Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 March 11

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March 11

RfA

How do you start a Request for administrator-ship? Immunize (talk) 00:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Nominate. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If you are thinking of creating a nomination for yourself, I strongly recommend you read Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship and especially the parts about What RfA contributors look for and hope to see and What RfA contributors look for and hope not to see. In short, I took a quick look and I think you would not have a plausible chance of passing an RfA nomination at the present time for a number of reasons, mostly related to experience, which I will expand upon on your talk page if you desire but I think would be inappropriate here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone ever passed an RfA shortly after asking on the Help desk how to do it? --Teratornis (talk) 05:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge. TNXMan 21:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You need GAs and FAs or you haven't a chance. Soxwon (talk) 05:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That's not strictly true, please don't spread misinformation. GlassCobra 20:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Soxwon, there are many admins who have no GAs or FAs (for example, I have one solitary GA) - some admins are big content creators, others are not. Looking at the last 10 successful RfAs (these figures are based on their answers to questions at RfA and/or their user pages):

Tim Song: 0 GA, 0 FA

The Wordsmith: 1 GA 0 FA

Kingpin13: 0 GA 0 FA

Mike Cline: 0 GA 0 FA

Father Goose: 0 GA 0 FA

Phantomsteve: 1 GA 0 FA

J04n: 3 GA 0 FA

Calmer Waters: 0 GA 0 FA

Taelus: 0 GA 0 FA

Leonard^Bloom: 2 GA 0 FA

Which goes to show that your statement is true - none of those (that's going back to the end of January) have any FAs, and 7 of them don't have a GA! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 21:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(anecdote) When I went up for the mop (2006/7 seems like such a long time ago...) I don't think I had any GAs or FAs, and that fact was not -- to my knowledge -- brought up by anyone who participated in the discussion. Granted, standards have changed, so that statement might not be completely accurate in 2010, and of course I don't mean to insinuate that article-building doesn't help. Currently I have worked on 2 GAs, but does that mean I would stand a better chance of passing than if I had no GAs? The only way to be sure is to stand for the mop again. But I digress; in summary, it is a definite falsehood that GAs or FAs are required to pass. Xenon54 / talk / 21:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

What If I use the information posted by others on wikipedia, is there any guidline for the same?

Hi,

I am using wikipedia for a long time. I was thinking about using this informaion for my own purpose. is there any guideline for using this content. If there is any where I can find that?

waiting for your response,

Anant P. Agwane [phone no. redacted] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.214.86 (talk) 08:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi: you can find the rules for how Wikipedia content can be reused at this page. In a nutshell, you can use most Wikipedia content so long as you attribute it to Wikipedia, and if you make any derivative versions so long as you clearly identify the changes and make the derivative version available on the same terms as Wikipedia. The situation is a little more complex for some media files, but that page should set it all out. Let us know if you have further questions. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

NB I have removed your telephone number from your post to protect your privacy, because this is a very highly visible page online. If you would like to have it removed permanently from the page history, please see Wikipedia:Requests for oversight. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The telephone number has been removed from the history by a member of the Oversight Team at my request. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Newly created account

I created my account here just hours ago. I was surprised to see that an account with the same name has also been created in the Bulgarian Wikipedia (and other Wikipedias), and when I have logged in here, I am logged in in every other Wikipedia I browse. In other words, my account is not just for here, but for every edition of the project. But I already have an account in the Bulgarian Wikipedia since 2007. Does that mean that I now have two accounts there and I can be accused of sock puppetry? --Магьосник (talk) 12:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You must've set up a unified login when you created your account on the English Wikipedia, so it created accounts on other projects. You can see a list of Wikipedias that you have an account for with the name Theurgist here. If you created an account on the Bulgarian Wikipedia with a different username, then that means you do have two accounts there, but you're probably not going to be accused of sock puppetry. The rules may be different on the Bulgarian Wikipedia, but here sock puppetry is when you use two accounts deceptively, and you are not doing that. --Mysdaao ^talk 13:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I found out that the list you provided contains only Wikipedias that I have browsed while having been logged in here. I just made an experiment and opened a page of the Georgian language Wikipedia, and an account with the same name was automatically created there (as you can see in the list). How can I prevent this in the future? --Магьосник (talk) 15:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you can, it's a feature of the unified login system. Don't worry though, it is not sockpuppetry - that is using an alternate account on the same Wikimedia project for underhand purposes such as evading a block or a ban or !vote stacking at an Afd discussion. It is perfectly OK to maintain a second account for legitimate purposes, for example, I use User:Ukexpatmobile for accessing Wikipedia from mobiles devices. – ukexpat (talk) 16:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Missing password

Hey Help desk,

I represent a company, which has info about it in Wikipedia in 4 languages. I have made three of the language versions and have passwords to enter, edit and save my editing with. The fourth language version, Germany, was created by a German summer trainee a couple of years ago. Now I would like to update the info, and have done so, too, bur for some reason I can't get the German version's updates visible. I suspect it has to do with the password that I don't have for the German version? What can I do about it?

