Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 March 4

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March 4[edit]

Untitled[edit]

I don't know the technical term for the "pronouncer" after the topic/subject. In any event, mine appear to be in some language other than my own(English).

Here is an example:

Fascism, pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/


All else is fine. Is there something to be adjusted on my computer?


Thankx! Ted —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.15.151.38 (talk) 00:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ted. Wikipedia's pronunciations use a special set of symbols called the International Phonetic Alphabet. Whereas the letter "a" might have different sounds among English, Spanish, and German, while the IPA symbol /a/ always represents the open central unrounded vowel. For a more in-depth explanation plus a list of all symbols and their letter equivalents in common languages, I suggest you read Wikipedia:IPA and related pages, such as Wikipedia:IPA for English. Xenon54 / talk / 01:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading a Graph made w/ Excel[edit]

If I create a graph using non-free (Proprietary software) like Microsoft Excel, would I be able to upload it? Or would this result in some type of license violation? The upload page at the commons says that "# Graphs, maps, diagrams, and audio you have created entirely yourself." however its not very clear regarding how they have to be created. -- GateKeeper (talk) @ 04:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter what program you use. That said, you're likely to get better results from a vector-based program (like Origin) if you have access to one (better both in that it'll likely look nicer, and will definitely be more scalable). -- Bfigura (talk) 05:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You shouldn't upload anything that can't be viewed by users who don't want to pay money to buy the program that is required to view your upload. Woogee (talk) 20:39, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"New" message on my IP talk page[edit]

Am I in trouble? For the last week or so, when I link to Wikipedia but before I sign in, a "New message" alert appears, and directs me to the talk page for my IP address. The content is that an edit credited, or blamed, on me has been reverted, and I should learn how to write articles, and all such stuff. The putative offense was perpetrated on the article for Newport, Rhode Island, date 23 September 2009, time 23:32. I have read the history for the article, and the change credited to/blamed on me is as the reverter stated, not relevant. So far, so good.

The problem is that I did not write this. At least, so far as I can remember. The date of the change was 23 September, and heck, I don't even know where I was on 23 September. At 23:32 (that would be 17:32 CST), I would be eating supper, or walking the dog, or washing dishes, or something. I would certainly not be writing about Newport, RI. (I do not have anything against Newport; I wouldn't write about it because I don't know anything about it.)

So you can say that somebody snuck into my house while I was eating and used my computer without my knowledge and left a rather harmless trail on Wikipedia and no real harm was done and why don't I just shut up about it? I would ordinarily do that, but for two reasons: (1) Why is this message just appearing now, a half year after the event, when I have no way of remembering who was around my place at the time? And more importantly (2), how do I get rid of the warning message when I link in? I have read the message on the talk page; should that not remove the "New message" banner? Since that doesn't work, what should I do? PKKloeppel (talk) 04:17, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Many ISPs use dynamic IP addresses which change every time you connect to the internet. It could be possible that someone else messed around with the page, got a warning, and then you got assigned that IP at a later time. I wouldn't worry about it, just log into your account to avoid seeing it. -- GateKeeper (talk) @ 04:21, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • (edit conflict)x2 That IP, I believe, links to Rushville, Illinois. If you don't live around there, then I don't know what it is. If you do, then it must have come from your connection. It could have come from another person in your house or possibly in our ISP. My advice is to just ignore it, since it isn't anything that disparaging. You might have a somewhat dynamic IP inside your ISP, and possibly it just returned to that IP. But like I said, just ignore it for now, since I don't see you getting into trouble for any of it. –Turian (talk) 04:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you restart your modem, you ISP might assign you a new IP address (I know mine does that). Astronaut (talk) 04:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you only edit while you are logged in to your account, then you can ignore messages on an IP number's talk page. If that IP number gets blocked from editing, it won't affect your account, because you can still log in. In fact, creating an account (as you have already done) is how to prevent this very type of confusion. See WP:ACCOUNT. --Teratornis (talk) 05:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Have you thought about registering an account. It has many benefits, including the fact that your IP would not be shown (or available) to 99% of all users (only CheckUsers have the ability to link an account name to an IP - and there are only 37 of those on Wikipedia). You would also have your own talk page (as opposed to the IP one which you have seen). -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 08:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@ Phantomsteve - he already has, the original post was by User:Pkkphysicist, an account which was created 28 March 2008. My suspicion is that he gets this message prior to logging in.
@ Pkkphysicist - I am in the habit of turning off all my hardware when not in use, to save electricity. When I start up again, my IP address is always different; it is allocated by my broadband provider. I have only ever made twothree edits as an IP user, neither beingonly one of which was from this PC, so if I see any "You have new messages" boxes prior to logging in, I simply ignore them and log in. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Since typing the above, I lost my login during a different edit - and it was saved under an IP address. Hrmph. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:LOGGEDOUT. Which used to have some help on how to ensure you were logged in. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it disappeared with this edit. Thanks. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bold move?[edit]

