Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 July 3

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July 3

Blocking Defaults

Please see 25/8. That is the title of the film. You know when an article is like.. Example:123/Test. And under the title, in small print it will say Example | 123 because of the slashes. Is there any template I can use to block this from happening on the 25/8 article? ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 02:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Subpages are disabled in the mainspace, so it's fine as it is. Algebraist 02:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

What about the talk page? ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 03:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe such a template (or other method) exists. One could use personal javascript to hide the subpage uplink for Talk: pages whose corresponding mainspace page exists, but that's all I can think of. Algebraist 03:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I once posted to Talk:9#This is year 9 talk page to explain things to users following such a link. You could do similar at Talk:25, but I expect fewer users accidentally ending up there. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Appropriate Infobox for Brooklyn Borough Hall?

Do you know of one? It is on the List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Brooklyn. If you know of a list of infoboxes, that would help too. I found this Category:Buildings and structures infobox templates but it doesn't have anything useful to the article. Thanks Louis Waweru  Talk  03:10, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with {{Infobox building}}? Algebraist 03:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Nothing, just seeing if anyone has one for landmarks or government buildings. Louis Waweru  Talk  03:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

{{Infobox nrhp}}. Algebraist 03:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There we go, now that's granular. Thank you Louis Waweru  Talk  03:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Logo Copying

If you replicate a logo, and an image of the actual logo was not used in the replication, can it be uploaded to the Wikipedia as free? Such as public domain ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 03:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

A copy of a copyrighted work falls under the same copyright. That's kinda the point of copyright. The technical means by which the copy was produced aren't relevant. Algebraist 03:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay! ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 03:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

And see Commons:Commons:Derivative works. --Teratornis (talk) 20:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Aligning text to the center

You now how you can use <font color=color> </font> to change text color, is there a template I can use for aligning text to the center? Thanks! ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 04:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Algebraist 04:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Clever! ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 04:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

And we actually have a {{center}} template. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:50, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Forest Schools

Could I suggest that someone more adept at moving pages than I am moves Forest Schools to Forest School, incorporating the links and talk page already there? I am afraid of overwriting stuff if I try to do this myself, but I think it needs doing. Thanks.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Target page exists already, so this can't be done by normal users due to technical restriction; you need an admin to do this. I suggest you list it at Wikipedia:Requested Moves. —SpaceFlight89 (talk) 09:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You are suggesting a merger of two pages and not just a move from one page name to another. That doesn't belong on Wikipedia:Requested Moves. You could follow the proposed merger procedure instead but I would oppose it. Forest Schools is about a type of school. Forest School is a disambiguation page for schools called "Forest School" for whatever reason, for example named after a person. Some of them are not of the type. The two pages serve different purposes and should not be merged. But maybe names shold be changed, for example to "Forest school" for the type and "Forest School (disambiguation)" for the name? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:56, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Other website appearance

Why is my talk page and other user pages appearing on other websites:

• http://www.momblognetwork.com/content/user-talktyw7
• http://sthweb.bu.edu/shaw/anna-howard-shaw-center/biography?view=mediawiki&article=User_talk%3ATyw7
• http://wapedia.mobi/en/User_talk:Tyw7
• http://top40-charts.com/pedia.php?title=User_talk:Tyw7

Please reply asap. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 10:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

All pages on Wikipedia are published under a free GFDL license so people are free to copy, mirror or modify anything on Wikipedia and use it wherever they want. As to why these sites are mirroring your userpage, I don't know why; but they're free to do so. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 10:44, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

They download the entire database and import it to their system. {{noindex}} has no effect on mirrors like this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

How to prevent this? And what does the tag {{NOINDEX}} does? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 10:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Your talk page transcludes {{Usertalkheader}} which explains it may be found on other sites. Mirror sites must give credit to the source to satisfy the GFDL. Many fail to do so. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 10:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX}} tells search engines such as Google to not index your page. However, these mirror sites download the entire Wikipedia database and export it to their site; this includes user pages. {{Usertalkheader}} includes the notice that "If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site." I don't know of any way to prevent this and I have no clue why mirrors would want to include user pages. See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Are you reading the links in the replies? The magic word __NOINDEX__ uses noindex to tell search engines to not index the page. Wikipedia deliberately gives no method to stop mirrors. Below the edit box it says "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL. You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form."

