Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 October 3

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October 3

a page deleted

Hi,

I am a new user here. Needed a little help.

A page under the title Tarana Raja Kapoor was deleted on 29 December 2007 by an admin who is no longer active. How can i get the complete information that why was it deleted as I want to write an article on the same title and dont want it to be deleted.

Also can a moderator or volunteer help me with my way further.

Sana.Murri (talk) 21:50, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Sana.Murri, one suggestion of a place to create your article is WP:AFC. There, your article won't be deleted right away, but it might be declined if it isn't ready yet. That gives you a chance to improve it, until it is ready.

Always remember that including good sources for every fact is the way forward - WP:42 and WP:REFB will help you with this. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:53, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Tarana Raja Kapoor was unsourced and only had a few lines of adoration, sounding like a fan in love. It started "Tarana Raja Kapoor is an extraordinary person, stunning anchor, RJ, a wonderful actress, and a voice-over artist." Just ignore it and try to write a real article at WP:AFC, satisfying Wikipedia:Notability (people). PrimeHunter (talk) 23:03, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Photo requirements

What do you do when you are an ordinary mortal and you cannot understand the licensing requirements? I quote from "Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion of a photo" ...

"F3. Improper license. Media licensed as "for non-commercial use only" (including non-commercial Creative Commons licenses), "no derivative use", "for Wikipedia use only" or "used with permission" may be deleted, unless they comply with the limited standards for the use of non-free content. Files licensed under versions of the GFDL prior to 1.3, without allowing for later versions, may be deleted."

Sheesh. All of the photos I put in an article four years ago were deleted. Can somebody translate the above? It seems like "for Wikipedia use only" and "used with permission" are exactly what *should be used in Wikipedia. This seems like Twilight Zone. Help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3dimen (talk • contribs) 00:53, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a goal of producing reusable content; so with limited exceptions Wikipedia accepts only content that permits reuse by anyone for anything, including commercial use and derivative works. —teb728 t c 01:03, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

(e/c) There is no way to make it truly simple if you want to understand it well, because the details of image use is simply not simple, but I think it might help for you to first understand what is the perfect type of image, rather than seeing a laundry list of the things that we don't want. What we want are images that are in the public domain (not copyright-protected at all), or if copyrighted, that bear a free copyright license that allow free reuse even for commercial purposes with very little restriction. This is what the WP:CC-By-SA license is. As stated at Wikipedia:Non-free content: "Wikipedia's goal is to be a free content encyclopedia, with free content defined as content that does not bear copyright restrictions on the right to redistribute, study, modify and improve, or otherwise use works for any purpose in any medium, even commercially." So breaking down this list of negatives from the speedy deletion criterion, we don't want images that are:

• "For non-commercial use only": because our standard is for material that can even be reused for commercial purposes, a very non-restrictive copyright license;
• "No derivative use": because making derivative use verboten is highly restrictive on reuse;
• "For Wikipedia use only": because this restricts our users from reuse (it means "you can only use it on Wikipedia"), and we are all about allowing people to take our content and reuse it;
• "Used with permission: rather similar to the last, this means its use here is specifically permitted, but that's all.

There is a policy we have that allows use of images that are copyrighted in a manner more restrictive than our licenses – even use of fully copyrighted images. It's called Fair Use and is a doctrine which "permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders." However, all instances of fair use is considered not ideal; we do allow it but only under very strict standards that a media file must meet. Those standards are set forth at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria. Turning to some specifics, File:Bott 2068761571.jpg, for example, was licensed under cc-by-nc-nd which does not allow commercial or derivative use, so it is incompatible with our license. It's possible some of the images that were deleted could meet our standards for fair use, but that a whole nother ball 'o wax; one must provide a fair use rationale for each use of the image and the use must meet the criteria I linked earlier. It is indeed a pain, it is frustrating, but it is necessary for us. The ridiculously widened reach of copyright of the modern age, so much expanded from its roots, is a big part of the problem. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:29, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to explain this. Very clear and accessible to a layman. I am going to post a new question directly related to speedy deletion, who is allowed to do this, and how to recover the old usage/copyright information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3dimen (talk • contribs) 16:42, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion for programmers - finding images

I was searching for an image and I tried the following terms in the search box...

