Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 November 29

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November 29

Liquid-proof headsets

Given the popularity of the Gatorade shower in American college football, I wonder if electronics manufacturers routinely produce liquid-proof headsets? I'm suspecting that the interior components of electronic headsets would be damaged by contact with even a tiny amount of water with high levels of electrolytes. Everything I'm finding on Google is either outright false positives or swimmer-oriented headphones. Nyttend (talk) 05:03, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd imagine that they might be okay given that coaches and such are out in the rain during games. Dismas|^(talk) 16:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It depends on the level of water/liquid they're exposed to as well... I accidentally submerged my headphones in a cup of water the other day - they were a little feint straight after but by next day they are as good as new... gazhiley 14:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

pages

Hello,is it correct that wikipedia has 25 million pages including all languages? Also,is an autobiography a reliable source? Atlantic306 (talk) 15:42, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

See meta:List of Wikipedias, which says that there are 36,907,975 articles in the 291 Wikipedias. However, that's just articles; there are 141,603,046 pages of all types (including 37,897,582 just here at en:wp), including redirects, talk pages, etc. Nyttend (talk) 16:10, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks,that's impressiveAtlantic306 (talk) 16:32, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Also, to answer your second question, it depends. You can see what constitutes a reliable source at WP:RS. If the person says that they can transport matter with their minds, that's going to need a better source. If they say that their birthday was on a Tuesday, the autobiography is probably good enough. Dismas|^(talk) 16:44, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

ThanksAtlantic306 (talk) 17:35, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Specifically, an autobiography is a good reference for the fact that the person believes such-and-such - but, by itself, is not good evidence that they are correct in that belief. Wikipedia is generally OK with a lack of good references for facts that are unlikely to be disputed (eg "The sky is blue") - but anything even slightly open to doubt needs a solid reference - and preferably more than one. So in Dismas' example, the autobiography is a good reference for the fact "John claims that he can transport matter with his mind" - but is not a reference at all for the fact "John can transport matter with his mind", which his ability is not confirmed by the autobiography and is highly likely to be disputed. On the other hand, "John was born on a Tuesday" is rather unlikely to be disputed - so the autobiography is an adequate reference - but if John is known to habitually lie about his age, then "Tuesday" is disputed and the autobiography is not an acceptable reference. SteveBaker (talk)

However, note that many people do lie about their age, which involves changing their birth date (and perhaps day of the week, incidentally). Also, a person can't directly remember their own birth date, so must rely on other sources, which might also be unreliable. One common deception was to change a birth date so as to be just after the wedding, or perhaps 9 months after. StuRat (talk) 14:13, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

This was the case with my uncle. When his parents had both died we discovered he was actually one year older than was believed, to hide the fact that my grandmother was heavily pregnant at the altar. μηδείς (talk) 20:44, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Question about Second-Order Copeland Method:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland%27s_method
This wikipedia article says: "The second-order Copeland method uses the sum of the Copeland scores of the defeated opponents as the means of determining a winner."
Is this right?
On the tenesee example menphis won no battle against other cities, and so defeated no one, so the "sum of the Copeland scores of the defeated opponents" will be zero, nashville as some example defeated everyone and their scores are -3, -1 and +1, so nashville final score here will be -3.
Anyway by wining against nashville you get -3 points, some amount of points you wont be able to receive later by wining other battles (and so having a score higher than 0).
This method of voting doenst sounds right. What I am missing here?201.79.68.82 (talk) 16:48, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I think this question might be better on the Mathematics desk, as I've not been able to find a simple explanation of the system on-line, only learned papers written for mathematicians. However, this and this seem to indicate that the "second-order" comparison is only used to break ties, not to determine the initial result. If someone _does_ understand the system (and can explain it in simple terms), this is a great opportunity to improve our article... Tevildo (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2015 (UTC)