Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 June 11

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June 11

Improper category listings in article

Resolved

 –  – ukexpat (talk) 01:00, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

If I find several category tags in an article which are completely inappropriate for the article, do I just remove them and note why in the edit summary? Or do I have to go to a board somewhere and make a case for why they should be removed?

As a corollary question - if deleting the inappropriate category tags will leave the article with no associated categorization, is that okay? Or do I have to find a category that would be appropriate and leave it in the place of what is removed? Thanks. --Garyww67 ^{☎ ☸} 00:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

As to the first, be bold. Generally, for any edit that doesn't appear controversial, do it and then if someone reverts you discuss it. As to the second, it's up to you, but the more you can help, the better. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 00:42, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!--Garyww67 ^{☎ ☸} 00:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

using interwikis as sources

Resolved

Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29 clearly says that we are not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source. Where does it mention anything about interwikis? Debresser (talk) 01:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The concept of a "wiki" means that no Wiki can be considered a reliable source. Reliability requires editorial control; that is that material is vetted, edited, peer reviewed, or otherwise goes through an indepth process to ensure accuracy and reliability. The nature of all Wikis is that they are instantly changable and have zero editorial control. That is why Wikis cannot be considered reliable. Its no different in this regard than a web forum or a blog. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:25, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) When you say interwikis, may I assume you mean foreign language Wikipedias (and other Wikimedia projects)? If so, the link you provide says to avoid "self-published media" and includes "open wikis" in that list. All other language Wikipedias are open wikis. While it does have this specificity, we come to the same result without it. We should use "reliable sources", meaning "sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". That is certainly not true of en.Wikipedia in general, nor its foreign brethren (though much of our best content is fairly reliable). Note also that in general we favor secondary sources over tertiary source such as encyclopedias. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know the meaning of the term "open wikis", it turns out. Thank you. Debresser (talk) 02:34, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Booker T. Washington High School

How do I include a school that is not listed on the Booker T. Washington School page? 96.241.167.45 (talk) 03:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I added a heading - I assume this is the article that you are referring to. Edit the article to add the school to the list using similar formatting to the existing entries. – ukexpat (talk) 03:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

arch corses

wat is the difference between b.arch and b.tech arch corses —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.7.23 (talk) 05:25, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 2.8 million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen. If that is not fruitful, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. —teb728 t c 06:39, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

This page is for questions about editing Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 07:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Tool to find a Wikipedian's contributions to one article

Is there a tool that I can use to find a Wikipedian's (mine in particuler) contributions to one particular article? Using the article's edit history is not practical, because one that I am thinking of is very actively edited, and my edits started a few years ago. I don't see a way to filter my contributions or sort by page name. Finell (Talk) 05:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

This tool gives one's edit count for an article (just replace "Pennsylvania" with the article you want), but that's just your edit count for an article, if you want to see your contributions filtered, I'm not really sure how to do that. AlexiusHoratius 05:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You can also try User:AmiDaniel/WhodunitQuery, but not really what I think you want. Think there is a web tool for what you want, but can not find it now. --Stefan ^talk 06:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm adding User:AmiDaniel/WhodunitQuery to my tool box for other reasons (thanks!), but I'm still looking for a way to do what I originally asked, if anyone can suggest something. Finell (Talk) 18:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Sub Page

Resolved

Hello Fellow Wikipedians!

Losing my mind over a certain question. Any help would be appreciated.

I saved an article on my Userpage yesterday. I think I was supposed to use a Subpage instead.

Can't seem to find my way to a Subpage to enter the article information there.

Please help.

Note: The "Move" option does not appear either. I made 11 changes and have had the account for over 4 days.

Thank you.

- Mares

Maresborrego (talk) 07:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I moved the article to User:Maresborrego/Edward Paul Reyes for you; I assume that is the title where it should be? As for moving a page: The "Move" tab should be visible on top of the page, on the right side of the history tab. Personally i can only see 7 edits made trough this account, which could be the reason why you can not move a page yet. 3 more edits, and you should be a-ok to do this yourself :) Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 07:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

admission in engineering college

can i get admission in college of engineering and technology chandigarh in electronics as i have got 42229 rank in aieee. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.245.71.122 (talk) 10:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

This page is for questions about editing Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 10:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Please contact your preferred college or university. E Wing (talk) 10:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC

CITY College, Affiliated Institution of Sheffield, Thessaloniki-page deleted

Hello and good day!

I am registered under name Floropoulou at Wikipedia, and in the behalf of CITY College, Affiliated University of Sheffield, Thessaloniki I was in charge for main information about CITY College at Wikipedia.

I approached the page 2 weeks ago in order to see some information and everything was OK.

But now I can see that the page is not longer there, it has been deleted, but without any information nor any explanation.

Please can you help me with this issue in order to bring back the page of CITY College, Affiliated Institution of Sheffield, Thessaloniki? Please, be kind to reply me ASAP, because this is of high importance for our university.

