Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 December 18

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December 18

Halloween 3D

I would like to know if the halloween 3d is going to continue after halloween resurection because that film is a loose end because michael isnt dead at the end — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.254.15 (talk) 00:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried the Entertainment 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. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Tables with multiple consecutive conditional rows

I'm sorry if I broke etiquette by moving this to the bottom, but I didn't want to risk this being archived before I find a complete solution. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I can't figure out how to make multiple rows on a table conditional when the default for each of them is blank. In this example, Two/Three won't work because Two will have an extra line break whenever Three is absent and misalign the text. Five/Six won't work because Six won't recognize its first line break because it's before the text. Eight/Nine won't work because Nine won't recognize the line break in the default of Eight without any text in the parameter. What should I do in these cases? Thanks.

{|class="wikitable"
|-
|One
{{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}Two|}}
{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}Three|}}
|-
|Four
{{#if:{{{5|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}Five|}}{{#if:{{{6|}}}|
{{!}}-
{{!}}Six|}}
|-
|Seven
{{#if:{{{8|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}Eight
|
}}{{#if:{{{9|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}Nine|}}
|}

—Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

You should always start a result on the next line:

{|class="wikitable"
|-
|One{{#if:{{{2|}}}|
{{!}}-
{{!}}Two|}}{{#if:{{{3|}}}|
{{!}}-
{{!}}Three|}}
|}

— Edokter (talk) — 00:10, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem with that is that it doesn't recognize that the result has started until the first character, ignoring all spaces and line breaks before the first character. It reads the {{!}}- as a pipe on the same line, and then a hyphen, giving me "|One|-", which resolves as a hyphen with the style "One" applied to the column. It then starts a new line with "|Two|-", and a third line with "|Three", resulting in this table:

-

-

Three

Is there maybe a null character that I could add at the beginning of the result that would have zero affect on the output would would let the software know to start reading the result, even if it's a space or linebreak? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 04:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

This seems to work:

<table class="wikitable">
<tr><td>One</td></tr>
{{#if:{{{2|}}}|<tr><td>Two</td></tr>|}}
{{#if:{{{3|}}}|<tr><td>Three</td></tr>|}}
<tr><td>Four</td></tr>
</table>

— Sebastian 21:22, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Salted page?

How can I unblock Steffi to create a given name page? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:50, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Hiya Clarity. Wikipedia:RFPP#Current requests for unprotection recommends contacting the protecting admin first, in this case User:CactusWriter. Failing that, you could file a request at the aforementioned link, or attempt to contact another admin directly. Best, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 04:06, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Okey dokey, thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:02, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Search box for talk archive

Hi, I have archived this page and used the recommended search box. However, the search does not seem to work. What have I failed to do? Or is there a time lapse before the edit becomes effective? Cheers, Bjenks (talk) 05:20, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Try again in 24 hours. See Help:Searching#Delay in updating the search index. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:27, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

online earning

sir please tell me that can i earn online money by data entry jobs in india. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.203.41.18 (talk) 05:28, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

As it says at the top of this page "This page is only for questions about how to use or edit Wikipedia. Are you in the right place"? Data entry needs careful attention to detail... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:33, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

article removed

About a year ago I inquired about the removal of a bio page "Francis Moriarty" and was told it was removed because of a problem with a contributor, but not because there was any problem with the article in question. I was told in several emails from different people that this was being looked into but then I never heard back. If it could be replaced, that would be appreciated. 07:36, 18 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.185.30.184 (talk)

Searching for "Francis Moriarty" at Special:log/delete gives one entry:
2010-12-04T03:18:54 Jclemens (talk | contribs) deleted "Francis Moriarty" ‎ (G5: Creation by a blocked or banned user in violation of block or ban)

If you contact the admin who deleted it at User Talk:Jclemens, they may be able to help you, perhaps by userfying the article for you so that you can develop it. --ColinFine (talk) 12:35, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:Weather box/metrictoinch

This template is adding an extraneous significant figure when converting millimetres to inches (for example, in the Freetown article, the rainfall figures are given to five significant figures in inches). This is mathematically and meteorologically unjustifiable. I can't see where, in this template, the extra s.f. is being added. It must be in one of the protected precision templates. Could a template expert possibly check this? Dbfirs 08:02, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I tried to work it out but got lost too. It has something to do with {{Precision1}} which is used to decide the required precision for each row based on the precision used in the January figure provided in the city weatherbox. Now, whether this should be changed in {{Weather box}} or {{Weather box/metrictoinch}}, I couldn't tell (too many "{" characters and commented out bits to make much sense of it and no documentation for the deeper down templates). Perhaps your best bet is to bring it up at Template talk:Weather box. Astronaut (talk) 10:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Where there is already some discussion on this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:33, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I see now that the template writers assume a fixed number of decimal places, even when this increases the number of significant figures. I can see the meteorological and metrological reasons, but it certainly looks odd to a mathematician. Dbfirs 12:46, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

A personal appeal

To whom it may concern:

Hi, I am a graduate student at Claremont Graduate University in southern California. I am studying social psychology and cannot help but notice your personal appeals that head every page on wikipedia. I noticed that a few months ago you had "personal appeals" heading various wikipedia pages, and the appeals would vary in size, font, words, picture, and source (author, founder, editor, etc.).

