Help desk
< July 17	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 19 >

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.

July 18[edit]

Templates[edit]

If I want to type {{Lorem ipsum|dolor}} and get 'This is foo', {{Lorem ipsum|sit}} and get 'This is bar', and {{Lorem ipsum|others=Wikipedia}} and get 'This is Wikipedia', then what is the template code for Template:Lorem ipsum? Kayau Voting IS evil 00:49, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your question threw me a bit, as {{Lorem ipsum}} is an actual template, so I thought you were referring to that. But anyway, the following code would produce the desired output:

This is {{ #if: {{{others|}}} | {{{others}}} | {{ #switch: {{{1|}}}

| dolor = foo

| sit = bar}}}}

However I would recommend the following instead:

This is {{ #switch:{{{1|}}}

| dolor = foo

| sit = bar

| #default = {{{1}}}}}

If the template is only to use one parameter, the latter code is the better option as it removes the need to specify others= when using the template: ie. {{Lorem ipsum|Wikipedia}} would produce 'This is Wikipedia'. The only problem you'd have with this version is it would be impossible to produce output such as 'This is dolor'. Hope that helps. AJ Cham 01:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, that is very helpful. Small request: Could you analyse and explain the code so I can remember it more easily? Thanks! Kayau Voting IS evil 02:01, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've coloured the text in the first example to try and make this easy to follow:

Output text: "This is". If a parameter named "others" exists, then output the text of that parameter, else compare the contents of parameter 1 with the following:

If it is equal to dolor then output "foo"

If it is equal to sit then output "bar". (Close SWITCH statement) (Close IF statement)

I hope that's clear enough, and you should be able to figure out the second example from that. I'll just point out that the purpose of the #default line of the switch statement is as a fall-back – if the supplied parameter doesn't match any of the items in the list, then the default output is used (in this case, returning the value of parameter 1.) Regards, AJ Cham 03:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That is very helpful! Kayau Voting IS evil

Kobe Kaisei College[edit]

I report that there is incrrect infomation. Please fix it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Kaisei_College Kobe Kaisei College (神戸海星女子学院大学, ........ In 1998 it became a four-year college.

×In　1998 OIn　1965 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.19.40.92 (talk) 01:19, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You could be bold and fix it yourself... – ukexpat (talk) 01:22, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brian O'Brian shorts[edit]

Can you please help me find the video of the Disney Channel Brian O'Brian short where he is getting ready in the bathroom. It was one of if not the first episode. My daughters never got to see it and I cannot find it anywhere. Thank you Steph Brooks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.120.238.140 (talk) 02:01, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about 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. – ukexpat (talk) 03:19, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Page with an incorrect title that duplicates the subject of an additional page[edit]

Hi, what is the correct practice for dealing with pages such as Create a mainpage on wikipedia? This example clearly needs to be deleted as the page title was created in error, but it expands beyond the article we already have on its subject, CampusEAI Consortium. Is there a way to keep the additional material while preserving the attribution history? Thanks in advance, Them From Space 02:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:HISTMERGE, and may god have mercy on your soul. Alternatively, you could move the page to Talk:CampusEAI Consortium/Draft and work on it there until you think it's ready to implement, then reference the draft for the actual edit history. Second is more work for history searchers, far less work for editors. --erachima talk 03:06, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't look as simple as you might think. CampusEAI Consortium started out being much longer. It was then very much reduced in size by more experienced editors to resolve various issues with the formatting and referencing. I could be wrong, but it seems like the original author then created Create a mainpage on wikipedia in order to reinstate much of the original article. I think the page should be speedily deleted as a recreation of an earlier version of the original article, and have therefore flagged it for speedy deletion. Astronaut (talk) 10:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Six tabs gadgets[edit]

What do I need to put in my monobook.js/.css to use the six tabs gadget, so that the tabs go article, edit, hist, talk, edit hist? It's in the preferences of WB but not WP. Kayau Voting IS evil 03:16, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar help needed[edit]

Swedish Social Democratic Youth League need help whit gramma on dis page have dyslexia and not have english as my first languse.Wolfmann (talk) 17:32, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

English only?[edit]

