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January 5

blocking a user

If someone makes frivolous changes, can they be blocked from editing a page? How would I report this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jadh1 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not from a specific page, but they can be blocked from editing any of Wikipedia. ~~WP:ANI is the place to report it.~~ Sumsum2010·T·C 02:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AN/I is only for complex vandalism and other problems that can't be handled elsewhere. For run of the mill vandalism, use Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Before posting there, a final warning in an escalating series should have been posted to the user's talk page (for example {{Uw-vandal4}}, {{Uw-spam4}} or {{Uw-speedy4}}), and the user must have vandalized within the last few hours, including after the final warning was given. Various warning templates can be found at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. A block request is unlikely to be acted upon unless you follow these steps.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, strike what I said about ANI. Sumsum2010·T·C 02:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

tool that turns isbn into a book citation?

Someone told me about a tool that takes just an isbn and it does the whole citation. But I can't remember where. Ring a bell?TCO (talk) 01:30, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether the one you've heard about exists but check out Wikipedia:Citation tools.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking there, I think the Universal Reference Tool does that. That's a very nifty page and here's another to add for google books. SmartSE (talk) 10:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!TCO (talk) 08:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Page protection question

Is it possible to protect only a portion of a page? Like so user's can't edit a heading, or the transcluded heading? CTJF83 chat 03:06, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. What's the page and the problem. We might be able to give a better answer if we knew more of the details. Dismas|^(talk) 03:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My talk page. I was tired of harassing vandalism, so created User talk:Ctjf83/Header to hopefully cut down on vandalism. But I want it so that header can't be removed from my talk page. It can't be edited due to semi-protect, but can still be removed. CTJF83 chat 03:14, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You could copy the contents of User talk:Ctjf83/Header to User talk:Ctjf83/Editnotice, and have that semi-protected. The message would then appear to anyone who edited your talk page. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 03:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would be given in to the harassers demands. I guess if a portion of a page can't be protected, I'll just hope for the best. CTJF83 chat 03:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some users keep track of how many times their user page or talk page get vandalized on their user page and bear it as a mark of pride.Naraht (talk) 10:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Additional info on info of Lloyd Corrigan.

I love Perry Mason shows! As I was watching a old black and white series today, I noted the face of the "murderer" = Lloyd Corrigan. I wanted to and did look him up on wikipedia. There I found wonder info. However there was nothing about Lloyd being on Perry Mason. If you want to use this info, fine. If not, fine again. I choose to send this info as info only. Thanks. Ahlbeck49. Have a grand day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahlbeck49 (talk • contribs) 03:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This could be verified using this for the citation. Don't have time myself right now.-Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can i use HTML in wiki markup?

Can I use HTML in wiki markup If yes can someone tell me how? Anish9807 (talk) 05:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe such usages are contraindicated in Wikipedia articles, in most cases. See Help:HTML in wikitext for specifics on how to do it, but if it can be done using wikimarkup instead (especially in the article space) you should use the wikimarkup, for the sake of the editors that follow you at said articles. You probably have a lot more leeway on your userpage in using HTML markup, however. --Jayron32 05:34, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

how to replace a logo (not in-line text)

Hi,

I am trying to update a new logo of the Company i am working in Wikipedia (http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/CASBAA). I sucessfully uploaded the latest logo, wondering how could I replace the current one by the latest one.

Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Casbaa ken (talk • contribs) 08:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is a copyrighted logo, Wikipedia Commons would need to see evidence that the logo is now public domain as you claimed when uploading it - see Donating copyrighted materials. Without this, it is likely to be deleted as a copyright violation. However, I've worked round this - I have downloaded the logo, downsampled it, and uploaded it to Wikipedia (not Commons) as File:CASBAA Logo Low Resolution.jpg with a Non-free use rationale. I hope I've done this well enough to meet all the rules...

I have also edited the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia article to use the new logo. You were editing the file page of the old logo; I have undone those edits.

