Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 January 18

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January 18

== Why was my page deleted? work for Melissa Harrington AKA MelissaMidwest and I was trying to make a page for her and before I was done with it you deleted it. I am not sure why this is but Melissa is a very important person in the adult world and needs a page on your site. Melissa's site www.melissamidwest.com is currently the most successful amateur model on the web getting better then 8 million visits a month and over 500 million hits a month. She has been in over 30 magazines anywhere from Maxim, FHM to Playboy. She was arrested at least twice for doing her site and was featured on CNN one of the times. I got the idea to do this page because another model in Melissa's field has a page on your site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Riley and I was trying to do a similar one for Melissa but I am still learning how the site works. I in no way wanted to put things that are not allowed but I have read many pages on your site and they explained what people had done in there careers and the impact they had made in there field. Melissa is one of the only girls in the adult world that owns and runs her own company and is trying to get other girls to follow in her footsteps so they are not taken advantage of. She is very generous with the community donating quite a bit of what she makes back to the community. I feel she is more then worthy of having a page. If you tell me what I can and can't put I would be more then happy to follow your rules. Thanks, Shane

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melissa_Harrington_AKA_MelissaMidwest.com&action=edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by MelissaMidwest (talk • contribs) 00:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC) . Hello are you there. So are you going to call me tomorrow. If you are gonna call me tomorrow just call me on your mobile, ok cause my dad & mum is gonna get angry at me if your gonna call me from the phone. Thank you for sending your message about when you were young & born.

Articles about people need to explain the person's notability, and provide reliable sources to back up these claims - this is the only "worthy" that counts here. For more in00:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If you think you can demonstrate notability, etc, then you might like to create a draft of the page in private user space, eg User:MelissaMidwest/MelissaMidwest. When you're ready, come back here and ask for a review and if you meet the above acronyms, someone will move the page in main-space. But be warned, you never 'own' a page, other people are always free to edit it, or to propose it for deletion, which they will, if it isn't clearly notable. Regards, Ben Aveling 01:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Also see: Wikipedia:User_account_policy#Company/group names and Wikipedia:User_account_policy#Sharing accounts. Wikipedia has much stricter requirements for articles than many other wikis. You might want to check out other public wikis in wikiindex:Category:Pornography, such as for example NikkiWiki which according to its WikiIndex entry uses the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia, so editing there probably works much like it does here (different MediaWiki wikis can have different features enabled, so they are not all 100% compatible, but the basic editing commands generally work the same way). Wikis that specialize in a given topic usually accept a wider range of articles within their topic than Wikipedia does. --Teratornis (talk) 04:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

after several tries, cannot log in

I just created a new account and have verified several disguised graphic phrases, but it does not let me log in. I have been told that my email has been verified, after I clicked on the link sent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.141.74.126 (talk) 00:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I’m assuming that “disguised graphic phrases” is referring to the CAPTCHA. I don’t have an answer for you, but hopefully someone can provide one. —Travis^talk 00:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See Help:Logging in. Usernames and passwords are case sensitive. The account must be at the language Wikipedia you log in to. What is the username and what happens when you try to log in? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Boxed templates...

How do I put a box around a template, like {{Unreferenced}}? Kitsune 01:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Use Template:tl, like this: {{Unreferenced}}.   jj137 ^♠ 01:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Eh, that's not what I meant, I meant, click Template:Unreferenced, and look at the template. See the box around it? I want it like that. How do I place a box around text in a template? Kitsune 01:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Is {{Ambox}} what you're after? Bencherlite^Talk 01:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, something like that! Kitsune 01:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

My question was: How do I copy that sort of thing and make a box on my own wiki? :( Kitsune 01:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

View the source of any template that you want to emulate to see how other authors did it. —Travis^talk 01:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Porting templates to other MediaWiki wikis can be somewhat difficult, because the template in question may:

• Transclude other templates, which in turn may transclude more templates. You have to copy all the transcluded templates to your wiki, or edit your template code to supply the same functions.
• Require various extensions. This may be true if the template you want to copy or adapt contains markup codes that "bleed through" unprocessed on your wiki when you view a page that transcludes your template. For example, many templates on Wikipedia rely on the ParserFunctions extension, and you have to install this yourself on MediaWiki. See Special:Version for a list of extensions installed on whatever wiki you are looking at.
• Require various CSS style classes to be in MediaWiki:Common.css. The easiest solution is to copy the whole page from Wikipedia to your wiki, although that will almost certainly be overkill.

