Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 January 14

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

January 14

Compact table of contents

Is there any way to get a TOC to automatically appear compact without pressing the "hide" button? Cheers, :.:∙:∙∙:∙:.:|pepper|:.:∙:∙∙:∙:.: 00:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Adding the template {{TOChidden}} will do what you appear to want, but note the caveat after "Alternative" in the documentation. Deor (talk) 02:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Not seeing images

How come I suddenly can't see images in Wikipedia? 69.128.174.75 (talk) 03:03, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

There are different possibilities involving browser settings or domain blocks. 1) Which browser do you have? 2) Can you see images at other websites? 3) Can you see a small MediaWiki or Wikimedia image in the lower right corner of this page? 4) Can you see an image when you click File:Example.jpg? 5) Can you see an image when you click http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Abbreviations

I received a response (actually an accusation of vandalism) by abreviating the word hour or hours in pharmacokinetic information provided. The question was raised as to why I made the change. I did not know where or how to respond, hence using this site within Wikipedia. Reasons: Accuracy, consistency and unambiguity are key factors to take into consideration for abbreviations. While 'hour' or 'hours' are good descriptors for time and are unambiguous, they are not consistent with other values provided within the information boxes for various drugs. For example, molecular mass is referred to as 'g/mol', density is 'g/cm3' (with superscript for cubed), 'mg/mL' for solubility and appropriate units for centigrade or farenheit. For consistency, if abbreviations are used for some measurements, then abbreviations should be used for all measurements, should standard abbreviations exist, for all measurements. Alternatively, if 'hour' or 'hours' are spelled out in full, then all other measurements should be spelled out in full (eg, degrees centigrade, milligrams per millilitre). My preference, for space considerations and clarity, is that standard abbreviations be used. Most international chemical and medical journals, for example, use standard abbreviations (including 'h' for 'hour' or 'hours'. I object to the term 'vandalism' being used when I made an honest and appropriate attempt to apply some good sense to abbreviations used. I hope that these comments are taken favourably. If I can be advised about the most appropriate link to make constructive comments in future, that would be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Williadb (talk • contribs) 03:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

hour is a short simple word known by all English speakers while h for hour is much less international standard than many other units. It's not an SI unit (unlike s for seconds), and many languages abbreviate to the first letter of hour in that language which is often not h (it's t in my Danish). The English Wikipedia has readers with many different native languages and backgrounds, and an isolated h can be confusing. See also WP:UNIT which spells out hour except sometimes when it's part of a combined unit like km/h. I agree your edits were not vandalism but I don't think you should have continued without discussing it after the first warning which didn't say vandalism. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The best place to respond initially is on your talk page, where you were left the message which you refer to above. Alternatively, you could start a discussion on the talk page of the article and get a consensus for your changes -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 03:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Images that use coins as dimension indicators

I recently came across a photographic image in Wikipedia (in the article "Durian") that used a coin of some kind, possibly a U.S. quarter, as a dimension indicator. I recall seeing a Wikipedia policy page in the past specifically asking photo contributors not to do this, but I can't find the appropriate page, tag, or other such information. Can anyone help? 3.14 (talk) 05:51, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's a dimension indicator. Maybe it just happens to be there when the photo was taken. :) Kayau Voting IS evil 05:55, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

See {{NoCoins}} and the long discussion on its talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I've also had run-ins with editors about the no coins rule. I think the rule should be extended to cover text descriptions as well as images. Something that strikes me as really odd about refrences specifically to the US "quarter" coin is that its diameter is in fact <within half a hairbreadth> of one inch, but editors still insist on saying "about the size of a quarter" when "about 1 inch" would be far better understood (and can easily be converted to mm). Roger (talk) 09:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone who responded to this question. Since I'm not that familiar with how I should tag the image (and since every time I read a Wikipedia policy talk page I end up with a headache trying to figure out what's going on), I think I will leave the image in question alone. 3.14 (talk) 03:51, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

about the process of deleted data recovery

in what way the deleted data will be recovered form the pen drives(flash/memory cards)? what is the process and the procedure? what are the supporting softwares?

send your description to my mail and Id is

thanking you sir, from sunil kumar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.244.76 (talk) 07:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for in the articles Data recovery or Undeletion. If you cannot find the answer there, you can try asking your question at the Computing section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except about how to use Wikipedia, which is what this help desk is for).For your convenience, you may click here to post your question. I hope this helps. (Your email address has been removed to protect your privacy) -- John of Reading (talk) 08:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Mithapur

i was just going thru the article written on Mithapur. Its written that there is only one english medium school there and that is MHS

I think KPS(Only English Medium) should also be mentioned. where we start from nursery and we do our primary schooling till fourth Standard.(I did my schooling here till fouth) thn frm 5th Standard we go to MHS(Both English and Gujarathi Medium) till our 12th.(i did my schooling till 6th ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.172.12.114 (talk) 07:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion regarding Mithapur. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). -- John of Reading (talk) 08:40, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

User:Robcarmi13/Robin Almeida - Editing

Hi,

I posted an article on the below link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robcarmi13/Robin_Almeida

but when i open the page, the title of the article shows as User:Robcarmi13/Robin Almeida whereas i need the title to be as Robin Almeida

Pls suggest how i do this as i cant find a solution.

