Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 January 4

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

January 4

incorrect link in feature article

Today's feature article on John Brooke-Little has an incorrect 'more' link (to yesterday's article - Yarraluma) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bonnyjars (talk • contribs)

Thanks for the heads up; it has been fixed. The best place to report this in the future would be Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. Dar-Ape 03:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Beatle

when i type in beatle it gives me a page on the beatles. i want to learn about the actual beatle Italic text''Italic text bug. what doi do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.56.131.168 (talk • contribs)

You are probably looking for the article Beetle (notice the different spelling). -- Natalya 00:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Most people find it to be quite useful to acquire basic spelling skills. It does make for one's life to be easier at times.

I edited Leland Irving

Sorry to bother you. This is my first try at editing. I hope that I did okay. Could you check if my edit is okay?

My son, Jason, was diagnosed with the same rare cancer that Leland Irving had as a child. Jason was a tall, strong young man of 18 when he suddenly became very ill. We learned that he had a rare childhood cancer that we had never heard of--rhabdomyosarcoma. Even with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation he died on his dad's 50th birthday on 8/25/05. At times it is still hard to believe what we all went through and that Jason is really gone, but he is. I want to do all I can to increase awareness of this childhood cancer in particular as it receives so little in the way of funding for research for a cure.

I found the article about Leland using a news search of the word rhabdomyosarcoma. When I searched his name and saw that he had a Wikipedia article, I thought that the fact that he had cancer as a child would be good to include. A childhood cancer diagnosis always changes the lives of all affected.

Thank you for your help.

Pam —Preceding unsigned comment added by PamA50 (talk • contribs) 19:50, January 3, 2007

Welcome to Wikipedia! You're right, that's interesting information to have in that article. It may need edited a little to fit our Manual of Style, but it's good to see you cited the information. Glad to see you were bold in adding information to an article! -- Kesh 01:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

how to retrieve a redirected article?

today another editor merged the Karellen article into Childhood's End. Though I still can open the talk page Talk:Karellen, the original Karellen article redirects now to Childhood's End.

how can I retrieve the original info?

Cesar Tort 00:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Click on the link you provided for Karellen, when that redirects you to Childhood's End you will see a bit of text just below the title of the article that reads something like "Redirected from Karellen". Click on that link to go to the Karellen page, you won't be redirected this time. Now you can view the history of the page for Karellen. Dismas|^(talk) 01:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Go to Karellen, and when it redirects to the other page, click the link in "(Redirected from link)". This should take you to the page without redirecting. To retrieve the original info, see WP:REVERT (long story short, click the date you want to go back to under the "history" tab). However, I suggest you either give a legitimate reason or discuss on the talk page before reverting. –Llama man^{sign here} 01:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Cesar Tort 01:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not planning to revert. Only to retrieve info for my web page. Cesar Tort 01:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The more articles the better. Right?

I know that wikipedia has a virtually endless amount of room for articles. But does this mean that I can post articles that aren’t necessarily interesting or important to everyone? (For instance an article about me, a friend, or a rarely seen character in a TV show) Basically what I'm asking is, if I make an article that is unbiased, well formatted, and of high quality, will it be deleted just because of its subject? 24.128.184.41 02:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC) Jake

Yes if it fails the notability guide no matter how nice and informative the article is...it will be deleted. See the Deletion guide for more info. — Arjun 02:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Basically don't make an article on yourself or a friend. — Arjun 02:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Also,please note that writing articles about yourself or a friend is discouraged. See Wikipedia:Autobiography and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. 24.20.69.240 05:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if it is original research, meaning the information came from you personally, or "I heard it somewhere on the internet", or "a friend of a friend". Please see WP:V and WP:RS. ColourBurst 06:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• More articles is better, but at the latest Wikimania conference, Jimmy Wales said something I agree with completely. (paraphrasing) "We shouldn't focus on increasing the articles count, it's not the number of articles that count, it's the quality." It's better to have 1000 perfect articles than a million ones in progress. So I thinkt's better to focus on quality than quantity. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Foreign Language Scripts Showing up as ????????