Obviously, the more you learn about template programming, the fewer problems you will have with copying templates or template ideas from other MediaWiki wikis. I don't know if anyone has actually written a template porting guide, but this question comes up often enough on the Help desk to indicate demand for such a guide. --Teratornis (talk) 05:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way to make text invisible everywhere except when on the edit page?

I know there is a function for this in HTML, but is there a Wiki tag to make notes only visible to someone editing the page, such as a direct note to someone editing that those reading the page don't need to see? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.144.233.204 (talk) 02:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, enclose your text like this: <!-- Text here -->. Try to avoid doing this though, the talk page may be a better place to put a note on the article. Prodego ^talk 02:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Prodego’s disclaimer. I think that html comments should only be used to explain some element of the page layout or other technical detail. It can also be used in non-article pages to give instructions to other editors, for example, <!-- PLEASE ADD COMMENTS BELOW THIS --> could be used on a talk page. —Travis^talk 02:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Invisible comments. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

says I didn't cite sources but I did

The article on "compulsory public education" has a notice on it saying it doesn't cite any sources. But as you can see, it does. How do I get rid of that notice? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Griffothy (talk • contribs) 02:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

When you click "edit this page" at the top, you will see a template that looks like this {{Unreferenced|date=(date)}}; remove it. Voila.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The article was missing {{reflist}} when it was tagged, but you have since added it. I took the liberty of removing the tags. —Travis^talk 02:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

China

Are there any ways to get around China's block? I have a friend who's going through withdrawal--69.246.23.58 (talk) 02:47, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China. —Travis^talk 02:57, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

making a page

I am trying to make a page about a comedian named Steve Patterson. Someone is saying it should be deleted because I don't have enough sources. the page is still under construction. What should I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Britney901 (talk • contribs) 02:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

State your case on the article’s deletion discussion page. —Travis^talk 02:54, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The article is at Articles for deletion, here Barring a snow close (which is extremely unlikely, except as a keep), the deletion debate will be there for five days or longer before any action is taken with respect to the article, including deletion. So my suggestion to you is to first read Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions before commenting at the deletion debate, and whether you do or don't, go add sources to the article. Two users have already expressed their opinion that the subject is notable, and should be kept, but that the article needs more sources to establish that notability.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Special TOC

On this page I'd like to have a TOC box that looks like this
1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
etc.
With the years divided into decade groups, instead of one hugely long vertical list. Is there any way to do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dizzy hiss (talk • contribs) 03:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Oops. I took the liberty to create a TOC before you clarified your query. You may revert it. And sorry, i dont know how to create a horizontal TOC like you wanted. kawaputra^torque 03:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps {{CompactTOC8}} can fulfill your need. —Travis^talk 03:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Then again, no. That only works as an alphabetic TOC. —Travis^talk 03:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki's markup language is not a full-blown programming language with loops, so it is hard to write a template which could compactly generate a TOC box with variable start years, end years, and number of years per row. However, Wikipedia's users have made some remarkably intricate templates, so I hesitate to say it can't be done. If you have an hour to burn, you might browse through the intricate template category and see if anyone has done anything similar to what you want to do. --Teratornis (talk) 05:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I didn't think it would be possible, but thought I'd ask. Next question: can you have a TOC that's hidden by default? --Dizzy hiss (talk) 12:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Put __NOTOC__, that's two underscores, NOTOC, then another two underscores. I've done it on my userpage if you would like to take a look. NF24^{(radio me!)} 12:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but what I'm looking for is to have a Table of Contents on the page, but collapsed (hidden) so that all you would see is a box that says "Contents [show]". You could then click on the "show" link to see the full TOC. --Dizzy hiss (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I have added {{TOCleft}} to the page. It accomplishes basically what you are looking for. If you want it to start out collapsed whenever a user visits the page I believe there is also a way to do that.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 13:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Another alternative is to Create 1st tier section for each decate (1950s, 1960s, etc) and then use the {{TOClimit}} feature so only the top level section titles will show in the table of contents.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 13:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