It has been suggested that Chile helps to Chile be moved to the Spanish title of this Chilian telethon (see Talk:Chile helps to Chile#Requested move). This strikes me as such a no-brainer that I'm tempted to be bold and do the move straight away without waiting for 7 days of discussion/consensus building. It is quite possible that because the proposer is an IP editor, that is why there is even a proposed move rather than a bold move. If I was bold and did the move now, would I be messing up the procedure which has been set in motion? Astronaut (talk) 04:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Something tells me you should, since the translation is wrong. I don't think there would be anything controversial, but that isn't a promise. I would support an instant change. –Turian (talk) 04:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I frequently move articles without any discussion, when the title is an obvious bad title (mistranslation, misspelling, obvious violation of naming conventions, etc.) For translations, you may want to let the discussion go for a day or two to make sure the translation is "right", but once you are sure of that, it should be uncontroversial enough to forgo the usual 7-day discussion period. --Jayron32 20:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No issues here, imo. Go ahead, do it. But make sure you resolve all the double redirects. ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 05:16, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Downloading Wikipedia software[edit]

Is there a place where I can download the Wikipedia software onto my computer so i can create my own wiki for my own sole use? If so, where do I go to do this? Keraunos (talk) 05:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. You want MediaWiki. -- Bfigura (talk) 05:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also see mw:Manual:Wiki on a stick for instructions on how to run MediaWiki as your Personal wiki. The MediaWiki software alone is not enough; you must also run a LAMP (software bundle) such as XAMPP. --Teratornis (talk) 19:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rose
 
Common connotations
love, optimism
About these coordinates     Color coordinates
Hex triplet#FF007F
sRGBB (r, g, b)(255, 0, 127)
HSV (h, s, v)(330°, 100%, 100%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)(55, 143, 355°)
Source[Unsourced]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

I need a MediaWiki that will allow me to create color boxes such as the one at right, for the research I am doing about various colors. Which ones will allow me to do that? Keraunos (talk) 20:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Most of that functionality is not done in MediaWiki itself. Rather, it is the result of templates that are essentially just normal Wikipedia pages (with the ability to handle parameters) that are transcluded elsewhere. For example, the box you use here is located at Template:Infobox color where, if you click on "view source", will give you the code that is required to display it. I believe that most infoboxes and similar templates use a certain amount of CSS, so you have to do some fiddling around there, but I don't know enough about it (either in general terms, or in MediaWiki/Wikipedia-specific terms) to help you there. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 01:21, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Template porting is, in general, hard. To get a particular template to work on another MediaWiki wiki, you may have to consider all these dependencies:
  • The template you want may transclude other templates. You can see by editing the template and previewing it. Look below the edit window at the "Templates used in this preview:" section. Those templates, in turn, may transclude more templates. And so on, until you have pulled out all your hair.
    • If you don't need the entire hierarchy of template dependencies, you can collapse them by substituting the template on Wikipedia into a user sandbox page, and just copy the resulting wikitext to your destination template.
  • The template may use style classes from MediaWiki:Common.css.
  • The template may use MediaWiki extensions. There is no simple way to get a list of the extensions that a particular template uses. You can see the extensions installed on Wikipedia at Special:Version. If you see strange codes "bleeding through" to the rendered page when preview your template on your destination wiki, that may mean you need an extension you haven't installed there yet.
  • The template may rely on side effects of other software running on Wikipedia's servers, such as HTML Tidy. This can cause problems that are even harder to debug than missing extensions. The only example I know about is {{Navbox}}. Hopefully for the rest of your hair it doesn't happen to you.
  • Another complication is Wikipedia's template documentation system. It took me a while to port that. My advice is to skip it for a personal wiki unless you want to learn a lot more about templates than you might need.
  • Some templates on Wikipedia contain features that are overkill for a small wiki, such as extensive abstraction to share common features between many other templates you don't care about. Sometimes it's easier to design your own simpler template from scratch, since you won't have to worry about the incredible complexity here. You may also find simpler templates on another wiki that caters to a smaller specialist user community. Look up your topic of interest on WikiIndex and see what other people are doing. In general, you will notice MediaWiki wikis outside the WikiMedia Foundation family typically have far fewer templates than Wikipedia and they are generally simpler. There aren't a lot of skilled template coders in relation to the number of wikis.
Running your own wiki makes you realize how much value a skilled user community provides on a vibrant wiki like Wikipedia. The difference between Wikipedia and your own wiki is like the difference between a city and the wilderness. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but if you have grown used to one, moving to the other is a shock. --Teratornis (talk) 19:29, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Articles' Quality Rating within WikiProjects[edit]

