Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 April 7

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April 7

How to add external link wiht good information?

I would like to share a relevant information with all wiki users about call center industry. Please have a look on both of links... Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_centre External link: http://www.callcentersindia.com/call_centers_news.php

Please assist me for the same.

Ajay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.174.5.2 (talk) 03:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Please read our guidelines: WP:RS, WP:EL, and WP:ADVERT. You may wish to use Wikicompany, which accepts articles about any legally incorporated company in the world. --Teratornis (talk) 04:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

People born in 1926

What percent of people born in 1926 are still alive today? 76.17.183.82 (talk) 03:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea, but I tried {{Google}}ing your question: What percent of people born in 1926 are still alive today? and that led me to a site I had not seen before, WikiAnswers. I'm guessing you haven't seen it yet either, otherwise you would have asked over there. As Jerry Pournelle might have once said, "Recommended." You could also try asking on our Reference desk. This Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia, not general knowledge questions, although depending on who is watching the Help desk at a given time, someone might take a stab at just about any question here. --Teratornis (talk) 04:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

commercial self promotional edits

As a watcher of recent changes, I try to look beyond the obvious vandalism. I occasionally come across changes that seem to be commercial self promotions such as this change. Are these appropriate? Should they be flagged or removed? I'm aware of the spam link, but not sure if it applied to this type of addition. I'd like a little guidance please. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not appropriate. I removed it, and will warn the user. Grsz11 04:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I would say revert with a custom edit summary, then warn the user. -- Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 04:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. As a relative newbie, I want to be careful not to overstep the bounds of good judgment. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

How to correct date format?

I noticed some incorrect date formats on the page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19 near the bottom, for example "Verified 2008-08-03" which does not look right since this is only April, so apparently it should be 2008-03-08. The edit form does not present that text for correction. What is the proper way to fix such dates, or who to contact about fixing them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Wise (talk • contribs) 05:45, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I fixed it - you can see the changes I made here: [1]. Unfortunately, those dates were inside references, which meant I had to look through the text of the entire article to find where each reference was defined (which I did in a text editor). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 06:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Your diff shows your text editor didn't keep some special characters in interlanguage links. I have fixed it. I once did the same thing with an old text editor to a couple of articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I should have checked. Funny, since UltraEdit is pretty good at a lot of other things. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 23:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

How to nominate picture from Commons for Featured Picture

I asked this question at the FPC talk page, but have found that policy talk pages seem to be ignored on Wikipedia. Can someone here answer?

I would like to nominate (or someone else can) an image that is in a Wikipedia article that is a Commons image. When I get to the step of editing the page to add the FPC blurb, it says the page does not exist, because it is in commons. What do I do? Does transclude just mean put it in squiggly braces? --Blechnic (talk) 06:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

That´s the general idea of transclusion. To substitute, put subst: in the squiggly braces before it. George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 07:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Copy text from WIKIpedia in order to use it on my website

I am creating a catalog of software systems and sometimes need parts of text from WIKIpedia. Is it valid to copy small parts of text for use on my site? Do I have to rewrite it in order to use it? 79.181.123.3 (talk) 07:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is licensed under a GNU Free Document License [2] which states that to text can be reproduced under certain circumstances. Please read the license to find out if it applies to your project, if not you might need to reword the text you're attempting to use.--Torchwood Who? (talk) 07:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

use of colors

example, faulkner's short stories, why listed in black, red or blue?? 08:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean links?

In Wikipedia, blue are good links.

Red are links to articles which don't exist.

Black is simply text.

Other websites have their own colour schemes set by their creators.

--grawity ^{talk / PGP} 09:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

links

how to connect links? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.126.39 (talk) 08:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

You can link something by putting square brackets before and after the word like [[this]]. More information here. -- 194.75.236.69 (talk) 09:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

spanish page wanted in english

im not really sure if im doing it wrong but ive tried everything. i was searching for a spainsh actor (juan jose ballesta) ...it seems his page is found when its in spanish but it cant be found when its in english.. anyway. i visited the spanish page and looked for a something that said transalate into english. but it couldnt be found. so what should do? 213.42.23.73 (talk) 08:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess you could try using BabelFish ([3]) or another computer translator to roughly translate the page in English. Other than that maybe you can request its translation since the English version hasn't been created yet. -- 194.75.236.69 (talk) 09:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems you are describing this article on the Spanish Wikipedia: es:Juan José Ballesta (see: Help:Interlanguage links to see how I made that link). We can use the {{Google translation}} template to generate a machine translation into English:

• Translate Juan José Ballesta from the Spanish Wikipedia to English

The result is not brilliant prose, but it's more understandable to me than Spanish. --Teratornis (talk) 01:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

commodity tracking system

want to know about the literature review concerning food allocation either for relief or donation.thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.255.43.5 (talk) 11:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried the humanities section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

help pls

how do i shot web? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.2.175.71 (talk) 13:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "shot web"? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not a serious question, it's an Internet meme. Leebo ^T/C 13:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. In that case: I dunno lol.[4] PrimeHunter (talk) 15:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It is amazing how inventive people can be when it comes to wasting time. Imagine if all that brainpower went into mitigating the effects of peak oil, for example. Then civilization might not collapse. --Teratornis (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

next 2010 football world cup

next football world cup —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.169.164.30 (talk) 13:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

