Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 December 31

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

December 31

Largest contributions

Hello, I want to see who are the human-users who made the largest contributions to a given wiki article. Is there any way to filter the last versions by number of bytes? thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 04:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ben. Is this what you're looking for?--A Wild Abigail Appears! _{Capture me. Moves.} 05:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Ben-Natan: Near the top of the "History" tab is a line of "External tools". The first of these is the "Revision history statistics" tool; part of its output is a chart of the "top editors" to the article by edit count and by text added. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error included ref

I have no idea what all this jargon means. I made an addition to an article, out of personal knowledge, I don't know how to verify it, but the War Crimes Tribunal sentences guards to execution and lengthy imprisonment as a result of the actions of Watanabe. The original article was about"Unbroken" a film by Jolie. . — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rodyates (talk • contribs) 05:51, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

"Personal knowledge" can't be used in Wikipedia articles. You need to give a reference to a reliable source - such as a newspaper or book.

You wrote, Watanabe had thouroughly smashed my fathers face in with a pick handle, on Australia Day in 1942 because my father would not lick the sole of Watanabe's boot

We cannot verify that that is true. Unless someone has written about it, we can't add it to the article. Igor the bunny (talk) 07:06, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

hover not working — thanks

Belated thanks to User:Edokter and User:Quiddity (WMF) for help with the problem I posted on 17 December, it was the Hovercard feature that caused the problem, now resolved. Happy New Year to all Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:22, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Maybe off-topic

In the course of an enforced change to another computer I've lost three useful functions which I can't reinstall because I don't remember whether they are Wikipedia scripts, Firefox add-ons or Greasemeonkey scripts

1. If I hovered above an image it was automatically magnified. I thought this was a built-in Wikipedia feature, but it seems to have gone, so I don't know how to get it back
2. I had two functions that enabled me to save (as image files) Google Book pages and Amazon "Read Inside" pages respectively. This was really useful for working articles up to FA

I'm pretty sure that the latter two are external scripts, and strictly speaking beyond the scope of this page, but any help here or via email would be great Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:22, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: They don't sound like Wikipedia features so Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing would be a better place. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:15, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:54, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

How to edit wiki?

Dear fellow users, I am new to wiki and I would like to know how to do the following things: 1. Create Pages 2. Make hyperlinks 3. Typing coloured words 4. Make charts

I'd appreciate if anyone can tell me the answers to my questions and/or other tips and tricks too. Thank you.

Radium128 (talk) 08:20, 31 December 2014 (UTC)Radium128

Hello, Radium128, and welcome to Wikipedia (which isn't called "wiki", by the way!). I suggest you start with The Wikipedia Adventure to find out about editing. Two more tips:

• First, I suggest you don't even think about creating new articles until you've done a fair bit of editing: it's hard! When you want to have a go, look at your first article.
• Secondly, what we are here for is to create an encyclopaedia. Any other purpose is subordinate. So Wikilinks (links to other Wikipedia articles) are very much encouraged (as long as we don't go overboard with them), and charts may be appropriate for particular articles. But work to get the content right and properly referenced before spending any effort on colours and appearance. --ColinFine (talk) 10:46, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

As ColinFine has said, creating articles well is challenging, for two related reasons. The first is that articles must be based on reliable sources, and it takes editing experience to learn how we interpret our guidelines on reliable sources. The second is that articles must cite the reliable sources using references, and the formatting of references is complicated. There are several activities that you can engage in to improve your editing skills. If you are a native user of English, or close to it, and it seems that you are, one activity would be copy-editing. Read that page, and its instructions on how to find articles that need copy-editing. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, while adding hyperlinks that are needed is easy enough, as long as you don't overlink, typing colored words and making charts are also technically tricky. Charts and references are two of the more technically demanding features of Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Welcome. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

References

Since references are one of the most important requirements of Wikipedia, but are tedious and have complex requirements, where is the best place to propose that a Twinkle or other tool be developed to facilitate the formatting of proper references? Should I propose that at Village pump (proposals), or is there a better place where I would be more likely to find a programmer with the right skill set who is willing? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:54, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

There's already a tool available in your settings: Prove It. See if that works for you. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Tackxx

Heading added by ColinFine (talk) 10:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

An entry on Tackk would be additive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.14.241 (talk) 09:06, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello. You're welcome to try writing an article on Tackk, if you think it meets Wikipedia's criteria on notability. The thing to remember is that a Wikipedia article must be based almost completely (at least 90%) on what other people have said about a subject; so you need to find where other people have written about Tackk, otherwise it is impossible to write an acceptable article on it. If you want to do this research and create an article, I suggest you read your first article; otherwise you could post a request at requested articles - but there's quite a backlog there. --ColinFine (talk) 10:51, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

specialization

You have a group of people who write most of the content, a group of people who format the content and do maintenance work like cleaning vandalism or categorizing pages, and a group of people who write templates and MediaWiki and bots.

