Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 September 17

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September 17

Hidden redirect

Mos Def shows up at Special:WhatLinksHere/Common_(rapper) through the redirect Common (entertainer). When I search the page and its templates, I don't find that redirect. What is going on?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The link table had not been updated yet after at least one of your two navbox edits [1][2]. See Help:Job queue. The article was removed from WhatLinksHere when I made a null edit of it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Search history for username via changes made

I want to warn on a user's talk page for copying an entire news account, verbatim, into Fermi 1. I already added the {copypaste} tag into the article, rather than delete en masse.

But in order to find the editor, I'm not sure how to go about searching the article's history for the specific offending text, short of looking at every single edit summary. How might this be done? — VoxLuna ☾ ^orbit_land  

Try WikiBlame RudolfRed (talk) 04:47, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I would also recommend Wikiblame for articles with many revisions, but doing a quick check to see if the copyvio came in in the first page of article history revisions is easy, and if it is, narrowing it down to the offending edit is also easy. Just go back about halfway and see if the copyvio's present. If so, check the last edit on the first page and if not, you know its in the back half; if your first halfway check desnlt find it, you know it's of more recent vintage and can check the front half. Just keep dividing, forward or backward by halfs and repeat and wash. In this way you can usually narrow it done in a very short time using only a handful of spot checks. Once you have narrowed down to ten or so revisions you can check the diffs (and can often make an educated guess as to which diffs to check in the few you've now isolated, by who the users are). In this case, the copyvio was added in the the most recent edits to the article by an IP. It's been reverted, the history RevDeleted, and a warning given. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:09, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

What if an owner of a popular news source would decline use of a website?

Sorry for the Yahoo Answers type question, but what if an influential content owner became mad at Wikipedia and told the website; either on the website or through the media that they can't use their website as a source? Let's just use Sumner Redstone as an example because he is influential in CBS and Viacom. What would be done if he would say something like "Wikipedia isn't reliable and I don't want CBS News being used to source its articles." Let's imagine that he wouldn't try to enforce this with a Dame Dash type lawsuit and that this involves the local CBS News affiliates as well. Would CBS News be listed as a site that can't be sourced to comply with his request? Or would Wikipedia ignore Redstone because the benefits of sourcing from CBS News, which like all major news platforms has exclusive stories in some cases, drastically outweigh obliging to content owners? --Thebirdlover (talk) 12:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I would say, "bollocks". No website by dictat can prevent Wikipedia linking to it and thus prevent it being used as a source.--ukexpat (talk) 14:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no obligation to content owners other than to follow the law with regard to copyrights, including fair use. We wouldn't oblige anyone who wants more restrictions than allowed by law. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Table Sorting

In List of sovereign states in Europe by minimum wage, if you sort on the third column (Monthly Minimum Wage in Euros), the UK comes out top, with 1169.47, ahead of France and Ireland with values in the 1400's, and Andorra comes out last with 962, although there are several entries less than 100! In fact, the order is all over the place. I can't see anything obviously wrong in the code, so what's up? Rojomoke (talk) 12:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the behind-the-scenes code was confused by the cells containing a dash. I've added data-sort-type="number" to the column heading so that it knows to sort the cells as numbers. See Help:Sorting#Forcing a column to have a particular data type. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:59, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

William J. Florence

Resolved

 – Operator error! --ukexpat (talk) 17:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Why aren't the image captions showing? Thank you for your help. Vzeebjtf (talk)

Whoops! I just realized they are missing the "thumb" parameter. [Face-slap] Vzeebjtf (talk) 16:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Change Users

I recently had a friend help me create a wiki page for my business. Is there anyway to remove his name as the User with mine ? The Page is located at User:John Stenson/The Office Bistro I have also done a lot of updating to the article is there the possibility of getting the article moved up ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjturner (talk • contribs) 17:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

It has been deleted as unambiguous advertising and promotion. There are useful links on your user talk page and on your friend's. Two pages that you definitely need to read are the guidance on autobiography and conflict of interest. If you want to prooduce an advertising page for your business, Wikipedia is not the place to do it; there are plenty of web hosting sites available. - David Biddulph (talk) 17:36, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/King Carlos Coffee

