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Welcome, newcomers and baffled oldtimers! If you have a question about Wikipedia and how it works, please place it at the bottom of the list, and someone will attempt to answer it for you. (If you have a question about life, the universe and everything, go to Wikipedia:Help desk instead.)

NOTE - questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable.) After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia, placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive if it is of general interest, or deleted.

Your questions answered here

Hello, can someone help a newbie, please? 1) How can I get an uploaded picture onto a page? 2) What makes a page into an orphaned page? Thanks Renata

Hello, to get an uploaded picture onto a page you would put a link in like this: [[image:imagename.jpg]] (if it's a PNG, you'll obviously have .png there instead). If you want to show something and display ALT TEXT, you would put [[image:imagename.jpg|ALT TEXT]]. What makes a page an orphaned page is that no other pages link to it, which means that no one will find it except through "random page" or a search. To resolve that, just find a page that's relevant and work in a link to the orphan. --KQ

What's the easiest way to communicate with other users- I've had a message from maverick and don't know how to re ply... quercusrobur

All you have to do is follow the link to the person's user page then click on the link to their talk page. --mav

What's the convention for movie titles?

Use italics for the title or name of books, movies, albums, TV series, magazines, and ships. See the Wikipedia:Manual of Style for answers to many questions like this.

Wrap text around pictures: How do I get text to wrap around a picture? (Copied from Talk:Dwight Eisenhower to promote the idea of this village pump page.)

Easy way: <div style="float: left">[[image:Eisenhower.jpg]]</div>
Hard way: use a table (shudder). --Brion VIBBER

Of course, the table works in older non-CSS browsers, too.

So does ASCII art.

Editing individual year entries I stumbled across Tarquin's style guide for the layout of contents of these pages, but I wondered whether there was any particular commonly agreed restriction on content for these. For example, can one just check on pages which link to a year article and slap the events in (with discretion over omitting particularly boring events!) Mazzy

In the absence of some robot spider doing the same thing with limited intelligence, I have been adding to the various "day" and "year" pages as I go along. Very few of them are thickly populated, and if the only thing that happened in 864 was "Khan Boris of the Bulgarians is baptized an Orthodox Christian", then that tells you something, either about 864 or about the state of the Wikipedia.
So, it seems to me you should go ahead and add to the "day" and "year" pages. Wiki on. Ortolan88
I've added an item to 864. It's easy if you look!
Now Boris doesn't need to feel lonely. :-) Eclecticology 11:58 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

converting images


Juuitchan wants to convert some BMP images to PNG for an article. Anyone willing to help out here?

For easily manipulating images in pre-determined ways (changing attributes, converting to other formats, resizing, etc.) my favourite toolset is ImageMagick. It's free software and runs on most common operating systems. -- Bignose

Most modern raster graphics tools understand PNG (those that don't aren't worth using), but some understand the format better than others. Also, people sometimes forget that PNG has got 8bpp and 16bpp modes, which are complete overkill for most maps and flags and such. PNG Tips for Cartoonists is an introduction to PNG for comics artists, but most of the article contains pretty useful information for Wikipedians too. The tool mentioned in the article, pngcrush, really does squeeze the last bits out of your PNG files and comes recommended.--user:Branko

If he can put them somewhere I can access them (like FTPing them to ftp.piclab.com:/incoming), I'll do the job. If he wants to do it himself, I recommend Paint Shop Pro from http://www.jasc.com . --LDC

Deleting articles

Can someone tell me how to delete an article? I wrote Sound Card and realized that Sound card exists (and is the correct spelling?). I moved the contents of Sound Card to Sound card and made Sound Card empty, but can't delete it. -- User:Volker

Hi, Volker. I'm here to help (hold on to yer wallet!):

  1. You could put #REDIRECT [[sound card]] (note second word "card" is lower-case) in the Sound Card article. That way, if anyone vists the Sound Card page, they will be whisked automagically to the real sound card article.
  2. Only Administrators can delete pages, and we do so only rarely. Usually a REDIRECT does the trick.

--Ed Poor

  • Also, for future reference; if the name you realize your article should have had doesn't already exist as a page, you can click the "Move page" link in the sidebar to move/rename the article to the new name. This will automatically keep the old name as a redirect for consistency's sake. Moving this way is the "cleanest" way to rename an article, because the edit history stays with the article, instead of being broken across the old page and the new page. (Note that the "move page" only appears if you're logged in.) --Brion

are Umlauts allowed in article titles?

