Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 August 4

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August 4

Image Search

How do i search in Wikipedia for just images and not the whole page.

This is the best I could come up with: Wikipedia:WikEh?/Images/. If this does not help, reply here. --wpktsfs 00:20, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

You could use Google Image search. Type the name of what you want to search for then type " site:en.wikipedia.org " after your search term. This will make Google search only in Wikipedia for images. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 00:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

You can start by writing a search term in the normal Wikipedia search box, click "Search" and not "Go", then uncheck "Wikipedia" and check "Image" in the boxes at the bottom, and use the search box at the bottom. PrimeHunter 02:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Page creations

How do I find out what pages I've created? It ain't here — Jack · talk · 01:39, Saturday, 4 August 2007

Unfortunately there is no link or tool for that as far as I know. See also [1]. PrimeHunter 02:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Here are some counters, one addressing your concern, but they seem to be down at the moment. ALTON .ıl 05:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Help with username

Hi, i have forgoten my password. I am User:tiptoety, how do i go about recovering it if i never entered my email address?

Nvrm, I got in, Thank you. Tiptoety 02:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Luisitania article

Quote Ireland, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard. The sinking turned sentiments against Germany.

I think its a typo? lol how can more people be lost then were aboard ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.76.32.16 (talk)

The article is RMS Lusitania. 1,198 is less than 1,959 so I don't know what you mean. PrimeHunter 03:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair Use Rationale

I have contributed to a Doom 3 Enemies page, and it immediately got a Speedy Deletion notice for a no Non-Free Use Rationale, I have since edited it and wondered if this is now correct? This is my first real wikipedia edit..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Doom3-Archvile.JPG — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.132.66.100 (talk) 21:31, August 3, 2007

You actually have to rationalize why it's Fair Use, but you don't have to use that template. For an example, look here. ALTON .ıl 06:02, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

swimming pool safety regulations south africa

What are the current pool safety regulations in south africa regarding fencing

Wikipedia doesn't have that kind of information. I suggest contacting the South African government.--Chaser - T 06:50, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

nice opportunity

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

"As of 2007, the John Robert Powers organization is a network of franchises that charges their clients for acting and modeling lessons. John Robert Powers franchises (hereafter JRP) often claim in their marketing literature to be talent agencies or the like. Critics describe JRP as employing actors as talent scouts, and using high pressure sales tactics.[1]"

I don't think the above description of John Robert Powers is fair.

JRP provides workshops for kids, as well as guaranteed auditions with agents, casting directors, magazines and managers every week - so they can make (face to face) connections with important people.

Yes, there is tuition for classes, as with any class!

Regarding the marketing literature, I've never seen anything to indicate JRP is anything other than a school, that promotes their students.

John Robert Powers basically opens doors for kids by giving them the tools they need to book work - and putting them in front of the right people - on a weekly basis.

Which is all an actor can ask for - right?

why unique selling point of harry porter not included

Hello. Who is harry porter and what has he to do with JRP? Is it Harry Potter? If you can source a valid unaligned third party link that describes a relationship between Harry Potter and JRP then I would say that needs to be in the citation. That would be a great reference. Not all organizations are all bad....but it is hard to find a positive reference to JRP that was not written by someone related to a JRP franchise. Personally I ahve found no such linkage. If an actor in a Harry Potter movie has made any sort of statement about his/her John Robert Powers training...it should certainly be available somewhere.Sheepshear 21:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivia Wiki

Does anyone know of a Trivia Wiki?

The reason I ask is that I'm becoming dismayed at the large amount of work that went into the large amount of interesting and useful material that is gradually get removed from wikipedia as trivia, by people who (rightly, I suppose) cite WP:EFFORT, WP:INTERESTING, WP:USEFUL and WP:TRIVIA.

I thought it would be a worthwhile project for me (and others if it works well) to transwiki to elsewhere where this material is wanted. (Actually it's not literally a transwiki, is it, where the source wiki isn't a sister project?)

But my question is, is there another wiki out there? One that is GFDL compatible, specialises in trivia, and is already large and well-established enough that it's unlikely to vanish off the face of the web.

