Help desk
< July 22	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 24 >

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.

July 23

Editing the article, "Naphtha"

I am trying to edit a section (Air Sampling for Naphthas) in the article Naphtha, trying to clean it up. The "edit this page" presentation looks okay, but the page renders weirdly. It looks okay down to the subsection "Breathing Zone Air Sampling Procedures". After the bulleted list, in the article there is a section "Active Air Sampler Rate Verification". In the code, however, it is followed by:

"Break both ends of sorbent tube using sorbent tube breaker. Insert sorbent tube into the rubber sleeve of the adjustable low flow holder or tube holder. The arrow on the sorbent tube indicates air flow towards the pump. In the absence of an arrow insert the end of the tube with the smallest sorbent section into the tube holder. Connect the loose end of the flexible tubing into the pump inlet.

Active Air Sampling Method for Naphthas

Preparation & Calibration

Prepare and calibrate the sampling equipment by charging batteries of the active sampler.
Verify that sufficient varieties and quantities of detector tubes are available for air sampling......"

This stuff has disappeared.

Further down, in the references, things are fine until you get to reference 4. Then it picks up some, but not all of the missing stuff from the "edit this page" code and, mysteriously, creates a new table of contents.

The following material, while in the wrong place, seems okay. Then comes a paragraph:

""High humidity can severely reduce the breakthrough volumes of adsorbents like charcoal and silica gel."<ref>DiNardi, S (2003). ''The Occupational Environment: It’s Evaluation, Control and Management'', Second Edition, American Industrial Hygiene Association, Fairfax, Virginia, p. 182</li> <li id="_note-TLVs">'''[[#_ref-TLVs_0|^]]''' American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) (2003) ''TLV’s and BEI’s(R) Threshold Limit Values for Chemical Substances and Physical Agents, Biological Exposure Indices'' ACGIH, Cincinnati, Ohio</li></ol></ref>"

that is truly strange.

I figure that there is some simple error somewhere that causes all of this peculiarity, but I can't find it.

I am not a particularly old hand at Wikipedia editing. Help!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mherr (talk • contribs)

It's not strange, it's routine: someone forgot to close one or more <ref> tags with a matching </ref> tag, such as the <ref name="Plog"> tag. See: WP:FOOT. It's not rocket science, but it is computer science, which is kind of hard too. --Teratornis 05:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks...Sprinkling in a few "/"s fixed it all. Mherr 13:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article titles listed in categories

Is there a way to get an article to show up on a category page with a modified version of the article's own name? For example, here is something I came across, and to me it seemed confusing. At Category:National football (soccer) premier leagues, the pipe link is used to get the entries listed in order by country, rather than by their own names. Very good idea. But it leads to some uncertainty, because for many entries there is no indication of what country it represents, other than if it is under the "E" heading, it must be some country that starts with "E". My idea would be to use an alternate title, which would append the country name on those listings that are not immediately identifiable. For example, instead of just being listed as Premier League under "E" and Major League Soccer under "U", the list would indicate Premier League (England) under "E" and Major League Soccer (United States) under "U". But maybe there is no wiki coding to allow this. Is there? — Michael J 05:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See: Help:Category#Sort key. It looks like you're out of luck, according to this excerpt:

The displayed name is not changed, and, unfortunately, only visible on the edit pages of the members of the category.

MediaWiki's categories are a handy feature, but they are not as flexible as many people (you, for example) would like. Someday we may have more options if MediaWiki obtains semantic wiki features. --Teratornis 05:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question about verifiability

I created a document about a year or so ago about an organization that I am in. Unfortunately someone deleted it and there is no way for me to retrieve that page. I am wondering if I create this page again will it be deleted because it can not be verified in an encyclopedia? There was quite a bit of information that was within that document and the person removed it without notifying me that he would be taking it down. Once they took it down they did not provide an adequate enough response to why they did it. If you search on google.com there is a chance you will see the same information in other websites because I am a member of this organization and I have written quite a few of these entries. So before I put in more work to let people know about my orgnaization I would like to know this information.

Read WP:COI, WP:CITE, and WP:RS. I think those may help you understand the situation, why the information was deleted, and what you need to do to avoid it being deleted in the future. Lara Love 06:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image galleries

On my user page, I have my barnstars arranged in an image gallery. I'd really like to have the barnstars be about half the size they are now and put the text in small tags. How can I do this? I'm pretty sure I won't be able to do it as a gallery, but possibly some sort of table instead. Any help with this would be appreciated. Lara Love 06:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something like this, perhaps:

	This is some text.
	This is more text.
	Here is still more text.
	Here is still more text. Notice that the table will keep stretching to accomodate the widest cell, unless you specify a width.

