Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 July 28

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July 28

Service Badge

A certain user (User:SSZ) has decided that his 1683 edits were enough to award himself an Experienced and Established Editor Service Badge. Is there anyone I can go to to give him a warning? I removed it from his userpage and also removed a Yeoman Editor badge from his talk page. Thank you. Anonymous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.31.114.182 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Most editors are not overly concerned over others' userpages. Mjpresson (talk) 01:38, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The addition [1] mentioned contributions by an IP address. If you have an issue with somebodys user page then it's recommended to discuss it on their talk page first. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The edit summary

Some prolific editors consistently fail to write an edit summary. I'd like a pleasant way to remind them not to forget the edit summary (especially on pages I'm watching). I was thinking maybe of a small box similar to a wikicookie- is there something already in existence? Ning-ning (talk) 06:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, there is: {{editsummary}} Dismas|^(talk) 07:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Ta. I was hoping for something with a little picture of a knot or something :) Ning-ning (talk) 10:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Category question

Why is one of the albums not in the correct order here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Roy_Harper_albums . The album Descendants of Smith shows under the H category??? Stephenjh (talk) 07:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Should work now. The DEFAULTSORT magic word changes where the page is placed in categories. I removed it. WODUP 07:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

latest words

i want to know the latest words that were coming in the usage regularly and their meanings. so how can i view those words on wikipedia and an example sentence for their usage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.62.89.13 (talk) 07:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You might try Wikipedia's sister site, Wiktionary. WODUP 07:34, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

List of Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year may be the closest to what you want in Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Immersion Composition Society

Hi there! Years ago, someone wrote a Wiki article about a movement of which I am the author.

I was trying to clean it up today. One thing I did was include links to pages of some of our members.

Some of these are Myspace pages. And then I got a message that Myspace links are bad, and direness ensued.So I took them off.

But I still have this *dust broom* notice on page saying my article needs to be cleaned up. Except, that is what I just did. It had factual errors and whatnot before!

Can I get rid of that clean up notice? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholas Dobson (talk • contribs) 07:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Sure, open the page via the edit tab at the top, scroll to the notice enclosed in these things: {{ and }} and delete then save page as usual. You could leave a note on the article's talk page explaining why if you like. Have you checked the WP:COI page lately btw? Julia Rossi (talk) 09:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I do think the WP:MOS should be read before removing it =). Here are a couple things I noticed Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Section_headings, Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(titles). Louis Waweru  Talk  09:43, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Clean up is the least of the article's problems - it badly needs sources to support notability, as I have noted on the talk page. – ukexpat (talk) 14:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

A survey

Sam4bc has asked me on my user page to complete a survey external to the wiki. Is this spam? Should Sam4bc be blocked? Should all of his requests to many other users be reverted? Snowman (talk) 08:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That user discusses the research and links to User:Geraldckane for more information. I did one of these research surveys a while back— I had to go the the university website and fill out a release, so I am confidant that was a valid project. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:18, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

What are the main anti-vandalism initiatives?

Can someone point me briefly to the main policy or cultural changes that have been justified as helping combat vandalism? I know autoconfirmed users and WP:BADIMAGES, but I'm drawing a blank beyond that. Skomorokh 11:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

IP's were allowed to create pages before the Seigenthaler incident. Paragon12321 (talk) 15:49, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, any others? Regards, Skomorokh 16:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam. Corvus cornix_talk 23:38, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:ABUSE, WP:AIV, WP:UAA WP:SSP, WP:TW, and WP:OP are the ones that I'm most familiar with. GO-PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 08:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't believe no one mentioned Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit, and WP:RCP.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 14:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for these, but I am specifically looking for restrictions on editing. Mahalo, Skomorokh 16:02, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The Editor's index is the first place to look for just about anything relating to the internal workings of Wikipedia. See for example WP:EIW#Vandal. --Teratornis (talk) 19:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:PROT talks about restrictions on editing of individual pages. I believe these have been phased in over time. That is, when Wikipedia was new, it had fewer restrictions than it does now. Also see WP:ACCOUNT for the benefits of having an account. I think that in the early days, unregistered users could do everything that registered users can do. So any additional privileges from having an account probably represent cultural changes to combat vandalism. Also see Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies. --Teratornis (talk) 19:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I would say definitely autoconfirmed status, blocking, protection (even though most of these have always existed). Various blacklists have also found their way in, like title blacklists, external-link spam blacklists, and username blacklists. More recently, several semi-automated anti-vandalism tools, like Twinkle, Huggle, VandalProof, etc. Even more recent (into the future, as a matter of fact), there is Wikipedia:Abuse filter, which hasn't gained much ground but looks potentially promising. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 20:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Can no longer login with email that contains underscores ABC___XYZ@hotmail.com

Hi

I registered with an email address that has three underscores in the middle. ABC___XYZ@ABC.com

However when i try to login it says it cant find my account. The reason is because it is not recognising the 3 underscores so therefore isnt finding a match for the email.

