Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 May 4

Help desk
< May 3	<< Apr | May | Jun >>	May 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

May 4

Deleted threads / articles etc

Morning all,

Just ran a search for Demonik (a cancelled video game for Xbox) and, after seeing there wasn't a page for it and trying to create it, found two previous versions have been deleted. Is there like an archive store for the information held in wikipedia or do I have to go the slow way and use google to search all posts made anywhere that have reference to Demonik?

I Am The Oracle (talk) 00:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It's available here. Goodraise 01:16, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

As an administrator, I have access to deleted files. In this case, there were two versions of the article. The first was in fact the game you were refering to, but it was so short that basically your explanation of the game above was as long as the article was. The second was an unrelated topic about some non-notable band, and which had nothing at all to do with your video game. Also, before you create the new article, please read Your First Article which will explain how to avoid pitfalls that people run into when creating new articles. Most importantly, you will want to clearly indicate, with as many references as you can, why the subject is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia as outlined by the criteria at WP:N. Wikipedia can only document that which has already been documented before, see Wikipedia:Verifiability. If a subject has so little existing information about it that a Wikipedia article would have nothing substantial or reliable to reference, then it probably does not merit an article in the first place. If you would like some time to craft the article outside of the main encyclopedia, you can do so by creating a subpage of your userpage. At this subpage, you can work on a draft version of the article, and take a few days to put it together without fear of it getting deleted out from underneath you. Instructions for doing so are described at WP:USERPAGE and WP:SUBPAGE. If you need help doing this, ask for help, and I or someone else can walk you through it. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Editor for my wikimedia

hi

I am using 1.14.0 in my server (http://doc.erpvn.com), but I cannot see editor as same as this editor (there are some of button as Subscript, Superscript, Table,...)

Could you help me how to get this editor?

Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ati.solution (talk • contribs) 00:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you need the MediaWiki Support Desk. – ukexpat (talk) 01:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Six Flags

Six Flags over Texas" include the United States, France, Spain, Mexico, Texas and which other flag? -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.11.217.200 (talk) 03:12, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for in the article about Six flags over Texas. If you cannot find the answer there, you can try asking your question at Wikipedia's Reference Desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except about how to use Wikipedia, which is what this help desk is for). I hope this helps. Goodraise 03:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Confederate 68.88.198.81 (talk) 03:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism Report

Resolved

 – Goodraise 03:54, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Somebody with rollback authority might want to have a look at [this page]. The article has been vandalized a couple of times, some of which were corrected. Its a bit of a mess and I'm not sure how to fix it, other than just rolling back all of the changes from the last couple of days. Thanx! 68.88.198.81 (talk) 03:34, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

As the primary contributor to List of Jericho episodes, I have no idea why that wasn't already on my watchlist. I found the last good reversion, and reverted back to that one. Thanks, NW (Talk) ^{(How am I doing?)} 03:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of stubs

I have twice tried to create a stub page about New Zealand's new nationwide cellphone network NZ Communications. Both times the page was speedy deleted, by different administrators. The reasons given were:

• A3: Article has no meaningful, substantive content
• A7: Article about a company, corporation, organization, or group, which does not indicate the importance or significance of the subject

I asked the second administrator why they deleted the article and they asked me for more sources.

Speedy deletion is a mechanism for pruning out junk pages and copyright violations. It doesn't make sense to me that articles should be speedily deleted merely because they are incomplete. Wikipedia is a multi-contributor environment after all.

In the article I wrote a few paragraphs of meaningful content about the technology of the NZ Communications network and its significance in New Zealand.

I am concerned that pages are being deleted using speedy deletion before anyone has a chance to develop them beyond stub stage.

If administrators think articles are not notable then wouldn't the normal (slow) deletion process be more appropriate. Authors need a chance to argue for the notability of the article.

If administrators want more references then there are appropriate templates for asking for that kind of information on the page.

Using speedy deletion on stubs is very discouraging to new editors like myself and doesn't teach us what you want the article to look like.

