Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 January 11

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January 11

Associating user id with talk page id in wiki dumps

I'm processing the most recently finished en-wiki-...-stubs-meta-history.xml dump for a research project and have run in to the following questions:

1. Is there an easy way to associate someone's user id with their talk page id (as well as their user page id)?
2. If a user changes their user name, does their associated talk page keep the same page id? How about subpages of their talk page (eg. User talk:User_Name/old)?
3. How does user name changes affect user name collisions over time? For example, the user name "Angela" has had about 28 different user ids associated with it over Wikipedia's history. If an user edited "User talk:Angela" who were they talking to, the current (as of the dump) user id associated with "Angela" or the user id whose user name was "Angela" at that time?

I asked this question on Village Pump (Technical) earlier today but am unsure if that was the appropriate forum for this question, hopefully this is the best place for this question. Thanks for the help!

Andlarry (talk) 00:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:VPT was actually closer to the mark, given that questions of greater technical difficulty go there, but if you're not getting a response, it's probably because you are asking a question that goes well beyond what most Wikipedia users normally think about. Your question is sort of like asking a ski instructor to explain the physics of snow. (The Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia.) If you want to research Wikipedia, you have to learn a lot of specialized material, and figure out who the other users are who know that material. If you aren't an expert with MySQL or interested in becoming one, I'd say you're probably in for some tough sledding. There may be some limited help available from the small community (if we could call it that) of people (mostly academics, I suppose) who research Wikipedia. The first step would be to read everything linked from WP:EIW#Research, WP:EIW#Download, WP:EIW#Query, and WP:EIW#MediaWiki. You should either find answers there, or at least a better idea of who might know what you need. Are you doing this research project entirely on your own, or do you have an advisor? --Teratornis (talk) 00:41, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Teratornis, I appreciate for your help! I'm happy to dig into the media wiki software to find my answer, I posted because I ran out of places to look. Thanks for the links, I'll be sure to explore them. Other than a direct answer to my questions, that is the sort of help I was looking for. I do have an advisor, who I can talk to about getting in contact with other wiki researchers. Thanks again! --Andlarry (talk) 01:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

And I am sure there is much helpful material over at MediaWiki. – ukexpat (talk) 01:15, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm slightly curious about who is formulating the questions you are trying to answer, and what information he/she used to formulate these questions. Namely, I'm wondering why the information sources that motivated the questions aren't enough to guide the path to answering them. That's a circuitous way of saying that I think before someone could formulate meaningful questions to answer about Wikipedia, one would have to know a lot about Wikipedia, e.g. more than I know about Wikipedia. Because without such detailed knowledge of Wikipedia's internal workings, how would one have any idea whether one was asking the right questions? Generally a thesis advisor should know a lot about whatever he/she sends the graduate student to investigate, at least enough to be able to know what the meaningful questions are, and if not how to answer them, at least where to send the student to learn the existing state of the art which the student will presumably attempt to extend. So I'm a little puzzled by what I'm seeing here - the student asking for help on the Wikipedia Help desk. This is unnervingly consistent with the hypothesis that the thesis advisor is kind of shooting in the dark. What specific background does your advisor have with wiki technology? You don't have to answer here, just take these as thought questions, but for the kinds of questions he/she seems to be sending you to investigate, I'd say the minimum qualification for an advisor to have any idea what he/she is doing would be something like:

• Has edited extensively on at least one wiki. (If there is a way to understand wikis without actually using them, I cannot imagine it.) I'd look for an edit count in the 5000+ range on at least one well-developed wiki and on at least one poorly-developed wiki (so the advisor clearly understands the role of the user community along with the raw capabilities of the software). The standard is high here because we are talking about someone who should have authoritative knowledge and thus be capable of extending the state of the art.
• Has installed and administered at least one wiki from scratch, and preferably written extensions for it. Granted, this is getting into technician stuff, but there is no comprehensive theory of wikis yet that academics could carve out as a domain entirely separate from banging on some code. (Try to imagine a theory of glassblowing which doesn't involve actually blowing any glass. That would probably be more attainable, actually, than a theory of wikis that wouldn't require any direct experience, since glassblowing is just physics.)
• Has published in a peer-reviewed journal on some relevant topic.
• Uses impressive jargon such as "Commons-based peer production" and "Social production of value".
• Is utterly irresistible to women. (Sadly, this doesn't seem to be a consequence of developing expertise on wikis. But fortunately it is also not a prerequisite.)

