Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 1

This is an archive of the help desk. Please do not edit this page. To ask a new question, go to this page.

The most recent archives are at the end. Non-archived questions may be summarised in the Summarised questions section below.

Summarised questions

The following relate to questions originally on the help desk that were not archived here.

• See Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Tutorial for more info on editing.
• You can sign your name using four tildes (~~~~)
• This page is a response to the Wikipedia:Village Pump getting too large and aims to be able to answer newcomer questions faster.
• Uploads of maps are very welcome, as long as they fall under the GFDL.
• See MediaWiki namespace for information on creating navigational boxes.
• For information on Samuel Huntington, see Samuel Huntington (statesman) and President of the United States in Congress Assembled
• A developer is not needed to create a Farsi Wikisource as all languages are on one site. Ask on their Scriptorium for further info.
• For problems accessing the Chinese Wikipedia home page, ask at the Chinese village pump
• See download.wikimedia.org to download the database
• See Wikiproject for info on working on groups of related articles.
• See m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables for help on creating tables
• Linking to directories discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:External links
• If you forget your username, go to an article you edited in the past and find your name in the page history. If you remember what your email address was, a developer could use this to find out your username.
• Tool bar/search bar: Feature suggestions can be made at sourceforge or m:bugs
• Images before 1921 are public domain. See Talk:Islam Akhun

Can't view images

Hi all,

My IE can't seem to open the images contained in the articles. All there is just a gray box with the image's title. But when I view Wikipedia from school, the images show up just fine. Any ideas?

Thanx.

On my version of IE (6.0), the setting that turns images on and off is in Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced Tab -> Multimedia -> Show Pictures. Make sure that is checked. If that doesn't work, can you not view any images on any page or just those in Wikipedia? Hope this helps, Jrdioko 19:36, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Some people had privacy or ad-blocking software which can mistake some or all of wikipedia's images for ads, and so replaces them with nothing (or sometimes "AD" or something like that). Wikipedia doesn't display ads or webbugs, so if you're running such a program then it's safe to edit your preferences and allow "en.wikipedia.org"'s images to be displayed. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:28, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)~

Red links (articles that do not yet exist)

Do you have any criteria for deciding when to create a link to articles that do not yet exist, or is it up to the whim of the writer?

It's pretty much up to the writer. If you feel that there should be an article on that topic, feel free to create the link. We encourage people to be bold in editing. If you'd like to learn more, you might want to try Wikipedia:Manual of style, which might help. But mainly, learn by doing, and from other articles. Yours, Meelar 22:55, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hello and welcome! If you see a red link to an article that doesn't exist and feel you know enough about the subject to contribute something useful, go ahead and give it a shot. As Meelar said, don't be afraid to be bold in editing. Even if you only know a few details about a subject, you can still create a stub. As long as you have something to contribute, go ahead and do so! Hope this helps, Jrdioko 23:00, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

In general, I think that when an article could possibly created through a red link, it's better to link it than not. --Αλεξ Σ 23:03, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A Daily Dose of Knowledge

Wikipedia rules! Is there any chance the site's creators/maintainers would implement a feature so that userse could sign up to recieve a daily (or weekly, or whatever) wikipedia entry (encyclopedia article) on a random subject (or, random within a user-selected set of categories)? It could be a daily dose of knoweldge. I would love something like that, and I'm betting others, would, too.

And, if not, is there anything like this in existence already (that is not limited to a certain subject)?

Hmm, click Special:Randompage once a day? It would be interesting to get something like that in the email though, perhaps a new mailing list that sends a copy of the featured article of the day to subscribers? -- Jrdioko 05:29, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Anyone could set up a mailing list like that. Why not organise one? Martin 15:27, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How? Email me at lukeprog@hotpop.com

I believe there has been some discussion both about a mailing list, and about distributing the Wikipedia:featured article of the day via RSS syndication (the latter really is the more sensible option, if perhaps the less accessible one). In both cases it needs someone to write some code, someone to set up the necessary server things, and someone to figure out some needful policy (who does what, when, etc.). Our having a "featured article of the day" is itself a new (and I think excellent) innovation, so we've not yet gotten around to figuring out the details of publishing or syndicating it yet. But yes, it would be a great thing to have (much like those "word a day" emails people get). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:36, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Some people set their browser's home page to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage which functions as a sort of Wikipedia Article of the Day idea. Just a suggestion. :-) Jwrosenzweig 18:00, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What stops abuse of free editing?

If some idiot wanted to come into an article and delete information or change information so that it is inaccurate, what is to stop them from doing that?

See Wikipedia:replies to common objections. Kosebamse 09:14, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Peer review. Watch Special:Recentchanges, build up a watchlist, use "related changes" to watch for changes in your field of interest. If someone writes something that is incorrect, fix it or revert them. Simple vandalism, such as deletion of sections, is usually cleaned up within minutes. It's not perfect. For it to work, we need lots of people helping out. But wikis show that people are generally good. Good users always far outnumber malicious users. See also Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. (via EC) -- Tim Starling 09:22, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, IBM did a study, which found that the average time that vandalism persisted was less than 5 minutes. I can't remember the link, but someone could supply it if asked. Yours, Meelar 22:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

See history flow (PDF). Angela. 16:10, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

Index of the Wikipedia Namespace?

Is there a page that has links to all pages in the Wikipedia namespace? Hopefully organized by topic, with short explanations of the content? So far, I've found 3 or 4 of them, all listing a small section, but nothing complete. This includes the so called 'Community Portal.' --Voodoo 01:20, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Alphabetical index. It's not annotated, but the page titles are quite clear.  :) fabiform | talk 01:35, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, that's not bad, but it's alphabetical. I found two, or maybe even three more index type of pages, all of them very incomplete. The closest to complete seems to be Wikipedia:Utilities, and that's both incomplete and not very good.--Voodoo 03:46, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Of the index pages I've seen, Wikipedia:Utilities is the most comprehensive. It doesn't list all the pages, but you can probably get from there to any page in the Wikipedia namespace with only a jump or two. I'm afraid that if you don't like that page, you're probably out of luck, because I don't think we have anything better. People have done lots of indexing of those pages over time, but it's a big project. Isomorphic 05:36, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I could use a good answer to this question too; I often get lost in the Wikipedia namespace. We have so many organisations and policies! The Wikipedia namespace could use a bit more organisation (covering all the nodes), but I don't know where to start.. ✏ Sverdrup 18:41, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm working on it, people, but it's a HUGE project. The complete list, bot-generated, is Wikipedia:List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Wikipedia:Alphabetical index is more manageable because it doesn't fill your screen with all the archives and subpages. Wikipedia:Utilities will be renamed Wikipedia:Topical index, and it will eventually have a more complete (and hopefully better organized) index, but it takes a while to get there from where it is now. --Michael Snow 21:40, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I started working on this too. Do you want to create a page with what you have, or at least the proposed categories etc. so we can help you, or would you rather just do the whole thing yourself? --Voodoo 01:13, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The alphabetical index is already complete - what I'm doing there is mostly looking for pages than can be merged with or redirected to other pages. But anybody who wants to help with the topical index (aka Utilities) is welcome to work on the existing page. I'm not planning to create a new page, just rename the old one when it gets complete enough to call it an index. --Michael Snow 02:16, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Inventor of the Long Playing Record

Question and response moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Inventor of the Long Playing Record

REGISTERED MAIL

Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#REGISTERED MAIL

How to edit TOC in article w/no edit link for same?

I would like to edit an article by adding a section which would mean editing the TOC for same as well to add/change an entry in same but there is no edit link next to the TOC and the TOC is not included in the intro section or the one below. How can this be done?

The TOC is automatically generated from the section headings. To change it, change the section headings (i.e. ==Section Title==). Tuf-Kat 05:32, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

Also, any new section headings you add will be automatically added to the TOC. Isomorphic 05:32, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

However, you need a certain number of section headings (four maybe?) until the TOC creates itself. That might be why you're not getting one. Αλεξ Σ 13:32, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I thought it was three... LUDRAMAN | T 21:01, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In the new version of MediaWiki, you will be able to use __FORCETOC__ to include a TOC on pages with less than 4 headings. Angela. 17:45, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

Why not just add the TOC automatically whenever there is more than a screenful or two of text between the beginning of the page and the last heading? --Voodoo 00:28, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Probably because "a screenful or two" is different for different people on different computers, systems, settings, screen widths... moink 00:29, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That's why I made the amount of text approximate. There is no benefit to using number of headings as a metric, it is just as dependant on those variable factors you mentioned. Also, you can have many headings in a message short enough to fit on a single screen, and in fact that is exactly what the TOC displays. The TOC is there so that you can jump to a heading without scrolling, and it's the amount of text between the beginning of the page and and the last heading that makes scrolling to that heading necessary, not the number of headings. --Voodoo 02:17, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Good grief. The TOC, as it stands, is intuitive and works wonderfully well. It's one of my favourite things. --bodnotbod 01:17, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

Whats wrong with using *.gif - images?

I just put out some illustrations wich are in the gif format... because of its rather flat-coloured style of content a gif provides an efficient compression. And I don't need a bunch of colours. So I can't se a bunch of technical reasons for using png in this case. MrMambo 01:24, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)~

Have a read of GIF#Unisys_and_LZW_patent_enforcement. Dysprosia 01:29, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Apart from the legal reasons, and the technical features you don't care about (colours, alpha, gamma) PNGs will generally compress to a smaller size (particularly if you use PNGcrush on them) and have 2-dimensional adam-7 interlacing (which means intermediate versions displayed to viewers with slow connections will be more useful). If you're doing diagrams or similar in some vector drawing program, please also upload the original vector file (in a zip file) and link to it from the PNG's description page - that way your diagram can be edited by others, or can be transformed into some newer format in the future, as the need arises. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:41, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

PNG compresses based on flat colors the same as GIF does, so that's not an advantage to GIF. If you don't use the extra colors, they don't count against you in the file size. PNG's features are essentially a superset of GIF's, and PNG most always compresses better, so there's no reason to prefer GIF. Really the only advantage GIF has over PNG is that it allows animation, which we generally don't want for Wikipedia images anyway. DopefishJustin 00:15, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Adding links?

I added links to the site but they got deleted? May I ask why? They were related to the topic I added them to. The links weren't spam because they have helped many other people.

Thanks, Phil

I'm guessing you are user:65.24.255.159 as your edit to this page was your first as a logged in user. If you are that user, then I think the reason you were reverted was because the links were not relevant to add to an encyclopedia. Software reviews might be useful, but they do not add any value to an article on what computer software is. Similarly, with the wiggyp link you added to web design; the link is related to the topic, but does not give information about web design - it is just one of hundreds of similar sites offering templates. These sort of links belong in a directory like Wikia or the ODP, not in an encyclopedia. You could also ask DJ Clayworth on his talk page as he was the one who reverted you. Perhaps he will be better able to explain it than I am. See also m:When should I link externally. Angela. 17:54, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not for an explanation of the general policy. Isomorphic 18:17, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Mirror

I HAD REQUESTED DELIVERY OF THE MIROR ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO. I RECEIVED DELIVERY FOR ABOUT 3 WEEKS AND HAVE NOT RECEIVED IT FOR ABOUT A MONTH. PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS.

