User talk:Panel Switchman

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Panel Switchman!

First steps tutorial Our first steps tour and our FAQ will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy. You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold contributing here and assume good faith for the intentions of others. This is a wiki—it is really easy. Getting help More information is available at the community portal. You may ask questions at the help desk, village pump or on IRC channel irc:wikimedia-commons #wikimedia-commons (direct access). You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at Commons talk:Licensing.		Goodies, tips and tricks Put Babel boxes on your user page so others know what languages you can speak and indicate your graphic abilities. All your uploads are stored in your personal gallery Please sign your name on Talk pages by typing ~~~~ Use the CommonSense tool to find good categories for your files (then other people can find them too!) To link to an image page without embedding the image, type: [[:Image:Foo.jpg]], which produces: Image:Foo.jpg If you're copying files from another project, be sure to use the CommonsHelper Made a mistake? Did you want to rename or move a file? Simply upload the file again and mark the old one like this: {{bad name|correct name}} For more information read the full deletion guidelines.
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Tip: Categorizing images

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Hello, Panel Switchman!

Tip: Add categories to your files

Thanks a lot for contributing to the Wikimedia Commons! Here's a tip to make your uploads more useful: Why not add some categories to describe them? This will help more people to find and use them.

Here's how:

1) If you're using the UploadWizard, you can add categories to each file when you describe it. Just click "more options" for the file and add the categories which make sense:

2) You can also pick the file from your list of uploads, edit the file description page, and manually add the category code at the end of the page.

[[Category:Category name]]

For example, if you are uploading a diagram showing the orbits of comets, you add the following code:

[[Category:Astronomical diagrams]]

[[Category:Comets]]

This will make the diagram show up in the categories "Astronomical diagrams" and "Comets".

When picking categories, try to choose a specific category ("Astronomical diagrams") over a generic one ("Illustrations").

Thanks again for your uploads! More information about categorization can be found in Commons:Categories, and don't hesitate to leave a note on the help desk.

BotMultichillT (talk) 20:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Image:Sdr Relays Closeup With Hand.jpg is uncategorized since 30 December 2008. BotMultichillT (talk) 20:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• Image:Panel Sender Relays.jpg is uncategorized since 30 December 2008. BotMultichillT (talk) 20:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• Image:Panel GCO District Sender Selector Frame.jpg is uncategorized since 9 January 2009. BotMultichillT (talk) 06:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
• Image:B Board Manual Originated Calls.jpg is uncategorized since 24 January 2009. BotMultichillT 06:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
• Image:B Board Machine Originated Calls.jpg is uncategorized since 24 January 2009. BotMultichillT 06:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Panel pictures

As promised, here's a copy of my E-mail reply to you:

Sat, 3 Jan 2009 11:45:00 -0800 (PST) "bcopanel-switching@yahoo.com" <bcopanel-switching@yahoo.com> writes:

> I had uploaded two so far but they are in my area, I think. 

> I need a little help understanding the upload procedure

> as it is rather terse.

Excellent. No, you don't have a particular area, at least not in the sense I think you mean. All pictures are available to anyone who searches for them. You were entirely successful in uploading; you merely failed to connect them properly to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_switch article.

> You suggested putting them in the commons area but don't know how to do that.

Actually, you succeeded in that. Not that the question of uploading to Commons vs Wikpedia is a big deal. Commons is mainly the picture department of Wikipedia, though it does other things as well. The important thing is, you correctly uploaded the pictures and I failed to take the trouble to search properly for them.

> Actually, now that I look I can't find the two I uploaded?  This is

> very disconcerting considering I used to be a Systems Analyst.

> Guess I'm getting too old. Help.

A lot of us spring benders are getting too old. If you look into the article now, you'll see your first picture. Where you went wrong seems to be in counting the square brackets. Probably you followed the pattern from my crossbar IRRP caption, which has extra complications because it contains a link inside the caption. What you needed was something simpler, viz

Panel Sender relays, with cabinet doors open

whose double square brackets at each end mark off the code that tells Wikipedia about the picture. You unbalanced your brackets, which made the picture display fail.

To look at the details about your picture you can click on it. Its file description has a link to its Commons description. The latter page also has a link to your Commons personal page, which has a link to your "Gallery" of all the pictures you ever uploaded.

Y'see, when you opened a Wikipedia account, you also got a Commons account. Also a dozen others, but you're unlikely to care about the others. This is because of a simplification campaign early in 2008, which, umm, brought complications. Oh, well, your Commons account is the one you should be using for pictures because it makes them widely available and findable for other editors, beside Wikipedians. I sometimes find good pix in Commons that weren't intended in the first place for Wikipedia but the author wanted everyone to have a crack at them.

In the daytime I'll paste a copy of this message into your Wikipedia Talk Page and your Commons Talk Page, unless you beat me to that. It's a little difficult now because I'm at a computer that has mail but not Web. Better to discuss these things in your Wiki talk pages, in hopes of someone butting in with something useful.

You can reply either here or in your Wikipedia talk page; I have both of them on my Watchlist and will see when I log in. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)