I don't mean to get all Simon Cowell here, but if you're writing a thesis, you're going to defend it before a committee, and there's a slim chance someone on your committee might have a minimal degree of competence in this topic. In which case you'll have to explain yourself to the satisfaction of someone with my minimal degree of competence. You want to be sure that when you go to defend, you know more about your topic than anyone else in the room. While you're plowing through the voluminuous reading material I linked to above, also read everything I linked from User:Teratornis/Theory of Wikipedia, which lists some authors who are trying to develop a theory for this stuff. You want to read everything by Clay Shirky and Yochai Benkler, for example. If nothing else, Benkler's The Wealth of Networks will cure any insomnia problem. --Teratornis (talk) 06:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

My reply at the village pump might also be a good insomnia cure for some people. :-) In short: "probably not", "yes if the page is moved", and "dunno". I've done a lot of research on page history to try to find old edits - see User:Graham87/Page history observations - but I'm not a MySQL expert by any stretch of the imagination. Graham87 06:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

PAGESINCATEGORY question

{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Organizations}} is, at the moment, returning a count of 35:

Count: 34

But the count is (as I understand it) supposed to include pages within subcategories. Since Category:Organizations has 21 subcategories; the total, inclusive count is obviously much, much greater than 35.

I've read the relevant (I think) help page at Meta: m:Help:Category#Count, which is rather terse, and gives no clue as to what might need to be done (null edit? separate new page?) in order to get this magic word to work correctly with this category. Suggestions?

(By contrast, {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Living people}} seems to work correctly, returning a number around 330,000.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

m:Help:Category#Count contains a misunderstanding of the source it mentions: m:Help:Magic words#Other_2. The latter says: "Returns the number of pages in a given category, including sub-category pages and file description pages." Here "sub-category pages" only refers to the category page a subcategory is displayed on, and not the pages in that subcategory. Category:Living people really does contain hundreds of thousands pages directly and not in subcategories. The category is not intended for manual browsing. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Category:Organizations has 21 subcategories as you say. Adding the currently 14 articles gives 35 category members in total so {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Organizations}} is correct. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit no-show

Resolved

I've just deleted some vd at Portal:Contents/Portals#Mathematics_and_logic. The "edit" page looks clean but the actual page still shows the vd version. The page is semi-protected and I'm autoconfirmed. Help? hydnjo talk 02:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

strange. It's looking good half the time. Empire3131 (talk) 02:18, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you try purging the page? Your edit was made to the subpage Portal:Contents/Portals/Mathematics and logic and not [[Portal:Contents/Portals, so possibly the older version is still showing on the transcluded page. Cheers. Chamal ^talk 02:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You edited [1] a transcluded page. That can happen without noticing it when you click a transcluded edit link. If you want the edit to propagate quickly to a page where it's transcluded then you can purge that page. It appears Portal:Contents/Portals has either been purged already or the software automatically updated it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. I shoulda' realized that when "Save page" returned only the transcluded section. Thanks all. hydnjo talk 02:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete

I had previously created a template page, which I have now placed within an article. How can I delete the Template page now that there is nothing there? --Sweet Pea 1981 (talk) 03:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Only administrators can delete pages. You can place {{db-author}} on it. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:48, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

