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Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 August 10

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August 10

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White pill

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I HAVE A WHITE PILL.ONE SIDE HAVES250 AND THE OYHER HAVES 5311 WHAT IS IT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.60.74.23 (talk) 08:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Wikipedia: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, select the relevant section, 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.

specific MediaWiki pages

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What pages produce the "view history" tab? What about the "create" tab? I found the vector of the latter, but can't find the rest. sonia♫ 09:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Skin 1.5, history.js. If you wish further skins, kindly don't leave a request here on a highly watched forum. It'll be better if you ask administrators directly as these skins are in general sensitive pages open to attacks. Thanks and warm regards. ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 09:03, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

creating a page

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am new to Wikipedia and would like to set up an account and create a page about my band. how do i go about that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hodmusic (talk • contribs) 10:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have set up an account—there's nothing more to it than what you have already done. As for writing about your band, please read WP:COI. While it may seem odd that you would be discouraged from contributing to an article when you probably know more than any other editor, it actually makes sense in the context of the Wikipedia goals. All is not lost, though, if someone else creates an article, you are permitted, even encouraged, to post information to the related Talk Page, suggesting corrections, addition, or relevant sources, but other, uninvolved editors should make the changes.--SPhilbrickT 11:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Name

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What is the origin of the word Asha? What language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.178.21.83 (talk) 12:46, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Language 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. Cassandra 73 (talk) 13:14, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Question

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Hello... I have set up an account.... I found a great Charity that I would like to put in the encyclopedia section..

I have spent hours here and still do not understand how to use the system...please give a simple answer as to how to do this...

Thankyou

Chubassco Chubassco (talk) 12:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Please see Your first article. If you'd like help going through the steps below, try the Article Wizard.
  1. Ensure that you have an account and you are logged in. If you don't have an account, create one
  2. Make sure the subject is notable enough to have their own article
  3. Find references
  4. Make sure no article on the subject exists under a different title by typing the subject into the search box to the left (←) and clicking 'Search'
  5. Type the page name in the search box to the left (←) and click 'Go'
  6. Click 'Create this page'
  7. Create the article, including all your references, making sure you adhere to the Manual of Style and our article layout guidelines
  8. Be aware that Wikipedia deletes thousands of new articles for failing to adhere to our policies and guidelines. New articles by new users are at extra risk of deletion, due to new users' unfamiliarity with our rules. Consider gaining experience by editing existing articles before attempting to create new ones. --Mysdaao talk 13:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

USO of North Carolina

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Someone decided to recommend speedy deletion of the page I submitted for "USO of North Carolina," which they say is not prominent enough. It's the oldest and longest-running USO in the world, and supports nearly a quarter million servicemembers annually. Additionally, they have launched new programs to connect servicemembers with family members during deployment. To make matters worse, they redirected my page to the United Service Organizations, which is entirely different, and are ignoring my request to delete the redirect. Just delete the page if you're not going to work with me. Jsrawlinson (talk) 12:53, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I'd have declined the speedy deletion request: being the oldest organisation of its type implies significance which is what an article needs to do to survive a speedy deletion request.
You've reverted back to the pre-redirect version, which is fine. I've copy-edited the article a wee bit, and added some tags indicating how the article can be improved.
You posted on the article's talk page, which the other editor may not have seen, so don't be too concerned about the lack of response.
Bottom line: don't worry too much, this is all part of the "cut-and-thrust" of editing on Wikipedia. Feel free to follow this up with me if you have any further issues. TFOWR 13:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Compact Flourescent bulbs

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I was wondering if the kelvins rating on a comp. flour. bulb is directly related to the heat given off by the bulb? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jongrandy (talk • contribs) 14:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. TNXMan 14:25, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See Compact fluorescent lamp#Spectrum of light. The spectrum of light from a CFL appears to be due to the layers of different phosphor coatings on the interior of the glass. Thus the spectrum would have no obvious relation to the heat given off by the bulb, other than the fact that adding more coatings to change the spectrum would lower the efficiency a bit, and would thus require increased power to maintain a given light level, and this would result in more waste heat. CFLs operate by a completely different mechanism than incandescent bulbs, so beware of reasoning by analogy between them. --Teratornis (talk) 18:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Editing

