Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 September 1

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September 1

Article on 'Walpole, Massachusetts'

- the latest entry under 'History' should be removed...this has no place here- clearly someone's personal grudge against the town...please REMOVE. Richard Cunnane — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.236.184 (talk) 00:32, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

The vandalism which you were seeing had been reverted more than a week ago, but apparently there was a caching problem. I've done a null edit which should have cleared it. Thank you for pointing it out. - David Biddulph (talk) 01:27, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Richard Lindzen

Hello, I have been trying to expand a section of the article Richard Lindzen, and I tried to add a cite doi template. But it's been 3 days since then and the template still hasn't been filled out, it's still just the DOI. Can someone inform me as to how to fix it? The bad doi can be found after "...as well as Hadley circulations." Jinkinson (talk) 02:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed by [1] --Glaisher [talk] 06:15, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Search Box

Suddenly last week, the wikipedia search box stop working. Instead of suggestions from the Wikipedia drop down list, it's the Internet Explorer 10 Auto-Complete list that is displayed. I've reseted and cleared IE 10 to no avail. What can I do to restore Wikipedia behavior.

Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bergo2058 (talk • contribs) 03:49, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

@Bergo2058: If you're still having this problem, I suggest asking at WP:VPT. Be sure to mention your operating system (Windows XP? 7? Vista?) as well as your browser. Also, include in the posting whether this problem does or does not change when you are logged into Wikipedia, compared to when you are not. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:07, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Addition to category

I would like to add a link on the 'Category:Films based on fantasy novels' page, but, as there is no direct way to do so, nor any indication of the indirect way to do so, I'm stymied. Specifically, I wanted to add the Rankin/Bass animated film Flight of Dragonsbased on the Gordon R Dickson book The Dragon and the George to the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Terenciom (talk • contribs) 05:31, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Put Category:Films based on fantasy novels at the bottom of the article you want to add to the category. RudolfRed (talk) 06:00, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

More info on categories can be found at WP:CATEGORY. Dismas|^(talk) 06:25, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Another user has now visited the page The Flight of Dragons and added the template, making the article appear in the desired category. Take a look at this edit to see how it was done. -Karenjc 19:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

help

hi, what steps should i follow 1/upload my picture 2/ write my history — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emmanuel J Kamara (talk • contribs) 06:58, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Writing an autobiography on Wikipedia is strongly discouraged. See WP:AB. As for the photo, you could upload it to commons: if you agree to release the photo under a suitable license. --Glaisher [talk] 07:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Emmanuel J Kamara is essentially a Wikipedia article at this point. This page should really be about how Emmanuel J Kamara can contribute to Wikipedia.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:17, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Descartes and his findings.

Yes John. I am not computer experienced and would ask for help in this explanation of Descartes writings now developed to explain further the spiritual sensor of the brain, giving greater understanding and enlightenment. Thank you meantime for your kind considerations.Tom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tglen (talk • contribs) 07:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I've left you some introductory links on your talk page. One important rule at Wikipedia is that articles should only summarise facts and ideas that have already been published elsewhere, in good-quality publications such as books by respected publishers, scholarly journals and respected news outlets. If these ideas on Descartes can be backed up by references to sources like these, then I suggest you post at Talk:René Descartes so that an interested editor can help you work out where to fit them in to the encyclopedia. But if the ideas are new or original, then they don't belong here. There's more on this at Wikipedia:No original research. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:49, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

spam blacklist

Currently there's a spam blacklist banner at Kerry Bentivolio. The supposed spam link is MLive.com, the website for eight Michigan newspapers owned by Booth Newspapers. Why is it considered spam? 204.111.20.10 (talk) 09:45, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