• 488824530.jpg
• File:488824530.jpg
• File:Vol 488851659.jpg
• File:Ap cov 488824530.jpg
• Image:Bott 488824530.jpg

Could the programmers at Wikipedia make the search process a little more intuitive and forgiving?

Or has this image actually been deleted? In that case, wouldn't it be more helpful to tell the user? And more important, shouldn't old images be preserved (even if not used in an article) so that prior copyrights can be examined?

Last questions: where to put suggestions for Wikipedia programmers? Do they read this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3dimen (talk • contribs)

File:Ap cov 488824530.jpg was deleted because of a copyright violation. All the intuitive and forgiving programming in the world cannot find an image that does not exist on a website. BTW, you can search for a filename at http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en by entering the file name in the search field and specifying en.wikipedia.org in the domain field. As for "preserving" old images, that depends on why they may have been deleted. Images that have copyright restrictions and not licensed for use by Wikipedia cannot be kept for legal reasons. Cresix (talk) 01:28, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

And to answer your last question, see WP:VPT for adding suggestions for the Wikipedia programmers. Dismas|^(talk) 02:35, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Helpful response, thank you. Cresix, your answer goes to my point that the Wikipedia interface should return *something. You must have had a magical way of knowing that 488824530.jpg was deleted. How does a typical user know this? Wikipedia must store this information somewhere and it really should be reported to a searcher. I will post this issue to Village pump (technical). By the way, an advanced Google search for "488824530.jpg" in the Wikipedia domain returns no results. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3dimen (talk • contribs)

At Special:Log/delete you can see whether a specific page or file name has been deleted. Your talk page (linked on "My talk" at top of any page) has links to deletion logs for three deleted files including File:Ap cov 488824530.jpg. If you don't know the precise name then it can be harder to find deletions. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:45, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

To PrimeHunter, sorry, another hall of mirrors for me! I visited the Deletion log and could not find the file. I selected Deletion log from the pull down menu and entered "488824530" in the target and other fields. I got "No matching items in log." There must be thousands of records in that log - why no easy way to find a file? This is a replay of my original complaint that the Wilipedia search process is not intuitive.

Another issue is that it is not clear to an ordinary person why the file name sometimes uses a slug and sometimes uses a number. How does an ordinary person know which one to use? I guess I could go to WP:VPT (again) and make a suggestion about all this, but this is not fun any more. I am so far from what I set out to do, blah. 3dimen (talk) 22:16, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

The deletion log was already selected by my link. Enter File:Ap cov 488824530.jpg in the Target field to see [1]. The deletion log requires the precise name. It's not a search feature. You could have found the name in several ways, for example at User talk:3dimen (where you could just have clicked the red links to see the deletion log), or in the article version where you used the file: [2]. If you uploaded a deleted file then you can ask an administrator to find the file name in your deleted edits. Only administrators can see deleted edits (there are legal reasons for this). Or you could have tested each of the suggestions in your first post. File names are chosen by the uploader. It was you who uploaded it 5 May 2008 as "Ap cov 488824530.jpg". The upload form has a field for the target file name so it doesn't have to be the same name as the version on your own computer. See Wikipedia:File names if you want to upload other files. I don't know exactly what the upload form said in 2008 but the current Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard says:

Please provide a clear, descriptive name by which your file will be known on Wikipedia. This name must be unique across the whole of Wikipedia, so please make it informative and easy to recognize. It's no problem to use a fairly long name. It may also include spaces, commas and most other punctuation marks. Please also note that file names are case sensitive (with the exception of the first letter). Good: "City of London, skyline from London City Hall, Oct 2008.jpg". Bad: "Skyline.jpg", "DSC0001234.jpg".

PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I forgot non-admins can also see the name of deleted files uploaded by a user. Here are two ways to get to Special:Log/3dimen: 1) Enter 3dimen in the Performer field at Special:Log. 2) Click "logs" at top of Special:Contributions/3dimen (you get there on "My contributions" at top of any page). You can select "Upload log" if the user has many logs and you only want to see the uploads. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:49, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

* Point taken that the names of my photos were not useful. It was four years ago and I thought I had assigned proper names but apparently I hadn't.