With kindest regards,

T. Roine —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tikaroine (talk • contribs) 13:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You have a unified login, so you have the same username four Wikipedias in different languages (listed here). This also means that you have the same password on each Wikipedia, so that probably isn't the problem. Your account on the German Wikipedia has made only two contributions over a year ago to the German version of the article. You haven't saved any edits on the German version lately. It's possible you're pushing the German equivalent of "Show preview" instead of the German equivalent of "Save page", which is what you need to push to save an edit. If you speak the language, you should ask your question on the German Wikipedia Help Desk, which is at Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia. --Mysdaao ^talk 14:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia is running in a special mode: All edits by new users or users who are not logged in are hidden until a regular editor has checked they are not vandalism. Sometimes this takes a few days. Did you update your company's business statistics on Monday? Then you weren't logged in at the time, which is fine.

I have just sighted the edit for you at de:Nordkalk. If you get this problem again, ask at the German Wikipedia, or better, go directly to de:Wikipedia:Gesichtete Versionen/Anfragen. That's the place where you can ask for sighting if you don't want to wait any longer. Hans Adler 14:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I know this isn't what you were asking about, but from your description above you appear to have broken the Wikipedia policy against sharing accounts, and the guideline on conflict of interest. I suggest you read these, and also WP:ORG and WP:RS, as the article Nordkalk is likely to nominated for deletion unless you get some references added from independent reliable sources. --ColinFine (talk) 00:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

How does this work?  : fr: Canal de la Colme

You learn so much by seeing other people's code. I recently discovered I could do this [[:fr:Canal de la Colme]] yielding this fr:Canal de la Colme. Somehow I can put :fr: before an article name and Wiki will look it up in the French Wikipedia! Of course you would probably only do this if the English Wiki did not have that same article.

What is this functionality called so that I can review its documentation and options? GloverEpp (talk) 13:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Interlanguage links. --Mysdaao ^talk 13:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that most of that page is about adding the interlanguage links in the column on the left side of the page. You may also be interested in linking to other Wikimedia projects: InterWikimedia links. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that you can pipe such links too, so that [[:fr:Canal de la Colme|Canal de la Colme]] renders as Canal de la Colme. Note also that the first colon (:) is very important - without that the link appears in the list of interlanguage links at bottom left of a Wikipedia page. The colon trick also works in other situations too, see WP:COLON. – ukexpat (talk) 16:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Book help

I tried to create a book. I added articles to it. It had chapters and everything but the button where you tell it save the book area was gray and could not be pressed. I am a registered user with an auto-confirmed account (didn't want to show ignorance so I came here not logged in). What did I do wrong?—162.83.165.74 (talk) 14:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with showing ignorance? Not even Jimbo knows everything about Wikipedia. For example Jimbo talked about making "the sum of human knowledge" available on Wikipedia, despite WP:NOT clearly showing Wikipedia only wants a relatively small (but still absolutely large) subset of human knowledge. Besides, the mechanism by which the brain forms memories works much better when we embarrass ourselves (true story, it has to do with the release of stress hormone causing long-term memories to form). The more foolish one feels when learning a lesson, the better one learns it. My advice is to embrace the shame, to learn Wikipedia faster. But the best way not to show ignorance on Wikipedia is to ask questions the smart way. As to your question, I haven't a clue. Do you get this problem with all the books you try to create, or just this one? The first step in debugging the problem is to isolate it. The problem might be with:

• The specific book you tried to create. (If you can create other books, but not this one.)
• Your account, specifically. (If you cannot create any books, but other people can.)
• The book feature, globally. (If nobody can create any books.)

If you can create other books, that would probably rule out the second possibility. The next step in that case would be to tell us the exact steps you followed in the failed case, so other users can try repeating them. --Teratornis (talk) 19:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Font size

How do I manually change the font size of say, a whole paragraph without using any pre-designed template. I tried using {smaller|text}, but it doesn't seem to work. Kindly help. *Truth* (talk) 14:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You can use HTML tags such as <small></small> and <big></big> to make small text or big text. You can also tell it to use font size of a given percent bigger or smaller than the orgininal font. However, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting) advises against using different sizes inside paragraphs. Those features are mostly for use in some specialized tables. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Could try something like <span style="font-size:.6em;">...</span>. Cheers!☮ —Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk 15:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It's better to specify font as a percentage of the original size than as an absolute size because some visually-impaired users use a large default font size. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Table problem

