Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 January 18

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January 18

how do I filter out template links from "what links here"

When looking at the "what links here" list, is there a way to filter out the links which are embedded in templates such as are added at the end of an article, e.g. {{...}}? Hpvpp (talk) 01:43, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

No, this cannot be done. See more at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 69#What links here and navboxes. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:43, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay. I have added a comment at bugzilla:3241. Hpvpp (talk) 04:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Add a Company to Wikipedia

How do I add my company into Wikipedia as have Telstra and BHP? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.92.170 (talk) 04:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

First you lave to ask yourself one major question: Is it notable enough?(see WP:Notability if you aren't sure), if it is not notable enough it will be deleted. The either submit it at Articles for Creation or create an account and create it yourself. Sumsum2010·T·C·Review me! 04:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

To answer the OP: Telstra did not add an article to Wikipedia. Someone completely and totally unconnected to Telstra (actually, hundreds of people who have nothing to do with them) have added it. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a business directory. Companies do not list themselves. What happens is that people do research, gather information, and write encyclopedia articles from reliable sources. Insofar as your company is, well, yours, you are essentially forbidden from writing about it directly, per our conflict of interest rules. You are free to ask for an article to be created, see Wikipedia:Requested articles, but you should not take it upon yourself to introduce content related to your company. --Jayron32 04:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You should read WP:FAQ/business first of all. --ColinFine (talk) 23:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You could write a draft and put it on your talk page or in your sandbox (you'd need an account for a sandbox, I think). Then mention it at WP:AFC with a link, and it can be independently reviewed, and if need be, modified (or rejected) prior to it going into article space.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Blogs allowed in "External Links" section?

Hi, I couldn't find this answer in the "external links" reference section, but I could have sworn blogs were frowned upon at Wikipedia. The article is locked, so this blog would need to be removed by someone with more power than I, if deemed inappropriate: [1] ~ this blog is listed as "Contrail Science - the Science and Pseudoscience of contrails and chemtrails blog with extensive information on specific contrail characteristics and chemtrail misinformation. Includes substantial discussion." at the very bottom of Chemtrails. Thanks for your help! 174.74.68.103 (talk) 05:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea about the specific blog in question, as I have not investigated it, but in general not everything called a blog is expressly verbotten at Wikipedia. Blogs are like every other media, they are value neutral. Just as I can publish something I call a "medical journal" out of my own home and distribute it, doesn't mean that it is equivalent to, say, the "New England Journal of Medicine. It's the manner of the publication and the reputation for reliability that makes one source good and another bad, not just the method of transmitting or publishing that source. The problem with blogs is that the blogosphere has a MUCH higher "noise ratio" than do other media, given the realtively insignificant means of entry into it, compared to say, actually publising a paper magazine or producing a network TV show, or something else like that. So, reliable blogs do exist, its just that the abundance of really shitty blogs means that you have to be REALLY careful about which blogs are used for which purposes at Wikipedia. All that having been said, I remind you that this is speaking in the general about blogs, and not in specifics about this ONE blog, which I have not looked at. --Jayron32 05:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Blogs are generally discouraged in external links sections. Exceptions to this rule are made in cases where a blog is the subject of the article. Another exception is where the blog is written by a reliable authority on the subject and it adds detail to the article that can't otherwise be written into the article's text. The website you link to probably wouldn't be acceptable in any article except one focusing on the website itself. ThemFromSpace 05:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It's actually a personal website, not a blog. I'm surprised no one has suggested this be discussed at the external links noticeboard. I'm also wondering, as this is a fringe subject, if WP:PARITY applies. Also of course there is the article talk page where the IP frequently posts but hasn't brought up this issue. I think the discussion there about the IP's use of sources may have led to the IP coming here. Dougweller (talk) 13:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Micro editcountitis

Is there a way to find out what is the most edits by a single contributor on a single article (any article)? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Tools#Page_histories may have some good tools for you to use. I can see several which are promising. --Jayron32 06:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

This tool returns (among other things) an ordered list of the 50 editors with the most edits to an article. Leave the start and end date fields blank to search the whole history of the article. Deor (talk) 06:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Now that I'm more awake, it occurs to me that what Clarityfiend wants may be to identify the article with the most edits by a single individual (and the user name of that individual), not the user who's made the most edits to a particular article. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that. Deor (talk) 13:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If that were the case, any of the standard edit counters do that. I think he's looking for a way to comb through the edit history of a single article and determine who edited it the most. Several tools at the link I posted above could do that. If he wants to know the most edited article from a single username, then the same link, under the section "edit counters" will provide that. --Jayron32 14:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood me. (Although initiated by someone named Clarityfiend, this thread this is becoming less and less clear.) What occurred to me is that CF might have been asking "Out of all the articles on Wikipedia, which has the greatest number of edits by a single person (not a particular person), and who is that person?" I'm not aware of an edit counter that answers that. Deor (talk) 16:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I think Deor's interpretation is right. In the absence of a tool, I know of 2,160 edits by one user, to one article. Can anyone better 2,160? Arjayay (talk) 17:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Just found 2,910 at Elvis Presley Arjayay (talk) 17:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The question was about articles but I apparently have 5706 edits (excluding this one) to this help desk. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