Of course, I'm happy to take this to WP:RD, but I'm asking here at the help desk first, rather than cross-posting. AndyJones 08:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

wikitravel is the main travel wiki, though its licence is cc-by-sa. This is only technically different to the GFDL but it's different enough that content can't be copied there. --Cherry blossom tree 08:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

No, sorry, trivia, not travel. AndyJones 09:12, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry. It's so obvious when you point it out! I suppose the various Wikia wikis accept material that would be deleted as trivia on Wikipedia. --Cherry blossom tree 09:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

On the definition of transwiki: according to m:Help:Transwiki, this refers to copying articles between Wikimedia Foundation wikis. As far as I have been able to tell, there isn't even a proper term for copying articles from Wikipedia to some non-Wikimedia wiki (I've used wiki outplacement to describe this process, for lack of anything better). That should tell you something about the scale of this problem - it's almost as if the Wikipedia community hasn't even formulated the concept of trying to preserve the value of other people's work. The problem, of course, is of Wikipedia's own making: the MediaWiki software was specifically designed to encourage random visitors to create new articles, and this goes back to the very origin of Wikipedia as a departure from the earlier Nupedia. Nupedia had a complicated procedure for creating and approving new articles, and it was too slow and difficult to be effective. Wikipedia was designed around the idea of making it easy for anybody to edit anything, and the result has been explosive growth.

In the beginning, Wikipedia was begging for new articles, but today the situation has changed. Wikipedia has 6,818,564 articles, with thousands more being created each day, and a large percentage of new articles end up being deleted. The software still makes it easy for naive new users to create new articles, without requiring new users to demonstrate even the most basic understanding of Wikipedia's policies and what Wikipedia is not. Then admins go around deleting the thousands of inappropriate articles per day which result from the way Wikipedia positions itself to new users.

As far as which wiki to use for "trivia," that's probably too broad a category. If you browse around on WikiIndex a bit, you'll see many other wikis with comparatively narrow topical focus. It seems that lots of people who start wikis are thinking quite narrowly at the time. For example, there are more wikis that focus on one particular musical group or genre, than wikis which accept articles about all types of music. (I suspect that focusing a wiki too narrowly is likely to doom it, by preventing the wiki from attracting enough contributors to form a viable community.) In any case, we can't very well control what everybody else decides to do, so if you want to outplace deleted articles that you would label as "trivia," you might need to classify them further (game trivia, travel trivia, entertainment trivia, music trivia, etc.).

Perhaps it is time to start a WikiProject Outplacement, with the goal of identifying suitable alternate wikis for Wikipedia's deleted articles. As far as I am aware, there has been no organized attempt to do this yet. I did start the section: WP:WWMPD#If all else fails, try another wiki, and in a couple of AfD discussions I suggested an alternate wiki, but the problem is too large for my occasional individual efforts to noticeably dent. --Teratornis 11:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Reporting technical problems

Since yesterday we are having technical problems in the Latin Wikipedia. Some/many talk pages are not displayed, I mean, they are displayed blank, there is not even a navigation on the top. See la:Vicipaedia:Taberna#Blank_talk_pages.

To whom should we report this problem? Thanks! --Roland2 08:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like you might want to put in a bug report at bugzilla. Raven4x4x 08:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint. I've reported that as a bug, however, I does not look like a bug in the software, it looks like a temporary problem with the database, cache or so. So no coding bug, but something for the server admins or database admins. --Roland2 09:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Solved. --Roland2 11:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Resolved

how to mesar by caliper

how to meser by caliper —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.130.100.180 (talk • contribs)

See: caliper. --Teratornis 10:29, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

A question about possibility to publish a link

Hello,

My name is Olga Tumilovich and I would like to ask you the following questions:

Question #1: Today I tried to post a link to http://maps.poehali.org/en/ at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map#External_links, but the moderator has deleted it. I cannot really understand why, because poehali.org is not a commercial resource and is absolutely free. It represents more than 18000 digital images of military topographic maps, which are all avalaible for free. I really don't see the sense of deleting it.???

Question#2: At mapstor.com there is section with article (http://mapstor.com/article/maps.html). Can I link to this section at

1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map#External_links 2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topography or I can not? Which is the most suiatble place for my article in your point or view?

Many thank to you,

olga OlgaBl 10:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

We have a page that details how we make those decisions: Wikipedia:External links. The best place to discuss specific articles is the talk page of the article - for this article, that's Talk:Topographic map. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 12:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia features constant tension between inclusionists and deletionists. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia about almost everything, your edits may be judged by any number of people who may not share your enthusiasm for a particular subject. This creates no end of conflict, because naturally Wikipedia attracts millions of people who like to edit articles about their interests, whereupon they find themselves constrained by Wikipedia's complex and often vexing policies and guidelines. The situation is much different on a wiki which caters to a particular subject area - subject area enthusiasts will typically find such a wiki much friendlier than the (metaphorical) zoo which is Wikipedia. Check out Category:Maps on WikiIndex. You might also inquire at WikiProject Maps, specifically on its talk page. --Teratornis 23:30, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Peter Theo Vasiliou