As an employeee of the company, you have a conflict of interest and should not edit the article text except to make the limited kinds of correction described here. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

International Standards & Codes on Provision of Temporary Material/Passenger Hoist for Hig-rise Construction projects.

I would like to know if there are any international standards which requires a Contractor to provide at least one material/passenger hoist when working on high-rise construction project. If so, after what height and/or number of floors must such hoists be provided?

Thank you.

Christopher Yap Tripoli, Libya —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.136.10.23 (talk) 08:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Miscellaneous reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps.

Note that no-one at Wikipedia will be able to give you legal advice. See the legal disclaimer. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:40, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How to create name of article in lower case

I am trying to name an article in lower case but everytime the system updates the first letter to upper case. The name of the article needs to be adicom not Adicom. What needs to be done? --Shonkho (talk) 10:30, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Lower case first letter. Place {{lowercase}} at the top of the article.

I think you just add {{lowercase}} to the top of the article once you've created it with a capital (That's based on looking at iPod). I'm not sure, but there may be something else you have to do as well. SmartSE (talk) 10:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In other words allow the title to be Adicom (there is no way around that), but add {{lowercase}} at the top, which will display it as “adicom” —teb728 t c 11:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Table alignment

Could someone more able in table syntax than myself, take a look at History_of_the_world#Comparison_table and try to get it to align to the centre? It contains code that looks as if it should work, and I've tried messing around with it but haven't managed to change it at all. Thanks SmartSE (talk) 10:45, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I removed class="bordered infobox" which caused right allignment. —teb728 t c 11:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I guess that makes sense as infoboxes are on the right. SmartSE (talk) 14:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Submitting an article in another language

I was planning to do either a translation, or submit a whole new text for an existing English language article. How do I do that? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TMerton (talk • contribs) 10:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is the translation from another language to English or the other way round? If it's into English this is the right place to ask, but if it's from English, then you should ask at the relevant wikipedia for that language. If you let us know what language it is though, we may be able to help regardless. SmartSE (talk) 10:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to sumbit an article in Russian that will be either a translation of an already existing English article, or a completely new version of it. How can I do that? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TMerton (talk • contribs) 11:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Submit your translation to Russian Wikipedia http://ru.wikipedia.org/ and include an Interwiki link at the bottom: [[en:Xxxx]] where Xxxx is the title on English Wikipedia. —teb728 t c 11:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Russian and Wikipedia languages can have different policies but these links may be of help: Wikipedia:Translation, ru:Википедия:Проект:Переводы, Wikipedia:Starting an article, ru:Википедия:Как создать статью, Wikipedia:Your first article. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How do i create a page after signing in ?

  SANGA RACE:

The sanga history (nigerian):This race came into Niegria long along.Some authourities claimes that the sanga race migrated from central Africa and first settled in Toro local government in BAUCHI State.Some of them remained in Toro area while some proceeded to southern part of Kaduna State.

At their area of first settlement,they expanded and so many comunities born out.

CONSTITUENTS:The present sanga race consist of the ningo,ninzo,nika-kop,nikashu,nikpara,nidam and nigyar comunities as the predomainants. DIALET:Like any other dialet in the world,the original dialet has being affected by others neighbouring dialets.Greatly affected,is the ninzo comunity which now speaks a combination of the original dialet and mada dielet.Nigyar had closed association with the NUmana speaker therefore speaking what is term as gyar Shebu!gyom (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Please see Your first article. If you'd like help going through the steps below, try the Article Wizard.

Ensure that you have an account and you are logged in. If you don't have an account, create one
Make sure the subject is notable enough to have their own article
Find references
Make sure no article on the subject exists under a different title by typing the subject into the search box and clicking 'Search'
Type the page name in the search box and click 'Go'
Click 'Create this page'
Create the article, including all your references, making sure you adhere to the Manual of Style and our article layout guidelines
Be aware that Wikipedia deletes thousands of new articles for failing to adhere to our policies and guidelines. New articles by new users are at extra risk of deletion, due to new users' unfamiliarity with our rules. Consider gaining experience by editing existing articles before attempting to create new ones.

