User talk:Hersfold/Archive 13 (January 2008)

← Previous archive - Archive 13 (January 2008) - Next archive →

This page contains discussions dated during the month of January 2008 from User talk:Hersfold. Please direct all current discussions there. Thank you.

---

Copyright material

Dear Hersfold, just saw your comment about my contribution to the Icaros page (saw it on the Pablo Amaringo page). I am confused because the material you referred as breaching copyright is my own material so I do not really understand, and would appreciate your input on this. With regards Howard —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hgc99 (talk • contribs) 18:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

(For those reading this later, this is in reference to the Icaros AfD) We have no way of knowing who is in control of your account, and as many web pages are held under some form of copyright that is incompatible with the terms of the GFDL, there is a strict policy against using copyrighted material on Wikipedia without permission. If you are indeed Howard Charing, you may want to send an email to permissions-en AT wikimedia DOT org to grant permission for Wikipedia to use the text at this link [1] in the Icaros article. It may also be necessary to request permission from the owners of that website, as the copyright notice at the bottom of the page claims that they are the owners of the copyright, not you. I'll leave the article alone for now to allow you to do all of this, however I should note that the consensus of the AfD discussion linked above was to redirect Icaros to another article, and another editor may re-enforce this decision at any time. Re-creation of material removed by an AfD discussion can be again removed without discussion under Criteria for Speedy Deletion G4. For more information, you may want to look through WP:COPY, WP:V, and WP:CSD. I hope this helps some. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:40, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Re: Help me number 1

Hersfold note: Copy of discussion removed to avoid clutter/confusion - see Joseph's talk page (archives) for full discussion

Hi. Thanks for the reply. However, I did not understand your reply. #1 ... what is a wikitable CSS class? What does that term mean? And #2 ... the column headings are not centered (at least, the last one "Record") ... even though you said they are centered by default. Can you clarify your answer, as I am now more confused. And #3 ... are you sure that nothing can be done to create a margin of indentation in that last column? Thanks! Please reply at my Talk Page. Thank you. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:29, 3 January 2008 (UTC))

Sorry, I tend to be a bit bad about not explaining things at times.

1. A CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) class is a set of pre-defined settings for a web page or table. When you add class="wikitable" to the top of your table, you're telling the table to use the settings defined for a "wikitable" in MediaWiki:Common.css. That's what gives the tables that standard gray background and thin gray borders. "infobox" is another CSS class with different settings; for example, all infoboxes will display on the left side of the page by default and have no internal borders.
2. The headers appear centered on my screen, and I don't see anything that would cause it to not be so. I'd have to say it's something wrong with your browser or personal CSS settings - most likely the formal, as I'm pretty sure your personal CSS would be blank.
3. Pretty darn. I tried messing with the table on your talk page for about half an hour and all I did was make it really ugly. You might try asking someone more experienced in Wikimarkup than myself, but I'm not sure how much they'll be able to help. Sorry.

Always welcome, glad I could be of some help. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:45, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Help me number 2

Hersfold note: Conversation truncated to the point where it started here. For the full conversation and Joseph's help request, see his talk page.

Thanks! The above explanation was very helpful. There is only one thing that I did not understand. After you colored a cell with a different color, your code includes this notation: | & n b s p ; ... what does that mean? And what does that do? Thanks for your help! Please reply at my Talk Page. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:40, 3 January 2008 (UTC))

  literally means nothing. "nbsp" is an acronym for Non-Breaking SPace, and when enclosed in an ampersand and a semicolon, it becomes a Unicode character for a space that won't allow a line to break like a normal space would. For example, check the sentences below - they use only nbsp's and should run off the edge of your screen instead of forming two lines.

"The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Brown Dog" is a sentence that uses every letter in the English language, and is often used by elementary or primary school teachers to check that young students are properly writing their letters. The sentence is also used frequently in typing diagnostic programs for a similar reason.

