Help desk
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July 2[edit]

Revision Numbers[edit]

Some edit notes read:

Undid revision 123456789 by "user name" (where '123456789' is an example.)

Usually the revision number refers to the previous edit, but not always.

Please advise how to find an edit from the revision number. Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 00:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=123456789 PrimeHunter (talk) 00:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

building a fence[edit]

we are buildin a fence and i wanted to know if when the people come to read our meater each month do they fisicaly come and look at the meater or just drive by and point that sencer reader at it from the road —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.51.200 (talk) 00:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 00:26, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming the question is serious, one simple and accurate way to get the answer would be to call the telephone number that appears on the utility bill each month, and ask the people who send the bill how they get the information for it. Granted, most utility companies now probably have those wonderful IVR systems that present the caller with a lengthy menu of options, none of which are what you want, but if you have enough endurance, you can sometimes actually talk to a human by the end of it. --Teratornis (talk) 06:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes— only your power provider can really answer the question. I'm on an electric coop and used to submit my meter reading via the internet every month. My meter was upgraded a few years ago and it now transmits the reading over the power line. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 09:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An electric coop? For battery hens? DuncanHill (talk) 11:32, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll go out on a limb and guess Gadget850 (Ed) refers to a Utility cooperative. Although I could see the marketing advantages for a self-cooking chicken. --Teratornis (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eggsactly. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:07, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

unknown painting #2[edit]

baby angel putting a rose crown on a beautiful woman dressed in a white and blue dress {looks roman}. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.229.105.205 (talk) 01:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could try Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. This help desk is just for answering questions about how Wikipedia works. --Beloved Freak 01:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Special page for protecting[edit]

Hello. I would like to know if there was a special page, such as Special:Blockip and Special:Userrights, that lets administrators protect a page. Cheers, RyRy (talk) 02:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No such page is listed at Special:SpecialPages. seresin ( ¡? ) 02:33, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Protection is done by clicking the "protect" tab at the top of an article; there is no special page. —Kal ^(talk) 04:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know you have to click the "protect" tab, I was just wondering if there was a special page for it. Thanks anyways. -- RyRy (talk) 04:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion[edit]

how do i find out why my entry is up for deletion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hrbutler06 (talk • contribs) 02:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at the deletion page, which will be linked to by the deletion tag on the page to be deleted. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 02:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User status[edit]

One of my users (friend of mine) says that the status function to tell other users whether your online or not only works for MonoBook. Is that true?

--Xizes^(talk) 03:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That depends. Which one? Qui? Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 03:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's the one I'm using, and I copied the code from another user, although I forget which of the 1 million users it is. Right here ---> User:Xizes/StatusDiv

Stale

– I got the problem solved. My friend was talking about the position of the template

By the way, the page should work in all skins, it doesn't use wiki-code, it's HTML. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 03:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Requested Page[edit]

I was asked to create the page on the artist Darlene Libbey, but seeing that it needs to be wikified a lot, I didn't know if perhaps this article belongs on wikipedia since she is not famous or well known.Renaix (talk) 05:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)Renaix[reply]

You can take a look at Wikipedia:Notability (people) to see if she follows the guidelines. -- Natalya 11:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Brit vs. American spelling?[edit]

An anonymous IP-address user just went thru "James Bond (film series)" article and changed all the American spelling to British spelling? (He or she also changed "England" to "the UK"). Is there a Wikipedia standard on this?

WickerGuy (talk) 06:09, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:SPELLING. If I remember right, that goes over this point. Basically, American English is used for predominantly American subjects and Brit English for Brit English subjects. If the article doesn't lean one way or the other, whatever convention was established first is kept throughout. Dismas|^(talk) 06:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And see the links under WP:EIW#Spell, for example Wikipedia:Manual of Style (national varieties of English). (We could have settled this issue in 1814, but apparently the framers of the Treaty of Ghent did not anticipate Wikipedia, while they were hashing out other issues such as the captured American slaves that the British promised to return, but never did.) --Teratornis (talk) 06:22, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English, as mentioned. Basically, the form of English should be used that would naturally be associated with the subject. That article is a fishy area for this, however; Ian Flemming was himself British, as is the titular character, but the films are produced by American companies. Considering that, staying the same might be the winning argument. The UK vs. England one is more simple, as they have quite distinct definitions. Be as specific as is relevant...Someguy1221 (talk) 06:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The James Bond films should be in American spelling in my opinion, as it was pointed out above, they are produced by American companies. The books written by Flemming, however, should probably be in British English. Gary King (talk) 16:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The films should ofc be british english as well, it would just be unnecessary to have all James Bond articles in BE and then suddenly some James Bond articles in AE — chan dler — 17:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see the argument for AE, really. James Bond's clearly superficially a British thing. When Sony produce a film we don't write about it in Japanese English. AndyJones (talk) 17:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there such thing as Japanese English? Gary King (talk) 17:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A similar case I can think of is the Harry Potter films which are written in British, I don't know about movies like LOTR and Narnia. — chan dler — 17:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anyways, these issues should be brought up on their respective talk pages. Gary King (talk) 17:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether this counts as Japanese English, but see: Engrish. (All your Help desk are belong to us.) --Teratornis (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page[edit]