By the way, do not begin lines with leading blanks. The strange formatting of two of your lines above was caused by leading blanks. —teb728 t c 11:59, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Adding entries problem

Hello

I want to add

[www.alertpay.com AlertPay]
[www.anypay.com AnyPay]

( with the https:// prefix ) at the page https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_on-line_payment_service_providers, but somehow everytime the edit is blocked by the spamfilter. How I get rid of this?

Thanks in advance,

RoestVrijStaal (talk) 12:30, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

alertpay.com is listed at meta:Spam blacklist and cannot be linked. https://www.anypay.com and http://www.anypay.com can be linked (but don't work for me). PrimeHunter (talk) 13:15, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why you would want to add them anyway...would still be spammy... – ukexpat (talk) 15:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Image upload problem

Resolved

Hello. When I upload a photo to the Reggae Report page, it shows up reversed... like a negative. I've tried two photos, and they are both reversed. Can you help please? I would like to upload more photos but I can't seem to get them to show as they actually look. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MPeggyQ (talk • contribs) 18:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Answered below. CTJF83 chat 18:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with image uploading

Resolved

I have problems with image uploading. Whenever I upload a photo to the page Reggae Report, it shows up as reversed...like a negative. I have tried two photos and they both show up as negative. Can you please help? Thanks. MPeggyQ (talk) 18:25, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's really weird, cause it shows up fine at File:REGGAE REPORT VOL 13 NO. 4 1995 Bob Marley.jpg CTJF83 chat 18:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well I shrunk the image due to WP:NFCC and it fixed the problem. CTJF83 chat 18:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

... thank you! what i should i do going forward to have the images upload correctly? were they too large? MPeggyQ (talk) 19:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well honestly, I'm not sure what you did the first time, that it came out how it did. If it happens again, feel free to ask again on here, or contact me on my talk page directly if you want. Yes, per WP:NFCC #3B, low resolution images have to be used instead of high resolution when the image is not free. NFCC is a strict policy too. CTJF83 chat 19:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...Wow! so much to learn! thanks for help and link to WP:NFCC.. do you suggest the magazine covers are kept as non-free? or are mag covers required to be non-free? and how many images/covers can be added to the page? Thanks again. MPeggyQ (talk) 19:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Image display issues can be caused by a number of things - incorrect colour space (should be sRGB rather than CMYK or others) for example. – ukexpat (talk) 19:19, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Yes, magazine covers would always be non-free (assuming they are copyright). Basically the only images that are free are images you take yourself or create yourself. While there is no set limit on the number of images, per 3A on WP:NFCC "Multiple items of non-free content are not used if one item can convey equivalent significant information." So basically you are pretty much limited to one cover, maybe two, if there is a justifiable reason, maybe a specific issue that gained a lot of coverage in outside magazines, newspapers, new coverage, etc. CTJF83 chat 19:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...thx... maybe when the logo changed... it shows the passing of time... 15 years - three logos... in addition, can I add a photo or photos that i personally took and own? (not magazine covers)...historical photos...can't be found anywhere else? MPeggyQ (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Yes! :) If you took the photo yourself, you can pretty much upload as many as you want. I mean like pictures of people, places, etc. If you need help on one of those, feel free to ask! CTJF83 chat 19:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, also, you are encouraged, but not required, to upload free photos only (like ones you took) at Wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons. That way other projects, like French and Spanish Wikipedia, etc can use the images. CTJF83 chat 19:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Editor Help

For the average person, the whole process of posting is far too complicated. Are there helpers who will take a basic MS WORD Document and edit and post it in the correct acceptable format?

It seems that a lot of the hassle of back and forth could be eliminated if the unskilled could submit all material to an editor helper, who would do the correcting work, so something is posted once and correctly.