What does one have to do to enable foreign language scripts/alphabet to be displayed properly instead of ??????—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.219.29.151 (talk • contribs) 23:57, January 3, 2007

It depends on the language that's showing up as ????. See Help:Multilingual support for more information. By the way, you only need four tildes to sign your username and date, no more, no less. Cheers, Tangotango (talk) 05:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Editing Categories

How do I add/remove articles to categories? --JDitto 05:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You have to edit the article itself and change the [[Category:Category_name_goes_here]] to the category you want the article in. You can have multiple category tags in the article. G.He 05:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Could I put myself as a wikifriend?--JDitto 05:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure. :) G.He 05:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Contacting other researchers on Wikipedia

Hi, I would like to know how I can contact other people who are researching on Wikipedia. My research can be summarized by the questions below:

1) In the absence of monetary compensation, what motivates people to contribute their knowledge to Wikipedia? 2) How do such motivations relate to the contributor's level of participation and performance?

I wish to contact other like-minded peers who are doing social research such as this. Should I join the wiki-research-l mailing list (I do not wish to unintentionally spam others)? Are there other points of contact?

-WikiInquirer 08:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• There've been people who did such research, but I forgot names, perhaps searching the mailing list archive for wiki-en-l will help you along. - 131.211.210.17 09:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, shall try that WikiInquirer 05:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Akward Situation

My user name is The Hybrid, but my signature is THL and has been for a while now. I recently discovered that there is an actual User:THL that came about before THL was my signature. This person was only around for about 3 edits before apparently leaving. I am planning on changing my sig as a result of this, but here is my question. Would it be OK for me to place a disclaimer on that person's non-existent user page saying that if they are looking for THL, that they should go to User:The Hybrid? If this user were to ever return I would explain the situation to them, but I'm just curious as to whether or not I'm allowed to do this. Cheers, -- THL 09:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Hmm, I think changing your signature would be a better idea even if he doesn't return, but failing that leaving a message on that talk page notifying visitors that the sig is yours and not his is probably a good idea to avoid confusion. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I have already changed it, but I think that I shoul do it anyway just because that was my sig for so long. I'll leave one on his talk page, but Could I leave one on the actual user page as well? Cheers, -- The Hybrid 10:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
• I think this would be a good reason to edit someone's userpage. If he comes back and objects we can take it from there, but I think that chance is pretty slim if he hasn't shown up for so long. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Cool, thanks Mgm. -- The Hybrid 10:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

cannot find a page by the search box

Hello,

I have created an article yesterday, named Electronic Nose, but when I enter "Electronic nose" in the search box, the only article that is found in the one on Machine olfaction. How can I do to make my article appear when someone searches "Electronic nose"?

Thanks in advance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mbonnefille (talk • contribs).

You might want to have a look here – Wikipedia:Searching. Regards, — Nearly Headless Nick 10:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Your article is here – Electronic Nose. You might also want to cite sources as per WP:CITE and WP:RS, so that your article is becomes verifiable and asserts enough notability to avoid speedy deletion. Also, while leaving comments, make sure you sign them with 'four tildes' – ~~~~ so as to mark your comments. Have a nice time and happy editing! — Nearly Headless Nick 10:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Adding a category to an article

Earlier on I created an article on The Stroke Association, using The Stroke Association account, and would like this to be listed in the category, Charities based in the United Kingdom - sub-category Health charities in the United Kingdom. Please advise me how to do this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The Stroke Association (talk • contribs)

I've done this for you. --Dweller 12:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

In the future, you can just type in text like this: [[Category:Health charities in the United Kingdom]] at the bottom of the page. --Rory096 14:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

How to edit a list of references that do not appear in the editor?

On the Spinnaker Tower page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinnaker_Tower there is a references section in which I wish to insert a link for the word LUSAS to the LUSAS page in Wikipedia.

However, when I view either the whole page or just the reference section in the editor no listing appears. Instead, only the text 'References' with another line stating 'references' appear.

I've looked through the wikipedia FAQs for reasons why this should be and have drawn a blank.

Can anyone assist or advise me what is special with numbered reference lists of this type?

Thanks.

Prls66 13:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The references are actually cited farther up in the article. Wikipedia:References#Footnotes should give you the information you need. -- Natalya 13:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

However, you cannot use Wikipedia as a refererence; this is not an acceptable source. You should also never list a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUSAS to link to another article. If you just want to turn the word LUSAS into a link inside Wikipedia, type brackets around it like this: [[LUSAS]]. Notinasnaid 14:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Help!!

how do i write an article for my friend so that its not deleted? i wrote one, saved it and it was there and the next day it was gone. i didn't add any websites it was all about her life...so it was nothing that i needed to cite..why did it still get deleted?

i want to write an article for a friend. she is not famous but she models and dances and i wanted to make an article of her life. i tried but it was deleted. there was nothing in the article from websites thats why it wasn't cited because it was all about her life. how do i do it so that it is not deleted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Verob26 (talk • contribs) 10:35, January 4, 2007

