Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 April 5

Help desk
< April 4	<< Mar | April | May >>	April 6 >

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 5

Page Size Tool

Due to the recent typography upgrade, I changed my Appearance preference to Vector. This caused the Page Size Tool to disappear from the articles. Can you tell me how to get this tool to appear in the Vector skin? Wahrmund (talk) 00:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Move the code that you have at User:Wahrmund/modern.js to vector.js. That should fix it. Dismas|^(talk) 01:23, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Referencing errors on Philosophy of futility

Reference help requested. How do I reference in the article the reference list at the end of the article?

Thanks, UNMEMBA2015T1 (talk) 02:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

There were a couple of things going on causing the display reference issues. The format for getting references to display is {{reflist}}, so i corrected that [1]. Then the format for "named" references was incorrect, so i fixed that [2]. The general method is to put the full reference information in the body of the article (<ref name="Lee2002"> Author:Lee Title: A Book Pubdate:2002 ect</ref>and then reuse the "name" portion <ref name="Lee2002"> as the footnote when the source is used again. You can see more information at WP:REFB. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:18, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

To reuse, you need to add a slash: <ref name="Lee2002"/> Anon126 (talk - contribs) 02:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Note the slash at the end that I forgot in the original response. Thanks Anon126! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Entries on a Dab page

Hi, on De La Salle College there is an entry for De La Salle College, Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia being a former name or constituent of Southern Cross Catholic College. I have read wp:DABNOT and aren't sure if this entry is desired. Is it wp:DABRELATED? I have another to add if it is desired. TIA Bleakcomb (talk) 02:09, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

IMO, it should be kept because someone may look up the college not realizing that it had been absorbed by the other school. I didn't check but if it isn't mentioned in the Southern Cross article, it should be. Dismas|^(talk) 02:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Search error

I'm looking for a Babel-type template (which may or may not exist), similar to Template:User Shav, to express interest in Tolkien's Tengwar script. I searched for

Template:User Tengwar

The search returned two hits (not counting Did you mean: Template:User Teenager):

• Template:User WikiProject Middle-earth
• Template:ISO 15924/wp-name (redirect from Template:User iso15924/name)

The first hit is not what I want. The second hit returns

Script error

So does the name it's redirected from.

--Thnidu (talk) 02:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

This is harmless. Template:ISO 15924/wp-name is a behind-the-scenes component of Template:ISO 15924. It's been coded to work correctly when a parameter is passed in to it, but when you view the template page directly there is no parameter. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:03, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Cite error at the reference desk

What's producing the cite error at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities? Someone cited a couple of sources in the "Claustrophobia" section and put a {{reflist}} below it. This caused problems down below, since there's a citation in "Nurse's cap", so I added another reflist there, but (1) the citation in that section doesn't appear in that reflist, and (2) we still have the error. When I preview the page with a reflist at the very bottom of the page, the same problems happen; it's not a case of someone putting references below the reflist. Nyttend (talk) 02:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Nyttend it looks like it was something added in this edit [3] as it is not there before and it is there after. since neither the {reflist} nor {reflist talk} fix it, maybe just take out the ref tag formatting. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:30, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

@Nyttend: actually the one above got fixed with the reflist tag. could it be the Harvard ref inside the other ref added in this edit [4]? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I saw how that reference wasn't showing up in the reflist, but I couldn't explain why not, as I've never figured out Harvard referencing. I don't have a clue how to fix it (or to demonstrate that it's working fine), so I can't give you a solid answer. Nyttend (talk) 03:54, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

See Template:Reflist#Multiple uses. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:06, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

How do I refer to the same reference twice in the same article?

E.g., in Mister Ed#Guest stars I refer to a tv episode (Clint Eastwood Meets Mister Ed) as guest starring Clint Eastwood. A few lines down, I want to refer to that same episode again in reference to Donna Douglas.

I don't want to add two separate references to the same source, of course of course.

Thanks.

