Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 August 21

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August 21

AfD Question

Is it an appropriate step to be WP:BOLD and add a redirect to an article currently up for deletion? Or should I hold off on that step until the AfD has had more time to come to consensus? Lithorien (talk) 13:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Articles at AfD should not be redirected before the discussion closes and that usually takes around 7 days. The AfD started today and you made the only comment so far. You definitely shouldn't redirect the article but you can make a post saying "Redirect to Danny Wallace (humourist)" (or to the section Danny Wallace (humourist)#Danny Wallace and the Centre of the Universe) in the discussion. Keep and delete are not the only options. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thank you. :) Lithorien (talk) 18:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

manga

Head scratcher ...

There is vandalism on the page. The history shows it was immediately reverted (11:07 today). The edit tab doesn't show it. But it's still there in the article. --99.245.206.188 (talk) 00:25, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a caching problem I guess, sounds like something I experienced once. You need to purge your browser's cache. Someone else should help you with that.----occono (talk) 00:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You know I thought I did. But maybe I was on drugs. It's gone anyway. --99.245.206.188 (talk) 01:51, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

August 20th 2009 - Events

Hi, I am currently aware of a recent event in Toronto but do not know if it would qualify to make the page under "events" in August 20th AddZack (talk) 00:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The Event is a tornado touched down with 1 dead in Durham Ontario . Plus there were several sitings of Tornados in the Woodbine and Vaughan regions which caused extensive damage to Vaughan Mills and to homes in the Martin Grove - Highway 7 area .. Houses had roofs torn off and at Rutherford and Highway 7 houses were destroyed or severly structurally damaged

Source : http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/08/20/tornado-durham.html?ref=rss http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090820/wx_watch_090820/20090820/?hub=TorontoNewHome

You could write about this on Wikinews. Also we have a Durham, Ontario article which already mentions a tornado. --Teratornis (talk) 04:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia citation bot

Hi. I noticed that there is a bot that anyone can use to clean up citations of wiki pages. I was wondering what other kind of bots are available to use. Anything would be helpful. Cheers P.o.o.r.P.h.o.t.o.r.e.m.o.v.i.l.s.t. (talk) 02:35, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

See WP:EIW#Bot. --Teratornis (talk) 04:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Is it also possible to create and have your own P.o.o.r.P.h.o.t.o.r.e.m.o.v.i.l.s.t. (talk) 05:14, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes you can create your own bot, but you need to have a pretty much advanced knowledge of a programming language. And then you have to get it approved so that it can run here. See WP:BOT, WP:MAKEBOT & WP:BOTPOL if you are interested. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 05:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I will look into it and maybe get ideas from other bot scripts. Cheers P.o.o.r.P.h.o.t.o.r.e.m.o.v.i.l.s.t. (talk) 06:04, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

pop

what is SPAM? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.183.239.194 (talk) 03:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

See the Wikipedia article on Spam. If you are looking for Wikipedia's guidelines on spam, see here. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 03:24, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

How do I create an Infobox?

I type in a template for an infobox while editing my page, but it just posts what I typed. It doesn't create an infobox. Can I just have steps to easily creating an infobox? —Preceding unsigned comment added by GreggyBear (talk • contribs) 03:43, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You mean at Greg M Baratta? That's gonna get deleted, I think; you should keep that on your userpage, at User:GreggyBear. --AndrewHowse (talk) 03:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Maps

You guys need to add maps...I'm looking at Wales..and there are no maps...Geeze...put in some GD maps. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.176.128.54 (talk) 05:02, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean? There are maps in the Wales article. If you want more, you can find them at commons:Category:Maps of Wales. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 05:53, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please remember that everyone works here for free and on their free time. Warrior4321 14:02, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Free time? er... heheh looks around guiltily ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 14:06, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Strange display of Wikipedia pages

Please help! Just now when I opened Wikipedia the main page comes up without the navigation and search column on the left side of the page - the rest taking up the whole width of the page. Also, the link to my own page, tec., is no longer at the top right of the page, but listed in a group below all the news, etc.

This is when I use (as I usually do) the latest version of Firefox browser (I run Windows Vista SP 2). However, when I open Wikipedia in Windows Explorer it looks normal.

