Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

This page is for discussion of the Reference Desks only.

Please post general questions on the relevant reference desk.
Please don't post comments here that don't relate to the Reference Desks. Other material may be moved.

Please do not discuss guideline issues and policy proposals on this talk page

The guidelines for the Reference desk are at Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines.
Please discuss issues concerning the guidelines on its associated talk page, Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/guidelines, and more general proposals at the Village Pump. Off topic discussions may be moved.

Archives (dates are close, not exact)
(1) Jan 1-Sep 15 '04	(2) Feb 1-Nov 13 '04
(3) Mar 20 -Aug 17 '05	(4) Aug 19-Aug 30 '05
(5) Sep 4-Sep 18 '05	(6) Sep 25-Dec 3 '05
(7) Dec 10-Jan 9 '06	(8) Jan 9-Jan 19 '06
(9) Jan 19-Mar 27 '06	(10) Apr 2-Aug 2 '06
(11) Aug 9-Sep 20 '06	(12) Sep 21-Oct 22 '06
(13) Oct 21-Nov 1 '06	(14) Nov 1-Nov 11 '06
(15) Nov 9-Dec 4 '06	(16) Dec 5-Dec 11 '06
(17) Dec 11-Dec 13 '06	(18) Dec 13-Dec 16 '06
(19) Dec 15-Dec 19 '06	(20) Dec 19-Dec 31 '06
(21) Jan 01-Jan 09 '07	(22) Jan 09-Jan 18 '07
(23) Jan 18-Jan 31 '07	(24) Jan 31-Feb 13 '07
(25) Feb 13-Feb 28 '07	(26) Mar 01-Mar 13 '07
(27) Mar 13-Mar 31 '07	(28) Apr 01-Apr 10 '07
(29) Apr 10-Apr 21 '07	(30) Apr 21-Apr 29 '07
(31) Apr 30-May 8 '07	(32) May 8-May 14 '07
(31) May 14-May 26 '07	(32) May 27 - June 20 '07

Style of Ref desk header

The current style of the left side of the header is:

How to ask a question Do not ask difficult questions. Have mercy on our volunteers. Put a question mark after the question. This way we will know where the question ends. Have faith. The Wikioracle knows all.

After reading the above, you may ask a new question by clicking here.

How to answer a question Wash your mouth first. Keep the reference desk clean. Don't answer questions while drunk. You know what happened last time you did.

Often questioners don't use the "button" ask a new question by clicking here, but apparently use the "edit this page" tab, causing avoidable edit conflicts. I wonder if that may be because the "button" is not prominent enough. My attempts to produce something more prominent have led me to the following design:

How to ask a question Do not ask difficult questions. Have mercy on our volunteers. Put a question mark after the question. This way we will know where the question ends. Have faith. The Wikioracle knows all.

After reading the above, you may ask a new question by clicking here.

How to answer a question Wash your mouth first. Keep the reference desk clean. Don't answer questions while drunk. You know what happened last time you did.

What does everybody think? Is this an improvement? If so, are there suggestions for further fine-tuning?  --Lambiam^Talk 20:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

On my browser (IE6, I'm at work, I can't help it), your two boxes overlap, so it's not an improvement. --LarryMac | Talk 20:58, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Which two boxes?  --Lambiam^Talk 21:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

"After reading the above," is overlapped by "ask a new question by clicking here." Other than for what appears to be a placement problem, which I don't know how to fix, the instructions are fine. I rather like the rest of the changes, too, facetious or not, especially "Don't ask questions while you are drunk". You might want to consider adding one about not trying to answer while drunk either, with the same "you know what happened the last time" reminder. Bielle