It should not be :Ludwig Maximilians Universitat, Munchen, but Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München, may I change the link, or will occur any errors with "äöü" in titles? --chd


They work just fine (as long as you only need stuff in ISO 8859-1). However, for those whiners who can't or won't type them (and in cases when a form with accents stripped is commonly used in English), make a redirect from the unaccented title to the article or vice versa. Ability to link cleanly is key. --Brion
Shouldn't it be either "München" or "Muenchen"? That is, the customary way to express the umlaut if not available is by putting an "e" after the altered vowel. I suppose you'd still want a redirect from "Munchen" and "Munich" for that matter. Ortolan88
Yes, the German language is special in this way, in that it has a standard 7bit version of its alphabet, and we shouldn't forget this in our redirects. To judge from Wikitech-L, in fact, the "ue" version is quite common on de:. — Toby 23:05 Aug 25, 2002 (PDT)

On a recent visit to Austria, I was quite surprized (probably shouldn't have been) that this is applied even to URLs. ÖBB, the Austrian Railway (presumably Österreichische Bundesbahn?) has the web site www.oebb.at (and www.obb.at most definitely doesn't work) -roy

Is there any reason not to bypass redirects?

Every time I click on a link in an article and discover that I have been redirected, I am tempted to return to the original article and fix the link. Is there any reason not to do this? Do people refrain from doing this because it is purely mechanical and a waste of time? Come to think of it, if bypassing redirects is purely mechanical, couldn't we write a script to bypass all redirects everywhere, and leave the redirects in place only for the sake of future misspellings? ---Karl Juhnke 23:39 Aug 25, 2002 (PDT)

Yeah, mainly it's a purely mechanical waste of time. Additionally, for forms that are equally correct (ex, British vs American spellings, short/long form of a country name, etc) adding a big old bla bla bla bla| to the link code clutters up the edit box. Clean, easily readable and editable code is paramount to what's supposed to be a community-edited project, and piped links are harder, not easier, to work with. An automatic redirect "fixer" might be nice (if it can be trusted), but it shouldn't be blindly thrown at everything. (All the above is IMHO.) --Brion 23:47 Aug 25, 2002 (PDT)
The usefullness of the redirect depends. If it is really a spelling error, then you should fix the link in the article, since it's a spelling error there as well. Many other redirects are for renamed pages because of naming conventions or the like (for example /subpages that have been moved), and there's no harm in fixing these (though no harm in leaving them either). However, sometimes the author of an article intends to use a slightly different term than the name of the article, but wants to link it anyway. For example, he may want to talk about the Kingdom of the Netherlands to specifically indicate he's talking about the Antilles and Aruba as well. Although the Kingdom of the Netherlands redirects to Netherlands, the use of a different name makes sense. Of course, the author could have written [[Netherlands|Kingdom of the Netherlands]], but this is much easier. That would be one reason not to mechanically change all links to redirects.


What is a good format for writing large numbers? Should we use the American format? --Juuitchan


See orders of magnitude. The exact format is still being debated on the talk page. There are long chains of pages you can link to from large numbers. -- Tarquin
No. I mean, should a pinball score, for example, be written as 3 486 147 040, or as 3,486,147,040, or what? -- Juuitchan
Ah, I see. 3,486,147,040 is preferred, I should think. I'll mention it in Wikipedia:Manual of Style.


I would like to make suggestions for eliminating some hassles in using one's Watch List. On what page should I do this? Also, why has my TOC comment on Wikipedia:Chat not been answered? David 09:02 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

Wikipedia:bug reports has a link to the feature request tracker on sourceforge. (It's kind of a pain to use, but it's easier to keep track of things there.) If you think it bears discussion, you might also post a note about your idea to the Wikipedia-L mailing list. Wikipedia:Chat doesn't seem to be used much these days; probably nobody answered it because nobody saw it, or because the few who did weren't particularly interested. (A child of the computer age, I never use the main page / table of contents -- I find things by search or via a link on another page I've already found; or of course on special:Recentchanges!) --Brion 11:36 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

Hi- how do I remove an entry after discovering that a very similar one aleardy exists? breatharian is very similar to breatharianism, which I just created, how do I get rid of the latter??

