Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 February 1

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February 1

Strange page rendering problem

Resolved

 –  – ukexpat (talk) 04:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

On this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto

Depends on page width and font size, some time the text in the Battle section is covered by the map on the right. For example: http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5466/clipboard02n.png http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/3994/clipboard01mw.png

I can reproduce the behavior in (all win32) Firefox 3.0.17 and Google Chrome 4.0.249.78(36714). MSIE 7 do not have the hidden text problem, but the paragraph starting with "Half the TSRs" will always stay below the right info-box and may leave a large white space on the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.54.49.7 (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't see it in Firefox 3.6. In any event, I threw in some {{FixBunching}} templates - did that fix it? – ukexpat (talk) 01:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It works better on Chrome now. It still have the same problem in Firefox 3.0.17. May be time to upgrade... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.54.49.7 (talk) 02:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Definitely! If you are worried about any of your extensions not working just install nightly tester tools - it can force compatibility and works like a charm for me. – ukexpat (talk) 02:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you need to be an admin to nominate someone for adminship?

Resolved

 –  – ukexpat (talk) 01:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you need to be an admin to nominate someone for adminship, as well as to vote in an RfA? -NerdyScienceDude :) (✉ click to talk • my edits) 01:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• No. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 01:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! -NerdyScienceDude :) (✉ click to talk • my edits) 01:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

How Do I Insert Pictures into an Article

Resolved

 –  – ukexpat (talk) 04:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Greetings,

I do not know how to put pictures into an article. Could someone please direct me to the place where they tell you how to do it or offer to help me in this task? Thanks! SWitzki (talk) 02:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• If you want to add an existing image to an article, add [[Image:File name.jpg|thumb|Caption text.]] to the area of the article where you want the image to appear – replacing File name.jpg with the actual file name of the image, and Caption text with a short description of the image. See our picture tutorial for more information.
• If you want to upload an image from your computer for use in an article, you must find out what the proper license of the image is. If you know the image is licensed under a free-license, upload it to the Wikimedia Commons instead of here, so that all projects have access to the image (sign up). If you are unsure what license the image takes, see the file upload wizard for more information. Please also read Wikipedia's image use policy. I hope this helps. – ukexpat (talk) 02:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

THANKS! I'll check out the turtorial and see if I can figure it out. SWitzki (talk) 03:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Special character

I found some words with a bar on top of alphabet "a" like Chāyāvathi in one page to reflect proper pronunciation. However when I first did a search with normal spelling character, I couldnt find the word. Then I had to manually read thru the page to find this. How to type this character using keyboard?

Thanks Balaji Email redacted —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.144.73 (talk) 03:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Please do not post contact details such as emails here, as this page is highly visible. As for your question, please leave questions about facts at the reference desk; this page is a help desk for questions about editing Wikipedia. Thank you. Liquidluck✽talk 04:03, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

When editing, you will find a box below your edit box with different alphabets, and you can pick a particular one: the choice 'Latin' includes 'ā'. However, Wikipedia does not provide any particular assistance in this for searching. How to enter accented and other special characters depends on your operating system and keyboard layout; but most systems have an accessory called 'Character map' or something like it, from which you can pick the character you want.

When you are talking about the title of an article where the subject of the article properly has an accented letter, there should also be a redirect from the same name without the accent (see WP:NAME#Special characters and formatting, but if you are talking about searching for a word within an article, I don't think there is any particular help for this. (If the word, even though not the title of the article, is likely to be searched for, it is possible to create a redirect the to the specific section of the article).

In this case, since Chāyāvati is an alternative name for Suryakantam, it is appropriate to provide a redirect from both Chayavati and Chāyāvati to Suryakantam, and I have done so.