• If the template is useful for repeated use, I'd like ask you not to delete it. By the way, the template will still exist unless you blanked it. Using subst: to get the material in the article doesn't affect the template and simply adding {{template}} to the page means that deleting the template will also result in the deletion of the content, since the template is still being called. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:33, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The content of the template - Template:FNBO Direct Rates - was copied and pasted into a bigger article - FNBO Direct, so I think the template can be deleted without adverse consequence. I have tagged it. – ukexpat (talk) 16:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

assessing articles

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 02:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

How do I assess an article without a wikiproject template? Also, how would I assess an article as a 'set index' or 'disambiguation' class page? OlEnglish (talk) 03:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

First I would ask why the article has no WikiProject template. Is this because:

• There is no suitable WikiProject.
• There is a suitable WikiProject, but no member of that project has noticed this article yet.

I think you need to resolve that conditional branch before doing anything else. If you tell us the title of the article, someone can tell you which branch you are on. As to the second question, I've heard of disambiguation pages, but what do you mean by "set index"? Can you give an example? There are list pages, if that's what you mean. I'm not sure how someone would assess a disambiguation page. I don't think I've heard of that before (which doesn't mean nobody is doing it, I just haven't heard of it yet). There are, however, featured lists, so there is some rigmarole for assessing them. For more information on assessment, see WP:EIW#Quality which for all I know might contradict everything I've said. Trust the consensus guidelines, not the individual editor, no matter how glib and compelling he thinks he is. --Teratornis (talk) 06:25, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Assessments are either for an individual WikiProject or for Wikipedia 1.0, with the exception of the separate featured article, featured list, and good article processes. So, if you want to assess an article, you have to add a WikiProject template. Most WikiProjects support assessing pages as disambiguation pages or set index articles, but you'll have to look at the specific WikiProject template to see if it does. I think that WikiProject templates that don't support those use NA-Class instead. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 19:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. However I have come across articles that are 'assessed' as disambiguation or set index without any wikiproject template at all in their talk pages, and some like Dodge Charger have the template assessing the article as a stub yet it still reads 'set index' at the top of the article. I guess what I'm asking is how is this done? I have "Display an assessment of an article's quality" checked in my preferences. Is this just an obsolete Wikipedia 1.0 leftover feature? Also, does every article NEED to be associated with a wikiproject? Should this be criteria for an article to be upgraded to good article status? OlEnglish (talk) 00:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like you're talking about the assessment information displayed by this user script, which only partly relies on WikiProject assessments. For disambiguation and set index pages, it just looks for the DOM objects produced by the templates used to mark such pages. These are essentially page types rather than assessments. (By the way, if you notice a bug with that script, please report it at this page.)

In the case of Dodge Charger, the article is correctly detected by the assessment script as being a set index article; note the {{SIA}} template at the bottom of the page. I'm pretty sure the stub assessment on that article's talk page is incorrect, since a set index article follows the style guidelines for stand-alone lists rather than for articles.

As for whether every article needs to be part of a WikiProject, I don't think it's required. However, there are so many WikiProjects that almost every article will be associated with at least one, and it's helpful to place articles under all applicable WikiProjects so they can better keep track of articles under their scope. It's not strictly required for good article status, though. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 01:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you very much. OlEnglish (talk) 02:43, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Google

Hello,

I was wondering how to post my Wikipedia article on Google. It is all set when I search for it on Wikipedia, but it doesn't show up at all under Google.

The URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morristown_UFO

Thanks so much for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Soron616 (talk • contribs) 06:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe there is nothing we can do to influence Google's indexing schedule. You just have to wait. I've seen delays as long as four days. --Teratornis (talk) 07:03, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It might take a while to get indexed. There are no incoming links from other articles in the mainspace, so adding links from relevant articles might be a good idea. It will help the spiders find the page quickly. --Unpopular Opinion (talk) 07:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

You should also add categories. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:17, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

And folks, let's not forget that we are here to create an encyclopedia, not win points for getting articles to show up in Google searches. – ukexpat (talk) 16:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm still fairly new, so I hope it's ok that I add my 2-cents. First, as the article does see more views, it will probably change. That's to say that an article isn't "owned" by any one person here. Don't be offended by this Soron616, it's simply our way of being open to all, and improving all the articles here. Your hard work is duly noted, appreciated, and preserved in history. Regarding links: wiki markup seems to work in such a fashion that words that are "internal" links get added to the "keyword" tag in the html markup. (yes, I know the phrase html markup is redundant ;)). This, (along with many other factors), typically causes topics on Wikipedia to eventually rank very highly in Google search results. So, if you have the words that will be searched for "linked" to other wiki articles (UFO, Morristown, etc.) it will eventually be ranked quite high. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ched Davis (talk • contribs) 16:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC) oops ... sig: Ched (talk) 16:53, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

After reading through it ...I might add .. "Job well done" by the way. Ched (talk) 16:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Children/people who inspire

How can I use your directory to find a list of children or people who inspire others? I am trying to generate a list of names for my students to then use the internet to locate the information on such people. Thank you for your help. Theresa Murray —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.89.4 (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view policy would likely prevent such a category from being created. The person would have to have some sort of magazine or newspaper article written about how they are so inspiring. Xenon54 12:44, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

You could try looking at selected subcategories of Category:Children which shows some children who have become notable for different reasons. But it varies whether they can be called inspirational and it's not the kind of judgement Wikipedia makes. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:12, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Just for fun, I searched Wikipedia with Google for: "inspirational children", and I found a glaring example of peacock language and non-neutrality in St Matthew Academy#The Three Houses of St Matthew Academy. In particular, the glowing praise for Mother Teresa deserves a modicum of balance. --Teratornis (talk) 20:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Time lag for updates to "What links here"

I've poked around enough to understand that, when I change a link in a template, there are a couple of tasks that get thrown into the job queue. The first is to update each page that transcludes the template, so that it shows the updated information. The second is to update the "What links here" for the article that used to link from the template, but now no longer does.

I also understand that the length of time before these actions get completed depends on the length of the job queue. Unfortunately, I don't have any context regarding that number. The job queue is currently at almost 1 million — is that long?

I'm asking because it appears to be taking a very, very long time for "What links here" to update, even though the transclusions have gone through. For example, back on December 20th, I changed a link in {{Template:Country Radio Stations in Illinois}}, from WAAG (FM) to WAAG, following a page move. Three weeks later, the "What links here" for WAAG (FM) still shows the pages that transclude that template. I have a number of similar cases. While this often happened in the past, it seems that the lag for this has stretched from a day or two back in the summer to three weeks and counting now.

So, is this normal? Aside from null edits at every single transcluding page, is there anything I can do about it? It's not a huge problem in that the correct information is showing in the articles themselves, but it makes the job of monitoring incoming links to disambiguation pages very difficult when links that have been fixed appear not to be. Mlaffs (talk) 18:33, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It may be me grasping the wrong end of the stick, but are you sure you've followed the redirect from WAAG back to WAAG (FM)? When I look at the "what links here" for the latter it only shows the following, none of which are transclusions, and all of which are links.

Wikipedia:Help desk (links)

WBWN (links)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/WikiProject Illinois articles by quality log (links)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Illinois/Assessment (links)

User:AlexNewArtBot/IllinoisSearchResult/archive5 (links)

WLUV (links)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Radio station articles by quality log (links)