* All of the above discussion results in very limited information: basically who deleted the file and why. This is not what I am ultimately looking for. In my original post, I tried to communicate that I want to look at the prior copyrights (meaning the original licensing information that I provided way back then). I feel my hands are tied because this information is apparently not available to me without going to an administrator. I was hoping the Deletion log would provide this but apparently not.

* To be precise, clicking the red link on my user page takes me not to the deletion log, but to a Creating file page, which indicates the page once existed but has been deleted. No links to the original File: page.

* Again, to be precise, looking at a previous version of the article and clicking on the file name only gives me a File Upload Wizard. Again, no links to prior licensing information.

* I must stand by my claim that this is not user friendly. If Wikipedia feels they need to delete an image, OK, but just delete the jpg itself and keep the rest of the File: page that was associated with it. The only price Wikipedia is going to pay is that a unique file name is used up - no big deal. Also make sure the main search box and the Deletion log "search box" point to this page.

3dimen (talk) 02:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

File pages are editable wiki pages with page histories. Licensing information can be mixed with other things and any user can edit the pages. There have been suggestions to make deleted Wikipedia pages visible but I have never heard it about file pages before. See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Deleted pages should be visible. If it hasn't been requested then there is probably a low demand, and it would cause several problems and complications. I'm an administrator. Below is the content you placed on the three file pages. They were all nominated for deletion with {{db-noncom}} (preview it on any file page to see what it displays there). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:10, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

File:Ap cov 488824530.jpg:

Summary

American Photographer cover photo by Douglas Hopkins. Appears on www.flickr.com/photos/dohop/488824530.

Licensing

File:Vol 488851659.jpg:

Summary

Photo of volcanic eruption by Douglas Hopkins. Used for cover of Harvard magazine. Appears at www.flickr.com/photos/dohop/914692.

Licensing

File:Bott 2068761571.jpg:

Summary

Bottle of fragrance from Douglas Hopkins and Company. Appears at www.flickr.com/photos/dohop/2068761571.

Licensing

Wow, PrimeHunter, thank you. This will be very helpful in getting the photographer to write a permission statement and get the pictures reinstated on the article. I don't mean to come across as a complainer, but there is a problem with the system here. It took three days to get this information. I hope I can get an advocate among the admins to understand and vouch for my idea. IMHO, it is not necessary to remove the File: page when an image is deleted. It seems to me that just the jpg can be replaced with an informational message, so the image can no longer be used. Then all the other information, such as the original license and any templates and the description and the source URL can remain in tact. This system would reduce the load on you admins, as you wouldn't have to dig this up every time, right? I'm not a programmer, but in my mind it doesn't seen that difficult, so I will probably keep banging the drum on this. Best... 3dimen (talk) 17:56, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

You could have gotten the deleted license info right away by asking for it. Your original post only said among other things "shouldn't old images be preserved (even if not used in an article) so that prior copyrights can be examined?". That sounded like a policy discussion to me and not a request. It's very rare for admins to be asked for deleted license info. If file pages were kept then there would be more work in checking whether something should be deleted for legal reasons, monitoring pages for vandalism and other problems, handling when people want to upload a new file with the same name, and other details. Many files are deleted from the English Wikipedia because they are moved to Wikimedia Commons with the same name and still displayed with the same url at the English Wikipedia. For example File:The Bluebook 18th ed Cover.gif which now displays commons:File:The Bluebook 18th ed Cover.gif. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:22, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, thanks for your comments.

* "You could have gotten the deleted license info right away by asking for it." Please try to see it from the user's point of view. That's a little like saying "you could have opened the safe if you knew the combination". It's the first time I have ever had to ask a human for *any content on Wikipedia. In fact it seems to run contrary to the philosophy of a wiki, which is "please give me a good search engine and let me find it myself".

* "That sounded like a policy discussion" You're right, and it really still is. In the beginning it was really frustrating to use all the search engine tricks I knew and still not know if the copyright information had been deleted or if it was still there somewhere and the search engine was not cooperating. As an admin, you already know the answer to this, but I didn't.