I know you can specify image size, with gallery tags, but I don't know how much more you can do. Feel free to take a look at this page's source code to see how I put that table together, you can play with image and font size as you please. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect. Thank you! Lara Love 06:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Smart searching

I think it would be a good idea of Wikipedia could add a "smart search" function whereby if you enter a wrong search term, Wikipedia automatically comes up with suggestions that are close to what was entered. So for example, if you were searching for "Madonna" but entered "Madnona" instead, it would automatically ask you if you were really looking for "Madonna".

Many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.67.203.141 (talk • contribs)

i agree wikipedia should, wikipedia sucks with a smart search. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.96.245.81 (talk • contribs)

This is a perennial problem. Often your best chance is to search on Google with "site:en.wikipedia.org" at the beginning of your search query. Shalom ^Hello 13:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help:Search admits that Wikipedia's built-in search capability is rather weak. This shortcoming has stimulated several third parties to fill the gap. See: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Sea. I find that Google Search on Wikipedia works pretty well and tolerates some misspellings. Google can also search parts of Wikipedia, such as the Help desk archives. You may wish to create links to your favorite searches on your User page, as I did here. --Teratornis 16:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to create a new page

How do I create a page about something that hasn't already been added?

See Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Shalom ^Hello 13:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Usha prevedna

introduction od this writer and her achivements —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kimimittra (talk • contribs)

Assuming you spelled her name correctly, Google Search on her name finds nothing, suggesting she hasn't achieved enough even to get her name on the World Wide Web somewhere. (Even my real name shows up in Google Search, and I'm not notable enough for a Wikipedia article.) It's fairly hard for a person who has done anything at all not to show up in Google, suggesting that Usha Prevedna's greatest achievement thus far may be that she somehow managed to keep her name off the Internet. --Teratornis 16:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not so good vibrations

I have to identify sound vibration transmit from neighbor's speakers of the sound system (sound meter was measured beyond 50 dB). But others were unable to hear this sound vibration. I would like to find out why this happen to me.

I have been making reseachs and consultations to MD and others, but No one could find out this situation, so that the neighbor play stereo music all night through, and I hear sound vibration when ever the neighbor play stereo music.

I appreciate your reply to my e-mail address, <email removed to avod spam>

Sincerely,

Ms. Hisae Sander —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.119.115 (talk • contribs)

Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here's the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit 12:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You might buy your neighbor an iPod and hope he or she will use the earbuds and enjoy music privately. Loudspeakers are incredibly inefficient for entertaining one individual, because only a tiny fraction of the sound output enters the primary consumer's ears. The remaining sound radiates into the environment as noise pollution. The invention of sound amplification has greatly harmed the ability of humans to live in close proximity, and this is actually a serious problem for urban planners who wish to combat urban sprawl and its associated automobile dependency. I read that in some densely-populated areas of Europe there are substantial penalties for people who disturb their neighbors with loud music and other entertainments. Also see: soundproofing. --Teratornis 16:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsible templates always display expanded

On my home computer, collapsible templates always display in expanded form, with no show/hide link. I first noticed this phenomenon shortly after installing AWB (and .net). Note that they display correctly on my computer at work, which doesn't have AWB/.net installed. Any ideas? DH85868993 13:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest making sure that you have the newest version of AWB installed, and checking against any other Wikipedia-related extensions you have to see if they are causing the problem. If you can't figure it out yourself, I would suggest filing a bug report. You'd probably have better luck asking at the AWB pages anyway. Sorry. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 16:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{ {helpme} }

How do i add a page to wikipedia?

See Wikipedia:Your first article and Help:Starting a new page. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 14:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"If" switch on templates

Does it now force the text to start a new paragraph? Before it just "went with the flow" and just stayed on one line. For example, on Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball, what should display as "PF/C" displays as:
PF
/C
Can anybody fix this? --Howard the Duck 15:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the problem was being caused by the <noinclude> tags - since they were on the next line in each of the position templates, the template was including the line break just before them. By putting the noinclude on the same line as the position link, the line break is now not included when the template is used. Hope that makes sense, if not, check this diff to see what I did. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 16:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but it looked normal until a week ago. Everything should be fine by now. Wee thanks. --Howard the Duck 16:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Updating references

How does one update references on a page?Dlomont 16:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can add new references in an article by adding the citation at the appropriate place within the article, surrounded by <ref></ref> tags. This will create one of those little numbers^[1] which links to the citation at the bottom of the page, where you place a <references/> or {{reflist}} tag. To update a specific reference, you have to find the first occurrence of that citation and update it within the article. For more information, please see WP:CITE and WP:FOOT. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 16:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Block

I think someone has blocked my username to prevent me contributing to articles. I have edited articles about Shropshire in good faith, but there is somebody who objects to any contibution I make. Could it be this person who has blocked me? And how can i undo it? Thanks. I love Wikipedia and would never do anything underhand to harm it.

best wishes,

Justkindness —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.107.168.16 (talk • contribs)