It was triggered by the word "petition" within the URL, but I think this a mistake and have removed it. There's a discussion about this at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#petition. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. 204.111.20.10 (talk) 21:27, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

dead links and archive.org

Sometimes when reading an article I find that a link in it is dead, but I can find the page it referred to on archive.org. Is there a policy on how to edit those links? Can I just replace the original "page.html" by the corresponding "archive.org/page.html" and/or do I need to do something extra? For instance, in some reference lists, I see written "retrieved on...." next to a link, though usually that reference simply turns out to be a 'standard' url, not an archived one? 87.210.219.0 (talk) 10:43, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Depends. Some citations use a citation template, and many of those (eg {{Cite web}}) contain explicit parameters to define links to archived citations on archiving sites such as archive.org. Cite web contains |archiveurl=, which is for the url of the archived link. If a citation does not use a citation template, then a template such as {{Wayback}} can be added to the citation. For example, if the citation is a footnote, then {{Wayback}} can simply be placed inside the <ref> tags, such as <ref>[http://www.mycitation.com MyCitation] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.google.com/ |date=* }}</ref>. Note that you might need to specify more parameters in the Wayback template if you want to provide a direct link to the archived snapshot at Wayback. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 11:13, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Or you can just add "Archived on [date]." at the end of the ref instead of "Accessed" or "Retrieved" or whatever. In case you hadn't noticed, the date forms part of the archive.org url, so for things like pdfs where it isn't obvious from the page itself when it was archived, you can get it from the url instead. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:27, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

If the original link is dead and the citation uses a citation template, then you can set the |deadurl parameter to |deadurl=yes. That will change the display order of the links, i.e. if |deadurl=no, then the title will retain the original link and the archive link will be placed at the end. If |deadurl=yes, then the link order will be reversed. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 11:32, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Link rot. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:28, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Is there a section in the MoS for roads?

I remember it, but I don't know where it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.238.182.192 (talk) 11:37, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

You might be looking for Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards or Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways#Structure of articles. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

German untitled nobility

To whom it may concern I wish to advise of an omitted name in the German untitled nobility. The name and family are Heinrich von Glocken who resided in the Bohemian area until 1650 approx. They left due to Religious reasons and moved to the Wigtown area of Scotland. Some other relatives qualified for residency due to Religious conversion and their name von Glocken remained until at least WW1. Therese documented evidence of this in both Military and 1651 Czech census Register . Maybe this is not of interest by including it in "German untitled nobility". However Iv just registered on Wiki due to this knowledge with this input. Thank you for this opportunity and look forward to whatever knowledge or facts of interest, i can contribute Regards

Joe — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joerightjustice (talk • contribs) 15:43, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

This is about the category "German untitled nobility". The category does not attempt to list all living and former members of the German untitled nobilty. It is a list of Wikipedia articles whose subjects are or were German untitled nobility. Maproom (talk) 16:50, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Walter Ungerer - Media Artist

I do not understand how to correct this problem in the article for Walter Ungerer - Media Artist.

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Do I just add {{reflist}}, and if so, where? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djrphoto (talk • contribs) 16:13, 1 September 2013

Yes, that's what you do. You put it at or near the bottom of the article, where you want the reference list to appear. You probably precede it with something like

== References ==

to make a header for the section. Maproom (talk) 16:29, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Are you talking about User:Djrphoto/sandbox? You need to read WP:referencing for beginners. The definition of the reference (between the <ref>...</ref> tags) needs to be in the article text immediately after the text which it is being used to support. - David Biddulph (talk) 17:34, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Please let me know how the linked help page can be improved. --  Gadget850 ^talk 19:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

User accounts & Passwords

I am probably in the wrong place, but cannot find a better place. I have lost my password and the password recovery/reset (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PasswordReset) page is NO Help. I suspect my e-mail address on file is outdated. And no security word for recovery ever set. So what if anything can be done? Would it be helpful to create a new account - use that as a more secure means - then attempt to get back to my original account? [Or leave old account as "dead"/ unreachable?] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.214.45.242 (talk) 17:10, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

It would be entirely reasonable to create a new account. It would then be helpful to state on the user page of your new account, that you are the same person as used to operate the old account. Maproom (talk) 18:15, 1 September 2013 (UTC)