How do I go about asking Wikipedia to change its policy so that speedy deletion doesn't get used on recently-created stub pages?

DarrylJH (talk) 03:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The direct answer to your question is: If you want to ask "Wikipedia to change its policy so that speedy deletion doesn't get used on recently-created stub pages", start a discussion at WT:CSD. However, it seems to me that you are misunderstanding the grounds upon which the article was deleted. You do not have to prove that the company is notable to keep it from being speedy deleted, you only have to explain why it is notable. Also note that "notable" has a special meaning on Wikipedia, which is explained in general here and for companies in particular here. I hope this helped. Goodraise 03:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

To survive a speedy deletion nomination in the A7 category, an article only has to "indicate importance or significance", and that is an even lesser standard than "notability". – ukexpat (talk) 04:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I point to the special meaning of the word on Wikipedia and use it in its dictionary meaning in the preceding sentence... how embarrasing. I think part of the misunderstanding here is the wording of the most recent deletion: "A3: Article that has no meaningful, substantive content: Company which has not yet launched. Perhaps it will be notable once it does." Which leads to believe that the article was deleted for non-notability, while that is never a reason for speedy deletion. Goodraise 04:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

If an invalid reason for deleting an article was used, the proper forum to get the deletion overturned is Deletion Review, found at WP:DRV. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(after three edit conflicts) As both a stub-sorter and an occasional new pages patroller, I'd chip in that there are definitely a large number of cases where a {{prod}} notice is a better idea that simply speedying the article. In the case of this particular article, however, I'd add that it would be rare for a company that has not yet been launched to ever be considered as significant enough for an article. Once the company is up and running, it's quite likely that there will be enough information about it available to indicate its importance and/or notability, but - other than in exceptional circumstances - that's very unlikely for a company that's not yet either been advertised or launched. In those cases, any Wikipedia article for the company is likely to be far too much like an advertisement for an upcoming release than an objective article, and is not likely to show any indication of the company's significance. In itself, though, this might well be a fairly questionable reason for speedying (AFDing or Prodding, yes - speedying though...?) Grutness...wha? 05:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the NZ Communications network is up and running. It has a roaming deal with Vodafone. So it's been launched for global customers, just not for New Zealand customers. I know Darryl and he tells me he said something to that effect in the article. My question is: how does the community have a discussion of whether a topic is notable (or important/significant) if the article gets speedy deleted by fiat as soon as it's created? Ben Arnold (talk) 09:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't. A more formal debate on the merits of Notability, verifiability and other inclusion criteria may occur at an articles for deletion nomination, but only if the article is created in a form that doesn't meet the speedy criteria. To condense what they are—those that would be applicable here—the article must:

• Be created with enough content that it isn't subject to CSD A1 or CSD A3 (consider working it up in a subpage, or creating it with an {{under construction}} tag);
• Be created with content that attempts to be neutral point of view so it isn't subject to CSD G11 (avoid peacock wording; state just facts not opinion; write in the third person; be aware of our conflict of interest guideline; read the business faq);
• Be created with content that asserts importance or significance so it isn't subject to CSD A7 (you don't need to show notability, just indicate importance or significance; the best way to do this is by citing to reliable sources which verify the content—it will need this eventually anyway, and the lack thereof will cause it to fail an AfD debate if not met, even if it avoids speedy deletion);
• It doesn't sound to me as if the subject is viable as an article topic yet, but if you create it in a form that avoids the pitfalls above, it probably won't be speedy deleted.
• We have had many debates on Wikipedia about not tagging article for speedy deletion as soon as they are created. The result has been that it is still permitted but looked down upon by many; templates have been created to address the issue (see {{hasty}} and {{CSD5}} [both of which I made]) and see the editing notice at the top of newpages which says "Please consider patrolling pages from the back of the unpatrolled backlog" as well as the language at WP:CSD: "Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete". Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Text outside main text area