                                  EMAIL: TUFF_FAN28@MSN.COM

Robert, this is an encyclopedia. We don't sell mirrors (or even encyclopedias, really). So I think you're asking at entirely the wrong website, I'm afraid. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:07, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Am I missing something here? LUDRAMAN | T 01:57, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the meaning of your comment has been changed, due to a context alteration [1]. -- Tim Starling 03:54, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

One must occasionally wonder about people like our friend here. Are they really serious? Do they think the internet is one giant organization, so if you buy something at one site, and ask about it somewhere else, it doesn't matter because it's all the same people? I'd think it was a joke, but I've seen more than one of these and it can't be that funny. Isomorphic 04:57, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A while (admittedly, a fairly long while) ago a friend of mine manned the helpdesk at Netscape. Much of her time was spent dealing with folks who'd bought (or more likely failed to buy) stuff online, couldn't figure out from whom the'd (not) bought it, and so complained to Netscape, citing them as being somehow responsible because their browser had been used. So yes, lots of people think it's all the same people (some of them are congressmen) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:01, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I am the head of a nonprofit organization whose name happens to be the same as that of a registration system for college enrollments. We get a bunch of request from prospective students complaining they have not received their ID number, even though it's fairly clear from reading our WWW pages that we are not in the least involved in registering college students.David.Monniaux 07:22, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Other language edits

I can manage English and, at a pinch, a couple of other languages. I could 'Talk' about the page in Latin script and someone would probably understand. But how could factual errors be alerted for other languages?

On each of the different language wikipedias there are of course people who will correct mistakes when they spot them. In the underpopulated wikipedias it might of course take significantly longer until a mistake is spotted than on the english one. Or do you mean what you should do in case you spot an error in an english article which is/might already be translated into one of the languages you cannot check? You can always leave an english message on the talk page of the (e.g.) greek article, there are good chances someone there will be able to understand your english and fit it into the article. You might also check for the Ambassador of the language and contact that one with your problem. andy 10:05, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm off to the Embassies right now.

Renaming a page

What is the process for renaming a page? There was a discussion about a year ago on Talk:Woodworking about renaming the main Woodworking page to Woodwork. I think this was a good suggestion, but no-one followed up on it. I would like to start helping out in to this topic area...

Steve-o 16:25, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Use the move this page function on the sidebar. LUDRAMAN | T 17:00, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Figured that part out, but I was wondering if there are any conventions around gaining concensus, etc. It appeared from the Talk page that there was something more to it. It sounds like there isn't, so I'll just go ahead and do it. Steve-o

Basically, everything should be done by consensus, but most things here are done fairly informally - we debate an issue based on reasons for and against where necessary, but otherwise just let each other get on with things. In short, Be bold - someone will tell you if they disagree with what you've done! - IMSoP 19:19, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Remember, anything you can do here is reversible if it turns out someone disagrees. So don't worry about messing up - if it turns out there's disagreement, it can always be changed back.

Posting Commercial Links on Wikipedia

I am a member of various affiliate schemes, e.g. Amazon, Tradedoubler etc, and would be interested in adding information to the Wikipedia in order to benefit commercially. For example, if there was discussion about a particular film, then I could post an external link from Wikipedia under my affiliate scheme to Amazon. I feel this could be mutually beneficial, but would like to know people's opinions about this before I start doing so.

For books, always post at least one ISBN if you can. Not only does it make it easier to track down the book, but the ISBN is automatically linked to a page that lets people shop for it at the site of their choice. So people can read the description, and buy it if they like from the seller they like. We're giving them choices, and not advertising any seller in particular. →Raul654 22:41, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

That's a big no no. If you want to make some money for yourself, set up your own website. Dori | Talk 00:49, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

(credit is due, btw, to the original poster - thanks for asking first) Dammit, we used to have a link to a policy answering this exact question (on the Village Pump, I think) so we should show it's not just Dori and I being petulant. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:52, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Number 18 on Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Dori | Talk 01:16, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

Besides being generally discouraged, I believe it would be ineffective. It's my understanding that the Wikimedia Foundation briefly tried the Amazon affiliate program to evaluate its fundraising potential, and that it was discontinued because virtually no revenue was generated. --Michael Snow 23:51, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The isbn pages suggest the amazon affinity program is still in place - hit this: ISBN 0061075620 and then the first "find this book" link in the "Individual online booksellers" section. If it was discontinued, where is the (very little) money going? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:22, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My understanding was based on this post by Jimbo to the mailing list. It's possible that the information at the page you mention was not updated. That's all I know. --Michael Snow 03:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Copyright on images

I uploaded 2 images for the password article. I'd assumed they were covered by fair use, but now I'm not so sure. The images are "Password_game.jpg" and "Password gameshow.jpg". Are these kosher? What's a good rule of thumb? (Bear in mind that I'm new, good-hearted, and a little lazy. And there are probably lots of users that fit in this category.) Quadell 01:29, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The article is Password game, btw. I'm guessing that they are Fair use (assuming you're in the US). Wikipedia's policy is here: Wikipedia:Fair use -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:34, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On reading that page (particularly the "no one person may decide" part) it looks like you should post both images there, in the context of the article in which they're used. Folks more knowledgeable than I can then consider what's appropriate. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:37, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Multilangual log in

Is it possible? I mean to have the same (account) username and password for the English, and say, the Arabic edition which I also use? Or are they in totally different realms?!

Ahmad

Short answer: No. Or, to be more precise, completely up to you - you can have the same username and password if you want, but you'll still have to log in seperately on each wiki, because they have completely seperate user databases. I believe there has been discussion of this inconvenience in the past, but I haven't time to find it at the moment I'm afraid. - IMSoP 16:12, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article Series

I'd like to bundle the human [sense] together in an article series. Should I post messages on the talk pages of every individual article I wish to include? Or are there other procedures for this? - MGM 19:46, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

I think the general practice is to create a list with links to all of the related pages and put it on all the related pages. The best way to make the list is to create it in a MediaWiki namespace, something like MediaWiki:HumanSense and then all you have to put on the individual pages is {{msg:HumanSense}}. LUDRAMAN | T 13:51, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I meant should I do anything specific to notify contributors with possible objections? -- MGM 07:02, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

The best way of getting the attention of lots of people at the same time is to start a discussion on the Village pump - or better still, start it somewhere else and publicise it on the pump (keeps things tidy, saves needing to archive it later). Alternatively, start doing it, use well-chosen edit summaries, and see how many people who have the articles in their watchlists start sending you complaints... :-/ Up to you ;-) - IMSoP 22:11, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How do I change my e-mail address?

I just opened a wikipedia account and unfortunately the e-mail address that I gave was wrong. Could you please let me know how to change my e-mail address? Thank you very much. - LightSeeker

Log in, and click "Preferences" in the upper-right corner of your browser. You can change your email address there. →Raul654 00:29, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.

Author HELP!

I absolutly love wiki-pedia and i use d it all the time. This time i used it for a history class, i need to know the main person who made this website or at least whos idea it was to make this website, or how many people made it. i serously need the answer AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. THANK YOU! =)

It sounds like you need to cite it for a paper. Please see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. →Raul654 04:16, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

And stuff about whose idea and things like that can be found at wikipedia's article on, err, Wikipedia! -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:59, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Downloading just part of the database...

I'm not positive about the best way to do this...but I am just wanting the "Biography" section of Wikipedia. Is there a way to get this without downloading all 8000+MB of the database?

Use Special:Export. Note that the current revisions of all articles only take 218 MB. You only need to download 8 GB if you want all previous revisions. -- Tim Starling 05:22, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

That small!? Wow! Great stuff. --bodnotbod 01:20, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

Fonts

One of my PCs seems to have all the right fonts to be able to display funny characters on some Wikipedia pages, and one does not - it displays boxes for characters in some other languages. How can I get the right fonts for the one that does not? Nroose 08:05, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You don't say what operating system you have. In Windows 2000, go to Start → Settings → Control Panel → Regional Options; in the General tab, select all the check boxes in the list under "Language settings for the system"; select Apply (you may need your installation CD at this point). Gdr 18:23, 2004 May 5 (UTC)

Cross referring while editing

While editing an article I often need to refer to another to check (for example) its exact title. With most web pages I can hold the shift key while clicking on a link. This opens a new window which I can then close before returning to my editing window. Unfortunately, holding the shift key while clicking on GO does not open a new Wikipedia window. Instead I find I have to click the back button to return to my edits, which I then find I have lost! Okay, I suppose folk have to learn from their mistakes but I have done this several times now so I just thought I'd ask whether it's technically possible for such a feature to be added. Shantavira 08:51, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't know about the technical GO solution -- I agree it might be handy. The rest is a matter of personal habit. I usually open two or three separate browser windows when I'm doing research and editing -- one for the Edit page, one for searching Wikipedia (which I usually do via the Search Site button on my Google toolbar, rather than via the Wiki search -- saves a step), and a third for searching the web via Google, if necessary. I always start my edit by clicking "Show Preview" -- that way if I need to investigate any of the links within the article, I can do your Shift-Click trick on article links from there, open a new window to check the related article then close the window, then simply scroll back to the edit box to continue working.

When checking related pages, I often Shift-Click on "What Links Here" in the sidebar, opening a new window with the list of related links. This makes it very easy to use my Back button (or better yet, the drop-down list next to my IE Back button) to return straight to the list after investigating something on it.

For a really long edit, you can compose offline in Notepad or a word processor, then copy and paste the whole thing into the edit box -- saves headaches with lost edits. If the server begins behaving strangely, you can select and copy all your text with some quick keyboard shortcuts (click in edit box, CTRL-A, then CTRL-C) before clicking any Save/Preview/Go buttons -- that way you can easily paste your edits back in if you get a server error. (Check the page history first, though, since your edit might have gone through after all.)

Good luck, and happy editing! Catherine 19:03, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Another tip which you might find useful is to click "show preview" when you're part way through editing, you will then see a copy of the article with any changes you've made - red links are immediately obvious, and you can shift click on any of the links in the previewed text to open a new window if you find you need one. fabiform | talk 11:12, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Also, if you feel that being able to open search results in a new window would be useful, you can suggest this at Sourceforge or discuss it at Meta. Angela. 20:15, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Not to be too much of an evangelist, but a complex editing task is often made much easier by using a browser that supports tab navigation. I personally use Mozilla, but folks also use Konqueror and Opera (browser) which have the same feature. I typically have five or six tabs (they're just windows, but they're easier to handle that full-on toplevel windows) open to wikipedia, with at least one for doing wikipedia searches and another for doing google searches. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:28, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Also worth evangelising about is that forms retain their state when you click back in Mozilla - i.e. you can start editing, follow a link, click the back button, and your edits will still be in the edit box. I don't know what other browsers do about this. - IMSoP 23:39, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Changing image formats

A little over a week ago I replaced a bunch of maps in JPEG format that were taken from the CIA World Factbook with the same maps in PNG format. As I did so, I built up quite a list of orphaned images, which will be a bit of a task for some admin to remove. A thought just flashed into my head—could I have gone to, say, Image:Barbados.jpg and used the "Move this page" feature to move it to Image:Bb-map.png (and then uploaded the PNG version), or would that have only changed the name of the page and left the image filename alone? —Bkell 10:33, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You did it the right way. You can't use "move this page" on image: pages at all, not even to correct a typo in the filename. Once you're finished, you can put a link to your list on Wikipedia:Images for deletion and an admin will delete them for you (don't worry about making work if you're improving wikipedia, deleting images doesn't take an admin long anyway).  :) fabiform | talk 11:06, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Problem editing wikipedia articles with Lynx browser

I'm having trouble editing pages in certain situations. My access is through a community freenet, using Lynx Version 2.7.1. My problem is that when I want to add material in between what is already present in an article, I cannot find a way to "insert another blank line" without deleting what is already there. Any suggestions? Andrew Sly 19:30, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Maybe the overwrite function is on, and you should turn it off? LUDRAMAN | T 19:42, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah, no, I know the problem you mean - Lynx uses a fixed number of independent lines to show the input box - Enter just moves you down a line. I've never worked out how to create a new one, either, although there must be a way. You could try looking through the Lynx User's Guide. ALternatively, Ctrl-X Ctrl-E (or, it seems, Ctrl-E Ctrl-E) will let you edit the textarea with your default editor - so on my system it popped up in Vim. As soon as you save and exit, Lynx will pop back up with the new version of the text. - IMSoP 23:56, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"As of YYYY" links

Why do many articles have links like [[As of 2004]] instead of As of [[2004]]? —Bkell 20:43, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Basically, these links allow people to use "what links here" to see if the information needs updating. See Wikipedia:As of for more information on it. Angela. 20:47, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, okay, that makes sense. —Bkell 20:52, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Is wikipedia going to be limited to just a knowledge base? a big networked reference tome?