I used the code in the table I created because I needed the table to display nothing in those cells. Had I simply left them blank, I would have run the risk of the cells not displaying properly and turning out complete gibberish. Using an nbsp forces the table to display something, so it's not empty, you just can't see what's inside it. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Sorry to keep bothering you! Thanks a lot for all of your help. Let me follow-up with two questions, if I may. #1 -- as far as that code of & n b s p ; ... I just want to make sure that I understand it. You are saying that that code simply "prints" a blank value in the cell of the table ... is that right? And why exactly do we want (or need) to "print" a blank cell? And #2 -- the color chart. Is there a better color chart somewhere, that has even more color choices? In other words, most of those colors are very dark and, if you use them as a background, it would simply make the actual cell text very hard to read -- if not impossible to read. I am looking for more lighter pastel "shades" so that the actual text of the cell is not hard or impossible to read as the colors of the text and background mix. So, are there more shades available somewhere ... or is this the complete / entire list of available colors to choose from? It seems to me that a great majority of those available colors (on that chart) are far too dark to be able to see or to read the actual text within the cell, if they were set as the background color. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC))

1. Yes, nbsp creates a blank space. As I said, it's mainly to make sure that the table displays as I want it to. Leaving a blank cell blank probably won't cause it to display incorrectly, but it could make some things not display as well as desired. For example, here, I want a table with three cells. The first cell should have a 1. The third cell should have a 3. The middle cell is the tricky one, because I want it to display nothing, but be wider than the other two cells. So, the first time I tried it, I just hit the spacebar four times, leaving four spaces in the second cell. As you can see, the table didn't recognize those spaces as anything useful and simply ignored them. Wikimarkup doesn't like whitespace, so the middle cell is really skinny and looks ugly. The second time I made the table, I put four nbsp's in the center cell instead. The table has to recognize those as characters, so it prints two spaces, giving me the appearance I want.

Table with four spaces	Table with four nbsp's
1 3	1      3
Contents of center cell
"    "	"    "

Please note that in the "Contents of center cell" section, I used additional code for the same reason, to force it to display correctly. Just ignore that additional code - the stuff in the example tables is what's important.

2. I'm sure there is, there are hundreds of the things out there. If you do an internet search for "HTML color chart" you'll get a whole list of them. Technically, there are 16,777,216 different colors you can choose from, so no chart is going to give you every color code in existence. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 18:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		For all your work with ribbons, but especially for creating a ribbon when I needed it the most (and in good time, too!), I, Sharkface217, hereby present you this barnstar. --Sharkface217 02:30, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, it's something I rather enjoy doing. Thank you for requesting my services. :-) Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:00, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. --Sharkface217 21:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

help

dear my need is that i have one on wikki. for example it is a man whole picture. i want to add to my article as half size photo it without any edit in photosop or other software.is there html or other codes fot it? plz help me anybody quickly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emmanzur (talk • contribs)

When placing the image in the article, if you add "|thumb|caption" after the "Image:Example.png" bit, you'll get a smaller version of the image with a caption describing what it is. For example: [[File:Bad Title Example.png|thumb|caption]] will create the image at right.

caption

. The actual Example image is much larger, which you can see by clicking on it. Is this what you wanted? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

dear i need imgage.jpg crop x="0%" y="25%" width="100%" height="50%" for only show users through programm(not thump). Emmanzur (talk) 20:19, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe there is any way to do that on MediaWiki. The <img> html tag is disabled for security reasons. In order to crop the image, you'll have to upload a new version. Sorry. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:12, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, re Chopin Etude

Hello Hersfold,
I had cleared my cache repeatedly, without any success. Oddy, all seems to be working properly now! Thanks, Prof.rick (talk) 19:06, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Hm, that's odd. In that case, it may have been the server's problem. If you get that again, try adding "?action=purge" to the end of the article's URL in your address bar - that should force the server to go find the new version and display it. Glad it's working, anyway! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 19:16, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again! I'll remember that tip! Prof.rick (talk) 19:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

DYK

On 9 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Hood Mockingbird, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--The Placebo Effect (talk) 13:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello :)

Hi :) I got your message today. Thanks for being willing to work with me. I'd certainly be interested Katie (talk) 05:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC) P.S. I see you're at UMBC. I may be attending there soon as well :D

Excellent! Unfortunately, I was a complete idiot, and forgot that I'll be out for most of next week. Sorry! I will definitely help you get set up here later today or tomorrow, though - I'd rather take a little time reviewing your contributions for a while to see what you're comfortable with already, what you're interested in, and what you need to improve on. I'm really sorry about my lack of common sense there, but I should definitely be able to really start working with you after my short break. I'll let you know as soon as I have things ready! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 21:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. - Cool! Where are you going to college now? UMBC's a great school, hope to see you there! :-)

Not a problem at all :) I'm mainly trying to work on learning how this all works in terms of the code, etc. Testing some things out on my user page and the like, just trying to get acquainted with how it all works. Look forward to talking to you soon and enjoy your holiday! Katie (talk) 21:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC) PS I'm working on transfer right now with my computer science degree. My Paramedic degree will move to UMBC for the last 2 years :D

Re multiple references to same volume, different pages.