On Taunton Demography section the tables look ugly, is it possible for the lower wider table to be moved up in line with the table on the right? Thanks DharmaDreamer (talk) 14:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I have removed style="clear:both;" from the second table on Taunton#Demography. This property was preventing anything else from appearing to the side of that table. Now there isn't the blank space between the text and the tables. --Mysdaao ^talk 14:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Why does my Wikipedia not retrieve d by a Google search

Generally when I execute a search on the web using Google, the Wikipedia entry on the searched topic is high up on the list of articles retrieved. However, when I execute a Google search using the title of my Wikipedia page, it doesn't find my wikipedia entry. Why ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rosalynhuie (talk • contribs) 14:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a question for Google, not for Wikipedia, really: we have no control over the listing of Wikipedia articles in Google's search results. The answer will be that Google's PageRank algorithm rates other pages more highly (probably because they receive more inbound links and are more commonly chosen by searchers than is the Wikipedia page). For what it's worth, when I search for Human Frontier Science Program, the Wikipedia article does appear on the second page of Google search results. Gonzonoir (talk) 14:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, Google might not have crawled it yet. Cheers!☮ —Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk 15:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It is actually appearing in Google searches, so that's not the case here, but it's a good general point about new articles. Gonzonoir (talk) 15:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It could be to do with Google's search algorithm. Google ranks pages based on the number of links to them and in general a lot of sites link to Wikipedia pages. However, for new pages it can take some time before sufficient links are created and then crawled by Google's spiders. If on the other hand you are talking about your user page (you did say "my Wikipedia page" - remember no one editor owns a Wikipedia article they have written), and no one links to your user page, then it will have a very low or even zero ranking. Astronaut (talk) 15:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

<brokenrecord>And don't forget we are here to build an encyclopedia, not engage in a contest for Google rankings.</brokenrecord> – ukexpat (talk) 16:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Since we're here to build an encyclopedia so that people can read it, and since those people will need to find it first, I tend to interpret these as technical "have I done something wrong that renders this page invisible outside Wikipedia" questions rather than efforts to become internet-famous. Gonzonoir (talk) 16:26, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This type of question comes up often enough to deserve an entry in WP:FAQ. --Teratornis (talk) 19:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:FAQ/Readers#SEARCH mentions that the Google index will be somewhat outdated (but I'm often unsure which FAQ something will be in). PrimeHunter (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I had searched the FAQ for the word Google, but that particular instance appears to be hidden in the results by another instance higher up on the Wikipedia:FAQ/Readers page. That reminds me again why I would prefer to search a single large FAQ page with Ctrl+F or ⌘+F. Splitting the FAQ into multiple pages defeats browser search. --Teratornis (talk) 04:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I once made a version of such a page at User:PrimeHunter/FAQ/Combined, and actually searched Google there to find this question. Should we make a prettier version (may require editing of the transcluded pages) and move it to a subpage of Wikipedia:FAQ? PrimeHunter (talk) 04:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

That's a thought. It might conflict with the section shortcut scheme already in place on some pages. I haven't looked to be sure. --Teratornis (talk) 01:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit count

According to the counter in 'my preferences' and in the popup I get when I hover over my signature (I have the popups tool installed), I recently passed the milestone of 10,000 edits on the English Wikipedia. I was trying to look through the list of 'my contributions' to identify which one was the 10,000th edit, but I can only count 9,000 and something. I know that deleted contributions (I do quite a bit of anti-vandalism fixing and flagging for speedy deletion) are not listed in 'my contributions', so is there a tool that will tell me which one was the 10,000th including all the deleted ones? Astronaut (talk) 15:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's a tool for that. Only administrators can see deleted contributions. The information seen in your preferences is only a counter that is incremented when an edit is made but not decremented when one of those pages is deleted. If you're interested, this tool will find your nth non-deleted edit. --Mysdaao ^talk 16:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

User:Ecw.technoid.dweeb/𪷎𪷉𪷄𪸘𪸘𪵞

Hello! I'm trying to create the userpage User:Ecw.technoid.dweeb/𪷎𪷉𪷄𪸘𪸘𪵞. It says there is a permission error. Is there a way to create it anyway? Thanks! Cheers!☮ —Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk 16:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

According to the error message, you would need an admin to create the page for you. You can find one at the administrators' noticeboard. They will probably want to know why the warning trigger should be ignored in this case. Gonzonoir (talk) 16:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy to do it for you, but as Gonzonoir asks, why are you creating the page? TNXMan 16:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The characters after the / are not displaying correctly for me. What language is it please so I can investigate my settings further. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 17:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

They are Unicode substitution glyphs— they display as blocks with the code number inside if you don't have the proper font installed. The first character is 02ADCE, which is one of the Asian fonts per [1] in the range for CJK characters. I recommend you do not use them in your signature as most editors will only see the blocks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello again! They are rare Hanzi. (They are all from CJK-C.) I would like to create it as one of my typical (for me) strange pages *that are not suitable for mainspace*. Thanks. Cheers!☮ —Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk 17:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

See below for how this thread appears for me:

So do I need a specific font to display these characters or is it a PC or browser setting? Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 18:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You can try Help:Multilingual support (East Asian), but I could never get it to work with Windows XP. Looks like Windows 7 supports the major Asian fonts out of box, but not the one in question. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:23, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

[2] Cheers!☮ —Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk 19:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I've created your page. Edit away! Nyttend (talk) 19:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Template for section copyvio?