What cleanup/Deletion tags would be approiate for Peter Theo Vasiliou Thedjatclubrock :) (talk) 11:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Why not try improving the article, rather than tagging it. The subject is of reasonable notability, so deletion is unnecessary. Your tagging of a biographical stub as "spam" was inappropriate, so I've declined speedy deletion. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

deleted pages

When a newly created article is deleted, is that creation deleted from the user cotributions page as User_talk:Majiqmud has received a number of warnings for this but these are not listed in his user contrbutions. ThanksTbo 157 12:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes but if they were warned using warning templates with a link to the article it would appear as a red link but even if the article is not cited in the warning the administrators can check the Deleted contributions if reported to AIV. Ds.mt 12:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

A user's deleted contribs can be seen at his deleted contribs page. I don't think non-admins can see that : in this user's case, it shows Majiqmud editing Kenyan Animation Industry, Kenyan Animation, Swahilipod, and Learning swahili. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

how to make an infobox

--1jake312 14:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

What do you want it to do? There may be an existing infobox that can be used. Based on your edits, {{Infobox Television episode}} may be relevant. See also Help:Infobox. PrimeHunter 15:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Multiple References

Suppose you have a book called "The ABC Story" written by Mr. X and published by Y Publishing and suppose you refer to it 5 times in one article.

How can you make multiple references to a work without it appearing 5 times in the <reflist>. I only want it to appear once but refer to it throughout the article.

How do I do that ?

Tovojolo 15:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

At the first citation to the source, instead of using <ref>text</ref>, use <ref name=pick natural name for the reference>text</ref>. The next time you want to cite to that reference in the article, just type <ref name=name you chose earlier/>. You must not forget the trailing backslash.--Fuhghettaboutit 15:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Footnotes#Citing a footnote more than once. PrimeHunter 16:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding Keywords/Names to broaden search to find page?

I'm wondering how to make two more names link to the Daniel A. Farber page using Wikipedia search. For example, someone would like to find the Wikipedia Daniel Farber page, but typing Daniel Farber brings up nothing, they instead are forced to type in 'Daniel A. Farber'.

Since I'm creating the Daniel Farber page, I'd prefer it if people could simply type in Daniel Farber to reach it as well. I read the wikisearch page and didn;t find what I was looking for. B.Soto 15:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

We use what's called a redirect for this purpose. What you do is create a page for the alternate name, and simply type #REDIRECT [[name of page you want people to find]] as the text. When they search for that parameter, they will automatically be taken to the correct page. You can format the text for the redirect page by using the editing link right above the text screen which is labeled "#R".--Fuhghettaboutit 15:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Daniel A. Farber was just created and has not been indexed by Wikipedia search yet. When that happens it should be the first search result on Daniel Farber if no redirect is made. PrimeHunter 16:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

need help urgently

Have been searching for The Pre-colonial West African traditional economy and i dont know how to go about it how much more know how to frame the question pls i would appreciate it if you would just help me thanks

Thanks for posting. I think the reference desk might be able to help you better. We answer questions about using Wikipedia. Lara♥Love 16:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Try these Google Searches:

• Search Wikipedia for: Pre-colonial West African traditional economy
• Search the World Wide Web for: Pre-colonial West African traditional economy

--Teratornis 21:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

New category

I created Category:Circus films by adding the category to a few pictures. However, the category still shows up as a redlink. Is there a problem? Clarityfiend 16:44, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Go to Category:Circus films and click the edit link, then add some text describing the category. :) -- Stwalkerster talk 16:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

And add parent categories to it, for example Category:Films by topic. PrimeHunter 16:54, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Clarityfiend 18:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If your category has a main article (that is, an article which defines what the category is about), you can emphasize it by placing the {{catmore}} template at the bottom of the descriptive text for the category. --Teratornis 23:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

User Pages

I just joined Wikipedia today. I'm happy to be a user, and the first thing I wanted to do was create my userpage. I decided that I wanted my userpage to be a lot like Tangerines', with a lot of Userboxes or whatever you call them. But I don't know how to get to Tangerines' user page to see how he did it, and I don't know how to insert those Userbox thingies.

Also, I am wondering whether you need to do anything to become a member of a Wikiproject. I'm very interested in WikiProject: Schools, so can I just write articles about them and then display on my userpage that I'm part of the WikiProject, or does it take more than that? Please fill me in on those things.