I am a casual visitor to wikipedia, but somehow it seems there is something lacking in wikipedia. Ok, its an encyclopaedia, right? but is knowledge all we need? where is the room for creativity?

Wiki offers interactivity! rapid communication of ideas, collaboration at a reasonable speed...so whats my build up here?

How does one express his ideas in Wiki, ideas soon to become applications in science (can i get a random peer review, ofcourse at my own risk), in sociology, politics (wow can i campaign?), market survey (can i dare to start this venture?). Well yes, there is no ownership conferred by Wiki to the idea, but that is at the convenience of the person who is expressing it. The "ideas" can be anything. Well to be short, i want links where i just dont find existing knowledge base, but ideas leading to future.

Think, Share, Make and Evolve!

Yuvvaiva!

wikipedia is not original research - we only want generally accepted ideas. →Raul654 22:06, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

The slightly longer answer is simply to say that Wikipedia is only one of many sites using the wiki concept, and a Free Encyclopedia is the use we're putting it to here. Off the top of my head, I know that MeatBall is keen to generate knowledge about online communities, and the original wiki at the Portland Pattern Repository was set up to foster ideas in computer programming. You might also find some useful links by browsing through MeatBall:WikiCommunityList. - IMSoP 22:14, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

add talk page link

by using ~~~~ i sign my name with timestamp, is there an easy way to add a link to my talk page after it as i've noticed some users who do that, thanks calexico 23:48, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The nickname (set in your preferences) is subsituted into the wikitext like this: [[User:Joe|<nickname>]]. So a nickname of "Joe]] [[User talk:Joe|Talk" produces "[[User:Joe|Joe]] [[User talk:Joe|Talk]]". -- Tim Starling 01:29, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

Consensus on FA candidates

I'm looking for a page that explains why featured articles have their nomination mentioned on their talk pages.

To me it seems to be more logical to do this on top of the article in question, like with cleanup and deletion notices. I actually nominated an article which has already been featured because of this. But obviously a consensus has been reached. Can anyone point me to further reading about this and explain why this is the case? - MGM 07:08, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

This was discussed before, and I think that discussion took place on Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. Basically, it was obvious to everyone that marking a page as "featured" at the top was quite intrusive on the article, and so it was decided to tag the talk page only. →Raul654 07:13, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

Might I suggest a less obstrusive picture on top of the article to announce FA candidateship? Maybe a star labelled FAC or FA (once they've been featured. Make the Wikipedia a bit more colorful... - MGM 22:31, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)

how do i get to

I can't get to page that explains the origin of the words? I got there through google, but dont know how to get there from the main page... can you help... thanks

Are you looking for etymology? Isomorphic 16:10, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

top news stories listed by year

I just stumbled onto this incredible site. I was onto a page that lists each year going way back...and has links to the top news stories for that year. Now I can't find it again. (With links to full story) Please help!

Linda Holmes Victoria, BC email: hucklin@shaw.ca

Linda, it's easier than you think. Just go to an article named for the year you care about (e.g. 1314) and you'll find out everything we currently have about that year. For some information that may be skipped, go to that page and then hit the "what links here" link (on the lefthand side) for a more complete (if rather hard to read) list. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:07, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

personal stats

How can I check easily the total number of edits I have made?calexico talk 19:50, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

the only way is to hit "my contributions", choose 100 or 500 or whatever, and count how many screensful you get. There is a statistics page (I forget where) but it isn't updated very often. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:56, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, last updated April 10. (I'm #382!). - Lee (talk) 20:03, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Calexico let me know what you think! Calexico 22:06, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC) - Great thanks!

adding language links

calexico 16:16, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC) I have had trouble in adding language links from, for example, my English User talk page en:User talk:Calexico to my French User talk page where instead of a nice little link right at the top, I get the link written out in the text, see User talk:Calexico to see what I mean. Am I doing something wrong?

According to Wikipedia:Interlanguage links, "Interlanguage links in talk pages and on Meta will appear inline in the text, like regular links, so you can cite other pages in discussion." So no, you're not doing anything wrong - this is just the way interlanguage links behave on talk pages. I may be wrong, but I don't think there's a way round this. --Camembert

Uploading images

I would like to upload an image that I believe is covered under fair use. As I understand it, I am supposed to upload it, write up a case describing why I think it is covered under fair use, and post the case and image to the fair use page.

However, I cannot upload a file unless "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright."

Am I missing something here? -Rwv37 00:52, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Can anyone answer this? -Rwv37 23:28, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

If you want to upload a fair use image, you need to lie when you check the box, and then explain on the image description page that it is fair use. This will change with the new version though, where you can specify the source on the upload form rather than having to falsely tick the box. Angela. 01:36, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Claiming my anonymous articles?

I just accidentally wrote an article while not logged in. Checking the user log for my IP address, it turns out that I've made a few changes while not logged in - either accidentally, or before I had a username.

Is it possible to somehow "claim" these changes for my username, so that they show up in "My contributions", for example? If so, how? Thanks. -Rwv37 20:08, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit :) - Lee (talk) 20:14, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! -Rwv37 20:16, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Images x Text art

I just made some PNG pictures to replace the text art on the Magic star page, for later find out someone took the last JPG pictures to add the text. The three new PNG files, together, are smaller than the first JPG of the last version, before the text, so the page is still quite light.

Anyway, I wanna know if the PNG pictures were a good idea, or if the text, in this case, is a better choice. If it's not, I'd like to know when the images would be better. Thanks - Kieff 23:44, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I think your PNGs are great. The ASCII art they replace really wasn't nice, but I don't see why the original JPGs (which also look fine) were removed. Perhaps you should ask User:Jacquerie27 who added the images and then the ASCII art why they did so (perhaps theres some reason of which I'm not aware). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:43, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

about acetaminophen

please i would like to inquire if there is any difference between paracetamol and acetaminophen?

Did you read the acetaminophen article? Gdr 17:28, 2004 Apr 29 (UTC)

Article Author / Originator

Hello,

Hopeless newbie here (but I have read at least SOME of the many FAQs and Help pages)...

What I was wondering was, how do I find out who began or authored a page?

I clicked on 'page history' but that did not tell me.

--bodnotbod 21:36, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

The thing to do would be click on "page history", then scroll (using the "next 50" button if necessary") until you get to the first version. The author of that is the original author. Meelar 21:39, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

When the software is upgraded, the page creator will be shown in the meta data for a page. This example shows <dc:creator rdf:resource="http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gwicke"> meaning Gwicke was the first person to edit that page. Angela. 18:01, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

Cannot make text into a link

I've successfully made a link in the sandbox using the square brackets.

I am attempting to turn the text:

"A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,"

...into a link at this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996 -- at the July 8th point.

Why am I having trouble?

Is it to do with the fact that quotes and/or a colon are inbetween the brackets?

Thanks for the previous answer Meelar.

It's the quotes. Stick them (and the comma) on the outside of the link and it'll work. - Lee (talk) 22:44, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Change edit history, so creator is me

I (stupidly) posted a chemistry assignment (now Periodic table history) onto Wikipedia. Now, if the Panel (the people that are marking my assignment) look for plagerism and see this, they'll fail me/expel me from school... Whatever.

Anyway, my question is, is it possible to change the original authoer (202.173.189.49) to my username (Goog), so that I have a better chance of proving ownership if a problem arises?

Failing that, can the article be deleted?

Goog 11:04, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sure, just follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. Angela. 13:29, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

May take some time, though ... Chris 73 | (New) Talk 03:38, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Lost in space

Who runs the show? Who's top dog? Where do I find your reply in this mess?

Lost in Space was produced by Irwin Allen …

… Oh, you meant to ask who runs the Wikipedia? Gdr 13:17, 2004 Apr 29 (UTC)

---

Character coding in different Wikis

I run into a problem with character coding, moving names from Polish Wiki to English. They look ok at first, but next edit shows the letters like ą, ę, etc. have been corrupted into meaningless strings @#%#% and such. I wonder, y does it work on PL Wiki, not here? The letters should be visible in UTF...or what does Wiki use? Is there just no point in using non-standard letters in EnWiki? See names in tables on those pages: Hetman on enWiki plWiki Tnx in advance (umm, and major tnx if u can copy your reply to my talk page! --Piotrus 16:43, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The Polish Wikipedia transmits and receives data in UTF-8, so you can enter any Unicode character. The English Wikipedia uses ISO 8859-1, which includes only the characters needed for Western European languages. So if you want to put Polish letters in the English Wikipedia, you have to convert them to HTML character entity references. For example, you'll have to turn "ą" into &#261;.

Many people think that the English Wikipedia should use UTF-8. See the disccussion at Wikipedia:Unicode. Gdr 17:23, 2004 Apr 29 (UTC)

Praise and Other Comments

Is there a repository for one's thoughts on the Wikipedia?

You know, like you get on the back of a book, except open to all?

It's just that I would firstly like to say what a fantastic project this is (I'd used it as a reference a number of times in the past, but only yesterday started making my own contributions)...

And I quite like the idea of "It's the Crack Cocaine of Copy Editing!" appearing somewhere.

Sorry, I'm sure everyone's got more pressing matters...

--bodnotbod 20:52, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

Your user page (or a subpage thereof) is a good place to put that kind of stuff. →Raul654 20:59, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks, I appreciate that. Don't think I'll start any subpages just yet. I've added the stuff to my user page where, no doubt, at least 3 of the 60,000+ contributors will see it ;o)

---

How do I create a menu similar to the one one the Alias (television) characters pages displayed as

 ? SD6-Agent 12:12, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The contents of {{msg:alias}} reside at Template:Alias. To make a new one, you just have to create a page that similarly starts MediaWiki: (using whatever trick you do to start a new page). Then just use {{msg:<page_name>}} wherever you want to put it. - Lee (talk) 15:30, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Marked for deletion but not in deletion list?

I was looking under the Starcraft links and noted that most of the pages are marked for deletion, but none are listed on the deletion discussion page. Being a huge gamer myself and noting that SC is one of the best selling games of all time, I wonder why this is the case. Is it due to copyright information, duplication of material, etc?

Much thanks.

Hi, they are on votes for deletion, see here: Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion#Command_Center_(StarCraft)_et_al - if you want to have your say, you need to edit Template:VfD-Command - you should do it soon though as these pages have just about had their time and the discussion will soon end.  :) fabiform | talk 19:54, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Text in the MySQl database

When I download the database (I have the Spanish version of the database), the text shows up as a bunch of unreadable symbols. How do I get the actual text of the articles?

If you're simply looking at the file you got from the download, then it'll be meaningless to everyone - it's a dump of a MySQL database. To read it, you need to load it into a mySQL database. Then the wikitext (which is odd, but not meaningless) will be visible in the "cur" table. To read that as HTML, you either need to install mediawiki or build an offline version (see Wikipedia:Database_download#Static_HTML_tree_dumps_for_mirroring_or_CD_distribution). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:24, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Help moving tabbed table from Word document

I apologize if this is covered elsewhere. I just rewrote the puberty article by writing it in Word and pasting it into the edit window. Near the end I had some 4 column tables of normal times of development that were simply tabbed columns (not actual Word tables). As you can see the numbers are run together and the tabs and CRs were not pasted. I have the original Word tables. Can you suggest a way to transfer the info without rewriting all of it? Thanks. (Slow learner) Alteripse 21:21, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

OK I've done it for you, but if you put a space as the first character on each new line the wikisoftware will keep the original formatting. theresa knott 07:46, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. Alteripse 14:33, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Archives

There was a main page a week or so ago that had links I wanted to see. I lost it and forgot what exactly the links are. I'm addicted to wikipedia and now I'm obsessing about finding a cache or archive of previous main pages. I was wondering if there is such a thing. Thank you.