Many thanks in advance and sorry for disturbing but this matter is very important for our University.

Best regards, Floropoulou —Preceding unsigned comment added by Floropoulou (talk • contribs) 10:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Basing myself on the deletion log, the page was deleted under the CSD guideline, section G11. This means that the page was deemed to be an advertisement for the subject, rather then being an encyclopedic article. Deletion under the CSD guideline implies that an article in a shape that would require a full rewrite of the article, rather then simple modifications to be compliant to our guidelines.

As for bringing the article back, i would suggest rewriting it in accordance to our policies, and in specific Notability, Verifiability and Neutral point of view guidelines. I also urge you to read WP:COI as your position gives you an inherent conflict of interest with the article's subject. Editing article's while having a CoI is strongly discouraged, and in some times even prohibited. I hope this helps, Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 11:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Signature help?

Resolved

I want to change the color of my signature. Right now it's this: Aditya ^α _ß . I want it to be in this colour: #000080. I've tried adding <font color="#000080"> and </font> at the end but it doesn't seem to work. Any idea why? Thanks. Aditya ^α _ß 12:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Use it inside the link, like this:

'''[[User:Aditya|<font color="#000080">Aditya</font>]]'''

Which will produce: Aditya

Hope that helps :) Chamal ^talk 12:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

It makes the code huge, but it works! Thanks for the help. Aditya^α _ß 12:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Tom Van Flandern?

I tried to close this case as it had had no activity since April. Did I close it correctly? Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk | ☮✌☮ 13:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. I would just leave a note in the comments section indicating why you closed it. TNXMan 13:26, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Classification as a stub?

I am working on a page with the subject of a school as a subpage of my userpage. One time when I went to edit this page, I noticed it had been classified as a stub. Is this allowed by procedure? Or, to put it in a less confusing, and more general way, Are articles under construction in user subpages allowed to be classified as regular articles? The page in question is here. Poker5463 (talk) 13:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Such tags should be regarded as hints as to problems existing with the current version, rather than as condemnations. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

But should they be added to pages in user space? I think not, because if they are they add the subpage to the stub category and that isn't appropriate for user space pages. – ukexpat (talk) 14:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Ukexpat has the exact thing I'm talking about, but I was not sure whether or not this is right. this is aarticle, but not in the main space. I am not sure at all on this discussion. It seems to be as if it is an article, but it is not in the article page for this topic. Poker5463 (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC) - sorry, i meant that Ukexpat has the major topic. I am attempting to discern, from users more experienced than I, whether or not this tag belong's on my user subpage. Poker5463 (talk) 15:22, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

User pages are distinct from articles. If a particular message template and its corresponding category only pertain to articles, then I would think a subpage should not display the template nor categorize into the category. The idea for the category is to guide other editors to articles that need work, whereas the point of making a user subpage is to allow one user to work on something for a while before opening it up to other users. The template in question appears to be {{school-stub}}. WP:STUB says: "A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information." As a second issue, I would say User:Poker5463/Dutchess Day School in its current revision is already looking too long to be a stub. The goal on Wikipedia is for stub templates to be only temporary, so you would remove the template if your page was a real article when it grew to start class - which is about where it looks to be now. See {{grading scheme}}. --Teratornis (talk) 19:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure if the tag even belongs there in the first place. Should I bring this up with the project, or is this the right place, or should I go somewhere else? Thanks to all who have helped so far. Poker5463 ^Repeater 21:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Lyrics Pages

I have been curious as to why there are no links from songs on wiki to the full and correct lyrics...is there a legal reason for this or it has just not been done? If it can be done how should I/all the other users of wiki go about correcting this. It seems that as useful as wiki is for looking up information on artists/songs the correct lyrics should also be kept here.Ewrenn256 (talk) 14:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Copyright, mostly. WP:LYRICS has more detail, but basically it's copyright. In cases where copyright has expired Wikisource would be a better location, with a link to Wikisource in the article here in Wikipedia.

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 14:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You are free to put external links in that direct to a page that does not violate copyright, for instance, some artists post the lyrics to their songs on their offical site's, so its fine to link to these, but otherwise external links to copyright violations should be avoided. All the best Spitfire^Tally-ho! 14:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

where to comment

Where should I go to comment on an admin's deletion of a user page and history? Thanks. --Rajah (talk) 15:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest discussing the issue with the admin in question first. If you still have questions, there is a place to review deletions or an admin's noticeboard. TNXMan 15:42, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot for searching

Where can I find a bot that only grabs pages and searches text inside? For example, I have a list of 50 articles, and I want to see which ones contain „string”. Thanks Ark25 (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that WP:BOTREQ can help you with this - it is actually an really easy task to program a bot with those capacities. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 16:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Romanian Map

I've used the Romanian map to do a short movie for my College partners:

[1]