I wanted to list this Afc submission at WP:Copyright problems for an opinion about close paraphrasing of THIS web page, but I have no idea how to format the entry which has multiple unfamiliar templates, and I gave up. Can someone else do it? Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Anne, no point beating about the bush - it's too close a paraphrase and I have tagged it for G12 speedy.--ukexpat (talk) 17:56, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I see that someone has already tagged it for copyright violation, like this: {{db-copyvio|url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Carlos+Pinzon+-+Colombia%27s+coffee+king.-a053392923}}. But as ukexpat says, the article is likely to get deleted soon anyway. Maproom (talk) 18:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

As I said, I tagged it for speedy deletion as it looks like a clear case. WP:Copyright problems is for the less obvious cases where, for example, the copyright status of the source may be in doubt.--ukexpat (talk) 18:45, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't sure. A lot of rearranging of the sentences was done, but the ideas and language were all about the same. I didn't think it should be hanging around in the Afc for six months. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

How can you attribute properly when an article has no author's name?

I am using Wiki material for a book I am writing and want to give proper attribution to the author. One article I used was on politics, another on inflation, a third on food. However, there were no author’s names.

On the "Creative Commons Attribution..." page it stated: "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor."

However, I did not see anything about attributing the work in a manner specified by the author or licensor. And, again, saw no author. I am looking in the wrong place? What am I to do about attributions and properly recognizing authors?

Thank you,

Jimmy Benson — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimmy Bens.n (talk • contribs) 18:21, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Wiki material is created by a community, so you attribute it to the wiki you took it from. Of course, material on Wikipedia is cited to a source, so you should find the source the material came from and use that instead. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 18:27, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

[Jimmy Benson writes] Okay. Makes sense: "Wikipedia is cited to a source, so you should find the source the material came from and use that instead." I rather new to Wikipedia. You wrote: "so you attribute it to the wiki you took it from." I don't know how to phrase this ... My question: "What is a wiki, how does one distinguish it and tell one from the other?" Thanks. JB. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimmy Bens.n (talk • contribs) 18:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

"a wiki" is a type of website using a type of software; this particular wiki in which we are communicating is the English Wikipedia ("English" in this case meaning "in the English language, not "controlled by the English crown"). --Orange Mike | Talk 18:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Does WP:CITEWIKI help?--ukexpat (talk) 18:43, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

[Jimmy Benson writes] I checked CITEWIKI and it had a link to the Tool Box where in the drop down window was "Cite this page." Clicking that link showed me the following: " Page name: Politics; Author: Wikipedia contributors; Publisher: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia."

At least in this case, the authors are very inconspicuous and low key. For WAR was the same. For ECONOMIC GROWTH it was the same. Are they all the same? In all cases the author is Wikipedia contributors.

However, earlier you wrote: "Wiki material is created by a community, so you attribute it to the wiki you took it from. Of course, material on Wikipedia is cited to a source, so you should find the source the material came from and use that instead."

It is much easier to cite "Wiki contributors" as the authors. Is it illegal to do that? One is legally bound to not attribute an article to "Wiki contributors" but must find the source of the material they got it from or possibly face a lawsuit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimmy Bens.n (talk • contribs) 19:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I believe he was hinting that using the source where Wikipedia itself got the information may provide you with more accurate information, since anyone could've edited Wikipedia to say wrong things (hopefully it'd not stay for you to see for too long). If you want to cite Wikipedia, you'll want to link back to the history of the article with the words "Wikipedia contributors" for the author. To find the history, there should be a "view history" tab at the top of every article. Hope this helps :) ~Charmlet ^-talk- 20:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

@JImmy Bens.nl: Per WP:CITE, "You should not cite any particular author or authors for a Wikipedia article, in general." And, quite frankly, if you were to only put this in each footnote:

Name of article, Wikipedia, date. [The date is very important; Wikipedia articles change all the time.]

that would be quite sufficient to guarantee that the Wikimedia Foundation wouldn't sue you. In fact, I'm not aware of any cases where WMF has sued anyone with regard to copying content, even when Wikipedia was not cited at all. WMF gets all of its revenues from grants and donations, so it really isn't particularly concerned about copying from Wikipedia without attribution.

