Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 April 18

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April 18

TYPHO

Resolved

 – Probably was vandalism, it has been removed. Thanks for pointing it out. tempodivalse [☎] 18:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Characteristics Mice range in size from 1000 ft to 2100 ft long.

I was reading and i came along this. MICE THATS THE KEYWORD

REALLY ??? 1000 FT LONG MOUSE INTERESTING LOL LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU CHANGE IT im still interested =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.50.126.77 (talk) 05:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Huh? Could you please provide a link to the article in question. There is a chance that the article has been vandalized or something like that. You, or one of us, could fix it, if you helped us find the problem... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:09, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I went to the most likely culprit, mouse, and sure enough... Reverted and warned.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Need some help

Im involved in a online game community where its page is at www.spartansfleet.com How can i create or submit information so when people google "spartansfleet" a wikipedia result shows up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kagadis (talk • contribs) 09:35, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You can't. In order to achieve such a result an article would need to be on Wikipedia about the website. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a tertiary source by definition, and as such it only contains articles on subjects that are already known in the wider world by having been been the subject of substantive publication in multiple, real world, reliable sources (newpspapers, magazines, books, documentaries, academic journals, etc.) that are completely independent from the subject (meaning a website and anything written by it members are invalid sources on itself). We have a guideline for web pages to see if they meet our inclusion standards at Wikipedia:Notability (web). I took a look at some of the things we check into to see whether a website is a valid subject of an article and found that the site you mention does not appear to be. With only 18 Google web hits and none to reliable sources, no news or book hits, no other sies that are found through Google to link to yours, only 1,831 members, and not in the top 100,000 websites by traffic ranking (per Alexa), it is very unlikely the website is a proper article subject.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

free public,criminal,and health records

I have been searching the internet for hours looking for a web site that provides public, criminal,and\or health records free of charge and have failed to find any such site or state\federal government organization which can or will provide this information. Can you help me out please in finding this website,organization, or any information that will help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.172.234.250 (talk) 10:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You can try asking at the reference desk, since this page is only for help in using Wikipedia. I think it's highly unlikely that you will find such a site though, because of privacy laws that would prevent such information being published freely on the internet. Chamal ^talk 10:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Steal ISBNs from Britannica?

Resolved

 – Manuel-aa5 (talk) 07:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

In Wikipedia there are many articles with {{unreferenced}} box. Is it possible to steal the missing ISBNs from Encyclopedia Britannica? --Manuel-aa5 (talk) 14:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You can always reference the Encyclopaedia Britannica, yes. Was that what you meant? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:51, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) An ISBN isn't something that needs to be "stolen", you can find information on how to add the ISBN at Wikipedia:ISBN. Anything that has the {{unreferenced}} tag, or {{fact}} tags attached to it can be fixed if you have a reliable source which verifies the information. You can read about references at WP:REF. — Ched :  ?  15:56, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced articles usually need to be fixed by some kind of literature search. If Google does not lead you to an appropriate reliable source online which can be cited, you may have to find books in the library. One you know the correct book to cite, the ISBN is easy to get. EdJohnston (talk) 16:22, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

One problem is with multiple editions, each with their own ISBN. Page numbers may not match, text may have been edited and even the title of the book may have changed. The ISBN should be from the book that you actually used to make the reference. Please don't just grab a number and stuff it in just to fill the blank. --Gadget850 (talk) 16:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I think when the questioner writes "steal the missing ISBNs from Encyclopedia Britannica", the questioner means: on seeing a Wikipedia article with the {{unreferenced}} template, look at the corresponding Britannica article, see its sources, and cite the same sources from the Wikipedia article. Since anybody can cite a source, citing the same source that someone else cites would not constitute "stealing". However, a source that Britannica cites may or may not apply to the corresponding article in Wikipedia - that would depend on whether the Wikipedia article makes similar factual claims which the source would support. To determine that, one would have to read the source document. If all you know is that Britannica cites a source document, and you cannot access the document (because it's not online, and not at your library, etc.), then you should not cite the source from Wikipedia, because you would not know exactly what you are citing. --Teratornis (talk) 18:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, since Britannica is a commercial competitor of Wikipedia, and would benefit commercially if Wikipedia were to fail, it's probably best not to even look at copyrighted Britannica editions when editing on Wikipedia, to minimize any possibility of inadvertent plagiarism. Instead you might restrict yourself to looking at older Britannica editions that are out of copyright, such as the 1911 edition. --Teratornis (talk) 18:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I would mirror what Teratornis has said. It is bad form to include a book as a reference to something if you didn't even open the book yourself. Possibly valid as a "further reading" addition, but not as a reference. However, based on several comments made by the OP on this and other places, he seems to have a serious misunderstanding about what ISBN is. ISBN is nothing more than a serial number assigned to a book. It provides a unique identifier for a specific printing and edition of a book, and nothing more than that. It is not a statement of reliability or anything else. The OP seems to feel that ISBN is somehow a "magic bullet" which has some sort of mystical usage if applied to references at Wikipedia articles. Many older books have no ISBN numbers, but it does not make them unreliable! Where availible, when using a book as a reference, it is a fine idea to add the ISBN number as part of the Bibliographic information where it is availible. But to just drop ISBN numbers into articles as though they are somehow some sort of magic pixie dust which will somehow make articles that have them better seems like a weird idea indeed! --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:32, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I may be going off on a tangent here in regards to the OP (Original Poster)'s question - but it may have some value too. We don't want to use Britannica as a direct reference since it's a tertiary source itself, but rather we'd want to use secondary sources where available. I know that's not directly related to the original question as I understand it - but thought it may be a piece of info worth adding. — Ched :  ?  20:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

