Help desk
< December 20	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 22 >

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 21[edit]

article about a company[edit]

Hello, I'd like to write a article about a web hosting company "HostCram". — Preceding unsigned comment added by SPUZE (talk • contribs) 01:56, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

First, remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a business directory. Start by reading WP:YFA on how to write an article, including how to determine if the subject is notable, then use the article wizard there to create a draft for review. Writing an article is not an easy task for a newcomer, so you might want to start by improving existing articles instead. RudolfRed (talk) 02:03, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To that I would add: if by any chance you, SPUZE, have any connection with HostCram, you should first read WP:COI, WP:PAID, and WP:NOTPROMO, and comply with any conditions that might apply to you and to the proposed article. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230,195} 90.220.212.173 (talk) 10:46, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a new wikipedia page[edit]

How do I create a new wikipedia page that talks about the history of trail riding in the Canadian Rockies? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cochranekayak (talk • contribs) 05:23, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Cochranekayak: I recommend starting at Help:Getting started. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:26, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cochranekayak, while you're at it, you could give a look to how to create your first article too. Thanks, Lourdes 05:57, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update BOT?[edit]

I've been trying to find the "update" BOT, that updates each WikiProject by doing it manually. I can't seem to find it anywhere. Adamdaley (talk) 06:54, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Table update tool is maybe what you were looking for, but the bot is currently blocked so it does not update anything if used...Jokulhlaup (talk) 09:34, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Article on Law Firm[edit]

Dear,

Similar to all large law firms which are our competitors our law firm would like to have its profile on Wikipedia. We understand that wikipedias purposes is not marketing but information. At same time, ALL large law firms have profiles in wikipedia that evidence their history, size, offices, etc. We have tried to develop similar profile but it was blocked by wikipedia. What we want is just same as all other law firms. Please help us achieve that.

Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:18:500B:24AB:E03D:8F01:6330:2E09 (talk) 09:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. I can assume that you have a conflict of interest with this law firm, so please read WP:COI and make sure that you properly disclose your conflict of interest. Since you are an IP address, you are currently not allowed to create articles. If you want to make an article, please read WP:YFA and check out WP:AFC. Also, please do not create a WP:SPAM article that is solely promotional. Also, make sure to sign your posts using four tides, or ~~~~. Thanks. EMachine03 (talk) 13:25, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, IP user. I'm going to give you some corrections to your language which may seem nit-picky, but I think will help you understand what is going on. First, Wikipedia does not contain profiles: it contains articles. There are several differences, but I think the principal one is that Wikipedia has little interest in what a subject says about themselves, and absolutely no interest in how they wish to be presented. Linked with that is the second point, that nobody - no person, no organisation, nothing - has an article on Wikipedia. Many people and organisations are the subject of articles in Wikipedia. What Wikipedia articles do is to summarise what people unconnected with the subject have chosen to publish about the subject. --ColinFine (talk) 21:40, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I will add further that anonymous efforts to create a "profile" for your company may well be interpreted and responded to on the assumption that you are attempting to commit marketing and promotion, especially since doing so without openly disclosing your conflict of interest is a violation of our terms of service. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:52, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting problem[edit]

Hello, how can I fix the formatting for the heading of the "A" section here?--Dormius (talk) 16:51, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Dormius. I'm not sure why it was displaying like that, but I used a different template for the columns and it seems to have fixed it. GMG ^talk 16:55, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Now, that was fast – thank you so much! Of course, for future reference it would be useful to know also what caused the error in the first place. Maybe someone else can help us with that?--Dormius (talk) 17:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully someone else can help clarify. But personally, for columns, I find it's usually safer to use {{div col|colwidth=30em}} at the start and {{div col end}} at the end, since it seems to overall have less problems interacting with other templates, presumably because everything isn't in braces: {{ }} GMG ^talk 17:05, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenMeansGo: Thanks once more. I'm afraid though I didn't quite get the part "because everything isn't in braces"...--Dormius (talk) 17:10, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I... I'm not really that tech savvy, but with the template that was being used before it ends up looking like this:

{{columns-list|colwidth=20em|

Stuff

Stuff

Stuff

}}

So the "stuff" is inbetween the opening of the template {{ and the closing of the template }} But when you use the other one, the start and the end both have an opening and a closing, so I've found it tends to have less problems, especially with other templates. So it would look like this:

{{div col|colwidth=30em}}

Stuff

Stuff

Stuff

{{div col end}}

Hopefully this explains more than it confuses. I'm not totally sure why it works that way. I just know that I end up with less wonky formatting with the second one. GMG ^talk 17:18, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

With complicated wikitext it often solves a problem to have separate start and end templates with the middle being wikitext by itself and not a parameter to any template. A simplified version of the reported example:

{{columns-list|
=== A ===
* Abraham
}}

It produces:

=== A ===

Abraham

The problem is that section heading code ==...== must be at the start of a line in the wikitext produced by a page. It was at the start of a line in the source but not in the code produced by {{columns-list}} which strips leading whitespace and inserts a div before the remaining part, leading to this:

<div class="div-col columns column-count column-count-2" style="-moz-column-count: 2; -webkit-column-count: 2; column-count: 2;   ">=== A ===
* Abraham</div>

A possible fix would be to insert something non-displayed before the section heading, e.g.:

{{columns-list|
<nowiki />
=== A ===
* Abraham
}}

This time {{columns-list}} will only strip the newline before nowiki and not the one before the section heading. But there are other dangers. The fix [1] by GreenMeansGo is safer. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:58, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Spacing[edit]

Hello, how come the spacing before "In Zitaten wird sic in eckige Klammern gesetzt…" is smaller than in the subsequent paragraph beginning with "Die so gekennzeichnete Besonderheit" here? (Nobody has answered in German WP, so I thought I might as well ask here.) Best regards--Dormius (talk) 17:14, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are you viewing on mobile? GMG ^talk 17:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. No, I'm using a regular desktop PC. Best--Dormius (talk) 17:38, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Because the line starting "Die so" is part of the text belonging to the doubly-indented "um eine Besonderheit" item.

The source text includes <br/>, which has made it harder than usual to follow what's happening there. Maproom (talk) 18:01, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Maproom: Thank you! But what exactly does a double indention have to do with the line spacing? Aren't those two different animals? And shouldn't that be considered to get fixed with respect to a harmonious typeface / layout?--Dormius (talk) 20:37, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they're two different animals. The use of the "<br/> commented-off linefeeds" trick conceals the fact that, despite the appearance of the source code and the rendered text, "Die so" is in the same paragraph as "um eine Besonderheit" and so has the same indentation. Maproom (talk) 20:52, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are other Wikipedia articles acceptable sources?[edit]

The title says it all. YuriGagrin12 (talk) 18:45, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey YuriGagrin12. Article can, and should link to other articles using internal links. However, Wikipedia is user generated, and like other user generated sites like IMDB, internet forums, and nearly all blogs, it is not appropriate for use as a source. Having said that, if there is a statement on another Wikipedia article that is supported by a source which meets our standards for reliability, then you can use that source on another article to support a similar statement. GMG ^talk 18:55, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay @GreenMeansGo: Thanks.

This may not be all that helpful, but maybe also consider WP:CIRCULAR. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 11:11, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing people.[edit]

Dear Wikipedia, I deleted a reference by the Guardian as it was incorrect, and wanted to reference myself. I am Matthew Pilkington the youngest son of Godfrey Pilkington and I am referencing myself in reference to how he died.

How do I do that? First hand references? It can be verified by my brother Andrew or my 2 sisters, Clarissa and Penny. Pilk64 (talk) 18:51, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Pilk64. In order for content to be verifiable, it needs to be supported by published sources that meet our standards for reliability. Personal experiences cannot be verified by readers, and constitute original research, which isn't allowed. GMG ^talk 18:57, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

SUBPAGES[edit]

Are you allowed to have PHP files as subpages on WP? Thank you, 92.96.94.152 (talk) 19:08, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are code blocks available in the computer programming languages A and B? Sincerely, 92.96.94.152 (talk) 19:08, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Can you create subpages written in Lua, Haskell, Java, C, C++, C#, C--, A, and B? Gratefully, 92.96.94.152 (talk) 19:08, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean executable PHP, the answer is no. If you simply want to display some code, you can use a subpage in you user space and <source> tag. Ruslik_Zero 20:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia supports pages written in Lua. You can read more about it here: Wikipedia:Lua – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:10, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:User pages for what you may have in userspace. It should serve a purpose for Wikipedia, e.g. display the code of a bot. The only languages which can run from userspace are JavaScript, CSS and normal wikitext. Lua can only run from the Module namespace. It might be possible to make a script in JavaScript which reads a user subpage and tries to interpret it as a program in another language, but I certainly don't recommend that. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:14, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! - 2.50.114.206 (talk) 06:15, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

references spread over 2 sections[edit]

Hi, im pretty sure that there should be just one section listing all references on an article, and not 2. In this article, Political status of Taiwan, where it says Position of other countries and international organizations, i found out that for some reason there's a completly separate references section about halfway through from the one at the bottom of the page. I check the wikitext and i found nothing wrong, also theres a site error for taipeitimes.com that says that it was invoked but never defined, but i found nothing wrong. can somebody fix it and/or tell me why does it happen? thanks. Pancho507 (talk) 21:24, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pancho507: An extra <references /> tag was somehow added to the article during today's edits. I've removed it. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:32, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How many links do we have to archive.org?[edit]

The external link search stopped showing results at exactly 60,000. How many are there in total? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Macon (talk • contribs)

User:Emijrp/External Links Ranking has counts from June 2014. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:38, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone has a better number, it would really help the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 57#RfC: Nonbinding advisory RfC concerning financial support for The Internet Archive. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:42, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

NASA photos, copyright question[edit]

NASA's Cultural Resources Center hosts a lot of pictures online. I am specifically interested in ones about the (ghost) town of Gainesville, Mississippi. My question is: What is the copyright of these pictures, and are they okay to post to a Wikipedia article with correct attribution? I don't pretend to be an expert, or even very knowledgeable, about WP policies on such things, so I am asking for some guidance. Here is a link to the NASA site that hosts the pictures I am interested in: [2] Ditch ∝ 23:42, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ditch Fisher: The about page at [3] says the content is public information and may be copied and distributed. It may be public domain as it is a work of the federal government. You should ask at WP:MCQ where the copyright gurus hang out. RudolfRed (talk) 01:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]