Help desk
< February 13	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 15 >

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.

February 14[edit]

Statistics: Wikipedia editors[edit]

How can i find a statistic listing out locations of wikipedia editors? eg. the number of wikipedia editors from country a, b, c, and so on? The closest thing i could find is through Category:Wikipedians by location. However, this would not give an accurate indication of the number of editors in those specified locations since some users may not include their userpage under the appropriate categories. Is there anything more accurate than this? ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 03:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think I saw this type of data somewhere once, but I can't find it now with a small effort. Note that your question is somewhat ill-posed, because "editor" is a very broad term. That would include everybody who has made at least one edit to Wikipedia. You might consider narrowing that down, perhaps to "active editors" or "editors with significant contributions" unless you really do want to include every drive-by editor who typed "Hello world!" on the Sandbox and left. Also note that there are over 200 Wikipedias in different languages. By Wikipedia do you mean all of them, or just the English Wikipedia? The geographic distributions of editors for the various language Wikipedias will almost certainly be different, depending on the geographic distributions of people fluent in the various languages. Anyway, here are some more links where you can continue searching if nobody else provides the answer you want here:

--Teratornis (talk) 03:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A Google search finds User:Pseudomonas/IP editors by country. --Teratornis (talk) 04:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The most thorough analysis of Wikipedians I'm aware of is the UMU-Merit survey, which sadly doesn't seem to have investigated country. Though I can offer my personal observation – and I'm not the first to notice this – that Australians are over-represented in lists such as Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits and Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, when I say "editor" i meant registered users or active editors (whichever is easier to identify). And I was referring to only English Wikipedia. Alternatively, a breakdown of number of edits by country. eg from wikichecker there has been about 444millions edits on en.wiki - where did those edits come from? Im not sure if such statistics exist though, but any help is much appreciated. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 05:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I found this, Wikipedia:Edits by project and country of origin, but it is outdated. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 08:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few things to discuss[edit]

1. Is there a source to proves that British Actor Dominic_Keating who played Malcolm_Reed on Star_Trek:_Enterprise that he was born in 1962? He looks like he was born in 1965. Is there a verified source for this?

2. Wikipedia might want mention that Dustin_Diamond who starred on Saved_by_the_Bell was in a porn movie according to IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1328912/

3. Would it be ok to add a photo for British Canadian author Martyn_Godfrey since he is dead from this link: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/martyn-godfrey/?

4. Wikipedia might want to put The_oc under the Category:Serial_drama_television_series. Just a suggestion. Thanks! Neptunekh2 (talk) 03:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding #2, if you would like to add the movie to his filmography, you're welcome to. You're an editor, go and edit. But you should be aware that the movie that you point out is not a porn movie in the usual sense of the word. It's listed as a comedy at IMDb. Dismas|^(talk) 03:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually there's consensus that IMDb does not meet Wikipedia's requirements for reliable sources and should not be cited as a reference; see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Film/Resources#IMDb. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:22, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...Although you could, of course, cite a different source that provides the the same information. Re #3: A person's death doesn't automatically terminate copyright on photos of them. See Wikipedia's Image use policy. Re #4: Sounds reasonable to me, assuming it meets the criteria described at Category:Serial_drama_television_series. You can add it yourself by adding [[Category:Serial_drama_television_series]] near the bottom of the article, where the other categories are listed. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Citing other articles[edit]

If a user creates an article and uses the same format as another article (obviously changing the words), do they have to cite the article from which they copied the format from?

For example, the original article says:

"Roswell is a city located in northern Fulton County; it is an affluent suburb of northern Atlanta, Georgia. According to the US Census Bureau's 2008 estimate, the population is 87,657. It is the seventh-largest city in Georgia."

And I place it in another article and modify it:

"Columbus is a city located in northern Muscogee County; it is an affluent suburb of southern Atlanta, Georgia. According to the US Census Bureau's 2008 estimate, the population is 190,000. It is the third-largest city in Georgia."

