Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 August 18

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August 18

Enable mobile version

I inadvertantly hit the "permanently disable mobile version" link. How do I enable it again? I found an answer in the FAQ that directed me to the WAP site, but it is not the same as before. 68.228.91.169 (talk) 00:06, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I could not find a way to do it in wikipedia, but you can delete the cookies in your browser to revert to the mobile version 62.178.210.8 (talk) 11:24, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Merging Cells

Is it possible to merge cells B and C in Table_markup#Combined_use_of_COLSPAN_and_ROWSPAN? If so, how?174.3.103.39 (talk) 02:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this what you wanted:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
A	B&C	D
E	F
G
H

The code is

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
|-
| Column 1 || Column 2 || Column 3
|-
| A
| B&C 
| D
|-
| E
| rowspan="2" colspan="2" align="center"| F
|-
| G <!-- column 2+3 occupied by cell F -->
|-
| colspan="3" align="center"| H
|}

Hope that helps. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 04:14, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I think he was going for an L shaped region in the box, which, as far as I know, is not possible. –túrian^patois 04:18, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Turian, that's what I thought the OP was after. If it is, then as far as I know, this cannot be done using HTML, or in wiki. -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 08:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Help

How to insert photo gallury? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Satishalekar (talk • contribs) 03:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

See WP:GALLERY for more info on using the Gallery function. --Jayron32 03:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Suppression without explanations of 8000 bytes from "Quinceañera film"

Hello, can you tell me if this massive suppression by "Shiver of recognition" (red link) is normal ? I think I know and love latino culture, and cannot be thought intolerant, since I have several gay people among my friends. I am perplexed. Thanks for your answer.Arapaima (talk) 08:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently you are referring to this edit. That was not clear from your post. —teb728 t c 08:23, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

As a first step, may I suggest that you leave a message at Shiver of recognition's discussion page and ask them why they removed it? looking at it, it certainly looks as if they changed the previous version's text with no good reason (not helped by no edit summary), but as I know nothing of this film, I cannot say more myself. I do know that as well as having no edit summary, Shiver of recognition didn't say anything on the film's discussion page. -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 08:45, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a pretty detailed summary. I'd say a shorter version would suffice. hmwitht 14:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answers. After some pondering, I didn't try to write on "Shiver..."'s inexistant discussion page, but restored the erased text under a new chapter-heading : "Detailed analysis of the plot" , with a 2 lines warning that this chapter is for people who want to know more about the film. Hope it will placate the eraser. Best regards Arapaima (talk) 17:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Search for not so new article

Usually, when I create a new article, it shows up in the search box within a few hours. I usually create a new article in a sandbox, then after I can find it in search, I remove the redirect from my sandbox to the article. This time, I created a new article on the 15th. The article, USA Women's Pan American Team, clearly exists, and if you enter the complete name into the search box, it will inform you that such a page exists. But if you enter any part of a a reasonable search, say "USA Womens Pan" or even "USA Women's Pan American", the search feature will not find the article. Am I doing something wrong?--SPhilbrickT 11:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

My tests indicate the search index has not been updated since August 8. For example, this Sandbox search currently reports a result from this August 8 version of the Sandbox. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The search index has been updated since the above. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Access a specific deleted revision given its oldid

As the subject says, is it possible to retrieve a deleted revision directly if you have the old rev_id (typically in the form of a permalink)? Thanks, decltype (talk) 12:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently not. I just went to CAT:CSD found a blatant copyvio to delete, copied the URL to its permanent oldid, and then I deleted it. When I thereafter tried to access the permanent link I got "The requested page or revision cannot be found" ... This error is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link where the content has been removed by an administrator or another user with similar access....--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:26, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify for others, only admins can see deleted versions and they have another url system with a timestamp instead of an id number. I don't know a direct method but I know a slow indirect method. Increase or decrease the id number by one until you find any page version which has not been deleted. Don't care about the page name (and you don't have to remove it from the url). This will give you the time of the deleted version, usually within the same minute. Then look for that time in the deleted page history. If there were multiple edits to the deleted page that minute then I'm not sure how to find the right one. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Notability of Websites