My question is: what do you call these groups, preferably avoiding terms like "gnome" that laypeople don't recognize? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.230.236 (talk) 09:10, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Everybody are volunteers and can choose what to do. Lots of people do many things. Your first group is sometimes called content creators. The last is called programmers, coders, or sometimes developers for the MediaWiki software itself. I don't think the middle has a general name other than WikiGnome (see Wikipedia:WikiFauna for others such wiki terms). Copy editor is a common word for a part of the gnome work. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:09, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

trent jones cole jr.

Hello my name is Angela Wilson the mother of Trent Jones Cole Jr. as stated in you article. Name correction -Trent James Cole Jr. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:8903:4B00:F2B4:79FF:FE1D:F351 (talk) 09:11, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

(some info removed) GermanJoe (talk) 10:23, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Fixed in Trent Cole after finding an additional online source, thanks for pointing this out (might want to contact ESPN as well for a fix in their data). GermanJoe (talk) 10:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Error in sortable table column

(Reposted from EAR for better technical expertise here. — TransporterMan (TALK) 15:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC))

Hi. In the table of subsection Benguet#Municipalities, I added data-sort-type="number" under several columns for numerical sorting. After doing this, however, the "Land area" column does not sort at all (even if it does during the Edit Preview). I do not know if this is a bug, or if there is something wrong in the syntax. Please help. Sanglahi86 (talk) 15:00, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

rowspan and colspan often cause problems with sorting. In this case it only broke if certain content was elsewhere on the page, so it looked OK in preview of section editing. I have removed colspan [1] and sorting works now. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for a Block?

Is it possible to thank a mop-holder for blocking an editor? I can't see any way of doing so, and thought that as we thank editors for making edits, and correcting (for example) vandalism - why can't we thank editors for blocking those who do the vandalism in the first place?

Much as we all do this work, mop-holders do that bit extra but there doesn't seem to be a quick way (apart from barnstars and posting on talkpages,) of acknowledging the work? Chaheel Riens (talk) 18:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

When a user is blocked, the admin who does the block normally informs them by placing a message template on the blocked user's user page or talk page (practice seems to vary). That operation is an edit, so I suppose you could find that edit in the page history and use "thank" there: Noyster (talk), 19:32, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• Log entries for actions are currently not thankable. Phab:T52867 looks to change that for page patrols, sure it wouldn't be hard to modify that to be 'any' logable action. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 19:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Noyster - I should have thought of that. Thanks. Chaheel Riens (talk) 19:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Canvassing

What is your opinion on this exchange, which followed general discussion on the article's Talk page (see my comments there)? Could my post to the editor on my Talk page be considered canvassing for editorial support? P-123 (talk) 19:44, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The two of you were already discussing the page on the article talk page on 29 December, so a new conversation on a user talk page between the two of you on 31 December cannot possibly be canvassing under the definition found at WP:CANVASSING. I have not looked at the page or talk page closely enough to comment on whether there might be other problems. Is everybody involved aware that WP:DRR exists? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:24, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

My Removals

Hey, I was reading about your removals. I was adding an event to 2013 that made international news when it took place on May 6 and the next 4 months after that. I was wondering why they could not remain posted. I am not sure if this is the talk page because I looked around for the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.163.69.148 (talk) 21:58, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The relevant talk page is Talk:2013. Maproom (talk) 22:44, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

There are mentions of Ariel Castro in May 2013, June 2013, July 2013, August 2013, September 2013. Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia and the lasting significance doesn't seem big enough for the main 2013 article. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:59, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

how to refer to a category on a talk page

I want to refer to a category on a talk page. With an ordinary article, I can type in SS Adriatic (1871) and get the desired result. If I put "Category:Tea clippers" in the same squared brackets, it appears right at the bottom of the page, when I would like it in the text in the same way as the link to SS Adriatic works. i.e. you can read the words "Category:Tea clippers" in the sentence in which it is written, but you can click on it to see what is in that category. Is there a way of doing this? Thanks,ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Escape it with a colon before Category. [[:Category:Tea clippers]] → Category:Tea clippers. Works for files as well. --  Gadget850 ^talk 22:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

collapsed section on a talk page

I'm preparing a whole load of statistics for a talk page. If I put them in "in full" they will completely submerge the points I am trying to make. What I'd like to do is have the words "see detailed analysis" clickable to open up this data. I know I have seen somewhere how to do a collapsible table and am reasonably confident of getting that to work - but I need to include an explanation of how I have gathered the data, what level of precision is used, etc. So I am not sure that would fit in a table too well. Any thoughts on this?ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:38, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

You can use Template:Collapse to collapse a section of text which should, I think, suit your needs :) Sam Walton (talk) 23:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

You can use {{Hst}} as well

All your data would go in here. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 00:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)