As a social psychologist, I am very curious about these appeals. Are you conducting a study to determine which appeals people read more? Less? Are you just throwing together appeals and airing them randomly? Was the first round of appeals to determine the size and layout of the appeal (font, picture to the left, etc.)?

This is only curiosity, but I'd love to know. I use your website a lot, and I would really appreciate just knowing if there is anything more behind the appeals. I'm not asking for specific information if you are conducting an experiment. I really just want to know if this is an experiment or not. If you could get back to me at your earliest convenience I would truly appreciate it. Thank you for your time and consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.67.104.148 (talk) 08:08, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's not only an experiment (it's also a fundraiser), but yes, the fundraiser organizers are constantly testing different banners against each other to see which do best, so the fundraiser can be as successful as possible. Check out meta:Fundraising 2011 for a taste of the sort of tests they're running. Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:15, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Mental Health Supporting Application

<spam removed> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.201.205.3 (talk) 08:31, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

We are an encyclopedia, not a human rights organization. So no, we can't "support" you, and asking help desk readers to do so is inappropriate. CharlieEchoTango (contact) 08:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

temperature and chemical structural stability of edible vegetable oils, especially poly unsaturated cooking oils used for frying .

There is high pressure sales pitch of herat-friendly poly unsaturated refined cooking mediums such as sunflower, soya and groundnut oils that are used in frying starchy foods and vegetables, including deep frying. Do the double bonds of carbon atoms in these oils form ring compounds in the food that is fried or in the residual oil. The reactions may be either in a given chain of the same molecule or between two or more chains in close proximity while boiling. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.193.127.7 (talk) 09:01, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our policy here not to 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 nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. —teb728 t c 09:55, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

mail box.

sir/madam, I couldnt understand no see my mailing box, no where i can composed mails to friends. Pls direct how to go about that. Here is little beat diffrent from other mailing companies. Thanks for understanding. Niying Engelbert. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eniying (talk • contribs) 11:46, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. It is not a mailing company. We do not provide a mailing box.  Chzz  ►  11:56, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 3.7 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. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:56, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

account problems

i am trying to create an account so i can contribute images and editorial help, but cannot do so because presumably my username/account already exists. however, a search shows that my user account does not exist (not with all lower case nor with various combinations of capitalized letters in the username), nor is my email account recognised, nor can i get my login information sent to me. i am guessing this may be a bug because i just discovered that my blog essays have been cited a number of times by various individual wikipedias.

that said, i still want to create an account so i can contribute directly! can anyone help me?

87.155.93.233 (talk) 11:52, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

You have not said what user name you are trying to create, so I cannot check. It is possible that the account already exists on another language Wikipedia, or it may be too similar to a name that is in use. The easiest solution is, to choose a different user-name.  Chzz  ►  11:57, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

my username is grrlscientist. that has been my name since the jurassic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.155.93.233 (talk) 16:54, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, looks good to me. [1] What exactly is the error message you're getting? I'm guessing that your username is too similar to someone else's; you may find Special:ListUsers helpful to see if that is the case. If all else fails, see WP:ACC for assistance; they may be able to create accounts that you're blocked from creating. Finally: all usernames begin with a capital letter, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Sorry. --NYKevin @863, i.e. 19:42, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

The account User:GrrlScientist was created 6 April 2010.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 21:14, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

However, that account never made any edits, so if you go through the simple "ACC" process, it's quite unlikely that any humans would object. Nyttend (talk) 21:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

the specific error i receive is this:

There is no e-mail address recorded for user "GrrlScientist". Complete this form to receive an e-mail reminder of your account details.

and when i do, it denies anyone with my email address has an account. however, when i try to create a new account, it says it already exists. (And weirdly, i cannot see any indication that my account exists when i follow that link.) :(

the same can be said for "Grrlscientist" and "grrlscientist". i did send something just now to the "ACC process" but not sure what, if anything, will happen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.155.93.233 (talk) 22:18, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's a good chance they'll refer you to the usurpation process, which basically entails creating an interim account (with a different name like "GrrlScientist2"), editing for a while (the process is not officially available to brand new accounts, to ensure that popular names are actually used), and then usurping the old account (the old account gets renamed to something else, and then your account is renamed to the old account). I do hope they're able to just give you the all-one-case name, and you should wait for official word from them, but they might not, and I'm sorry for that. --NYKevin @224, i.e. 04:22, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Removing "Unreferenced" template from article

I'm a new user. I just added some sources to the article Kajto, which had been tagged as "unreferenced". Can I go ahead and remove the template?