background

this isnt actually a question,its a suggestion,why dont yall make your background color actively changeable for the viewer so the bright white background doesnt hurt peoples eyes while there trying reading, and possibly make the text color changeable too.didnt know how else to contact yall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.218.30.46 (talk) 06:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If you WP:REGISTER for an account, you can easily change the colours using a WP:SKIN. Bovlb (talk) 07:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

PLease remove pages on 'beauty queens'

Dear all, i would like to request the authorities of Wikipedia to REMOVE pages featuring beauty queens. In particular the page on 'Romanthi Maria Colombage' of Sri Lanka who participatedin the 2007 Miss WOlrd contest. i have personally found Wikipedia to be of immense interst and have gained much knowledge by browsing through its many pages. BUt i find that wasting pages in 'beauty queens' demeans such a web portal which has so much knowledge and interst to people. Kindly remove such pages, especially miss romanthi as she adds no colour or life to such a vibrant encyclopedia.. Thanks and Regards, an avid patron —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.247.212.30 (talk) 10:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

What stays or goes in Wikipedia depends on the person's (real or fictional), company, etc Wikipedia:Notability amongst other things. So unless a page violates Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines we keep it. VivioFateFan ^{(Talk, Sandbox)} 11:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia and has plenty of storage capacity so I wouldn't say "wasting pages" about things I don't like. With 6,819,061 articles, there are probably many things any given person doesn't like. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy if you want to suggest deletion of pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Has Information about Article Changes through RSS Feeds Been Substantially Reduced?

I follow the changes in about 150 articles by using the RSS Feed that is available under the "history" tab for Wikipedia articles.

Prior to about January 1, 2008 the feed would send a complete description of any changes to articles with the older revision in yellow and the newer revision in blue and the changes in red just like when you click on the "compare selected versions" button in the history tab of an article.

Since about January 1, all that seems to be coming in the RSS Feed is the "Edit Summary" with no details about the change that has been made to an article, making it substantially more difficult and time consuming to see if vandalism has taken place on an article.

Has there been a change in Wikipedia Policy about sending the complete description of changes via RSS or is there some setting in preferences I haven't been able to find that will get me back the complete description of changes made to articles via RSS feed.

Best Regards,

Reservoirhill (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I checked the feed for this page, and each entry contains both the edit summary and the diff, at least in Mozilla Firefox. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the source code generated by the feed. Is it possible there's been a change in the software you use to view the feeds that could be cutting them off? Maybe a setting to only show the title? • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 16:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

No, I haven't changed anything that I know of. I'm using the Google RSS Reader on Firefox. The funny thing is that if I scroll down through old postings all the ones before January 1 still show the diff. It's only after January 1, that only the edit summary shows up. Since it is obviously there, I'll try a different reader and see if that fixes it.

Thanks for your help.

Reservoirhill (talk) 16:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Difficulty with referencing.

After reading instructions multiple times, I am unable to understand the directions related to referencing (and linking) web pages and was interested in whether someone can assist me for the following site?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icos —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.113.78.21 (talk) 12:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You have to add {{reflist}} at the bottom of the page in a new References section. I've done it for you. Now you might want to use {{Cite web}} to format all those refs correctly. NF24^{(radio me!)} 12:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Blackberry

Would be AMAZING if you guys could get a download for the Blackberry so that we can have a local Wikipedia application on there. CONSTANTLY use the BB to search on the internet and would love to search with Wikipedia about information. Excellent website and organization, keep up the good work.

