Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 December 29

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December 29

Sea silk

Dear Friends:

I have a long-time Swiss friend who is probably the world's top expert on the very rare and beautiful fabric known in English as Sea silk made from the byssus or fibres produced by certain seashells.

She writes: "The German Wikipedia on "sea-silk (byssus) is very bad and full of legends and mistakes. I tried already to make corrections, but I don't manage to insert them in the text. This kind of work is just not my cup of tea... I tried to find somebody of Wikipedia here in Switzerland, to tell about the problems. No chance to get somebody on the phone, or to find a mail address of a real person."

Is there anyone out there who can suggest someone who would be capable of fixing this article up? I would be quite willing to help them with any queries or technical information, references, etc (in English - sorry - since I don't know German). It might be possible to just translate the English article and transfer the illustrations, etc.

I wrote the article on Sea silk in the English Wikipedia and am pretty current with literature on the subject.

Please contact me if you can help - or know of anyone who can.

Thanks, John Hill (talk) 03:29, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

@John Hill: Hi John. Since each language Wikipedia is separate, you will likely need to contact someone or post to a help forum at the German Wikipedia. A random contributor to the German Wikipedia is much more likely to speak English on average than a random contributor here is to speak German, so if you post there in English I don't think it unlikely that will get a response. I personally received lots of help when I posted to a German Wikipedia help page. When I did so I wrote out my question in English and then wrote "I don't speak German so I am posting this below using machine translation. I hope it does not come out too garbled." (and then used Google translate but fixed the wikilinks and such other stuff up where it changed them). Where to seek help there? Well, the German Wikipedia's help desk is at de:Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia. The talk page of the article, as you probably know, is at de:Diskussion:Byssus – a tailored place to post, but whether it gets any action depends on the number of watchers which is likely small. I have also taken a look at contributors to the article and its talk page and the only one whose accounts appear active is user Ghilt, whose talk page is at de:Benutzer Diskussion:Ghilt. Keep in mind that the German Wikipedia, just like this one, requires people to provide citations to reliable sources that verify the changes they wish to make. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:30, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Posing a question at their Embassy is also a possibility, though I don't know how often it gets checked (though a few years back when I was translating captions for an image as I put it on different Wikipedias, I would often ask for help at the embassies and got replies back for most of them). - Purplewowies (talk) 05:11, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect "Days Ago" Calculation

On the Apple Keynote software page [1], the Infobox section indicates that the latest stable release was on November 21, and says "33 days ago". However, this 33 days is displayed on December 28th, some 37 days after November 21. The code for that date is "latest release date = {{release date and age|2013|11|21}}". Note that the page was reloaded so as to avoid displaying a cached value. Even accounting for time zone differences, the 33 days indicated is incorrectly calculated. Thanks.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.8.149.129 (talk • contribs)

Hey. You correctly identified the issue but I am guessing did not do a true page cache purge (or it did not take, which does sometimes happen). In any event, I also saw the error, but it was immediately fixed when I did the purge. Note that if you go back there and still see the error, you might need to purge your own computer's cache memory. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:38, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

sy barash regatta

Why isn't there more information on the sy barash regatta? There should be a list of bands and the date(s) they played. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.215.91 (talk) 04:57, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason why there isn't more information in the article is because no editors have found reliably sourced encyclopedic content that they wanted to add to the article, but you could change that. The reason why the specific content you are mentioning is not included is probably because as an encyclopedia, there are things that Wikipedia is NOT, and a program guide or list of trivia is one of them. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:52, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

How to move a page from /User to without /User

I want to move my page which is currently at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MyBusTickets to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyBusTickets (without the user prefix)?

Please help with pointers — Preceding unsigned comment added by MyBusTickets (talk • contribs) 07:00, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Your submission at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/MyBusTickets was declined 3 times. You deleted the feedback from that earlier submission but I have restored it. If you wish to improve your submission to address the problems, and if you can demonstrate that the subject meet's Wikipedia's requirements for notability, then you can then resubmit it using the resubmit link which you had deleted. Your user page is intended for describing you as a user in the context of your Wikipedia editing, not for drafting an article, although you can use user subpages or a user sandbox to draft an article before submitting it for review. Note also that your user name appears to represent an organisation rather than an individual, so you need to read WP:CORPNAME and choose a new user name. If you are trying to write an article about an organization with which you are connected, you also need to read about conflict of interest. --David Biddulph (talk) 07:19, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I now see that there was another attempt, for which the deletion discussion was at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MyBusTickets. --David Biddulph (talk) 07:23, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Personal page