Again, I may be missing something, but all of those appear to be correct, and wouldn't need to update following your change in December. _Gb^T/c 19:15, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake, it's WBWN and WLUV that are the issue, isn't it. To clarify, then, the problem is the fact that WBWN and WLUV are still showing up as linking to WAAG (FM) even though the template transcluded onto those pages has been updated to point directly at WAAG? _Gb^T/c 19:19, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's the problem exactly. Here's an example that's a day older, and much more wide-spread. {{Template:Cumulus Media}}, edited on December 19th to change a link from KBED (AM) to KBED. There are a huge number of articles transcluding this template, all of which are showing the updated version — some of them have been cleared from the KBED (AM) "What links here", but a huge number of them remain. Mlaffs (talk) 19:34, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, well, just to double check it's not anything else, let me edit one of the two pages to see if that pushes it out of the links list for WAAG (FM). _Gb^T/c 19:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

And it's just done that - WLUV is no longer on the list. Must be a job queue issue, then, I guess, although why it's taking so long is beyond me - I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts? _Gb^T/c 19:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Updates not appearing

Trying to update electoral results in the riding of Leeds-Grenville from 1988 and before. However when I try and save my updates within the result charts, my updates do not show up! However when I go back to re-edit, they show up on the edit page. Click re-save? They don't show up on the actual page!

Please help!

Political junky (talk) 19:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you bypassed your browser cache and done a server purge? – ukexpat (talk) 20:17, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

MOTD lag

Is anyone else experiencing a server lag at MOTD? Click the link; what is the last motto in the 'in review' section? TopGearFreak 20:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

If you mean the latest one, ie. the top one, then I've got "if you don't like the weather, wait a minute". _Gb^T/c 20:40, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

No, I meant the bottom one. Also, on top, I've got "Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt". TopGearFreak 20:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

For me, bottom is "Toot and come in." The weather one is 10 from the bottom. The top one is the same. Xenon54 20:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

In that case bottom one for me is "be a person and respect others as persons". It's number 4.14. "Toot and come in" is 4.11, "let me win..." is nowhere to be seen. _Gb^T/c 21:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Although on the actual page in question - Wikipedia:Motto_of_the_day/Nominations/In_review - (rather than the one being transcluded onto WP:MOTD) "Let me win" is .1, "toot and come in" is .25 and "if you don't like the weather" is at .15. _Gb^T/c 21:03, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Bottom motto for me is "Be a person and respect others as persons", yet when I go to edit it the motto that comes up is "no guts no glory". I purged the cache and it's the same. Help? TopGearFreak 21:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Clicking on edit alongside "Be a person and respect others" from Wikipedia:Motto of the day/Nominations will open up section T-20 on Wikipedia:Motto of the day/Nominations/In review, which (because it's not being transcluded properly) corresponds with "No guts no glory" - likewise, clicking on edit alongside "You write with ease to show your breeding", the section above "be a person" on Wikipedia:Motto of the day/Nominations will open up the section above "no guts, no glory" on Wikipedia:Motto of the day/Nominations/In review, which is "what do we live for". The question, therefore, is why isn't it transcluding the latter onto the former properly? _Gb^T/c 21:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Have purged both pages, and it looks like the two tie up to each other (to me, at least) now. _Gb^T/c 21:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I have seen this problem before at the MOTD nom page. Even after purging, I saw ones that were not there anymore. Maybe some techy guy can help us with this? Chamal ^talk 00:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

image weirdness

Resolved

See WP:RD/C#svg 2 png curious. The image, to all who see it, is a white box, but the image exists. I've tried purging the image page and the RD page, but to no avail. This is seriously weird. Any help? flaminglawyer^c 21:32, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

• I commented on the reference desk page. May be on to something, maybe not. —Noah 22:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

• It's fixed now; there was an error in the SVG code. - Erik Baas (talk) 23:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Tweaking Special:LinkSearch

When using Special:LinkSearch, I can't seem to find a way to limit returns by namespace. Does anyone know of a tweak to LinkSearch (or of a different utility altogether) which would allow me to filter or sort returns? At the moment I'd like to be able to limit results to links in the article namespace only. Ultimately it would be handy to be able to sort LinkSearch results by namespace or by Wikipedia page name, rather than just by external link name. Cheers! TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)