Well, there isn't an archive per se. You've got a couple options. First, you can click the "page history" link on the Main Page, and go back to a version from a week ago. That'll give you a list of each version of the page, with times and dates. The down side to that there's a new version every time anyone tweaks anything on the page, so you'll probably have to scroll through a good number of edits to go back a whole week.

There are some other options. You can look at Wikipedia:Goings-on and its archives, which list the "featured article" for each day. You could also look at the archive for Mediawiki:dyk, which has a lot of neat stuff. If you remember the actual articles you're looking for, just type them into the search box. Wikipedia's internal search is disabled, but it'll let you access a premade google search. Isomorphic 04:29, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Just thought I'd point out that previous versions of the main page probably aren't all in its history, as the majority of changes now take place on "transcluded" pages. So the "featured articles", "in the news", etc, are now actually their own pages, magically merged into the main page whenever you view it. You might want to look at Wikipedia:Editing the main page for details. - IMSoP 18:24, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

• The Did you know section is archived at Wikipedia:Recent additions.
• Anniversaries are archived at Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May (or whichever month you want)
• The featured articles are archived at Template:Feature/Archive
• The news items are also shown on Current events which are archived at the month they occurred in, such as April 2004. Angela. 20:54, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist Clarification

I'm slightly confused about my Watchlist and it's this phrase on theWikipedia:Watchlist page that's doing it:

The default cutoff for the watchlist is currently three days for users with less than 1000 pages in their watchlists and 12 hours for Wikipediholics with more than 1000.

I keep thinking that if nobody changes a page I am watching for a certain period of time, it is going to fall off the bottom - and I won't be notified when it is changed. I'm fairly sure that doesn't happen, but can someone reassure me on that point?

To make it explicit: If I choose to watch a page, I will be notified of a change on my Watchlist, provided I do not actively Stop Watching even if it's 5 years from now?

Secondly - Every time someone changes a page I am watching, that page shoots straight to the top of my Watchlist, regardless of how long ago the previous change happened?

--bodnotbod 12:54, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Every time an article is changed, then it goes right back to the top of your watchlist, no matter how long you have been watching it. However, after (by default) 24 hours, it falls off the bottom again. So you have that much time to notice changes to an article. →Raul654 14:23, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Great. That's exactly how I want it to be. Thank you. --bodnotbod 14:31, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

"You have new messages" malfunction

I've had two occasions where I'm informed I have new messages, but when I click on it, there's nothing new there.

Does this happen to everyone? Perhaps if someone starts to leave something but then 'cancels' instead? --bodnotbod 16:43, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Strangely enough, it happened to me twice yesterday although it has never happened before. theresa knott 16:50, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

If there's no apparent change to the talk page, someone may have inserted a comment in some obscure location, or a comment may have been removed. So it's best to check the history. I'm aware of a bug that can cause the new messages note to become "stuck on" when someone makes an edit, but I've never seen it come on spontaneously. -- Tim Starling 03:37, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Hit counts?

I know I'm usually on the other end of questions here, but I haven't found it: is there a way to count the number of page views for each individual article? Thanks, Meelar 01:19, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the server lists them by the month. Go to my user page and click on the link to "Current month's hits". By the way, that's an auto-updating link I never have to change it :) →Raul654 02:25, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

PS - that is a ***HUGE*** list. Make sure to stop it before it loads too much and crashes your browse.

That's weird, I wanted to ask exactly the same question. But, having said that, I don't want a huge list. You can't just do one page at a time? --bodnotbod 00:15, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Each page used to have a counter at the bottom, but this feature had to be dropped in the interests of speed. theresa knott 15:05, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

extra spaces in paragraph breaks

I noticed in the article on Thursday Island I wrote, there seems to be extra spaces between some paragraphs. I've had a read through the editing help but have drawn a blank for this but no doubt there is a simple explanation. Any help?

thanks

Roisterer

I have fixed the problem for you. They weren't seperated with a simple carriager return - there were some spaces there too that you couldn't see because they're, well, spaces. →Raul654 04:37, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Watching Long Pages

On pages that have 'edit' links on the right hand side, if I edit a section - using that link - and have my 'Watch This Page' box ticked: Am I only then watching that section of the page for changes? Or is it still the entire page?

Failed attempt to register

Hello

I appreciate Wikipedia, and have been able to get a lot of good information here. I have some things I could also contribute. I attempted to register using my email address as my username. After I filled in the fields I pushed the button to register, and got only a blank screen. Later I came and attempted to log in under my username and password, and again got a blank screen My email address is unfolding@smartchat.net.au

Please let me know what to do

Thanks

Richard Maguire

Sydney Australia

Using an email address as a username is probably not a good idea, as spam havisters get email's from web sites. Try logging in with unfolding as you username, and put your email in the email field of the log in screen theresa knott 09:24, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, an @ symbol in a username seems to cause this problem (I just replicated the black screen Richard got). I'll check sourceforge and file a bug if one isn't outstanding. But Theresa's caution is correct, notwithstanding. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:38, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

On a related topic. I do not currently have an account with MetaWiki or any of the other projects beyond the 'pedia. I was thinking of setting up an account. Is it a bad idea to use the same username/password for each project? That's what I'd like to do, but I wondered if it would cause a conflict of some sort. Thanks. --bodnotbod 15:02, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Single sign-on is something that's on the development "todo" list (so you'd automatically register for every project in one go, and not have to worry about creating N new accounts). But that's not done, so you do indeed need to register on each individual wikiproject. I think almost everyone keeps the same username (and lets face it, the same password) on each wiki. There's someting to be said for preemptively registering on a bunch of the wikis (such as the other-language ones) so that no-one can go there and register your username (and use it to frame you somehow). It's quite sensible to be registered even for languages which you don't speak, as you can probably figure out interwikis anyway. For those ones I usually leave a message on my user page there saying "I don't speak lower silesian, and I rarely visit this wiki, so if you want to talk to me, do it on 'en'". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:19, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Admin promotion

So I've accepted a request for adminship and I got 20 votes FOR voting me as an admin. The deadline has expired so when do I become an admin? SD6-Agent 18:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

When a beaurocrat (sp?) promotes you. →Raul654 18:48, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

It's bureaucrat. Just think of them ruling a piece of furniture. Meelar 20:01, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Done. Sorry for the delay. Angela. 07:06, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

BC/AD vs. BCE/CE

Is there a Wikipedia standard regarding the usage of BC/AD or BCE/CE?

Yes, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Gdr 18:06, 2004 May 5 (UTC)

Links

On Wikipedia:Tutorial (External links), User:Bernhard.kaindl inserted the question " How can one link to a page which needs a pipe in it's URL?" onto the page. I think the answer is that a pipe won't bother the system at all, since it's internal links that use pipes. If anyone knows the answer to this question for sure, let him know on his talk page, please. Thanks, Isomorphic 05:32, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think you're allowed pipes in URLs. If you try in article titles, you just get the "Bad title" error, and for external URLs, it says "Invalid URL", so there shouldn't be any cases where this is a problem, as such URLs should not exist. Angela. 07:28, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

He answered his own question with the following: "Note: Using the pipe('|') in the URL of the link does not work literally, apparently HTML provides for the possiblity to specify any character in hexadecimal form, so you can write '%7C' instead of the pipe." So I assume that works. fabiform | talk 11:43, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think '%7C' will work in urls either. http://www.example&7C.com also produces the Invalid URL error. Angela. 18:45, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Right, let's clarify things here:

• First, the address of a page has to do with HTTP (a protocol for transmitting and receiving data), not HTML (a way of formatting a document)
• URLs (the full address of a page) should not be confused with domain names (just the first bit) - and domain names have additional restrictions that don't apply to the rest of the URL (because of yet another standard, DNS)
• Finally, article titles within the MediaWiki are subject to their own restrictions, to avoid the system breaking horribly when someone does something weird with "magic" characters; this is yet another issue (um, where are we, number 4!)
• Meanwhile, the MediaWiki software has an idea of what it thinks a valid URL should look like, and it actually appears to be there that this issue arises: I can access a page by typing http://rwec.co.uk/~ron/test|page into my browser, but to make a link from here to there, I have to use http://rwec.co.uk/~ron/test%7Cpage which is defined as equivalent by the HTTP definition.

My, now there's an unnecessarily long-winded explanation for you - anyone would think I'm procrastinating or something... :-/ IMSoP 21:58, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Reducing size of uploaded images

How do I reduce the size of an uploaded image? Or will I have no choice but to somehow change the image on my own computer (which I also don't quite know how to do) and upload it again? I've uploaded a portrait of William Wallace Denslow that is obviously much too large. If I can figure out how to do this reduction, I will be able to upload some additional images (all in public domain) that I happen to have scanend into my computer and could be of use here, such as a map of the Land of Oz. --Woggly 11:27, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

There's an automatic thumbnail syntax to use for this job, I've done it to the image on William Wallace Denslow. I typed the following: [[image:Denslow WEB.jpg|thumb|250px|William Wallace Denslow]] - start with the image file name, end with the text you want in the caption, and in between (in any order) you add elements like "thumb" to make a thumbnail, and a width in pixels if you don't like the default thumbnail width, "left" or "none" if you don't like the default right-align, etc. You can find all the details of this at Wikipedia:Extended image syntax.  :) fabiform | talk 11:50, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. Practicing in sandbox. --Woggly 18:02, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Link directly to 'page history'

Is it possible to link directly to a Page history?

I've tried a number of Google searches across the wiki project and can't find an answer. The fact that page history is sometimes referred to as the revision history and edit history isn't helping ;o) --bodnotbod 16:04, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible. Go to the page history and copy the complete URL. Then use the same syntax you'd use for making an external link. Here's an example, linking to this page's history. The same trick can also be used to make links to difference pages and other pages of the same sort. Isomorphic 16:11, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

You can also link to specific versions in a page history, but be aware that these are not permanent as the page IDs change if a page is deleted and then undeleted, or when a page is moved. Angela. 18:49, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks to all above who answered various questions of mine. I don't know whether to keep thanking people (my polite instinct) or whether it's less annoying just to leave it as implied... --bodnotbod 00:05, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Why does Völkerwanderung go direct to edit

In the migration page, there's a link to Völkerwanderung (it is underlined red for a non existing page). However the Volkerwanderung page does exist and has content.

I've looked in the migration page and the reference seems to be done normally with two square brackets like so: [[Völkerwanderung]]

This is a known bug, sometime the link table gets confused, and not all incoming links are listed on the "What links here". The case that a link stays red even though the target page exists is more rare, sometimes it goes away by editing the target page one. However not this time - so I changed the link to Volkerwanderung, which is a redirect to the correct spelling with umlaut anyway. That way the link is blue at least. andy 20:52, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Single or double space?

Uh, this might be silly, but I've noticed that in some articles people use double spaces after a period (Like "Hello. How are you?"). I've been using just one, and I've seen articles like that too. But I was thinking that double spaces could be some recommended thing when writing the articles, or that the double space might be used for some internal wiki thing I'm not aware of... So, is that completely irrelevant or there should be a "after period spacing standard" hehe?