No. When a Wikipedia editor adds a reference, the Wikipedia editor is implicitly affirming "I have read the cited reference, and I have found that the cited reference supports the assertion in the article." You cannot add the cite to a Wikipedia article based solely on the existance of the cite in the Britanica article. You can cite the Britanica aritcle, or you can go read the reference yourself and then directly cite the reference. You cannot simply cite a reference that you have not read yourself. Note: I have broken this rule myself. When I use a public-domain article from the DNB to create a wikipedia article, I preserve the citations from the origohnal. However, I make a specific notation inthe reference sectin of the article and annotate each reference to indicate that these are "derived" references. -Arch dude (talk) 00:11, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding an external link

I am attempting to add an external link to the page "Reformed Epistemology". My edit shows up in the preview. But after I click "Save" it does not appear on the site. The page does not appear to be protected. Trainingtimothys (talk) 14:32, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Did you pass the captcha? When external links are added, you must enter the captcha password. This is a preventative measure against spambots. tempodivalse [☎] 14:34, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure to what you're referring. Your account only has one edit (this post) and the article Reformed epistemology shows that the last edit was on the 16th. Did you hit "save page" at the bottom of the page after making the edit? TNXMan 15:51, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Redirecting an acronym

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 16:18, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I want to create a new page Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and set up a redirect from PCI DSS - easily done from what I can tell, but is there some sort of etiquette for this sort of thing? Should I also copy across the discussion page? Random name (talk) 16:04, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. I've moved the page to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and left PCI DSS as a redirect. The talk page has also been moved. The best place to go for guidelines on article titles and such would be this page, but if you have further questions, please feel free to ask here. TNXMan 16:09, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Great stuff - thanks for that TNXMan! Random name (talk) 16:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Just another FYI, you learn about moving pages yourself at Help:Moving a page. TNXMan 16:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

How to create a Spoiler Alert???????

Resolved

 – Wikipedia does not warn about spoilers, please see WP:SPOILER. Thanks, tempodivalse [☎] 01:57, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

How do i hide something that can be viewed upon the reader wanting to but not all the time because it is a spoiler? —Preceding unsigned comment added by AricNeo (talk • contribs) 20:27, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You don't. See WP:SPOILER.  GARDEN  20:28, 18 April 2009 (UTC)]

(edit conflict) Yes, it is against our policy to provide spoiler alerts. Please see our relevant policy: WP:SPOILER. Hope this helped. tempodivalse [☎] 20:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a mistake to say "our" policy. There is no editorial board at Wikipedia and this is a matter on which there is no consensus, and merely a temporary (I would say somewhat arbitrary) decision about what to do. It could change someday. I think it's bad policy, so do some other people. I realize that some people believe the decision is entirely consistent with everything else about Wikipedia, but I believe the policy conflicts with the official policy of the Wikipedia Novels Project. Just my view. Anyway, there is no "we" at Wikipedia - it's a huge group of volunteers and it is neither a democracy or a consensus based group. Indeed, it's often hard to know how policy is made - but some of it is not agreed on by everyone.Levalley (talk) 22:20, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Hm, maybe that was a poor choice of words on my part. When I said "our policy", I really meant to say "Wikipedia's policy". tempodivalse [☎] 22:28, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Still a poor choice of words. It is (assuming it has consensus which Levalley denies) a Wikipedia style guideline. It doesn't claim to be a policy. —teb728 t c 23:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah! I saw the check mark template on the WP:SPOILER page and for some reason confused it for {{policy}}. Guess I need to read more carefully. Thanks, tempodivalse [☎] 23:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguating from a possibly non-notable subject

In searching for person Foo (= person1), I found an article on another person of the same name (= person2). person1 may not meet WP notability requirements. It's not clear what to do from WP:DAB and MOS:DABRL. Perhaps {{Otheruses4}} or {{For}} in the lead section of person2, with a red link to person1, to quietly raise the question of whether person1 is notable? (I only know enough myself to write a negligible stub about person1.) Enoent (talk) 21:08, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Hatnotes like {{Otheruses4}} and {{For}} should not link to non-existent articles. See Wikipedia:Hatnote#Non-existent articles. If person1 has no biography but has a significant mention in another article then that article might be linked. Disambiguation pages may have red links if other articles have red links to the same target, or if the subject seems clearly notable but nobody has written an article yet. But don't create a disambiguation page if it will only have one blue link. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:18, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps specifics will help. person1 is David Plummer, creator of ARP, a notable computer technology in use on hundreds of millions of computers. However, the article on ARP did not cite him—I just added him, per practice on other Internet technology pages—and he is not mentioned anywhere else in WP. person2 is David Plummer, a musician and children's writer. There are at least five more distinct David Plummers referred to in various articles.

My take on my David Plummer is that he is notable enough that other people may search for him and find the musician instead. Likewise, perhaps less so, for the others. MOS:DABRL gives the example of a short definition on a disambiguation page in lieu of a red link; it's not clear if this is the best way to disambiguate a notable person from people notable enough to be mentioned in another article but not notable for an article of their own, or if any disambiguation is called for.

(Let's be clear: I'm less concerned about the Plummers per se than about how such situations should be handled.) Enoent (talk) 22:57, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Other people with the same name as David Plummer only have very brief mentions in other articles, so I wouldn't make any hatnote or disambiguation page on David Plummer. Readers will just have to use the search box to find the little information we have about them. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)