The 2010 FIFA World Cup will take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in South Africa. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Georgia On My Mind

Hello everyone

I'm thinking about creating the article Georgia On My Mind in the Portuguese Wikipedia, but i have doubt. Can i put the full lyrics in the article or not? Maybe i can, but i'm not sure, so i'm asking. Thank you. -- Bluedenim^talk 13:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

No, the lyrics are copyrighted; that's a copyright violation, big-time. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:05, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

What's the status of the lyrics in the article here? Leebo ^T/C 14:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

They were a copyright violation, and have been removed. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. -- Bluedenim^talk 14:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Indicating Ancestry in BLP articles

Is there a policy to help with questions such as (for example):

If famous person XXXXX was born in America and his parents were born in America, but one of his grandparents was from Scotland, should the person be included in the category Scottish-American?

Wanderer57 (talk) 14:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Unless the subject is described in a reliable source (rather than a gossip rag) as Scottish-American, or as self-identifying as Scottish-American, I would say no. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:05, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Since biologists generally agree that the most recent common ancestor of all living humans lived in Africa, every American can claim to be African-American, but most Americans do not reach that far back in their ancestry when concocting labels. --Teratornis (talk) 18:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Can I change my username?

Can I change my username? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pericone (talk • contribs) 14:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

If it's important to you that your contributions remain with you, you can go to Wikipedia:Changing username and request a change. If not, you can simply create a new account. Leebo ^T/C 14:21, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Where did the archive go?

I'm two months behind but this is always fun to read.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

They didn't go anywhere, I don't think. Though someone did blank the the main archives page and one of the pages from January today. Leebo ^T/C 15:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Problem solved, at least for me. I went to the archive from before October 2006, and clicked where it said to go for more recent archives.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Explaining red-linked terms

If an unusual term is a red link, rather than having a page describing it, should you explain the meaning in brackets? Obviously it would be best to create the page but I am trying to familiarise myself with style guidelines (which I already have a good understanding of but I can´t find this bit anywhere). --George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 16:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

No. The page will quickly become bloated if every unusual term is defined inside the article. The link should be made, which will give others the incentive of creating the article. If it is just a term (and not a subject that requires an article), you can link it to wiktionary instead of wikipedia where there are many terms defined. -- kainaw™ 16:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

For finding an author of a poem

Hi, let's look at a hypothetical situation. Joe Bloggs knows the first line (or title) of a poem, but not the author. He wants to find more info at Wikipedia about the poem or its author. He searches for the poem, but gets no relevant results. What can be done to help him? FYI the poem is My Heart's In The Highlands which I swear was by Robert Burns but I can't find any sources that say so at Wikipedia or Wikisource. --Kjoonlee 16:21, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have full texts of poems, as that is not part of our purpose. I would suggest looking elsewhere, such as various online quotation dictionaries. (And that is by Burns, incidentally.) --Orange Mike | Talk 16:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC) whose folk were frae the Lallans

Thanks. :) OK, full texts are better off elsewhere, but what about titles? --Kjoonlee 16:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Again, Wikipedia's not a search engine; in fact, our search function is notoriously one of our weakest features. (When I do a search within Wikipedia, I do it from Google's "Advance Search" feature.) I always advise using your search engine of choice, first with the supposed title or long quote in quotations; then without. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

For something like this, I suggest asking at the Reference desk. Folks there might recognize it. -- Kesh (talk) 17:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I know Wikipedia's search is weak. What I'm asking is what can we do to provide info that the wikisearch program can grasp. --Kjoonlee 17:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

(undent)Now that the Wikimedia Foundation has some money, maybe Wikipedia will finally get a decent search feature. In the meantime, I suggest searching Wikipedia with Google. See {{Google custom}} for some examples. Learning to search means learning to use various search tools, and also it means learning where to look for various kinds of information. Wikipedia, thus far, is not trying to be a comprehensive directory of everything, but only what is "encyclopedic." An encyclopedia would probably not contain the full text of all an author's poems, or even all the titles of that author's poems. A search strategy I often use is:

1. Search Wikipedia with Google; if that fails, as often it does, then:
2. Search the Web with Google

Since Wikipedia is whatever its users decide it should be, the definition of what belongs here tends to change slowly with time, usually in the direction of including more material. Ultimately, Wikipedia might contain everything that can be reliably sourced, but that isn't nearly the case now. Another point that relates to your question of how to increase an article's visibility to the built-in MediaWiki search feature is to create redirects from letter case variations and alternate spellings of article titles. --Teratornis (talk) 18:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I know Wikipedia isn't a repository for everything and anything, but Wikipedia does include discographies: Category:Discographies. I've concluded that poems should be treated similarly as well. --Kjoonlee 19:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, the more comprehensive Wikipedia is, the better, because WP:NOT#PAPER. From my reading of the history of Wikipedia, many of the content restrictions in WP:NOT got put in early, when Wikipedia had few users and needed to focus their efforts. Today we have a lot more users and the number continues to grow, so I can't imagine any direction but upward for the total content here. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to see the quality trending upward everywhere, but we'll get there eventually. --Teratornis (talk) 01:05, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Question