Have you any suggestions as to how I can get it to display properly in Firefox (Version 3.5.2)?

Many thanks,

John Hill John Hill (talk) 08:25, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please ignore the above comment - I restarted my computer and the problems seem to have fixed themselves - I don't know what happened. Thanks, John Hill (talk) 08:35, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Not receiving verification email

There is a problem somewhere with verifying my email address: I am not getting the email that Wp is supposed to be sending. As a newbie sysop on another MW-powered wiki, I am particularly interested in finding out what's going on, since I might have to answer such questions myself.

I hope I have rounded up all the usual suspects:

• Typed the address in, twice. Pasted it in, once. (Same nothing.)
• Checked local client (Tb 2.0.0.22 (20090605)) for filters (off) and junk caught (none).
• Checked ISP (RoadRunner) web-based mail, which I normally don't use, for filters (none found) and junk caught (none).

For the obvious reason, I am not posting my email address here; I get almost zero spam, and would like to keep it that way. Somebody with root access can probably dig it out of my account in the database, or I could email somebody directly, with reasonable privacy.

Suggestions welcome. --LCE(LCE talk contribs) 08:56, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The mail may be blocked before it reaches a point you can access. Help:Email confirmation#Known issues says: "If you are unable to receive the mail with your normal mail service then you can try another, for example one of the free webmails in comparison of webmail providers." In my tests of two mail services the mail from Wikipedia has always reached me within seconds. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the idea, but I haven't got another service. And a lot of mail from the other wiki gets through just fine. Is it possible to check the bounce messages, from undeliverable email? I can go hassle my ISP, but I need to know what to hassle them about: bouncing your emails, or not making them visible to me. "@cfl.rr.com" should be a good search string.

BTW, that help page wasn't linked from anywhere useful that I could find, so I added a link in Help:Contents/Account settings.--LCE(LCE talk contribs) 12:14, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The mail is from wiki@wikimedia.org which must be sending a lot of similar emails and risk being suspected of spam. If your other wiki is not from Wikimedia then it probably has less risk of that. The English Wikipedia alone has 48,347,791 user accounts. I guess only paid and busy developers would have access to sent and bounced mails if they are stored at all. I don't know whether they will investigate individual cases and answer questions. Setting up a free webmail account is fast and easy for many services but checking it regularly for new mails may be annoying. Help:Email confirmation is linked from MediaWiki:Prefs-help-email which is displayed under E-mail options in preferences. Help:Contents/Account settings and maintenance is also a good idea. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:43, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

online payment

Is their anyway to make my payments online rather than using the mail service —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timberwolf757 (talk • contribs) 12:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our roughly three million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Changing unfactual information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Dept Dear Help desk the following page refers to a band of which I was a founding member, there are some really big inaccuracies in the peice ( that we are from Glasgow Scotland for example when the band was from London) it would be good to update the correct info, what it the most reliable way to do this and with who in the wikipedia editorial community? All the best Angus

85.158.69.246 (talk) 15:15, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You could document your concerns on Talk:Test Dept, providing reliable published sources to support your claims if possible. See Help:Talk page and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. --Teratornis (talk) 17:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please help me

Excuse me, can someone help me? I want to unite 2 username: User: Adryano and User: Adyadryano into user: Adyadriano. all are mine. but now I have a global cont on the last, User: Adyadriano Please help me. --Adyadriano (talk) 15:43, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not very experienced with global usernames, but can I redirect you to the place where username changes are requested? I believe they have to be changed on all the projects you belong to. ceranthor 17:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

google images?

If an image is on google images, does that mean it's free-use and possible to upload it directly to the wiki:commons? Laughingtam (talk) 16:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

No. Most images that you will find on Google images are copyrighted and should not be uploaded to commons. Some places to look for free images on the internet are listed here. Flickr's free image search is also useful. —SpaceFlight89 16:38, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Google Image's advanced search feature provides an option to search for freely licensed images. For more information about licenses suitable for Commons, see Commons:COM:L and the links under Commons:COM:EIC#Copyright. --Teratornis (talk) 17:45, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Creating a list in a table.

How do you properly put a list in a table?