Liquidluck - your reply about contact details was appropriate, but the question is clearly one about using Wikipedia, and is appropriate for this desk -- ColinFine (talk) 08:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right, Colin, I misread the comment- thanks for pointing that out. I apologize for my mistake, 68.45.144.73! Liquidluck✽talk 08:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

editing erroneous info in my bio

I have read the article about me on Wikipedia. Tonight I edited out a paragraph that contained much erroneous data, as well as information on my publishing contracts which is inaccurate and is not public business anyway. It is plain to me that the paragraph was written by an ex-wife who wrote it to inflate her importance in my career. She claims to have been my agent, which she was not. She stated that I was married to someone whom I never married. I became aware of such misinformation when I began to see it posted in publicity for some of my public speaking engagements. Simple deletion of the paragraph is enough remedy for me, even though the misinformation has been spread by Wikipedia's posting for years. But I do not want to see that information put back in. I will advise her to that effect. James Alexander Thom 63.3.9.1 (talk) 06:03, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about the trouble this has caused you. Your biography hadn't been edited today, but I just deleted the second paragraph since it wasn't referenced. Technically, everything in your biography should go, since it isn't referenced. I've tagged the article with a clean-up tag and I'll try referencing it later today or tomorrow, though I'm concerned that any references I come across will be tainted with misinformation from this article. We're unable to protect the article from editing, but I'll keep an eye on it and hopefully other Wikipedia contributors will as well. Please feel free to contest information in the article by editing the article's discussion page. Liquidluck✽talk 08:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Removing unwanted contributions from history page

Some articles have been subject to previous edits that are clearly deliberate hoaxes and contain no truth. If this is the case and can be proven by evidence, is it possible for such edits to be deleted even from the article's history page? Even though the information can be easily removed from the article, the ridiculous edits still remain on the Internet, on the history page. Does anyone know if all traces of an edit can be removed?Tkma (talk) 09:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkma (talk • contribs) 09:36, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• Although it is possible to remove edits from the article's history page (see Wikipedia:Oversight), as a rule, this would be used to remove personal information (such as someone's email address, telephone number etc), or libellous information. Without knowing the articles, I can't give a more definitive answer. If the information is just simply incorrect (such as "The doors on the White House are purple") then obviously this would not need to be removed from the history. The guidelines for Oversight say It is used within strict limits to remove defamatory material, to protect privacy, and sometimes to remove serious copyright violations, from any page or log entry (including if required the list of users) on English Wikipedia. - if the edits fall within those criteria, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_oversight for how to contact the oversighters. If your request does not fall within the suitable area, your request will be ignored - although if you make a few requests like that, you would be risking being blocked for disruptive behaviour. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia is displaying an out of date logo for our company

Our company Portmeirion has recently updated its logo.

The image at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portmeirion-logo-green.png

Is now out of date and we need to update or remove it.

How can this be done ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.159.154 (talk) 13:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

You have to have a registered account and be an autoconfirmed user to upload files. If you don't wish to go through this, you can post a link to the new logo here, and I or someone else can upload it for you. --Mysdaao ^talk 13:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the way to reply but the new logo can be found at http://www.portmeirion.co.uk/media/black-portmeirion-logo.png Thanks for your help —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hooperleed (talk • contribs) 13:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

You replied correctly. I have uploaded File:Black-portmeirion-logo.png and updated the image on Portmeirion Pottery. Thank you for your help improving Wikipedia! --Mysdaao ^talk 14:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate move of User:Springfieldohio to article

The user page and talk for the above user were inappropriately moved to an article page. I tried to move it back but I can't do that. Thanks. Americasroof (talk) 14:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe only administrators can move pages over redirects. You have three options: There are several administrators who regularly help out here, so you can wait for one of them to fix it for you; you also can go to the administrators' noticeboard to get one to assist you; or you can tag the userpage with {{db-g6|Dicen que Soy un Mujeriego|replace this text with a reason for moving}} (click the small text "Redirected from User:Springfieldohio" at the top of the article to get to the userpage), although you might run into trouble here because this situation isn't necessarily uncontroversial as CSD G6 requires. Xenon54 / talk / 14:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that Springfieldohio wrote the article in userspace and then moved it to mainspace; there's nothing really wrong with doing that. I've moved the talk page back to its original name, since that really is a problem, but I don't think anything needs to be done about the userpage. By the way, anyone can move a page over a redirect if (1) the redirect points to the page that you're trying to move, and (2) the only edit in the history of the redirect consists of creating the redirect to the page that you're trying to move. Such was true in this situation, so I don't understand why you couldn't do it. What sort of error message did you receive? Nyttend (talk) 15:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Springfieldohio shows no edits since working on this on January 8 when it was at User:Springfieldohio. It was moved in [1] by User:Kjell Knudde with edit summary "This is the actual title". I don't think userspace drafts should be moved to article space by others without a request from or discussion with the user, and I see no sign of that. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all for fixing. The user is somewhat of a newbie although prolific. I will email him to see what his intentions were. I suspect he was using his user page as a sandbox and somebody else wanted to put the article he was working on into mainspace. In any event I think it's correctly configured now (although I might remove the redirect on the user page). Thanks again. Americasroof (talk) 15:57, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