That's what I was looking for. Thank you. Thank you, very much. I knew I wasn't very clear, but couldn't come up with a better way to say it; I thought the title would help. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Does not receive: "A confirmation e-mail has been sent to the nominated e-mail address."

In My preferences, I changed the email address in user profile. When I save, it comes back with "A confirmation e-mail has been sent to the nominated e-mail address." An hour later and still no email. So over the course of an afternoon into the evening, I try it several times, and try variations, like using another email that gets to me. I check my gmail account as well. No joy. To be sure, I send a test email to the address I typed in to the profile, and the test email arrives in seconds. Any idea how I can get the email so it no longer says Your e-mail address is not yet authenticated. No e-mail will be sent for any of the following features.? Classical Scholar 07:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you checked whether the confirmation email is being caught by spamfilters? Algebraist 09:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did, and no, there is no email. Classical Scholar 09:45, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

articles that begin with "..."

hi.

i'm having trouble entering articles that start with "...". i know that it helps to delete the dots from the address line, but in the case of "disambiguation" i reach the major page of that name, and sometimes it's not the one i'm looking for.

how do i reach the asked article? in this case it's Sting's album titled "...Nothing Like the Sun": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...Nothing_Like_the_Sun when i do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Like_the_Sun i get an article of a biography about shakespeare by the same name.

thank you in advance — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaghup6 (talk • contribs) 08:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to check, where are you "entering" the article name you're looking for? If I type ...Nothing Like The Sun into the Wikipedia search box (which is in the top right of every page if you're using the standard Wikipedia skin) and click "Go", I get taken directly to the Sting album article. You say "it helps to delete the dots from the address line" - have you tried it without deleting them? Which "address line" do you mean? (It might help if you tell us the browser you're using). Gonzonoir (talk) 09:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) I don’t quite understand what the problem is: The links ...Nothing Like the Sun and Nothing Like the Sun give the Sting album and a redirect to the fictional biography, respectively. If I search for “...Nothing Like the Sun” or “Nothing Like the Sun”, the dropdown list suggests both articles. —teb728 t c 09:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

i tried it both as a link from sting's discography page and the search box. the search box takes me to the shakespeare biography, and every link to the sting album gives me some sort of "false" anooncement. i'm trying it in my work computer which works through a main server, maybe that's the problem. i'll try it from my home PC as well. the address line I meant is the one where the full "http://" address is specified. everytime i try to reach the sting album article it appears with the dots in the address line, and in the past i managed to reach the page i wanted by deleting the dots so i assumed that's the problem, but in the case of disambiguation there's another problme on the way.

thanls again — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaghup6 (talk • contribs) 09:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Is it that you're trying to reach the Sting album page, but you want to do so without including the dots in the title? The dots are a part of the article title, so (since we have another article by the title without the dots) you won't be able to reach it that way. Before June 2006 the Sting article was at the title Nothing Like the Sun, so if you're remembering accessing it at that title perhaps it was a few years ago? It appears to be linked correctly from Sting discography too. By "false announcement", maybe you just mean the hatnote at the top of ...Nothing Like the Sun which points readers to the other relevant articles?

If you can provide us a more detailed, step-by-step description of what you're doing, what's happening, and what you would have expected to happen instead, we may be able to give a better answer. Gonzonoir (talk) 09:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

i just want to reach the sting page, i don't mind what it's written like. i don't remember entering it earlier so it's not because it has changed. when i say "false announcement" i don't mean any announecment by wikipedia, but a notice by the explorer browser that there was an error and that i should turn to the server manager. that is why i think it's a problem in connecting it through the server at my work. but as said before, i encountered this problem before and was able to access the wanted article by the deleting the dots preceding the article name in the address line.

thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaghup6 (talk • contribs) 10:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hm - that error notice does sound like something local to your system rather than something Wikipedia is producing. You said earlier as well that "every link to the Sting album" gives you this error message, so maybe something on that page is blocked or can't be handled by your system. For reference, the correct page title is ...Nothing Like the Sun, and it should be accessible by typing that title (or the article's URL, http://en.wikipedia.org/...Nothing_Like_the_Sun) into your browser's URL bar (at least it is for me, using Firefox 4 on default settings). I am surprised that deleting the dots previously worked, since they are part of the article's title, but if there's some kind of blocking or filtering going on at your end I'm not sure how it might interact with titling protocols. I think it's worth contacting your local system administrator and seeing whether they can help further. Gonzonoir (talk) 12:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks--Kaghup6 (talk) 12:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If a page name starts with periods then Wikipedia editors control manually what happens on the corresponding name without periods. It may redirect to the period version or to another page or it may have content of its own or not exist at all. On 7 October 2010 [2] Nothing Like the Sun changed from redirecting to ...Nothing Like the Sun into redirecting to Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life. Before that date you would indeed have seen the Sting album at Nothing Like the Sun. I have created a new redirect Nothing Like the Sun (album) to ...Nothing Like the Sun. If your work browser has problems with url's containing consecutive dots then maybe Nothing Like the Sun (album) will work for you. It's also possible it will work to replace one or more dots by its percent encoding %2E as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2E%2E%2ENothing_Like_the_Sun. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

pictures as border of a box

Again, this is the second time I ask, nobody replied. Instead of colors, how do I use pictures as borders in a box? -- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 10:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know the answer. But, assuming this is for your user page, you could try the experts at Wikipedia:User page design center/Help and collaboration/Help requests. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

But also note that if you are referring to non-free images, they can only be used for specific purposes in articlespace, they cannot be used on user pages. – ukexpat (talk) 16:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Search by page creation date

Is there any way I can search for articles by date of creation? I'm not talking about recent articles; I am interested in seeing what articles were created on a particular date several months back. RolandR (talk) 10:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't find a way to do this. If you don't get a good reply here, try asking at Village pump (technical) -- John of Reading (talk) 11:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

How to find the Writer of an article???

Trying to find the person who wrote the bio for Rachel Harris, they need to add that she was on MONK in 2005 in Season 4, Episode 9, "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa", she played Alice Westergren (the killer). The showed aired on 12/2/05. Information is on TV.COM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.108.231.44 (talk) 12:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Rachael Harris (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

To see the names of the people who have contributed to the article, click on the "history" link. But, since this is a page at Wikipedia, I encourage you to be bold and add the information and its sources yourself. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

That is, provided you have a reliable source for the information. This discussion would seem to suggest that tv.com not a reliable source. --ColinFine (talk) 23:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Login problems

I'm experiencing a very annoying sort of login problem: Somehow, Firefox has started to forget that I had already logged in for 30 days and has asked me to re-login every time I opened the browser (without me signing out or clearing my Firefox history or anything). I changed the password to rule out someone having a laugh with my account. Now I'm trying to login from a different computer and can only access the page immediately after the login (with my WP layout, links to my preferences and watchlist etc.). However, every time I try to access any other page, they tell me I'm not logged in anymore. Any help would be appreciated. Best, 212.117.123.14 (talk) 13:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The last bit sounds like a cookie problem; this tutorial may be helpful. I'm not sure about the first bit but Help:Logging in may have something. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Adrian. I've tried logging in via the secure server (which I had forgotten to try before out of sheer stupidity), and it worked fine. I'm going to try and find out why the normal route didn't work. Thanks again, and best, 212.117.123.14 (talk) 13:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't thought of that, but I'm glad you've made progress. You could also ask for help at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Function to display some

hello,

are there any function to display:

• how much pictures I uploaded
• how much articles I deleted
• how much articles I moved
• the most edited articles
• ... and so on

I know the tools, which do that. But I need it as a normal text, with parser function. Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 13:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for, do you want to see how many pictures you have uploaded, articles you have deleted (well, your not an admin, so you could not have deleted any :)), how many articles you moved, and your most edited articles? I'm not quite sure what exactly you are looking for. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 14:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you wrote exactly the same as above.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 14:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You said you needed it as normal text but, here is something (better than nothing). Your top edited articles, Articles you deleted/moved and Pic's you have uploaded. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 14:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I said a text not this tool, that I already know :/. -- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 15:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I know all this, I am not a noob. I just want a function, that view that in a normal text, visible to anyone. There are already Magic Words, that do the same, so there must be such things. How do I do that?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 15:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I really don't know what to tell you then. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 16:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

There are no magic words for these. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

DPM is not an acronym, it is an abbreviation. Laser and radio are acronyms.

