Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 July 20

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July 20

Detect a redirect

Is there any way to detect when a page was reached from a redirect, and then transclude a template with different parameters based on that? The page is reachable from a few different names, and it would be consistent to show the embedded template slightly different for each. Thanks! Anterras (talk) 01:48, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I would not think so. A definitive answer could be found at WP:VPT, but I believe that a page is displayed without regard for what link was used to reach that page. In principle the information is available because, for example, Sasquatch shows Bigfoot with the note "(Redirected from Sasquatch)" at the top. However, there is no way a template can access that, I think. One issue is that pages are cached and readers see the html from cache. Johnuniq (talk) 09:46, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know whether this is always true, but I often find that the URL at the top of the screen includes the page you were redirected from. And whether that is useful information or not, I couldn't say.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:45, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

@Anterras: Indeed it does, but that still does help in detecting whether it is a redirect from inside the page code. As far as I know there is no Magic word that has this function. Possibly someone could write a Lua module for you to do this. There is a variable ("wgRedirectedFrom") set to the redirect source page. So one could make this determination in javascript with something like: if (wgTitle == wgRedirectedFrom) {<thing to do if true>} else {<thing to do if false>}. But since javascript cannot be used in article space, you could do this only for your own personal display of the page. I don't know enough about Lua to say how to write a module, or even if it is possible, as Johnuniq says, you would do better to ask at VPT.

Anyway, it strikes me as a bad idea to display pages differently according to where they were redirected from. That could end up with enormous confusion especially when problems are reported. If the page needs to be displayed differently for different redirects it probably needs to actually be different pages with different titles. A better approach might be to transclude the basepage onto (what was) the redirect page followed (or preceded) by whatever it is that needs to be different. We can probably advise you better if you explain the specific problem you are trying to solve. SpinningSpark 21:59, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

This user script will show if a link is to a redirect, User:Anomie/linkclassifier, if that will help. Mlpearc (open channel) 21:09, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all the good info. It looks like the best thing is to not try to do this, since it's not already built-in. Transcluding the basepage like SpinningSpark suggested seems like a good alternative, and I think I'll try that. Anterras (talk) 22:46, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

JOY OF COOKING

PHILLIP SMITH SHOWN AS SAXOPHONIST. WHEN I PRESSED HIS NAME SUBSEQUENT FILE SHOWED HIM AS TRUMPETER.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.9.186.241 (talk) 03:05, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me, but could you rephrase that into an actual question? Also, you don't need to use all capital letters. Dustin (talk) 03:06, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

It appears that you are talking about our article titled Joy of Cooking (band). (That final word is important. There is, not surprisingly, a book of that name.) I suggest you make you comment on the Talk page of that article, rather than here. And when you do, please don't type in all capital letters. On the Internet that is quite hard to read, and can be perceived as shouting. Also, please remember to sign your posts. HiLo48 (talk) 03:14, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you are right in that the link in the article on the band is to the wrong Philip Smith - it links to a former Principal Trumpet with the New York Philharmonic. As we don't have an article on the musician in the band, and are unlikely to create one (I doubt that he meets our notability criteria), I'll remove the misleading link. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:16, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention — removals by non-administrators

I sometimes notice listings on WP:UAA, particularly in the bot-originated section which when looked at by a human are obviously not policy violations. Is it OK for me to remove such listings myself to help with the backlog, or are only administrators allowed to remove listings? Thanks. RationalBlasphemist (Speak) 04:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

It should be ok, but I suggest you ask at the UAA talk page first, there may be some technical tasks that need carrying out, such as category removal (see Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Instructions) that make it more complicated than simply deleting the report. Make sure you fully understand the UAA policy before taking on this task. SpinningSpark 09:05, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I'll ask there. RationalBlasphemist (Speak) 09:22, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Faulty plagiarism

I am an employee of Ananey Communications. I was put in charge of creating a Wiki page for a show Ananey produces called "Street Food Around the World." I have yet to submit the article, but I have uploaded it as a draft-and the CorenSearchBot popped up and said it was reviewing the content for plagiarized material from an unaccredited article (http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=280048 )and then subsequently deleted it. Ananey owns the show and owns the rights to the show and because I work directly for them we found this message concerning since it is our content. The website has seemed to intercept the information word for word from something we have published in the past. I was wondering what we could do about this? I do not want to cite them 1. Because they are clearly a spam website looking to get credited when they themselves have plagiarized content and 2. Because we own the rights to the show and produce the show so we should be able to protect/publish our own words.