PS as an FYI. Based on past correspondence with this user, I suspect he edits at a library and must have left himself logged on as this article is wildly different from what he has historically posted (e.g., the article about a Spanish movie when his historical posts have been about the Midwest). Americasroof (talk) 16:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Account Deletion

Is it possible to delete a wikipedia account, including deletion of the user page?Trickyskills (talk) 15:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

User pages can be deleted but accounts cannot be completely deleted. See more at Wikipedia:Right to vanish. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Further to PrimeHunter's reply: Due to the fact that Wikipedia content is licensed under the GFDL, all edits must be kept for attribution purposes, and so your account cannot be deleted. You do, however, have the right to vanish, which you can exercise by (1) requesting your user page (found at Special:Mypage) and subpages be deleted, by adding the {{db-userreq}} template to them; (2) requesting to change your username to something that is unconnected with you (possibly a random collection of letters and numbers); (3) never logging in to your account again. The "right to vanish" does not mean anyone has the right to a fresh start under a new identity. Anyone who wants to continue editing should request a change of username instead so edits can be reattributed. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

How to eliminate large white space?

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

See top of article. How to eliminate the large white space. I have tried but cannot get a good fix of the problem. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 16:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I do not see a white space in this article. If you're referring to the space caused by the table of contents, you can remove that by clicking the "hide" tab in the table itself. TNXMan 16:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That's odd — I do see a large white space; the text begins at the same line as the top of {{infobox nrhp}}, which itself begins at the bottom of the first infobox. I don't know how to fix this either. Nyttend (talk) 16:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is visible only with Internet Explorer (great piece of software). I found the problem within Template:Infobox museum: this is the correct version User:Basilicofresco/test2. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 17:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox museum has been fixed. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 07:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia pages do not open .msg : The server at en.wikipedia.org is taking too long to respond

Dear Sir ,

My search sher shah suri returned pages on wikipedia but the pages do not open with the msg :The server at en.wikipedia.org is taking too long to respond. I fail to understand the reasons . Some pages open while others dont . Could you please investigte the reasons and advise .

I faced problems with following google searches:

kanda india wiki bageshwar district india wiki

Please advise . Thanks .

Sunil K. Aggarwal

On wikipedia the "search" function is case insensitive, but the "go" function is case sensitive. Searching for "sher shah suri" gives a link to the page which you can click on, but if you try to "go" to the same term it will not do so. On the other hand if you type "Sher Shah Suri" and click "go" you will be taken there directly. The article an Sher Shah Suri uses that capitalization because it is a proper noun. LeadSongDog come howl 16:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But the message "The server at en.wikipedia.org is taking too long to respond" sounds like a temporary condition. --ColinFine (talk) 08:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Invisibile (useless?) characters

These invisible unicode control characters &#FEFF; &#200E; &#200B; create problems within templates (take a look here). On italian Wikipedia we are wondering about a complete bot removal of &#200E; and &#200B;. Is there any page on en.wikipedia with a single useful left-to-right or right-to-left mark character? -- Basilicofresco (msg) 16:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. These are often necessary to force proper display of bi-directional text. Here is a recent example. Algebraist 18:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure to understand why they should be necessary. I mean, do you see any difference between (Uyghur: موللا مۇسا سەيرا) and (Uyghur: موللا مۇسا سەيرا)?(take a look below) The second one has no control characters. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 19:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