Also one more thing is when i search on google with the name as Robin Almeida the search result doesnt show this as the first search result. Any clue why?

Pls let me know answers for the same on — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robcarmi13 (talk • contribs) 10:38, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

You have created a user space draft. To turn this into a Wikipedia article it must be moved; see this help page for details. You won't be able to move the page yourself yet, because you need to make another four edits before you qualify as an autoconfirmed editor. (I have removed your email address to protect your privacy) -- John of Reading (talk) 11:06, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The draft has now been moved to mainspace but it has been tagged for speedy deletion and proposed for deletion as a non-notable subject. – ukexpat (talk) 15:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

why editing system is so difficult and old ?

hi , I am wondering why the editing system is still text based and is not visual . it must be a visual editing system like MS word so it would be easy for public to edit well . with the current text based editing system it is not easy for all to edit pages perfectly as they do with visual systems such as MS word 2007 . I think it can be replaced easily with a visual and object based editing environment . I am wondering why it is yet using the old system ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edit4world (talk • contribs) 11:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

This has been requested many times. There was a discussion on this page only a week ago - archive. If you click My preferences, then Gadgets, then check wikEd, you you can try a slightly better editing interface. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:59, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

No way! Just look at Wikia - the 'improved' look makes editing more visual, and frankly, it's an epic fail. Kayau Voting IS evil 13:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

There is also a somewhat related discussion on User_talk:Jimbo_wales#Attracting_more_female_editors Jimbo's talk page. Jimmy himself just gave an interview, in which he commented about the confusing nature of wikipedia editing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12171977. Buddy431 (talk) 16:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikitext is one of the simplest markup languages. Learning the basic markup is among the least of the problems confronting the new user. A much harder problem is learning Wikipedia's incredibly complex procedures, and rules for content. Visual editing would only help with how to type (and only slightly), not with what to type which is the real problem. Check out articles for deletion where you will see thousands of well-formatted articles receiving no quarter. Lots of people can easily figure out how to format articles on Wikipedia; in contrast, writing acceptable content eludes them, at least initially. Fiddling with the user interface will do almost nothing to spare the new user from having to read lots of friendly manuals and absorbing their content. Building the world's largest encyclopedia is, I believe, a task which is irreducibly complex. Which means only the minority of people who are good at handling complexity will thrive as editors here. --Teratornis (talk) 18:04, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem is made worse, of course, by Wikipedia's do it yourself nature. The set of people who could master Wikipedia editing if taught in a classroom setting is probably larger (perhaps much larger) than the set of people who can figure it out by reading manuals and trying things on their own. This is why civilization invented schools. If Wikipedia wants to get even bigger (which would roughly amount to taking over the world, at least the world of online editing), Wikipedia might have to do what every other organization aiming for world domination does: set up its own network of schools, or attempt to infiltrate existing schools with its curriculum. --Teratornis (talk) 18:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Side note to Kayau : the fact that all known WYSIWYG systems are inadequate platforms for mass collaboration does not mean no such platform could be adequate. But that's how I would bet. Wikipedia editing will probably remain daunting for new users until software technology becomes able to embed the expertise of Wikipedia's skilled human editors. The same thing would be true if we were trying to teach everybody how to do almost any other complex task, such as piloting a Boeing 747, playing guitar, or performing brain surgery. No software technology can make those skills available to the novice yet. The aspiring pilot, musician, surgeon, or Wikipedia editor cannot sidestep the hard work of study and practice. --Teratornis (talk) 18:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Please realize that most of the people who do the programming for WikiMedia are volunteers. Large scale projects such as creating a workable WYSIWYG interface would be a daunting task for people who actually have jobs. Corvus cornix_talk 20:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Notability guidelines for theatres

Hello all, I came across the East London Theatre archive ([1]) a few months ago and began adding relevant areas of it as a resource/reference to some relevant articles on theatre. I also began to create some theatre stubs for theatres that the archive covers, but that do not yet have Wikipedia articles. One of those new articles, Albert Saloon, has been flagged as possibly not meeting notability guidelines (general notability guidelines), I was wondering if we have any notability guidelines that cover theatres, and if so, could anyone offer a link please. I'm happy to chug along creating new theatre articles, but, it might prove to be a wasted effort if they in fact do not meet the relevant notability criteria. Any tips (or a link to the notability guidelines) will be much appreciated. Thanks, Darigan (talk) 12:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't find any special guidelines for theatres, so it's just the standard guidelines which you've probably already seen. To establish notability you need to show that people have written about the theatres in reliable sources such as books and newspapers. The theatre archive seems to be a collection of self-published primary sources such as adverts and programmes, without much additional writing or interpretation. So, yes, I'd advise you to find additional sources before beginning new articles about any of these theatres. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