How do I create a personal page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.244.185.4 (talk) 10:14, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Unregistered users cannot create a userpage. In order to do so, you must create an account. But be aware, Wikipedia is not a hosting service. Accounts are for people wanting to help with the encyclopedia. Not just to have a web page somewhere for your own personal use. If you want that, there are many other places on the web that are more suitable. Dismas|^(talk) 10:48, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

request

Talk:Timeline of World War I#Split into months in subsections? --Kc kennylau (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Category:Essex County State Senators

Unreviewed category - please take a look. Thanks --Frze ^{> talk} 10:49, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Classical music database

Hello! I am a private researcher on a specific topic in classical music. I collected a huge pile of data (>10.000 data sets) which is unique in the world. The topic is pretty specific and my database so huge, that no publishing house wants to publish this. Therefore I am searching for different ways to get my results into public. I thought Wikipedia could be a possible place for this. Unfortunately I am researching just on a specific composition genre (concertos) of just a specific time (20th century), so my results dd not fit into the existing wikipedia articles. Are there different platforms to create a whole new database (something like IMSLP)? Is there a specific group or person I can contact for more details? Thanks, Tobias — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.180.15.183 (talk) 12:01, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately Wikipedia is not the place for publishing original research. Samwalton9 (talk) 14:21, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

You might consider Wikia. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 15:41, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Articles for each day of the year

I have a (general) question about the Wikipedia articles for each day of the year (e.g., December 29). Where is the appropriate page to ask such a question? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:28, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

You might have tried asking here:-), but Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year is a tailored place. Note that the guideline is at Wikipedia:Days of the year. However, its talk page, Wikipedia talk:Days of the year, appears far less active than the wikiproject's. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:01, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll try that! Thank you. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:03, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Anytime!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

UFC 168

Just a message for someone to change the TKO (Broken Leg) victory for Chris Weidman to Doctor Stoppage (Broken Leg) as this is what was offically reported on the UFC website. A TKO is a technical knock out in which anderson silva did not stop fighting or it was broken up because he was getting beat to badly it was broken up because the doc judged anderson unfit to continue the fight due to his broken leg. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WingerEdd (talk • contribs) 19:24, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

support your change by including a reliably published source. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:31, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

trees

When touring NZ I saw a beautiful tree with purple flowers/ What is the name of that tree,please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.69.23.101 (talk) 20:15, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

This is for information about editing Wikipedia. You are looking for the Reference Desk. see: this page. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:27, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

@69.69.23.101: It's a jacaranda. That's my guess. Jacarandas are trees with purple flowers. I may be 100% wrong, and I'm comfortable with that, because I don't know anything about New Zealand flora, but since you're asking a Yahoo! Answers-type question with only crumbs of information, I feel really, really good about guessing like they do on Yahoo! Answers; it's absolutely, definitely a jacaranda, I think. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_Jaafari

The page has been filled with faulty data, best to restore the original article and lock editing.

[redacted] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.85.138.127 (talk) 21:22, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:31, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Editing a chart

Hi! I've been over at the List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes trying to remove a link to Chaos theory in the season 2 chart because the link appears irrelevant. But there's nothing there to edit when I touch the "edit" button. Instead, it's just something with these "{ }" around it. How do you edit these charts? I've never had such a problem until today. Thanks! Survivorfan1995 (talk) 21:41, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

The code {{:CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (season 2)}} means that the page CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (season 2) is transcluded. You did right by editing that page.[2] Your edit had not yet propagated automatically to List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes so I purged that page and the link disappeared. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:51, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there any policy for this?

I was recently reviewing the Milo Goes to College article and noticed that whenever referencing the album's respective artist (Descendents) a "the" is prefixed in front of the band name despite this never being included in any official releases, advertisements, etc. I understand "the" is usually instinctively added to band names whose titles wouldn't sound grammatically correct otherwise, but I still feel that including it in an article is in error. I would be more than happy to correct any instances of this I come across, but I would first like to know if there is any policy regarding what to do here. Thanks. felt_friend 23:42, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to add that I replaced all instances of "The Descendents" with "Descendents" in Milo Goes to College already. From there I checked the article for Descendents and noticed it contained many instances of "The Descendents" as well. Thus, seeing as this error seems to be fairly common, I brought the matter here. felt_friend 23:48, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

In general we "follow the sources". Do the sources most often use simply "Descendents" or do they use "the Descendents"? Its not exactly the same, but Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_mediation/The_Beatles#Closure over whether to use "the Beatles" or "The Beatles" may give you some insight (if it doesnt cause seizures). -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:36, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Will do, thanks. felt_friend 16:02, 1 January 2014 (UTC)