Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 November 3

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November 3

Image fail

Why doesn't this edit work? (A new graphic has been created, but does not display ... even if I look at the page source, and copy and paste the link, the image won't display). What have I missed? Guinness (talk) 00:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

There is currently a thumbnail display problem for some images, it seems. (See also this discussion: Wikipedia:VPT#Image_scalers) Intelligentsium 00:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know why it fixed it but I tried reducing the number of pixels moderately and it works now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:38, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Odd, but thanks :) at least I know it's not something *I've* done ;) Guinness (talk) 00:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I hereby designate you as the sitewide scapegoat for all technical problems. You should apologize to each of our 47,327,532 users.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll do Aaron A. Aaronson, but I'll ask him to pass it on to the next one :) Guinness (talk) 01:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

:-) Of course, User:!! is our first user, alphabetically speaking.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:57, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Qantity of Categories in english Wikipedia?

I am currently in the process of writing a paper about Wikipedia Categories. Ive done most of my research using Wikipedia API to get approximate numbers and to analyze categories structure. But i also want to know how many categories does Wikipedia has at the moment, and i just cant find this information. I could, of course, just install a previous Wikipeda DB dump and make a query to cout all categories, but that is an overkill. And using API for that would take too much time and strain Wikipedia servers.

So i am asking this question here: How many cartegories does Wikipedia have and is there a place where this info is posted or could be extracted from? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DSUmanskiy (talk • contribs) 00:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Normally, you would use the "magicword" {{PAGESINNS:name}}, replacing "name" with the namespace you wish to return, so you would replace it with Category. However, this feature appears to be disabled, per this page. You may be able to get the devs to activate it briefly, or possibly you could find other ways to do it. Try asking at The Technical Village Pump, which is patroled by people who know how to do this stuff. --Jayron32 02:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer:) I will look into that. The magicwords seem pretty awesome and i think they might do the job. If i figure out how to use them that is:) And persuade the devs to enable them. --DSUmanskiy (talk) 11:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Image problem with new page

I have created a new article Ignatius Cooper Grubb and uploaded an image File:Ignatius Cooper Grubb.jpg. I can't get the image to display appropriately in the article. 1) it is too large, and 2) it seems to have some extraneous info surrounding the image. I have reviewed other articles with images and tried techniques I observed (like |thumb|), but nothing seems to work. Appreciate some guidance, the article is otherwise about complete. LynnSGrubb (talk) 04:15, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done; by the looks of it, images placed in Template:Infobox officeholder do not need all that fancy coding around it. All you need to do is place the file name in the "image" parameter, and then specify the size in the "imagesize" parameter below it. Note that there seems to be some problems as of current that involve sized images not rendering correctly; for instance, when I re-size your image as 250px instead of 200px in the article, it causes the image to not show up for me. It's basically just a problem with the servers. This should be fixed in due time, I think. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 04:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The usage of images in infoboxes can be idiosyncratic. Usually (but not always) the image = (or sometimes imagename = ) parameter is looking for the image name WITHOUT any brackets or the File: prefix. Secondly, the imagesize = parameter is optional sometimes, but in this case it looks like you need to enter a resonably small imagesize (i used 200px) to make it work in this infobox. Like every other part of Wikipedia, infobox templates developed organicly and often independently, so often it isn't all that intuitive how they will work. If you check how I fixed your problem, it will usually work on most infoboxes, but be prepared for it to get screwy once in a while. Trial and error and experience will generally get you good results (its what I did to fix this problem). (post-ec) Looks like I editconflicted both here and at the article with SuperHamster. We pretty much did exactly the same thing. --Jayron32 04:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the image, since it was taking up quite a bit of space! Arctic Night 07:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Persons of National Historic Significance

Does anybody know how to get an 'align="center"' tag to apply to a whole column in a table? I would hate to have to keep typing that lot out every time I create a new row... Arctic Night 06:18, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

At Help:Tables#Row_template there is a recommendation to use a template for "easy specification of a format for a whole column, such as color and alignment". So it looks as if there is no easy way to it at the start of the table definition as you'd expect. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:06, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

If I read the documents aright, there is no way to set the alignment of cells per column in CSS. (You can do so directly in HTML, but styling attributes in HTML are usually avoided nowadays in favour of CSS). While it would presumably be possible to make the wikicode do something that can't be done directly in CSS, I don't think it is likely to be judged worthwhile. --ColinFine (talk) 00:07, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Religion of Firoz Gandhi