Would I have to cite the first article? Thechased (talk) 03:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. You'll find that most articles about a certain range of subjects pretty much read the same. Take most any actor. They'll usually start out with John Doe (born January 1, 1900 - January 1, 2000) was an American stage and screen actor It's just natural that they're all going to look the same. And in the case of cities, many articles on US cities were actually created with the help of a bot that just pulled various data from a census file. Dismas|^(talk) 03:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and in general, we should never cite ourselves. So let's say that you want to say that John Doe attended Yale University in the John Doe article. You should find some other source for that statement and not the Wikipedia article for Yale University. Dismas|^(talk) 03:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:CIRCULAR. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Search keywords/code[edit]

What keywords do I need to use so that I can easily use the search box to search Wikipedia-help? A list page would be very helpful also.

 IamIYouareYou

05:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

If you click the magnifying glass to the right of the search box, you'll be presented with the option to restrict your search to certain namespaces. Click the button labelled "none" to uncheck all the namespaces, then check the boxes for Wikipedia, MediaWiki, and Help, then run your search. For the kind of technical questions you've asked below, you try checking only the Help namespace first.

By the way, you might want to read the guideline on signatures, as yours doesn't seem to comply: it lacks a link to your talk page, and looks like it might disrupt the flow of surrounding text. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 05:45, 14 February 2011 (UTC)Iamiyouareyou (talk) 06:04, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

code help[edit]

Ribbon Stacking[edit]

Specifically, I want to stack my acquired Award ribbons on the top of my user page. What is the code for accomplishing that? 05:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)Iamiyouareyou (talk) 06:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

yes, the style you are looking for is "<div style="position:absolute"...>. You can add more extras, for example the position: <div style="position:absolute; z-index:100; right:20px; top:20px;">...</div> You may include a clickable picture, that would be the {{click}}-template. If you want examples, please examine this here from my user page. Regards.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 13:39, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Barnometer[edit]

What part of the barnometer code do I need to edit to make it's vertical length shorter? Meaning how do I make it smaller? 05:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)<pre style="width:100px;height:20px; border:4px dotted red; color:red;"> IamIYouareYou </pre> (talk) 06:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since the formatting of user pages can be so different from articles, there is a separate Help desk for them: the Wikipedia:User page design center. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Secure server[edit]

I've been logging onto Wikipedia through the secure server feature, which I believe has a few problems. Although it says "remember me for 30 days" or something like that, I was logged out a few times after only 3 three minutes. This frustrates me because while saving a page, I would be logged out, so the IP number is displayed instead on "Sp33dyphil" on the article's talk page. What's going on here with the "Remember me for 30 days" thing? Also, after using this feature, I found out that, if I log in without the secure server, the computer seems to reject me and log me out again. This means that I will have to be using the secure server whenever I want to edit the site. Can somebody please explain what's going on? Thanks Sp33dyphil ^{(T • C • I love Wikipedia!)} 05:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Does anything in the "I get logged out just after logging in" section at Help:Logging in help you? Also, when switching between secure server and the ordinary server, other users have solved problems by deleting the en.wikipedia.org and wikipedia.org cookies, so you might give that a try. If you need to have your IP address hidden from view where you disclosed it by accident, see Wikipedia:Oversight. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How to insert a photograph[edit]

how can i insert a photograph in any article by uploading it from drive?? Yaaerodrum (talk) 08:02, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You must first upload the photo and then place it in the article. See WP:UPLOAD for instructions. Dismas|^(talk) 08:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing Figures/Images[edit]

How are figures/images referenced in the article? I found such a missing reference, which I would like to correct, in

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

"The autocorrelation function of the Rayleigh fading channel shown above with 10 Hz maximum Doppler shift is shown in the figure. It is periodic ..."

In a scientific article one would use numbers. I was unable to find anything on this subject in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Images —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.187.189.80 (talk) 10:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if your talking about formatting for references, or for captions. References are created using the <ref> tags. This will automatically create a reference (what appears as a ^[1]) in the article. The number will match up with whatever numkber the reference is in the article and clicking it will take you down to the reference list, which you must list with either {{reflist}} or <references />. An example would be: "This is a sentence I want to reference. <ref>This is my reference and will show up in the reference list</ref>". References can be done in any style, and if the article is established you should use whatever style is already in place. But to make things easier we have a series of templates, such as {{citeweb}} which produce references in a standard format. For more information on referencing see Referencing for Beginners.