What are the guidelines regarding the noteability of a web site? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vistro (talk • contribs) 13:49, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Notability (web). Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Order of items on a disambiguation page

What is the correct order to put items on a disambiguation page?--Mikespedia (talk) 13:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I think what you are looking for can be found on this page. Let me know if this is what you need. TNXMan 13:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict):The suggested order is shown at Manual of Style: Disambiguation Pages: Order of Entries. -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 13:56, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Chimerica

Would Chimerica be a term in the Wikitionary, rather than have a seperate Wikipedia article? Mr.TrustWorthy----Talk to Me! 16:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd say your best bet is the discuss that at Talk:Chimerica. hmwitht 16:58, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Infobox or Table

How do I make an infobox or table? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sfranklinh (talk • contribs) 16:30, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

See Help:Table (or there's an "insert a table" button in the editing window right above the text box.

You can add an infobox by transcluding it. You place {{infobox person}}, or whatever is the title, at the top of the page. You can see all infoboxes at Category:Infobox templates. hmwitht 16:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration policy

Good afternoon, I apologise for bad English, I used the autotranslator

You could not give the exact and detailed answer. According to the information here Arbitration policy has been the jurisdiction of Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee.

• Question №1: It is actual, whether so it?
• Question №2: whether it Extends on other language sections, in particular on the Russian?
• Question №3: Russian analogue of arbitration committee is completely self-sufficient, or is obliged to take in attention principles of English-speaking arbitration committee?

Thanks. SergeyJ (talk) 16:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

In what place it is possible correctly and to ask these questions officially? SergeyJ (talk) 17:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I can try and give some answers (I'm one of the arbitrators on the English Wikipedia). Despite that, this is not an official answer, but it might be the best you get (sorry if my English is too colloquial to be easily understood). Here are my answers to your questions:

(1) I don't understand the question.

(2) The jurisdiction of the English language Wikipedia Arbitration Committee does not (by definition) extend to other language Wikipedias, and hence does not extend to the Russian language Wikipedia.

(3) Other language Wikipedia arbitration committees (including the Russian one, if it exists) are independent and follow their own rules and policies. They are free to follow and borrow ideas from elsewhere, but are not obliged to do so.

If anyone reading this knows more about how arbitration works on other projects, please add more to this answer. A good way to find other language Wikipedias is to look at the interwiki links at WP:ARBCOM, and also to look at the list on meta of other arbitration committees. See meta:Arbitration Committee and meta:Wikimedia Arbitration committees election processes and meta:Global arbitration committee. Those last two links aren't really needed, but I thought they looked interesting. Carcharoth (talk) 22:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The Russian language Wikipedia has an dispute resolution system in place, up to and including RFAR. SergeyJ is currently involved in one RFAR which has been accepted, and another which has been recently rejected. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 23:45, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Searching user contributions

I've always wanted to be able to search things like the following, mainly in my own user contributions:

1. Any text added by me in any talk page that contains a certain word.
2. An edit (by me) on any project talk page that was a reply to a certain user, or at least in the vicinity of that user's signature.
3. An edit that inserted a certain template (possibly with "subst:").
4. Search a range of dates.

Until now, I just assumed that wasn't possible, but then I realized that we have Wikipedia:Tags, and the filters have very complex conditions. So at least we have a technical solution to do such things in bulk, and my question may boil down to whether it is possible to do the same thing (or simpler things) individually. — Sebastian 17:29, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