Who decides on the rating of an article? If an article were rated a 'Start' Article in 2007, but has since been vastly improved, who would this be reported to? SmokingNewton (talk) 07:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone other than the creator (or a major contributor) can change the rating - it doesn't need to be reported anywhere. Read the assessment criteria (there should be a link to it on the WikiProject banner) and decide which grade the article is, and then change the rating as appropriate. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 08:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't feel comfortable with that, but feel that the rating is wrong, visit the relevant WikiProject page, and see if they have an "Assessment request" section or subpage, and put a request there. If they haven't, put a message on the talk page of the WikiProject. It should be noted that, generally speaking, whilst the opinion of just one editor is required for classifications Stub, Start, and C (sometimes B and A), the higher classifications are more tightly controlled - especially GA and FA, where peer review and committee consensus is normally needed. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My New Page[edit]

I recently submited a page for Wikipedia "Cambridge Ruskin International Collge". It has not since gone live. I dont know if this is because I haven't submitted it properly or if there is a problem. Please advise. Many thanks! Isabel —Preceding unsigned comment added by Isabel Crawford (talk • contribs) 09:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's in your userspace, at User:Isabel Crawford/Cambridge Ruskin International College. It could do with some work before you move it to article space; some references would certainly be needed. See Wikipedia:So you made a userspace draft. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Create book bug[edit]

There is no any "save and share book" section on "show book" page after login, anywhere. Khitron (talk) 11:34, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You will see the "Save and share your book" option when your account is autoconfirmed, which happens automatically after your account is at least four full days old and has made at least ten edits to any page on Wikipedia, including Wikipedia:Sandbox. For more information, please see Help:Books. --Mysdaao talk 13:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Updating filetype of image[edit]

A long time ago I uploaded my first image... And people added the templates for image quality and stuff, because it was an uncompressed png. I updated it with Photoshop, and made a lower resolution low-quality version, but the file is still called File:LaserCombo.png. Since it is still a png file, it shows the earlier version still. How do I fix this? I'm totally new to media uploading on the wiki.  Awesomeness  talk  12:51, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The new version File:LaserCombo.png was uploaded successfully. You can see this from the "File history" section on the image page. Where are you seeing the earlier version? You may have to bypass your cache so your browser downloads the new version correctly. --Mysdaao talk 13:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Help with misformatted table[edit]

