Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 December 21

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.

December 21

List of WikiProjects

Is there a list of Wikiprojects? I am new and eager to join a few.--DocDeel516 (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It is divided into a lot of sub-lists, but I believe Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory is what you are looking for. -Seidenstud (talk) 01:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Just joined WikiProject Physics!--DocDeel516 (talk) 01:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Requesting account reset/merge

Hi. It has recently come to my attention that I have two accounts, calmofthestorm and calmofthestorm7. I have control of calmofthestorm7, and would like to switch back to calmofthestorm. I request this based on the following verification:

• An edit made by calmofthestorm to its own talk page includes the email address calmofthestormgmail.com. You can find it here: User:Calmofthestorm&oldid=16542806

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Calmofthestorm&oldid=16542806 If this is acceptable, email me a token or something to that address and we can work that out. If this isn't possible I understand, it's a pretty tenuous connection. I will simply begin using calmofthestorm7 and place a link and explanation on calmofthestorm's talkpage.

This looks even more sketchy since I just added a committed identity to calmofthestorm as an DHCP IP thinking I had access to the account, then removed it as calmofthestorm7 briefly thinking the account wasn't mine (until I saw the linked edit and remembered writing it). If the admins don't want trust it I understand, I am a sysadmin in my spare time;)

Alex —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calmofthestorm7 (talk • contribs) 01:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi there and welcome back to Wikipedia. A password reminder was sent to the email address associated with calmofthestorm within the last 24 hours, hopefully you'll get that email and then you should be able to login to calmofthestorm. Matt (Talk) 03:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

You may want WP:USURP as well ~ R.T.G 09:28, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And you really shouldn't be putting your email address on your user page unless you want a ton of spam. You can use the {{noSpam}} template like Matt.T did for you here, or better yet, let people contact you using the "Email this user" button. Franamax (talk) 12:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I hardly get any spam thanks to SpamBayes adaptive filtering:-) But thanks for the warning, I was rather young when I wrote that page. I already tried the password reset mechanism, problem is it went to an old hotmail account I used at the time that has since been taken over by someone else. In other words, I believe the address registered to the account is different from that mentioned in the userpage history edited in by that account, and was requesting authentication based on the latter, not the registered address. (Why would the user himself add an address to his own page he didn't own?). From the sound of it, this isn't something the admins are willing to do which is fine. I'll update the account's userpage with a redirect to my new account and just consider that one deprecated. It shall serve as a lesson to me to be more careful with passwords in future. I suppose I could also probably guess the password in <50 tries, but that's more work than I really want to put in. Thanks anyway, it's good to see the articles I started four years ago in chemistry and physics are still around, though in far expanded, improved, and in many cases more correct form:-) Calmofthestorm7 (talk) 16:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Requesting block of Hezzospike

I haven't requested a block before but, I've recently added a speedy delete tag on an article created by Hezzospike. I see on his talk page that he has had his final warning and he was warned that he would be blocked next. Can an administrator review this and block him if necessary? Thank you Didz93 (talk) 01:56, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Go to WP:AN ~ R.T.G 02:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Didz93 (talk) 02:07, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Problem with Chess article

I have tried several times to access the article "Chess (game)". Each attempt seems to load the page in Internet Explorer OK, but I then find that Internet Explorer is locked up. I then end up killing the task using Task Manager. Other large articles such as "Boeing 777", "United States" and "Australia" load without any problems. I have tried re-booting the PC, but the result is the same each time.

Internet Explorer v6. Windows XP Professional SP2. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leigh-01 (talk • contribs) 04:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Does the problem persist in a non-obsolete browser? Algebraist 08:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Read wiktionary:obsolete. It's not obsolete just a tad old. If I were to try using IE 7 or 8 my computer would crash spontaneously and I do need at least one IE browser running for sites that don't seem to know other browsers exist. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem is likely that the Chess article has a mozillion images on it. There are 17 board layouts shown, each with 64 little images, one for each square of the board. If your browser can't handle that, there's not much that can be done without completely redoing the images. I believe there's a way to turn off images, but not exactly sure what it is. Franamax (talk) 11:38, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

You can test by editing the article directly [1], copying the text into your sandbox (or the system sandbox), then changing the instances of "Chess diagram small" to something else like "xx diagram small". Then you should be able to at least read the article, but without all the nifty diagrams. Franamax (talk) 11:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

You could try disabling images in your browser settings. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I disabled pictures in the browser (Tools/Internet Options/Advanced/Multimedia/Show Pictures). This allowed the page to load very quickly. By right clicking the missing picture(s) with the mouse and selecting Show Picture allowed the various pictures to be displayed as required. Leigh-01 (talk) 23:05, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Please help complete afd nom

Can someone please create <removed to avoid canvassing> and place the text there as follows:

{{subst:afd2 | pg=G<removed to avoid canvassing> | cat=M | text=Contested prod, which I had proposed on the basis that [[WP:CRYSTAL|Wikipedia is not a crystal ball]]. I have never understood the purpose of this type of article. It's normally not really about the subject at all; it's about the fact that the inchoate subject will exist. Once the thing exists, everything in article like this has to necessarily be changed from about it coming out, to about the album itself. It's really an entirely separate topic and not normally notable. If it was then the article should be named something like "Glad To Be Live release date announced" and that subject should be able to exist either as a separate article or as a subsection of the article once it comes out. But of course it can't. It makes no sense.[[Special:Contributions/71.247.123.9|71.247.123.9]] ([[User talk:71.247.123.9|talk]])~~~~~}}

Please leave in the five tildes, which will generate a timestamp at the time of creation. Thank you.--71.247.123.9 (talk) 05:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Done —teb728 t c 06:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!--71.247.123.9 (talk) 06:52, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Consumption of ink in Colour/Black cartridges in printer/copier/scanner

When I scan (scan only and not print)a color photoghraph in my HP All In One (Printer/Scanner/Copier), does it consume color and black ink in the cartridges. I only want to save the photograph in my PC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.125.50 (talk) 09:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

No. Algebraist 09:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Reference

I was looking at the article Fafnir, and made a Google search. I found the this [2]. I see it's a copy and past. Is it allowed to do copy and past without making it an own article? And if I want to put that reference into the WIKI article, how should the reference look? --90.224.52.177 (talk) 13:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it appears that site copy/pasted their text from Wikipedia. This is evident in the same use of wikilinks. Lots of sites now mirror Wikipedia, about.com being one of the most well-known examples. Referencing it wouldn't be correct, because it would basically be citing itself. Nevertheless, see Wikipedia:Citing sources for more information about referencing. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 13:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

global turn off boxes at top of page

IN many pages, the various boxes (project, class etc) take up a lot of space. Eg, in this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Charles_Cantor) there are boxes for genetics, University of california, etc etc. Is there a global box suppressor >Cinnamon colbert (talk) 16:07, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

• There are boxes that contain show/hide functionality. Template:ArticleHistory is one of them. Template:Articleissues does the same for templates on the article itself. There's also one that combines different WikiProject tags, but I can't remember the name of that one. Try finding it at Wikipedia:WikiProjects. - Mgm|^(talk) 16:20, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

When you have more than two project banners on a talk page, you can wrap them in {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:29, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

thanks, just right, cinnamon colbefrt

Project to bring word like editing to wikisoftware?

Whatever the original goals and thoughts of wiki software, it is clear that the needs and desires of the users far outweight the sophisitication of the current software: people want something like ms word or open office writer, eg what people want is good page layout without markup. Is there a project to bring this sort of functinality to wikipediaCinnamon colbert (talk) 16:07, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The subject of a WYSIWYG editor for wiki-markup is discussed here (along with why making and implementing one is difficult with the current setup). You may want to read that for more information. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 19:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The Stanton Foundation recently awarded a grant to the Wikimedia Foundation to make the editing interface easier to use. I've written a draft for the Wikipedia Signpost about this: User:Hermione1980/MediaWiki facelift. Cheers, Hermione1980 19:31, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Aside from the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of building a WYSIWYG interface that captures the expressive power of a good markup language (notice that Microsoft Word does not also provide a markup language interface - it seems that simplicity and power cannot coexist in the current state of the editing software art), I strongly suspect that wikitext constitutes a desirable intellectual barrier to entry on Wikipedia. It forces people to read the friendly manuals, and screens out those who won't. Editing productively on Wikipedia requires far more than learning a comparatively simple markup language. One could argue that Wikipedia is already too easy for newcomers to start using, as evidenced by the thousands of new articles by new users we delete for violating our mind-numbingly complex policies and guidelines. Wikipedia is already easy enough to allow thousands of people to get in way over their heads, and then we clobber them after they do what the system seems to be encouraging them to do - plunge ahead before bothering to learn what the site is about. Should we make Wikipedia accessible to an even less competent group of potential users? To see what happens to quality when a system requires less competence to use, observe how the usefulness of email has steadily deteriorated over the past 20 years as it has become usable by progressively more (and thus necessarily less competent) people. However, even if my suspicions are true, that Wikipedia works well in part because it's hard for people with average and below-average IQs to function here (yes, I am an admitted and unrepentant anti-anti-intellectualist), we could still use some tools to amplify our wikitext-slinging ability, such as a WYSIWYG table editor, some database tools to efficiently manage citations, and further improvements to the search function. However, attempts to thicken the client introduce problems of their own. I suspect it would be very difficult to redesign Wikipedia's interface in a way that would lead to a net improvement. After all, Wikipedia did not become the most successful collaborative project in history by accident. We may already be pretty close to the current optimum design (with respect to the current limitations of technology and the distribution of human ability). By analogy, a violin is pretty difficult to play, but making instruments easier for the inept does not automatically lead to better music. What we really need is something we've never had: a way to actually increase human ability. --Teratornis (talk) 22:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Edit counters