Don't know if it's useful but the movie can be remade if someone finds it useful. Thanks! --TudorTulok (talk) 17:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you use a non-freely licensed song in the soundtrack? --Teratornis (talk) 18:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Both music fragments are composed by me. Does it change something? --TudorTulok (talk) 19:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:EL says Wikipedia should not link to external pages that contain copyright violations. If you plan to distribute creative works for other people to use freely, see Creative Commons to familiarize yourself with how to license your works to make your permission explicit. Otherwise by default everything is under copyright of its creator(s) and other people are unsure of their legal basis to re-use someone else's work. Incidentally, the video you made appears to use the map in a purely artistic way. However, Wikipedia needs more animated maps to display encyclopedic content. For example, see:

• File:United States installed wind power capacity animation 561px.gif
• Commons:Category:Animated maps of the United States
• Commons:Category:Animated maps

Using animated maps to display statistical data for a nation or region may seem somewhat boring, but this is an encyclopedia, so boring is what we do. --Teratornis (talk) 19:29, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You may find these other pages interesting, or not:

• Commons:Commons:Meet our illustrators
• Commons:Commons:Meet our photographers
• Commons:Commons:Audio and video requests
• Commons:Help:Converting video

--Teratornis (talk) 19:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all these, I am clarified with the utility of my map show. --TudorTulok (talk) 23:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Checking articles created by user

Is there any way to get full lists of articles created by Wikipedia users (for example by me)? Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

There sure is. Just follow this link. TNXMan 18:55, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! But then, how to make it not truncate the list to just the 100 most recent ones, even with redirects excluded? Mikael Häggström (talk) 04:59, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

creating a page

I created a page, or so I thought, and now it isn't showing up anywhere...what did I do wrong? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.158.173.66 (talk) 19:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

If you created an article you must have a user account, so log into that account and the article should be listed in you user contributions, unless it has been speedily deleted. What was the name of the article? – ukexpat (talk) 19:10, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussing further with user on talk page. – ukexpat (talk) 20:19, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Why they doing git? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonyisajew (talk • contribs) 15:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

{{Cell wall disruptive antibiotics}}

Would a template expert please take a look at this one - there are # characters scattered around it and I can't figure out if they are supposed to be there or are editing errors. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 19:18, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

There is a legend at the bottom of the template that gives a meaning for the # character. Perhaps moving the legend line to the top of the template would make this confusion less likely. --Teratornis (talk) 19:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I made a suggestion on the template talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:47, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, OK now it makes sense. There must be a better character to use than #, maybe an asterisk? Heading to talk page to suggest. – ukexpat (talk) 20:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Bakugan Editing

Hello - I work for Spin Master the maker of Bakugan. We have being trying to edit the Bakugan Battle Brawler Wikipedia page and update it with the newest information but, for some reason it keeps getting taken down - it alerts me with "edit conflict". We are much reliable than who ever is doing this so if you could get back to me and let me know how to stop this that would be great.

Thanks so much,

Campbell Courteau Public Relations Assistant Spinmaster Ltd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spinningtoys (talk • contribs) 20:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

An edit conflict is when two people try to edit a page at the same time, the user you have had a conflict with did not do so on purpose, see Help:Edit conflict if you want to learn more. However, we generally strongly advise that you do not edit articles pertaining to a company that you work for or that you founded, please re-introduce the material after reading: WP:COI, WP:SPAM and WP:BFAQ, if you are still satisfied that your additions are unbiased and that they are fully referenced you may read them, thank you, all the best Spitfire^Tally-ho! 20:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:COI. The best thing to do is make suggestions for improvements on the article's talk page to gain consensus from other editors. – ukexpat (talk) 20:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

As ukexpat says, if you are unsure of the edits, you can suggest them on the articles talk page, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 20:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears that you have a conflict of interest with the subject. Wikipedia is not about promoting a product or event. It looks to me like that is why your edits have been reverted by another editor. Edits must be verifiable, written from a neutral point of view, and reliably sourced. I hope this answers your question. Wperdue (talk) 20:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)wperdue

PDF won't appear

I tried to get a PDF version of National Register of Historic Places listings in Champaign County, Ohio by clicking the "PDF version" in the toolbox of the page, but time and time again I get an error message:

POST request failed

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search The POST request to http://pdf1.wikimedia.org:8080/mw-serve/ failed (Operation timed out after 3000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received).

Return to Main Page.

The first few words, "POST request failed", are a header, in the same spot and format as "Wikipedia:Help desk" is here. Any idea what I can do to make this work? I'm about to be out of town for a while without Internet access (thus was I trying to download the PDF), so if anyone has a reply, please leave it at my talk page. Nyttend (talk) 20:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I should note that I've been having trouble with PDFs in general — every time I try to download a certain book, it won't work. See details at my unanswered VP/T request. Nyttend (talk) 20:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Bug submitted as bug 19167http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19167. Glacier Wolf 00:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)