Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)

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Scott Peterson is a Wikipedian

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Scott Peterson

Probably just a troll pretending to be him; anyway, the person behind that login is now a banned wikipedian... Thue | talk 22:36, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

COTW image

I've just uploaded image:Cotw.png (used on Template:COTW) and the transparency has failed. Neither MS Image Editor nor Fireworks MX is fixing it for me. Could someone sort it out as I've got no access to anything better at the moment. Cheers, violet/riga (t) 23:12, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Most of the images I've seen used simply are not transparent. (Most of the stub images, for example, only look transparent because they match the background of the page.) My understanding is that you still need to use GIF for transparent images because there's not a lot of browser support for transparent PNGs (it doesn't work in Internet Explorer, notably). -Aranel ("Sarah") 20:33, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • I think internet explorer supports transparancy, just not alpha channel transparancy (which lets you make something half transparent and such). --fvw* 20:41, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)
  • (Image:Move article.png) is transparent. I believe fvw is correct. violet/riga (t) 20:52, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, I had no problems with converting the original Image:Move article.gif into Image:Move article.png. Also, I was thinking of converting all other such stub icons to .png. Any problems with it? Halibutt 21:30, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I say go for it. (It would make them more easily portable if they had transparent backgrounds while you're at it.) I need to get a better graphics-saving program. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:41, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Trouble editing big articles

In the last week or so I've had unprecedented trouble -- unprecedented for me, at least -- editing long articles. Anyway, I am asking if someone who is not having this problem can help me out. As explained in some detail at Talk:Spanish_Civil_War#How_you_can_help, I have rewritten one section of Spanish_Civil_War at Talk:Spanish Civil War/Staged; the edits should be uncontroversial (mostly copy-editing non-native English), and were intended as something prior to a future effort to reduce POV. I've tried and failed several times to get this edit in there myself. If someone else can do this, I'd sure appreciate it. Just indicate in the comment that you are pasting it on my behalf. Thanks. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:28, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

There, I think I managed to edit it successfully. ✏ Sverdrup 22:04, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

TNX, it worked. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:44, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

bad title

I just noticed the Finch band article. Good article, but the title doesn't seem right. However, there's already a (different) Finch (band) article, so I'm not sure what to do. --InShaneee 17:17, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If they were in (more) different genres, that would be they way to go. Since they're both forms of rock, I went with Finch (US band) and Finch (Dutch band). Now to go update some links... Niteowlneils 21:06, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Connection with Trillian?

Hi

I'm interested in uploading some information to Wikipedia but first I wanted to check which part of Wiki that Trillian connects with?

When you mouseover a word in Trillian it loads a Wiki definition but when you go to Wiki and look for that word the definition doesnt seem to be on the page anyway.

For example I want to upload some info about Dark Age (not Dark Ages) and when I search for Dark Age on Wiki it doesn't exist, however there is a definition available when you mouseover in Trillian.

Hope that all made sense :)

Artemis

You might want to contact Trillian about that, since, as far as I know, Trillian has never contacted Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation about using our content. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 17:39, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On your computer, inside the Trillian application data folder, is a custom static index of Wikipedia article titles with many assigned stop words taken out. As you type with this feature on, it cross references this index, and if there is an article it underlines it. Only as you hover over the word does it attempt to retrieve the definition, from what I believe to be Trillian's servers. It then takes the text of the definition and saves it to its own file on your hard drive for quick future use. The Trillian developers have described the feature as "new" and still under development, so we can probably anticipate enhancements in the future. --Alterego 18:12, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Revival Of Buddhism In India

While trying to add material from this deleted article's talk page to the vfd discussion, I've messed up the formatting of the discussion in a rather profound way. I don't want to dabble with it more myself, for fear of what mutation I may create next. Could someone please take a look here? Joyous 19:44, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

This has been taken care of. Joyous 13:02, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate material across articles

(Cross-posted to Wikipedia:Help wanted)
Handedness and Left-handed share a fair amount of material (mostly on the theories on the origin of handedness). It seems to me that such duplication is unnecessary and will only drift apart in the future, and the material should only be in one of the articles. I'm not sure which article should hold the discussion, though, or how the material should be divided among the articles. I also don't think they should be merged, so I don't think the {{merge}} tag is apparent; since that seemed about the only suitable tag on WP:CU, I don't know what to do. Perhaps someone could take care of those articles? -- pne 10:21, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

link to external web site

Will someone please link the Sundance Kid stub to the www.sundancekidhenrylong.com web site

sexual abuse in foster home

Could someone please let meknow ifthere is a statute of limitations in sexual abuse cases involving children as at least 3 of us were abused physically sexually this happpenedin winnipeg manitoba canada 1980