To answer your question, yes, they are completely different. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 09:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Windows XP italian + Firefox 3.5.7

Are you serious? I see no differences (tested on Windows XP with IE 7, Chrome 3.5 and Firefox 3.5.7, take a look at the image). Do you see them reversed? What kind of browser / system are you using? -- Basilicofresco (msg) 11:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes one is reversed. Firefox 3.5.7, but does it matter? Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 13:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Now they both look the same, but I see from the history that you changed it in some subtle way in your previous edit. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 13:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

FALSE. I bet you are not able to show us this "subdle edit"... because nobody edited that line. Anyway there is a strange fact: both sentences above have got the control character (probably my mistake in the first edit). -- Basilicofresco (msg) 14:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

My test on Windows XP italian + Firefox 3.5.7

Anyway here are again the sentences:

• (Uyghur: موللا مۇسا سەيرامى‎) lrm mark at the end (hidden character, found here)
• (Uyghur: موللا مۇسا سەيرامى‎) lrm mark at the end (inserted as html entity)
• (Uyghur: ‎موللا مۇسا سەيرامى) lrm mark at the beginning (inserted as html entity)
• (Uyghur: موللا مۇسا سەيرامى‏) rlm mark at the end (inserted as html entity)
• (Uyghur: ‏موللا مۇسا سەيرامى) rlm mark at the beginning (inserted as html entity)
• (Uyghur: موللا مۇسا سەيرامى) NO mark

Does anybody see any difference? Thank you. Basilicofresco (msg) 14:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course there's no problem with them. Why would there be? If you'd bothered to read the link I provided, you'd know that problems happen when a string of weak undirected characters follow rtl characters, as in the example given there of " Uyghur: (موللا مۇسا سەيرامى; 1836–1917) ". Here the dates display before the text in FF 3.5.7. Adding an ltr mark causes correct display: " Uyghur: (موللا مۇسا سەيرامى‎; 1836–1917) ". Algebraist 15:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Finally! This is an answer! I read the link you provided, but the first time I failed to exactly understand the problem. Now it is clear. Thank you very much. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 15:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Cans and Can'ts

Resolved

 –  – ukexpat (talk) 20:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Would love further explanation on cans and can'ts on Wikipedia. Especially, rules and etc along those lines. As for me I had instances when I posted something that I didn't know that I could post on Wikipedia. Maybe more and which I can't think of at the moment.

Thank you, in advance.--Jessica A Bruno (talk) 18:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That's a pretty general question because there are a lot of policies and guidelines about Wikipedia, but I suggest you read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. In regards to your most recent warning, I suggest you specifically read the section Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#FORUM. You appear to be primarily asking questions about unrelated topics. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and almost all of the discussions are about improving the encyclopedia. The reference desk is good for asking factual questions, but not for asking people's opinions or advice. --Mysdaao ^talk 18:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I added a welcome message to you talk page (I know it's a bit late) - it has links to a lot of useful pages.  – ukexpat (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Many of your edits have been on the Reference Desk. There are two problematic trends in your posts. These are not problems that will cause others to demand that your account be blocked. These are more of a social "no-no" within the society of the Reference Desk. First, you have made posts that do not contain questions. There is a long complaint, but no question to be answered. The Reference Desk is just that: A "reference" desk. When asking a question, you should focus on what reference you want. Do you want a reference to some statistical number? Do you want a reference to a book on a topic? Do you want a reference to a bit of trivia? Second, you tend to fall into discussion instead of question/answer. The Reference Desk is not a discussion forum. While there is a lot of discussion that takes place, it should (and I mean "should" not "does") only pertain to better gathering references. For many people, the Reference Desk it too boring to mess with. There are no good discussion. There are no jokes. There are no links to kitten videos on YouTube. If you find it boring, please don't despair. There are thousands of discussion forums on the Internet. Just go to the Computing Reference Desk and ask for a link to some that meet the topics you are interested in discussing. -- kainaw™ 18:47, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses to my question here. Okay and never even thought of it that way before. --Jessica A Bruno (talk) 19:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

list of ex-millwall players

add to list ray brand player from 1951/1961 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandyfootball (talk • contribs) 20:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no List of ex-Millwall players, do you mean Millwall F.C.#Notable former players? And maybe a please next time?  – ukexpat (talk) 21:03, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

can't find my user page

I started to create a new page in my user space. I save it. Now, I can't find it to continue editing it. Help! Wdrefmember (talk) 20:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

