Help desk
< October 8	<< Sep | October | Nov >>	October 10 >

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.

I have edited an article which describes things that I done in ways that i didn't do at all which makes me very angry as my name was not meant to be mentioned, published or known due to the sensitivity of the case. But when i type my name in the search box the article still comes up. I DO NOT want to be searched or found on Wikipedia for this particular article as its untrue and could put me and my family in danger. PLEASE can you remove my name from anything and everything to do with the related article.--Carlsberg75 (talk) 00:24, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We are not psychic! What are you refering to?--Aspro (talk) 00:29, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From the above users contribs history, I am guessing this is what they are refering to. --Jayron32 00:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I think the editor is referring to Murder of Jeffrey Howe‎, the only article edited by Carlsberg75. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who Carlsberg75 actually is (his or her name), and I suppose disclosing the name would defeat Carlsberg75's apparent purpose. I reverted the change Carlsberg75 made to the Howe article because it wasn't a proper reason for removing material from the article, but I couldn't look at the source of the material in the article because the website of the source gave me a weird message: "We've hit a problem and we can't show the page you asked for right now. Please try again in a few minutes." Whatever that means.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The report is available at an alternative url. - David Biddulph (talk) 07:53, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, David, I've replaced the cite with the unexplained technical error with the one you found.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:43, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Carlsberg has basis for removing the name in question. See WP:BLPNAME. I have restored part of the edit, but without the name. It is unnecessary to the article and potentially damaging.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 14:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, although I assume you guessed as to the name and we have to assume Carlsberg is that person (or related) - still, you're correct about it not being necessary to the article. I restored a date Carslberg had inexplicably changed - the date was correct before per source.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:43, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, better to err on the safe side when it comes to BLP names, I guess. I retained the rest per your revision and the source, of course. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 14:59, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I just noticed that the main photo for Al Hirschfeld was re-uploaded with an enhanced version almost two years ago, but his article still displays the unrestored version. Not sure why this is. Thanks. Delaywaves ^talk 02:01, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to me that it is indeed showing the new version; it's just that the two look similar at low resolutions: image shown on article image from image page scaled to 200 pixels (note the indentical URLs). Hope this helped. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the problem. This is a known .jpg issue that the devs haven't fixed yet. The issue only occurs on .jpg files. For some reason, the system sometimes caches a previous version of the image (usually due to some sort of error in the .jpg file encoding). The easiest way to correct this is to open the image with image editing software, resave the image, then reupload the image. Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 04:40, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An anonymous user, operating under several different IP numbers, has been repeatedly deleting a citation to the Leigh Brackett article regarding her script for The Empire Strikes Back. Since this user has never bothered to provide any reason for the deletion, I've been repeatedly reverting the deletion (even though the original edit is not mine). This is a minor annoyance but not worth fussing about. However, in his last edit, the user added the edit comment "Your IP has been pinged. Do you have legal representation?".

I gather this is an implicit threat. I'm not sure who is being threatened, and it's highly unlikely that the threat is serious, or even meaningful, but I'm pretty sure this is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Is there a policy violation here, or is there any sort of way of discouraging users from making (pseudo-)legal threats in lieu of actually discussing edits on the appropriate page?RandomCritic (talk) 02:20, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:No legal threats seems to be the relevant policy. If the IP users continue to edit-war on that article, then I would suggest requesting that it be semi-protected at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Hope this helps. :-) Regards, —{|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|} 02:32, 9 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]

I requested a password reset and I have not received the e-mail. (It was not intercepted by my spam filter.) Unless this normally takes several hours, there is either a problem with the password reset or my account has been compromised. Since there are no longer any edits (all minor - no great loss) or discussion contributions associated with my account I'm guessing someone has hacked my account, though I don't know why anyone would take over my account just to delete everything.

My user ID is KADC and I used my real name to create the account so hopefully an administrator will be able to help me regain control of my account whatever the problem may be.