If you're still in/near Winnipeg, try here--if not look for something similar locally (although they will probably only know specifics if they are in Manitoba, as provincial laws may vary. Niteowlneils 03:26, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Problem with School Use

Not sure if this is where I start. Did create an account also. I teach school and had created a link to the KKK to project for use on a Reconstruction Unit. When I opened it yesterday it was full of very descriptive obscenities. Although, I had linked to you and used you for research before, I had not previously looked at your site too closely, but see that it is editable. Being a bit stunned and using with our new online text books etc... I moved on, but looking at it again last night it was in its contaminated form. This morning it was back to the original. Can you trace the origins of the unique edits??? Possibly one of our students???? My ninth graders were very kind to me as I gapped at it on the big screen.

   Also, do you have a site with simple guides for student/teacher use?

Might be worth bookmarking a particular version of the page in future, if it's going to be part of a live presentation... Look for the "page history" link at the top of each page.

e.g. page history of KKK, and an unchangeable version of that page Ojw 19:26, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That is good advice. Also, you might want to read Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. It's not exactly what you are dealing with, but the considerations are similar. If you have some comments specific to classroom use that don't seem to be covered by the discussion there, please feel more than free to write them up at Wikipedia talk:Researching with Wikipedia, and I'll make sure they end up appropriately integrated either as part of the "Researching" discussion or elsewhere. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:37, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

1. If you are talking about this version, contributed over a 14 minute period 14:38, 25 Jan 2005 UTC, the IP address for that "contributor", 69.151.180.30, traces to "Aransas County Isd", and I'm guessing "Isd"={something} School District. This vandalism was reverted within 10 minutes. Unfortunately the next day a totally different IP persisently vandalised the article again for almost 30 minutes, despite being reverted four times. As you can probably imagine given the subject matter, it's one of our more frequently vandalised articles. (Ah, it's in the same IP range as http://www.acisd.org/ )
2. There's also Wikipedia:School and university projects. All the ones reported so far have been university students, but with the proper planning and supervision a tightly-focused project could probably work for high school kids. Niteowlneils 03:06, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image Search

How do I do a good image search on Wikipedia? Should I use Google or an internal search to ensure I am not replicating images... just curious, Google does a pretty good job on advanced search. - RoyBoy [∞] 07:05, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is no perfect solution yet. You could go to the appropriate article and check links to related articles and foreign language articles by hand. This works surprisingly well. Google also works, but make sure to search site:wikipedia.org, not just site:en.wikipedia.org. You should also check the commons. -- Chris 73 Talk 07:31, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Do any wikipedians live in the proximity of Central Park, NY?

I just started The Gates as an "ongoing event" marked page.

My information of what is going on in central park of New York in the the first two months of 2005 is limited to what I can find on the Christo and Jeanne Claude website - I'm not sure the info on that website will be updated all throughout the event. Anybody caring to keep the "The Gates" page a bit up to date until the event is over?

--Francis Schonken 13:02, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I put some information onto your page. Take a look and let me know what you think. (I live right by the park, and walk through almost daily). Morris 14:25, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Images of currency

Hi - are there any legal issues concerned with adding images of banknotes to entries concerning currency.

Thanks Mike

Banknotes are copyrighted by the organisations that control them. For € banknotes the copyright statement is © BCE ECB EZB EKT EKP 2002—this is the European Central Bank. Since I'm a normal human and not a lawyer the legaleze is Greek to me, but it seems only images specifically released as specimen are "free" for use, and reproduction of images which may possibly be used to forge actual notes is specifically forbidden: PDF file. User:Anárion/sig 14:18, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For US currency, there are some very specific rules about what is legal. I am not an expert in the field, but I believe that the general rule is that it is okay to publish gray scale images that are significantly smaller than the size of the actual notes. There are very strict laws concerning producing counterfit currency, which one would want to avoid breaking. I think that the treasury department web site has some specific information, and some images of the new notes (20$/50$/100$) that you are allowed to copy. Morris 14:30, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Help with Nine Inch Nails

An anon editor (IP - 202.0.62.40) has made a re-direct to the "Nine Inch Nails" page - from it's equivlent in centimeters!!! Please would someone remove this re-direct? ta! Selphie 15:10, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It must have been a joke, and not even an original one. I've deleted it. If you see this again, please place a {{delete}} tag on it, and it will be deleted before long. It doesn't actually hurt anything, so it isn't urgent to deal with it.-gadfium 20:58, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Name of The Hacker's ship?