Resolved

 – Goodraise 05:34, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick question, when editing some pages, there is a block of text just above the main text window. For example, this page has a list of five bullets regarding the use of this page. How and where is that entered? Useight (talk) 05:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

That is called an editnotice. More on editnotices can be found at Wikipedia:Editnotice. Hope this helped. Goodraise 05:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's an edit notice. For this page, the edit notice is located at MediaWiki:Editnotice-4-Help desk. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Useight (talk) 05:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

plastic bag with (PET , MPEC , LLDPE) delaminate after WET tissue insert into bag

i am a QC,this concern is occur in my company , when we put the wet tissue into palstic bag , the bottom of the plastic bag will delaminate into 3 layers, we cant find the actual answer y the palstic bag will going to be like this after the wet tissue is putting inside . Before the wet tissue is putting inside the lamination is cant be observe visionary but the dealminatinon will exist after wet tissue putting inside.. y? i would very pleasure if any one can help me to get the answer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.111.128.125 (talk) 05:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Science reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Type size in edit box

Resolved

 – JohnCD (talk) 10:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

What controls the type size in the edit box? It has suddenly become extremely small, without my changing any settings (as far as I know). I have looked all round "my preferences" but can't see anything. I am using the Monobook skin with Firefox, and no gadgets except the toolbar clock. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 09:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Hold Ctrl and move the mouse wheel. Alternatively go to (on Forefox at least): Tools -> Options -> Content -> Fonts and Colours box -> Advanced and fix the size of Monospace.  GARDEN  09:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how those two techniques interact, but by fiddling with both I've got things back to normal. Thanks. JohnCD (talk) 10:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

for starting a new business regarding GEARS

Am Sachin, DME holder, working with gear industry frm last six year, NOw I am interesting to start a new business for auto car gears sales and service, So please I want some information suggestion or instruction from the concern persons. Please do the needfull. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.211.246.53 (talk) 11:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 2.8 million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free 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 that is not fruitful, we have a reference desk, divided into various subjects areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. TNXMan 13:16, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Euro bank note

I would like to know where on the Euro bill can I see from which country the bill is.

Renate Hinsepp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.69.20.169 (talk) 13:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

• You can't - Euro banknotes are the same whichever country they are issued in. Only the coins have a "national side". See Euro#Coins and banknotes. JohnCD (talk) 13:54, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • CORRECTION - the design is the same, but you can work out from the serial number where the note was issued. See Euro banknotes#Serial number. JohnCD (talk) 14:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

AM/PM

Is there a style guide for how to use times a.m./p.m. or am/pm or AM/PM? I thought it was at WP:MoS but I must be mistaken. Template AMPM doesn't really help cos it doesn't say it's in tune with MoS, for all I know it may be an old, redundant template (in which case needs to be marked as such). I read somewhere, I am sure, to use a space then a dot m dot (except for noon which should be just that and not 12 noon or 12pm etc) which is not my preferred way but will follow it if that's MoS but can't seem to find anywhere that says so.

Just my usual struggle to find this. I was copy-editing Sunday shopping and there's a mix of formats, but there's no point my trying to make them regular until I know what format they should be. Best wishes I bet you will point me to something in an instant and I will have to bash my head against the wall again. WP templates and doc are SO hard to find. (And I tried Google.) SimonTrew (talk) 14:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Try this: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) Lars (talk) 14:26, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Have a look at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Time_of_day. You can use either am/pm or a.m./p.m. Tra (Talk) 14:28, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I knew it would be bleeding obvious, believe me I did look there, I dunno why I tried search on am pm a.m. p.m. etc found nothing, I looked in the section myself found nothing, just must be a blonde moment or something. That does seem to make template:AMPM be nonconformant then, seems slightly odd to have a template that contravenes MoS, I'll leave a note on the talk page there. Thanks again, now I can fix that article. SimonTrew (talk) 17:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is so huge that you will find some inconsistencies between the various parts. Not every user who writes templates has read every manual, and sometimes the manuals change, rendering older things out of compliance with the latest rules. It's far easier for a relatively few people to formulate rules, than to make sure our 48,347,734 registered users are fully aware of the rules. Wikipedia gets edited by users at all experience levels, and no amount of experience guarantees a person will know every single rule. I bet even Jimbo doesn't know all the rules, although hopefully he knows more than most users. Incidentally, your search on AM/PM might have failed because Wikipedia's built-in search might not like very short keywords. --Teratornis (talk) 02:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Image Stack-Up

Problem with image stack-up in the Calcite article. Not sure how to resolve. I tried the image tutorial but could not find a good answer.