In this particular case, a search reveals that there's plenty of reliable, independent, sources to write an article from to easily meet the general notability guideline. I'll go add a source now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks John of Reading & Fuhghettaboutit - I'll apply the general notability guidelines to each of the prospective theatre articles I've listed on my userpage. Thanks for adding that ref as well Fuhghettaboutit, it looks like it will act as a further reference for quite a few of the proposed articles. Ta muchly, Darigan (talk) 13:53, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Ezinearticles

Can my articles on ezinearticles be republished here? I have several articles about diets which I would like to included in your info pages.

–––– — Preceding unsigned comment added by Snoopy055 (talk • contribs) 15:47, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds unlikely. They are probably original research, which has no place in Wikipedia. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Snoopy055, please sign your posts with four of these: ~ (tilde), not four dashes. That'll fix the "unsigned edit" comment. Happy wikiing! 217.254.183.64 (talk) 18:25, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

create article for notable person

I am trying to create a page for a notable person( Indian film actor) using this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Ready_for_submission

This link however doesn't give me the sections like life and career, filmography, the section with birthday and life details in the draft area. Do I have to add it on my own or I am using the wrong link to create the article. Please help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Achau24 (talk • contribs) 16:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Those sections you will need to add on your own. You may also want to review {{Infobox actor}}. TNXMan 16:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

See Help:Section for how to make sections. You can also view the source of an existing article to see how it did something. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:14, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism

I represent Allegiance Communications, a cable operator located in Shawnee, OK. The company appears in Wikipedia. Regularly, someone goes into the article and edits it to state that the company loses "800+ customers per month due to poor quality service and high prices". This is false information yet while I have removed these incorrect statements four times, they reapperar every few weeks as part of the introductory paragraph describing the company. How can this action be stopped? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dnarciso (talk • contribs) 17:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I have added the Allegiance Communications article to my watchlist, and I am sure that others seeing this help desk post have done the same. Addition of unsourced information should be caught more quickly in future. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Issue

Just a footnote in Wikipedia's "be bold when editing" statement. I was a fairly frequent editor, mainly reverting articles when people posted nonsense. I did add things here and there. But at one point I came upon an article I was contributing to, and a user -- not an admin, but someone who obviously wanted to be an admin -- reverted my edits. I re-added them, and he reverted them again, and had an editor friend of his lock down the article. When I approached the user I was treated in a nasty tone and was referred to as someone who didn't know what I was doing. When I approached the admin to ask what I did wrong and mentioned the user should have helped, not been nasty, he agreed with the user's choice of action, but never told me what I did wrong. I noticed that the user, after this altercation, went through all the articles I had edited, took out items and posted warnings on said pages.

Ever since that day, I have never edited a single article, nor have I contributed when Wikipedia asks for donations. Wikipedia admins should use a little better judgment and/or be chosen a little more wisely.

Thank you for your time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.53.238.2 (talk) 17:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry that you had a bad experience. If you could point us to the specific situation, as in what the article was and when this conflict occured, perhaps one of us could help sort out what happened? --Jayron32 17:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"When I approached the admin ... he ... never told me what I did wrong." That is unfortunate if true. Every Wikipedia editor who reverts another editor should be able to cite the specific Wikipedia policy or guideline they are acting on (or think they are acting on). Ideally this should be in a link in the edit summary, to make the change self-documenting. However, not all administrators and other experienced editors are as informative as the typical Help desk volunteer. We will almost always link to the pages that describe whatever rules we are talking about. It's too bad that neither the editor you had a dispute with, nor the administrator who sided against you, referred you to this Help desk for an explanation. Since you posted without logging in, we cannot be sure that Special:Contributions/206.53.238.2 shows your edits (IP addresses can be shared by multiple users, and you may have edited under other IP addresses). However, that Contributions page shows a string of edits to articles about Global warming. If you have edited Wikipedia's global warming articles, note that the topic arouses considerable political controversy (the underlying science is much less controversial among climate scientists themselves). If you want to wade into that arena on Wikipedia and edit productively, you're going to have to read a lot more of Wikipedia's instruction manuals than a person who does not sign his or her post has probably read. The only way for Wikipedia to let anyone edit, without causing Wikipedia to descend into utter chaos, is to have highly detailed explicit rules that we can all follow. Ignoring Wikipedia's rules almost always works against an editor. --Teratornis (talk) 21:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Login issue... can't get new email notification...