There is disagreement about how mirrors and other data users must give credit to the source, for example you and others who have edited your talk page. Many mirrors do nothing at all which is clearly disallowed. Many consider it enough credit to give a link to the page where the page history can be used to find contributors. Some mirrors give a list of all contributors in the page history. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The Momblog website poses the most concern because it seems to have been POSTED by a user not by an automatic mirror. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 12:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

The weirdest thing to me is that it's a diff page. The Mom Blog poster jackjames has apparently posted a lot of random looking Wikipedia diffs, sometimes seconds apart so it may be automated. The url of the diff is given as source. Many of the diffs have consecutive numbers, indicating they were consecutive edits at Wikipedia. An edit to your talk page just happened to be among them. I wouldn't worry about it. I might be worried about getting rid of this junk and blocking the poster if I was a Mom Blog moderator. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

How to make my talk page to be the top google search result when I search for Talk tyw7? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 13:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Tyw7 currently starts with {{NOINDEX}} which means Google is told to not include it at all in search results. I guess most mirrors will effectively ignore this and not noindex their copies of the page. It requires adding a special HTML meta tag to the page. NOINDEX was added in [1]. If you remove it then Google should detect it at some time and include the page, but we cannot control placing in search results. There are ways to attempt to influence it with search engine optimization (SEO), but I don't think you should use Wikipedia pages for SEO. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Recipients of the Legion of Merit

How to I add Col. Wayne E. Thurman's name to the "Recipients of the Legion of Merit list? Col. Thurman was Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff in the War Department when General Thomas T. Handy was Deputy Chief of Staff. General Thomas T. Handy awarded Wayne the Legion of Merit on 31 August 1947. I have the citation and a photo of Gen. Handy presenting it to Wayne, then a Lt. Colonel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.234.161.168 (talk) 11:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I guess you are referring to Category:Recipients of the Legion of Merit. That is a category and not a list. See Help:Category. Only Wikipedia pages can be added to categories and there appears to be no page about Wayne E. Thurman. If he satisfies Wikipedia:Notability (people) then you or somebody else might write a biography about him and then add it to categories. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Wayne Thurman doesn't have a wikipedia page at the moment. If you could provide a reliable website or book which would give information about him, I'm sure an editor would create a stub page, and add his name to the list of LoM recipients, but we need the citation reference. I can't find a reference to Wayne Thurman through searching Google, etc, but if you can provide the citation, and where we can find it, I'm sure any editor would be happy to add it to the list PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 11:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Infobox image not working

I can't get this image to show up in the Chester Grosvenor and Spa article. I've followed the tl:Infobox building usage and also tried just about everything else. I've also tried a different image, to see if that was the problem. I've added several photos to infoboxes before and never had this problem. Can someone help, please! Maedin\^talk 11:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You had image= twice, with the second one blank. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

D'oh. Smacks forehead. Thank you, Gadget! Maedin\^talk 12:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Press Council

What is the benefit of the nigerian press council decree to the nigerian journalist —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.138.19.243 (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried the Humanities section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. TNXMan 13:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Please 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. PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 14:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC) Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not Yahoo Answers. Please stop asking such questions here. Thank you. All the best, Kayau (Talk to me! See what I've done! Sign my guestbook!) 04:04, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Starting a new article