Thanks quercus robur

The easiest thing is usually to redirect it to the existing page, so when someone goes to the new page they get shunted automatically over to the old page; see Wikipedia:How to use redirect pages. I went ahead and redirected that one. --Brion 11:20 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)
The convention so far seems to be to have the main page as the "ism", for example "surrealist" -> "surrealism", etc. It doesn't really matter though. :-) -- Tarquin 12:05 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

I find myself somewhat annoyed at the amateurish contributions of one particular Wikipedian who is ignoring valid criticism of his work. After an extended discussion and rewrite of one particular article, he simply restored portions of his own work, placing them at the front of the new article. Most of the information in the restored portions has been incorporated into the new article, but some of the information is just plain wrong. My solution to this quandary has been to state my objections (which have been casually dismissed by the Wikipedian in question) and abandon ship, working on other portions of Wikipedia while I wait for someone else to come along who has more patience than I do, but I am not happy about it. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on how one might handle such petty confrontations without coming across as a control freak?--NetEsq 8:40am Sep 6, 2002 (PDT)

I've commented on the substantive issues at Talk:Law. I ended up there in response to a similar appeal by the other party on the mailing list. Edit Wars are seldom solved by two determined Wikipedians clashing head-on when both believe that they are right. Even though my views on the issue appear to be closer to yours, I have so far avoided putting them anywhere other than the talk page for fear of fanning the flames of war. Two things that can help are the involvement of more Wikepedians, and even more importantly the lapse of time to allow for reflection.
Definitions are especially tough, because everything that follows in the article will depend on the definition. I was recently involved in an edit war over the definition of Biblical canon, and can sympathize with your frustration. It all does make me feel that we may need a definition of definition. I'll have to think about that one, and maybe even do something. Eclecticology 17:29 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)
I truly appreciate your attention to this matter, and I share your concerns about Edit Wars. What concerned me most was not the content of the article, but the fact that forward movement of the editing process was thwarted by one contributor reinstating portions of a previous article which were written by him without any attempt to address the concerns raised by me and by other contributors. There is no doubt in my mind that criticizing the contributions of other Wikipedians will create contentious situations, but I also believe that criticism is a necessary part of the editing process, as is responding to criticism, whereas simply restoring a previous version of an article without responding to criticism is counterproductive. In any event, I will heed your considered response and await the involvement of more Wikipedians and the lapse of time to allow for reflection.--NetEsq 11:12am Sep 6, 2002 (PDT)

Somewhere I saw a page listing all pages in the [[wikipedia:]] namespace. Does anyone know where to find that? --KQ 20:49 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)

I don't recall, but that's a pretty simple and efficient SQL query: SELECT cur_title FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace=4 ORDER BY cur_title
user:AstroNomer knew it: it's Wikipedia:List of articles in Wikipedia: namespace. And you're right, that is a very quick query. --KQ 21:20 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)

Special characters

From: Talk:Connective
Anybody knows how to get the correct symbols for conjunction/disjunction? (</> only rotated 90 degrees) -- Anon


The chars that are okay in all (well behaved) browsers are on Wikipedia:How does one edit a page. Link to outlandish ones there too. It's ∧ and ∨ BTW -- Tarquin

A discussion about copyright was moved to Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights

Changes etiquette

When is it a good idea to mention or discuss an edit on the corresponding Talk page? Does size of edit matter? Potential controversy? Apparent other activity? -- Khendon

If you're removing or contradicting existing material, it's probably a good idea to explain in the talk page (or if it's brief, at least in the summary box in the edit form). In general try to be pre-emptive; if you think someone else is likely to question what you're doing, you can save a step by clarifying your intentions first. (The talk page is also a good place to cite sources for possibly controversial material.) --Brion

I had a possibly related question... If I believe that information on a page is suspect, but aren't (yet) in a position to confidently refute it, what is the appropriate way to flag the issue? Most articles I have looked at don't have anything at all on the talk page, so the chances of anyone seeing a comment I might put there seem remote... -roy

You should raise your concerns on the talk page - there are always lots of people looking at Recent changes who may see your comment, and other people who read and edit the article are also likely to look at the talk page. So the chances of someone seeing it are actually pretty good! Enchanter

I added links to the two pieces of legislation mentioned in European Company Statute, which I assume is appropriate. I'm not sure if I've done it in the most appropriate way, though. I'm simply put the links at the end of the article, but I wasn't sure if there was a better way of doing this. Is there any standard approach to linking to external documents that are cited in an article? Perhaps in this case the formal citations to the documents (which appear in the main text) should be external links themselves? Then again, is it really appropriate for the citation to be in the body of the text to start with? 

          -roy


Looks like the common practice. In general, external links are left at the end of the page. There are some among us that even prefer external links without the [ ], so that the URL is visible in case someone prints the article. But I think that has not been decided. --AstroNomer 19:32 Sep 9, 2002 (UTC)


Thanks. I just though it would seem more natural if there was some way of linking to the source inline -- but it doesn't seem to be the Wikipedia way...