Richard-of-Earth is generally incorrect in saying that you need to trace the source of materials yet one more step - that is, to look at the citations that support text in the Wikipedia articles, and cite those sources. You should do that if you are using a quotation that you find in a Wikipedia article (all such quotations are supposed to have sources, and to be removed if lacking them); otherwise, the text in the Wikipedia article is not supposed to be copied from a source, and so attribution to a particular source is unnecessary. We do encourage people to look at sources that Wikipedia articles cite (the footnotes), and to use those sources rather than Wikipedia, particularly for academic papers, but that's just a suggestion, not a requirement. And, of course, much (too much) of the text in Wikipedia articles is not sourced (has no footnote), so it's not possible to easily determine where information came from; when it is, the source is often offline or paywall-protected, so again using Wikipedia directly would make the most sense.

Good luck on your book. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:24, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

A reader isn't required to trace back to the source WP cites, but it is a good idea. The cited sources should be reliable sources, while WP does not consider itself a reliable source for citing in its own articles. One of the best uses of WP would be to find sources on a subject. RJFJR (talk) 21:27, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Others have commented about whether it's a good idea to base information in a book you're writing directly on a Wikipedia article. If you decide Wikipedia is good enough for your purposes, the mechanics of the citation are easy enough. If navigate to a random article, Supaul for example, and look at the left side of the window, you will see a heading, "Toolbox". There is a little arrowhead next to it; if the arrowhead points to the side, click it to expand the Toolbox heading. Then click on "Cite this page". Appropriate citations in the most popular citation styles will appear. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Several answers above have commented on whether Mr. Benson ought to be citing Wikipedia in his book. I don't think that is any of our business. We shouldn't be treating him like a Wikipedia contributor who's failing to follow our standards for references, or a schoolchild who is stinting on his homework. It's his book, and we don't even know what it's about or who his intended readership is. If he wants advice he will get it from his editor or his publishers. Maproom (talk) 22:04, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

PDF citation does not support claim

In the article Sel-Sync, the citation[3] does not support this portion of the claim:

D-2 (video) was the first digital recording video tape format to offer Sel-Sync "read before write"

(the PDF addresses analog recording only, not digital video)

Is there a wikicode tag or something to flag this type of citation? Or should the claim be removed? I'm looking to support or remove a similar claim in the D-2 article.

Thank you for your time,

XyKyWyKy aka raffriff42 (talk) 21:17, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

When I have come across something like that, I have simply deleted the reference, with the edit summary "source cited does not support statement". But I guess there must be a politer way of doing it. Maproom (talk) 22:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

@XyKyWyKy aka raffriff42 {{failedverification}} if you want to give other editors a chance to discuss/fix the ref. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:46, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

That's the one! Thanks! XyKyWyKy aka raffriff42 (talk) 01:06, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

page deletion it violates copy rights!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cedric gilmer

please delete article name Cedric gilmer it was only for a class assignment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gilmer123 (talk • contribs) 23:39, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

We have no page named 'Cedric gilmer'. As for 'class assignments', Wikipedia is not a web-hosting service - and note that when you edit Wikipedia, " you irrevocably agree to release your contribution" per our terms of service. You retain the copyright to your material, but you can't withdraw it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:52, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

An article by that name was deleted today. Dismas|^(talk) 00:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

... but not because it violated copyright. Its creator gave the copyright to Wikipedia when he put the content there. Maproom (talk) 18:10, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

No they didn't. Contributors retain the copyright to their contributions: see Wikipedia:Copyrights. By contributing, they do however allow their material to be reproduced and modified by others, as long as the appropriate attribution takes place. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:16, 18 September 2013 (UTC)