If your referring to images that has a slightly different syntax. Basicly it is the same syntax as for a interwiki link ([[ ]]). Basically it is [[File:(name goes here)|(size goes here)|(caption goes here)]]. For more information on images there is the picture tutorial and the wikisyntax cheatsheet. --nn123645 (talk) 13:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki deletion issues[edit]

Hi Everyone

I am posting this here as I have been unable to get a response from anyone on any other platform. I have twice created informative pieces on two vietnamese restaurants in Shoreditch which I love and have been twice delted. I even went onto Wiki and followed the example of the River Cafe making the piece factual as opposed to an advertising format, taking down any pictures I didn't have the rights for and having references and Links to other pages with no contact details for the restaurant in the piece. However I have been deleted twice now and really wish to get the message across that these restaurants follow the real history of Vietnamese cooking ( a little of what I put in the piece) and the history of the restaurants. I certainly didnt mention anything about it being delicious or promotion of any kind.

Please help

Kind regards SimonWFCA (talk) 11:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The notices placed on your talk page to notify you of the most recent speedy deletions say that your second versions of each article were deleted under criteria A7, which says that an article may be deleted if it does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. To find out more, I suggest you contact the editors who deleted the articles - links to their respective talk pages are in the signature at the end of each notice. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also read the General Notability guideline - WP:NOTABILITY, as well as the notability guideline for companies and organisations WP:CORP. The subject of an article must "deserve" its place here on Wikipedia. Roger (talk) 11:30, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked at the last article and agree with its deletion under WP:CSD#A7. Most restaurants are not notable as we use that term here. You said above that the article had "references"—citation to references would be the most important way you could show notability—but the article had none. External links are not references and in any event, what we need is independent, third party reliable sources (newspaper articles, books treatment, magazine pieces, etc.), not links to the restaurant's website.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know it can seem frustrating, but Wikipedia has quite specific definitions of notability - it's to do with how much third party attention it has attracted. In the case of a restaurant, Le Gavroche or Le Manoir are probably notable - lots of reviews, chitchat in the Sunday supplements etc, chef's got himself a tv show and book deal. In the case of your local (probably excellent) Vietnamese, it's probably only got a couple of reviews in the local paper, which wouldn't be enough to achieve notability in Wikipedia terms. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Help again with this table[edit]

hello,

if I push the sortable button in the "Dimensions" column, why is "Heydar Aliyev" the first (with "100×70"), even if the lowest number is "70". Could you find the mistake, please? Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 12:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Easy to answer that. The contents of the column are text strings. "100×70" starts with "1", and therefore comes before any of the other strings in that column, which start with "2" or higher numbers. - David Biddulph (talk) 12:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your answer. So I need to add for all measurements the {{nts}} template? If so, I should write like this: {{nts|100×70|70}}, right? Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 12:36, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My reading of Template:Nts doesn't suggest that it works the way you suggest. Perhaps you were thinking of Template:Sort? - David Biddulph (talk) 12:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether there's any conventional way to order stamps by size, but another option would be to have them sort by total area. You could do that using something like {{sort|7000|100×70}} in each line, where 7000 is the stamp's total area, which I derived manually. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Six Nations rugby 2012[edit]

For Week 3 of the Championship you have 2 games on Friday, 24th February which never happens. I think this should be Saturday 25th with Scotland v France on Sunday 26th Feb. The other fixtures look ok. Just incase someone is booking a flight using your info. May Sinclair —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.36.137 (talk) 14:29, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed it. Our dates were copied from the Daily Telegraph, which had got them wrong. Algebraist 14:36, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A suggestion I have[edit]

Would it be ok to create a categories for wikipedians descent or ancestry? Please let me know. Neptunekh2 (talk) 15:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as you know since you're in category Arab Wikipedians, we do have these categories. Are you asking if it's alright to create another one for one that's missing? Because I'm pretty sure that would be okay. If you need any help creating a category, let me know. --Danger (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My user page[edit]

Well, I'm really not pleased how my user page looks, but I have no idea how to redesign it. If anyone can help me, I'll be very grateful. Also, I don't know is this a right place to put this up. If there's a place where this types of problems are resolving, please tell me. --Sundostund (talk) 15:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We have a page just for that sort of thing. Good luck! --Danger (talk) 15:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thank you. --Sundostund (talk) 15:51, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

making a subpage a wikipedia article[edit]

hello all! i created a subpage and wanted to merge/ move it into the real wikipedia world... is this possible?