Kenmcl2 (talk) 02:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

See WP:NAMEDREF. In short, instead of putting fact 1<ref>Source</ref> and fact 2<ref>Source</ref> (producing the two separate references), you put fact1<ref name=Title>Source</ref> and fact2<ref name=Title />. The reference name ("Title" in this case) must be precisely the same each time (it's case sensitive, for example), but it's completely arbitrary and won't be displayed to readers, so use whatever you want. You can use a multi-word name and/or a name with non-alphabetic characters, but in such a case you must put it within quotes, which are optional with one-word names; for example, <nowiki><ref name=silly>, <ref name="silly">, <ref name="silly silly">, and <ref name="silly 123"> are all valid, but <ref name=silly silly> and <ref name=silly 123> are not. Don't think yourself obtuse if you don't get it! I first discovered the technique on a specific article, and for months or years after that, I had to go back to that page and copy/paste in order to use it in other articles. Nyttend (talk) 02:48, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Excellent explanation, Nyttend. Thank you. Kenmcl2 (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Footnote names are slightly visible to the reader, since they are built into the URLs associated with the alphabetic back-links at the start of the footnote. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:16, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Interwiki problem

Hi, what can i do if i believe there is an administrative issue with another Wikipedia project? Is there a way to report such issue at the main English project? Thanks. Prokaryotes (talk) 03:15, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

english wikipedia only deals with english wikipedia issues. if its something requiring immediate attention, you can e-mail the oversight team. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 04:04, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but it doesn't require immediate attention. Prokaryotes (talk) 04:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

People often assume that English Wikipedia is the "main" Wikipedia, but it isn't. It happens to be the biggest and oldest, but it has no authority or responsibility over any other Wikipedia, or any other Wikimedia project. --ColinFine (talk) 09:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• Prokaryotes, 99.9995% of stuff can be handled on the other projects at the projects themselves. In that last rare odd case, you may need to ask for assistance at meta:. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 11:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Help with Interwiki link requested

Can somebody create a link between "Administration Building (Randolph Air Force Base)" on the English Wikipedia and "Edificio Administrativo (Base de la Fuerza Aérea Randolph)" on the Spanish one? I can't see the "Languages" section on the left-hand sidebar, so I couldn't add the link myself. I imagine there's a way around it but I'm a new user.

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.73.26.110 (talk) 06:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

 Done I don't know why you couldn't see the "Languages" section --ColinFine (talk) 09:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I wrote this while ColinFine was posting the above. The article currently has no interwiki links and hence no Wikidata page. You need to be logged in to create the page. If you create an account and log in there will be a link for adding interwikis in the sidebar. When you are not logged in and there are not already any interwikis the link is suppressed. SpinningSpark 09:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Json format

If I go to any Wikipedia article, click "View History", and click "Page view statistics", I see the page view statistics, and under them a small-type link "This page in json format." When I click the link, hoping to learn what json format is, I just get the message "Server overloaded, please throttle your requests." I doubt that Wikipedia is really overloaded at 06:30 UTC on a Saturday – so what is happening here? Maproom (talk) 06:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I get the same message when clicking on the link. Note that at the bottom of the traffic page for a particular article it says This is very much a beta service and may disappear or change at any time. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 08:20, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Bear in mind that those stats are not on Wikipedia, but at http://stats.grok.se, so it's not Wikipedia that's overloaded. As to JSON format, if only there was some online encyclopedia we could look such things up on :-) Rojomoke (talk) 09:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Lost or misplaced account dilemma

I have an account on the English, French and Hungarian WP as LouisBB, and to my knowledge I also had one on the German WP. However, this latter has been lost or somehow misplaced, because I cannot access it from my other accounts. However, when I try to generate a new account on the German WP the old Username is not accepted, and I am told that this username is already taken. I thought that I might have found a solution by generating a new account with the Username LouisX. This seems to have worked, but now this Username is automatically generated in the other languages as well. There is no connection with the other accounts and I don't wish to rewrite my details under LouisX or complicate things by keeping accounts under two names in all the other languages. I thought of creating a redirection page from LouisX to LouisBB. My question was: is this acceptable, or is there a probability that it will lead to further complications? However it seems that I am even here not connected to my existing accounts, so I shall have to remove my German account and ask you again. LouisX (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The account does exist on the German Wikipedia, I can see its contributions. The problem is that it is not attached to your unified login as can be seen here. I don't know how that has come about. Are you using a different e-mail address on de.wiki? I believe the automatic unification process is based on e-mail addresses. You can manually unify at Special:MergeAccount. SpinningSpark 10:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

If you are logged in to a unified account at one wiki and visit another wiki without logging out first then your account is automatically created at the other wiki. You cannot remove accounts but you can log out and log in again as LouisBB. de:User:LouisBB has not specified an email address. The account must have another password. That means our software couldn't tell whether it was your account when you unified accounts in 2009, so it wasn't included. If you remember the password then go to Special:MergeAccount. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