I can tell you right now you're not blocked - if that were the case, you wouldn't have been able to post here. IP addresses do not have the authority to block user accounts - Administrators are the only users which exercise that ability. If another user is causing you trouble, consider going through the steps at Dispute Resolution. If you are worried that you may be at risk of a block, read the policies at WP:3RR and WP:CIVIL carefully and abide by them. If you'd like, I can swing by and offer a third opinion on the matter to try and clear things up. Just let me know here or on my talk page. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 16:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The post here was made by User:88.107.168.16. I assume it was Justkindness (talk · contribs) who is not blocked and edited with the account 12 minutes after posting here. I don't know what caused the idea of a block. PrimeHunter 19:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Admin powers

Can admins see if a user is currently online or offline? Can anyone? Thanks.

This can normally be determined by looking at users contributions, this can be done by viewing the users' userpage then clicking User contributions in the left hand-side toolbox or going to Special:Contributions then inserting their username. — Rlest (formerly Qst) 16:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

^{(Edit conflict)} Please sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~). Thanks.

The full list of Admin powers can be found here. I do not see that listed among them, nor is this possible for normal users. Many users have a status code which they update manually when they log in, however this is limited to their own userspace and is not used by everyone. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 16:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

regarding unauthorized editing of content

Iiitkolkata 17:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)i want to know about avoidance of unauthorized editing of the content!!![reply]

You'll have to explain this more....— Rlest (formerly Qst) 17:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you refer to bad edits by two IP addresses to IIIT-K International Institute Of Information Technology, Kolkata. This is unfortunate but very common. Nobody owns an article, and there are no "authorized" and "unauthorized" editors of an article. It appears from your editor name that you are closely associated with the institute which is actually considered problematic. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Articles can be protected from edits by IP adresses or by all editors who are not administrators, but it takes a lot more than the problems at the mentioned article. PrimeHunter 18:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removing or changing a picture

Hi,

I have looked through Wikipedia's FAQ section (along with other areas) to find out how to change a picture posted on a wiki page to something new. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any information on how to do this.

The specific page I would like to help out with is the main page listing for "Gamma World". The current page graphic is rather bad (an old, beat up rulebook cover). I would like to replace it with a new (untattered) picture of the same rulebook, but am unable to swap or change it in any way.

Any help you can give on how to do this would be wonderful.

70.59.147.211 18:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In order to upload images, you will need to register an account. Unregistered users are not able to upload files for security reasons. Once you've logged in, go to the image page here. Near the bottom of the page, you'll see a light blue link that says "Upload a new version of this file". Click on that. You'll be brought to an upload form, where you'll need to use the "Browse..." button to find the image you want to use on your computer (it is assumed that you have already scanned the image or taken a picture of it). Do not type anything in the "Description" box - since you're uploading a new image to the same place, the fair use tags and rationale are already there and don't need to be modified.

Note that the image you want to upload will be copyrighted, and so must meet Wikipedia's Fair Use Policy to the letter. In this situation, you just need to make sure the image you use is of low resolution - all the other criteria have already been met.

For more information, see WP:IMAGE, WP:IUP and Help:Images. I hope this helps. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 20:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading text

How do I upload a word document? Fpn1956 18:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You don't. Wikipedia articles are written in wiki markup, usually directly on the website. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

However, there are a few tools for converting Microsoft Word documents to wikitext. See: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia#Imp. --Teratornis 21:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About the use of ü, from the german language.

A number of pages (such as the "Rüppell's Fox" page) have recently been moved. The move puts a ü in the heading, which is not a letter in the English language. This causes a problem with UK typewrites and can not possibly be an English word. Even the latin version of animal names have the german letter replaced with "ue". Is there some guidance on this? Quite a lot of revernting may have to be done and I would like to be sure of the rules before doing this work. Snowman 18:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As of now, the moves seem to violate relevant policy. It would probably be a wise idea to first check with whoever's been moving them and ask for a rationale, quoting the policy.

Have a nice day,

The Rhymesmith 20:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've dropped a note on the admin's talk page. See what he says. The Rhymesmith 20:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The names follow standard English in that is it refers to a person's name; this is not generally changed. The person commemmorated is Eduard Rüppell, not "Edward Rueppell". Check in any English language ornithological textbook, you will only find Rüppell's Warbler, Rüppell's Vulture, etc. I have never seen "Rueppell's" in any textbook, and if that were adopted wikipedia would be going contrary to well established English usage. And, by the way, your claim that "This causes a problem with UK typewrites and can not possibly be an English word" is completely untrue; even my grandfather's 1950s manual typewriter could type ü perfectly easily, and I have never used a keyboard that couldn't type it easily. As for Latin names, that is a policy of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, and has no relevance to either wikipedia or the English language. - MPF 20:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can speak to the "typewriter" problem (which I suspect refers to computer keyboards, as I doubt many people use actual typewriters to edit on Wikipedia): below the edit window in Wikipedia one should find a box of characters one may click to insert them at the cursor position, including several vowels with umlauts. This is not a comment on whether such characters should appear in English Wikipedia titles, merely a way to type them when they are not available on one's keyboard. --Teratornis 21:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