Please can you help me login, and send me a new password.

Thanks

Nic

P.S. I presume i could login previously because my password had been remembered. Now that cookie has expired i cant get back in to update my articles —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.170.247 (talk) 11:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You don't need your email address to log in, just your username and the password you registered with, so I'm not sure why the email is an issue. Bencherlite^Talk 12:18, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me guess... you've forgotten your password and you're trying to get it back. Is this correct? GO-PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 08:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Broken link in AfD template

Can anyone work out why "this article's entry" in the AfD template at the top of Jeffrey Reodica is a redlink? AndyJones (talk) 11:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

It isn't any more (for me at least). I've seen this before with TW AfDs; it's some kind of caching issue, and either a purge or a null edit solves it (I can't recall which at present). Algebraist 12:15, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe it's a purge that does the trick. Press Ctrl+Shift+R to bypass the cache and reload the page. I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure that's it. TN‑X-Man 12:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, see WP:PURGE for more info. TN‑X-Man 12:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. seems to work. AndyJones (talk) 13:00, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Both purge and null edit work here. A null edit can fix more problems than a purge but should not be needed here. A Ctrl+Shift+R reload does not work unless the page has been fixed by other means since you last loaded it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Correcting the title of my newly-created entry

I have just created a new entry on "Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company," and I need to correct it to initial caps but cannot seem to find a way to access the title through the "Edit this page" command. When I first entered the name of the entry (to check to see if it already existed)I typed in all lower case, except for the first word. Can you tell me how to go into the title and edit that? Or can you do it for me at your end? I am sure there is some perfectly obvious and simple way to do this but I can't seem to find it. Thank you very much for your help.Megavoice (talk) 12:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You can't rename a page through editing its content.

At the top of the page, where you see the "article" "discussion" and "edit this page" tabs, you should see one saying "move". Provided you are autoconfirmed (ie. have an account which is more than 4 days old, and have made more than 10 edits, which I believe you have) you should be able to "move" the page to its new title. Go in there, insert the new name of the page to which you want to move it (in this case with the capitalisation), and hey presto.

Oh, since I wasn't sure if you were autoconfirmed, I took the liberty of moving the page - to Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company - myself. More information on moving pages can be found here. _GB^T/C 12:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Captain wants to speak to Bradbury

Resolved

 – Well, under discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities anyway. Is there a template for this?

Hello, I am trying to help out a user who is all very keen to find out about a short story by Ray Bradbury, and sometimes he is asking in the wrong place. When I tried to put him in touch with Mr Bradbury he say "You're talking nonsense". I think he is also claiming to be a captain; perhaps he is a real captain. He also asks questions about dinosaurs when he obviously brought up "prehistoric animals". Sure to be it is a 'leap of faith' from prehistoric animals to a dinosaur - can someone advise me how to deal with him well and to find his story as he is reluctant to contact Ray himself. King of the Fondue (talk) 13:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The only Bradbury story I recall with dinosaurs is his now-classic "A Sound of Thunder". If you need more help, you should ask at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey Gadget! We establish it not the Sound of Thunder. It has paralysis and bears dying in it. The protagonist is chased. Thank you for your help and I shall let the 'captain' Rommel know.King of the Fondue (talk) 14:34, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I have this in a book of short stories at home — I wrote a book report on it back in my schooldays, is why I remember —, but I can't remember the name of the story for the life of me. I will check when I get home and let you know. I will reply on your talkpage since this ain't the Reference Desk. :-) --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 15:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion and copyright infringement

