Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 April 8

Help desk
< April 7	<< Mar | April | May >>	April 9 >

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.

April 8

Articles transcluding articles

List of high schools in New York City transcludes individual fake subpages by borough, such as List of high schools in New York City – Manhattan. I've never seen anything like this before. Is it permitted/encouraged by policy? I think they should all be substituted. — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 01:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks like it's fine per WP:TRANSCLUDE. Dismas|^(talk) 02:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll start an AfD in a few hours to seek more consensus, the list isn't all THAT long. — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 16:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

tap content changing

When a user visits Wikipedia, there are two tabs at the top of the page. One says, "Article," and the other says, "Discussion." About as fast as you can blink your eye, the tab that says, "Article," changes to say, "Main Page." Why?

There are some special pages around here but they likely all pull from the same "template", for lack of a better word. You can see the same with this Help Desk page. The tab at the top of this one says "Project page". All pages here are "articles" in a certain sense. But the Main page is the main page and therefore, the tab changes. Dismas|^(talk) 06:39, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I see this too. The page loads, and then the styles/JavaScript/whatever kicks in and renames the tabs. I'm sure that this has been discussed at Village pump (technical), but I can't find the thread just now. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen a discussion about it but here is my take. Pages at this website are divided into namespaces for different purposes. Main Page is in the main namespace which is intended for articles and is named "Article" at the English Wikipedia. I think all other pages in that namespace say "Article" on the tab, but the Main Page has a special status and isn't written like an article. There has been discussions about moving it to another namespace. Some other languages have done this, for example German: de:. Saying "Main Page" instead of "Article" gives a hint that it isn't really an article. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this misses the point. When I click "Main page" at the top left, it really does say "Article" for a fraction of a second, and then the tab renames itself as "Main page". Similarly for all other pages, the label "View history" is displayed briefly and then redisplayed as "History". And this is some kind of bug in the page loading. It's certainly distracting. (Firefox 3.6.15 + Windows Vista, btw) -- John of Reading (talk) 11:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know whether the posters point was why it says "Main Page" or why it changes during loading. For the latter, tabs have a default name in a skin. This default can be changed but the change is read after the default so the default may be displayed briefly. This is a known consequence of the implementation and not considered a bug. The default tab name for the main namespace is "Article", but Main Page loads code to change it to "Main Page". The default name for the page history tab in the Vector skin is "View history". I guess you have enabled "Twinkle: Friendly" under Gadgets at Special:Preferences. This changes "View history" to "History". PrimeHunter (talk) 13:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Citing Twitter tweets?

Is it possible, and citation worthy to reference tweets from Twitter? — Hucz ^{(talk · contribs)} 06:47, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

There's WP:TWITTER, but it doesn't explain there how you might cite a tweet. If a specific tweet is important, perhaps someone will quote it in a "proper" news source that you can cite instead.

As an aside - please fix your signature. A signature must not call a template, for technical reasons; see WP:SIG#NT. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:24, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

You can quote a tweet or email, but you can't use it as a reliable source. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:14, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

However, you can only quote an email if it has already been published, for example on a mail list with public archives. See also WP:SELFPUBLISH. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:26, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Gadget850's reply is contradictory. All citations must be to reliable sources, but the source only has to be reliable for the way it is used. I might cite the Boston Globe for the time of sunrise in Boston, and that would be a reliable source to establish the actual time of sunrise. I might use a self-published source as a reliable source to show that the author of the source wrote something, but it wouldn't establish that what the author wrote is likely to be correct. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

There is guidance on the APA Style site.[1] ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK, {{cite web}} can be used to cite a Twitter post. Mjroots (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Chase Aldredge

<gallery> File:file:///Users/desizemore/Pictures/Photo%20Booth/Photo%20on%202011-01-14%20at%2001.06.jpg| Chase Aldredge 2011 File:Example.jpg|Caption2 </gallery> [ Chase Aldredge is the guitar player/singer for the band Grandma Hates Geneva, and the former vocalist for the bands All Dead Label and Buried Amongst the Dead.

This isn't a good place to submit content for an article. Here's some standard advice - feel free to ask more questions later:

A Wizard is available to walk you through these steps. See the Article Wizard.

Thank you.

Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines with which all articles should comply. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Wikipedia:Your first article. You might also look at Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. An Article Wizard is also available to walk you through creating an article. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

sometimes articles are outdated. Jimmy, what do you think of adding a "last updated: X/X/20XX" to each page ?