Kieff 03:52, May 6, 2004 (UTC)

Well, in proper English writing, there are two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. The wiki software, however, displays one and two spaces as the same, so it really makes no difference. Yours, Meelar 03:59, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

In fact, I think somebody told me that this was a British English convention, but I could be wrong (I've always thought of two spaces as "correct", but I know Microsoft Word's grammar checker has an option for which you want to standardise on). And FWIW, the squashing of multiple spaces is done by web browsers when reading the final HTML - I think it's designed to allow the source of web-pages to be formatted independent of their rendered appearance. Hence the wide use of the "non-breaking space" entity   - IMSoP 17:40, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm British and I've taken typing classes. And I can confirm that we were taught to use 2 spaces after a full stop (or period as you would have it). And I have the habit now, so I'm glad nobody's telling me not to do it. Apart from the way it looks, I like the way it gives me a nice percussive dugga-dugga when I finish a sentence. Too much info? OK... --bodnotbod 01:28, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Manual of Style states:

There are no current guidelines on whether to use one or two spaces after a period but it is not important as the difference only shows up in the edit box. The page itself will only display one space (unless you use &nbsp; to force it otherwise). See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spaces after a period) for a discussion on this.

See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spaces after a period) for a discussion on this. Angela. 01:43, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Talk and Google

Moved to Wikipedia:External search engines

Repeated vandalism over a two week period

Where would I report someone who has been vandalising articles for two weeks between making useful edits? I have 15 instances of vandalism I can link to directly between Mar 20th and May 4th.

Also, I am worried it will lead to edit attacks on my articles, is it possible to submit to a committee anonymously?

--bodnotbod 01:31, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Well, Vandalism in progress is more for attacks that are taking place in real time. You're talking about a long-term pattern. If you want, you can tell me or another admin by email. Unless you think the violations are enough that the user should be banned, all it will do is alert us to keep an eye on their contributions. Isomorphic 03:40, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I have passed my evidence on to another administrator (I saw their offer first), thanks for the offer, though. --bodnotbod 01:31, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

Math formula doesn't show up

Hi,

I just created the article Edgeworth series, and the first displayed equation doesn't show up. The others appear just fine. I am using the rendering option "HTML if very simple or else PNG". It would be great is somebody could help me out here. Wilke 20:47, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, it looks OK to me, even with that setting (normally I use the stupidly named "Recommended for modern browsers"; just wanted to rant about how stupid that name is again...). Have you tried the eternal magic of Wikipedia:Clear your cache, and seen if it's still not showing? - IMSoP 21:38, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Works now, so was probably just a cache problem. Wilke 21:52, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Collaborative arguments

This novice has a question for the Wiki community about the use of Wikipedia for the collaborative examination of complex problems.

There are increasing numbers of what some call 'non-trivial problems' in the world, problems that are complex and multilayered, exhibit conflicting data, and are often dynamic thru time (e.g. are we running out of oil?). Determining answers can easily be beyond the capacity of any individual or single institution, and apart from scholarly journals there is no public forum for hammering out the relative merits of different evidence & arguments.

If the talking points of an issue can be laid out (in say a nested heirarchy), and appropriate near-blank pages created, contending views and independant thinkers could make progressive contributions. 'We all stand on the shoulders of giants', simply cos the view is better. I think Wiki could play a role as a less-biased forum for individuals to examine all sides and make their own minds up on the evidence, as well as providing a valuable repository of state-of-play info on the issue.

This is not too dissimilar a use to the open law project (from the little I've read on it), but I know that is seperate to Wiki & obviously there are issues of storage and issue framing, as well as the basic point - does Wiki want to go there? If I've posted to wrong list, overlooked some existing open source tool, or missed strictures in Wiki policy blocking this, I apologise humbly, but would still like to here from anyone who has explored this idea, would be interested in doing so or knows of related online efforts.

Thanks, Liam C. Melbourne, Aus. e51049 at ems.rmit.edu.au

You'd like Wikinfo. Dysprosia 14:31, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

Did I edit this page correctly?

I added a picture to the Jerry Rice page and I just want to make sure I did it correctly. Could someone please look at the page and make sure? Also, could someone please click the image and look at what I did copyright-wise? I found the image on a certain website (a website that sells autographs), so I simply added a link to the website.

Thanks, Sheil

You did it properly. Good work :) Re to the copyrights, you said on the image page that the image is freely usable with attribution - where does it say this on the website? It's good to know you're being mindful of copyrights, however. Thanks Dysprosia 13:27, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

math typesetting problems

Apologies if this isn't the right place. Why doesn't the following work?

In a paper in Nature in 2003, it is shown that $<\phi _{n}>$, the expected abundance of the n-th most abundant species, may be calculated by

$\theta {\frac {J!}{n!(J-n)!}}{\frac {\Gamma (\gamma )}{\Gamma (J+\gamma )}}\int _{y=0}^{\gamma }{\frac {\Gamma (n+y)}{\Gamma (1+y)}}{\frac {\Gamma (J-n+\gamma -y)}{\Gamma (\gamma -y)}}\exp(-t\theta /\gamma )\,dy$

(this is an early draft). Why does the maths typesetting stop and the text revert to text?

any tips welcome

Robinh 20:46, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

You had an extra </math> in the middle, so you were inadvertently telling it that the maths typesetting should stop there! (I've taken it out so you can copy-and-paste the new version, in case anyone's about to say "looks fine to me"). You had ...{\Gamma(1+y)}</math>\frac{\... - easy to miss in amongst all that TeX; it might be a good idea to split it onto multiple lines to make it easier to edit (a single newline within the TeX markup doesn't make any difference to its display).

What a thoroughly scary equation, by the way - keep that thing away from me! - IMSoP 22:37, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

List of National Arms

I added a bunch of links to images to national arms previuously not listed. I just want to make sure its cool.

Rudy Galinda

Not on the list?

Not on what list? - IMSoP 16:54, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Request for feedback

I've just contributed an article for the book Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and would welcome and feedback or suggestions for improvement. Please use my Talk page to contact me Andrew Sly 02:08, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

the wiki will be locked in a few minutes

Hello people new to this game, but liking it enormously, I find the red message

the wiki will be locked in a few minutes

appears at odd moments. Why? By whom? What does it mean? It sounds vaguely menacing, (viz: If I happen to be around when it happens, will I be locked in, or locked out? Ot even locked up? ) as an error message is certainly disconcerting, and is absolutely unclear to a neophyte like myself.

Grateful for clarification

Richard Brown

Hi Richard. :) It's eye-catching isn't it! A few days ago wikipedia was locked down (inaccessible to read or edit) for a couple of hours during hardware upgrades, that was the warning message that was posted before this happened to let everyone save their work, etc. So the message is old and out of date, and you can ignore it. I'll explain why you're seeing it (and only occasionally).... anonymous users (that is anyone who's accessing wikipedia but who isn't logged in) are served a cached version of pages to reduce the load on our servers. Evidently some of the pages you're looking at were cached a few days ago, when that warning message was relevant. To get rid of it on a single page, try refreshing/reloading it. To stop getting cached versions of pages you need to create an account (all this requires is that you pick a username and password), as logged in users don't get cached pages. I hope that helps. :) fabiform | talk 15:27, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Concatenate Articles

I would like to make a big article out of smaller articles.

[[include ArticleN]]

Is this possible?

It is possible to include elements like this, but we wouldn't use it for standard article content. If you would explain exactly how you want to use them, or why you want to break up a large article like this, it will be easier for me to explain the best course of action. :) fabiform | talk 17:20, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

To elabourate, currently you can include special pre-defined sections, for instance that would be used on multiple pages, by putting them in the MediaWiki namespace. The next version of the software will allow "transclusion" from any namespace, making it technically feasible to do what you seem to be asking (the syntax, by the way, will be {{:ArticleN}} if ArticleN is just in the normal article namespace).

However, I'm going to take a stab in the dark that you want to make a long page easier to edit - in which case you have two options:

• if it's really really long, maybe it just needs to be in several articles anyway - after all Wikipedia is not paper, and we can make use of the power of hyperlinks...
• if it's just getting hard to edit, you just need to learn how to use section editing - use appropriate headers, and you can edit the contents of one header independent of the others.

Hope that helps. - IMSoP 18:11, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

This probably should have gone into meta, as it's more of a general mediawiki question and not one specifically for anything I am doing on wikipedia, but thanks for the info, anyway.  :) I'll look forward to the feature in newer versions. Msporled 18:33, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Weight o other planets

Moved to wikipedia:reference desk

Battle of Entries

Hiya, I just recently joined and one of the first articles I've altered is the Whiteness page. The article posted was ill-informed and not that helpful so I added some more info. Later I noticed that someone (a non-registered user (NRU)) reverted the article. We seem to disagree about this topic. The NRU says that "whiteness" means "white people are racist". Whiteness Studies has never made such an assertion. SO- shall I alter the entry once again? Will this turn into a battle of the entries? How do we proceed? Worldtyrant 01:23, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Anonymous users have the same rights to edit articles as do those with login accounts. From the history of the article you mention, it looks like you've been removing the "votes for deletion" tag on that page. Please don't do that, even if you feel its insertion wasn't justified. Instead, discuss the matter over on the votes for deletion page, and an admin will remove the VfD tag once the discussion and voting is done. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:28, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and in general what you're describing (one person adding stuff, another removing that and putting in something else, repeat at nauseum) is described here: Wikipedia:Edit war. It seems to be a hobby for some :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:31, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I can see it now - we should create a Wikipedia Dungeons and Dragons scenario. I'll be Grethor, a 9th level edit warrior, chaotic-evil affilation. If I get promoted one more level, I'll learn the spell of permanent reversion. →Raul654 18:11, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks for the info! Especially the Edit Wars link. Worldtyrant 22:42, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Is it OK to exactly quote dictionary definitions (with attribution)?

On controversial topics, it's good to quote a difinitive source. But dictionary publishers are in the business of selling dictionaries. Is it OK to quote a definition exactly? Mackerm 03:37, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

You wouldn't be quoting the whole entry. Most dictionaries give details of pronounciation, alternative spellings, examples of usage etc. I can't see how you could violate copyright if you are sensible and only quote the actual definition, as long as you put it in quotation marks and attribute correctly. It's not as if we would be doing it for every article. only the ones where the definition is variable. theresa knott 08:47, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. Mackerm 14:20, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Spellcheck

Could you provide a spellcheck while editing pages? Rajasekaran Deepak

Link to user talk page

How do I get to my "user talk" page? I use the "Nostalgia" skin, and suspect that the problem is in the skin. Rajasekaran Deepak

Go to User talk:Rajasekaran Deepak. Also, when you log in, you should see (in the upper-right hand corner of your browser) your username, and (talk) next to it. →Raul654 23:39, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

When I am logged in; from any page on this site, I must be able to directly go to my "user talk" page. The "Nostalgia" skin gives direct access to "special pages" using a drop-down menu. The "user talk" page ought to be included in this menu. Rajasekaran Deepak

The "user" page also ought to be included in this ("special pages") menu. Rajasekaran Deepak

POV to VFD

Template:PremierCollegesofIndia is listed on VFD, citing POV as the reason.

1. Isn't it wrong to list on VFD just because of POV?
2. Can I remove it from VFD?

Rajasekaran Deepak

1. Not necessarily
2. Absolutely not.

→Raul654 23:42, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Number of Words in English&French

Could you please give me the web site address(es) where I could find the number of words contained in the English and French (and other) languages? Thank you Chris

The question doesn't have a well-defined answer. There is a sense in which there are infinitely many words in English, because of open-ended naming schemes for large numbers, chemical elements, and chemical compounds (for example, unnilnilnilnilpentium is the name of a hypothetical chemical element with atomic number 100005). The web pages [2] and [3] claim that the biggest English dictionaries have around 500,000 words. Gdr 17:06, 2004 May 14 (UTC)

Three tildes and four tildes

When I add three tildes or four tildes, I don't get my "user" page (I have created my "user" page already). Could you look into the three tildes <Rajasekaran Deepak> and four tildes <Rajasekaran Deepak 18:06, 2004 May 13 (UTC)>?