I also assume that because of the deliberate complexity of this insiders club of monitors, that there are a lot of good articles and biographies etc. that are missing. Certainly there could be a one-shot one-stop place for people to make contributions and have others post them properly.

There is an overwhelming effort at ‘after the fact gate-keeping’, but why not be more helpful and friendly up front to make the reality of our world happen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.71.7.227 (talk) 19:56, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Or, you could always put a rough draft on your user page and ask for a review. CTJF83 chat 20:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are initiatives to create a WYSIWYG interface - I'll give a link later tonight when I get a chance - but it's not easy! However, if someone created a text-only article with no mark-up, someone would "sort it out" -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 21:08, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that the complexity is "deliberate", but an unfortunate byproduct of the fact that what we are doing is very complex. There may be people who are willing to reformat somebody's article, but as we are all volunteers who (naturally) do what most interests us, you may have difficulty finding any. --ColinFine (talk) 23:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is something like the world's fifth most visited Web site. All the other top ten sites are actually more complicated for expressing your own ideas, because to post on them you have to apply for a job and get hired, then navigate the corporate culture and so on. Most people who work for Google, Microsoft, AOL, etc. probably do what they are told for years before they get to write what they find interesting. On Wikipedia we replace all that corporate hierarchy with straightforward written rules that anyone is free to read and follow. But there is no free lunch - understanding the rules well enough to write articles that stick on Wikipedia takes an effort that is comparable to learning a new job. If there was a way to make it simple, someone among the thousands of brainiacs here might have figured it out. I suspect Wikipedia is an example of irreducible complexity - that is, there probably is no way to make Wikipedia much simpler than it is while keeping the quality up. Certainly, nobody else in the world has invented a user-editable site that is easier for new users than Wikipedia yet produces similar quality content. Which leads me to suspect there is a correlation between having the skills to figure out Wikipedia and the skills to write quality content. In any case, you may be approaching Wikipedia the wrong way. It's generally a bad idea for new users to come to Wikipedia with preconceived ideas about brand new articles. It's much better to start by making small edits to existing articles while learning how the system works. There are huge subsets of knowledge that Wikipedia does not want, for example, so a new user's ideas for new articles might be completely inapplicable to Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thera are a lot of things that could be done and there seems to be a lack of awareness of the issues from people used to how things are or just typical programmers not concerned for the user. We should be WYSIWYG. This is 2010, not 1985. When I do a citation on MS Word, I don't have to lok at a big KLUDGE of markup code in my para making it like a guessing game to read the text in edit mode. And what's with talk and typing the silly colons? Come on...people have been chatting on the internet in a gazillion formats without these markup indent games. We could standardize some more of the formats and rules and policies (pick one citation method for instance). There really ARE things we could do. And the most valuable thing is getting people to contribute, and drawing quality contributors. So making it a techie pain is NOT the way to get budding NYT editor types to come and contribute. And yeah, the project could use some of them to improve the prose and raise the prose standard.TCO (talk) 02:01, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some comments:

Better referencing tools would be nice, as would a table editor. It would be nice if the whole world could standardize on digital object identifiers or something similar, so you would only need to copy one number to cite any document. Instead of the current mess where the citation information is scattered around in endless random formats. And of course links are constantly breaking, so we need automatic archiving of everything we cite on Wikipedia.
I think the year is 2011 now.
Microsoft Word is not a fair comparison because Wikipedia has to run on the thin client known as a web browser. Even so, you won't find too many Word users collaborating effectively with each other across long distances or on large scales. I don't think that is an accident. Word and all other WYSIWYG document editing systems (as far as I have seen) are simply inadequate for large-scale collaboration.
See WP:EIW#WYSIWYG for some attempts in that direction. It's hard to do because markup languages are typically much more flexible than what can be shoehorned into the limitations of a WYSIWYG system. It's also unnecessary as almost anyone can learn Wikipedia's basic markup in a few minutes. For some complex tasks like table editing, a WYSIWYG editor would help, but for typing basic prose like this reply I can't imagine why I would need WYSIWYG.
As for the budding NYT editor types, editing prose is the simplest thing to do on Wikipedia. We don't need the wordsmiths to program templates and techie stuff like that. They only need to look at the complex markup if they want to do more than just edit prose.
Making Wikipedia somehow easier would not only make Wikipedia more accessible to good writers. It would also make Wikipedia more accessible to the majority of people who are not good writers. Look what happened to email when it became usable by ordinary humans. It turned into a cesspool of spam, viruses, unnecessary Word .doc file attachments, confidence scams, etc. Email worked much better when only techies could use it, but unfortunately you could only communicate with other techies with it back then.