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Why is somebody editing the Above Top Secret.com webpage, and changing the content into offensive language? It seems to be one or two users that are doing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Voyager78906 (talk • contribs) 14:57, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because they can? ;-) They've been reverted (you could have done that yourself...) In future, either discuss it with them (on their talkpages), discuss it on the article talkpage, or if it's clearly vandalism warn them and if they continue past a final warning then report them at WP:AIV. TFOWR 15:06, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

editing

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I'd like to edit our company article Ensim, with the below text. However it's not clear what the problem/objection is for the information I edit. I'm told the file is being reviewed for deletion. Any help to replace the article with what's below would be appreciated. Thanks

Ensim Corporation, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is the leading provider of infrastructure management software enabling identity and access management, provisioning and administration automation, change audit & reporting, and policy enforcement for enterprises ( http://www.ensim.com/products/ensim_unify/unify_enterprise_edition/index.html) and service providers ( http://www.ensim.com/products/ensim_unify/unify_service_provider_edition/index.html).

Our products for dedicated or multi-tenant environments include Ensim Unify, an integrated suite of tools designed to manage Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Google Apps, SQL, Office Communications Server (OCS), VOIP, Web Hosting, as well as other windows management tools. These combine to provide an automated, secure, and compliant management environment that overlays existing infrastructure. Monicajgallegos (talk) 15:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is not suitable content for a Wikipedia article because it is written with a promotional tone; articles should be written neutrally and should not promote the subject. The deletion discussion has been initiated because the company does not appear to meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria, detailed in WP:ORG.
Please see Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for further information. Cassandra 73 (talk) 16:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

financial aid from readers

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We are a family from Turkey too poor to have our own home are waiting for help thanks no paypal account <blanked> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.13.53.163 (talk) 17:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 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 upper right 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. TNXMan 17:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Google Docs

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  Resolved
 – Thanks for that guys - Happysailor (Talk) 21:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I stalk this page usually to help answer queries, I now have one of my own. Google Docs - is it suitable to be used in an article? I have searched and found reference to discussions that state its not suitable for use as a source (which I agree with) but is it suitable to use for external refsLinks? I'm not looking to add myself, but an IP has added google docs links to an article and I just want some opinion on it from other editors. Thanks - Happysailor (Talk) 17:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that Google Docs is a facility provided by Google that lets people prepare and store documents on the web. If this is so, these documents are self-published and are not suitable for use in Wikipedia unless it can be proven that the documents were actually created by an expert in the field. Or were you talking about some other kind of Google Docs? Jc3s5h (talk) 17:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, that's the facility. It looks like either the user, or someone else has uploaded some documents to the site and linked to them in the "External Links" (corrected section title above) section of the article.
One of the docs (well 3, but its one document split up) looks like its from an official source, and just uploaded so people can access it (although you have to download it as its 30MB+)
The other doc looks like its either written by someone personally, or split off form an official document, but doesnt show where its come from. - Happysailor (Talk) 17:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say they don't qualify. There's nothing to have prevented tampering and editing of what purports to be a government document from an official source. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Italian Image

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I wish to use the image   from Italian Wikipedia. It doesn't display but redlinks. Is there a syntax/template I should be using?Monstrelet (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, images uploaded locally aren't available on different projects. You'll need to upload the picture to Commons in order to use it here. TNXMan 18:03, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For ease of reference the It Wikipedia file is at it:File:La battaglia di Legnano di Amos Cassoli.jpg. – ukexpat (talk) 14:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Erroneous editing in the name of Education

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I am an instructor for a graduate course in Educational Technology. My teaching philosophy is constructivist in orientation. I like to start the class off by surveying the K12 teachers in the course about their opinions on Wikipedia and it's legitimacy as a learning resource. 2/3s to 3/4s hold with traditional school dogma that Wikipedia is not a credible source. Many reason the ease of editing contributes to the lack of article credibility.

While I can tease out their opinions, I am lacking a practical exercise that challenges this line of reasoning. I would like to assign a Wikipedia "erroneous editing" assignment where my students edit a given Wiki article and monitor how quickly changes are made to bring the text back in line with reality, ala Steve Colbert (August 2006).

Do you have any reasonable way for me to assign the experiment without creating 25+ rouge wiki vandals? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.181.195.14 (talk) 18:06, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We don't permit vandalism contests here; this is a reference project, not a playground. Vandals will be blocked. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:18, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We do, however, have some advice for school projects. Check out this page for tips. TNXMan 18:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is no need to introduce more vandalism into Wikipedia to measure the persistence of vandalism. We already have plenty of vandals. (By analogy, in Criminology, you can study the activity of criminals without creating artificially more of them. There is never any problem finding criminals to study.) Just tell your students to monitor Special:RecentChanges for a few weeks, classifying every edit as constructive or destructive, then watching to see how long the destructive edits persist. At the end of the observation period, your students could then repair any remaining destructive edits in the observed set. Simple, and everybody wins. Also see the links under WP:EIW#Vandal for studies that have already been done. See Wikipedia:Flagged revisions for a mechanism that might reduce the visible impact of vandalism to negligible levels. There could still be well-intentioned errors of fact on Wikipedia just as with any publication. --Teratornis (talk) 18:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also see User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers. And note that something like 97% of vandalism is by unregistered editors, so you can find vandalism more quickly in Special:RecentChanges by focusing on edits by IP addresses. --Teratornis (talk) 18:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can't see logo in different browsers.