The page said it was deleted and this is inexcusable seeing as the article that it says we plagiarized is not a legitimate website!

Please let me know what can be done about this before I submit the article for review.

Thanks, Lisa — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lissheff (talk • contribs) 07:09, 20 July 2014

Please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest — editors on Wikipedia are not allowed to edit articles that they have a conflict of interest in. Being that you are an employee of the company you wish to write about, that constitutes a conflict of interest. RationalBlasphemist (Speak) 07:15, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, you are right to say that the content of the thetvdb.com page is illegally plagiarised from some official page of your employer. Not surprisingly, our bot failed to realise that.

But disregarding the tvdb page, if some impartial editor creates a Wikipedia article about your employer's show, they will not be allowed to include content which is copied from the official page, as that would be a breach of copyright (as well, probably, as unacceptably promotional content). Maproom (talk) 09:30, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Text which is similar to that on an existing website is assumed to be copyrighted because usually it is. Some websites provide a license which allows reuse here, but that is rare and unlikely in this case. Copyright is a complex business and it's hard to make much sense of WP:C, but it has the story. In principle it is possible for someone who owns the copyright for some material to make that material available for use here, but for a case like this that is unlikely. An article here has to be written from scratch. Johnuniq (talk) 09:36, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Lisa. Leaving aside the conflict of interest (which means that your employers have given you a task which it is almost impossible for you to carry out), there are two different reasons why using material directly from your website is unlikely to be satisfactory. The first is the issue of copyright which has already appeared. The fact that some other site may already be infringing your copyright is irrelevant: Wikipedia will not accept text in which anybody has copyright, unless the copyright owner explicitly releases it not just for use on Wikipedia but under a licence at least as liberal as CC-BY-SA; so your company would either have to release it publically on your website, or send a message to Wikipedia as described at donating copyright materials. But even if you did all that, it is unlikely that material from your website would be appropriate in tone or content for a Wikipedia article. A company's website is quite properly partisan and promotional. Wikipedia articles are required to be neither.

If you think your company's show merits a Wikipedia article (which is entirely a question of whether it has been written about in reliable sources unconnected with your company, and not in the slightest to do with your company's wishes), then your best course is to assemble those reliable sources, and place a request at requested articles, so that an uninvolved editor may, if they choose, create such an article. --ColinFine (talk) 09:59, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Lissheff: I think a misspelling of your user name may have interfered with attempts to contact you. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:53, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

It is not correct that people with a conflict of interest are not allowed to edit articles. But they are discouraged from doing so because they might not be capable of writing with a neutral point of view, or they might intentionally write the article in the way their employers want. Someone with a conflict of interest can add information that is not controversial or change or delete incorrect information. What they certainly can't do is delete sourced negative information.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:51, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Message

I have received a message from Wikipellia about removing content from an article December 2013. I have never read the article. I have never edited any posts or articles. I am confused why this was sent to me.

Hello, ‎72.161.162.68. You are editing without using a Wikipedia account. This means that the only way of identifying you is by your IP address. Unfortunately, your IP address can change and then another address that was previously used by someone else is given to you. Or, alternatively, you may be using a computer that someone else was previously using to edit Wikipedia. In any case, if you have never edited this article, it's likely that the message was meant for someone else. If you make a Wikipedia account and log in before editing, you won't have this problem again. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Unexplained deletion

I cannot understand why the page for "David Bensoussan" has been deleted. Is there a way to put it back?

