Help desk
< April 5	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	April 7 >

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.

April 6

Can not print graphs and other "illustration" type equations in wiipedia mathematics articles

Wikipedia articles on mathematics frequently contain "illustrations" that is graphs, equations and charts in separate boxes outside the main text. These all print as black boxes when I attempt to print the page.

The mathematic equations within body copy are no problem.These have always printed out clearly.

I tried turning off Java and printing out article, but this does not help. Because I download mathematics articles from other Internet resources, I have also installed the basic Firefox mathematics fonts.

Please tell me what steps I should take to be able to print out mathematics articles in their entirety, including all "illustrations"

Thank you

tilde can not print —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.216.103.72 (talk) 02:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First you should make sure that your browser settings for printing are set to print graphics from webpages. Other than that I don't know if anyone on this help desk can assist you. This help desk is primarily for help using the wiki itself, not for technical support related third party hardware/software.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 02:45, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A test you can use to determine the problem might be clicking on a graphic you want to print, then trying to print the page of that specific graphic. If the graphic is still black it is an issue with your settings or your printer.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 02:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

posting PDF

I tried posting a PDF of the California Constitution here: Image:California State Constitution of 1879.pdf (1.6MB). However, test downloads won't open with Acrobat. Is there a special way to post PDFs, or are they not supported? The CA constitution is not available in its original form online, and I had to go to the state archives to get this, so this would appear to be our best option. Thanks, — kwami (talk) 05:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PDF files are not supported because they require third party software to view. You should read Wikipedia:Uploading images for details. I would suggest that you find a place to host the document off wikipedia and then link to the file directly.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 05:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is the PDF file one single page or multiple pages? If it's one single page you may be able to find a converter to change the PDF to an acceptable format.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 05:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's multiple pages, though we could convert to jpeg and create a book on wikisource. kwami (talk) 18:08, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I opened the pdf without trouble by clicking on the “California_State_Constitution_of_1879.pdf‎” link at Image:California State Constitution of 1879.pdf. —teb728 t c 06:00, 6 April 2008 (UTC) I can also open it by clicking here. —teb728 t c 06:10, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It will open correctly via direct link, but you can't place it within an article the same way you would with a traditional image, it will show the acrobat icon. Also, it has always been my understanding that uploads of pdf files in the image space were discouraged. I see that the editor asking the original question also posted this question to image upload talk page, maybe the people who monitor that page have a better grasp on what is appropriate use of PDF files in the image space. As it stands in the policy the technical aspects do not mention PDF as an acceptable upload format and the external linking policy WP:External links states that a PDF file should be linked with the specific descriptive text that it is a PDF format file.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 06:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The image namespace is meant for media files (pictures, video, and sound files), not text. This would be more suitable for Wikisource, and then link to it from the article. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, the second option works on my browser.

I'll look into Wikisource. kwami (talk) 06:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have permission to upload files at Wikisource, so I'll let someone else do it if they like. Meanwhile I've corrected the link in the article. kwami (talk) 06:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure wikisource allows you to upload text in PDF format, I think they require ASCII text files. Best to leave well enough alone for now, especially since you found something that is working. I would suggest that you place a question about a suitable place to house a PDF file on the talk page of the image. This will alert editors who might try to move or delete the file that there is some discussion about where such a document should be housed and it will help to avoid future conflict over the issue.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 07:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Language

if for example the language that im using is espanol and i would like to know the meaning in inglish what im going to do,to see the meaning in english. thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.234.41 (talk) 06:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When viewing an article, you'll see on the left, below the search bar and "toolbox" a list of links to alternate language versions. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If no one has translated the article for you, you can get a machine translation with Google Translate. For some examples, see the {{Google translation}} template documentation, and search the Help desk archive for: translation. --Teratornis (talk) 19:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For example, these are some machine translations of the English Wikipedia into Spanish, and the Spanish Wikipedia into English, using the {{Google translation}} template:

You can browse around in the translated versions for the most part normally, and Google will translate every page for you on the fly. However, some Wikipedia features will not work inside Google's translation frame, so the translated version is not fully featured. But it's good enough if you are just reading. --Teratornis (talk) 19:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