I'm trying to put this into two columns on a local wiki site:

http://shetlopedia.com/Bressay_%28Constituency%29

I'd rather have it as a list without any breaks, if possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JAStewart (talk • contribs) 17:08, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Any help would be appreciated, thanks. JAStewart (talk) 17:08, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You could port {{Column}}, {{Col-begin}}, and {{Col-end}} to Shetlopedia. If you don't understand what that means, try asking on the Shetlopedia Forums for someone with more knowledge of MediaWiki template porting to help you. Note that the Wikipedia Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. The Help desk gets questions like this from time to time, and it would be nice if someone (for example, you, after you figure this out) could write a page of instructions: "How to port templates from Wikipedia to your local wiki project". --Teratornis (talk) 17:24, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Or you can try:

{|
 |valign="top"|
 *Item A
 *Item B
 |width="50"| 
 |valign="top"|
 *Item C
 *Item D
 |}

Cheers, hmwitht 18:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Bot

Resolved

I used this bot a few days ago, but today when I tried to use it, it states :

Page Title : 403 Forbidden Page header: Forbidden Page content(text): You don't have permission to access /cgi-bin/wp/wp10/run_wp10.html on this server.

What happened? Warrior4321 17:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Solved the problem myself. Warrior4321 22:36, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this a legitimate reference?

In the article List of diplomatic missions of Palestine reference 2 is just "UNESCO. May 12, 1989". Is this a legitimate reference? It doesn't identify a specific document. —Preceding unsigned comment added by No More Mr Nice Guy (talk • contribs) 19:09, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

In all likelihood, there is a web link that can and should be used for the reference. Someone just needs to find it. Dabomb87 (talk) 19:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, there may have been a reference in the past which has been since removed. Check the article history carefully to see if this is the case. --Jayron32 23:00, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Geographic coordinates

Will somebody please help me. I have tried to find the geographic coordinates for the company Steinway & Sons. I have tried on Google Maps and some other sites but unfortunately without luck.

Steinway & Sons has 2 headquarters. The 2 headquarters are equal:

Steinway & Sons
1 Steinway Place
Long Island City
New York 11105

Steinway & Sons
Rondenbarg 10
22525 Hamburg
Deutschland

Can somebody tell me the coordinates for the 2 headquarters? Fanoftheworld (talk) 21:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the NY address is here, 41.168706,-73.538511, but 1 Steinway Place is in Queens, and Long Island City is elsewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sphilbrick (talk • contribs) 23:01, 21 August 2009

Mine was wrong, not sure why, I used Google maps to find it, but I don't quite know the right process, so I guess I did something wrong.--SPhilbrickT 23:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Long Island City is part of Queens... --Jayron32 23:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Steinway is in Astoria, though (but not for postal purposes). Deor (talk) 00:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

NYC: 40°46′45″N 73°53′59″W

Hamburg: 53°34′27″N 9°55′31″E

—Deor (talk) 23:16, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Editing Semi-Protected Pages

How does one become an established User in order to edit semi-protected pages? Is it by making a certain number of legitimate posts or having an account for a given period of time? Any help would be appreciated. Youknow009 (talk) 21:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It's both. You need to have an autoconfirmed account, which requires that the account is 4 days old, and has made 10 edits. After those thresholds, you should be able to edit semi-protected articles. Please also understand that if an article is semi-protected, it has been done for a reason. Please review the article history tab to find out why. --Jayron32 21:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Until then, you can put {{editsemiprotected}} on the talk page of an article along with the changes you think should be done, and another editor will do it for you if appropriate. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 00:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Do 'Goodwill' employees wear uniforms in Ontario, Canada?

Goodwill- as in the chairity thrift store. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.239.102.218 (talk) 23:05, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misevaluation, but it is our policy here to not do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn how to solve such problems.

Please attempt to solve the problem yourself first. You can search Wikipedia or search the Web.
If you need help with a specific part of your homework, the Reference desk can help you grasp the concept. Do not ask knowledge questions here, just those about using Wikipedia. –túrian^patois 23:08, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It's possible that this is a homework question but, unlike many we sometimes get, there's nothing about it that makes that evident. What teacher would ask their students to find out whether a particular group wears uniforms? To the questioner. Please visit the miscellaneous section of the reference desk; this page is for questions about using Wikipedia.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:01, 22 August 2009 (UTC)