You have to either find a veritable source, or wait until she becomes more mentioned on the web (you might even want to create a website yourself, although you'll need more than that). Try Google for obscure sources, and then take a look at WP:CITE. Good luck! | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 15:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably, it was deleted because your friend is not famous, and would be deleted however you did it. To stop Wikipedia from becoming a directory of everyone in the world, there are strict guidelines for notability. There are many other free web sites where you can create a web page devoted to your friend. Notinasnaid 15:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend you first look at our notability guidelines for people to determine if there should even be a Wikipedia article for your friend. Most people simply are not notable enough to warrant their own encyclopedia article. Please also note that references need not come only from the web; they can be from any medium as long as they are verifiable and reliable. --ElKevbo 15:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

In a nutshell, read the deletion policy — Arjun 16:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If your friend is not famous enough for Wikipedia, you could still write an article over WikiBios. — Kieff 18:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Deleting categories

Is it possible to request deletion of a category which is no longer populated? There is this Category:Jogos da Lusofonia, but I created the English counterpart Category:Lusophony Games (I couldn't just move the category) and edited all articles included in the former to this new one. But can the first one exist unpopulated? Couldn't it be deleted? Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 17:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

There's the Categories for Discussion process, using which you can request deletion of a category. Hope that helps. --ais523 17:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. It sure does! But now I realized they could have simply renamed it. Bugger :P Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 17:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If it has been empty for 4 days it can be proposed for speedy deletion.-Localzuk^(talk) 19:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

editing: truncated article

In editing an existing article (Crotalus scutulatus), the bottom of the article has become truncated. That is, the last couple of paragraphs, along with the footnotes, etc., have suddenly disappeared from the viewable article, although everything is present in the editing window. What's happened? And how do I fix it? Thanks. Scutdude 17:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's because a <ref> tag ends with </ref>, not <ref/>. If you correct the last ref in the article to end with the correct tag, the end of the article will become visibile again. (It's because the parser spends ages waiting for a </ref> that never comes, and can't do anything with taht information.) --ais523 17:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I solved the problem. Towards the end of the article, where it appeared truncated, it had some closing reference tags miswritten - <ref/> instead of </ref>. Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 17:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Uploading an image

I want to upload an image but I can't understand the process!Please explain to me how can I fill these info boxes in order to be sure that my image will be not deleted.Provide me an example ```````` --Floyd8 18:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's all about copyright; most images aren't suitable for use on Wikipedia because they have incorrect copyright terms. Wikipedia:Uploading images should give you the information you need; Wikipedia:Image copyright tags explains the options available in terms of copyright. Hope that helps. --ais523 18:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If that doesn't help, maybe specifics will help. Let us know the exact article name, and where the photo is from. Who took the photo? Or if it is from a book, when was the book published? Or if it is from a web site, tell us where we can see it. Notinasnaid 21:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Special

How many specials are there? (see my name, under the god-awful orange X's) --Darkest Hour ^{Ж Ж Ж Ж Ж} 20:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

See Special:Specialpages. Yuser31415 21:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Stub

Also were does the

{{stub}}

tag go on a stub page?

At the bottom for me. Xiner (talk, email) 21:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If I recall correctly it can be placed anywhere, but it seems to be a matter of common style to place it at the end, or immediately before any category (IE [[category name]]). Wintermut3 05:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I need help with improving a template

I recently created Template:Foreignlang (See fuller explanation its purpose here). Right now, the 2nd and 3rd parameters seem to be working, but I don't know how to code for the first parameter (The first parameter decides the language of the output, using the 2 letter identifications for the international wikipedias. en for English, ar for Arabic, ru for Russian, and so on).

...

--Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 22:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

(Discussion moved to Template talk:Foreignlang - it messed up the headlines here. — Sebastian 22:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC))

Current Glycerin pricing

Is there a source of current prices for both crude and refined [99.5% pure] bulk glycerin?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim Klein 44 (talk • contribs) 17:08, January 4, 2007

Pretty sure there must be one. However, you'd want to ask over on the Reference Desk (see the top of this page). This page is for questions about Wikipedia itself, so you'll be more likely to get an answer over there.