I had the impression that it was frowned on for regular users to remove warning templates like that, but I can't find any thing in Wikipedia's manuals or help pages that suggests that,

Also, is there any way I can get somebody to give it a once over to see if my edits look kosher? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naŋar (talk • Naŋar (talk) 15:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Any user can add or remove templates. You could have removed the template youself, since you have so clearly fixed the problem; I have done it for you this time. I think you've done a splendid job adding references here. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:42, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! And thanks for clarifying. Naŋar (talk) 15:51, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

What to do about persistant IP vandalism

Earlier today I reported an IP editor for continuing their vandalism after being warned. They have been now been blocked, but the more I investigated the more I found. I was thinking of statring a sockpuppet investigation but it is now getting quite large. In all, I think I have identified over a dozen different IP addresses going back 8 months. They have a persistant methodology covering a small subject area (changing the heights of mountains, de-wikilinking some terms, removing references, and a few other things). They either wait for the block to expire or simply get a different IP address from their ISP and do another bunch of edits to waste the time of the dedicated volunteers here. Can a longer block be obtained covering an IP range, or could an edit filter be set up to combat this? Astronaut (talk) 16:09, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

If certain pages are regularly targeted they can be semi-protected to prevent IPs from editing them. Requests can be made at WP:RFPP. Mjroots (talk) 16:16, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

While the vandal has a liking for vandalising the I Shouldn't Be Alive article (408 edits from 48 different IP addresses since March!), they have branched out to mountains, tall buildings, lists of mountains, mountaineers, and some other areas - perhaps because I Shouldn't Be Alive has been protected 4 times since July. Astronaut (talk) 16:44, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

AlexiusHoratius semiprotected I Shouldn't Be Alive for a month, but vandalism resumed pretty quickly after protection expired, so I've re-semiprotected for a month. Nyttend (talk) 21:23, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

A bad hyperlink.

Sorry, but I couldn't find a relevant FAQ or instructions for how to report this otherwise. There's a bad hyperlink in the "Software product management" article. Reference #1 doesn't bring up the article referenced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.199.41.207 (talk) 17:24, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Confirmed - Link is broken - Unable to find a copy of referenced material elsewhere on web. --Jamiedolan (talk) 18:16, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Corrected; thanks for pointing it out. - David Biddulph (talk) 18:18, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Archiving articles

How do you archive an article's talk page? Darrman1 (talk) 17:52, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Try Help:Archiving a talk page. - David Biddulph (talk) 18:11, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Article Edited - Removed Dup Section

HI;

I edited this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb to remove a duplicate section "Pests" was listed twice, but must of the information in that section belonged in the Toxicity section. I moved the appropriate information to the Toxicity section.

The article says it is part of the Wiki CD, so I just wanted to see if someone can take a look at the page and see if what I edited looks okay.

Thanks Jamie --Jamiedolan (talk) 18:17, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your correction and for pointing this out here. Another editor had made this inept edit. You repaired part of it, and I repaired the rest (and while at it removed the other editor's linkspam.) —teb728 t c 06:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

How do I add my photo to my profile?

How do I add my photo to my profile? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skaye67 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a "profile" in Wikipedia. If you mean your user page, there is a link there to Help:Adding image. - David Biddulph (talk) 19:18, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

What did I do wrongly?

In this edit, I attempted to give the Barnstar of Good Humor, so I copied {{subst:The Barnstar of Good Humor|message ~~~~}} from WP:BARN and then replaced "message" with my message. Unfortunately, nothing appeared that I'd typed in the "message" parameter appeared, so I had to add it separately. What did I do wrongly? Nyttend (talk) 21:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

It's because your message contained an equals sign. The parser thought that you were trying to pass a parameter with the strange name "For [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff" and the strange value "466472796 this] funny yet pointed reminder.".A workaround would be to write {{subst:The Barnstar of Good Humor|1 = message ~~~~}} so that the parser knows you are trying to set the value of parameter 1. A trap for the unwary. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

LYNN GARRISON

How about including this on the Lynn Garrison page?

I have tried to figure out how to do it and proved myself an idiot.

The shot is interesting in that it shows the last flight of an RCAF Lancaster on July 4, 1964 with Lynn Garrison as captain — Preceding unsigned comment added by Corsair133693 (talk • contribs) 22:03, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Lynn Garrison (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

File:LYNN GARRISON LANCASTER SIGNATURES JUL 4 1964.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

That's an interesting picture. But I'm not sure of the copyright position on this one, and unless this is cleared up the photo cannot be used here. Is this a photograph that you took yourself in 1964? If not, do you know who took the photograph or owns the copyright? -- John of Reading (talk) 22:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Campina Grande geo-coords placement error

Hi. The infobox displays the longitude coordinates as "eastern hemisphere", causing the Brazilian city to be shown in Tanzania. The place-marker pushpin is absent from the map. Please fix this. Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Coordinates fixed (so if you click through to get a Google or Bing map, it shows the town correctly) - but there's already a dot on the map in the infobox?bobrayner (talk) 22:45, 18 December 2011 (UTC)