Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 September 19

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September 19

User talk:M12390

The user mentioned seems to have a history of inserting POV on related articles of the MQM/Altaf Hussein and now to a recetn death article Imran Farooq. His user page is also full of such warnings. I dont know if a block or something should be considered or where to go next with this?

He also just added a lot of copy violation stuff to the imran Farooq page that i just went and altered to better wording. Everything he added in the section was a direct copy+pasteLihaas (talk) 21:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Hover board

I find an error with your hover board article. It says its a fictional item but I found a company that makes them

http://www.futurehorizons.net/hoverboard.htm

Have a great day! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.235.208.220 (talk • contribs) 01:45, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

• Feel free to edit the article, review Verifiability and citing sources first. Thanks. %Gryllida^talk 01:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
• Your request has also been added to the article's talk page. %Gryllida^talk 02:01, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The lead of Hoverboard says: "Some companies hoping to leverage the commercial success of the movies have marketed hovercraft vehicles as hoverboards, but these products have not been shown to replicate the experience depicted in the movies." You need independent reliable sources before claiming that this is a hoverboard as normally understood and not just a product the manufacturer markets as a "hoverboard". Your own link says it's a hovercraft, it uses air instead of magnetism, and it only lifts 1 inch. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Francis Bacon

I'm a Wikipedian on an enforced Wikibreak Does anyone have problems with the Francis Bacon page? It looks weird on IE. When I type in 'Sir Francis Bacon' instead of 'Francis Bacon' it looks normal though. 113.253.206.154 (talk) 02:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...could you perhaps offer a bit more information, such as what exactly looks odd? I looked at the page using both Google Chrome and IE 9, and it looks fine to me. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 03:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine here using Firefox. Dismas|^(talk) 04:05, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine on chrome for me too, but still weird on IE8. Screenshot here. Thanks 113.253.206.154 (talk) 06:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Bypass your cache. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Francis_Bacon and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon are different pages to your browser because Wikipedia redirects don't use URL redirection. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

cutting chicken claws

is there any way of cutting long claws on chickens. if so please let me know. Allan

This page is for asking questions about how to edit Wikipedia. For factual questions about everything else, see the Reference Desk. Dismas|^(talk) 04:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Bigotry at Wikipedia

THIS ARTIST HAS ALL THE REQUIRED SOURCES. YOUR EDITORS HAVE NOT RESEARCHED WITH THE NAMED SOURCES DIRECTLY, CLAIMED THE ARTIST WROTE ALL THESE WEBSITES HERSELF (!!!), HAVE MERELY DONE A LAZY (UNWILLING) WEB SEARCH (AND EVEN THAT BRINGS UP HUNDREDS OF INDEPENDENT LINKS INCLUDING STANFORD UNIVERSITY RADIO, CELEBRITY EVENT FOUNDER ARTICLES, ETC) ..AND THIS ARTISTS' BACK UP GUITARIST IS CITED AS HAVING THE HONOR OF PLAYING WITH THIS ARTIST IN A SEPARATE WIKIPEDIA PAGE. I ALSO READ THE OTHER RESPONSE THAT THE ARTICLE HAD ADEQUATE SOURCES BUT DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH LITERARY VALUE. HOWEVER, THAT WAS NOT PERCEIVED AS THE ISSUE EITHER PREVIOUSLY. EITHER WAY, NO REASON TO BAN PEOPLE. LET THEM ADD INFORMATION TO AN ARTICLE AS THEY SEE FIT. YOU DON'T NEED TO CENSOR PEOPLE FOR SUPPORTING AN ARTIST YOU DONT LIKE.

This totally legitimate transgender artist was harassed and insulted by wikipedia "editors" who also banned my user ID and IRC entry, after making transsexual jokes in chat room [01:02] == - Thank you for using freenode [01:02] == - [01:02] == End of /MOTD command. [01:02] == Usermode change: +i [01:02] == gateway/web/freenode/ip.76.169.14.24 is now your hidden host (set by syn.) [01:02] frigg [~frigg@freenode/utility-bot/frigg] requested CTCP VERSION from bralalalalacenso: [01:02] frigg [~frigg@freenode/utility-bot/frigg] requested CTCP VERSION from bralalalalacenso: [01:02] == #wikipedia-en-help Cannot join channel (+b) - you are banned

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bralalalala...<text of entire review from this page has been removed>—Preceding unsigned comment added by Foulballl (talk • contribs)

Another copy of the AfC page removed for clarity -- John of Reading (talk) 07:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

This question was also posted at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#No direct contact with named sources/entities by your "editors" and has been answered there. It is usually not necessary to ask a question in more than one place; most Help Desk volunteers will be watching all these pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

There is no need to re-post the text from Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bralalalala here. Anyone visiting this page can see the text by clicking the link. Have you read the response at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#No direct contact with named sources/entities by your "editors"? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

References

In Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners#Information to include, the reference example shows two different format for the same item: "27 October 2005" and "2005-10-27".

• Is this correct…why is there two different formats for dates on the same item?
• I know there is many acceptable ways to format dates, but is there are preferred way?