Robert Diaz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.95.28.130 (talk) 14:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You may want to propose this at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) or Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 15:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If TomeRaider runs on the BlackBerry, you could get Wikipedia that way. I looked at the Tomeraider site, however, and nothing about the BlackBerry jumps right out where I could see it. However, a Google search for TomeRaider BlackBerry finds lots of pages that mention both terms, for example this page which seems to be selling TomeRaider for the BlackBerry. Maybe you can figure it out; I don't own a BlackBerry, so I'm not sure. --Teratornis (talk) 05:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You can just use Google from your BlackBerry browser to search Wikipedia. Just pull up Google in your browser and search on "site:en.wikipedia.org stuff" where stuff is the Wikipedia entry you want to find. A slightly more convenient setup is to save the URL "http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org" as a bookmark. When you hit that bookmark it will pull up a Google search window with "site:en.wikipedia.org" already filled out and all you have to do is add the search term. Lastly, you could just use this guy's Wikipeida for BlackBerry tool. ;-) —Noah 19:01, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Masers of haematology in Ireland please

Please give me a list universies providing postigraduate and master of science degree in haematology and blood transifusion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.45.39.111 (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

This page is for answering questions about Wikipedia. Have you tried Wikipedia's 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, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 15:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hide minor and reverted edits in history

The histories of some stable (neglected?) articles, e.g. Physics, are dominated by reverted vandalism and minor changes. This makes for a history that's hard to check for substantive changes. Is there some way to hide minor and/or reverted edits so the history will be easier to look at? Thanks, Gnixon (talk) 14:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

In your settings, under watchlist, you can hide minor and bot edits on your watchlist. Unfortunately there is no way to hide edits on a particular page without requesting oversight which is generally only done to protect personal information.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 15:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I forgot about the minor/bot edits setting. Too bad there's not some filter for ignoring obvious cases of reverted vandalism that can be applied from the history page. Gnixon (talk) 17:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

adding

how do you add pages —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weedman19899891 (talk • contribs) 14:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Just type the right address for that page in the address bar and you'll be taken to a form for creating the page. Hope that helps! Gnixon (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Some additional tips:

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 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) 16:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

How do I create a sub page on my user page?--Htw3 (talk) 14:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Similar to the above, append "/Subpage_Name" to the address of your user page. Gnixon (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See more at Wikipedia:User page. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

How to look up a meaning of a word

How to look up a meaning of a word —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.33.138.65 (talk) 15:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Try Wiktionary. Jauerback (talk) 15:35, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Nintendo DS Browser

Will this divice work with dial-up internet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.103.49 (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

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.Jauerback (talk) 16:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Quickly fixing broken pipes?

When you rename an article, that tends to create broken pipes. Right? You have to check the "pages that link here" thing on the left. When you do that, though, sometimes you find that there are hundreds of pages and it can be tedious to fix them all. Are there any scripts or bots that can automate this? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 16:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Pages should be renamed by moving them. This automatically creates a redirect so links to the former location still work. The only problem is double redirects. It's recommended to fix them right away but otherwise a bot will do it automatically at some time. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it creates double redirects, and you should also fix the single redirects, and yes there are often hundreds of them. I do not know of an automated way to do this, and I would be very leery of an attempt to automate this in any event. One quick tip: when there are a great many links, they many of them are frequently generated by templates. So ont he"what links here" page, start by selecting "templates" instead of "all." It takes the software awhile to update the "what links here" page for links from templates. -Arch dude (talk) 03:45, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Email Spam/Abuse

Resolved

 – SharkAtomic has been indef-blocked by an admin. 18:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I've been editing in Wikipedia for more than a year now, but I just encountered my first case of email spam/abuse today. A user named SharkAtomic used Wikipedia to send this message to me via e-mail:

Hello, I present myself, I am a man of 25 years. I have a phantasm, it is that which an unknown woman looks at my photographs of me naked and sexy. If you want my photographs answer me and I send them immediately to you. I hope not to have to disturb to you and that you will answer my request favorably. I would really like that is possible because for me it is a dream which an unknown woman looks at my photographs. You would make ego the happiest man in the world. Please, please accept please. It is not a joke, I am really motivated, and that is done with a very great discretion. Good day.