Resolved
 – Redrose64 (talk) 16:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the article Hebrew alphabet, something is seriously wrong with the table under the heading "Description". The top set of two rows in the table seems to be okay. The first row shows the primary form of each letter, and the second row shows a smaller secondary form (if any) beneath the corresponding primary form. The bottom set of two rows is problematic. Here, inconsistently with the first set of two rows, the primary forms in the first row are smaller than the secondary forms in the second row. Also, I'm fairly sure that the secondary forms are not lined up with the corresponding primary forms in the row above. Now, I checked the revision history for this article, and the problems with this table seem to be the result of the most recent revision. The most recent revision was quite extensive and involved formatting edits to many parts of the article, not just to this table. I do not understand table-formatting markup, so I can't assess whether the other formatting edits were improvements or not. Because I have no reason to think that the other formatting edits in the most recent revision were undesirable, I don't want to just revert the last revision, which seemed to involve a lot of work. Is there anyone who understands the formatting markup who can fix this, or can you recommend any other action to fix it? Thanks. Marco polo (talk) 14:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've put the old version of the table back; please check it, as I don't speak Hebrew. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:14, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Further investigation shows that the misalignment was caused by the presence of a semicolon following the rowspan="2" attributes (rowspan="2";), which meant that the attribute value was unrecognised. If I wotk out what caused the oversize font, I'll revert my edit and fix up per these investigations. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Right - it was style="font-size:300%;" being applied to both the row and to the cells, which gave 900% font size. Page now fixed properly, see this diff. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing it! Marco polo (talk) 17:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

how to add "share" to toolbox[edit]

I wanted to 'share' a Wikipedia article about "raining animals" related to the recent raining of fish in Australia to my Facebook page. I found info in Wiki's Helpdesk Archive that appears to indicate that the capability to "share" must be added by Wiki HelpDesk to a user's "toolbox", with the user's permission. I am a registered user. Do I need to submit a formal request somewhere to have this feature/capability added to my account?Dloftin (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You need to edit Special:MyPage/monobook.js and add:
importScript('User:TheDJ/sharebox.js'); //[[User:TheDJ/sharebox.js]]
Save it and follow the instructions at the top of the page to bypass your browser's cache. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:42, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading an Image File[edit]

Resolved
 –  – ukexpat (talk) 22:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The College's logo on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Ida_College is outdated. I would like to upload the new logo. How do I do that?— —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.59.54.16 (talk) 16:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Without an account you can't. You can request it be uploaded at Wikipedia:Files for upload or an autoconfirmed user can do it for you. Hang on a sec and I will do it. – ukexpat (talk) 16:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
 Done. See File:Mt-ida-logo.png. You may need to purge and/or bypass your cache to get it to display in the article. – ukexpat (talk) 17:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Help![edit]

Resolved
 – Mysdaao talk 18:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The last collapsible box on my userpage is swallowing up the rest of it and I can't figure out how to stop it! Can somebody fix it for me?--Editor510 drop us a line, mate 17:42, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I haved fixed it for you. You needed an extra |} to close the navbox. Without it, everything below it was put into the navbox. --Mysdaao talk 18:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you...I could have sworn that that was there...must have been confused.--Editor510 drop us a line, mate 18:35, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome. --Mysdaao talk 18:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions - posting images and verifying yourself if you have a wikipedia page[edit]

Hi

Furst of all I can't seem to upload an image to my own wikipedia page. Someone has created one for me so I wanted to make sure the details are correct and add an image. I can't find the correct page that tells me how to upload an image although i have found the html link [File:gb37.jpg|thumb|alt=Georgie Bingham|Georgie Bingham]] I do not know how to get that jpg to show up on the page. Please can you help me?

Secondly my wikipedia page does not cite any sources - can I be that source as I am the person that page is about? I am pretty sure that I can ensure my page is accurate as I know pretty much everything there is to know about me!

