Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 March 9

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March 9

What should I do if I doubt whether a source relates to a claim?

Just asked a question about francium in WP:RD/S; I would like to how to deal with that kind of problem, since there would be a number of non-free resources which only shows me an abstract and not explicitly explaining how it relates to the claim.--Inspector (talk) 00:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

The resource exchange at WP:LIB can hook you up with editors who have access to paid sources. RudolfRed (talk) 01:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Curation Toolbar

For some reason, the curation toolbar isn't showing up in the new pages feed. Please help. Revolution1221 (talk) 01:33, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

From what I can see:

• Go to the new pages feed
• Click on an article in the queue
• A "curate this article" link will then appear at the bottom of the "Toolbox" menu over on the left hand side.
• Click on the "curate this article" link, and the toolbar will pop up.

--Shirt58 (talk) 04:42, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Reducing a non free image without messing it up!

Hi all!
This picture is at 96 dpi, as is its source.
It's claimed as fair use, but it would appear to me that the resolution may infringe policy.
I'd reduce the image resolution myself, but I'm not terribly good with image manipulation. Could someone possibly see if they can reduce the resolution down as low as possible without losing the nice "glorious technicolor" look the pic currently has? Thanks!
Pete aka --Shirt58 (talk) 04:33, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

360 × 270 seems to be a routine size for screenshots. No need to reduce. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:36, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

pronunciation audio files

hen I click on the > on the box for the pronunciation of a word in the Wikidictionary, it doesn't speak (no audio) and a black line is slashed across the audio box. Why doesn't the audio work and what does this "slash" mean?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.21.202.228 (talk) 05:37, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Your question seems to be related to Wiktionary. Wiktionary is a sister project of Wikipedia which is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, not Wiktionary and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using Wikipedia. The best course of action may be to seek help at the English Wiktionary's Information desk which is the equivalent to Wikipedia's Help desk. To answer your question, I think you might have disabled the plugins in your web browser and this might be the problem. Please check whether plugins have been enabled on your browser. To get a better answer I recommend you to ask your question at the Wiktionary's Information desk. --Ushau97 ^{talk contribs} 09:08, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Wiktionary doesn't appear to use audio files. Do you mean Wikipedia articles like Westerveld with a speaker icon linking to File:037 Westerveld.ogg? See Wikipedia:Media help (Ogg). What is your operating system and browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:34, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like a problem on your computer not on wiktionary. It sounds like you are missing the program to play th particular format that was used bu ask at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing and they can probably give you more advice. RJFJR (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually Wiktionary does use audio templates. And the inquirer might have problems with his/her plugin. Maybe it's not the latest version or the web browser does not support it. Thanks. --Ushau97 ^{talk contribs} 05:04, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The poster didn't give an example and I couldn't find one in my searches. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:02, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

References

If there is a university article on wikipedia, can I add references from its own website?Farhajking (talk) 09:32, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but only to support uncontroversial factual information. Secondary (independent) sources are preferable, and are required if there is anything in any way evaluative in the text they are being used to support. Also, not everything that appears in the university's own website is encyclopaedic. See WP:PRIMARY --ColinFine (talk) 10:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Copyright problem

What is the correct advice to give an editor who is reusing text here on WP that he originally created for a website? I don't know yet if the editor owns the website concerned or not - if that makes any difference. Is there a specific help desk where he can be assisted to legalise the copyvio without getting branded as a "wiki-criminal" and having his work summarily burnt to the ground? Roger (talk) 13:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

How about WP:IOWN? RJFJR (talk) 13:35, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Issues with a BLP

I have been editing a BLP for and added a story about a fine received from the court. This has been properly referenced from a reliable source. It is my belief the subject has deleted this twice now but I have reinstated it. I wondered if there was anything that could be done or an advice? The article already has a note about issues including being edited by subject or someone linked to him and it appears to me that anything negative is always removed. (Edinburgh loon (talk) 15:14, 9 March 2013 (UTC))

Try the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. There may be valid reason for leaving it out as undue material. It is rather trivial and only covered locally by media. So the 'signifcant coverage' guideline may fail to keep it in the article. We aren't a tabloid.--Canoe1967 (talk) 15:36, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Article classes and references

Dear editors: I was reading this article: Roots revival, and I saw that it had no references or citations. It's been tagged this way since 2007. When I read the article's talk page, I was surprised to see that it was rated as a B-class article. I then checked the following article: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment and was further surprised to see that having any references or citations wasn't listed in the requirements for a B class article. I must be misunderstanding the purpose of the rating system. Shouldn't an article with no references be at best Start-class and at worst be considered for deletion? It contains a lot of what seems to me to be unsubstantiated opinion. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:11, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

You can always change an article's rating (except FA, FL and GA) if you feel that it is inadequate. Actually this article lists its sources but without inline citations. Ruslik_Zero 17:29, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Since verifiability is a core policy of Wikipedia, all articles are expected to be adequately sourced. Also, if you look at the more detailed B-class criteria, suitable referencing is one of the requirements. That said, the article class is not always an accurate measure of an article's quality, until you get to Good Article quality or higher. Rating articles is the responsibility of the relevant Wikiprojects, and is done individually by many editors (including beginners). The rating requirements may also differ from Wikiproject to Wikiproject (for example, WP:MILHIST, one of our biggest Wikiprojects, checks B-class requirements relatively more stringently, while some other Wikiprojects may be more lax). Because of this, there are even times when two Wikiprojects may rate the same article into two different classes. There are also plenty of instances where an article is rated incorrectly (for example, a Start-class rated B-class and vice versa). Chamal ^T•C 18:04, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