--Teratornis (talk) 05:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice response. Seriously. 1. how does one edit prose when one opens the edit window one sees a mass of cite templates, piped links and hidden comments? One's efficiency goes to heck. 2. If its so easy, why are the articles so bad? Our standard is well below normal finished product for any print publication or web site. Let's think about making that change. 3. If you make it more accessible to "word types", you will get better content and prose. Make it only accessible to gearheads and you won't. I really don't see a rationale for making the tool hard to use, to discourage people who want to work on content. I'm NOT more motivated to edit this site, because the tools are clunky. If you want to restrict editing, figure out some other barriar than making the tools clunky.TCO (talk) 06:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Syntax highlighting in the edit window helps a human editor distinguish prose from markup code. See wikEd.
Which articles? We have a lot of articles that are quite good. Article quality is mostly a function of how many skilled editors are interested in a particular subject. We have a lot of quality on serious subjects in the sciences and humanities, and a lot of junk in the less notable pop culture topics for example.
Your premise may be true, but it's not enough just to "get better content and prose", we also have to make it stick. Anybody can edit anything on Wikipedia, so to improve Wikipedia you have to find a way to attract more "good" editors than "bad" editors. Making the site easier for one particular subset of people might also make it easy for undesirables. Most people cannot write well. People who write well may not like having their work replaced by crap.
- In my opinion, learning the markup code on Wikipedia is not the biggest barrier. It's harder to learn all the rules for content. That's why Wikipedia deletes thousands of articles - vast numbers of people are easily able to figure out the markup before they figure out what belongs here. How many of the "word types" will react well when their nicely written prose gets mercilessly deleted because they violated some obscure rule for content they had never heard of?
There is no "rationale" for making Wikipedia hard to learn, any more than there is a "rationale" for traffic jams. Instead Wikipedia's complexity is something that evolved on its own, in response to the unavoidably complex nature of building the largest encyclopedia in history. The complexity is a sometimes undesirable side effect that nobody knows how to get rid of without breaking Wikipedia. But on the flip side, complexity provides power. The Wright flyer was much simpler than a Boeing 747 with its several million separate parts. The more complex aircraft does more. People complain about complexity, but almost all of human progress involves building more of it.
I might add that probably no one truly understands exactly how Wikipedia is doing as well as it does. That means probably no one really understands whether changing something here would have all the effects they expect it to have. If a different kind of site would be a better way to attract millions of contributors and build a better encyclopedia, why has no one built it? For all we know, maybe Wikipedia with all its seeming defects is, on balance, the only system of its kind that can work right now.

--Teratornis (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you create an account and log in, you can click My preferences, then Gadgets, then check wikEd. The wikEd gadget changes the editing window to become a little bit closer to What You See Is What You Get. Wikilinks become blue; bold text becomes bold; references get gray shading so they're easier to identify; and Ctjf83's signature becomes a glorious rainbow. There are other similar tools listed here. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:27, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Teen Mom 2