I want to ask was Firoz Gandhi "Muslim" by religion and later on he changed his religion? Please elaborate it. Thanks....... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.164.9.74 (talk) 08:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I think the Reference desk would probably be the most appropriate forum for asking this question. Arctic Night 08:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

merging siren articles

I am trying to merge/redirect the following articles (all small and unable to advance): ACA P-15 ACA Cyclone ACA Hurricane ASC T-135 to the List_of_sirens_built_by_Alerting_Communicators_of_America article. Can anyone help me out with this? Everytime I try to redirect, it just doesn't work. --JustInn014 (talk) 09:09, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

You've made one correct redirect, ASC T-135 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). What is going wrong with the others? -- John of Reading (talk) 12:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I wonder whether List of sirens built by Alerting Communicators of America meets Wikipedia's inclusion criteria and the requirements of WP:LIST? – ukexpat (talk) 13:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

rev list

my name is willem kroesbergen and i made a short page about myself. i tried to add a footnote, but i get the following error: Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{Reflist}} template or a <references/> tag; see the help page.

but with the information wikipedia gives, i am not able to make a reflist.

please can you help me how to edit my page willem kroesbergen to ad the following footnote: JSTOR: Early Music, Vol.22,no3(Aug., 1994)pp.482-495

it will be helpful to ad some information to make it easier to solve this problem for others.

thank you.

willem kroesbergen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kick030 (talk • contribs) 10:16, 3 November 2010

I see that another editor has fixed the problem. The error message included a link to a page that tries to explain how to fix the problem. You might like to read Help:Footnotes as an introduction. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

However you need urgently to read WP:AUTO. Autobiographies are strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. --ColinFine (talk) 00:10, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit war

In article Sriracha, I keep adding my edit with appropriate citation and rationale for the edit. However, another user has initiated an edit war with me and refusing to provide any comment on why he/she is removing my edit. 99.231.241.146 (talk) 11:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Several editors have undone your sketchy edits. Your edits are not being accepted because they are not from a reliable source. Go do something productive and stop warring.--Chris (クリス • フィッチ) (talk) 11:24, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Note that your edit contains no source. I request a third-party to evaluate the merit of my source compared to kintetsubuffalo's (lack of) source. 99.231.241.146 (talk) 11:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm a non-involved third-party. I have a couple of points:

• As far as I can see, no one provided an edit summary when they reverted 99.231: in my view this edit war could have been prevented had someone taken the time to communicate with 99.231.
• 99.231, this is not a good source. It simply shows that this company produced the sauce: it does not say what you are claiming, specifically it does not say that this sauce is Vietnamese. Just because an American company produces a sauce and has a Vietnamese founder does not make a sauce Vietnamese.

All of you need to discuss this further and stop reverting. If you continue this edit war I'll protect the article until such time as you can discuss this issue and gain consensus for any proposed changes. TFOWR 11:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Can we simply have both claims with {{fact}} requests? This, I believe, is the most fair and reasonable resolution to the dispute, which the other editors seem absolutely hostile to. 99.231.241.146 (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

If both claims are disputed, then it makes sense to a {{fact}} tag to both (i.e. to Thai and Vietnamese origin claims). To my mind the Thai origin claim seems very reasonable, however if it's disputed (as it is here) then tagging it and then finding a source is the way to go. I would hope that sources for either or both claims could be found, and that will be hastened by adding {{fact}} tags. TFOWR 11:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing in dispute here. Two English sources already cited in the articles said it's of Thai origin. One source in Thai said it's first marketed by a Thai Company.Suredeath (talk) 11:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) I don't think adding a claim to Sriracha sauce with a at the same time is a good idea; either find a good source, or don't add the claim, but don't add the claim and make someone else find the source. I agree with TFWOR about the poor behaviour here: not only not using edit summaries when reverting the IP and not taking the issue with the IP to either the IP's talk page or the article talk page, but also (when the matter is brought to the talk page by the IP) saying "I feel no need to justify myself to an IP". Err? Bencherlite^Talk 11:44, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, screw it. I have several editors bullying me, and IP user puts me at a disadvantage. It's just a damn sauce; let them have this internet article. 99.231.241.146 (talk) 11:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec x 5)It is widely-known and long-accepted that Sriracha sauce is named after the Thai town - it is already sauced, er, sourced. If you believe there is a Vietnamese equivalent or a Vietnamese origin, that is clearly contentious, so you need to discuss it on the article's Talk page first and present some evidence. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• I've protected the article, as the edit-warring continued. I note Boing! said Zebedee's comments, and I'll revisit the article in a wee while and reconsider whether full-protection is the best option here (and in the meantime any admin is free to remove the protection without discussing this with me, if they feel it's sensible to do so). Whether the article remains protected or not, all parties need to communicate better, and the idea that IPs are second-class citizens here is unacceptable. TFOWR 11:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• Not to mention a violation of Please do not bite the newcomers. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 13:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