Is there any policy stating that conversation on a talk page or edit summaries be rendered only in English? It would appear a disruption otherwise. 71.40.78.186 (talk) 18:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is the talk page guideline about using English as a "good practice". Not exactly policy I guess, but important enough that there exists a Template:Uw-english about it. --Saddhiyama (talk) 19:00, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Need advice: What's the best way to fix articles that are poorly sourced?[edit]

I've been trying to improve the sourcing of an article that is poorly sourced. So, I've been going through each sentence and finding sources to support everything the sentence says. But retrofitting sources into an existing article can be very tedious and time-consuming. You have to find sources that match the article's content and then sometimes have to tweak the article to match what the source actually says. I can't help but wonder if it would be easier to just throw out the old article and start over from scratch. That if I assemble my sources, read through them all, and just wrote the article based on what I just read, things would go a lot quicker. I'm the only editor actively working on the article. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is, in general, easier to rewrite the article yourself than to retrofit citations into it. However, the means by which you should do this depends on the quality of the article. If your research is making it clear that the article has serious content errors, then by all means please restart the page immediately, a temporary stub is better than disinformation. Do note, however, that only material which is "challenged or likely to be challenged" requires a direct citation (per WP:V), so if your research of the topic is not bringing the article's content into question, there is no urgent need to replace the current content, and it's probably best to redraft the article on a separate page (Talk:Pagename/Draft or your userspace being the traditional locations) so that your rewriting does not interfere with the informativeness of the article while it is in progress. Once the draft is complete, then you can overwrite the page with it. --erachima talk 19:41, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So far, the factual accuracy of the article appears to be excellent. The worst thing I found so far was one bit of minor vandalism which I removed. (It was minor, which is probably why no one noticed it.) Those are good points about using a separate page and keeping the page up during the rewrite. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How long should I wait for a response? and if I don't get it, what can I do?[edit]

Someone reverted a massive edit I made to an article. They claim that my edit was vandalism. (For the record, it definitely was not vandalism) I went to their talk page and explained to them my intentions and motivations and concluded by asking if they would have a problem with me reverting their reversion. That was almost an hour ago. According to his history of contributions right now is right about the time he is usually online and editing but I have not gotten a response. Granted, he hasn't done anymore editing either.

Although the edit I made was massive, it was nowhere close to what the article needs (its 220kb long, I'm working on splitting it up). I want to get back to work on it, but I don't want to have to worry about getting reverted again. How much longer should I wait? And if I don't get a response, what should my next step be?--*Kat* (talk) 21:47, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Continue your work. Your edit summary did not in any way explain what you were doing. So, if you continue your work, you should explain what you are doing. Otherwise, it only looks like you are deleting large chunks of the article. -- kainaw ™ 21:59, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it is not vandalism, but without an edit summary, Avala may be forgiven for thinking it was. But an hour is an unreasonable time to expect a response in.

It would have been helpful if you had linked to International recognition of Kosovo above, rather than leaving us to hunt through your contributions to find it. ----~~

Yes, I realize that I did forget to put a descriptive edit summary. I'd put descriptive edit summaries on the other articles I'd created/edited and the category too but for some reason forgot to do so with the main article. Maybe because I was just stopping for a period of time. Never the less, a very quick glance at the diffs should have told any experienced wikipedian that I was NOT engaging in vandalism.

I'm not surprised you went hunting through my contributions to find the article I was talking about, but the reason why I didn't link to it was because it wasn't really relevant to my question.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I was expecting a response, but I certainly was hoping for one. I didn't write him question that long after he reverted me.

Anyway, thanks for getting back to me about this. I don't know if I want to edit the article again so soon after writing on his talk page (I don't want to appear as though I don't really care about his opinion)--*Kat* (talk) 23:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edit the page ..and in your edit summary say- Info moved to new article on the subject New article name....00:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Creating a Family of Pages[edit]

If I am working on a few pages (lets say 3-5) that will all be linked to one another, is there a way for me to save my progress as I work on them, before releasing them to the public? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hh73wiki (talk • contribs) 22:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, create them as user subpages first. Then ask for feedback at WP:FEED. When you think they are ready they can be moved to the mainspace. Before you start take a look at WP:YFA, WP:N, WP:RS and WP:CITE. – ukexpat (talk) 23:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]