It can be done. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style. It is looked down upon, but useful in some circumstances, and not apparently outlawed. Ortolan88

I notice many ppl, like AstroNomer in the last message, use a sort o automatic current date/time insertion. How do I do this? Yves

  • To add it to your signature, use four tildes in a row (~~~~) which produces a signature like this: -- April 00:38 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)
    • And three tildes in a row (~~~) produces a signature without the time stamp, like this:Ortolan88

Abuse? How do you report abuse? The page September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Zionist conspiracy theories has had an abusive sentence added.

IF ANYONE ACTUALLY RESEARCHED THE HISTORY OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THESE THEORIES THEN THEY MIGHT ACTUALLY OPEN THEIR EYES AND SEE WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD. FUCK ALL OF THE ZIONISTS...MAY THEY BURN IN HELL AS THEY SO DESERVE...

I have deleted it but should we report the user who added it (64.229.129.155)?

Chris, deleting the abusive or offensive material is indeed always the first step you should take. If you put "revert vandalism" or something in the edit summary box, this will also attract the attention of other Wikipedians.
Next, you can do a number of things. One of them is to check whether there are any other pages the offender has vandalised, using this page. If there are more offensive acts, you can clean them up and put or at least put a notice at Wikipedia:VANDALISM IN PROGRESS and explain what the user is doing or has been doing. One of the 40 Wikipedia administrators will check updates to that page and block the person if necessary.

However, most vandals leave after only one act, or are discouraged when their vandalism is removed by others, so that is usually sufficient action. Hope this is clear enough, Jeronimo

Okay. I tried to fix some of the formatting on the Japanese language page but I can't! How do I do this??

I have also seen other pages with a similar problem. --Juuitchan

It would help if you explained what the problem was. :) Since your fix appears to have been changing <pre> tags into <tt> tags, I'm guessing the preformatted text is too wide for your browser window, either overlapping the sidebar or pushing the page wider than the screen. The sample dialogues are particularly egrerious, with two columns of text side-by-side. If you want to make those prettier, you'll probably want to reformat them entirely, to not be so darn wide. For instance, the translations and notes could go under instead of to the side. (By the way, help with the nascent Japanese wikipedia would be greatly appreciated. I have only a minor smattering of the language myself and can't do much more than set the software up and be enthusiastic.) --Brion 20:03 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)
I can't do it. I am not much more than a beginner at Japanese myself. --Juuitchan

When a site does not express any copyright notice, is it ok to use not edited content from its pages? In other words, is a resource considered public if there aren't anything stating the opposite? Please see http://www.fas.org/index.html . There are many definitions there I want to use, but i am quite lazy copyediting everything. Must I mail the webmaster? Or leaving the credits in the end of the term is ok? Thanks in advance. Yves 22:22 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)

No, copyright holds whether you assert it or not. Unless you have explicit permission, you cannot use the exact text on the page, whether edited or not.Andre Engels 22:30 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)
Notice was required under the 1976 Copyright Act. However, this requirement was eliminated when the United States adhered to the Berne Convention, effective March 1, 1989.
A cursory examination of http://www.fas.org/index.html would lead any reasonably prudent person to conclude that the content there is protected by copyright. Even so, copyright protection is not unlimited in scope, and there are specified exemptions from copyright liability. One major limitation is the doctrine of "fair use," which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act.
Section 107 reads (in pertinent part): "In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include . . . the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." Accordingly, copying a substantial amount of copyrighted content because you are too "lazy copyediting everything" would probably weigh very heavily against a finding of fair use. However, this is not a legal opinion.--NetEsq 4:50pm Sep 11, 2002 (PDT)

I understand, and agree. Thank you very much for clarifying this! I would only like to note that I said "lazy" because it's very difficult for me to write things in english. I know I don't need to worry very much with mistakes, but it's not easy for me to copyedit pages and pages of text - that is, formulate new text. Anyway, I am decided to do it, whatever how many (much?) time it takes.
So, I hope you don't get me wrong. I just wanted to economize efforts, so I could work in something else. Yves 00:20 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)

In OLD pictures and painting, is there any copyright restriction in favor of the one who digitalized it? It doesnt, right? Can I just get them? Yes, I am lame concerning copyright issues... :-/ Yves 01:55 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand your question, but both visual images and sound recordings are protected by copyright, and if you download an image from the Internet, it's a pretty safe bet that someone has a copyright for it.--NetEsq 7:51pm Sep 11, 2002 (PDT)


I don't know the answer, but I think Yves is asking about copyright on old pictures, like photos of Buffalo Bill, Queen Victoria and so on. In this case the original copyright would probably have lapsed (>75 years after death of owner), but would the person who digitized the picture and uploaded it have any copyright? Chris Q Chris Q 06:21 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
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