I think it is an error in the implementation of the rendering engine of IE. There should be a single box containing two non-overlapping lines of blue text, together forming a single link. Unfortunately, I've no idea how to code around such bugs.  --Lambiam^Talk 23:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, no doubt it's a problem with the browser. I'm sure it looks OK in Firefox, although I forgot to check last night. Unfortunately, we IE6 is still fairly dominant; I don't know how to fix it either :-( --LarryMac | Talk 13:42, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I dislike the BIG SIZE OF THE LETTERS. It makes the page look amateur. A.Z. 02:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Which browser are you using? For me (using Firefox), the x-height of the big letters is 9 pixels against 7 pixels for the main text, an increase of 30%, which is not excessive. It is the same size as the "How to ask a question" text in the current header; does that look amateurish too to you?  --Lambiam^Talk 04:47, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know why it looks amateurish, then. I just thought it was because of the size. I completely disagree with the recommendation for questions to have a question mark and for questions not to be difficult! With all due respect for whoever invented this (and I really don't know who was it), it is quite limiting, strange, instruction creep, and appears to me as rather a manifestation of a psichological problem such as being obsessed with being able to have full control and knowledge of things, as if they couldn't accept the fact that there are questions that don't have a question mark, and there are questions that simply can't be properly "answered", unlike a mathematical question. A.Z. 03:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

A.Z., those phrases about question marks etc. are placeholders that Lambiam put there to represent the real instructions. They are just jokes. --mglg_(talk) 04:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Damn it... This is like the third time that I read Lambiam's jokes as if they were serious stuff. I remember one time when he claimed to be an expert in logic and said that this was why he knew about appeal to authority more than other people. A.Z. 04:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Yea, he got me at first, too. StuRat 04:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Firefox look of proposed change

Thanks for the laugh A.Z.- you should've read the warnings on replying too, though. Anyway, I like it. It makes it much easier to see, and also helps draw attention to the rules, without being intrusive, and without sticking out like a sore thumb. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 04:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I thought all warnings were real, including those on replying. A.Z. 04:35, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

So is there anybody out there who knows HTML, has access to both Firefox and IE(6?), and can fix the code so that it looks good with both? To the right is a thumbnail of a screenshot showing how this looks to me using Firefox.  --Lambiam^Talk 08:22, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I tried looking at it in IE6 using IE4linux, I see the problem. Is it just IE4linux though, or does IE6 make webpages look freaking horrible? Everything on wikipedia was bolded and pixely and nasty... It's still readable though. It just has the lower line of "ask a new question, click here". I don't think a tiny glitch like that should stop us from making a better template- especially considering if it really bugs anyone, there's about a million and a half different other web browsers they could use.

Placement of "Ask a new question" button.

A simple suggestion, put this button at the top and bottom of each page (if possible), so people will see it. When confronted with pages of rules, they are likely to skip reading them and not see the button down below. StuRat 23:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. Removing the rules altogether would be good as well. A.Z. 02:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

They aint rules, they are advice to help people use the desk appropriately. Rockpocket 03:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Some of them sure quack like rules, for example "Do not request medical or legal advice. Ask a doctor or lawyer instead." StuRat 14:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that people who have advice to give write essays and link to them from the reference desk front page. A.Z. 23:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Could people reading this give their opinion? A.Z. 18:25, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Rockpocket, could you give your opinion about taking the advice out of the pages and putting it into essays? A.Z. 23:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

whassup?

Why is there that little icon in the upper right-hand corner of this page? I can see it's a link to Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/style change, but are people who haven't heard of that topic really supposed to realize that if they are interested in it, the ⊕ icon is the thing to click on? —Steve Summit (talk) 11:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I just clicked it to see what it is, and now it's a convenient shortcut to that discussion. I guess that's the point --froth^t 16:24, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

A long way back I used Image:Mspaintvista.png, unforntunatly it's a fairuse image, so it had to be removed. Feel free to pick another image, preferably one with a transparent background, the template is stored at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/color--VectorPotential^Talk 16:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, but my question was not "What is it for and where does it go?" (which I eventually figured out), but rather, "How is someone who doesn't already know what it's for supposed to recognize it for what it is?" —Steve Summit (talk) 00:34, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

They could just click it to see what it is, but I guess a short subtitle would be useful. A.Z. 20:59, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