99.248.238.157 (talk) 08:23, 9 October 2011 (UTC)KADC[reply]

According to Special:Log/KADC, the account KADC was created in 2006, but according to Special:Contributions/KADC there have been no contributions. If your account had been compromised, that wouldn't remove record of existing contributions, so if you are convinced that contributions have been made previously it looks as if you've not remembered correctly the name of the account. If you know what pages you've edited, the edit history of those pages would tell you the name of the account which made the edits. - David Biddulph (talk) 08:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As an administrator I can also see there are no deleted edits at Special:Contributions/KADC. As David says, it looks like you misremembered the username. You can also look for possible names at Special:ListUsers. I'm not sure what you mean by "I used my real name to create the account". Users are not asked for their real name and I guess KADC is not your real name. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:09, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you actually want the username KADC whether the account was originally yours or not then you can request it at Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Over at Wikipedia:Upload I uploaded a file with a spelling mistake in the filename (I had spelt "fanciful" wrong). So I had it deleted. But now when I try to reupload the image with the correct filename it won't let me. It keeps saying "

A file identical to this file (File:Ragnall mac Somairle, faniciful seal.jpg) has previously been deleted. You should check that file's deletion history before proceeding to re-upload it." When I click either "submit modified file description" or "ignore warning and save file anyway" buttons, it won't let me upload that image again. How can I upload this image?--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 09:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the message means that the file content and not the file name is identical. Can you make another version of the file without the same content byte for byte? If not then I can try to undelete and move the deleted file. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:45, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I re-cropped the original image on my pc, so that the new version could not have been exactly the same as the one deleted, but I still got the same old song-and-dance - that it was identical to a recently deleted image. I double checked the size of the two versions of that image, and noticed they were the same size, so I just sharpened the image which made the file size a bit bigger, and then tried again. It worked. I guess it means that the wiki-software uses filesizes to help determine duplicates. Oh well, I got there in the end. Thanks. I was getting pretty frustrated.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 03:53, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sir i am a dvorak keyboard user i am willing to edit English Wikipedia I am using internet cafes I want to type English in dvorak layout online. please help — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linangovan (talk • contribs) 11:08, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I compared the two layouts via the following two depictions:

What is the specific problem? The Dvorak layout seems to contain the same basic characters as the QWERTY layout, so apart from special characters you should be able to type all basic characters also found on a QWERTY keyboard. See Help:Special characters if you need some specific special characters. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the poster is used to a Dvorak keyboard but is using Internet cafes without Dvorak keyboards, and then wants to reassign the keys to the same position as Dvorak so typing becomes more efficient for somebody used to Dvorak. I don't think Wikipedia has any built in feature for this. There may be a general method you can use for the given computers to reassign their keys for all programs, if the Internet cafes allow it. This help desk is specific to Wikipedia issues. You can try posting to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. Tell them which country you are in and which operating system and keyboard type the Internet cafes have. You can also try a Google search like dvorak change layout. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:51, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What is the name of this sign (#) and why is there no article on it in Wikipedia? Instead the article page redirects me to the Front Page, is this a bad joke or something? --88.112.41.113 (talk) 11:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Number sign. I'm guessing the redirect to the mainpage is because of the way Wikipedia links are coded.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Number sign mentions some names for it. It cannot be used in page titles. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Forbidden characters. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... I see, but how are people supposed to find the number sign page if they cannot find it with # ? There are no special workarounds for these kind of situations, like disabling formatting for one page or anything? --88.112.41.113 (talk) 11:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone with an account there perhaps file a report at Bugzilla? Or is it already listed there? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:57, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's bugzilla:26766. There is no simple way to find number sign if you don't know a relevant name (see [1] for redirects to it), but that is also the case for numerous Wikipedia articles not about symbols. Some imagination and knowledge may be required. If I didn't know a name for # then I would have entered ASCII in the search box and made a browser search withCtrl+F to find # which on the second occurrence links to Number sign. I realize most users probably wouldn't think of this or have the required knowledge to attempt it. Redirecting # to the main page is actually logical if you know how url's work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. If the article title # existed then it would, with our normal correspondance between article titles and url's, be called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/#. But # is a fragment identifier in urls. A url starting with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/# would normally be used to link to a section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (or wherever that url alone redirects to). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/#In_the_news, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#In_the_news and Main Page#In the news all go to the same place on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. You can also get there by entering "#In_the_news" or "#In the news" in the search box. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Erm. Just for the record, it's also called Hash tag. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 20:53, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hash is a common term for the symbol and mentioned in the lead of Number sign. Hashtag is a Twitter term mentioned at Number sign#In computing. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:14, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the "Contents" in articles cannot be collapsed or minimized?Savolya (talk) 13:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It can for me. The table of contents says "Contents [hide]" and I click on "hide". Is there no "hide" link for you? Is it the same on all pages, for example also this help desk? It requires that JavaScript is enabled in your browser. Which browser do you have? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:19, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi: I debated posting this to the Village Pump (technical) but am scared of getting my head bitten off. As of shortly after 04:10 today, on my desktop machine (Win 7 Home Premium, Forefox 3.6.18) non-Special pages on en.Wikipedia will not load with Monobook or any other skin I tried changing my preferences to - except Vector. The sidebar and top of page material appears at the bottom of the page, pages display in a semi-raw state with wikilinks underlined and the caret mark and/or letters at the start of each ref. also underlined. I think what I'm seeing is a page minus skin. de.Wikipedia is unaffected. My housemate on the same IP who runs Unix doesn't have the problem. And dialing up on my laptop - Win XP tablet PC edition 2005 version 2002, Firefox 3.6.20) - I don't have the problem. I'm posting this from the laptop because I'm not sure I can figure out how from the desktop (and I really can't use Vector - if it has the alt. char. tables at all, it hides them in some fiendishly unobvious place). Help! --Yngvadottir (talk) 15:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying Monobook now and it seems to be working. One thing you could try is to refresh your browser cache by pressing Ctrl-F5. Post back here if that doesn't work. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:51, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to have worked, many thanks! Waiting 11 hours and then rebooting didn't . . . wtf? Glad I posted here and not at VP(T) Yngvadottir (talk) 16:02, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't find the answer. According to AT&T I have lost the option of opting out of electronic deposit, ACH, as of June of this year. I have been trying to verify that but have been unsuccessful. I checked you information on the subject and could not find an answer. Prior to June 1, 2011, I have opted out and do get my cancelled checks back as photo copies which is acceptable. With ACH neither the bank or I have a copy of the check so I get nothing other than the check number, date, and amount. AT&T says that I no longer have that right to opt out so they ACH all my checks for my monthly payment.

I want to continue to opt out and I need some rule or section from the Federal Reserve or NACHA that I can challenge AT&T's decision. Thank you for your help.

(Redacted) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.59.19 (talk) 18:24, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. Goodvac (talk) 18:32, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect List of Wikipedia articles about fictional vehicles does not make sense in my opinion. However it doesn't seem to satisfy any of the reasons at WP:R#DELETE. Should I nominate it at WP:RFD? Can someone point me to a policy or guideline covering the appropriateness or inappropriateness of this redirect? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 19:10, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A "list of wikipedia articles" is a category. It would make more sense to redirect to Category:Fictional vehicles. -- kainaw™ 19:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Special:PrefixIndex/List of Wikipedia articles shows 3 such redirects. If you take it to WP:RFD then I suggest a group nomination. You could also just tag with {{R unprintworthy}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the above captioned article: under the sub-heading; Confederate Officers the pictures of the Confederate Officers, which should be on the right cover the script on the left. Also in the Article: List of Civil War Battles you forgot the Battle of Bentonville, march 19–21, !865.

Thanks:-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.55.67.182 (talk) 19:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your first concern, article is "Battle of Franklin (1864)" in section "Confederate", a subsection of "Opposing forces"? I don't see any layout problems there. I tried on several different computers (Mac and Windows) using multiple versions of Firefox. What browser are you using? For your second, "List of Civil War Battles" takes me to an article titled "List of American Civil War battles". I see an entry for "Battle of Bentonville" in the table in the "Battles rated by CWSAC" section, dated March 19–21, 1865. DMacks (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

I recently installed the Wikipedia app for Google Chrome. Since installing the app, I have been receiving a pop-up desktop notification in the bottom-right corner of my screen notifying me of new messages. I have searched for a way to access these messages, but the notification does not give an option for accessing them and, as far as I can tell, after logging into Wikipedia, there is no option for reading messages. I have selected the option to disable the notification from within the pop-up, but it still appears every time I launch Wikipedia.