John Adams (miniseries) Inforbox

Can someone take a look at the infobox at John Adams (miniseries) to help determine why certain fields like cinematographer aren't showing up? Thanks in advance.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 11:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Infoboxes only have a certain number of parameters, and "cinematography" and "budget" aren't defined at Template:Infobox Television Film. So, they won't show up on the final infobox. Xenon⁵⁴ 12:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I thought that might have been the case. Do you know of a television related template that might include those parameters by any chance? I know film covers at least some of them, but I'm hesitant to use it in this context because I like have episode count in the infobox.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 12:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{Infobox Television}} has a "cinematography" parameter. Xenon⁵⁴ 12:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can also edit an infobox template to add more fields to it. In general, adding new fields is not destructive to existing pages that use the template, as long as you write your new template code so it does not display your new fields when their input parameters are empty. However, template coding can be difficult and scary, and messing up a template can mess up many articles at one time, so you would want to approach that carefully. A simpler option is to examine the history of a template (for example: Template:Infobox Television Film), find some users who have extensively edited the template, and ask them on their talk pages if they can add the extra fields you need. You could also ask on Template talk:Infobox Television Film, but sometimes a template's talk page doesn't get attention often. Incidentally, the Template talk:Infobox Television Film improperly shows documentation for the template which should actually be on a /doc subpage, which one creates by adding the {{documentation}} template to the template page. See: Wikipedia:Template documentation#How to create a documentation subpage. --Teratornis (talk) 19:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adoption program

I'm going to ask here because more people read this... won't probably get any answer on WT:ADOPT. Okay, so, I suddenly thought that I could adopt someone to further train my WP skills (since I'm not that frequently online for now and can't access my account) but there are criteria for the adopter... since this is an IP and I obviously don't have 500 edits with it I can't adopt? 86.154.180.0 (talk) 13:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, what is your account? If you cant acess it, then click email password on the login screen. Otherwise maybe admins can help you with this. Nothing 444 13:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can learn almost everything about Wikipedia by answering questions on the Help desk. Unlike with adoption, you don't have to meet any requirements to answer questions on the Help desk, other than being able to figure out questions and look up the answers. You don't even need an account, although having an account would be a good idea if you want to build up a reputation for being a good helper. See: Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer to get started, and study other users' answers to learn how we do it. Even though we have lots of Help desk volunteers, you will almost always find questions that haven't been answered yet, or questions with partial answers to which you can add more information. Because we get lots of edit conflicts on the Help desk, we try to answer briefly, so lots of questions require several responses to build up a complete answer. --Teratornis (talk) 18:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading picture

How do I upload a picture to a page on wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djdevious (talk • contribs) 14:32, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Images and other uploaded files and Wikipedia:Image use policy. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you trying to do this on an IP, then it wont work. Nothing 444^{Go Irish!} 18:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit special page

hi how do i edit a special page on my own hosted wiki using the thing downloaded from media wiki —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.158.160.14 (talk) 15:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editing Special pages is not possible, please can you rephrase the question: what is the "thing" ? Stwalkerster [ talk ] 16:00, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) You can modify all special pages at includes/SpecialXXXXX.php. Also, to change the interface messages, see a list at Special:Allmessages. In the future, remember that this is a Help Desk for using Wikipedia. For questions about MediaWiki, please try at mediawiki.org. Good luck! Soxred93 | talk bot 16:02, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, use the following links to get information about MediaWiki:

mw:Project:Support desk - to ask questions
Search Meta-Wiki with Google
Search MediaWiki.org with Google
m:Help:Contents#For administrators - the MediaWiki manual section you must read if you run your own wiki

--Teratornis (talk) 18:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Writing Practice Problems/Exercises for Wikipedia Articles

Hello,

For topics on science, I was wondering if Wikipedia allowed users to create practice problems on another page linking to the topic page.

For example, if I wanted to create some exercises on Logarithms, could I create a link on the Wiki article on logarithms to another page with exercises?

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vertciel (talk • contribs) 18:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This would probably be more suitable for Wikibooks. So yes, I imagine you could add your exercises on Wikibooks, and use the {{Wikibooks}} template to link from the Wikipedia article about logarithms to the corresponding Wikibooks entry. --Teratornis (talk) 19:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity would be another possible site where you could develop exercise problems, study guides, lesson plans, etc. --Teratornis (talk) 19:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can search those wikis with these links, to see if anyone has already started pages relating to logarithms you could expand:

Not surprisingly, both sites have lots of pages mentioning the topic. Also, now that you mention logarithms, I recall that Wikipedia has several articles relating to exponential growth that could use more practical examples and exercise problems. For example, Post scarcity#Unavoidable scarcity mentions that if world population continues to grow at its present rate for just a few thousand years, the resulting mass of humans will exceed the mass of the Observable universe. However, the section does not show the math. You might work up some illustrative examples on Wikibooks or Wikiversity and link to them from the section on Wikipedia. Similarly, the article about Albert Bartlett cites his famous lecture about exponential growth but shows no math examples. You could go through all the articles about population and put them on a firmer mathematical foundation. --Teratornis (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion--No, it is not appropriate to link from a Wikipedia article to a quiz or other study guide. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia: a repository of facts. It is used by many people for many purposes, not just by students, and the "quiz" links would add unnecessary clutter for other users. Consider your example of "logarithms." There are thousands of websites that can aid in learning about Logarithms. How many of these should we link to? Further, there are many levels of knowledge about logarithms, should the quiz be for 12-year-olds? 18-year-olds? professional engineers? Professional mathematicians? math historians? This problem gets a lot worse for other types of articles. On the other hand, quizes are an excellent idea for Wikiversity: people go there to find teaching resources. Material threre can make great use of the material on Wikipedia by linking to it. -Arch dude (talk) 22:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We use the {{Wikibooks}} and {{Wikiversity}} templates to get around such external link proliferation. See some examples of their use in Engineering#External links and Arithmetic#External links. That's how we link articles on Wikipedia to corresponding entries on those other wikis. The link from Wikipedia would not say it is to a study guide, just to more information on Wikibooks or Wikiversity. --Teratornis (talk) 23:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds perfect. just add {{Wikiversity}} to the Wikipedia article, and then go to Wikiversity and create a course or a series of courses on Logarithms. Start withs a simple stub course that is nothing but a quiz on the Wikipedia article, and expand from there, linking like crazy to other educational resources on the web and to other Wikipedia articles. Eventually, the course may grow, but even if it never grows the original quiz remains useful. -Arch dude (talk) 00:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

peer review - clock conflict

I recently added the show clock personal preferences feature and now my peer review button is hidden. Is it possible for both to show simultaneously.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 19:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, you may want to contact the author of the gadgets you selected and see if they have an update you can put into your monobook.js that will work correctly. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 19:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One wonders if stacking enough gadgets into the same pixels might create a singularity. One also wonders why the gadget designers each assumed their gadget was the only gadget a person would ever need (well, isn't it?). Speaking of utterly off-topic non sequiturs, just last night I stumbled across SkySails, and what a clever idea that is. --Teratornis (talk) 19:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do I figure out who was the author of a gadget?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 21:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ask here, I suppose. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 21:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could search Wikipedia with Google for: preferences gadgets tab. That finds several mentions in the Village pump, and Wikipedia:Gadgets. If you read that page, its talk page, and the pages it links to, you can probably figure out who added a particular gadget, or some users who might know who did. It's somewhat strange that the Gadgets tab on Special:Preferences does not link to Wikipedia:Gadgets. Someone should look into adding that obvious link to the text at the top which says: "Please note that these special gadgets are not part of the core MediaWiki software, and are generally developed and maintained by users on Wikipedia." That sentence needs a link on "gadgets", and also on "developed and maintained" (to whatever page has the relevant discussion). --Teratornis (talk) 23:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

archiving own talk page

I know I may have missed this somewhere but I would like to archive my talk page on yearly routine. I know that says I might not get a lot but hey...! I have looked at MiszaBot/Archive HowTo and ClueBot III#How to archive your page but they seem to deal in hours or days. 1stanniversity coming up so any assistance gratefully received. Edmund Patrick ( ^confer _work) 20:20, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Then you can set the archive length to 365 Alexfusco⁵ 20:22, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just try to set up with your config as

{{User:MiszaBot/config
|algo = old(5d)
|archive = User talk:Example/Archives/%(year)d
}}

see if that works, if not you can revert. -Optigan13 (talk) 20:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Opps simple when you stop and think about it. Thanks to both above. Ho Hum Edmund Patrick ( ^confer _work) 20:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Album Citation

How do you cite something recorded on an album, or something found in the booklet included with the album? Youre dreaming eh? (talk) 22:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is {{Cite album-notes}}, although I don't believe there is a template for the album itself. The closest I could discern was {{Cite video}}. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hints to screen readers

~~Is there a template to insert hidden text which will be read by screen readers and the like? --h2g2bob (talk) 22:20, 6 April 2008 (UTC)~~[reply]

Will ask for change at MediaWiki:common.css --h2g2bob (talk) 22:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WIKIPEDIA & PDA Accessibility

please help me to visit and/or contribute to Wikipedia using my Palm Treo 680 to access the internet. THANKS! Kennethstrauss (talk) 22:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It depends what browser you are using within your Palm Treo. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 22:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might find something useful under WP:EIW#Mobile. --Teratornis (talk) 22:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

making articles

how do i make articles on wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Buubin (talk • contribs) 23:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New accounts can create articles right away (some other things take 4 days). Our general advice:

Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines which all articles should comport with. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite to reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Help:Starting a new page. You might also look at Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]