About changing username

Hello I want change my username- Ashaharkhan786 to Ashahar Khan. I went through user rename log column but it all goes over my head. So I am requesting here to change my username on behalf of mine, with noticing prior msg. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashaharkhan786 (talk • contribs) 09:29, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

You must make the request yourself at Wikipedia:Changing username/Simple. SpinningSpark 09:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

WANT TO CREAT MY ARTICLE ON WIKIPEDIA

DEAR SIR

I WANT TO CREAT MY OWN PAGE ON WIKIPEDIA, THAT WILL REGARDING MY LIFE

RAEESS — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pretoriaint (talk • contribs) 10:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

See WP:AUTOBIO. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:29, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I alway block my page

i always block my page. but i need to write what I can do and I want to know what is the reason? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.135.28.60 (talk) 12:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

If you mean you cannot edit a specific page here at Wikipedia, that could be because it might be semi-protected, but you would have to specify which page you are referring to in order to receive a more specific answer. If that is not what you mean, please try to clarify so we can provide a more specific answer to your question. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 13:12, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

If you register an account, you will be able to edit semi-protected pages. Registering an account has other advantages also. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

is Wikipedia now using different fonts?

Hi. Apologies if this is the wrong place for this question, but has there been a decision to change the font styles on Wikipedia articles, perhaps over the last couple of days? From what I'm seeing on screen, this seems to be the case; it's quite obvious in article and section headings, but then really noticeable with text inside infoboxes, Contents lists, picture captions and box quotes. In the captions and box quotes, it's not just the look of the typeface, but the leading's expanded to such an extent that even two or three lines of text there appears excessively long, as if text needs to be cut (which is not the case, of course).

Probably sounds like I'm imagining it – I told myself the same thing for a day or two … Anyone got any ideas? I can't see anything in my Preferences that might apply. Thanks, JG66 (talk) 16:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

If you look just up this page you'll see numerous other discussions of the same topic:

• #Vector font
• #Font
• #Help! New Font Choices Make Wikipedia Look Like An Amateurs First Web Page Attempt!
• #New fonts on ALL of wiki?
• #the new Wikipedia font size hurts my eyes
• #Fix annoying font change,
• #The new font size is way too big
• #Serif font headers - is this something new?

--David Biddulph (talk) 16:57, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry – before posting, I looked a few discussions up from the bottom of the page, but obviously not far enough. Thanks, JG66 (talk) 17:05, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Need help adding new category to to an existing category (where it should be) as a sub-category

Hi,

I am unsure how to add a new sub-cat. I have created a new cat. (below) and it needs adding to the category: Competitive_video_gaming (link to this is also below). If you could do this/ explain how, that would be great.

https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Category:Professional_Call_of_Duty_players&action=edit&redlink=1 needs to be added as a subcategory to:

Category:Competitive video gaming

Thanks, mrkingpenguin — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrkingpenguin (talk • contribs) 17:00, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

You write [[Category:Competitive video gaming]] on the Category:Professional Call of Duty players page. SpinningSpark 17:59, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Visible annotations in wide images?

For the wide image Commons:File:Living Computer Museum pano 01.jpg in Living Computer Museum, is there some way to make the image notes visible? In this case they lead to a bunch of more detailed photos; it would be nice to effectively have those in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 18:15, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

ImageAnnotator is a Commons feature for images displayed on their file page. It doesn't work when the image is displayed on other pages. The English Wikipedia has it as an option at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, but there are few or no working uses here. See Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator. There is a different feature mw:Extension:ImageMap which does something similar and can be used in articles, but it doesn't show popup images and it's intended for linking to articles and not to files. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:21, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh well. And I assume it is considered inappropriate to tell someone to click through to get to the annotated image, since we don't normally put stuff like that on article pages. - Jmabel | Talk 23:16, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and even worse, they would have to click through to Commons and not just to the English Wikipedia file page File:Living Computer Museum pano 01.jpg. That would confuse many users. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:23, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

What is considered "minimal use"?