How can I access my messages and/or completely disable the pop-up notification from occurring? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigwoodenhead (talk • contribs) 20:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What app? Where did you get it? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why isn't my mouseover working on the view history prev and cur links?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 20:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to WP:POPUPS? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My mouseover was not working for over an hour. It is back up and running.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So I am thinking of adding an image of my glorious sukkah to the article about them (it doesn't have any American sukkot in it), and I constructed it from wood I bought as well metal braces, a bamboo roof and a so-called "SukkahScreen" wall I bought from Steve Henry Woodcraft. Mr. Steve Henry Herman has registered his SukkahScreen with the patent office afaik. So what kind of licence do I put for it? Do I just put a note that the parts were supplied by Steve Henry Woodcraft of "The Sukkah Project"? Here is an image of the sukkah [2]. The final one will be taken from a different angle without the pirate flag, but you can see the bamboo roof and the SukkahScreen (the green wall) make up much of the visible structure. (Also, yes, I know the deck is a mess.) Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 11 Tishrei 5772 20:49, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

License it however you want. As long as you are showcasing your work, and not their product, their logos in the image would be incidental and de minimis - so you needn't worry about their copyrights/trademarks. The standard analogy is, if you take a photo of your child while their are wearing a Pooh bear shirt, you can still license the image freely; as long as the focus of the photograph is of the child, and not the shirt. ^Avic_ennasis @ 23:21, 11 Tishrei 5772 / 23:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you're asking. You don't need (and probably shouldn't as it would be classed as advertising) to credit the manufacturer of things in a picture which you took; the licence applies to the picture, not to individual parts pictured. Consider - do pictures of buildings credit the manufacturer of the bricks, or does a picture of a Rolls Royce car need a licence from RR? Per trademark the intent of a trademark is to exclusively identify the commercial source or origin of products or services, not to stop you taking pictures of it. This would be different if you'd signed some sort of an agreement not to take pictures of something (say a secret military installation, or secret details of a patented item such as the Coca Cola recipe), but I suspect this wouldn't apply to a sukkah screen (which, no disrespect intended, looks rather like greenhouse shade netting anyway). Apologies if I've misunderstood your question. Tonywalton ^Talk 23:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah alrighty. Just wanted to be absolutely sure. Yep, other than the wall and roof I built it, so it is my own work; in more ways than one. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 12 Tishrei 5772 18:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a less serious matter, but I want to make a template to put on my talk that has m sukkah on the left side with a message I can put in for my talk page. Basically large (but not too large, like 300 px across) sukkah image on the left and then on the right something like "This editor is currently chilling in his sukkah for sukkot; he askes that in keeping with the festival; please do not leave any bad vibes on this page. Thanks!" Anyone know the proper coding?Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 11 Tishrei 5772 20:58, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This should do it: {{tmbox|text=This editor is currently chilling in his [[sukkah]] for [[sukkot]]; he asks that in keeping with the festival; please do not leave any bad vibes on this page. Thanks!|image=[[File:Example.jpg|200px]]}} ^Avic_ennasis @ 23:21, 11 Tishrei 5772 / 23:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That'll do nicely. Thanks very much! :D Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 12 Tishrei 5772 18:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I opened my account today and began a subpage for a new article on Rose Naftalin. I saved the subpage a number of times while I was writing. I logged out but when I logged in again, I could not find the subpage. Can you help me find it? Thanks, Rip Rhododendron (talk) 22:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only edit listed in your contributions was this one to the Help desk. Could you perhaps have been picking the "Preview" button each time and never picked "Save"? If you're sure you were logged in, that's the only explanation I can think of. I'm afraid that if that is so, your work was not saved. --ColinFine (talk) 22:23, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If the page contained external links then you would have to answer a CAPTCHA as a new user in order for a save to go through. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:19, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]