i want to archiv my user page. It is very much on it right now. AlwaysOnion (talk) 11:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The good old fashioned way is to take the old material off the current talkpage, create a user subpage, slap the old material on there, tag it with {{Archive}}, and link to it from your current talkpage. Several bots can do it for you now - see User:MiszaBot III (instructions) and {{werdnabot}}. Xenon 54 11:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to preserve the edit history on the new page instead of just copy-pasting, consider using a page move to do the job. --Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 14:42, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Problems connecting to Wikipedia via Internet Explorer[edit]

Hope someone can help. I cannot access Wikipedia via Internet Explorer - when I add "en.wikipedia.org" on the address line on internet Explorer - it comes up saying that website cannot be found. BUT when I log onto my AOL account and put "en.wikipedia.org" on the address line there it instantly connects me to your site. Furthermore, if I do a search for a specific subject or author on Google and try to click the link to Wikipedia this also fails. This failure occurred 10 days ago previously I was able to get onto your site via Internet Explorer or through a link from a Google search. Can anyone tell me what the problem is and how to solve it? Many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.23.5.133 (talk) 12:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have a feeling that the problem is more with the browser and less with the Internet connection, since it works well with AOL but not with IE. I use Firefox and IE occasionally, but I have never encountered your problem here. My guess is that IE has not detected your Internet connection, but it could be anything. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 14:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I could help with this, but more information is really needed. Are you connecting to the internet with AOL or are you only using it in conjuction with an ISP? Also, have you tried including http:// in front of en.wikipedia.org, as sometimes IE, especially versions prior to 7, can be finicky if that is ommited from a url (no reason I can understand for it but it does happen). Aside from wikipedia, are there any other sites you can't get into? Particularly any other wikimedia sites? Try going to the main wikimedia page [1] and try using the link there to get into wikipedia through explorer.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 14:40, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe your ISP has a DNS problem. AOL may be using their own DNS, which works. You might find some help with the links resulting from this Google search:

how to diagnose network connection problems

One way to tell when you have a DNS problem is to browse to a site by its numerical IP address rather than by its domain name in the URL. We can see the English Wikipedia's IP address with the ping program:

$ ping en.wikipedia.org
PING rr.pmtpa.wikimedia.org (208.80.152.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from rr.pmtpa.wikimedia.org (208.80.152.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=61.5 ms
...

What do you get if you click this URL?

http://208.80.152.2

That doesn't actually get you to the English Wikipedia, but to a kind of redirection page that lists a bunch of wiki sites. The point is, if you can see that page, that probably means your ISP has a DNS problem. You would then report this problem to your ISP and hopefully they could fix it. --Teratornis (talk) 17:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

word-wrap[edit]

Frequently I would like to zoom in to an article. To do this, I hold down the Ctrl key and use the middle, scrolling button on my mouse. Another way to think of what I am trying to do is increasing the font size of the article. When I do that in Wikipedia, however, the article text does not word-wrap. The result is that part of the screen, and part of the text, is off-screen. Compare what happens when doing the same thing at a newspaper's web site like the New York Times. If you zoom in there, the text gets bigger but then also word-wraps so the reader will not have to go bouncing back and forth between one end of the hidden text to the other just to take advantage of increased font size.

-- John Ransom —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.49.103.252 (talk) 17:39, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see this problem in Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 on Ubuntu 7.10, but my mouse wheel does not work the same way. I have to select View | Text Size | Increase (or Ctrl +) to increase the font size. When I increase the font size, the text rewraps correctly, at least for the Wikipedia pages where I tried it. Do you get the same problem when you resize the text from your Web browser's menu? Perhaps the problem is specific to your browser. See: WP:EIW#Browser, especially Wikipedia:Browser notes. Maybe you will find some advice about your browser. --Teratornis (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Portal problem....[edit]

RESOLVED --ZooFari (talk) 18:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Err... that's good to hear. - tholly ^--Turnip-- 20:56, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

medicine[edit]

can taking and outdate pain med hurt you? \ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerrysrosebud (talk • contribs) 18:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer. We cannot answer your question even if we knew the answer, and you should not trust your health and possibly your life to random advice you might get from distant strangers on the Interwebs. But if you like to gamble with your life, you could search for what random unqualified strangers have to say on this game of pharmaceutical Russian roulette:

should I take expired medications?

I do know that any medication can hurt you if you take too much, or if you have an allergic reaction to it, or if it interacts badly with other medications you take. You should ask your physician for instructions on how to take medications, and if you do, I am about 99.99% certain that he or she will tell you to throw away any drugs that have passed their expiration dates. --Teratornis (talk) 18:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

sub headings...[edit]

This site is very NOT user friendly. I would like to make sub heads that appear in the content box. How do I do that?