Thank you very much for helping. I will forgo page references despite the inconvenience to readers. Wugo (talk) 05:32, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Although I've been editing for about a year, I still don't know my way around. Usually I can solve my problems by means of cut-and-try and, of course, abject apologies when disaster strikes. But citing plural pages in single references had me baffled until I asked for help. Thank you for your kind response; I shall not hesitate to ask for help next time I am befuddled.Wugo (talk) 03:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Adoption? Brilliant!

Hullo, Hersfold! Thankyou very much for offering to adopt me - that would be fantastic! I'm really only just finding my feet here on Wikipedia, so I'm eager to learn how editing *ought* to work, but still unsure as to what I'd like to contribute to. Well, not knowing what the next step of being an adoptee is, I'll sit tight and wait to hear from you. Thankyou again! :-D Beruthiel (talk) 01:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, sorry for the long wait! I've been out for the week at a leadership conference that I'd completely forgotten about when I posted the above message. I'm glad to hear that you're interested in the program. :-) It'll take me a little time to get things set up for you, but I think you're just in time to work along side my other adoptee, who I contacted at the same time as you. I will let you know when I have things ready to go. In the meantime, though, you can go ahead and check out Adoption HQ - that's where we'll be coordinating most of this program. You'll see that I have some information posted for User:Katieishme - she is the other adoptee you'll be working with. The information I have under her header is essentially the same as what you need at this point - the only difference is in the recommended WikiProjects near the bottom, and I've made a note of that in your section. Just go ahead and edit some pages based on what you already know, and we'll get started soon! Welcome to Wikipedia! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 18:26, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, no worries about having limited time - I'm in a similar situation, so to complain would be hypocritical! I'll have a good look at that page you linked; as for editing, I might hold off a bit until I feel I understand the formatting and code here better. Beruthiel (talk) 11:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

reply

Sounds great! Sorry it has taken me a bit to get back to you. The information you posted has been really helpful. I've been trying to read up mostly on editing and have really only had a chance to work on one article. I'm still looking into the projects. There's a lot to choose from there but I like the ones that you suggested so will probably jsut start there. I'm starting to get a little more familiar with how things work as well. The outline looks really good. The main thing so far has been formats to use for putting in citations. I guess learning that will come in time? Cheers Katie (talk) 03:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It can, but I can give you a big head start. Wikipedia:Citation templates has a long, long list of different templates that you can use to generate a standardized citation format. If you include these templates in <ref></ref> tags, it'll make one of those neat footnote things. Just make absolutely sure that you include the </ref> tag, or else the whole rest of the article will vanish! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Help Me

Hello. I had posted a few Help Me requests, mainly dealing with how to format Tables and Charts in Wiki-code (or HTML or whatever it is). I was cleaning up my Talk Page --- and I was not sure if I had yet gotten back to you to say Thanks. So, thanks for all the help. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC))

Re: Checking In

Hello :) Yes I'm still alive. Sorry this first week of school has really devoured my time. Tonight has been the first real time I've had to sit down and look through things, and am planning to get back into it tonight and tomorrow if that works. Cheers! Katie (talk) 04:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, no big deal, I figured that's what was going on. I'm just starting myself, and actually need to head off to class right now. Let me know when you're ready to get started again. :-) Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 17:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Rollback

Hello Hersfold, I have granted rollback rights to your account. The reason for this is that, after a review of some of your contributions, I can trust you to use rollback correctly by using it for its intended use of reverting vandalism: I do not believe you will abuse it by reverting good-faith edits or to revert-war. For information on rollback, see Wikipedia:New admin school/Rollback and Wikipedia:Rollback feature. If you do not want rollback, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Good luck. Acalamari 00:00, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I hadn't requested it, as I use Twinkle for most anti-vandal stuff, but I appreciate the vote of confidence! Thanks! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome! Acalamari 02:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Help Desk

Can you have the TOC scroll up and down? Also, the page is hmm... just turned "wide" if you know what I mean, can you fix that? Your help is appreciated! - Milk's Favorite Cookie 01:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Replied on your talk and fixed the scroll bar - not sure how to make things thinner, though. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:23, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! It looks great. I'm going to put it back as soon as I fill up mt first 16 archives (I'm on # 12). Thanks for the help! - Milk's Favorite Cookie 23:14, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your help determining why my page was, and should have been, deleted, among other things... Please do not reply. Thanks --Gopt (talk) 08:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Sorry things didn't turn out so well. (Reply not transferred to Gopt's talk page) Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 17:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)