After doing a Google search using the first line of the said message, I discovered that at least one other Wikipedia editor received the same email from the same person. I was just wondering, does this violate any Wikipedia policy and can the user be sanctioned for it? I looked through the policies a while ago and I couldn't find anything about cases like this, but I just thought I'd ask here to make sure. Thanks. --SilentAria ^talk 17:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That's kinda creepy. Sanctioned for it? Trout slapping maybe? It violates Wikipedia is not a social network at least. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 17:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

There isn’t anything that the help desk can do about this, however you might want to submit this to Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts. If that doesn’t work, you can submit it to the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. —Travis^talk 17:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I just checked something: it is possible for an administrator to block a user's ability to use the Special:Emailuser feature, and apply this block to the IP address as well so that it would be blocked even from sockpuppet accounts. That should probably be a last resort though, as it might possibly affect other users. Mr SharkAtomic needs to understand that Wikipedia is not a place to find and contact people to show them naked pictures. For one thing minors use the web site. For another, he'd have much better luck on a web site designed for that sort of thing. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 17:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I made a post at AN/I here. For all we know he is sending mails to dozens of people, so it is important this is handled well. The eyes and experience from AN/I might help. Arthena^(talk) 18:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

User also left an inappropriate message on another user’s talk page. I reverted it and warned him. —Travis^talk 18:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Indef-blocked, e-mail disabled. Block, revert, ignore. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the help, everyone! :) --SilentAria ^talk 22:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Mainspace edits

Hi. Could someone please explain to me what qualify as mainspace edits? Ever since I created this account I've been mainly reverting vandalism. I'm thinking of becoming an admin sometime and I want to be a more well-rounded editor. Could someone please show me some tasks I can get involved in on the site mainspace. Thanks.--Urban Rose 18:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

A good place to start is Wikipedia:Community Portal where you can find a variety of things that need to be done. Cheers! —Travis^talk 18:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mainspace. Basically, article editing. x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

(EC)Any edit you make in the primary article space. (nothing like Talk: or Wikipedia: or template: in front of it) is essentially a mainspace edit. Basically when someone refers to a number of mainspace edits they are expecting a level of actual contributions to articles, as opposed to just chatting back and forth with users or rearranging your user page.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 18:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

One of the best ways to get more involved in this is to join a wikiproject related to something you are familliar with. For example, if you are familiar with many different cars you could join Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles as an example.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 18:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See the definitions at Wikipedia:Main namespace and Wikipedia:Namespace. Reverting vandalism to articles is mainspace edits but many people in a request for adminship may prefer other types of experience. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship if you haven't already. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Links are removed

I keep posting external links on the "dental implant" page and they keep disappearing. Why? Srobert1944 (talk) 18:35, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If you were 76.109.162.23 then they were removed because they were spam links; the reverting editor identified them as that in the edit summary. -- Mentifisto 18:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:External links. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of external links, nor is it for advertising. The rest of the links on that article could use some serious cleanup too actually, if anyone is in a spam swatting mood. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 18:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

User boxes, alignment

The User boxes on my User Page are in two columns. I want to move the second column to the right so that it aligns with the right side of the page.

How do I do that ?

Thanks,

Tovojolo (talk) 18:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Userboxes are themselves miniature tables. Using information at wikipedia:tables you could substitute the userbox and use the align parameter. You could also include them in a larger table and use the parameter on that. As I have done at User:Oni Ookami Alfador/Sidebar.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 19:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You might also want to check out Template:Userboxtop. —Noah 19:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

removing "Quality standards" statement

Now that internal links/references have been provided, how can the following statement be removed? Site is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICOS.