I'm new to wikipedia, have just added an entry using informaiton quoted on other websites, and the new entry states that it may meet the criteria for speedy deletion due to copyright infringement. Some of the text in my entry is quoted from another website, however the original text plus the wikipedia text was created by my employer company, and I don't believe this consitutes a copyright infringement. Can you please advise how I can ensure that the entry is not deleted? I have tried citing the quoted text... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Democratic Engagement (talk • contribs) 15:09, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Unless you are officially authorized by your company to release this text under a free license (GFDL or public domain), or unless the text is officially stated on the website as being published under such a free license, you may not. To prevent this material from being deleted, rewrite it in your own words: this won't necessarily prevent your article from being deleted, but it will make it so that the article isn't a copyright violation. Nyttend (talk) 16:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Your other option, implied in the above, is to get the company to release it under a suitable license (note that "for use on Wikipedia" isn't actually a good enough license; we allow people to re-use Wikipedia content, so that has to be taken into account!). If you are taking this approach, somebody should contact OTRS to make it official, if you don't change the website's licensing note itself. --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 16:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy, you should not be writing or editing an article about your employer anyway.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 17:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Can a block record be purged?

When blocking an anonymous IP vandal, I accidentally clicked on User: MarnetteD, and blocked that person instead. Realizing my error, I immediately undid it, and left an apologetic message on Marnette's Talk Page. Marnette understood, but being proud of his/her clean block record, asked if there was anyway that my brief block of him/her could be purged from the record, fearing that the block could be used against her by some editors in the future. Can this be done? Nightscream (talk) 15:31, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Block him/her for one second with an apologetic message as the reason.--Natl1 (Talk Page) (Contribs) 15:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Another block is probably not necessary with the unblock message you left. That should be more than enough. Paragon12321 (talk) 15:44, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

And no, block records cannot be purged. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

If it's ever needed, eg. at RfA, keep the links so they can be explained. Re-blocking would serve no purpose. Mistakes happen, but when they do, it's best to keep it simple. PeterSymonds (talk) 15:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Images for upload/Current Requests revert problem

Can someone take a look at Wikipedia:Images for upload/Current Requests. I used standard rolback to revert vandalism to my previous edit and the page went blank. But my last edit (wih content) in the history is also blank. --Natl1 (Talk Page) (Contribs) 15:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

It's the bug discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Bug: revisions/pagesizes/pagerendering/wikisource not matching up, resulting in blanking or page replacements which apparently hasn't been fixed yet. I have restored the last valid page version. Your rollback worked "correctly": It restored a former version which was blank due to the bug. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Main Page Protection?

Has there ever been a discussion regarding the unprotection or semi protection of the Main Page?VIVID (talk) 15:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Many discussions. Unfortunately it's just not possible. Full unprotection would open the page to floods of vandalism from IPs, so the page will be continually unstable. Semi-protection is easy to get by; if a vandal knew they could vandalise the Main Page after four days and ten edits, that would be no problem. Even semi-protection to trusted users will cause problems. Remember, the stuff you see on the Main Page is transcluded, so the reasons for editing are less. Full protection is a sad but necessary alternative to prevent unwanted edits. PeterSymonds (talk) 16:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason why it's protected in the first place is because millions of people visit the English Wikipedia everyday. If it was unprotected, vandals will start to vandalize the main page. Since so many people visit Wikipedia everyday, including the main page, they might start to see inappropriate things, nonsense, and pure vandalism on the main page. What person would want to visit Wikipedia if the main page has nonsense on it? Other wikipedias, like Simple English Wikipedia, don't have the main page protected since it doesn't get hit by vandals often. They never target the main page to vandalize anyway. It's been unprotected for years and has never been vandalized since (I think it was vandalized once, but that was almost two years ago). Thanks, RyRy (talk) 02:58, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh that's too funny! I can't even imagine what kind of idiocy would pop up out of the woodwork if we unprotected the main page. Besides, this is more of an issue for village pump than the help desk. GO-PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 08:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi User:VIVID; to answer your question, you could read old discussions by checking in a search engine (I can't pull up anything useful from our internal search). Try this and/or this. --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 08:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Some MOS-related questions

Hi there

I often edit Wikipedia pages to correct grammar but I need assistance in figuring out what the official Wikipedia policy is on several particular aspects of grammar and punctuation. I could not find my answer at WP:MOS and so am posting here in the hope that someone could help me out. I need help with the following:

1. I once read on a Wikipedia namespace page that the BC / AD and BCE / CE dating systems are equivalent and it contained guidelines on their usage (incidentally, I cannot find that page now and would be grateful if someone could post a link to it). However, I noticed that at Template:Decadebox BC one acronym from each system is used which seems strange. Thus, I need advice on which acronym to keep and which to change.
2. I have noticed that many disambiguation pages (such as this one which I edited recently) contain some bullet points which end with full stops and some that do not. Which policy should be enforced?

Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here (talk) 16:43, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the guidelines you need are Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Longer periods and Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Bulleted and numbered lists. Epbr123 (talk) 16:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, but I'm still confused as to which option to go for in both cases - from what I could tell, the guideline is to always opt for one option or the other, but it does not really tell you which one to use in a given situation. It Is Me Here (talk) 18:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

With Template:Decadebox BC, for example, a consensus will need to be established on which system to use; you can either start a discussion on its talk page, or be bold and decide on the system yourself and see if anyone complains. Regarding Europa, it seems clear from the guideline that there shouldn't be full stops because they are not complete sentences. Epbr123 (talk) 20:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for the help - I changed to BC / AD per WP:BOLD. It Is Me Here (talk) 08:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

List in chronological order?

Should a list of books by an author be in chronological order? In Garry Kasparov#Books, they are listed in reverse order, which seems strange to me. Bubba73 (talk), 17:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

As long as they're in chronological order (reverse or otherwise), it should be OK. As long as there is order to it. I took a quick look through WP:LIST, and it doesn't indicate whether lists in chronological order should be reversed or not. I suppose it doesn't matter all that much. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 17:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

There shouldn't be a standard as i believe research proved that it is about 60%, 40% split on the reverse chronically order and non reverse so depends on the person.--Andrewcrawford (talk) 17:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:LIST does say to list them chronologically "The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists." Bubba73 (talk), 18:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Yet it doesn't state whether it reverse-chronological order is OK. Reverse-chronological order is still in chronological order... Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 20:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

To my way of thinking, there is chronological order and reverse chronological order. It doesn't say anything about reverse order. In fact, the only thing I can think of that is normally given in reverse chronological order is a resume. Bubba73 (talk), 22:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Scranton

Under the Media section for Scranton which is a city in Pennsylvania, you have all the television stations listed correctly but you need to add WQPX which is an ION affiliate and the studio and office is located in Scranton. I am the station operations manager and we have been a television station in this market for 10 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.102.201.13 (talk) 18:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi. If you find innacurate information in a Wikipedia article, please be bold and fix it. However, it is generally advised that you provide a reliable source, such as a link to their website. Many of our lists are incomplete, so feel free to add information to them. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 18:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Alison Wright is a Photojournalist not a journalist

I can't seem to change that in the edit field. Thanks, Karima —Preceding unsigned comment added by Karimacherif (talk • contribs) 18:39, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You cannot edit the title of and article. This is done with the "move" command tab at the top of an article. You must be an autoconfirmed editor to do this, it looks like you need to make 2 more edits to attain that status. See Help:Moving a page. I see she is also a writer, is journalist not a good generic term to disambiguate her article? Mjpresson (talk) 18:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The "(journalist)" part of Alison Wright (journalist) is only there to distinguish her from other people called Alison Wright. Her work includes writing and journalist is a simpler disambiguator than photojournalist so I don't think there is any need to change it - unless there is another notable journalist with that name. The way to change it would be to move the page. Your account needs 2 more edits before it becomes autoconfirmed and can move pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we don't have articles on other people named Alison Wright. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Right, but 3 out of 4 links from articles to Alison Wright were for Alison Wright (cyclist) who is probably notable and may get an article later. I have disambiguated those links. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Somebody has created a mess by making articles at Alison Wright (photojournalist) and Alison Wright Photojournalist in addition to the existing at Alison Wright (journalist). I don't have time to sort this out today. Will somebody else look at it? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

All right, I've merged them all together, and moved to Alison Wright (photojournalist). Superm401 - Talk 06:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Document transcluding

How to I transclude a document? I made Template:ESC National Year/doc, but I don't know how to add it to the template page. Grk1011 (talk) 21:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Simply place the {{Documentation}} template on the page inside noinclude tags. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:04, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Add <noinclude>{{Documentation}}</noinclude> to the very end of the template immediately after the last character. Any extra spaces or breaks between the template code and the snippet will show with the template. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:05, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Any chance I can get rid of the empty one on top? Grk1011 (talk) 22:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That's what <includeonly> is for. Algebraist 22:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again. I appreciate that you all did it for me too :) Grk1011 (talk) 22:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)