Ralphydanman (talk) 16:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC) Ralph[reply]

Will reply at user talk page Mjroots (talk) 16:32, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

edit / add content to existing page[edit]

You already have a page with recent history of the Afghanistan Scout Association. During my one year mobilization to Kabul, I worked as Scoutmaster to five troops aligned with various orphanages. I partnered with NGO PARSA, as they had access to the orphanages. We held many events including Scout Day at the US Embassy in February 2010 with the Afghan & International media present to interview Ambassador Eikenberry, PARSA's Exec. Director Marnie, and me.

How can I add a paragraph or two about our attempts to increase participation in the Afghan Scouts during 2009-10? -Steve M. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.223.116.201 (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please discuss this at Talk:Afghanistan Scout Association and be prepared to establish verifiable sources per WP:V. I also suggest you create an account. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC) Lead coordinator, WikiProject Scouting[reply]

Clean up and Nutrality problem[edit]

Hi,

I have recently edited this page as I noticed there was a nomination for for its neutrality to be checked and that it may require cleanup.

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

I have amended some of the article to help solve this - however the flags are still showing at the top of the page. I have gone into the discussion page to see if there are any clues as to what was under dispute but nothing is listed.

As these were from 2008 and nothing further has happened, how do I get them removed? I do plan on adding a lot more information to this page in the coming weeks and will be adding references and citations.

Regards.

Hutchfish (talk) 17:02, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you mean the "tags". To remove them, you must go to "Edit" (at the top of the page) and remove {{POV-check|date=August 2008}} and {{Cleanup|date=December 2008}}. Regards.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 17:50, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not remove the tags yet as the issues have not been dealt with, in fact I have added another -- the article does not cite a single reference to a third party reliable source to demonstrate the notability of the subject. I also chopped out the "Future" section as it was spammy and crystal balling. – ukexpat (talk) 18:29, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gray bar[edit]

I'm not totally sure this is the right place to ask, but here goes. I'm seeing a gray bar across the top of all or most of the Wikipedia pages I go to. Is that normally there, or is there some weird setting I've set that would cause that? Thank you, all. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There have been similar reports to this before: [1]. I don't think any full explanation or solution has been thought of so far though. Rehevkor ✉ 21:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I don't think people know Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_84#Mysterious_.27Grey.27_Bar_at_top_of_pages CTJF83 21:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll follow the advice on those pages and see what happens. Thank you! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One suggestion said the de-select "compatibility mode" in IE's "tools" menu, and that indeed took the gray bar away. I'm guessing that gray bar sits in place of something that wikipedia tried to display that IE could not handle, but we'll see. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:47, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Summary style[edit]

I haven't been able to find an answer to this, when doing an article in summary style, what length should the summary section be?

In the Burger King article I have the History of Burger King section summarized with 5 relatively short paragraphs. Each paragraph summarizes a section in the spin off article, which is not yet finished but is at 58kb as it stands now. I think the summary is an appropriate length because it summarizes a pretty long article in a rather small section, while others have commented that the summary has too much detail.

So, what is the proper standard? Is there one? --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 22:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. Disclaimer: I only read Burger King. I think it is really to long. although I love to read a long story, everybody who wants to know more about the history about this company should read really the history article. The beginning of the history, big turning points (one sentence that it went nearly bankrupt) and a bridge to today is only necessary. mabdul 00:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The suggestion at Wikipedia:Summary style is that the summary in the parent article will look similar to the lead section in the child article - which makes sense, when you think about it, since both are trying to summarise the contents of the child article, one at the start of the child article, and the other in the parent article. Personally, I think the summary in Burger King is too long at present judged by that approach. Bencherlite ^Talk 01:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]