Thanks! FieldMarine (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Several standards are allowed on Wikipedia for a number of different things as well as date format, such as British and American spelling, and references style. The reason is that we have a very large number of editors from very diverse backgrounds who are used to different systems. Some date formats are definitely frowned on though, such as the use of ordinals. The main thing with referencing is that you are following a published standard (such as Chicago Manual of Style) and not something you have made up yourself, and that whatever system is being used it is followed consistently throughout any one given article. SpinningSpark 17:30, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

In order to get the best result, I recommend using the Reftool gadget (select the appropriate version, 2.0 is for Vector only). This allowed you to enter the date, and other data in fields, and automatically organizes them. Otherwise, I believe that Wikipedia allows you to change your date format, by going to Preferences>Date & Time>Format.  A p3rson ‽ 17:46, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I understand your point about several different acceptable formats for dates are OK. But, I'm still not sure why there are two different formats used on the ref citation mentioned above. I would think we would want consistency on date use in an article. Is there a specific reason why the date is written two different ways for the citation as mentioned above or is that just put there as illustrative examples of different types of date formats? Thanks! FieldMarine (talk) 18:38, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I think you could make a case that it distinguishes the different purposes of the two dates in that example; but I admit that this is rather a weak argument, and is not presented anywhere. --ColinFine (talk) 19:38, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

My guess is that because the publication was English, it used the English date format for the date of the publication. However, for the date retrieved, it didn't have to adhere to that format. The section isn't about date consistency but generally more about what you should put in the reference. Still, it's a bit confusing, although not terribly important. I try to use the same format in references for date and date accessed, although it's really hard to keep all the references in a long article consistent (I'm not familiar with the Reftool mentioned by p3rson above). The date formatting issue is discussed lower down in its own section, although fairly perfunctorily.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

This is an artifact of horrendously long discussions on date linking about two years ago. There was once a requirement that dates be enclosed in double brackets so that they were formatted according to the user preference. A feature was added to citation templates to automatically link the date and the recommendation was to use numeric dates. This requirement was removed and the date linking removed from citation templates. Unfortunately, there was no push to fix the mix of date formats that resulted, and there are still templates and other pages that recommend the use of numeric dates.

See WP:DATES and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting.h ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

What would be helpful is to have autoformatting of dates by article. Therefore, if you had an article about an American topic, you could specify American-style dating, whereas if you had one about an English topic, you could specify English-style dating. The article preference would enforce consistency, both in the body, and in the sources.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

THE ``RIYASAT```

sIR,IM SEARCHING FOR THE HISTORY OF URDU WEEKLY THE ``RIYASAT``...THE ONLY URDU WEEKLY DEVOTED TO INDIAN STATES.PUBLISHED FROM DELHI IN 1920`S,DIWAN SINGH MAFTOON WAS THE EDITOR,PO BOX NO.82.WHERE CAN I FIND THE HISTORY OF THIS NEWS PAPER. 16:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)16:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)~~VISHAL MAHAJAN

You'd best ask at the Wikipedia:Reference desk but because I don't know the best way to forward your query, I'll offer what I can here and perhaps all could be transferred en masse to the reference desk. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have have an article on the Riyasat. The Sikh Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Indian Literature have entries on Diwan Singh Maftoon; both refer to his work at the Riyasat. By the way, your Caps-lock seems to be on. Haploidavey (talk) 17:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

There is also an Urdu Wikipedia which might have an article, but I was unable to search because I cannot type in Urdu. SpinningSpark 17:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there an under construction template?

Is there an under construction template I can use to indicate that a page is undergoing lots of changes and is in a state a flux? I thought there was such a template, but I forget what it was. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

yes, {{Under construction}} ~~ GB fan ~~ 17:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Depends on what you are doing, you might also want to lok at {{inuse}} ~~ GB fan ~~ 17:15, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe {{Current}} if it's the subject and not just the page that is changing. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to sort my watchlist by the date I last edited the page

I want to drastically trim my bloated watchlist. I used to add every page I ever edited - even a trivial typo fix or vandalism revert. Now I find my watchlist too large to manage so I want to remove pages that I have not edited in a long time. Roger (talk) 18:21, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

If you go to Special:Watchlist/edit you can edit the list (or Special:Watchlist/raw, although that doesn't have a "tick the items you want removed" option!) -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 20:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

If you click My preferences and then Recent changes, you'll see a checkbox called "Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript)". If you check that, your watchlist will take on a condensed format with all changes to one page covered on a single expandable line. This means heavily-edited pages won't overwhelm your watchlist. Why this is under Recent changes and not Watchlist, I have no idea... Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Which place to talk?

I have modified a copy of no:MediaWiki:Gadget-HurtigSlett.js at User:Iceblock/Scripts/Seeking-help.js so that it checks for Wikipedians looking for help and displays a tab saying, e.g., "1 seeking help". I believe this can be of interest to others, but where is the correct place to talk about this? (See also User:Iceblock/Scripts/Helpdesk.js) Iceblock (talk) 20:12, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts or its talk page. --Teratornis (talk) 00:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:Help Project. --Teratornis (talk) 00:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Iceblock (talk) 22:17, 22 September 2010 (UTC)