I would like to start a new article on the Three Dimensional Black Board. I was concerned that it might be a COI and was referred to Requested Article. I'm not sure what category to put the request in, as it is both an educational tool and a sophisticated scientific instrument. I have been ponderinng this for quite some time, and seem to have reached an impasse. I am sure that this would be a notable topic, and a valuable addition to the encyclopedia. If I can get someone to start the article, I am sure I can provide the necessary references and details without using Original Research. Any ideas? Phineas J. Whoopee (talk) 13:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

From your user name, I'm assuming you are referring to the fictional device from Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, I don't think we really need an article about it, unless you had a lot of detail with good references! PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 14:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's a COI, but probably not very notable. All the best, Kayau (Talk to me! See what I've done! Sign my guestbook!) 04:02, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

SMTP outgoing address for your e-mail server

Hello

Can you please provide me with the SMTP outgoing address for your e-mail server.

Thank you. Regards.

JJ van den Berg E-mail address :- <blanked>

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck.

Also, as wikipedia is a very public internet site, your e-mail address has been removed by Tnxman307! PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 14:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

handling e-mail notifications

Resolved

- Cureden 15:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

hi. question archive at the archive already handled this a bit, but i wanted to add reasoning & maybe suggest some possible solutions.
my watchlist produces on average 1-2 notifications a day. current setup requires me to manually check my watchlist every now and then (which i can't always do and often forget), older changes wanish from the watchlist and it seems to me that watchlist 'diff' links only show the latest change to the page (thus i often miss prior edits). that is very, very inconvenient and i constantly miss edits that i'd like to know about. what about enabling this feature, but leaving it to 'off' by default, so users would have to explicitly enable it - and if there still are performance concerns, what about some arbitrary limit, like "you can only enable email notifications if your watclist is < 50 pages" ? i believe that would notably improve quality of the contents - and i wouldn't have to hammer servers by viewing watchlist manually when that's not needed ;) --Richlv (talk) 14:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It is enabled. Check your preferences. Algebraist 14:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

oh. my. awesomely awesome, THANKS. --Richlv (talk) 15:00, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Email Confirmations Not Working For Me

I'm not receiving any email confirmations at the address I want to use, craig-wikipedia at theburleys.net, whereas if I change my preferences to use my work address (with a completely different domain name) it works right away. I'd rather not use my work address or use a different domain name that I have (hosted alongside theburleys.net).

Is theburleys.net "blacklisted" in some way, due e.g. to lots of Joe Jobs that have been sent, forging that domain name? If so, could it be unblocked, at least selectively, for this situation? If not, what is the problem with sending emails to that address? I receive plenty of other emails at that domain, but don't even see any attempts to deliver emails to me at that address in my SMTP server logs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cburley (talk • contribs) 15:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you doing the @ smbol right? craig-wikipedia at theburleys.net ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 17:44, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, just substituting it here to reduce scrapes (and edited your post accordingly). -- Cburley (talk) 18:18, July 3, 2009 (UTC)

How correct internal link pointing to disambiguation page?

See Ryan Lizza and link to The Washingtonian.

Washingtonian link goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washingtonian;

I think it should point to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washingtonian_(magazine).

I tried to edit the link following formatting from the Cheat Sheet but my edit results in a "page does not exist."

Can you show proper correction?

Thanks, —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.67.153 (talk) 17:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You want an internal link that points to Washingtonian to point to Washingtonian (magazine), correct? ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 17:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The best way to do this is to add a piped link (which I've done here). Thus, [[Washingtonian (magazine)|Washingtonian]] produces Washingtonian. TNXMan 17:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're reading Wikis for Dummies, please note that there is no standard for wikis, so the Cheat Sheet probably didn't work. All the best, Kayau (Talk to me! See what I've done! Sign my guestbook!) 03:59, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Page view statistics

Whenever I click the PVS link in the revision history, my browser says that http://stats.grok.se/en/latest doesn't exist, is this just me? ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 17:55, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't work for me either. Cureden 18:00, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd guess it's temporarily offline. It was working fine the day before yesterday, when I last used it. Gonzonoir (talk) 18:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Crap, I use that alot! Hope it's back by tonight ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 23:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I haven't tried for now, but I remember that it didn't work yesterday. All the best, Kayau (Talk to me! See what I've done! Sign my guestbook!) 03:58, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

It's back now \o/ The developer notes at the bottom of the page that it's a beta service that could change at any time, though. Gonzonoir (talk) 14:19, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

What is the best approach to sections copied from other articles?