No, no; no need for that. They win. I give up. Wiki alpha-males to the rescue! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.231.241.146 (talk) 11:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

cannot save page, because of forbidden page

hello,

i just edited List of awards and nominations received by Santana, until I added aceshowbiz (google it please). After saving the page I got a message, that linking to this site is forbidden. Can you tell me why this page is forbidden, please? thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 15:24, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

It's on the spam blacklist. – ukexpat (talk) 15:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) See WP:ELNEVER. This site is mentioned on this list of websites that cannot be linked to from Wikpedia because they are known to unreliable in some way. Here is the latest discussion about aceshowbiz. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

ah, that is so bad, because i found much informations there. however, thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 16:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

adding quotations in the correct place

Resolved

 – to judge from the IP's subsequent edits. Bencherlite^Talk 18:08, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I have been attempting to edit a page relating to an album (Nazareth's Hair Of The Dog album) to include the more recently added bonus tracks. When I finish what I'm doing the quotation marks are added automatically by the tracklist format, but in the wrong place. A song title that should read "Love Hurts" (single) instead reads "love Hurts (single)" with the quotations after the parentheses. I would like to fix this, but cannot figure out how (even after reading the tutorials and help pages) 69.204.79.146 (talk) 16:32, 3 November 2010 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.204.79.146 (talk) 16:29, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

See the wording of Template:Track listing. What you need to do at Hair of the Dog is this:

{{ tracklist
| title8        = Love Hurts
| note8         = single, or whatever it is that you want to add in brackets after the song title
}}

which produces

No.	Title	Length
8.	"Love Hurts" (single, or whatever it is that you want to add in brackets after the song title)

Hope this helps. Bencherlite^Talk 16:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Table problems

I am trying to rearrange some tables in the Beta decay chains in uranium & plutonium fission products section of the Decay chain article so that the five tables are below the text and all centred next to each other (not below each other). I had a go but it went slightly wrong so I had to revert. Could someone tell me the best way to do this? Thanks. Deano8216 (talk) 16:34, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

How does it look now? I added a {{clear}} at the end of your previous version, which I think has fixed the issue. Bencherlite^Talk 16:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

National Consumer Council (UK)

I searched wikipedia for an entry on 'The National Consumer Council' of the UK. All I find is a redirection to 'Consumer Focus' saying the NCC operated for 33 years until 2008, when it was absorbed into the new government run 'Consumer Focus' - that entry has NO information on the NCC, little on its replacement, and to say that also will be closed in the October 2010 Gov. spending review. Consumer Focus, while it lasted, had apparently a lesser consumer remit than the NCC. With its long history, I think you would have published a good-sized independant review of the NCC prior to its closure. Is it possible to either make that article available again, or link to a similar coverage of the NCC's foundations & aims ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.118.48.174 (talk) 17:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

National Consumer Council was created as a redirect to Consumer Focus. A search [1] didn't show an article about the National Consumer Council. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I must admit that I was surprised to see that the NCC has never had an article! Perhaps when I get time, I'll add something to the Consumer Focus article - there are over 2000 GNews Archive hits, so I should be able to do something! However, one thing that Google can't give me is time, so work and family commitments will have to abate somewhat! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 17:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Serious POV in Article locked for edit warring

There has been an article recently added to WikiProject Companies that has been page protected twice recently by the same admin for edit warring.

The article in question is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie

There has been discussion recently that the statements in the Lead paragraph are POV summary of the references provided. It does appear that the references are not supporting the statements in the lead paragraph which is why they may be POV summaries. It also seems that for the past year the same editors and admins have been contributing to the article which raises concerns as to whether the article is now filled with bias POV of editors who are now controlling the article.