* "It's very rare for admins to be asked for deleted license info." All I can say is, I'm surprised. If images are taken down for incorrect licensing, I would think that's the first thing the contributor would want to see. Also, please see bullet 1, relating to the unfamiliarity of asking admins for this kind of stuff.

So you can see that keeping the image File: is in keeping with this user's perception of what a wiki should be. Not to drag this out any more. I really do respect the good work you guys do here and appreciate all the help I have gotten. 3dimen (talk) 03:27, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

new editor needs guidance

This new editor: User talk:Anniming seems to need some friendly guidance. They are 3 for 3 on edits made and reverted.

I know there used to be templates for this sort of thing. Please will someone who is current on this add something suitable. Wanderer57 (talk) 02:30, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done –– Anonymouse321 (talk) 07:47, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Confermation about teacher Name Verra Seekra

Sir

Please let me conferm that mentioned in subject Teacher is still in service to search this respected teacher We are mentioning some Point

1.got tranning in PITAC Lahore Pakistan In Tool engineering Technique

2 engaged In Mechinical Department

From Altaf Mahmood (Manager Design PITAC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.177.154.102 (talk) 07:59, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I think you may be lost. This website is Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia, and this page is for asking and answering questions about how to use it. It sounds like you're trying to contact a company to give a job reference for somebody. You won't reach them through this page, I'm afraid. - Karenjc 08:43, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Random information visible on article page

Hi,

I added an image to this page: Knut Vollebæk, but the text: [[file: |300px|alt=]] is visible under the image. Can anyone help me get rid of this?--MP at HCNM (talk) 08:40, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done here. The infobox only requires the bare filename of the image, with no extra formatting. - Karenjc 08:50, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, also for the reason. Looks great.--MP at HCNM (talk) 09:49, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Editing of information

Im the head of one of the depertments at JSC MAdneui. Our company info is incorrect and would like to edit it. Also company has changed name so what do I need to make the corrections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.83.137.69 (talk) 11:12, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Please mention on the talk page of the article the correction you would like to make along with sources that support your information. --Anbu121 (talk me) 11:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I have moved the page to JSC RMG Copper to reflect the name change, as confirmed by the company's website.--ukexpat (talk) 13:10, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

ARTICLES IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION

Is an article written in a specific language on Wikipedia always subject to be translated in an other one or the entire process for notability needs to be repeated? I thought it needs only a correct translation to publish from a language to an other until I've read that translator has to submit every article already published in a language to the community of the other language as a "stub"

This means that what is notable in a country can be not notable in another, isn't? And that knowledge changes from place to place, is not all the same?

Thanks in advance for any answers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.7.220.42 (talk) 11:58, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Each Wikipedia may have its own guidelines and policies regarding notability, so the presence of an article on one can not be taken as an assurance that it is acceptable elsewhere. We can only provide help with English-language Wikipedia issues here though - if you wish to add an article to another Wikipedia, you will have to discuss any problems there. AndyTheGrump (talk)

Well, all Wikipedias are basically global. What you need to worry about is the notability guidelines at that specific Wikipedia, the most basic of which can be found in the interwiki/language links of WP:N. - Purplewowies (talk) 13:06, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Any idea for the usage of "stub" to propose a translation from an other language into English? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.59.204.8 (talk) 00:24, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

And what about sources in different languages? How could they has been taken as regular sources if no one can understand the original meaning of it? At the same time, not less important if the most part of community can not understand because written in other languages than English! Anyway, this could be the reason why different wiki-language platforms need to repeat the entire process for notability to verify the meaning of the sources and evaluate their degree of consistencies to be translated.. Anyone can tell me if is there any translator's community that I can talk to?

Thank you very much! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.3.60.92 (talk) 11:29, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Display the archives

I don't know the proper procedure to display the archives on a talk page.

The page is Wikipedia talk:Copyright violations

The archive is at: Wikipedia talk:Copyright violations/Archive 1--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:51, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done I added an archives box. –– Anonymouse321 (talk) 15:03, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, and now I know how to do it.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:03, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Question re Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic is a separate country than Dominica both located in the southern Caribbean. Different countries Dominica (The Commonwealth of Dominica) is not The Dominican Republic...Your site redirects Dominica to Dominican Republic is in the "same" country.