In order to decide what to do about Roots revival, I thought I would check to see if anyone at Wikipedia:WikiProject Roots music was reviewing pages. I found this "bot" embedded in the project page: User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Roots music. It has exactly the same figures as it had a year ago. Does this bot run automatically, or does someone have to start it up manually? Even if no one at all is reviewing, there should be an increase in unreviewed pages, so I'm assuming it's not doing its job. How can I get up-to-date figures so that I can see if pages are being reviewed at the project? The talk page isn't very active. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

That bot is used for updating the rating tables throughout Wikipedia, and you can find a link to manually start it up on its userpage. Seems to be working alright; it's making a lot of edits all over the place today as well. Judging by the history of User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Roots music, it has last updated the table on 8th March so it looks like somebody has reviewed or added a couple of articles. Chamal ^T•C 03:31, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Well I learned something about the way bots operate. No matter how far back I looked in the history of Wikipedia:WikiProject Roots music/Assessment, the numbers in the table were always the same, because the table is being transcluded into the page as the page is displayed, so it always shows the current figures, even if the rest of the page is from last year. I had already figured out how to start it up manually, but I was looking in the wrong place to see previous data. Thanks for pointing out the correct place to look. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:34, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Pop-up ads and intrusive code

Help! It seems that Wikipedia has been kidnapped by advertisers and is being held for ransom. Did the last fundraising drive fail to keep the wolf from the door? Those nasty double-underlined words that trigger a pop-up ad are driving me away from Wikipedia. How much money do you need, to make them go away? Here is my serious question: Now, whenever I edit and attempt to save, I get a message that there is extraneous code (some gibberish containing the word "javascript") in the source text, and it takes me some time to clean it out. Is this phenomenon related to the pop-up ads? I am becoming disinclined to continue being a Wikipedia editor, since this problem slows down my work drastically. What do you advise? Kotabatubara (talk) 16:46, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not doing this; I'm afraid your browser has picked up some malware. There's some discussion in this Village Pump archive. Try disabling your browser extensions one at a time to see if you can work out which one is causing the problem. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:57, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

To add a little detail to that, Wikipedia does not use any such ads in any of the pages. In fact, Wikipedia has been ad-free so far (apart from the fund raiser banners etc - see Wikipedia:Advertisements for more details). You also should not see any Javascript code in the wiki-editor when you're editing in the article namespace. Like John said, the problem is almost certainly on your end, and such issues are often caused by a recent addition like a browser plug-in. If you want to make sure, try editing with a different browser/computer and see if the issue persists. Chamal ^T•C 17:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

There have been some recent "critical" Java issues relating to security. You might also want to Verify Java Version to see if it is up-to-date. ~And run a trusted anti-malware program. ~:( 17:46, 9 March 2013 (UTC) - [modified:74.60.29.141 (talk) 07:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)]:~

And be sure you are actually at http://en.wikipedia.org/ not a mirror or fork site (see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks), many of which do have advertizing. - Arjayay (talk) 19:16, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's an update, since I posted the original problem. Short version: The problem is gone, and I don't know why! My browser was (and is) Firefox. I downloaded Chrome and when I used it, there were no pop-up ads or double underlining. But recently I accidentally went into Wikipedia through Firefox, and now found no double underline or pop-ups in it either. Thanks, all, for your efforts! Kotabatubara (talk) 00:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Eastern lightning

In the article about eastern lightning religion it is described as "an offshoot of Christianity". It may pull some tho some words, names, or stories from It, but it is in NO WAY an offshoot of Christianity. Please reword this.

Kera Latterell — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keralatterell (talk • contribs) 17:39, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Assuming you mean Eastern Lightning, it appears to me to be well explained in the article. Rmhermen (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Table wizard required!

Hi all, please see this article List of World Heritage Sites in the Arab States. The table has been messed up at image no.7 scrolling down, the columns need putting back in place (4 missing) and someone has placed one entry for Tunisia in the middle of the Libyan sites, so this would need moving down the list to the correct place. Cheers! CaptainScreebo ^Parley! 18:08, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done, I hope. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:49, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, good job. CaptainScreebo ^Parley! 19:17, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

New paragraph difficulty

I've just edited the Parterre article, and can't work out why a new paragraph in the edit window isn't translated as a new paragraph on the saved article page - it just continues as running text. The text in question is within the "History" section of the article, and begins "Parterre gardening fell out of favour in the 18th century....". I'm a fairly experienced editor and can't work out why it won't translate - am I missing something obvious? Thanks. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:07, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Not sure why this worked, but I managed to fix it by moving the </blockquote> tag to a new line. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:17, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

So I see - thanks! (If anyone else can explain why that worked, I'd be curious to know, for future reference!) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:23, 9 March 2013 (UTC)