Dr David Bensoussan Montreal — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.27.252.212 (talk • contribs)

• The article was deleted under the Proposed Deletion process, with a rationale of "non-notable. Fails WP:PROF". Articles deleted via that process can be restored on request Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion, but having reviewed the deleted content, I should warn you that you will need to improve the article to meet the Notability guidelines, of which WP:PROF is the most applicable. Failure to meet the notability standards may result in it being deleted again after a discussion. Also, check out WP:COI and Wikipedia:Autobiography before making your request. Monty₈₄₅ 14:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Greek speaker needed to check change of etymology on bruxism

• [1]

Previous etymology appeared in a few sources, although no inline citation. I do not know if the change is correct or not. Please clarify, thanks. 94.196.107.143 (talk) 14:56, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Multiple Incorrect Information About Me

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The following article contains major inaccuracies:

David Tillinghast

It appears that someone has combined multiple biographies and artwork from the web into a single article. This has recently caused embarrassment when this wiki article was used by conference organizers to present a biography and artwork to introduce me as a keynote speaker at a national conference.

Below is a comprehensive biography of mine for comparison:

“David Tillinghast graduated from Art Center College of Design in 1985 with a BFA in Illustration, Awarded With Distinction.

He has been a regular contributor to many of the major newspapers and magazines around the United States, and his work has appeared within the marketing materials for corporations such as Visa, Freddie Mac, and Harvard University. In a highly prolific twenty-nine year career, he has worked extensively in most major markets within the Illustration industry, including Advertising, Editorial, Book Publishing, Design Collateral, and Corporate Illustration.

His work has been selected for inclusion in industry publications including Communication Arts Illustration, Graphis Design, Graphis Logo, HOW Self-Promotion, Print's Best Booklets and Brochures, Print's Best Illustration and Photography, Print Regional Design Annual, Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, Society of Illustrators New York, and Step-By-Step Graphics. He has also appeared in galleries around Los Angeles. He is currently an Associate Professor and lead advisor for the Art Center College of Design’s Illustration department.

His association with Designmatters, Art Center’s social impact department, has taken him to the United Nations as a delegate for a project supporting the Millennium Development Goals, and their most recent collaboration, Uncool: The Anti-Gun Violence project, produced a series of children’s books that were adopted into local Public Libraries.

He is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently for Art Direction from the AIGA for Mark and the Jellybean Monster by Ariel Lee, which was selected as one of the fifty best books of 2012.

Partial List of Clients: Time, Inc., Business Week, Fortune Magazine, Texas Monthly, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Bantam Publishing, Viking/Penguin, Harper/Collins, McGraw-Hill Inc, 3COM, IBM, Freddie Mac, Hewlett-Packard, Visa, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Nortel, Solectron, Xerox Corporation, Harvard Business School, Vanderbilt University.” Just a further head’s up: I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and lived in New Zealand for a time as a child. I have been a resident of the greater Los Angeles area since 1982. I have no children. I was married for nearly twenty years, but my late wife passed away in 2011 from breast cancer. My mother is one of the last surviving Air Force Service Pilots, whom received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.

Can someone correct this article?

David Tillinghast Los Angeles, Ca — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dtillinghast (talk • contribs)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Italic title

I'm trying to make the full title of The Real Thing: In Performance (1964–1981) appear in italics. At present "(1964–1981)" isn't italicized, presumably because parentheses are read as disambiguators (e.g. "(album)") rather than part of the title; in this case though it's part of the title and should be in italics. {{italictitle|all=yes}} doesn't seem to be working. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:52, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Only the latest {{italictitle}} template takes effect, and there is one contained in the infobox. That superseded the one you added. I moved it below the infobox to fix that. Huon (talk) 20:39, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 23:14, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Paul Nicholson ( Darts Player)

How can I upload a picture for his infobox.

Resolved via IRC: Images should be released under a free license such as the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License. If such an image has been found, it can be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons via their Upload Wizard. Huon (talk) 20:39, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Creating a draft to work on an existing article

Hi all,

I have just copied the article NP-complete to Draft:NP-complete to work on it. It seems however that it's not the right way to do this kind of thing, since CorenSearchBot has detected it as a suspicious copy of the NP-complete article. What is the best practice in this case?