DPM is not an acronym, it is an abbreviation. Laser and radio are acronyms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.215.92.82 (talk) 14:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 14:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

<edit conflict> Thank you for your suggestion regarding DPM. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Kayau Voting IS evil 14:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

There are different uses of the terms. See Acronym and initialism. Wikipedia and many others say acronym about things like DPM. Please don't change this without discussion. By the way, radio comes from Latin radius. You may have been thinking of radar. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Web archive searcher

hello,

what is the best and easiest web archive searcher. I need it for tennis articles to source tournaments' sites, not only the same site in the official WTA website. Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 17:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, can you pleae clarify? Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 17:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you looking for something like the Wayback Machine? That's the only one I've tried to use, so I don't know if it is "best and easiest". -- John of Reading (talk) 17:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, great archivator!-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 17:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Chemical Structure Diagrams

I need a key to the symbology used to present chemical structure diagrams. For example in the article on ribose, there is a set of four diagrams for "D-ribose". Starting at the upper left and going clockwise I label the diagrams as quadrant 1 - 4. In quadrant 1, what is the meaning of the dashed lines? Quadrant 2 is self explanatory. In quadrant 3 and 4, what is the meaning of the tapered bars, the solid bold bars and the intersections. I would normally interpret the intersections as a location for a carbon atom but how do I populate the diagram with hydrogens? Any help will be greatly appreciated. If there is a key someplace, please just point me to it. Thanks 69.231.216.159 (talk) 17:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, this isn't really the place for these sorts of questions. Try the science reference desk. --T H F S W (T · C · E) 17:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

These are examples of skeletal structures. The quadrant 2 case is a Fischer projection, one of the least self-explanatory ways in my opinion (so much is implied by convention, rather than having hints to the 3D details for example). DMacks (talk) 17:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Rhode Island and The US Constitutional Convention

Why is Rhode Island refuse to send a delgate to the Convneton, and why did thye not sign the 1779 document? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.19.245.101 (talk) 18:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You may find the information for which you are looking at History_of_Rhode_Island#Revolutionary_era_1775-1790. If not, you may want to post to the humanities reference desk. TNXMan 18:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The rural population was heavily anti-federalist. These folks were represented by the Country Party (Rhode Island), which had control of the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1786 to 1790. More information on the topic can be found in the Country Party article. Xenon54 (talk) 18:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Error in editnotice

Say I visit [3]. I know it is the wrong place to upload a file, but look at the weird editnotice. Is this a bug? --Perseus, Son of Zeus 19:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, you are in the wrong place :) The title should not start with a ;, that produces indented, boldened text. Diego Grez (talk) 19:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Perseus' point is that no matter how wrong the article name is, the edit notice should still be readable. So, yes, this is a bug, but I don't think it is an important one. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Having the first character of the title be a * causes more or less the same result as a ; , curious.Naraht (talk) 20:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't find where that piece of the interface is defined. Seems like it would be a Special:AllMessages item? Without knowing exactly how the creation of those links in the interface happens, hard to figure out how (or if) it can be resolved (for example, an on-site template wrapper vs a function-call in the wikimedia software). Might be WP:Bugzilla time. DMacks (talk) 21:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It's a feature, right?Naraht (talk) 21:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like bugzilla:26781. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:37, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Not sure when these are actually going to be implemented, but we should check back after that.Naraht (talk) 14:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Confirmation email is not being sent.

In My preferences, I changed the email address in user profile. When I save, it comes back with "A confirmation e-mail has been sent to the nominated e-mail address." An hour later and still no email. So over the course of two days now, I try it several times, and try variations, like using another email that gets to me. I check my gmail account as well. No joy. Nothing in the Gmail or personal spam catcher. To be sure, I send a test email to the address I typed in to the profile, and the test email arrives in seconds. Any idea how I can get the email so I can authenticate the email address and get emails? Perhaps someone else could try changing their email to see if this works or not. Classical Scholar 21:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClassicalScholar (talk • contribs)

I have tested the system many times when users reported here that they didn't receive the mail. It has always arrived within seconds at both my mail adresses and it also did this time. One of them is at hotmail.com. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

ClassicalScholar - it is helpful to try to reproduce the problem; a global problem will perhaps have a different solution than would a localised matter. --AndrewHowse (talk) 22:16, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I can get the confirmation email at my gmail address, so it doesn't appear to be a global gmail problem. Have you perhaps considered creating a new gmail address, and trying to use that, simply as a test? If that new address were to work, then you would know that there is something particular to the address you've been using so far, perhaps some rules ("filters") that you've used? --AndrewHowse (talk) 22:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Creating a new dummy gmail address does work, but even though I set up forwarding, it does not seem to forward to the ISP address. Is there something in Wikipedia that prohibits forwarding? ClassicalScholar 23:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClassicalScholar (talk • contribs)

I don't think so. Are you trying to forward from gmail to another ISP? If so, then I would suspect the anti-spam provisions at that other ISP. --AndrewHowse (talk) 23:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)