Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 November 17

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November 17

Unified login

So, I've unified my account on Spanish Wikipedia, Commons and Meta, but there is an account on German Wikipedia the same as mine, that is not mine. Is there anything that can happen because of this? I don't want negative consequences because of somebody confusing us. Grsz^{11 →Review!} 03:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry there is nothing you can do about it. maybe try to contact the user to see if s/he will give it to you by giving you the password and then changing it. User name's are on a first come, first serve basis.--intraining ^{Jack In} 06:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Also please note that this help desk is for the english Wikipedia only, you should take this matter there if you would like more information.--intraining ^{Jack In} 06:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia to my knowledge does not forcibly rename any accounts with legitimate edits. If it bothers you that much, I suggest you contact this user asking them to request a rename, not to give you their password. — Manticore 09:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that de:User:Grsz11 isn't you? It might have been created for you automatically by the MediaWiki software. If it isn't, it does have contributions but they are recent so they might still be active. They speak English (judging from the edit summaries) so they should be able to communicate with you. Try to email them if they don't respond on the talkpage. The page for usurpation requests is here (English version). Don't worry about not being able to unify your accounts if all this fails, I haven't unified my account on 4 languages due to edits on those wikipedias; just note it on your userpage. Regards. Woody (talk) 11:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

All the contributions are from de:Joe the Plumber which was imported; so all of these changes were actually made by en.WP's Grsz11. I'm not even sure there really is a user by that name on de.WP - the account creation log doesn't show anything -, so logging in should just work. At the very least usurpation is possible. --Tokikake (talk) 14:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• According to http://toolserver.org/~vvv/sulutil.php?user=Grsz11 the account does exist, and was created just over half an hour after the account on the Spanish Wikipedia. It is unattached to the SUL account, however it has no edits (those visible in the contributions were imported from the English Wikipedia) so I think usurpation would be possible. I've seen accounts with no record in the user creation logs before, but only those created by new SUL accounts, so I don't know how this has happened. —Snigbrook 00:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Adjusting printable version

Is it possible to have an additional link in the sidebar that provides a printable version of a page complete with link underlining. Sometimes especially when working on FAC this is very useful. _ Mgm|^(talk) 13:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Articles do have a Printable version link in the left sidebar and browsers are supposed to automatically pick up the CSS when printing. There are two CSS sets that deal with printing: MediaWiki:Print.css and http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/commonPrint.css. I'm not a CSS guru; try asking at MediaWiki talk:Common.css to see if you can override this in your personal CSS. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

disambiguation

I can't remember how to start an article (e.g. Jim Messina, new deputy chief of staff for Barack Obama) when there is already an article with the same name (e.g. Jim Messina, country rock star from the band, Buffalo Springfield). I know it has to do with creating a disambiguation page, but I'm not sure how to do that.--Markisgreen (talk) 15:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are a couple of ways to do it. The first step is to create the page with the title "Jim Messina (politician)" or something along those lines. Next, you can either place a hatnote at the top of Jim Messina or move Jim Messina to Jim Messina (musician) and create a disambiguation page at "Jim Messina". I know it's kinda confusing, but I hope this helps! TN‑X-Man 15:43, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

All done, and Jim Messina (politician) awaits content. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:47, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

broken page

PLoS_ONE page appears to be broken - I can get to the talk and edit pages, and everything looks normal - but when I go to the article page, I just get the text "<script type="text/javascript" src="/skins-1.5/common/m". Any ideas what's going on here?Hopsyturvy (talk) 16:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It's working OK for me. – ukexpat (talk) 18:15, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Relapse

Can somebody please go remove number 1 & 2 ref tags on the above article because I don't know much about referencing so I don't want to mess with it and it wouldn't let me undo it so this is the only way I could find is to manually remove by editing the page. Thank you, HairyPerry 18:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• What reason do you have to remove references from the article? - Mgm|^(talk) 18:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Is there something wrong with the references? It appears that they are confirming that the release date is no longer known. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 18:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

And any proposed removal should be discussed on the article's talk page. – ukexpat (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Well somebody put in there that the date is February 23, 2008 and then they put in some refs that were broken so I thought that they were all just broken refs but I guess not. HairyPerry 18:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

more opinions needed in unblacklisting discussion

hey, sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but i need some other people to get involved in this unblacklisting discussion. if there is a more appropriate place for me to post this message please let me know. thanks xxx Jessi1989 (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know enough to offer an opinion, but please be aware of the guide on canvassing. Cheers. TN‑X-Man 18:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The appropriate place is the blacklisting talk page, where it's already been discussed and settled. Your time would be better spent on editing and improving articles. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 18:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

There is no need for more discussion: Your request was declined with the suggestion that you request whitelisting for specific use(s). —teb728 t c 18:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

thanks for the replies. for the record i'm not trying to bias the discussion, this was just to get some uninvolved people to take a look and give their opinion. i contacted the declining admin for clarification on the reason for the decline and he recommended that i continue the discussion on the unblacklisting request page. i think this is acceptable if i believe the decline to be based on false information. he has yet to reply to my post and the only person commenting has a personal involvement in the issue. i'm just after some more opinions from anyone who has the time to look into the issue independently. before i make a whitelisting request, i need to understand the rationale for the decline of this request, because none has yet been given. thanks Jessi1989 (talk) 19:14, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm uninvolved. Any reason why you don't follow the advice you've been given here and in the original discussion and simply request white-listing?