I want to add an image of an album cover to an article, but don't really understand all of the rules involved with this. The image is 198 KB - is this okay or does it need to be resized? If it needs to be resized, how would I do this? --Jpcase (talk) 18:27, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jpcase, it's more a case of resolution really. Minimal use would imply that the album cover is at the smallest possible resolution at which it is still identifiable. Sam Walton (talk) 18:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, "fair use" requires not more than 300Px on one side. To suit the Infobox, without white space either side, the image should be NLT 200 Px wide - although the new text format, introduced a couple of days ago, has increased the size of infoboxes, so they may now need to be slightly wider (Most album cover images seem to be about 240 x 240, which, coincidentally, seems to be the common size on Amazon) - Arjayay (talk) 18:47, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both. I thought that 198 KB was the resolution, but was just making a guess, since that was the only number that I saw. I'm not exactly tech savvy. Resolution is actually measured in Px then? How do I find the image's Px? --Jpcase (talk) 18:55, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

KB is the size of the file on disk. px (pixels) is the physical width or height. - Jmabel | Talk 18:59, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! That's really helpful. I found the px - it's 160 x 160. Is that too small? --Jpcase (talk) 19:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

That should be about right providing you can still tell what it generally looks like. If you like you could upload it (that's definitely fair use enough) and we'll take a look and let you know if it's too small :) Sam Walton (talk) 19:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll do that. I have one more question though. I got the image from Amazon's search results page (here [5]); not the actual page for the album (here [6]). I would have thought that the resolution would be the same for both, but it's actually different. Should I use the url for the search results page in the "Source" field, even though the results might change later, or should I use the url for the album's page, even though the resolution for the image is different there? --Jpcase (talk) 19:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and uploaded the image, using the url for the search results page. I guess that it can always be changed later if need be. The image does seem too small though. Is anyone able to help me resize it? --Jpcase (talk) 22:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Oops. I forgot to add a link. I can't figure out how to link to the image itself, but the article that it's being used in is Michael Lynche (album). --Jpcase (talk) 22:07, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

the "minimal use" is about the number of times and ways in which non free image(s) is used. A non free image of an album cover used once in the encyclopedia to illustrate an article about the album itself is " minimal" usage. using multiple non free images on a single article page or single non free image on multiple pages would potentially be more than minimal use and require greater justification for each additional time non free image is used. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:46, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Strange display of paragraph

Hello, now and then a paragraph is not displayed in the normal way, but it is surrounded with a box, has a fixed-width font, and all text is on a single line, running from the screen on the right side. The latest example I saw is on Talk:Circuit court, at the bottom. Does anybody know why this happens? When I looked at the raw (source) text at the aforementioned page, I saw nothing really strange. Bever (talk) 20:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

This happens when a line in the edit window starts with a leading space. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 21:15, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I have removed the two blank spaces at the beginning of the paragraph. It now displays correctly. Melbourne3163 (talk) 22:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Lookup of the word 'Rantas'......Incorrect in the definition/origin of the word

Rântaş (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I am Canadian with Hungarian heritage. My parents are from Hungary and I am fluent in the Hungarian language. Today, I looked up the word 'Rantas' on your Wikipedia site to see if I can confirm my knowledge of the Hungarian traditional making of roux which is a mixture of flour, oil/lard, garlic, paprika that is mixed together while being heated and then mixed into main mails such as cabbage rolls, etc to thicken the sauce and to my surpise (disgust), I see that this is stated as being Romanian. I would like to clarify this statement since this is strictly Hungarian by definition because the Romanian language does not reflect any words such as Rantas (which can be nothing but Hungarian). Yes, there are many Hungarians in Romanian (not by choice), however the word Rantas and its definition must with question be referenced as being Hungarian (not Romanian). Please correct this horrible error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lpalasty (talk • contribs) 23:58, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I also suspect that the word is Hungarian in origin rather than a Romantic loanword, but listen: you do yourself no favors by displaying nationalistic disgust here. Trianon was a long time ago; please tone down the rhetoric. The thing you'll want to do to get this fixed is to look for reliable sources that back up your claims. If you need help feel free to contact me at my talk page. -Thibbs (talk) 00:22, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

"Horrible error"? Are Hungarian-Romanian relations so strained as to find a mere assertion regarding a sauce worthy of such outrage? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, the article cites a couple of sources (for sauce) which indicate that the Romanians have at least heard of the stuff. And since we go by sources, not mere contributor's assertions regarding sauces, any change to the article will likewise require a source. I suggest you find one, and then raise the matter on the article talk page. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I know no Hungarian, and am a poor cook, so I won't be working on this – but there's plenty of material on Rántás in Hungarian Wikipedia. Maproom (talk) 07:10, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Things are somewhat confused as the Hungarian page on Rantas isn't interwiki linked to the one on the English language page, because it is linked to Roux, of which Rantas is a type.Naraht (talk) 14:34, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

The link provided by Maproom above, though, does link to traditional Hungarian rántás and it's much more detailed than the en.wiki article. Sadly as with many hu.wiki articles it's almost totally lacking sources. -Thibbs (talk) 15:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)