Resolved.

I was reading an article and noticed a problem in the references. It was a named reference without the full reference where the name was introduced. A quick search led me to the original where several paragraphs were copied from another article in Wikipedia. I could do anything from fix the reference and leave the text to condense and link back with a {{main}} to a total rewrite. Rather than fumble through policy pages and commentaries, I was hoping that I could get some generalized recommendations on how to approach the problem and figure out which policies take precedence. Also, are there any additional actions I should take? In advance, thank you. Novangelis (talk) 18:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

If the text fits in the article into which it's been pasted, I'd say leave it there, but take two extra steps:

1. Add a note to the article talk page noting that part of the text was copied and pasted from another article, and provide a link back to the source article - that's the best we can do toward attribution as part of our license.
2. Copy over the refs from the original article, so they work in the destination article too.

I had to do something very similar the other day on Vinyl chloride - take a look at its edit history and talk page to see what I did. Gonzonoir (talk) 18:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Done and done. Thank you. Even with several hours of looking through policies, I doubt I would have found this combination. Novangelis (talk) 19:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome, and your fix looks spot on. Marking this one as resolved. Gonzonoir (talk) 14:31, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyright infringement

Am I allowed to commercially reuse an image from a Wikipedia article if it is licensed with a GNU? I researched this in FAQs but am still a little incredulous that I can copy an image for free. Thank you. 173.46.230.215 (talk) 19:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Did you take a look at WP:REUSE? – ukexpat (talk) 19:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Image linking

The age-old concept of turning an image into a wikilink still eludes me. How is it done, and how do I do it? Enlighten me! a little insignificant 20:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

See the links under WP:EIW#Clickable. --Teratornis (talk) 20:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You simply need to place a colon at the beginning of the link. Thus, [[:Image:Example.jpg]] renders Image:Example.jpg (this can also be piped, like any other wikilink). TNXMan 13:53, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Jay Adams

This is from Jay Adams and concerns Nouthetic Counseling. What is wrong is the listing of organizations supposedly associated with our view. Some, such as Niel Anderson, are quite different. Some might like to be, but really aren't. Moreover, there are many more books available--over 100--so your listing is small. A complete list may be obtained from Timeless Texts. I would be happy to correspond with your editors concerning any matter relating to the entry. Thank you, Jay Adams —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.116.129.246 (talk) 20:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. You might want to bring this up on the article's talk page instead. a little insignificant 20:37, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia font displayed hard to read

Hi, after formating my Laptop the wikipedia seems to be the only webpage i cant seem to read ok. The page loads correctly but the font it's quite unreadable, manuscript type. Is there any missing fonts i should install? or did you guys changed your fonts? articles look readable when they show on search engines, but as soon as i enter the wikipedia they all turn to this font. Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.231.117.78 (talk) 21:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not specify what font text should be displayed in. Instead, it tells your browser to use its default sans-serif font. If your browser's sans-serif font is set to something unreadable, you should change the setting. Algebraist 21:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

A Bay Area philosifer said:

I wouldn't want to be within 100 miles ofr a Major Metropolitan area when the welfare checks bounce. "Who was that man? 22:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)198.69.252.74 (talk)

Have you tried the Miscellaneous section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. Xenon54 (talk) 22:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

And be sure to specify the bay. On Wikipedia you communicate with strangers around the world. I would probably assume, due to my U.S. bias, that you refer to the San Francisco Bay Area, but that would only be a guess. --Teratornis (talk) 02:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)