--Neptunemoon 19:16, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On The Up no page?

I would like to make a request for On The Up.

--Neptunemoon 19:27, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:06, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Hello.

Could someone please guide me? If I can help in any way just let me know. If someone would help me around Wikipedia that would be great. Thank you for your time.--Skybirds 22:56, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How do I get started? --Skybirds 00:17, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hello and most Welcome to Wikipedia! There are lots of people around here, and to track each other we keep User talk: pages. Mine is for example User talk:Sverdrup; use those pages to contact any user you want to ask something. (Do this at will, if they have time, most of the time they help you).

But if you need some pointers, we have an excellent Introduction and a nice Tutorial for newcomers. If you want to kick-start editing articles, the best idea is just to search and find an article you want to improve, or start a new article. There is also the Community Portal for editing projects and for finding pages about Wikpedia.

If you have any questions, just ask; here, or at our Help desk or on any user's talk page. ✏ Sverdrup 23:06, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Featured article by email needs a volunteer

I need someone to volunteer to replace Kate as sender of the featured articles by email. See User:Raul654/FA. →Raul654 00:39, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

Stupid spat getting out of hand

A ridiculous edit war has arisen over at Preview (software). This is hard to believe, given the small size and apparently uncontentious subject. But User:Sam999 has reverted this many, many times to attempt to include statements which appear to be part of a grievance between himself and his former employer, Apple Computer. Numerous users have reverted these changes which have no place in the article. I took it upon myself to attempt to explain why his changes won't stick, but now even this has degenerated into little more than name-calling. Perhaps someone could review the history and the talk page and see whether Sam999 needs to be banned - he has already broken the three revert rule but so have several others of us who are battling him. He seems to have no other interest in WP except for this article.Graham 05:11, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fixing a bot-generated list (like Births of a certain year)

I hope this is an appropriate place to ask this, but after creating a Bio page, I added him to the chronological list of births on the 1937 page. It then automatically put it in the alphabetical list titled "Category:1937 births" that I referenced below the article. The problem is he has 3 names, Rudy Ray Moore and the bot apparently uses the 2nd name to alphabetize by default. Is there any way to correct this so that he is listed under "M" instead of "R"? --PJV

[[Category:1937 births|Moore, Rudy Ray]]. You can do this for any category and it will order it by what is after the | even if that is no part of the article name. I've done it for you in the Rudy Ray Moore article. Evil Monkey → Talk 07:35, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

Iranian Architecture

I think the article needs to be renamed to Iranian architecture, then made as a category in Architecture by country, with Kashan and this one as articles in it. Unsure how to proceed on move, and how making the subcategory Iranian architecture would automactically know to go in Architecture by country... hmmmm... well that didn't create a subcategory. - RoyBoy [∞] 03:49, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved the article for you. (Using the default skin, there's a "move" button at top top of the page to the left of "edit this page" and "history".)

To put the article in Category:Iranian architecture, just add a link to [[Category:Iranian architecture]] and the bottom of the page. Follow the link to create the category by putting it within another category (in this case, [[Category:Architecture by country]] will do the trick). I didn't go ahead and do this because I don't know what other articles to put in the category, and there's not much need for a category with only one article in it. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:41, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Procedure for Reporting Vandalism by an Administrator?

In advance, thank you for your help. Could someone, please, describe (or refer me to the appropriate wiki-page(s)) for the standard procedure for reporting a wiki-administrator who has demonstrated a repeated history of editing-out documented facts and vandalizing wiki-articles? JUSTtheFACTS 15:25, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The fact that someone is an administrator has no bearing on his or her functioning as an editor. If you think a user -- administrator or otherwise -- is vandalizing articles, you might want to start a request for comment. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:16, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Question on Editing

I have been reading the excellent material on logical fallacies. I wanted to make some contributions in the area of rhetoric and popular rhetoric from the point of view of logical fallacies. But it is not clear to me how the final editing process works, i.e., what is to stop anyone from changing anything in a prior article?

How does one end up with the excellent content I have seen in the logical fallacy area if unqualifed and ignorant poster can post or edit?

Thanks, CMA

Becuase anyone can post and edit. It sounds wired but for the most part it worksGeni 19:43, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let me try to give you a little more of an answer. There are several thousand people who maintain "watchlists" of articles and check them with more or less frequency. The working assumption of Wikipedia is that far more effort will be dedicated to this than to vandalism. At any given moment an article may be in bad shape, but the "half life" of gibberish or outright lies in Wikipedia can probably be measured in minutes, certainly not more than an hour or two. However, as that term "half life" suggests, a small amount of bad information will remain even after a long time.