The admin who locked down the article suggested I use the edit request template however that only brought in another admin who had previously contributed to the article who made a small change. It also appears that certain editors are Gaming the System by using wikipedias rules to preserve the POV of the article. Often the rules are just posted in the discussion without explanation as to how they disprove the arguments.

I have considered seeking third opinions however since I am fairly new to wikipedia I do not know the best route to take and I am concerned that if the article is being controlled it will only draw in more editors who support the POV of the article. Some examples of the control happening are that if one editor questions the articles POV and mentions problems with the article they are accused of being connected to the company.

This article possibly needs third party fact checking and Cleanup from clearly unbiased and neutral parties to clear the POV from the article. Thanks DavidR2010 (talk) 19:19, 3 November 2010 (UTC)DavidR2010DavidR2010 (talk) 19:19, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Link from Wikipedia to Apple Pages application.

Love Wikipedia, and had something wonderful and unexpected happen while developing a document using Pages on my iMAC. I was developing a list of prairie plants and eventually noticed that after a entered the common name followed by the scientific name and pressed enter, I also obtained a link to that plant in Wikipedia. After entering 40+ plants, I saved it. I went back later to add more plants and after pressing enter, got nothing. Somehow I lost the linking ability that I didn't know I had in the first place. I eventually called Apple Customer Service, and although amused by my happiness, said it had nothing to do with the iMac or the Pages application. They suggested that prior to developing the document, I may have been on Wikipedia and somehow there was a connection maintained while I developed the document.. If so, I am very happy, but I would like to do it again. Any help would be appreciated. Thank You —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.60.41.204 (talk) 20:42, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The guess about a connection maintained doesn't make sense to me. It must be a feature in some software on your system. I don't know whether it could be Dictionary (software). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I forgot the email i use in wikipedeia

I forgot the email i use in wikipedeia. I have the username and password save in my pc for a long period but i forgot the email. What can i do? Xaris333 (talk) 21:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Have you checked your preferences? In my case, the email I used is listed there.--SPhilbrickT 21:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

So easy afte all! Thanks very much!!!! Xaris333 (talk) 21:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

<potentially libellous comment removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.170.27.75 (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2010 (UTC) ; modified by -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 23:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Marcelline Jayakody

Resolved

 – Other editors have reviewed and installed the new version John of Reading (talk) 16:08, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I have rewritten the article and believe it to now be free of copyright infringements. I am confused as to how to get my revisions reviewed and hopefully have the article lock removed. Thanks. ─AFA Prof01 (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Removing a clean-up category

I have authored a couple of articles that have received tags requesting various kinds of clean-up (e.g., add more references, remove 'ibid' references). I have made the requested changes (in one case over a year ago), but the tags were never removed. Is it up to me to remove the article from the clean up category and, if so, how? Pracktiker (talk) 22:29, 3 November 2010 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Pracktiker (talk • contribs) 22:25, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Such tags are added and removed manually (some of them are also added but usually not removed by bots). They are made by templates in the wiki source looking like {{Refimprove}} or others at Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup. The template code is in the place where the box is displayed when the you view the rendered page, usually at the top. You can remove them manually when the issue they point out is fixed. The cleanup categories are added by the templates and will automatically disappear when you remove the template. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Also be sure to explain that you are removing the tag and why (if someone could question it) in your edit summary. --D•g ^{Talk to me}/_{What I've done} 22:54, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Assuming you were referring to the articles William James Lectures and Harold Garfinkel, I have removed those tags. You can see what PrimeHunter details above in my edit. Intelligentsium 22:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

big png logo

Resolved

Hi, I was trying to make this big logo Cork's 96FMa bit smaller and possibly because it was a PNG file I couldn't manage, I removed the brackets and added a imagesize = 180pxs field and the picture just disappeared. Please help. Off2riorob (talk) 23:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Some infoboxes take normal image markup and other do not because it is supplied by the template. So here, since it uses the normal markup, I decreased the size the same way you would for an image outside a template: by adding the |XXXpx parameter right inside the brackets after the image name. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:00, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah I see, it would be great if we could standardize all the infobox markup...add the size in the brackets and not in a separate line, many thanks to you User:Fuhghettaboutit - Off2riorob (talk) 00:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

You're most welcome. Standardizing would be good but it would be a pretty big project and you'd need consensus first on what the standard was to be. Maybe you have a new pet project?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)