Hey. I always used interiot's edit counter. Now I tried soxred93's and sql's edit counters. Whilst interiot's edit counter says I would have 21,829 edits in the mainspace, soxred93's and sql's both say that I have 19,259. Therefore I have to ask: Which edit counter is the most accurate one? Thanks. — Aitias // discussion 17:20, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Could it be a result of the first one including deleted edits, while the second and third ones don't? Tan | 39 17:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, as far as I can see, the first one does not include deleted edits, as it shows 41,788 total edits (if deleted edits were included, it would show 42,914 total edits). — Aitias // discussion 17:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

My uContribs tool says 19,263, Kate/river says 19,261 (and you have a total of 1498 deleted edits). Franamax (talk) 19:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Interiot says in the source code that he doesn't count deleted edits and his data comes from the API Special:Contributions. However, he does some funky stuff figuring out the namespace, which defaults to (main) unless he can figure out it's somethig different (see the code at 'my $subspace = "Mainspace";'. I suspect this ends up counting too many edits as mainspace and undercounting other spaces. This seems to be confirmed by comparing wannbekate and real Kate: the User talk space counts differ by 2542, pretty close to the extra mainspace edits Interiot is giving you credit for. Sorry, just like a bank, the lower figure is the correct amount in your account sir. :) Franamax (talk) 20:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the very competent explanation, Franamax. Very helpful. :) — Aitias // discussion 20:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

Would it be a COI if I was to extend some of the articles relating to the Tyne and Wear Metro, because I use this service? Thanks, CTurnbull, just not logged in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.225.187 (talk) 17:52, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. Perhaps if you owned or worked for the company, but even then not necessarily. Just be sure to cite your sources. Tan | 39 17:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The fact that you thought to ask whether you have a conflict of interest suggests that you have the intellectual capacity to edit objectively even when you have a conflict of interest. I suspect that the people most prone to making unconstructive edits as a result of having conflicts of interest are those who are least aware that they have conflicts of interest. (See: Dunning-Kruger effect.) The COI guideline is curiously unenforceable on its own because "the ability of anyone to edit articles without registering is a Foundation issue" (see: WP:PEREN#Prohibit anonymous users from editing). If we don't require users to identify themselves, then we are trusting users to comply with the COI guideline voluntarily, or perhaps unwittingly by revealing their affiliations before they understand the implications of doing so. The guideline may be least effective on the people most likely to edit unconstructively as a result of having conflicts of interest - those who are the most oblivious to the way their conflicts make them more likely to violate other policies and guidelines. Fortunately, on Wikipedia we have a sufficiently complete set of rules to enable us to evaluate any edit on its own merits, without regard to an editor's identity. Thus we can think of the COI guideline as merely a labor-saving device - editors should generally be more productive if they focus their efforts on articles where they don't have conflicts of interest. However, countering that tendency is the fact that people are more likely to develop expertise in subjects that matter to them. The most knowledgeable persons in a given subject area will usually have some sort of personal stake in it. A good example would be religion. How many articles would Wikipedia have about the various religions if we forbade adherents (or opponents) of a given religion from writing about it, and how good would those articles be? Religions are generally useless to people who don't believe in them (for example, if you don't believe in Animism, or you aren't actively opposing it, how useful is Animism to you, and why would you want to learn about it?); therefore, extremely few people will be motivated to learn much about specific religions unless they are trying either to promote them or destroy them. The fact that Wikipedia has vast and complete coverage of religion topics strongly suggests that we don't take the COI guideline seriously enough to get in the way of writing an encyclopedia. --Teratornis (talk) 21:33, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify; having an interest in or familiarty with a subject does not mean you have a Conflict of Interest, otherwise we would have no quality articles at all. That just means you have an interest in the subject. COI means that you have a direct stake in promoting the entity that you are writing the article about; wherein that stake is in direct conflict with Wikipedia's stated mission. Usually, if you are writing about your company to increase its exposure, or to promote it in some way, that is in conflict with Wikipedia's WP:NPOV policy, and thus you have a conflict of interest. If you are just some guy who uses a service, and you wish to add relevent, verifiable, and neutral information about that service to Wikipedia, but you don't have any stake in promoting that service, then there is no conflict. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Status template

I am looking for a status template to add to my page. There's one that looks very similar to the one StatusBot used in the past, except, you update it manually by clicking links under the status simple. It's a small box. Or, any other template. Maybe you can point me in the right direction. Thanks! ←Signed:→Mr. E. Sánchez ^{Get to know me!} / _{Talk to me!}←at≈:→ 21:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure. Add {{Statustop}} to the top of your userpage, and

 importScript('User:Xenocidic/statusChanger2.js');

to your your monobook.js file. Cheers, Jake Wartenberg^talk 21:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)