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MASERGY page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masergy_Communications,_Inc._%28MASERGY%29 The logo, a jpeg image uploaded to Wiki, only appears in Mozilla and Sarafi Internet browsers. I can't get it to show up in Internet Explorer. Please let me know how I can fix this. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Egroover (talk • contribs) 18:13, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Egroover, which version of Internet Explorer do you have? Based on your answer, check the following links from Microsoft's support center > 1 and 2. The fix should hopefully solve it. If it doesn't, write back. Regards ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 19:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have the same problem with that image. It shows in Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome, but not IE8. I have also saved http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/MasergyLogo_w-Tag.jpg to my hard disk and opened it with the same result: It only shows in the 3 other browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dear PrimeHunter, try the links provided above which contain the fixes. In case you wish, you can directly visit the HotFix download site and check the fix out. The HotFix download resolves the issue in a significant majority of cases. Kindly note that this is a beta fix and can create issues (minimally) with certain other functionalities and should be used only when the IE image display problem perseveres across pages. Irrespective of that, it should in general work. The recommendation, though, would also be to use another browser like Chrome or Safari. Warm regards. ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 06:33, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I use Firefox. I only tested in IE8 because the poster reported a problem in IE. I read your links but it didn't look like they applied when the problem also occurs on the hard disk and other images can be displayed. The Hotfix says it's only for IE6 SP1 so I'm not trying it. Thanks anyway. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on Ed Olczyk hockey Player/Announcer

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I have photos of us when we were kids. He learned to ice skate and played his first several years of hockey in Niles, IL I know I grew up with him and was a teamate <blanked> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.206.195.79 (talk) 18:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would you like to donate those photos? If so, check out this page. TNXMan 18:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

error in formatting of References

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Hi Wiki, I don't know happened, but the #4 link in References on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingham,_Ontario got transcribed as: http://www.http//www.aboutown.ca/northlink/index.html , instead of: http://www.aboutown.ca/northlink/index.html. Your "edit" capabilities in "References" does not allow me to fix this URL. If you could do so, I'd appreciate it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shedderich (talk • contribs) 18:17, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. You need to edit the actual reference to correct those issues, not the reference section at the bottom. TNXMan 18:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Help

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Can someone help me edit my page, Mick Mulvaney (wikified text inserted by moi~! --Dave ♠♣♥♦№1185♪♫™ 19:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC))? I am trying to launch a page for Mick, who is running for U.S. Congress. Erinfebel (talk) 19:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Erinfebel, the article Mick Mulvaney has now been moved to our main article space. Feel free to edit it in its current form. However, kindly do necessarily read the following pages before adding information to the article > WP:BLP, WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NPOV. Reading these will be a good way to understand some basic extremely important policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Enjoy your editing experience and feel free to write back for help. Regards. ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 19:52, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to her tweets[1], Erin is in charge of social networking marketing for Mulvaney. She has been warned about COI. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:22, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

unable to view any picture

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i cant view any photograph on wikipedia. which format does they use? how can i view them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.61.251 (talk) 20:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is Wikipedia the only website where you are unable to view images? TNXMan 20:55, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
They are in common formats. The images are probably being blocked somewhere and it's not about format. What is your browser? Can you see http://en.wikipedia.org/images/wikimedia-button.png? It is at wikipedia.org unlike most images. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Templates for user pages

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  Resolved

On my home wiki (Chandos) there are templates on the right side for information about where I live, what I like to do and what I don't like. Where could I find those on the English Wikipedia page? Thank you!--Chandos (talk) 23:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Userboxes/Gallery would be a good starting point. You might also be interested in {{User:TFOWR/Userboxes/Sister Wiki}}, which I made when I couldn't find an existing userbox to point to "sister Wikipedias". TFOWR 23:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Damn your response time is fast. Thanks again!--Chandos (talk) 00:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Erin's Twitter account
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