And don't forget to sign your name by typing four tilde signs (~~~~) at the end of your message! -- Kesh 22:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

listing the last editor for a list of pages

For all pages in my user space, I'd like to get the last editor. This doesn't seem possible using Related Changes, because it only goes back 30 days. Is there any other way? Thanks! — Sebastian 22:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by the last editor. But, the best thing you can do is open the History tab for that page to see who last edited that page. -- Kesh 22:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

What I mean is a list like this:

   Name                            Last editor
   User:SebastianHelm              SebastianHelm
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage1     SebastianHelm
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage2     SebastianHelm
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage3     SebastianHelm
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage4     some user
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage5     SebastianHelm
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage6     SebastianHelm
   User:SebastianHelm/Subpage7     SebastianHelm

This would allow me to see that "some user" edited subpage4. Not all my subpages are on my watchlist, and I don't need to check them all the time anyway. Alternatively, it would be nice to have a feature to exclude one's own changes in the watchlist - only for certain pages. — Sebastian 00:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Putting previous contributions under my new name.

I have just created an account and would like to know if it's possible to put my previous contributions under my new name. I had been accessing Wikipedia under my office address and created the account under my personal address. I suppose that might have something to do with it.

Thanks

Kostaki mou 22:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC) 22:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I was at first under the impression that I was sending a private message to the help desk. I didn't realize I was entering a message that was accessible to all. That's why I entered personal information which I have since deleted. This is very misleading!!

Kostaki mou 22:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's no way to merge two accounts. Best thing to do is put a link on your new User page to the old account, and mention that it's your old one. And, if you can still log into your old account, do the same on it back to your new account. -- Kesh 22:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I did a little more research, and found a template to do this for you. Please see this link for details. -- Kesh 00:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I can no longer edit my article

Hi there,

I started an article last year on Cyberbludging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberBludging

Ive gone back to do some more work and have found that I cam only access the reference section of the article. I also noticed that my name was changed from Charles Heunemann to Charles Honyneman probably because because my name was spelled that way in a refence link.

I have included some additional reference links that show the correct spelling of my name but I would like access to the body of teh article so I can further develop the content and correct the spelling of my name.

Please help

Kind regards

Charles Heunemann <email-removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheunema (talk • contribs)

The whole article can be edited: just click the "edit" tab at the top of the screen. If that isn't working, post again here. Thanks. Trebor 22:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

As it appears this is an article about a term you coined, it would be a conflict of interest for you to edit it. If you note something that needs changed, post it to the Talk page of the article, so other editors can verify it and then edit the article for you. -- Kesh 22:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

"Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. etc. What's this all about?"

"Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still doesn't work, try logging out and logging back in."

I have gotten the above message after editing three times in one week. Usually, it's after I've done some extensive editing on long articles, and I've spent 45 minutes or more trying to improve an article. Why do you suppose this keeps on happening. As you might guess, it's extremely frustrating. Slater79 22:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it's something in the system timing out - I also get this after spending a long time editing (or leaving for half an hour and coming back). But it works when you hit save page again, so it's not really a problem is it? Trebor 22:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that happens if you've had the page open for a long time and then try to submit an edit, but your cookie for logging in has already expired. It looks to me like Wikipedia's logins are set to about 30 minutes after your last pageview, but I can't be certain.

The easiest way around that should be to check the box to remember your login on the computer when you next log in. Otherwise, you might want to refresh your page first to make sure you're still logged in before making an edit. -- Kesh 22:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Another possibility could be that you are going through a collection of proxy servers with your session data being mangled by them. This could be at your ISP or if you are at work it could be internal.-Localzuk^(talk) 23:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If you happen to be editing in IE on Windows, you can try this. Use File > Work offline - switch the option on. Then click Back. You will now be at the pre-edited page. You can select some or all of the edit text and copy it out, perhaps to Notepad. Now turn Work offline off, and you can try to apply the edit again, by viewing the article, checking you are still logged on, and clicking edit, then pasting back. Be careful and check your results, but it's better than retyping. Notinasnaid 10:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Another possibility is that the session data is indeed being lost due to a server-side issue (e.g. if you are running on a virtual host or a cluster). See this page for a solution which works quite well. hashinculde 10:40, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Help getting out of the box

Anyone with the time and inclination please take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Reference desk/RD header#Capitalization and ampersands in desk descriptors and get the next poster (probably me, currently in green) out of the RD header box. Thanks, --hydnjo talk 22:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

IOW, how do I start another section independent of the subst box? --hydnjo talk 23:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Canderson7, you fixed it.  :-) --hydnjo talk 01:18, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Wha are these crazy numbers?

[1]

+1, -4, what's up?

The number of bytes that were added or removed in the change. This is a recently added feature, and helps to detect vandalism and how major a change was. —Centrx→talk • 23:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

For more information, see Help:Watching pages#What do the colored numbers mean?