If somebody vandalize some Wikimedia project and get banned indefinetely from editing, will his/her IP address also get banned indefinetely? --88.113.132.153 (talk) 16:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

When a user account is blocked, the IP address may be autoblocked, but I believe this only lingers for 2 days. After that, the IP is no longer autoblocked. Banning is different and doesn't relate to technical restrictions. Leebo ^T/C 16:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I may also be remembering this incorrectly, so if anyone wants to correct me, go right ahead. ;) Leebo ^T/C 16:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

We rarely indef block IPs, as most IPs get handed out to different people (known as a Shared IP address). If the vandalism is coming from a fixed IP (usually a school or a business), indef blocks can happen, but are still considered a last resort. Usually if a specific user account is blocked, their IP is not blocked for this reason. However, the block may include restrictions preventing anyone editing from that IP from creating a new account; that's usually reserved for people who keep evading their blocks by making new accounts. -- Kesh (talk) 17:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

IfD

Hi there - if there is an image that is on Images and media for deletion that is under discussion but hasnt been closed, yet the discussion is archived quite a few days in the past. What do you have to do to get the discussion closed and consensus reached? It is here - [5] 77.96.99.100 (talk) 16:45, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

If the discussion is old, you can contact an administrator to overview it, or just make a simple note on the project's talk page. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 17:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it appears as though the discussion was closed, but not properly. I believe the discussion tag can be removed from the image since it was closed as keep. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 17:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Centre alignment in tables

Is there some way to centrally align a whole column of a table without having to put align=center in every row, or centre-aligning the whole table? I am trying to centre align the attendance and reference columns in Record home attendances of English football clubs. Oldelpaso (talk) 17:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Help:Table mentions nothing on how to change this, and I haven't seen any examples of anyone doing this. I just looked at the table at American Idol 7 (which has been heavily edited over the past number of years) and it uses align=center on every row. So were I to venture a guess it would be that it can't be done. You could try the village pump and see if you can get a developer. —BradV 17:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Some IFD formatting errors

Above, an anon user noted a non-closed IfD - which seemed improperly closed/formatted, not forgotten. I attempted to close it, but apparently somewhere someone affected the bottom and top closure headings. I don't have the time to fix the affects of what I did to properly close [6]. But can somebody take a look at [7] and see what they can do. I have to get to work. Cheers. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 17:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I fixed it, and removed the tag from the image. Apparently for media the begin tag goes under the heading, whereas at AfD the begin tag goes above the heading. It must be one of those undocumented inconsistencies. —BradV 18:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

License

When uploading an image, how do i tell which is the right one license to use, if i had not encountered them before? Simply south (talk) 18:48, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

If it's your own work, you can choose a license (preferably {{pd-self}} or one of the tags on this page). Otherwise, the image is owned by somebody else, and you will need to provide reasons why we can use the image and a tag from this page. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Create Your Own Article

I really want to create my own article but I have no idea how. Seriously, how do you do it? I hope to add some important articles into this website for the benifit of others. PLEASE help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pirate"aargh" (talk • contribs) 19:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Your first article! --Orange Mike | Talk 19:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I just need a little help

I am trying to upload a file and it says that I am not a confirmed user. I was just curious to know when I would be confirmed.

Ags07gigem (talk) 19:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

User become autoconfirmed 4 days after their account is created: Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed#Autoconfirmedusers. For you, that would be 23:31 on April 10th. --barneca (talk) 20:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Redirects

How can a registered user make a redirect without requesting it.

• Guy1423 (talk) 20:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Just like you would make a new page, except with the content being #REDIRECT [[Location of the desired target]]. See more at Wikipedia:Redirect. Leebo ^T/C 20:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

According to your log, it looks like you recently made your account. You might have to wait another day or two to be able to create a new page, which is what creating a redirect amounts to. --Teratornis (talk) 21:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Ooops. I checked more carefully and learned you should be able to make new redirect pages right now. --Teratornis (talk) 21:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Jimmy Carter

I have read the fAQ but did not find my answer. I recently edited the page on Jimmy Carter, inserting a section on Carter's envirionmental commitment. But the last segment of my edits did not appear on the edited page; and instead the treatment omitted part of the original text. Being a new contributor I don't know how this happened o4r what to do about it.

Frank Manheim Mysmakar (talk) 20:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

If you're referring to this edit, you added your signature to the end of the paragraph, which is not needed on an article page. You need only add a signature when leaving a message on a talk page. ~ Bella Swan 21:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Or help desk and village pump. Nothing444^{Go Irish!} 21:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem was caused by an unclosed ref tag, fixed by this [8]. When you insert a reference, it's important to enclose it in <ref>these</ref>, if you forget the last </ref> then things start disappearing. It's an easy mistake to make, and is also the usual reason for text disappearing. DuncanHill (talk) 21:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)