Is there a template for a specific section being a copyright violation?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs)

I found nothing at Wikipedia:Template messages/Maintenance#Copyright violations, so I suspect the answer is no, and I'm not sure such a template would be useful (and might be possibly harmful). The best course of action when you find text that is a copyright violation is usually to remove it immediately, with an appropriate edit summary. Such a template, by its very existence, might give the idea that such copyvios should be flagged rather than removed. Note the existence of {{Cv-unsure}}, which can be placed on article talk pages when a copyright violation is suspected without any definitive evidence. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I found that Template Copyvio has the ability to end it with a </div> allowing only a section to be substituted.Naraht (talk) 18:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Dispute Resolution

What is the next step in dispute resolution where consensus cannot be reached and talks have come to a deadlock, I don't think third opinion is appropriate because there are 3-5 of us. I've proposed mediation cabal but the other parties wont agree because they either claim I haven't got a case, claim there is no need for mediation or "there is already an agreement" which clearly there is not otherwise I wouldn't be here DharmaDreamer (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Horse and Country TV

The logo is old and incorrect and it is beyond me how to change it. JRudall (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC).

I'll take a look at it. – ukexpat (talk) 18:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 Done File:Horseandcountry.PNG - for some reason I could not upload it over the older logo so had to do it from scratch. – ukexpat (talk) 19:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

How to change color of Portal?

Hi, I would like to know how to change the color of a Portal for ex. [Delhi portal] is purple color now. Would it be possible to change it to a diff. one? And how can I try experimenting with diff. color on the portal without destroying it. Thanx. --Cr!mson K!ng (talk) 20:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Try out new colours (using "preview" until you've found a good colour) by editing Portal:Delhi/box-header. Bencherlite^Talk 20:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

My contribution was deleted without reason

I wrote an article where I used material from some of my own homepages, which I had publised and written myself.

One of the administrators deleted my whole article explaining I had broken against the copyrights of the author, who was I myself.

Should not this "administrator" first ask if I had the rights to publish, instead of removing and destroying my work?

All the material is now lost as I didn't have a copy.

What kind of a people are the Wikipedia administrators really?

Does the common man have no right in Wikipedia?

Why don't you kick out such extremist who destroy other pepoles work?

I really feel Wikipedia is develooping against a few persons dictatorship - and leaving liberal views and freedom.

Used to contribute with well prepared information, but by now, I have come hate Wikipedia and disguise it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.235.240.250 (talk) 20:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The administrator could ask, but who guarantees us that you are who you say you are ? We have thousands of people who say they own the material they upload, and most tend to be lying unfortunately, or just plain don't know what they are talking about. If you want to donate materials that are copyrighted, then this is possible, but you should read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Still in many cases, it is just as good to rewrite from scratch. Wikipedia usually uses a different style of prose then most websites. And you need a lot of sources to support your story as well of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:34, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I'm sorry you've had a bad experience. All is not lost, however. Firstly, for legal reasons, Wikipedia takes potential copyright violations very seriously, so errs on the side of caution if a submission appears to breach copyright. Again, I'm sorry if this appears harsh to you, but unless it can be confirmed that the material on the website is yours to donate, it can't be used. After all, if anyone could claim that they owned the copyright on a website without proving that they do, your website could be ripped off by anyone without you even knowing about it. If you still want to use the material, then read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials and follow the instructions there - that's step 1. Secondly, the material is not lost, since it can be undeleted by administrators. You'll have to tell us what the article name is, of course: as you posted the previous message without being logged into your account, we can't link your request with the article in question. When you've finished step 1, log into your account then post a request at WP:REFUND for the article to be undeleted. Hope this all makes sense, and that your experiences here on Wikipedia improve. Bencherlite^Talk 20:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As TheDJ says, there are ways to provide permission to use material from your own website. However, once this is received to the satisfaction of the OTSR team who deal with such matters, an admin can always undelete the article you created. As you did not create any articles (deleted or otherwise) as the IP under which you left this query, I cannot look at it and advise you further, but if you could let us know the article title, I can look at it and give better advice. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 20:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Without your username or the article name I don't know what the article said but Wikipedia:Conflict of interest may be of relevance if you use your own homepages. I guess your use of "disguise" was an accidental mixture of disgust and despise. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:45, 12 March 2010 (UTC)