Here is an example of a similar article where the problem is avoided. Can images not span several sections? Lars (talk) 14:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the template {{FixBunching}} can fix this, but I don't have a lot of experience using it. Might be worth poking around on the instruction page. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Attempted fix but had to move all images to the same section in order to use FixBunching. I couldn't find any way around this... any advice? Here is the diff [1]. Lars (talk) 15:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

You can break the images up into 2 or 3 groups and still use {{FixBunching}}, so long as you use the correct begin, mid and end templates for each group. – ukexpat (talk) 16:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Why not just create an Image Gallery as described at WP:IG and WP:GALLERY. That would solve the problem, no? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Ahmed Deedat

Before it turns into an edit-war: there is a dispute about the validity of some Youtube-clips on the Ahmed Deedat-page. My opinion is that these clips shouldnot be used, while User:Movieporchz believes there is no problem in using them. See also Talk:Ahmed_Deedat#Concerning_Youtube-links. Jeff5102 (talk) 14:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

What bot am I thinking of?

I know there's a bot that looks for pages tagged for cleanup that are also tagged with wikiproject banners, then gives a list of problem pages to the wikiproject. What bot is this? I would like to have the bot also give wikiprojects lists of articles tagged as needing translation, which would be a more effective system than maintaining tons of separate project lists. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

User:WolterBot? --AndrewHowse (talk) 14:41, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Or User:ArticleAlertbot, examples of the output of both can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Cleanup listing (WolterBot) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Article alerts (ArticleAlertbot). Nanonic (talk) 15:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Logged out when trying to make a Map request

I am logged in successfully (secure account) and I can navigate to most other ages without getting logged out, so I don't believe I have a cookie problem, but if I click on the link at this page Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Map workshop to make a map request, I am logged out. I suppose I could still make the request, but I'd prefer to make the request under my user name. (I did make the request under my user name, but by copy and pasting, I'd prefer to be able to do it directly.) Sphilbrick (talk) 15:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure what's going on. I went to the page and clicked on the make a request section, but am still logged in. You may want to ask either at the associated talk page or possibly the village pump. TNXMan 16:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try both. Sphilbrick (talk) 16:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't know how to post an article

Hi, I'm new at this. I logged in, wrote my article and thought it was published....wrong...what do I need to do, please??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seriesse International (talk • contribs) 15:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It appears that you have posted the article to your userspace instead of the main space. However, I would strongly encourage you to read our info on advertising and corporate notability before moving the page to the main space. TNXMan 15:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed users

Hi,

I just registered for Wikipedia 5 days ago, and I have made more than 10 edits (a lot of these are to my User Page, or using Friendly to welcome users, but a few are to revert vandalism, wikify articles, or fix bad grammar). However, I still can't edit semi-protected articles, like God or User:Example. Is there any reason why?

-- BlizzardDragon6 16:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem has been solved, it turns out that the required time period is 5 days, not 4.