Also, I would like to add a box on the right hand side that has our Fire Departments logo in there and basic info. How do I do that?

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kinnidi (talk • contribs) 20:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To add an image on the right hand side of a page, add:

[[Image:IMAGE NAME.jpg|thumb|right|OPTIONAL CAPTION]]

Just add a caption if you want, and put in the fire department's logo when you have found that image. Please explain the other part of your question - I don't quite understand. - tholly ^--Turnip-- 20:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it is. Would you prefer to write in full HTML? If the Fire department is related to you, it is a COI. StewieGriffin! • Talk Sign Listen 20:56, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The first question is about headings at different levels in the table of contents. It's described at Help:Section but the current version of Milwaukee Fire Department shows that Kinnidi has already worked it out since asking. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have made a few additional fixes to the headings and links. – ukexpat (talk) 21:54, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Second question: One sample infobox which may be of use to your article may be this one set up for UK Fire and Rescue. Infobox. There are many infoboxes created for a variety of purposes and articles. Category:Infobox templates. Upon scrolling this list, this infobox for fire departments may be better for your purposes. Just copy and paste the code in the section title Usage into your article when you are in edit this page mode. Fill in the various headings after the equal signs. SriMesh | talk 05:17, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

editing help[edit]

I am in the process of editing the article on the Clewiston Inn. I have successfully written the article but I need help uploading pictures and with references. I already read the FAQ but I still need help.

Zahrakhan (talk) 20:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You need to have an account that is 4 days old and has made 10 edits to upload images. Your account was created today, so you will have to wait. - tholly ^--Turnip-- 20:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see you had listed reference at the bottom of the article inside of <ref></ref> tags and properly included a references section with a template to make them appear ({{Reflist}}. All that was very good. I see you removed them now, probably because you hadn't figured out how to make them useful. Don't give up. You were halfway there. First, the text of the references needs to be far more transparent. For example, you listed a reference as "Hendry County Listings". This doesn't tell anyone who want's to verify what the references says, nearly enough to check it themselves. Example of information you should provide, where appropriate, would be the name of the publisher, the URL (if the source is online), the ISBN number for books, the page number from the source, and so on. We have a number of templates which help people format references, and the categories of information they list are illuminating as to what to include. Please see Wikipedia:Citation templates. The second problem with the way you were listing the references was that you didn't place them in the text. The purpose of inline citations is to have the footnote appear right next to the text it is referencing. Please see {{Refref}} for a visual snapshot of how inline citations are added and function. See also Wikipedia:Footnotes for detailed discussion. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Urine therapy??? - RSVP ASAP[edit]

Hi. I'm not sure if this is the place to put this, but I'd like to bring the following edits to your attention: see Special:Contributions/67.170.240.227. The anon has been inserting references to "urine therapy" to various ailment-related articles. This sounds unlikely, and can perhaps lead the reader to perform disgusting actions. I'd usually either revert this, or fix and wikify it and tag it with {{fact}}, but I'm not an expert in this subject by any means. Please take a look at it, especially if you have sufficient knowledge in the area. If it is true, it needs to be fixed. It is unsourced and might not be true, so please examine this ASAP. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 21:23, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's vandalism. An administrator needs to do a rollback as there are quite a few. Will an admin please look at this?Mike P ^(WHAT?) 22:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. It's been resolved. Please see User talk:Friday#Urine therapy. The anon has already been reverted and blocked. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 22:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Spam blacklist"[edit]

I got a spam blacklist message. The notice says that the hyperlink overflow=auto; height triggered this. 1) That's obviously not a hyperlink. 2) Why would this be blacklisted? flaming lawyer^c 22:05, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably not: [2] - which page did you try and edit? x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried looking at the Meta Spam blacklist? PeterSymonds (talk) 22:38, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This could be because the interface alert that the software gives you is malformed. It definetly would be a good idea to investigate why you had this problem, and any information that you can provide about the circumstances of your edit, will be helpful. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

changing out of the disambiguation classification[edit]

My name in Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band is "Ella Guru". When that name is typed into Wikipedia search it comes up with a woman who uses that name. Only if I look for a drop down menu and select disambiguation can I find it. I remember that when a name is used more than once the MAIN page after search gives the different links to each meaning of the searched name, yet now it only goes directly to her page. How can this be changed that if someone Googles "Ella Guru" or goes to Wikipedia and searaches that name that the FIRST page would show the different references to that name? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DoodeOfMonk (talk • contribs) 22:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you look right at the top of that page, it says "For other uses, see Ella Guru (disambiguation)". Clicking that link will take you to a page which mentions several uses of that name, including your own. Olaf Davis | Talk 23:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a picture[edit]

How do you add a picture to a wikipage? actually my user page, but how? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Number13lucky (talk • contribs) 23:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:IMAGE#Using_images shows you how to add images, and some good general information about them. -- Natalya 00:01, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A little more info - First you have to upload it, this may help you. Make sure you put all the right copyright info, or else it may be deleted. Afterwards, go here. IceUnshattered (talk) 00:04, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]