Please repair! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.191.83.69 (talk) 16:01, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

The article Dominica has a hat note:

Not to be confused with the Dominican Republic.

Where did you see the error?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:06, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Factual errors on United States presidential election, 1864

I do not the right numbers so I cannot edit the page to make it sensible. A section of the page is labeled "Results by State".

Here are some mistakes.

The leftmost column says Minnesota gets 4 electoral votes. The inner column credits Lincoln with 9 votes

Ignoring that mistake there are still two sums wrongs based on the listed numbers:

The sum of the numbers reported for the first column is wrong. Given the numbers the tally should be 239.

The tally of the electoral votes as given in the Lincoln column is not 221 but 218. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jpcohoon (talk • contribs) 16:45, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Ruslik_Zero 17:11, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Questions on speedy deletion

Four years ago I wrote an article on a photographer whose work appeared on the covers of many fashion magazines. I went to a lot of effort to make sure the images met all guidelines. In April the images were removed by Speedy Deletion. Here are my questions...

1) Is it true that only an administrator can perform a speedy deletion and why would it take so long for this to happen?

(Specifically is Nyttend an administrator and how do I determine this? If someone does a speedy deletion, you can understand that I would like to be assured that this person really understands the complex criteria, such as F9 etc.)

2) Now that the images have been deleted, how do I go back and review what the original usage was, so that I can see how it was in violation of F9? These photos were provided and approved by the photographer. I still have copies of the images, but does Wikipedia still have the original copyright information that I provided, and where can I find it? If Wikipedia deletes this information, for heavens sake... why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3dimen (talk • contribs) 16:52, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

1) Yes, only people with admin rights can speedy delete files. This can occur at any time; there's no time limit for noticing a problem with a file that brings it under the speedy deletion criteria. Yes, Nyttend is an admin. You can check this easily on their userpage at User:Nyttend, which has an admin userbox with a "verify" link to click.

2) Your next step should be to try asking the deleting admin, ie Nyttend, by leaving a question at User talk:Nyttend. They will have access to details about the deleted files, and should be able to explain how the licences failed to satisfy Wikipedia's requirements (and what, if anything, you might be able to do to rectify the problem). - Karenjc 17:12, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

They were deleted because there were licensed as CC-BY-NC-ND, which is not an appropriate license for Wikipedia. Only CC-BY-SA or a less restrictive license is allowed. Ruslik_Zero 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Karenjc and Ruslik - will follow up with Nyttend. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 3dimen (talk • contribs) 17:27, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

In what I assume is just a coincidence, a prospective admin is being asked right now how they would handle a CC-BY-ND license.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 20:01, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

About template

Resolved

 – --ukexpat (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

A40 road (London)

I am struggling to add this to my about template which reads thus: This article is about the A40 in London For the road outside London, see the main A40 road article. For other uses, see A40 road (London) (disambiguation).

I don't want A40 road (London)... which of course appears as a redlink ... but A40 as the disambiguation.

My formatting is this: {{about|the '''A40''' in [[London]]. For the road outside London, see the main [[A40 road (Great Britain)|A40 road]] article}}

From where does the redlink come from? I can't understand how to add what I want to this template.

Cheers! -- Gareth Griffith-Jones/GG-J's Talk 16:55, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Postscript

The A40 road article has this ( i.e. not a template):

For other uses, see A40 (disambiguation), for details of the A40 in London, see A40 road (London).

-- Gareth Griffith-Jones/GG-J's Talk 17:04, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

How about {{about|the A40 in [[London]]|the road outside London|A40 road (Great Britain)|other uses|A40 (disambiguation)}} which renders as:

This page is about the A40 in London. For the road outside London, see A40 road (Great Britain). For other uses, see A40 (disambiguation).

or {{about|the A40 in [[London]]|the road outside London|A40 road (Great Britain)|other uses|A40}}

This page is about the A40 in London. For the road outside London, see A40 road (Great Britain). For other uses, see A40.

to avoid the redirect.--ukexpat (talk) 17:13, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Gosh! That was quick. Thank you for sterling service. Sincerely, -- Gareth Griffith-Jones/GG-J's Talk 17:30, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

No problem, happy to help.--ukexpat (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Amado Crowley