One rather brute-force way to accomplish all the searches you want would be to export all your edits to a plain text file, which you could then search with a standalone tool such as grep or with the search function of any text editor. However, I don't know offhand of a way to export all your edits to a text file. There are some desktop search programs which can search various kinds of personally relevant information such as your e-mail, chat logs, Web pages you have viewed, your local files, etc., but I have not heard of one that would be Wikipedia-aware. It sounds like you want something like a keylogger program which understands wikitext markup and stores a copy of everything you edit on Wikipedia, making it usefully searchable. In the meantime you might look at WP:EIW#Download, WP:EIW#Research, WP:EIW#Query, and WP:EIW#Search to see what other people are doing. Similar requirements for complex queries on Wikipedia's database come up in the domains of vandal fighting and research on Wikipedia. I'm sure somebody knows how to do the types of searches you want to do, but they might require something like setting up your own personal mirror of Wikipedia so you can run arbitrarily complex SQL queries. Unless you can find a suitable online tool somebody may have set up to allow you to run your own queries (such as maybe mw:API:Query). --Teratornis (talk) 19:29, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the links, I will have to look at those. I'm astonished that you don't see a connection between what I want and the existing filters. Even creating a new filter for each new query (there'd be about one per week) seems less work to me than mirroring all the talk pages and their history, or even all of Wikipedia. Am I misunderstanding how filters work? — Sebastian 19:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about edit filters, certainly not enough to see how to use them to run arbitrary queries on the Wikipedia database. If nobody else chimes in with anything useful, you might try asking on WP:VPT or perhaps on Wikipedia talk:Edit filter. I'm only (somewhat) familiar with the methods other people have described to do these kinds of complex searches. That doesn't rule out the use of new tools. The Help desk gets questions about how to do complex searches from time to time, and our answers are never very good as far as I have seen, suggesting that the Help desk is not the best place to ask these kinds of questions. I am the first to agree that Wikipedia's immediately apparent search features are woefully inadequate for editors. They seem more aimed at people who merely read articles and want to look something up, and then from only the current revisions of articles. Histories are considerably harder to search. --Teratornis (talk) 20:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

In short, yes, you are. Those tags are for the edit filter, which is a way to screen specific kinds of edits, especially those likely to be vandalism, such as blanking or repeated characters. They are not for individual users' desires, which is why the edit filter permission is highly limited. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 19:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

That part I understand - they have a different purpose. My question, however, was technical: If we can use complex search for purpose A, it stands to reason that there might be a way to use it for purpose B, as well. Or can it be that the problem is not technical, but rather intentional: Are there concerns, such as privacy, if people can use complex search for their own purpose?

As Teratornis suggested, I probably should move this question to a different location; I may do so depending on what I'll find out in the links the big helpful bird provided. — Sebastian 21:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd suspect the lack of potentially useful features has more to do with the lack of sufficient developers to develop them rather than any conscious plan not to develop them. The list of requested features for Wikipedia is probably very long. Given that lots of people are already going complex searches on Wikipedia by various existing methods, it seems unlikely that developing new methods to do the same kinds of searches would be a priority. --Teratornis (talk) 02:07, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

gk

which are the two things on earth that we can see from space?????????????????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.164.235.109 (talk) 19:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misevaluation, but it is our policy here to not do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn how to solve such problems.

Please attempt to solve the problem yourself first. You can search Wikipedia or search the Web.
If you need help with a specific part of your homework, the Reference desk can help you grasp the concept. Do not ask knowledge questions here, just those about using Wikipedia. --96.232.52.43 (talk) 19:19, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The question is ill-posed, since only a few people can become astronauts, given the enormous energy, pollution, and monetary costs of getting up there. The vast majority of people represented by the word "we" will never go into space and thus cannot see anything from space. As to what on the earth astronauts can see from space, that depends on many factors such as the astronaut's visual acuity, the orbital height, the clarity of the atmosphere below, whether it is day or night, the angle of the sun, etc. The phrase "the two things" makes no sense either, as if only two things are visible. See Commons:Category:Astronaut photography of Earth for images of hundreds of things astronauts have seen from space. --Teratornis (talk) 19:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

And not just earth. If you were in space, you could see just about everything in the universe that you could see from earth, except better.Missed the "on earth" part--SPhilbrickT 20:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

If your teacher actually posed the question that way, reply that the two most obvious things are the oceans and the continents. It's not what he/she wanted, but it shows how bad the question is. —teb728 t c 00:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Such claims are often about man-made objects. See http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:28, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving page

Google was able to find an article before. After moving it to its correct name, it redirects correctly from its old name but Google or any search engine does not list it automatically.