Greetings,

The Supervising producer for Teen Mom 2 is Kendra MacLeod not Kendra Greenwood as it is attributed who is the Co-Ep for the original Teen Mom. Please correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.188.99.92 (talk) 21:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a reliable source for that information, you are welcome to be bold and edit the article yourself - though you will need to include a citation of your source, which can be a bit tricky for new editors. Best might be that you edit the article's talk page to explain what changes you want made, and which reliable source reports the information. --ColinFine (talk) 23:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The talk page being a redlink, I think contacting the relevant WikiProject would be a better bet. Kayau Voting IS evil HI AGAIN 11:17, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

typographical error/spelling mistake ban the result

I just typed photosymnthesis instead of photosynthesis. The page display no article. can you improve this very useful site like google finding correct result for a term with typographical error? I am a Tamil man pronouncing Haiti as Haithi. It is uncommon to know the correct spelling of all city in the world. How can I read about Haiti if the not guiding me even for wrong spelling?

We do that all the time. They're called Redirects. See that page for how to do them. Redirects can be used any place where a reasonable typo or mistake might occur. I just made one for Photosymnthesis for example. Arakunem^Talk 21:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC) Well, I did anyway. Apparently my definition of "plausible" doesn't jive with some. Arakunem^Talk 21:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can also search Wikipedia with Google for: Photosymnthesis to which Google asks "Did you mean: Photosynthesis". --Teratornis (talk) 05:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I almost always search Wikipedia with Google rather than use the Wikipedia search box for this reason - Google still seems more accurate at guessing what I meant, despite the recent improvements to Wikipedia's built-in search function. --Teratornis (talk) 05:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, the more redirects there are, the worse the spelling in WP articles becomes. This is because people see that a redirect for a mis-spelling forms a blue link, assume it is right, and repeat the same mis-spelliing throughout the article.
When wearing my WikiGnome spell-checkers hat, I check for various mis-spellings including rhythm - rhythem, rhythim, rhythym, rhytm, rythem, rythim, rythm & rythym. Unfortunately, just taking rythm, there are redirects for rythm, rythm and blues, rythm guitar and numerous other combinations of wrong spellings.
I have previously suggested that links to re-directs or disambiguation pages produce a "green link" (I later realised this could confuse those with red-green colourblindness - so "another colour link") making links to redirects and disambig pages easy to spot and correct, which would be extremely advantageous in any case, and dissuading people from copying the wrong spellings.
This would need some refinement, possibly in the same way that there are currently hard and soft redirects, to deal with redirects from say UK to US spellings.
Alternatively, if the built in search function can be improved enough, we could just remove a lot of the redirects and avoid a lot re-directed links and mis-spellings.
Arjayay (talk) 17:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We have a Category:Redirects from misspellings which says, somewhat confusingly:

"Pages using this link should be updated to link directly to the correct spelling, without using a piped link that hides the correct details."

Anyway, one can check the backlinks from the various redirects from misspellings to find pages that display the misspelled text. For example, Special:WhatLinksHere/Rythm found a live instance in York (group) which I just now fixed. Maybe there is a tool to track these down more efficiently. --Teratornis (talk) 21:42, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the example I just fixed was hiding the misspelled redirect name with correctly spelled link text to a different phrase. Thus the misspelling was buried in the wikitext and might have evaded standard spell check tools. Ugh. --Teratornis (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We already have different shades of blue for ordinary wikilinks and interwiki links (compare: Horse and wikt:Horse). Another option besides link shading might be to list links to redirects below the edit window, where the "Templates used in this preview" list appears already. Of course that would only be as good as the editor's choice to scroll down and look. --Teratornis (talk) 21:54, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

how does one view wikipedia measurements in imperial format?

I am a resident of the USA and do not use the metric system, nor do I want to use conversion tables every time I look at a figure. How can I set Wikipedia so that it displays only USA imperial measure? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.94.201.34 (talk) 21:45, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I'm aware, that's not possible. We do, however, have the {{convert}} template, making it easy to display figures in multiple units of measurement. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 21:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For example, if a figure on an article is given as 20kg, you might wish to replace that mention of 20kg with {{convert|20|kg|lb}}, which would display as "20 kilograms (44 lb)". GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 21:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]