Many thanks

GeebeeUK

GeeBeeUK (talk) 19:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • If you want to add an existing image to an article, add [[Image:File name.jpg|thumb|Caption text.]] to the area of the article where you want the image to appear – replacing File name.jpg with the actual file name of the image, and Caption text with a short description of the image. See our picture tutorial for more information.
  • If you want to upload an image from your computer for use in an article, you must find out what the proper license of the image is. If you know the image is licensed under a free-license, upload it to the Wikimedia Commons instead of here, so that all projects have access to the image (sign up). If you are unsure what license the image takes, see the file upload wizard for more information. Please also read Wikipedia's image use policy. I hope this helps.
You won't be able to upload images to Wikipedia until your account is autoconfirmed, which happens automatically when your account is at least four full days old and has made at least ten edits to any page on Wikipedia. You can upload images to Wikimedia Commons immediately though.
You can't be the source for the article about you. The policy at Wikipedia:Verifiability is that material has to be attributed to a reliable, published source. If a person were the source, there'd be no way for a reader of the article to verify the information.
You should be very cautious when you edit an article about yourself. This is a conflict of interest. Minor edits like adding images and sources are probably ok, but any content changes should be brought up on the article's talk page first. --Mysdaao talk 19:36, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Where are the episode counts in the character infobox?[edit]

Resolved
 – ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 05:12, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Take The Sopranos for example, when you edit this page it displays their episode count (see Tony Soprano, Carmela Soprano, Christopher Moltisanti), but when you read the article it isn't present. What's the deal? None of the characters have the episode count information anymore. Even The Shield and Nip/Tuck characters have an episode count on the edit page, but its not visible on the main article. Why? Geeky Randy (talk) 20:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, don't know what you mean. The Sopranos has "No. of episodes 86 (List of episodes)" in the infobox, and when editing it shows |num_episodes=86, which is consistent. Which section are the episode counts in that you are thinking of? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK I think I've got it. Your problem is not with the article The Sopranos itself, but with the individual character pages. The facility for displaying the episode counts in {{Infobox character}} was removed 20:47, 18 February 2010 with this edit; it had been discussed at Template talk:Infobox character#Parameter removal. If you don't agree with the decision, you'd best take it up on that discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link. I'm now a part of that discussion. Geeky Randy (talk) 00:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me...[edit]

Could you please direct me to the page in which formatting for inserting "userboxes" at the top of the page, that state that the user is often away for any reason, is given? A polite British-style inquiry of 2J Bäkkvire Maestro what are you looking at? 21:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you want Wikibreak.  Ronhjones  (Talk) 21:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How To Add Scripts[edit]

How do I add this script to my account?100110100 (talk) 23:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You go to the script page and copy and paste the code in the box. Then you create the page User:100110100/monobook.js and paste that code onto that page. That is your personal Javascript for the Monobook skin, and when you put that code there, the six tabs feature should show up on all the pages you view while signed into that account. --Brandon5485 00:45, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{!xt3}}[edit]

I am trying to remove the borders. How do I do that?174.3.110.108 (talk) 23:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No padding, no margins. What other parameters are there?174.3.110.108 (talk) 23:54, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

cf. [1]: How do I remove the margins or/and or or\and borders?174.3.110.108 (talk) 00:01, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Don't use class="wikitable", as it is styled with borders— see MediaWiki:Common.css. What does this template do? Beside violate the accessibility standards per WP:COLOR. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:17, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This template is usually only used on wikipediaspace pages.174.3.110.108 (talk) 00:30, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

2010 California gubernatorial election[edit]

I just submitted my 'Statement of Intention, FORM 501' with the Secretary of State'. Can I Add/Edit a Wikipedia Article on myself stating only factual data, with no references since I am myself? One that looks a lot like the Meg Whitman article. Cheers, --i am the kwisatz haderach (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, an article must be referenced with reliable sources. You should also be aware that editing an article about yourself would be a violation of our conflict of interest policy, see WP:COI. Regards, RadManCF (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

COI is a guideline, not a policy. Woogee (talk) 20:42, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You have no references. How could you state facts?174.3.110.108 (talk) 00:48, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aso!!!, Me Like. I can be here and there at the same time, two places at once. And the Kwisatz Haderach prophecy will be Internetly woven. I actually came back on this board to ask this very question, and it's answered before I even ask it. Again, the power of the Kwisatz Haderach, literally the jumping of the path/way/road. Cheers, --i am the kwisatz haderach (talk) 21:52, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wifoine, thanks much, first time using that Wiki-bit. I think I did it right, check it out. And I'll end this with a Puff Daddy Quote: Tell your friends, to get with my friends, and we can all be friends. --i am the kwisatz haderach (talk) 22:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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