You don't Italic texthaveItalic textto read about it! - Unsigned by "User:Tastylicious"

Why did it say "Italic text" instead of actually displaying it this way? How should I have got it to display in italics?

Why did I need to sign my name? If logged in, why was there a need to sign?

Presumably you clicked on the I button to add italics. The code for italics in wikimarkup is '' (two single quotes) to turn them on or off; the button writes Italic text onto the page, and you're meant to edit the 'Italic text' to say what you want to say in italics. As for the unsigned, when writing on discussion pages (Talk pages, deletion debates, and some other pages like the Help Desk) giving a signature helps identify who wrote the comment without having to look in the page history. The easiest way to type a signature is to type ~~~~, which will add your username and a timestamp to the page. For instance, I'm signing this comment here. See also Wikipedia:Cheatsheet (for markup codes) and the page about signatures. --ais523 17:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

kojo williams on the school of excellence academy.

hi, please how can i get in touch with kojo williams on the school of excellence academy in the city of ilorin and the social will being of the academy in Nigeria.pls send me this message to this email address. email removed or call this number —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.16.125.203 (talk) 18:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

This page is for questions about Wikipedia. You might try asking on the WP:Reference desk. And it's a bad idea to post your email address in a public forum. I've removed it from your message to help protect you from spam. -- Kesh 21:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The questioner can click on the link in the next sentence. For the rest of us wondering about this, Kojo Williams, former Nigerian FA head, now heads the Nigerian Football College of Excellence. According to reports last year, there was some big money being thrown around there, but no recent news of note. The website is not too informative. It is also the name you will find on many Nigerian 419 scam e-mails, no doubt because the name may seem credible to a reader. --Seejyb 22:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Getting Started

Hi, I work for an electronics company and I wanted to inquire about how to go about entering our information in Wikipedia search.

Thanks, 63.124.122.173 19:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. —Centrx→talk • 19:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Search engine summary

I edited a page with new information, but the summary of the site when I use Google to search for it is still the same. How do I chane it?

Google caches the text on their servers. It will be updated the next time their software reviews the article. —Centrx→talk • 19:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

And since many other sites scrape (copy) wikipedia it is possible that the earlier info will show up elsewhere for some weeks if not longer. --Justanother 19:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Best place to pursue an RfC on copyvio/legal issue?

Hi. Can someone please steer me toward the best next step for The Bridge (film). There is an ongoing dispute that cannot seem to reach consensus as to whether it is appropriate to link to a live site for viewing the film seeing as how the rights owner has attempted to remove it from circulation. Some are making very "legalese" arguments that I, not being an attorney versed in copyright law, cannot evaluate. Now an admin has moved the link to talk and indicated its problematic nature but the "legalish" sort have already restored it once and will likely do it again. I would like to set up an RfC on this but not in the religion category as the question is more wikipedia policy/copyvio/legal in nature. Thanks --Justanother 19:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

MCO

I am looking for a product I read in a book titled Beat Arthritis Forever by Dr. L Sands the product is called MCO cerasomal-cis-9-cetylmyrostoleate for arthritis?

Please ask this question here: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. Also, please sign your posts with ~~~~. Thanks you. | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 20:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Lots of sources. It is CMO. See here. --Justanother 22:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wiki stopped working

Hi, I recently changed the name of my index.php file into something random, since people at my school were seeing stuff I didn't want them to see, so I had to take a quick measure against it. When I got home, I changed the subdomain where the wiki was hosted into something else (without messing with any of the files), so people wouldn't know where it was located. I also changed the index.php file back to the normal name. However, when I visit my wiki now, it doesn't work anymore. I just get a blank page when I visit it. What did I do wrong? Did it screw up some dependencies or something like that? How could I possibly fix this problem?

Cheers,

Steven

• This is more about the software than Wikipedia. Try the MediaWiki help page. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Thing is that I cannot seem to connect to the Freenode network on IRC, even though I can connect to any other channel/server. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.25.234.115 (talk) 06:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC).

• • • There is a mailing list for MediaWiki help: mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org. Most of the MediaWiki developers watch that list and will be able to help you. Essjay (Talk) 06:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)