Thanks! Pintoch (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Is there a specific reason why you don't simply edit the article in article space, which will maintain the history? If you edit the article in draft space, then there will be history merge issues. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Resolved via IRC: The best practice is to edit the live article instead, both to ease collaboration with other editors and to avoid the licensing issues inherent in copying within Wikipedia. Huon (talk) 20:39, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Spam-like entry on my user talk page

A short while ago I received an e-mail message from the English Wikipedia, containing some commercial text, telling me that my user talk page was changed. It turned out to be a text, offering me a free Toyota Aygo car because I changed something a page about this car and the related Peugeot 107 and Citroën C1. I removed this entire nonsensical entry.

First of all, except for a pretty long "wikipause", I am mainly working on another Wikipedia language version, and only occasionally on the English one. So I am not quite sure whether this is the correct place to complain about this obviously unwanted input.

It does not seem to be real spam, as author's own authoring history is very limited.

I would suggest that this user be warned to stop this kind of unwanted editing.

HHahn (Talk) 20:04, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

It was a Wikipedia:WikiLove message, I'm sure made in good faith, if a little weird. He is not offering to give you an actual car. Яehevkor ✉ 20:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, that he did not actually intend to give me a car, was obvious. But to me it suggests that the writer is a sort of schoolboy who does not yet understand very well what an "encyclopaedia" is. He seems to be pretty new here, and if he repeats this sort of behaviour, I guess he should better be told to stop this nonsense.

HHahn (Talk) 15:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

How do you retrieve a Wikipedia page using its Page ID number?

How retrieve a Wikipedia page using it Page ID number?

For example, I have a list of Page Ids: 768770 20258156

How do I search by Page ID and retrieve the Wikipedia page?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.238.25.141 (talk • contribs) 21:10, 20 July 2014‎ (UTC)

• One way is to use the following form of URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=768770 Just substitute the page ID you want for the last bit. Rwessel (talk) 21:55, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

• Rwessel's answer is correct if the number you have is indeed a "Page ID". However, there's a different kind of number associated with articles as well: the "Revision ID", which uniquely identifies a specific revision of a specific article (or template, or other resource). If the number you have is actually a Revision ID, then you can use the same URL as above, except that "curid" should be replaced with "oldid". Or if you're already at the Wikipedia website, you can use "Special:Permalink/________", where the Revision ID number goes in the blank. For example, the two numbers you provided above—if we assume they're Revision IDs—can be viewed here (#768770) and here (#20258156). For more information, please see the "Help:Permanent link" article. — Jaydiem (talk) 01:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

The first answer seems more likely as they translate to the pages Menzerath's law and George Kingsley Zipf, both concerned with statistical laws related to linguistics (Zipf is of course the discoverer of the eponymous Zipf's law). The old revisions on the other hand are completely unrelated, one is not even an article. SpinningSpark 01:43, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Email address

I'd like to register my email address, but i never seem to get the confirmaton notice. RWCasinoKid (talk) 21:35, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@RWCasinoKid: Are you going to the "Preferences" button on the top right of the screen and adding an email? I believe that your email should appear at the bottom of Special:Preferences, if done correctly. Piguy101 (talk) 00:28, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

You might also want to check your spam/junk mail folder. If your spam filter is set to aggressively delete suspected spam, you might want to try turning it off for a while, or add wikipedia.org and wikimedia.org to your spam whitelist. SpinningSpark 07:52, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

If googlemail think wikimedia is a spammer, I'll try it out. RWCasinoKid (talk) 08:15, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I've checked the spam folder and the WM confirmation code isn't there either, maybe you can help me with that. RWCasinoKid (talk) 08:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, I've switched to yahoo mail and it worked there and now I'm confirmed. RWCasinoKid (talk) 08:33, 21 July 2014 (UTC)