There is text that becomes visible when you mouse over the icon, however I think I may add an actual always visible caption--VectorPotential^Talk 18:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which I've just completely revamped Wikipedia:Reference desk/color and added it to Wikipedia:Reference desk/RD header. If it clashes with anything in anyone's browsers, please let me know. --VectorPotential^Talk 19:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I made the text smaller and put it on just two lines. How can we actually "Help Out"? By proposing more colour schemes?  --Lambiam^Talk 20:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully, if the page generates enough traffic there will be enough opinions that we can build an effective consensus on the color of the page. If it doesn't generate any traffic, then we can always keep everything gray--VectorPotential^Talk 20:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really 100% sure what I want the page to be. It's just based on a subset of the style change page that froth created. Hopefully if enough people visit it the page will develop into something a little more user friendly --VectorPotential^Talk 20:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk/style_change/header

Could someone give this a once over? It looks just right in firefox, but I just checked IE 7 and it looks a bit off.--VectorPotential^Talk 20:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot (talk · contribs)

As some of you may have noticed, RefDeskBot has been behaving a little erratically lately, and Martin is on wikibreak. I've just finished cleaning up the last week's unarchived posts on the help desk, if someone could do the same for the entertainment reference desk, that would be incredibly helpful. Thanks to everyone who has been helping out with this--VectorPotential^Talk 17:02, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

For some bizarre reason it's taken away the 21 June date on the Humanities Desk, not the QAs, just the date, leaving an odd message (1. REDIRECT etc. etc.) between items 1.13 and 1.14. June 20 now has a massive 29 items! I tried to edit the missing date back in, but clearly lack the necessary technical skill. Clio the Muse 02:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

It's OK. I managed to make the alteration! Clio the Muse 02:48, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Mea culpa. In my defense, I have been misled by a statement made by the bot's owner; see above at #On linking to reference desk sections.  --Lambiam^Talk 06:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The only reason that the redirect problem would occur is if the bot was, for some reason, unable to save the page. I'm becoming slowly less busy, but am quite occupied until Sunday evening now (maybe Monday evening in fact). Once I have a spare moment, I'll check that everything's working as it should. Lambiam: Has the problem you note there happened before? I'm quite sure that the bot would have simply replaced the page text, given the basis upon which it works (taking this from rusty memory :)). Martinp23 08:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I see the diff above. Very strange, my apologies, will be fixed. Martinp23 08:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot deleted the header from the Entertainment Desk, apparently because it had a fragment of a transclusion included: [1]. I fixed it. StuRat 03:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. A.Z. 03:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Stu. It seems that June 13–1817 were lost in the process, though. --mglg_(talk) 04:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Lost ? I'd assumed they had been archived and the bot was dropping their transclusions because they were over 1 week old. You're right, the archived versions don't seem to be here: [2]. StuRat 04:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you put the deleted days back on the Entertainment Ref Desk ? I would, but my computer is acting up at the moment and probably can't handle that. (Archiving them properly would be even better, but I realize that's a lot to ask.) StuRat 04:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot failed to archive the entertainment desk for almost a week, because of this there were too many days on the desk when the bot resumed archiving that page, this confused the bot and caused it to mangle the header. The solution is for someone to restore all the missing archives, and restore the correct number of days to the desk.--VectorPotential^Talk 19:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Entertainment Desk history messed up ?

I only see one entry for July 25th, despite seeing several edit summaries for the day on the actual page. Why are these edits missing from the history ? StuRat 23:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Signature timestamps are displayed according to UTC while edit history timestamps are displayed according to the timezone you've specified in your user preferences. If you're west of Greenwich, edits may show the 25th in signatures but the 24th in edit histories. Also, see the transcluded archive histories[3]—eric 03:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's it, there are missing entries in the history. For example, there is no trace of this contribution of mine:

And while we're on the topic of Elton John, don't forget Empty Garden, his tribute to John Lennon: [2]. StuRat 03:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That edit was to the Entertainment desk's 22nd archive page[4]. The UTC timestamp is 03:10 on the 25th, but it shows as the 24th in the edit history for North American TZs. I think maybe the reason you noticed is because that desk has not had much traffic recently, currently there is only one question which has not already been archived—the rest are now transcluded on the page. I guess this is just one of the disadvantages of the archive and transclude system, it's more difficult to read the edit histories, but i haven't been able to find any edits which are actually "missing".—eric 16:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_13, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_14, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_15, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_16 & Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_17 are all literally missing, as they were never archived by RefDeskBot in the first place--VectorPotential^Talk 12:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