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 19:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

hi, thanks for the reply. i haven't requested whitelisting because the evidence given that lead to the unblacklist request being declined looks to be false/mistaken. the problem is i'm afraid this same false evidence will be given by the same person at the whitelisting request, leading to the same outcome. i've tried discussing this with the 2 people involved but neither want to do so, so i'm not sure what to do now. thanks Jessi1989 (talk) 19:47, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Syndicated Wikipedia articles

I recently found an abridged/edited version of a Wikipedia article published in a periodical. Is there a talkpage template or list somewhere to recognize this republishing? the skomorokh 18:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question, but I have one of my own - did the periodical comply with the reuse policy? – ukexpat (talk) 18:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question, but it did include the footnote "adapted from text in Wikipedia" ;) the skomorokh 18:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm that would appear not to be in compliance with the said policy. – ukexpat (talk) 20:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The template I am looking for is something like {{Press}} except instead of "This article has been mentioned by a media organisation:", it ought to read "This article was published in altered form by the following:" or suchlike. the skomorokh 18:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Well I guess someone could create {{Modreuse}} based on {{Press}}. If I were a competent template coder I would have a go, but unfortunately I am not! – ukexpat (talk) 20:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's status

Is anything wrong with WP today? It's really sluggish on my side. -- Mentisock 18:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Fine here. Are you having any trouble with the rest of the interwebs? Algebraist 18:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Everything's fine on my side. Maybe you have broken tubes? TN‑X-Man 18:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't seem anything else other than WP is working incorrectly today (then again this is based upon spending 99% of the time on WP and only a few minutes testing other sites). -- Mentisock 18:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• I had trouble running AFD on Google Chrome yesterday. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

New section tab

How do I add a "new section" tab to a subpage of my userpage? Thanks. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:34, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, "new section" is available on talk pages, but not user pages. If anyone else has a more specific answer though, that would be great. TN‑X-Man 18:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, the reference desk pages have such tabs, and they're not talk pages...(?) --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Use the magic word __NEWSECTIONLINK__ (note double underscores). Algebraist 18:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism only account

Hi, I have now reverted unconstructive edits by User:Galbetron on two occasions, and would like to give the user a warning about their edits but i'm not really sure how to. Could somebody please give this user a warning? Thanks Flaming Ferrari (talk) 19:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Warned. For future reference, you can find the warnings at WP:WARNING. Cheers! TN‑X-Man 19:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Disgraceful

Why was User:SocialScienceLondon blocked? They are a group of seemingly well-qualified editors who have thus far made nothing but positive contributions to wikipedia. These are the kind of editors we should be encouraging, and yet they have been blocked for having a collaborative account. Incase nobody realised, wikipedia is ALL ABOUT collaboration, and with a collaborative account where contributions are "peer-reviewed" prior to being posted then this is arguably more preferable to colloboration post edit. I'm shocked and disappointed that these users have been blocked. 79.75.220.67 (talk) 19:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

As you're no doubt aware, we have an unequivocal policy about shared accounts, Wikipedia:Username policy#sharing accounts. Really, the easiest thing would be for this group of users to each individually register for their own accounts. Darkspots (talk) 19:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

What is the purpose of that policy? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I found Wikipedia talk:User account policy/Archive 7#Sharing accounts, which is a discussion about whether or not the GFDL is the reason for the prohibition. Nevertheless, the compelling reason for the policy, identified in that discussion by Mangojuice, was that 1 person per account is very firmly accepted regardless, because of user behavior and communication issues. It doesn't seem like a very controversial policy. Darkspots (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It's true that the shared account policy is unequivocal; however, in the discussion linked to above, the quoted administrator also says: "Do you know of such a set of individuals who actually wants to openly edit, legitimately, as a group? Because yeah, in theory, such an account could be okay..... I don't know if a conversation on this theoretical point has ever taken place." I'd suggest moving this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Username policy, so that a conversation on this theoretical point can take place. --Fullobeans (talk) 20:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• When there is more than one person sharing an account, we cannot hold one specific person responsible for the edits on that account. The users are still welcome if they register individual accounts and (continue to) contribute constructively. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