[belated answer moved from parallel thread on talk page]

It turns out that your statement that the ü is "not a letter in the English language" is quite controversial. I don't know of a word in use in English that uses ü, but there are plenty of examples of other diacriticals: naïve, coöperate, flambé, El Niño, Noël, etc. Now, it's true, plenty of English speakers spell these without the diacriticals, or if they leave them in, think they're leaving them in on foreign words, not on English words. But there are plenty of other English speakers who consider these to be perfectly good English words which just happen to retain vestiges of their foreign (or older English in the case of naïve and coöperate) spellings.

Given that both opinions are valid, it's impossible to say which is the "one correct" spelling of the title of a Wikipedia article containing accented characters, just as it's impossible to decide whether we could have an article on color or colour. (And there's even an issue with apostrophes: should our article be on it's or it’s?)

On most modern computers, it's not too hard to type these non-ASCII characters, if you learn the keyboard combinations which your operating system uses. (Many graphical OS'es have keyboard helper applets you can bring up, with buttons you can click on with your mouse to enter the special characters. Wikipedia edit pages, too, have a bunch of special character entry shortcuts listed in blue beneath the edit box, at least if you have JavaScript enabled.)

Even if you can't or don't care to type these characters, on most modern computers and with most modern browsers you can cut and paste them, so they really needn't end up causing too many problems. In particular, if an article has a title you can't seem to type, you can usually cut and paste its name into the [[ ]] (if, for example, you're trying to create a link to the article). Barring that, most articles with diacriticals in their names have redirects in place for unaccented (and other variant) spellings. For example, El Nino (in effect) redirects to El Niño. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

who are admins?? can they apply permission on pages??

Iiitkolkata 18:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)who are admins?? can they apply permission on pages??[reply]

Hello, Administrators are users on this site whom the community has entrusted with extra tools to help Wikipedia. See the administrator page for more info. Hope this helps. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 18:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

aggravated burglary

what is it?

This is for Wikipedia related problems only, sorry. However more information maybe available from the article Burglary. — Rlest (formerly Qst) 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong page, knowledge questions go on the reference desk. However, since the question interested me, I checked the burglary article and found it has a section on it already: Burglary#Aggravated burglary. Looks to be simply "burglary with a weapon". --tjstrf talk 19:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changing Page Name

For Major Impact Wrestling (I'm a new user but have done minor editing for some time) I would like to know if the name can be changed to Impact Pro Wrestling Australia? Thanks

DaTruGunJack 20:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well pages can be moved using the "move" tab at the to of the article. However, users under four days old do not have that fuction. Also, before making a move, be sure that there is consensus to do so. I ^{(said) (did)} 20:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For more information, go to Help:Moving a page. @pple 09:52, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Memory Alpha

I believe Memory Alpha belongs to Wikipedia. If a photo appears on Memory Alpha, can we use it on Wikipedia ?

Tovojolo 21:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Memory Alpha is hosted by Wikia, Inc.. That article says: "Wikia, Inc. is independent from the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and other collaborative projects. However, both use the same wiki software application called MediaWiki, maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikia also uses the GNU Free Documentation License for wikis it hosts, except for Memory Alpha, which uses a Creative Commons license."

I don't know details of photo licenses, but note that many sites (including Wikipedia who tries to avoid it) uses many photos that they are actually not allowed to use. And things like fair use means that some photos are only allowed to use in certain contexts. PrimeHunter 21:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most images used on Memory Alpha are copyrighted by Paramount Motion Pictures Group or one of their companies. In order to use them on Wikipedia, you would have to determine the original source of the image (i.e., not Memory Alpha, but where they got it from) and justify its use here in accordance with Wikipedia's fair use policies. Be very careful when uploading copyrighted images, as uploading them improperly will cause them to be deleted and may result in a block. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 22:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can I add more subheadings?

I want to add some information to a page but it doesn't seem to be relevant to any existing headings. How do I add one?

Look here.

Have a nice day,

The Rhymesmith 22:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can add new headings to a page by clicking the button that looks like an "A" on your editing toolbar (5th from the left), or by enclosing the heading text in equals signs, like this:

== Level 2 headline ==
=== Level 3 headline ===
==== Level 4 headline ====

For more information, see Help:Editing. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 22:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And see WP:LAYOUT. --Teratornis 00:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, to avoid making a mistake I just made: evidently the correct Wikipedia terminology for these headers is

== Level 1 headline ==
=== Level 2 headline ===
==== Level 3 headline ====

—Steve Summit (talk) 01:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]