--->User:Wdrefmember/Wisconsin Directors of Religious Education Federation ..Buzzzsherman (talk) 20:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The only other edit I see you have made (see Special:Contributions/Wdrefmember) is to this page: User:Wdrefmember/Wisconsin Directors of Religious Education Federation. Is this what you mean? If you mean User:Wdrefmember, it is possible that you selected "Show preview" instead of "Save page" by accident. —Akrabbim^talk 20:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Wiki Suggestion

To whom it may concern:

This doesn't really belong here, but I couldn't find a place on Wikipedia where users make suggestions about the site. I think that each page, much like movie pages on IMDB or Netflix, should contain something at the bottom of it along of the lines of "Users who viewed this page also viewed: X, X, X and X." While many terms are linked within each page, seeing what other viewers looked at would probably touch on more general topics of interest with lesser obvious,thematic connections that Wikipedia can't intuit.

For instance, today I read the page on the "Donner Party." These kind of stories really fascinate me, but I had no way from the Donner Party page to get to other stories that are like these but are not merely explanations of minute facts about the Donner Party. I'm also very interested in the Dyaltov Pass Incident, and I think these two stories have a lot of similarities in their content such that a user who likes one might be interested in the other. However, there is no physical way to get from one to the other without knowing about both because their connection rests on themes rather than linkable words and phrases. Just a thought, thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.16.64.11 (talk) 22:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for some of the tools we have for grouping related articles together. You can also compile articles into "Books" and portals. Don't forget to search Wikipedia with Google because Google gives you related articles you might not find by following Wikipedia's internal links. Exposing Wikipedia visitors' browsing histories is unlikely to get much traction with the community, I would guess. It might just create more needle-in-haystack problems because you would have no easy way to sort out the "good" readers (whose browsing you might like to follow) from the hordes of casual visitors who might know less than you. You can, however, look at the history of any article you find interesting, see who has edited it, and check their contributions to see what else they are editing. Some users write user subpages to keep notes on what they are doing; for example, here is what I find interesting about the topic of Energy. For more information about attempts by other people to address this type of problem, see Recommender system and Collaborative filtering. A third party could (attempt to) set up a collaborative filter for Wikipedia. If enough people participated, such a site could potentially identify your interests and feed you recommendations from other users who share your interests. --Teratornis (talk) 23:35, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

And of course check the backlinks such as Special:WhatLinksHere/Donner Party. That often shows you many articles (and user pages, templates, etc.) that the article you are viewing does not link to directly on its own. For example, if you are viewing an article about a famous example of something, the backlinks can lead you to related obscure articles that link "upward" in the notability sense. An article about an obscure topic is more likely to link to a related less obscure topic than conversely. An article about, say, Barack Obama will not link to every person who is notable for having worked with him, but if those people have their own articles, their articles will probably link to Obama's article. --Teratornis (talk) 23:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Changing an existing article to reflect changed circumstances

In June or July 2009 the Honorable Stephan P. Mickle was elevated from his position as a district judge to the position of Chief Judge in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The article on the Honorable Robert L. Hinkle now needs to be amended to reflect the fact that Judge Hinkle is no longer the Chief Judge, although he remains on the court as a district judge. THSWarrior (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

THSWarrior —Preceding unsigned comment added by THSWarrior (talk • contribs) 22:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion regarding Robert Lewis Hinkle. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). --Mysdaao ^talk 23:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The same problem that happened to me yesterday is happening again

Hello,it's immunize (talk · contribs).Yesterday I asked here for help with editing an article I created, treatment of life threatening diseases, where my most recent changes were just not displaying. It was fixed by tiderolls (talk · contribs). Today the same problem is happening on a new page I created, Medical conditions related to autism. Any help would be much appreciated. Immunize (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I see it has been fixed by correctly closing ref tags in [2] and [3]. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)