Your user page still does not exist (as it evidenced by the red links above). It has no page history either, so you probably missed something. →Raul654 18:12, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. Deepak made a page called User:Deepak Rajasekaran, although his username is Rajasekaran Deepak. Deepak: yea, it's weird, but the softwar lets you make pages in the user namespace that aren't really your userpage. The pages created by the tildes are the correct ones. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:15, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I'll move it to the correct location if no one beats me to it. Isomorphic 18:16, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

You created a user page at User:Deepak Rajasekaran, but you are actually User:Rajasekaran Deepak. I moved the user page to where it should be. In future, get to your user page by clicking on your username in the very top right. :-) That way you'll avoid further confusion. Jwrosenzweig 18:16, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Hehe. Beaten. Isomorphic 18:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Undo

How can I undo a mistake I made? I want to revert back to the last-saved version.

I want a method easier than editing the page again. Rajasekaran Deepak

Go into the page history. Select the version you want to revert back to. Click "edit this page" - when the edit screen comes up, it should say in bold letters "This is an out of date version" -- save that version with no changes. Viola - you've reverted back to an older version. →Raul654 19:17, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

"Move page" when sidebar is disabled

I have disabled the sidebar. How do I move the page? "Move page" ought to be provided along with "Edit this page". Rajasekaran Deepak

The "Move this page" link bottom of the page should still work. And in the future, please sign your comments with ~~~~. →Raul654 20:28, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

Started adding ~~~~ to my previous posts but realized that it would insert the wrong time. Adding ~~~ instead. Rajasekaran Deepak 21:43, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

Sidebar missing

I hid the sidebar in my preferences some days back. Now I want it back. I enabled it again in the preferences ("Quickbar") but it does not appear.

I tried logging out and logging in, but it did not help. Rajasekaran Deepak 21:35, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

Located the problem: the "Nostalgia" skin! It does not display the sidebar. You ought to provide a warning about this in the preferences page. Rajasekaran Deepak 21:55, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

Identifying administrators

How do I identify whether a particular user is an administrator? Is there any indication in the "user" page? I don't want to search the list of administrators; I want something easier. Rajasekaran Deepak 22:02, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

Most of us state our administrator status user pages, but we don't all. Perhaps we should make it policy to do so. Is there someone in particular you want to know about? You can e-mail me if you want to find out privately. moink 22:04, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

To expand on Moink's answer (how does one pronounce that - does it rhyme with Oink or Ink?) there only surefire way is to search the list. There's really few reasons to need to know if a specific person is an admin - they don't have any more "weight" (so you don't need to check to see if someone with whom you're arguing is a "heavy") and all admin activities (protection, moves, blocks) are done in public anyway. So if you want something done (protection, move, block, etc.) then the best thing to do is to post on the appropriate page. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:09, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Table use

How do I get a table to float as a unit to the left (History of women in the United States)? --Αλεξ Σ 02:47, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Redirect to subheading

Is it allowed to redirect to a subheading if for example you refer to band member within the band's page? There would be too little info on the person themselves to merit their own page.

--MGM 11:41, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

Currently, the software doesn't allow for redirects to take you directly to sub-headings, but it is usually acceptable to simply redirect to the page and make sure the reader won't be confused as to why they've got there (just having the name in the table of contents will probably mean that's not a problem). Indeed, this is a common way of dealing with what would otherwise be irredemably short pages, and is probably a Good Thing™ People do occasionally use #REDIRECT[[Article#heading]], with the main advantage being that the intention is clear if the redirect is viewed directly; as I say, the software currently takes no notice, and treats it the same as #REDIRECT[[Article]]. HTH - IMSoP 12:45, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Could it be included in the software, think it would be useful - MGM 13:27, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

Funnily enough, somebody else just asked this on the Village pump - see there for a brief explanation of the technical difficulties involved. - IMSoP 13:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Question: Problem with editing Bromelain

Okay. I've had a bit of a problem editing the page for Bromelain. When I first made the edit, I used copyrighted material, which was a bad mistake (not to mention stupid) and I'm really sorry about that. However, after the copyright problem was fixed, I proceeded to look up information on Bromelain from multiple sources, and write my own, original article on the subject. However, this was again deleted and replaced with a copyright notification, and I don't understand the instructions to follow.

So, I just need help figuring out what to do next, and how to get in my original article. Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

Put your original works in Bromelain/Temp, and we can later delete the offending copyvio page and move Bromelain/Temp to Bromelain. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:47, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Additionally, thanks for taking the time to actually write a researched article. We appreciate it. Meelar 14:50, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

You can find your original article by looking in the page history. That way you can copy it out and put it in Bromelain/Temp. Just click the "page history" link and go to the second-to-last version. If you can't figure it out, someone can move the text over for you. Isomorphic 21:12, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Let me add my thanks for going back and doing it right -- we really do want everybody's help, we just can't afford to take chances over losing a portion of what we've built over copyright issues. If the copyright violation process seems awkward, it's because of this: if your new version were allowed to stand as is, then the old copyrighted version would still exist in the page history. Even though nothing remains of the infringement in the current article, a zealous copyright holder could claim that we are still "publishing" the old article because it continues to be available through the links on our site. Therefore, to protect ourselves legally, we've decided to go through the overcautious and tedious process of completely deleting the page and its history. The /Temp page solution allows good editors like you to continue working on a fresh new article with no page history problems, and as Finlay said, once the old article has been deleted (after the admins get through the queue ahead of it on the copyvio page), the new article will be moved. Catherine - talk

Table use

How do I get a table to float as a unit to the left (History of women in the United States)? --Αλεξ Σ 02:47, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Have a look at History of women in the United States#The Revolutionary period now. The table was floated by wrapping it in a 'div' with a style of float:left. Margins were used to make sure that the text-flow was clear of the table on various browsers. The table itself was wikified - see Using tables. Personally, I don't like the layout of the article - too much zig-zagging for my taste and for browsers on smaller devices. -Zigger 10:08, 2004 May 16 (UTC)

RSS Feed

Do Wikipedia have RSS feed for featured, in the news, anniversaries, and did you know... articles? 61.94.148.88 05:12, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Mostly no. There is currently one RSS feed at Wikipedia:Announcements. Bloglines can be used to subscribe to the Wikipedia mailing lists with separated addresses. Recent changes feeds into one of the FreenetFreenode Wikipedia IRC channels at #enrc.wikipedia. Feature requests to improve Wikipedia functionality can be submitted at the MediaWiki project here at SourceForge. --Zigger 09:01, 2004 May 16 (UTC)

Meta:Syndication feeds has information about RSS plans in the next version of Wikipedia's MediaWiki software. --Zigger 17:06, 2004 May 16 (UTC)

Ideas can also be discussed at meta:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion. --Zigger 17:38, 2004 May 17 (UTC)

Case Sensitive Searches

I found that the search engine for Wikipedia is case sensitive which makes it very difficult and frustrating to look for specific articles. Some of them use the redirection mechanism, which is not an ideal solution. Also, the search engine seems to be limited to article titles, so links and content are not indexed. Wikipedia is a great site, and an improvement in this area would make it even greater.

Many agree with you. Full text search is usually "disabled for performance reasons". Relevant articles and discussions can be found from Wikipedia:Searching, meta:MediaWiki User's Guide: Searching for pages, and Wikipedia:External search engines. --Zigger 18:04, 2004 May 16 (UTC)

Ideas can also be discussed at meta:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion. --Zigger 17:38, 2004 May 17 (UTC)

Four questions

First question; where can I keep work in progress?

Sometimes it takes me several weeks to write a big new article from scratch. Examples completed are puberty and androgen insensitivity syndrome. Similar examples I am currently working on are growth hormone treatment and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. As you can see the latter are incomplete, sometimes even with sentence fragments. So far, no one has bothered them because they are pretty unsearched-for (maybe even unwanted or unneeded, but let's not go there...). Is there a way to make a personal temp page, or hidden sandbox, or whatever you call it, where I could do all the work until it's ready to post in a more complete form and no one else would accidentally find it? Alteripse 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you can make a subpage of your userpage, by adding /whatever after it - for example User:Alteripse/sandbox, User:Alteripse/work in progress, or whatever you like. Alternatively, just keep things offline and edit offline, and when you're ready to submit your big new article, just copy and paste. Dysprosia 03:15, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Second question; More efficient searching in wiki?

My second question is related to finding some topi in wiki policy or metawiki or something that I remember seeing but can't find again. For instance, I saw something about academic standards disease and you might not be surprised that like a first year med student I suspect I may be incubating a case. More seriously, isn't there an index that covers both wiki and meta wiki and whatever other wiki I haven't even found yet so I can find something more easily? Alteripse 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Topical index, which covers the Wikipedia namespace on the English wikipedia. Meta probably has its own directory of some sort, but I don't know. Isomorphic 06:53, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Third question; trolls: wikipedia needs an immune system

I cannot believe the time-wasting destructiveness and bad faith of a few of the people logged on here now and in the past. Actually what I can't believe is why people here tolerate it. In dozens of posts all day, irismeister has been heaping abuse on at least two of the people who do some work here, even making vague threats. I gather he just returned three days ago from being banned for doing the same thing last month.

Why do we tolerate it? I've seen some of the arguments about legitimate differences of opinion, and giving people benefit of the doubt, and exasperated contributors or sysops tormented into saying something they shouldn't have, but trolling is like porn: you know it instantly when you see it, and the number of cases in which there is even a shred of ambiguity about motive should be quickly resolvable by direct questioning. When they play their "persecuted martyr" card, we should be able to trump it with a "let's sum up your constructive contributions" card. If you balance the cost of expelling (in terms of maybe losing the chance to convert someone from the dark side) against the cost of losing the real contributors who simply get fed up and leave (you've apparently got a whole pageful), it doesn't seem hard to figure out the paying strategy. Again, I am sure there are pages and pages of agonizing over this which I haven't found and maybe don't even want to completely read.

I actually do have a constructive suggestion: it ought to be possible to devise a fairly straightforward response checklist of criteria and questions --sort of like a Turing test for trolls, to notify those who appear to be trolling that clarification is being sought, boundaries being set, and ambiguity removed, and if responses and reassuring behavior change are not quickly obtained to follow through with long term banning rather than weeks of rising tension and you know what, just to banish them for a few days or weeks before they return and restart the cycle. We shouldn't be ashamed to have an immune system. Alteripse 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi I expect I am the admin you are talking about above who's been saying things i shouldn't. So I'll respond. The thing is, lot's of people are very concerned about being fair and welcoming and non cabal and giving people the chance to reform and so on. We have an arbitration comittee to deal with people like irismeister but, they won't act unless a complaint is made, they seem reluctant to ban someone for long periods of time, - and most infuriating of all they take weeks to make a decision. I would love to see a quicker decision making process, but it'll be hard to get one because are reluctant to appear harsh. In the meantime, to preserve my own sanity, I'll continue to make fun of my "admirer" theresa knott 15:51, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

You aren't the only one bothered by the state of such things. I posted a rant about it last night here. Anyway, the people to complain to about trolls and the lack of anything being done about it are the Arbitration Committee, who are at least in theory the source of rulings on such things. They've been a tad slow about it, though. Isomorphic 18:45, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Fourth question: Dealing with unresolvable controversies

You know what I mean-- those pages that get protected because two people trying to contribute (as opposed to trolling) cannot compromise. Has there been any experimentation with splitting a topic into distinct pro and con pages? I am imagining a main article that contains the undisputed factual information, with two connected viewpoint pages. I realize some of the fiercest fights are over the intro paragraphs-- perhaps the condition of allowing a pair of people or factions to append un-interfered-with expositions of their viewpoint would be to let a neutral party write a brief intro paragraph, which they could counter in the intro to each partisan section. A constructive model for this would be the books published for high school debating teams on controversial topics, which strive to allow persuasive presentation of both sides without forcing sentence by sentence amalgamation. I realize that presenting both sides is NPOV wiki policy now and the best authors ideally present both sides so that partisans of each feel fairly represented, but some of us aren't that wise and intelligent. I offer this as a way of providing some structure to a controversial topic that still lets both sides have a (mostly) untrammelled say without preventing the facts and opinions they wish to suppress. I have some further ideas on details if anyone wants to pilot this on a particular page. Alteripse 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

"splitting a topic into distinct pro and con pages" : this idea has been implemented at Wikinfo, by the way. Dysprosia 03:17, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Conflicting edits

I'm wondering how wikipedia handles multiple, simultaneous edits, that is if I'm editing a page, and somebody makes a quick change while I'm in the middle of doing something, what will happen when I try and save my changes? - Xgkkp 04:48, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

In the new software that is yet to be rolled out here, when there's an edit conflict, you'll get two boxes, the first with the current text, and the second with your text. You should merge your changes with the first, current text.