216.194.28.132 (talk) 11:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy? The date and time of the last update are already displayed, in the small print at the bottom of each page. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:51, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

As Wikipedia is maintained by volunteer editors, every page can't be always up to date with the most recent info. But if you know something about an outdated topic, or saw something new regarding to it in the news etc, just feel free to edit and update it. :) DARTH SIDIOUS 2 ^(Contact) 12:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, but I fear it could be misleading. For example, if someone corrects a spelling error, or updates one sentence of the article, the rest of the article could still be out of date. As a side note, if you want to find out who last edited the page and when, you can use the page history.--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 14:18, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Fraternity/Sorority (racial/religious) membership changes

Would a wikipedia page on the changes in membership (allowing non-protestants, or asians, etc.) to Fraternities and Sororities be appropriate? I'm thinking about notability and NPOV issues. In addition to text, I can imagine lists by Fraternity/Sorority as to when membership changes occured and lists of College/Universities that took action against Fraternities and Sororities chapters for National which didn't allow all students of the particular gender. I'd ask over at WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities, but it isn't that active right now. (Article name is also something I'm trying to figure out)Naraht (talk) 12:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems that it would be as notable as subjects like Women's suffrage. If it can be reliably sourced, I don't see why we wouldn't have an article on it. Dismas|^(talk) 12:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Delete Revision History

Is there a way to delete revision history.

Thanks PAL1234 (talk) 13:37, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It is possible, but only by certain users, who possess suppression rights. There are certain cases in which some log entries or parts of page history can be hidden, and if you have one in mind that should be hidden, see WP:RFO. DARTH SIDIOUS 2 ^(Contact) 13:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Fixing page range dashes

As far as I know page ranges are supposed to use these longer dashes (endashes?). I also know there is a bot for replasing minus (-) signs in page ranges by endashes. Can this bot be run manually over a specific article? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

An AutoWikiBrowser user can do it manually; there may be other ways. I've just fixed the page ranges in Wolstenholme prime, which I guess is the article you have in mind. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Yup, thanks very much John. Exactly what I had in mind. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:11, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Vast amounts of time, and presumably memory, seem to be spent editing one type of dash to another. Is there a reason WP is so concerned about how long a dash is? Arjayay (talk) 15:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is a very important issue. But since I don't have an endash on my keybord, my edits which involve the addition of page range dashes will likely cause a formatting issue to be fixed later. And this will eventually happen one way or the other, since for example User:RjwilmsiBot also fixesa these. Thus it will eventually be fixed some way or the other. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

See the FAQ at the top of WT:MOS. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the FAQ reference. I don't object to getting things right, I am just amazed how much effort is put into this, compared to more serious problems. I can't believe the length of a dash really makes "constructions ambiguous". Very few readers know the difference between a "mutton" (em—dash) and a "nut" (en–dash) - so few - in fact, that WP doesn't even disambiguate "nut" as the printing slang for an en–dash, although it is in Wiktionary [2].Arjayay (talk) 16:14, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Signature not workin

Hello, can someone please tell me what I need to do with my settings so that my signature will work? When I type the four ~, my signature appears automatically, but then, when I refresh my screen, I see the auto-generated notice indicating an unsigned comment. I have established that is has something to do with a relatively recent user name move User:David Able --> User:Quinn1 that a b'crat approved and performed for me. Anyway, I'm getting tired of hearing from Sinebot...any assistance would be appreciated :) Quinn ^☂THUNDER 15:57, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

You are logged in as Quinn1 (talk · contribs), but your signature here links to User talk:David Able. Try updating your signature to link to User talk:Quinn1 instead. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, of course. Doh! Thanks I'll try that. Quinn ^☂THUNDER 16:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Right. Your signature is customized so you have to manually edit it at Special:Preferences so it links to your current username. A non-customized signature wouldn't require user action after a user rename. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Same answer as you received last month - David Biddulph (talk) 00:26, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

submitting an article

I have an article written in Microsoft Word. It has one graphic in it. Where do I send it. I can submit the article as a text file if you prefer. 16:17, 8 April 2011 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darwin Sarnoff (talk • contribs)

You could for example paste your text into User:Darwin Sarnoff/My Article. The image needs to be uploaded either to Wikipedia or maybe Commons (depending on the license). (See comments by ukexpat). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I am afraid that article submission doesn't work like that. You will have to create the article here using Wikimarkup. There are tools available to make the Word to Wiki transition easier - take a look at Help:WordToWiki. I suggest that you create the article as a draft in your user space first. I have created a sandbox for you at User:Darwin Sarnoff/Sandbox for that purpose. Then ask for the draft to be reviewed at WP:Requests for feedback. – ukexpat (talk) 16:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

In addition, the image will have to be uploaded before it can be used in the article. Please see WP:UPIMG for help with that. – ukexpat (talk) 16:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

My above comment was meant in order to find out if the text is suitable for Wikipedia at all. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:35, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Can someone make a situation map for me?

I want a free version of this situation map: http://www.greekislandhopping.com/Updates/updateAssets/u_exsammap.jpg ( source: http://www.greekislandhopping.com/Updates/updatepages/u_disaster.html ) to use in the article MS Express Samina. Could someone create one plz? Thanks! SpeakFree (talk) 23:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I have copied your request over to Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Map workshop.

Please watch that page; it may take time (of course, everyone is a volunteer) - but you are more likely to get help there.  Chzz  ►  07:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)