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (April 2007) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.113.78.21 (talk) 18:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Internal links aren't the same as inline references. It's still lacking internal wikilinks and the refs need some formatting you see. I will fix it up a bit. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 19:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikilinks are like this, and are made using this: [[Link]]. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETSINTHEGARDEN}^{play it cool.} 19:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but upon reading the article, I'm tagging it with {{advert}} as it looks very much like advertising. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETSINTHEGARDEN}^{play it cool.} 19:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

How can one advertise a company that is no longer in business? • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 19:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing to advertise here. This is a company that is no longer in existence and, as the article notes, had a 17-year history that is important because of 2 main reasons: (a) the company was the largest biotechnology company in the Pacific Northwest before its closure and termination of employees (following its acquisition by Eli Lilly) and (b) it had a single blockbuster therapy (Cialis) that made it attractive to large Pharma despite its inability to successfully develop other drugs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.113.78.21 (talk) 19:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

{{advert}} doesn’t mean that text is advertising but rather that it reads like advertising. I.e. it is unencyclopedic. --teb728 t c 03:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Addition Deleted?

I added a little-known fact about Carl Sagan and it is no longer there. It is not offensive in any way. It just stated that there is a charter school named after and based on his work and beliefs that everyone can and does learn. Why was it deleted? HELP! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Azanakamili (talk • contribs) 21:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If you check the page history of that article, you'll see that another editor removed it with the edit summary, "promotion much?". Apparently they thought that the paragraph was too promotional of the school and didn't conform to neutral point of view. You should read the neutral point of view guidelines and rewrite the paragraph slightly to make it sound less promotional, and a bit more balanced. Hope this helps. If you need any more help feel free to ask again. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 22:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

On second thoughts, those guidelines are incredibly long and rambling. Take a look at Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms instead; it's shorter and more to the point. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 22:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

can i find information about dating businesses?

I plan to start a dating business. Where can I find mentors online?

68.211.73.117 (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried the Miscellaneous section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 21:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

See also

• Matchmaking
• Anonymous matching
• Online dating service
• Dating agency

I hope that helps. The Transhumanist 22:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Help disappearing text when I editr

Please help me I'm trying to make changes to pages on the fench Baroque and it doesnt work. First some of the text disappears and then it goes away and I made a change but made I typo but it went awat too. Someone called Voabot is saying I vandalized but I just cant figure out how to restore text /SAVE

1. SAVE

Done —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brodie2 (talk • contribs) 22:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I see you've been typing commands into the edit box, "/restore", "/quit", "/save" , etc. Note that the edit box is basically like any other text editor. Go to the text and make the change you want with the letter and arrow keys, and then click the Save button below the edit box. It doesn't accept typed commands. Make sure you're not selecting or highlighting any text with the mouse or with the ⇧ Shift keys, or the highlighted text will disappear when you next type. Have a read of Wikipedia:Introduction and Wikipedia:Tutorial, and try out your editing in the Wikipedia sandbox, so that you won't be told off by the robots for deleting text. If you do manage to delete some text, please don't save that version of the page.

If I have completely misunderstood your question, forgive me; please ask again, and clarify. To do so, click the "[edit]" link to the right hand side of the heading above, and type your question at the bottom of this section. Hope this helps, and please feel free to ask again. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 22:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

---

You have misunderstood. I have no trouble inserting the links and saving them:

• Dental-Implants.com: The Source for all information about dental implants
• DDS-online.com: Dental education and online courses on dental implants
• Dental-Implants.com: Cost of Dental Implants
• dentalimplant411.com: Dental Implants- Cost of dental implants. Dental implant information. Find dental implant dentist
• dentalimplant411.com: Learn about cost of dental implants

It is just that I come back a day or two later and they have been erased! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srobert1944 (talk • contribs) 23:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It appears that those links are in violation of the external links policy. This will lead to the links being removed. NF24^{(radio me!)} 23:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Srobert1944, I think you have edited in the wrong section, please see the reply to your question above.... • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 23:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)