To elaborate on the communication issue: group accounts exclude other Wikipedia users from seeing, participating in, learning from, and influencing whatever internal discussions take place among the shared account participants. Preventing such exclusion is is in keeping with User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles which revolves around the concept of openness (also see WP:CABAL). While participants do not need to disclose their real identities, we must have a one-to-one association between usernames and identities, because this is the only way for a community to function. Many-to-one associations (group accounts) and one-to-many associations (sockpuppets) both undermine the efficient operation of an online community, because they prevent other users from clearly associating a visible collection of ideas and edits with a distinct individual. For example, if many editors edit through a single account, then it becomes impossible for the larger community to police the individuals who use that account. Suppose one of those users decides to start vandalizing - then Wikipedia has to apply collective punishment to everyone who uses the account, possibly sullying the records of positive contributions which can no longer be distinguished from the negative ones. Or suppose there is a mild disagreement between someone who uses the account and a user outside the account. The outside user can only address the account as a whole, and that could create confusion if another account user logs in first, sees the "You have new messages" banner, and clears it. Wikipedia has the same problem with editors who don't log in - if multiple users share an IP address, innocent users can't understand why they are getting vandalism warnings and so on. It's just awkward to communicate with an individual who you cannot address as an individual. The whole basis for fighting vandalism is to track every user's edits, and group accounts degrade the precision of that tracking. The members of the group might all be wonderful people who understand and comply with all the guidelines and support Wikipedia's mission - but if that is true, then they won't mind the slight effort to create individual accounts. Thus the real question to ask is not why do we have this rule, but why do some people want to violate it? How does not making individual accounts help this group of editors do a better job? And is the improvement worth the risks inherent in a group account? --Teratornis (talk) 22:50, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I might add that all the members of the group might be wonderful people right now, but any group of people is prone to developing interpersonal conflicts over time. Some member of the group in good standing now might have a falling out in the future, and decide to take revenge by vandalizing and getting the whole group blocked. There have been numerous individual users on Wikipedia who contributed positively for years, but eventually fell into some intractable disputes that ended ugly. It's much better for all concerned when the damage stays confined to one individual's account. --Teratornis (talk) 22:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Issues with 8974 Gregaria

I was random articling away when I came across 8974 Gregaria. It is evidently missing a lot of information, but nominating it for deletion seems disingenuous. What is the correct course of action here? Is there a cleanup template I should be using? No-one is editing it, so it would probably be fruitless to post on the talk page. Ideas? Seegoon (talk) 20:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

{{expand}} would work. There's info at at the external link. Darkspots (talk) 20:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if the {{expand}} template should be used with stubs, as I've seen it being removed from stubs recently. —Snigbrook 21:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• I've just noticed this is mentioned on the documentation for the template. —Snigbrook 21:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• OK, good point. Darkspots (talk) 22:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)I have applied a couple of templates to see if I can attract attention and I will ask at the Astronomy project. – ukexpat (talk) 20:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Solo edit war

An I.P. seems to be engaged in an edit war with themselves at White people. What to do?! the skomorokh 22:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Warn the (probable) schoolchildren about 3RR, report to AIV as necessary. Bueller? Bueller? TN‑X-Man 22:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You might want to put {{Wikipedia template messages}} on your user page for just such occasions when you need to look up a suitable template message. In this case you could start with a level 1 warning template such as {{uw-test1}} or {{uw-joke1}}, and then escalate if it doesn't stop. --Teratornis (talk) 22:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• (ec) I don't think it's an edit war; the IP made an error in the first edit, removing a </ref> tag, which resulted in a "cite error". The user probably noticed the error, and undid before making the edit that was originally intended. —Snigbrook 22:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not important, but some math equations do not display correctly

I am interested in the articles about mathematics.
For some obscure reason, some math equations that seem to have a perfectly correct TeX syntax do not appear correctly on my browser (Firefox; I just see the TeX source line instead); I have seen this today on Hilbert space, and I am not the only one I suppose: it was probably the reason why some anonymous editor tried to fix the formula there; another user reverted to the previous version (correct syntax, but I don't see it correct). Once I fixed this on my screen by the silly solution of adding spaces (ignored by TeX) at both ends of the formula. A solution? Bdmy (talk) 22:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't familiar with this problem so I read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Using LaTeX markup and its subsection Very simple formulas which discusses how to control whether Wikipedia generates a PNG graphic for a formula or renders it as HTML instead. I guess you refer to the formula:

• $\langle f,g\rangle =\int _{a}^{b}f(x)g(x)\,dx$

which if I'm reading the friendly manual correctly should render as a PNG if we put a \, (one quarter space in LaTeX) at the end of the formula:

• $\langle f,g\rangle =\int _{a}^{b}f(x)g(x)\,dx\,$

The highly unsatisfactory HTML rendering of the first version may amount to some sort of a bug. You might ask about this on WP:VPT where the real eggheds hang out, if nobody here can explain why the first formula doesn't work. I'm pretty sure your browser is not the issue here, since the decision to render a formula as HTML or PNG rests with the server. --Teratornis (talk) 23:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Although you can change the default behavior that you alone see, in Special:Preferences, Math tab. --Teratornis (talk) 23:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a bug which seems to have appeared recently and is (AFAIK) not yet well understood. The bottom two threads on WP:VPT both relate to it. If you look carefully at the broken example above, you'll see that what appears to be plain text is actually the alttext for the image http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/1/0/3/103abd6243da33ed7fad9b17ff88d12d.png. What seems to happen is that a corrupted image gets stored on the servers for that specific TeX code (but not for other similar code, which is why superficial changes fix the problem) and has to be deleted manually by the devs. Algebraist 23:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like something got fixed, at least for me, because now both versions of the example formula I put in my reply are displaying as the same PNG image. When I first posted my reply, the first one was appearing broken. --Teratornis (talk) 04:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)