-- BlizzardDragon6 16:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The required period is four days. You should have become autoconfirmed at 16:28, 4 May, three minutes before your first post here. Algebraist 16:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Uploading pictures

If I were to come accross photos taken in the late 1800s and early 1900s, can they be uploaded into wikipedia?., If a Muesuem has the physical photos does this mean that they can re- copyright them, making it so i cant upload them? Hope i explained this well enough. Thanks Ottawa4ever (talk) 17:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Such photographs are likely to be in the public domain, but may not be, depending on such circumstances as where the photographs were taken, whether they were taken privately or for hire, and how long the photographer lived for after taking them. The owner of the physical photographs cannot claim new copyright over them (though they may be able to over derivative works that they create from the photographs), and (if the photos are still in copyright) might not even own the original copyrights. You should ask this question at WP:Media copyright questions, giving all the details you can about the photographs and the photographer. Algebraist 17:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

And see the links under Commons:COM:EIC#Copy, for example Commons:Commons:Image casebook and Commons:Help:Public domain. --Teratornis (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I looked into the public domain for canada and they say any photgraph taken before 1949 is in the public domain. Ill still post at media copyright questions to be sure. Thanks a bunch Ottawa4ever (talk) 18:34, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Special:Tags

What's it for and how do I use it? Cheers, Skomorokh 18:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Not entirely sure, but my understanding is that when an editor makes an edit, a special tag may be added to the edit summary. For example, if I was to remove a reference from an article, the special tag "references removed" would be added to my edit summary. I've used this a few times, in as much as if I see "references removed" I tend to check for vandalism etc. I'd guess this is fairly new, probably due to a recent software update. Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 18:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It uses the Abuse Filter to automatically add comments to the article history log. For example:

• (diff) (hist) . . Primo Levi‎; 18:30 . . (+198) . . Primolevicenter (talk | contribs | block) (→Popular culture references) (possible conflict of interest) [rollback]

Since the article name and the editor name are similar, the COI tag was automatically applied. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

See this related thread at WP:VPT: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Valid change tags. – ukexpat (talk) 18:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your responses. Is this strictly an abusefilter feature and not for regular consumption then? Skomorokh 10:24, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

my edits wont save

as in... I click "Save page" and reloads the old version...Noeyedeer (talk) 18:46, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

On what page are you encountering this error? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Try purging. Xenon54 (talk) 19:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, could you perhaps tell us where specifically this has occurred? Also, did you try refreshing the page after saving? If you give us those specifics, perhaps we can help you a bit more. Cheers, tempodivalse [☎] 00:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Title spacing in sidebar

Can someone figure out how to get space between the titles and the [show] buttons in this version of {{Ethics}}? It should work like {{Anarchism sidebar}} but I can't see what code is missing or causing problems. Any help appreciated. Skomorokh 19:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I've set it to a width that looks OK on my computer, but it might not on others using different fonts and such (I myself see a slight overlap on {{Anarchism sidebar}}). Unfortunately, I can't see a way of forcing it to choose a sensible width. Algebraist 19:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much Algebraist, that works for me. It is troubling that there is no way to fix the problem for all browsers/resolutions. Mahalo, Skomorokh 10:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Quick Information Box

How do you insert a quick information box into a page. For example: Logo, Founder, Location, Target Population. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Back on My Feet (talk • contribs) 19:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

These quick information boxes are called Infoboxs. You should find an appropriate Infobox template and use that. Algebraist 20:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Deleting Accounts

How do I delete my Wikipedia account? —Preceding unsigned comment added by CharosEagle (talk • contribs) 20:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

You can't. Well, it can be done, but the process is rare and difficult to go through. You can just create a new one or invoke your right to vanish. Livewireo (talk) 20:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Looking at your contributions after Sinebot added your signature (thanks Sinebot!), you haven't really made any contributions outside of this post, the sandbox and your userpage. Just make a new screen name. Livewireo (talk) 20:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Rare? The only way I know is direct deletion by the server admins and I'm not aware that this has ever been done ever. Algebraist 20:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Actually, accounts cannot be deleted. They can be abandoned and have their passwords scrambled, but the account will still be here. TNXMan 20:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(e/c*2) It is impossible to completely delete an account (i.e. remove all records of a user ever having joined or edited). Wikipedia's licence, the GFDL, mandates that all authors to a page must be given credit for their contribution. Even if all of a user's edits were oversighted, a record of him would still exist, but it would only be visible to oversighters. Xenon54 (talk) 20:41, 4 May 2009 (UTC)