I need someone to check if this article is suitable to be added to the exisiting Wikipedia page on Amado Crowley. I have tried four times to add the data but it keeps getting deleted. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xentophace (talk • contribs) 18:10, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

You need to read what you were told in the reply to your previous question at #Adding information to an article above. Read the tutorial, and in particular, follow the link to WP:Referencing for beginners. If you don't yet understand the detail of how to edit, put your suggestions in the talk page for the article, and let other editors consider it. I have deleted the lengthy details from below, because that detail doesn't belong here. David Biddulph (talk) 18:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Xeno, you keep pasting this content into the article, but have never provided a shred of evidence that the person you write about had anything whatsoever to do with the man who called himself "Amado Crowley". --Orange Mike | Talk 18:24, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Combining or cross-referencing categories

I recall having read about a tool that allows me to combine two or more Wikipedia categories. For example if I want to find all articles categorized as women novelists + people from Winchester + deaths from tuberculosis, how do I proceed? I can't find the tool. Any help is appreciated, and thank you in advance. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:54, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

See WP:CATSCAN.--ukexpat (talk) 19:38, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! ---Sluzzelin talk 00:35, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Question about my User talk page

I was viewing a Wikipedia page and I got a message that "userx" had posted something on my User talk page.

1) How did he send me that message, or does it happen automatically when someone posts to your talk page?

2) How do I let him know that I answered his post, or is there a way to do that? 3dimen (talk) 22:50, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Please Help:Using talk pages.Moxy (talk) 22:53, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

That message automatically is displayed by Wikipedia when a new message has been posted to your talk page.

–– Anonymouse321 (talk) 23:24, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

To tell someone that you've left them a message somewhere other than on their own talk page, you can use the {{talkback}} template. Go to their talk page and enter the code {{talkback|XXXX}}, with XXXX being the page where the message has been left. So in the case you cite, the code would be {{talkback|User talk:3dimen}}. - Karenjc 09:43, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the clarifications, especially about Talkback. Just tried it and it looks useful. 3dimen (talk) 05:30, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Trouble setting up an account

On the new accounts page, I entered my proposed username, password, e-mail address, and that horrible "captcha" word. After entering, it comes back with some sort of message about not being able to create the account. I have tried this several times and each time I get a different error message. The last error was "Login error The user account was not created, as we could not confirm its source. Ensure you have cookies enabled, reload this page and try again." After that I got: "Login error Username entered already in use. Please choose a different name."

Is there an easier way to determine whether or not a username has been taken already other than typing in all of the information over and over until it is approved?

Your login page states "Registering a free account takes only a few seconds and has many benefits." This is not true at all.

Frustrated, Jim B — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.28.160.181 (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

You can search for a user that already has that username. Just go to the search box on the top right of this page, type "User:<whatever username you want>" to see if it's already taken. –– Anonymouse321 (talk) 23:26, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

O.K. Not obvious, but that worked. Thank you very much anonymouse321. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimbwiki (talk • contribs) 23:37, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Great! Welcome to Wikipedia! –– Anonymouse321 (talk) 23:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I do agree it's not that obvious – I had the same issue :/ –– Anonymouse321 (talk) 23:42, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Special:ListUsers can also be used to see taken names with a given prefix. Special:Log/newusers shows accounts are created each minute. The account creation form has a link to Wikipedia:Request an account for users with problems. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I had never seen the Special:ListUsers page, thanks for showing me. It's hard to believe that there are that many usernames – and sadly most of them have no user page, no talk page, no contributions. –– Anonymouse321 (talk) 00:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

{{NUMBEROFUSERS}} returns 47,336,958. This and other large numbers are at Special:Statistics. "Special pages" in the toolbox to the left has links to these pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Help

I write for jill dahne and the information that I copied was from her website which I wrote for her and many other people copied and pasted it for other purposes please reply. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dina101 (talk • contribs) 23:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I see the text at http://jilldahne.com/about.html but there is a bigger problem than Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials: The text at Jill Dahne violates several key Wikipedia policies and qualifies for Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion. And you have a strong conflict of interest. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. You shouldn't make an article about her. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:26, 4 October 2012 (UTC)