If you've made major changes, you could replace the current text with yours (but be sure to make proper note of this in the edit summary!), and then afterwards merge any changes that were made by people before you.

HTH Dysprosia 04:57, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Right, but what happens with the current software, does it just write straight over it without warning, or still give an 'edit conflict' but leave it completely up to you to resolve?- Xgkkp 17:46, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Edit conflicts. - Lee (talk) 15:45, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Just for clarity, I'd like to point out that Dysprosia's original answer up there is topsy-turvy: the current software will always give you a 2-box "Edit conflict" screen. The new software will attempt to merge the conflicting versions automatically, and give you an edit conflict screen only if it can't - generally if the two edits both affect the exact same part of the article. - IMSoP 21:27, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Same?

Who copied who?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Utilitarianism.html

If you go to other articles, they are pretty much identical.

Wordiq copies us. They have a notice to this effect in small text at the bottom of the page. Not terribly prominent, but at least they're crediting us. There are frequently sites that don't. Isomorphic 16:38, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Note that the content of this site is free.(yippee!) Anyone can copy our content, as long as they credit us. theresa knott 15:44, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Pronouns for God

Is there a site policy somewhere on whether to capitalize pronouns referring to an omnipotent creator-divinity? ("God is great, but can he/He cook?") Edit wars are fun and all, but it would be nice to have a page to point to and say, "this is how we do it here". Not sure I'm asking in the right place, but a reply would be appreciated. -GTBacchus 19:06, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Found it. Wikipedia:Manual of Style. -GTBacchus 19:27, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Cotton Davidson

question moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk.

Image upload

I've found the guidelines for the image upload rather confusing.. I've found two images I'd like to use for my Mary Elizabeth Price article; one of the artist herself, and another of her work, released to me for use in wikipedia by a woman, who I believe is her neice, from their family history webpage. I'm unsure of where to go from here - as I have never uploaded or positioned images before (though that isn't what I'm currently concerned with), but I'm unsure as to the classification of the images themselves. Please help? Rhymeless 06:40, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

This page lets you upload the images and contains some guidelines. Wyllium 16:09, 2004 May 22 (UTC)

Thank you !

No question, I just want to let you know that this is a FANTASTIC site ! Keep up the good work. I plan to tell all my friends about Wikipedia !

Sabrina San Antonio, TX

Thanks. Why not express your gratitude by creating an account and contributing ? Wyllium 16:05, 2004 May 22 (UTC)

Thank you Sabrina for your wonderful praise. We all really appreciate it. theresa knott 15:40, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Page view

Why can't maximize the home page or any other page????????? Can we change the policy? Thanks, ivanf@optonline.net

I'm not too sure what you mean by "maximize". If you want to get rid of the quickbar (the thing down the side of the page with all the links), then you can turn it off in your preferences (to edit them, you need to create an account and log in). --Camembert

login problems, Coming Attactions slides

Hello, I am very, very new to Wikipedia, which I find helpful and important. 2 Questions; first, my "Log in" doesn't accept password on many tries.

Second, I can understand that my submission "In early advertising and promotion, "coming movie attraction" glass slides... ... examples can be found in scattered collections on DVD and WWW; not otherwise published, such as: Cleveland Public Library, George Eastman House, Vintage Louise Brooks, Environmedia Illustrated: “early coming movie attractions...”, Lilly Library: “the Ralston Sampler”, Lilly Library: “Ralston, G. mss.”" Is there an appropiate place for this?

Thank you, Glennralston 12.222.143.56

gr <gralston@in.net>

First, your login problem: what is the error message you see? Sometimes people think they've created an account but infact they failed (perhaps due to a server or connection timeout). Sometimes people forget that passwords are case sensitive, or forget their CAPS LOCK key (what a stupid useless key that is) is on (or was on when they made the account). Sometimes people have cookie-blocking firewalls or browser privacy settings (but you see a message about your browser not accepting the cookies). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:22, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Regarding your second question (which I confess I'm not entirely sure I understand). I wasn't aware of the existence of such slides, and I think that an article (mostly textual) describing them would be a fantastic addition. The kind of thing one would reasonably expect to find in an encyclopedia article about them are answers things like "Who invented them?" "Are there any famous artists or designers for them?" "When did they dissapear?" "Are there any famous or notorious ones?" "Is there a market for them now (the way there is for stamps) and what is the most sought-after or expensive example?" A reasonable model for such an article would be, say, Fancy cancel. So you could chose to write an article called something like Coming attractions slide or whatever you thought was an appropriate title. And link to it from somewhere like Silent film. But be careful about uploading too many images - wikipedia isn't really a collector's website, and anyway we often have copyright problems with images - see our (rather taxing, I'll grant you) copyrights policy. All of those links you have about would make fine external links. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:36, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Upcoming election

I am an unemployed person with an Idea to help the party, as well as give me a new way to be employed. First: Can I get the totel number of people in the PC party? Second: Whom is best to talk with an can sign a non-discloser, so my idea is safe. I know that in the post the PC party has upheld the right of intalecual property. Sorry for any spelling.

If you can not help, please forward to the right person, or let me know how to get to the best person.

Thanks for any help you may be able to give my.

Regards,

Paul Mepham

Sorry, Wikipedia isn't really the place for this. What's the PC party? I can try to help if you'd like, but no guarantees. Meelar 04:14, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Changing a page name?

Hi there. How do I change a page's name without doing a copy-paste job and losing the history? --Woggly 06:28, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

You use the "Move this page" link (which is on the quickbar, and probably at the bottom of the page, depending on what skin you're using). Sometimes, this won't work (if the page move would write over the history of an already-existing page, the software won't let you move it) - in that case you'll need to get an admin to delete the target page for you. Most of the time, this won't be an issue, however. See Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page for all the gory details. --Camembert

How do you terminate/delete your account?

How does one terminate/delete their account? Can't find the answer anywhere. Thanks.

You can't, there's no way. I suppose you could ask an administrator to block you (which a few people do, to help them overcome temptation to edit during busy periods like exams). Other than that, you can just forget your password and walk away. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:26, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Linking to Image: pages

Is there any way to link to an Image: page? I use Media: when I need to link to an image without displaying it, but I would really like to link to the Image: page instead. Any way to do this? —John | Talk 17:53, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Instead of Image: say :Image: in the wikilink. I dunno why this works. See the bottom of my user page, which has a bunch of these. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:58, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

It works becuase the developers thought it would be useful to have a way of linking without showing the image. The syntax is the same if you want to link to an article in another language as a link (in-line) rather than as a translation - e.g. [[:de:Fisch]] - IMSoP 21:09, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

A third sun

question moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk by User:Finlay McWalter.

location of Prague University

I'm trying to find the location & actual address of Prague university in order to plan living arrangements in the city. Can you help me...? any maps of the university & surrounding area..? Thank you for your help,

                                                        Jeff Foster
                                                     fostwand2004@yahoo.com

This one? Wyllium 23:44, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

caring for kittens

my kitten is 51\2 weeks old. When i woke up the first mourning i got him his eyes had dried sleep in them and he couldnt open them so i pulled them open very carfully. when they opened a whole bunch of sleep came ozzing out. does this mean that he had an eye infection?

Well, I'd check with a vet to be sure. That's the safest thing to do, and I'm not sure wikipedia can help with this. That said, the best place to go for this sort of thing is Wikipedia:Reference desk. Yours, Meelar 17:46, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

watchlist

Suddenly my watchlist shows This is a saved version of your watchlist. What could be the problem? TIA --Rrjanbiah 10:16, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Cached watchlists is just a function turned on by developers every so often to help reduce server load. It means you can only view your watchlist once an hour. If you look at it again within that hour, you'll see a cached version of the one you already saw. Angela. 22:31, May 26, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Angela... now, it seems to be working fine. I was bit worried if I did click anything accidentally to invoke such behavior. Thanks.--Rrjanbiah 04:14, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

animation??

I have a number of additions to pages planned (e.g. related to mobility managment and other things related to movement and time in wireless networks) which cry out desperately for simple animation. What is the current advice for that? Preferably someting better than animated GIF.. Which format, what application to use to write them etc. I have a RedHat system so something that works there is needed. Open standards / Free Software pls.Mozzerati 19:55, 2004 May 27 (UTC)

I'm afraid animated GIF is it. The "correct" solution will be (one day) either SVG or MNG, but support for these even in the latest browsers is next to zero. And we really want to support older browsers and those with alternate access devices like cellphones, PDAs, and the users of accessibility browsers like screen readers or braille displays. Also, one day there (hopefully) will be a paper version of wikipedia - so while animations are welcome, they should always be "expendable" - i.e. the article should still read and work fine even without the animation. Some folks work around the problem with clever design - see Circlestrafing, others with multiple frames of animation shown (e.g. Four-stroke cycle). I can think of only one article that has, and really needs, animation - Roundabout intersection. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:08, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I note that Four-stroke cycle also has links to MPEGs too (I think they're made with Blender). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:23, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

hmm.. the problem I'm dealing with is that mobility management really needs movement for good presentation (since that's what it's about).. I think I'm going to try in SVG then someone can convert to GIF later if that's really needed. It would at least encourage people to get SVG capabilities :-) Mozzerati 19:30, 2004 May 28 (UTC)

Okay. Please drop me a note when you've gained some experience with whatever tool you decide upon, as I'm keen to do some SVG myself. I imagine most mature SVG tools will convert to animated GIF. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:36, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. On looking around further, SVG may not work right now. See the discussion at: m:SVG image support. You probably don't want to spend too much effort making your SVGS before confirming that they work ok on wikipedia. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:25, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Trying to make spelling correction

Hullo,

Just tried to make my first edit, but the actual text for the article didn't come up in the box. I came across reference to protected text in the FAQ/newcomer/how to pages, is that what I'm seeing?

It all looks like this: "]]

• Type 212 submarine
• Type I U-boat
• Type II U-boat"

(ok, the quotation marks didn't help- but all I'm seeing is the formatting)

-Jes

_Jes help us out a bit - What is the name of the page you were trying to edit? theresa knott 14:56, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Theresa, I was trying to edit the Submarine article that was on the main page in recent days- it was still listed when I just checked. I think the spelling correction has already been made, but I'm still curious about the basic problem I had. Now I'll see if this posts because I tried to answer you yesterday and was surprised to see my reply wasn't here today... -Jes

Bad tire

Where do I post a complaint? I have a tire with a bubble on the side wall, and your agent (Discount Tire) is claimimg it is road hazard. It is on a trailer that I purchased new just over a year ago and has less than 5000 miles in it. I feel that your agent is giving you a bad name in this case. Please advise. Respectfully submitted George Joy 934 East Houston Ave Gilbert, AZ 85234 480-558-1996

George, this is an encyclopedia. We don't sell tires, we don't have agents, and we get our bad name in ways other than vending bubbly tires. I suggest you find a different website on which to post your tire complaint. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:56, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

LOL -- that defintely has to go on BJAODL. →Raul654 18:05, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Unusual requests perhaps?