--Nick4404 17:30, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi there, and welcome to Wikipedia! All the information you'll need on userbxes can be found here: Wikipedia:Userboxes. To join Wikiproject Schools go here: [2] and follow the instructions. AndrewJDTALK -- 17:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

To copy some of another user's User Page, go to their page, hit edit, then copy the text, and then paste that into your own user page. But make sure to make the page you make on your user page isn't identical to the source (some weirdos like impersonating other users). The rules about what you can and can't do with your user page are described at Wikipedia:User page. But a word of caution - user pages are very unimportant, and time you spend decorating them is largely time wasted. If you want to do something productive and worthwhile, that will actually help others, any improvement to a real article (even trivial stuff like spelling fixes) is hugely more valuable (and I'd argue more satisfying) than user page edits. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Participants for how to join. Adding {{User WikiProject Schools}} to your user page will place you in Category:WikiProject Schools members. PrimeHunter 18:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Also see WP:PROJGUIDE to learn more about how WikiProjects work. --Teratornis 21:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

emailing

How do I email a retieved article (set of pages) --Jerryms 19:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)to a person-jerrym

Just attach the retrieved file to the email. -- Kainaw^(what?) 19:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

However, if the recipient has access to the World Wide Web, you don't need to send the whole text of the articles, you can simply send the URLs, like this:

Dear friend,
 
Check out my question on the Wikipedia Help desk:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#emailing

Sincerely,
Jerryms

Sending just the URLs of the articles is faster for you and more efficient overall, because you won't be sending e-mail messages that are bloated with e-mail attachments. Also, e-mail attachments are a typical conduit for e-mail viruses and other nasty things, so your friend might be hesitant to open them. If you plan to send a list of articles to a whole list of friends, then it becomes much more efficient to just send the article URLs, especially since out of a whole list of recipients, the odds are that some of them won't be interested in reading some of the articles. --Teratornis 21:20, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I should add that if you send just the article URLs, you don't depend on the recipient having set his or her e-mail software to display HTML messages. Some people (like me) turn off all the HTML and rich text options in our e-mail clients because we find them annoying, not to mention potentially dangerous due to all the e-mail spam containing malicious payloads. --Teratornis 21:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Baritone Guitars

I edited this page to include additonal information not previously presented or needing clarification. There is no way to provide a citation because the information I added is from personal experience of 20 years of building guitars, twelve of which include baritone guitars. I'm not sure how to provide a traditional citation in this regard because the information came first-hand. Suggestions as to how you would like the additions cited?

Dberkowitz 21:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC).

See no original research. If you have original work that has never been previously published, you should enter it on another wiki which accepts original work. For example, search WikiIndex for: guitar. That finds Wiki Guitar and GuitarWiki. Many of these topic-specific wikis are looking to add content rather than delete it on the scale that Wikipedia does, so they tend to have less rigorous policies governing what you can write on them. If you can get your guitar work published in a reliable source, then you or others can write about it on Wikipedia. --Teratornis 22:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I might also add that even though your knowledge is first-hand, perhaps someone else has published it. You might try a Google Search using keywords from your information and see if you can find a reliable source for it. Given all the other people in the world who do things and write about them, it may be difficult to have entirely original ideas. On the other hand, it is not always easy to start with ideas and then go find reliable sources for them. See: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Sou for everything you need to know about sources on Wikipedia. For example, these resources may be helpful:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject External links
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup

--Teratornis 23:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Making a Page

Im new to this i wanna make a page. please tell me how, thank u i am user piazzajordan2

Hi! Please see Wikipedia:Your first article and Help:Creating a new page, also please do make sure your article meets the notability guidelines. :-) Stwalkerster talk 23:06, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Search box

I think it would be a good idea to automatically have cursor present in the search box each time the page is visited. Google do this and it makes searching much quicker.

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.100.29.251 (talk • contribs)

I'd suggest taking this to Village pump (proposals), as you're not going to get much of a response here. - Zeibura ^(Talk) 22:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

And I'd suggest you don't, because it's been brought up a few times (it may even be on the "perennial proposals list", and is in fact on the Main Page FAQ - look for "Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google?") and fairly firmly rejected each time, because while it would make things easier for people when they want to type something in to search, for people who like to navigate pages using arrow keys rather than the mouse it makes things harder. There are keyboard shortcuts to put the cursor in the search box, which are listed under that question in the Main Page FAQ. Shift-Alt-F works in Firefox (2.0 at least), and I suspect Alt-F will work in IE, so try those. Confusing Manifestation 11:09, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It's too bad this can't be a Preferences setting (assuming it can't be). I'm all for letting the user customize his or her view of Wikipedia to the extent possible. One size does not fit all. --Teratornis 16:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)