They've all been restored--VectorPotential^Talk 20:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Impossible to get to earlier questions

I wanted to look at a question and answers of an earlier date than the few days displayed. Yet I cannot see how to get to them. Would anyone agree that this needs correcting? I've no idea how to make such changes myself. Thanks— Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.2.214.17 (talk • contribs)

We already have an extensive set of archives--VectorPotential^Talk 12:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Misc desk being trolled

Recent contrib of 212.115.41.40. Please don't feed him. --LarryMac | Talk 14:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot (talk · contribs)

Didn't run last night, probably due to high database lag. It would be helpful if someone could complete last night's archive before RefDeskBot runs again tonight--VectorPotential^Talk 19:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Done.  --Lambiam^Talk 16:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, let's just hope that after two nights of inactivity RefDeskBot comes back online--VectorPotential^Talk 18:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

It's obviously on strike, like the Post Office here in England! Clio the Muse 02:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

English Language Reference Desk

Should we include a link somewhere to Wikiversity's English Language Reference Desk, which specializes in answering questions specifically relating to English? At any rate, the Wikiversity ELang desk is around, for anyone interested. The Jade Knight 00:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Since it seems so inactive, I don't see a good reason to link to it. Friday (talk) 00:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikiversity in general "seems so inactive". They're active (and questions get answered fairly promptly), but Wikiversity just doesn't draw the same crowd of questioners that Wikipedia does. Maybe in a few years… anyway, the Reference Desk is there, and is being used when people stumble across it. I just figured it might be a good place for people looking specifically for English Language help to go. The Jade Knight 13:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see "inactivity" as a reason not to link to it. It could be a reason to link to it, as this would increase activity. A.Z. 18:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Re.: Coast To Coast Question :

The question was a legit question. Why was it removed ? It indicated that a Debate between two opposing sides will take place, where it can be placed, was NOT "trolling" at all. The debate is between JC, a fundamentalist preacher and Oscar, who is alleged to be some kind of demon. Both called the show last night and indicated that there will be a bloody debate. What is the criteria on here for "trolling" ? 205.240.144.225 04:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

The question [5] was removed [6] because it was no question at all. It seemed designed merely to stir up debate, or drum up publicity for the radio show. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

And, for what it's worth, this similar question is also pretty dubious. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Archiving

Can I ask those of you who are knowledgeable in such matters if the automatic archiving is likely to come back any time soon? The Humanities Desk is getting horribly long! Clio the Muse 23:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

How about when the Ref Desk talk page is going to get an archive? Anyone? - AMP'd 23:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

 Done A.Z. 00:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Done what?  --Lambiam^Talk 09:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think he meant he done archived this talk page.[7] —Steve Summit (talk) 12:17, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've taken over (again) manually archiving the Computing reference desk. In case it's helpful, this is how I do it. --cesarb 01:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh! Cool! I didn't know about those top-header templates. Thanks. (You wouldn't believe what I've been using instead...) —Steve Summit (talk) 05:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Next to Template:Archive header for the daily archive pages there is also Template:Archive header monthly for creating the monthly archive pages, such as Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/July 2007. For the Help Desk, also (not) archived by RefDeskBot, use Template:HD Archive header and Template:HD Archive header monthly instead.  --Lambiam^Talk 10:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't look like we'll be getting RefDeskBot back any time soon--VectorPotential^Talk 22:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Help Needed

Is energy material? I couldn't find the direct answer to the question in the article. -PatPeter 17:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

See your question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Help_Needed David D. (Talk) 19:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Guys is "ignourant" ever used in old English? Or...

favourite, olde, and withe? I am in a discussion about language on Youtube here. -PatPeter 17:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have accidentally asked your questions on the page for talking about the reference desks. You will get much better results if you choose an appropriate page on the Reference desks themselves. For example, this question probably belongs under "Language". Skittle 18:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

See you question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Guys_is_.22ignourant.22_ever_used_in_old_English.3F_Or... David D. (Talk) 19:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)