Dandelion or dandelion look alike?

I've taken the liberty of copying your question to Wikipedia:Reference desk, which is the place for that sort of thing. Good luck! Meelar 22:51, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Credit for posting a site...?

Hi guys,

1stly I have to say I love wiki, and it's a great resource. I came across one (of many) links yet to have a sity that I wanted to contribute to. I am doing an extensive project into the topic, and I wish to post a table which I have compiled myself onto the website, but I then don't want to have to site Wikipedia.org on the end of the table, when it is infact my original work. What is the best action that I/we can take on this matter?

Thanks Brad

You can re-use your own content elsewhere without citing Wikipedia. As you retain the copyright on your own submissions, you are free to use them elsewhere without mentioning they are available under the GFDL, and you can also release them elsewhere under an alternative license. Angela. 00:46, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Adding euphemisms or jargon

Are euphemisms or jargon considered acceptable content in Wikipedia? I am aware of a use for the term optics in a public relations context that clearly does not match the content currently on the optics page. If these are acceptable content, how do I add this appropriately so as not to disrupt the more likely sought content that exists now?

--Gpvm 05:48, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

If an article could be written about "optics" in the public relations sense, then you could add a link at the top or bottom of optics to a new article called optics (public relations). If it's just a bit of jargon, but you think it's important enough that someone might look it up, then you could put a note at the bottom of optics, like:

Optics is also a term used in public relations.

Then write a little bit about it in the article on public relations. Keep in mind, though, that Wikipedia isn't a dictionary; it's an encyclopedia. You could also consider adding the public relations meaning to the appropriate page at our sister project Wiktionary, which is a dictionary. I don't know anything about Wiktionary's policies on slang and jargon though, as I'm not active over there. Isomorphic 20:33, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

See Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion. I believe they allow slang as long it meets certain standards, such as being in widespread use. Angela. 01:01, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Adding pics to other people's articles

Howdo all. I've just signed up to the site, as I have used it as an encyclopædia for some time now, and thought it was about time I contributed back to this great project.

Anyhoo, I was wondering if it would be terribly rude if I added some of my own photographs to some of the articles, for example Manchester Town Hall, or if I should really focus my contribution on textual stuff first.

-- OwlofDoom 17:31, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

There's simply no such thing as someone owning an article, so everyone is free to add whatever pictures they deem relevant and necessary to any article they want. So jump right in. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:40, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for letting me know. I wasn't really concerned about "ownership" though, more that a picture is hardly an intelligent contribution. :) Still, I feel better now.

-- OwlofDoom 17:44, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

We generally have far too few pictures, and of those too many that are either of dubious status or dubious quality. If all you ever do is upload photos of stuff you've taken, then you've still made an invaluable contribution. And if they're all of the quality of the Manchester Town Hall one we're in for a treat. You can tell you're a wikiholic when you wake up some Saturday, look out of the window, think "oh, it's sunny", and immediately head off to photograph every encyclopedia-worthy thing in town before the rain comes. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:01, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Finaly's right. No one owns articles. You might be interested in Wikipedia:Requested pictures. We are very grateful for anyone contributing images. Please don't feel it's a less useful contribution. It really isn't. Angela. 22:37, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

In fact, a picture is very important in an article about a building. So if all you ever did was add pictures of buildings like the one at Manchester Town Hall, those of us with interest in architecture would be thrilled. Isomorphic 17:42, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

So, (In a similar question), is adding pictures welcomed? I mean, I think quite a few of the technical articles could do with a few diagrams being added, but I wasn't sure if it was 'frowned' upon for bloating the database.... Xgkkp 11:26, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Adding pictures is greatly encouraged. If you've got good pictures or diagrams that you can release under Wikipedia's GFDL license, go right ahead and add them. File size and database bloat are not issues, at least within reason. In fact, it seems that we won't give articles featured status anymore unless they have a picture or diagramm. Isomorphic 17:42, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To follow up on this subject, I just want to ask simply, are images from government websites (US and Canadian primarily) considered public domain and therefore good to use here? TimothyPilgrim 01:58, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

The US government does not claim copyright so images from there should usually be ok unless the site says otherwise. The same is not true of other governments though, who do claim copyright. See crown copyright for example. Angela. 14:17, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

Language options

I've noticed that when language options are placed at the top of a page, with a blank line before the beginning of the article (in the new template), there is extra space in the published article (between the title and article body).

Language Options

 Article Body

Just thought I'd point it out, as it is a cosmetic defect of sorts (it bothered me) that just looks sloppy. Since the appreciated placement for language options is at the end of an article, it might make sense for people to fix this formatting when they are otherwise editting an article. Perhaps this is something that could also be fixed in a future version of the software.

Jeff 22:39, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

See, for example: Spermatogenesis --Jeff 22:39, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Those (which are officially called "interwikis" and "inter-language links") should go at the bottom of the wikitext (per Wikipedia:Interlanguage links). But what you describe is a (probably stylesheet) bug, so you should add it to m:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:25, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Rude to delete?

Hello again everyone.

I've been wandering around the site for the last couple of days, mostly contributing photographs and correcting the occasional typo. Now I'd like to make my first textual contribution to the Wikipedia.

I'd like to extend the entry on Ko Samui and add one on the Ang Thong National Marine Park. I notice that the current entry on Ko Samui is almost verbatim copied from here (although I have no idea if this constitutes a copyright violation, as the two authors might well be the same person, or have permission) and I was wondering if it would be rude to delete this text and start it again from scratch.

Thanks! OwlofDoom 09:35, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Here's my personal opinion: yes, it is rude to outright delete a text, unless you leave some kind of note of explanation or justification on the talk page for that article. Friendlier to try and work with what is already up there, if you can, and to improve it. I would also hope that, should you choose to delete the text, the text you submit to replace it will be in some way better than what was there before: more accurate, more comprehensive, more encyclopedic, and/or clearly better written. --Woggly 11:12, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Eek! Your advice is quite right if the content isn't someone else's copyright, but if it is then we need to be super-careful - reworking isn't an option (see excessively long answer below). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:36, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

You're right to bring this up, and handling situations like this can be a delicate one. If something really is a violation of another site's copyright then that's not something we can safely ignore (they could, after all, sue us). So what I suggest you do in such circumstances is:

1. check that it really is the same content (sounds like you've done that)
2. check the remote party isn't crediting wikipedia (there's lots of mirrors and copies)
3. check its not mentioned on one of the pages linked to from Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks (low, medium, high, undetermined) - some sites mirror wikipedia but "forget" to mention the fact (bad bad bad)
4. look through the edit history of the page, and see who contributed the suspicious content. If it's a signed-in user, check to see if they're still active (many aren't) and see if the text was built slowly up (which suggests it was authored here) or was just dumped, in finished format, by someone. Mostly anons and very new users are responsible for such dumps - more seasoned contributors know better (but equally some people write whole articles offline and upload them in a one-er, so a good article appearing wholesale isn't evidence, just indication). If you're suspicious, leave a message on the talk page.
5. if your figure it's quite likely that the text is a copyright violation ("copyvio"), list it on Wikipedia:Copyright problems and follow the procedure noted there.

Note that you shouldn't blank the violating text and start writing your new version - the potential violation is still in the edit history (which may be a legal problem in itself) and someone could accuse your new version of being a derivative work of the old one (even if it isn't). Better to make a whole new article at a temp page (as the copyvio page describes) which can be substituted for the violating page if the original is indeed a violation. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:34, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Hello again. It's not really the copyright violation I was concerned about. I was more concerned that it was difficult to expand the article without completely rewording what was already there. In my current draft, all the information from the original article is there, but none of the original author's words. Is this considered bad etiquette? The article was really a stub, but didn't carry a msg:stub tag. -- OwlofDoom 12:09, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the copyvio paperwork. Your new version is (rather obviously) vastly superior. It always pays to be delicate about making large changes - I confess I sometimes do things incrementally, adding details between existing stuff, then rewording existing stuff, then eventually zapping it. I try to do this with a (utterly fake: I'm a genius) touch of humility (i.e. not making the change comment something crass like "overwrite third-rate crap with real quality work" or anything dumb like that). No-one has complained yet (sukkas). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:32, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Addendum: I've just checked and the content was originally contributed without wiki markup (except the link to the website which also displays this content) by a logged out user (213.114.144.224). The wiki markup was added three mins later by User:Evil saltine. -- OwlofDoom 12:18, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

That's a common signature of someone ignorant of our copyright policy thinking they're doing us a favour by adding stuff, even if they shouldn't add that stuff. Saltine is one of those Recent Changes junkies of whom we spoke. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:32, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

We're not junkies! We can quit whenever we want to! Meelar 11:50, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How to change erroneous title capitalization?

I just finished merging Bovine somatropin into Bovine somatotropin and making the redirect I realized the latter article is really entitled Bovine Somatotropin but shouldnt be. Somatotropin is not a brand name or a proper name and should not be capitalized. I think I am correct that wiki policy is to cap only the first word of an article title? If so, can someone change Bovine Somatotropin to Bovine somatotropin or tell me how to do it?Alteripse 17:09, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Renaming pages is normally done by moving them. Click on the Move button at the top of the page and type in the name with correct capitalization. HTH  – Jrdioko (Talk) 18:26, 31 May 2004 (UTC) Thanks, I did it.

Preferences help needed

Ookay, this is quite embarassing, but having changed my skin settings to 'Nostalgia' and closing the browser window I've lost use of many of the features available in more advanced ones, or at least can't find them - this including user preferences, which I need to fix the situation. A link to the preference-setting page would be much appreciated. --Kizor 00:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

They're all in the drop-down box near the top of the screen. And you can always go to Special:Preferences directly. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:22, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

... *Sigh*. Thanks. --Kizor 11:21, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

User Page Policies?

User:Evertype's page redirects to a wikipedia article about himself. Is this standard procedure? It makes it extremely difficult and annoying to post anything on his talk page or look up his contributions. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:13, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)

• Well, there's no policy against it, and looking at that article, he certainly deserves an article. My suggestion would be to suggest on his talk page that he duplicate that content, rather than simply redirect. Meelar 19:34, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• I've edited the User:Evertype page. I hope I did it appropriately. Evertype 11:57, 2004 Jun 8 (UTC)
  • Yep, seems fine. There really aren't any kind of requirements or restricitions on what you put on your user page (with exceptions e.g. copyright violation, insulting other users harshly, etc.) Meelar 15:13, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Word Wrap

I recently submitted an article on dollshouses and when I added three new paragraphs, the entire block of text changed. Instead of finishing the lines after about 15 words, the lines are now about 25 words long, making the article hard to read. I have tried resubmiting the text and the same thing happened. Does anyone know why this happened and what I could do to solve it?

Which article do you mean? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:15, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

the article was called Dollhouse

Mediawiki, the software that runs wikipedia, does something special when a line begins with a space - instead of putting in a space, it goes into a special mode (used for quoting stuff, like poetry or computer software). That's the mode your example had gotten into. I've removed the leading spaces, and it now flows properly. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:46, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks!

SFN template errors

I have been adding material from a new source and citing it with the {{sfn}} template, which I have been using for years. I am getting an odd error message at History of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1800–1899 when using it, though. I can't figure out what the issue is. Can anyone help? Thanks! --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 13:54, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

And I figured it out. Copy-paste error. Thanks anyway! --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 13:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

change page name

hi how do ı change the name of the page ı just published Jojososyal (talk) 22:18, 19 May 2023 (UTC)