Does it take time before Search engines index it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.251.160.210 (talk) 19:26, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Scroll up a few items to my question, and you'll see that the search engine has not been updated since 8 Aug. Not sure why, or when it will be updated.--SPhilbrickT 19:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

So does wikipedia internal indexing affects indexing for other search engines also ? If I search article name in wikipedia, it finds it but not on yahoo or google search ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.180.235.217 (talk) 21:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

This depends on Google's indexing scheme, which we have no control over. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Google has a help forum you could try. --Teratornis (talk) 02:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

discrete mathematics/posets115.240.202.190 (talk) 19:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

if (a,)

You may want the mathematics reference desk--SPhilbrickT 19:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Map on Christianity article

Please read my post here. Someone with an image editor can handle this request. Thanks, Anupam^Talk 20:31, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Image workshop would be a better place for this request.--SPhilbrickT 20:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I have posted the same query at that location. With regards, Anupam^Talk 23:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Question about " This websites has been blocked REASON: Phishing Attempt

yesterday when I try typed the websites that I supposed to get there and sign in alike AIMOO.com I confused whats going on I never seen like this before. When I typed www.AIMOO.com waiting for open on websites somehow popped up whole black screen and said This Websites has been Blocked Reason: Phishing Attempt. I keep wondering what does it mean I never seen like this before first time I ever had on here when its popped up on websites screen yesterday. I dont know what its does mean? Please let us know about this. Does that mean someone tried break in everything on my wesbites, screen anywhere??? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.51.140.50 (talk) 21:07, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

This is not a suitable question for here, please ask on the Wikipedia:Reference desk.----o̴̿c̡̯̗̗̲̤͆͊̔̄c͖͇͌͂̏̍̎ọ̥͈͎̭͒n͇͈͔͚̰͈͖ͩ͌̆̆o̼͕̺̯̫̭ͣͪ̍ͬͪ̈ (talk) 21:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Listing order of new links, is there a protocol?

If I want to add a new link, under "external links", or "see also" internal or "notes", is there any rule about where to put it in the list? At the beginning (latest), or the end (last) or insert it somewhere else with a similar subject? JohnClarknew (talk) 21:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The Manual of Style doesn't offer guidance. I prefer alphabetical order (absent compelling obvious alternative). Keeps in mind that "Notes" is usually for footnotes, which is auto-generated.--SPhilbrickT 23:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Layout mentions alphabetical for See also and Further reading. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Alphabetized? Hmm. I can see users starting with A or AA or AAA just to get to the top of the list. Obviously a "common sense" decision. My common sense tells me that it should be in date of entry order, latest on top. For bios, often the latest entry is the obituary. Perhaps, the Manual of Style could be more specific about this. I note, though, that links placed within articles are favored. Thanks for the input. JohnClarknew (talk) 23:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

My head just exploded. We must be talking about different things. What does this mean: "I can see users starting with A or AA or AAA just to get to the top of the list."? --SPhilbrickT 00:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Since you ask, take any list of External links, write AAA in front of the link, and there you have it, first place in an alphabetical list. Check your yellow pages. So...explode awayyy... JohnClarknew (talk) 01:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

If the name of the site did not start with AAA, then that would be rather disingenuous. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Us representatives of http://aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com/ find Wikipedia a very favorable environment.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

However, it shouldn't be a huge problem. If an article has more than 3-4 external links anyways, most of them are likely in violation of WP:EL guidelines. External links sections should contain only a few links, such as official websites of the subject of the article, and little else. If there ARE lots and lots of external links, most are probably spam and not approrpriate for Wikipedia. --Jayron32 01:55, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

See also WP:SPAMHOLE. Adding external links temporarily to an article in development may be a useful step toward converting them into footnote citations, but unfortunately a common misconception among users new to Wikipedia is that the External links section is a great place to build a linkfarm. See WP:NOTLINKFARM. --Teratornis (talk) 03:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)