My name is Dwayne Kilbourne, and I cannot remember my password. Since I have not used the system in a long time, I worry that you have an older email address on file (maybe <redacted> that I do not have access to anymore). Is there another way you can verify my identity? I have a personal website <redacted> that I have email addresses on that I have access to along with GMail and Yahoo email addresses that I rarely use. Please look up my username (DwayneKilbourne) and let me know how I can proceed! I would like to keep my same username and account (hence, I have yet to decide to just create a new account).

Sincerely,

Dwayne Twitter = <redacted> if that helps! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.105.109.179 (talk) 18:04, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, no. Only you could access your account; and we use the e-mail address you provided us with. There is no way for any of us to violate your privacy and peek at your password, nor for any of us to change the e-mail address you yourself provided to us. I'm afraid you're going to have to get a new account, although if the old name has been dormant long enough, your new account could request permission to usurp it. In the meantime, I've redacted various contact information to prevent it being harvested by bots. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:31, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I hope you can help me. I changed my password last night, and can no longer get in with either the new or the old password. I can't get a new password, as it says there is no e-mail address for idissues. How can I get this taken care of?

Kristi Kho (idissues)

Pointless disambiguation page?

Is What the Hell pointless? It was originally a redirect to Hell, but I turned it into a disambiguation page after doing a search for "What the Hell" (in order to create a redirect for the Avril Lavigne song, at the time). But since the original "Hell" redirect was questionable in the first place, and since there is no article on the Terri Walker song, now I'm thinking that the entire page should be deleted, and the What the Hell (song) article be moved into its place. But I wouldn't mind some advice. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 19:57, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree, the disam page is completely pointless. I would list it at WP:RM as a non-controversial request. – ukexpat (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought so. I'll do as you suggested. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 20:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Notice on my userpage

Hello. I just added a notice to my userpage. However, on both sides, it sticks out almost to the edges. Can someone fix this so that the text is right next to the border? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 20:18, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

ToC columns

Is there any way to make the table of contents go into columns like the "see also" and references section are at the bottom of this page?

Abraham Schulte (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall ever seeing such a thing on Wikipedia, but I have not seen all of Wikipedia. If what you want is possible and allowable, somebody might have documented it in the links under WP:EIW#TOC. Why do you want this? --Teratornis (talk) 20:44, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

To shorten the vertical length of the ToC and fill in some of the blank space to the right of it on pages such as the one I mentioned before.Abraham Schulte (talk) 20:51, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason to change the TOC at Zinc oxide. The automatic TOC can be removed with __NOTOC__ and then a manual TOC can be created with a table but it will require manual updating if section headings are changed. I made a manual TOC when I merged 54 stubs into RSA numbers but it will very rarely be a good solution in article space – and I'm not sure it was when I did it. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:20, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not just for that, I was just using that as an example. I'd like to be able to make the ToC into columns for another page that I am in the process of creating.Abraham Schulte (talk) 21:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a {{TOCright}} template but it is rarely used. See the advice in the template documentation. If the article you are working on has a very long TOC, maybe you need to split the article, or back some deeply nested section headings into a table. --Teratornis (talk) 21:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Did you read WP:TOC? It describes some options for limiting the TOC depth. --Teratornis (talk) 21:44, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Notes vs. References

What exactly is the difference between notes and references on pages like this? Abraham Schulte (talk) 21:03, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"Notes" on that page is the section normally titled "References", where actual footnotes are displayed. The "References" section in that article is what would normally be called "Sources": material from which the article is drawn, but without sufficient specificity to permit proper footnoting. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

So is there a specific use for a notes section? And can you (or anyone else reading this) please point me where I can find all of this information? Abraham Schulte (talk) 21:20, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not standardized. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (layout)#Notes and References. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I thought Notes is where further clarifications are posted, and References are inline citations. And Bibliography is, I think, a listing of major sources. Sp33dyphil ^{(Talk) (Contributions)(Feed back needed @ Talk page)} 05:15, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

When I create articles or expand stubs I do it the way User:Sp33dyphil has explained: "References" is for inline citations, "Notes" is for explanations and "Bibliography" is for further reading. Roger (talk) 06:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Purple heart

Who can I contact to provide informatiion to add two names to the list of Purple Heart Recipients from the Viet Nam war. One name is mine and I can provide you a copy of my DD214 to verify the award. The other concerns my friend, a fellow Marine, who was KIA. He was wounded and died from the wounds a month later at Bethesda Naval Hospital, —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.80.73.139 (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

You can leave a message on the talk page of the article that you think the names belong in. Unless you or your friend are notable the names probably don't belong. There are hundred of thousands of people who are purple heart recipients and not every one of them should be listed. The only ones that should be listed is those that have articles written about them and meet the wikipedia notability guidelines. ~~ GB fan ~~ 22:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)