Compared to a more conventional reference work, it is an interesting tradeoff: a lot of bad information gets in (briefly) but is usually quickly gone; in a more conventional reference work, less bad information gets in, but what gets in is much more likely to stay.

In looking at an article, how do you insulate yourself from the bad information? Well, no strategy is perfect, but see Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia for some suggestions (among them, how you can exploit the talk page and the article history for this purpose). -- Jmabel | Talk 00:22, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Al Gore running for president in 2008?

Does anyone have any information?

--Relaxation 19:15, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Did you read the "2008 presidential election" section in the Al Gore article? That's got about as much information as I've heard on the subject. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:25, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Zero Hour - trying to add article, help!

Hello! I'm brand new to Wikipedia, and I tried adding an article to the encyclopedia. Under a search for "Zero hour" a result comes up pertaining to comic books. I added a category at the bottom relating to the September 11th terror attacks. I clicked on the link to add an article dealing with that article. I added content and then saved the page.

Well, when I clicked on the category link on the original 'zero hour' page, I get a link saying there is no article for this category. I added the content again, and now when I click on the link, it takes me directly to the editing page for the article content (not to the actual article). Does anybody know how to fix this? Thank you.

--Hawks9718 21:07, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is a Zero Hour article.

--Relaxation 21:15, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think you are confused about how categorisation works. A category is a grouping of related articles, not an article itself.

You have added Category:Zero hour - September 11th attacks to the Zero Hour article, but the article is about a comic series and has nothing to do with the Sept 11 attacks. It seems there is also a phrase "zero hour" which is. Instead of adding the category to Zero Hour, you should add a link in the Zero Hour article referring readers to a new article Zero hour - September 11th attacks, and that new article should be added to an appropriate September 11 category.

You couldn't find the "article" (actually category) you first created because you spelled it in two different ways: Category:Zero hour - September 11th attacks and Category:Zero hour - September 11 attacks.-gadfium 21:24, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok, did the link... now how do I add this article to the '9/11' category. I see the different articles listed for the category, but I still cant figure out how to add a 'new' article. --Hawks9718 22:42, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Basically, I just want to add a new article to an existing category --Hawks9718 22:56, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You add a category by editing the article, not the category. For example, if you add [[Category:Foo]] at the bottom of the article, you place it in category Foo. If you want it to alphabetize differently -- for example, if it was called "The Zero Hour" but you wanted it to alphabetize under "zero" -- you'd write [[Category:Foo|Zero Hour, The]]. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:29, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Oktay Sinanoglu and Oktay sinanoglu

Can anybody determine if these are the same people? RickK 06:16, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

"Oktay Sinanoglu is a professor at UC Berkeley." does not appear to exist. The other one with an actual bio appears to be real. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:41, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

site content

I have a website and would like to know if it would be possible to have the content of this site provided through my website free for my website visitors. If this is possible please I would like to know how this could be done. Thanks

Wikipedia's content is reusable under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. You can download a dump of the MySQL database from http://download.wikimedia.org/ . -- Cyrius|✎ 22:43, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

Removing large amounts of content without even discussing it!

I have noticed a few instances where someone will say something like Sub-Standard information, removing. I think everyone needs to see how an articles content can be expanded upon and edited to bring it up to a neutral point of view! I realize that this is an old subject here at wikipedia but never noticed it until now! Jaberwocky6669 17:32, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Two requests

I guess this is the right place (or one of the right places) to be looking for help. I have two requests to make:

1. For this summer's upcoming Wikimedia-wide conference, Wikimania 2005, we are working on a press release to help publicize it. More help is needed to write the press release (and eventually translate it), so if you're interested in the conference please help at Wikimedia press releases/Wikimania conference. Even if you know you won't be able to attend but want to support the event somehow, this would be a good opportunity.
2. I just published the latest edition of The Wikipedia Signpost a few hours ago. I know many people are reading and appreciating this effort at a Wikipedia community newspaper (check it out if you haven't seen it before), but it can't continue indefinitely with just me. I appreciate the many people who have been sending me tips about news in the community; now I need more people who can take the time to write an article or two about these events. Please contact me if you're willing to help.

Thanks to everyone for your support. --Michael Snow 18:08, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Warning Sign a song by the band Coldplay.

A request.

--Relaxation 20:31, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A request for what? -- Cyrius|✎ 23:48, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gex: Enter the Gecko. (Game.)

If you have any information to start a article that would be great. Thank you.

--Relaxation 22:42, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)