Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 December 12

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December 12

Date formats

Is there a Wikipedia policy which explicitly states that specific date formats must be used in certain articles? According to this page, it is acceptable for dates to be written as "11 December 2014" or "December 11, 2014". With this being said, isn't it acceptable for an article to use the second format when dates are concerned? JayJ47 (talk) 03:30, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

See WP:ENGVAR. Different dialects of English use different date formats. Wikipedia has two ways to deal with the fact that different dialects of English are different: 1) If an article has a strong tie to a particular variety of English, default to that locale's standard (thus Australian English in Australian-related articles, American English in U.S. articles, etc.) 2) If an article does not have any such ties, simply keep using what is already there (don't change the established convention). So, the date format you choose to use depends on which articles you plan to add a date to. If the article has a close tie to a part of the world that uses a particular format, use their format. If it doesn't, keep using whatever format is already in the article. --Jayron32 03:34, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

@Jayron32: Hypothetically, and maybe this never happens, if an article fairly consistently uses the "wrong" format for the geographical area (such as dmy for U.S.), would you mass change the dates without getting talk page consensus first? ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 03:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

For any long-existing, well-developed article, I'd have a hard time imagining it ever happening. For obscure, rarely-edited articles, it might. As always, if one feels uncomfortable making large changes and anticipates some blowback, posting a note on the talk page a few days before making the change is always a good idea. If no one says anything, go for it; but be sure you're correct. Nothing looks worse than someone who is overconfident in their own wrongness... --Jayron32 03:47, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Amen to that last sentence. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 03:50, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Jayron, I'm going to disagree. An established article may have a consistent date format at some point (and citation style, language style, etc.) but it can degrade over time. The applicable guidelines are MOS:DATEUNIFY and specifically MOS:DATEFORMAT. --  Gadget850 ^talk 17:47, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

You may be disagreeing with someone, but you're not disagreeing with me. --Jayron32 21:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Redstone

You should please include REDSTONE in your list of Southern Rock bands. They are out of Murfreesboro, TN and have been around for over 20 years, they have 4 studio albums and a live album as well as many vidoes. They have toured with Charlie Daniels, Kenny Wayne Shepard, and Hank Williams Jr to name just a few. They have a website at Redstonenow.com and a face book page at Here — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.114.125.181 (talk) 03:36, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I have a webpage and a face book. What I don't have is books, magazine articles, etc. written about my life, which is why there is no Wikipedia article about me. Do you have anywhere that Redstone has been extensively covered by reliable source? What have well-known musical journals like Rolling Stone or the like written about them? Before anyone starts an article, we need source text to work from. Who has written that source text? --Jayron32 03:49, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

If i may ask about passwords

Hey uh..Dumb question. In the rare event that i was to accidentally change my password to a Safari supplied password and forget it...How do i reset it? Lor^Chat 07:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Since you've saved an email address in your Wikipedia account preferences, you would be able to visit Special:PasswordReset and ask for a temporary password to be sent to your email account. You could then log in with that and set a new password that you can remember. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:49, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Phew..Crisis averted. In other news..Know how to get a iCloud Keychain reset without speaking on a phone? Lor^Chat 07:53, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

@Lor: No. If you don't get a quick answer here, this question is more suitable for Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I've used that special password reset link, but I don't get any emails. And I've checked both the inbox and junk mail folders. My user page is still up..... User:Rocketmaniac Any ideas? 65.130.196.16 (talk) 14:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Can't find the article in search

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi,

I have created my first wiki post on a website called Slenky.

But the page doesn't come up when I search for it on wikipedia. It's finished but is there something that I'm supposed to do so that it is officially published?

How or when will the page go live?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Annikaallen (talk • contribs) 07:51, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Your contributions list says that the only page you ever edited, other than this help desk or the teahouse, was User:Annikaallen, and that page was deleted as unambiguous advertising. This is why it is not showing up in the search. Please do not use Wikipedia for blatant advertising. JIP | Talk 09:15, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I'm sorry but I'm confused

does someone who has published books since the 80's.. have to have the publisher from then to reply to my post within 7 days for the post i wrote to be accepted? or.... also I have an amazing teacher and would like to give him the place he has earned

:)

I thank you for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zieante (talk • contribs) 11:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

To avoid the article being deleted you need to provide references to published reliable sources independent of the subject to demonstrate that he is notable in Wikipedia's terms. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:07, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

an article about a declaration of independence may cite it?

I claimed that an article about a declaration of independence may cite it, based on WP:PRIMARY :"an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source." the other editor deleted the content since "Deleted These are political statements , mostly unsupported by RS". Am I right? Ykantor (talk) 12:26, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

If you are having a conflict which cannot be resolved by friendly discussion, WP:DRN is probably the way to go. --Jayron32 16:17, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

On the one hand, as the policy states, a declaration of independence (which is not a novel, but, like a novel, is a published text) may be cited as to its own content. On the other hand, as Jayron32 advises, if discussion on the article talk page is inconclusive (and there does not appear to have been much discussion), dispute resolution lists several processes that can be used. Moderated dispute resolution at WP:DRN is one of them. Another one would be a neutrally wordedRequest for Comments. Edit-warring at that topic is subject to discretionary sanctions, so that the use of dispute resolution is a good idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:57, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Ykantor (talk) 18:48, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

DISPLAYTITLE with underscore: What am I doing wrong here?

Hi - I've created a webpage for the annual musical congress SoundTrack_Cologne (yes, the underscore is part of the name), using:

DISPLAYTITLE:SoundTrack_Cologne

But if you check the page, you see that it's not displaying properly, and searches and links containing the underscore don't work. However, the German-language site, here, actually does work with this German-equivalent magic word:

SEITENTITEL:SoundTrack_Cologne

So what have I done wrong here? And how do I fix it?- Theodulf-W (talk) 15:55, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

DISPLAYTITLE can only change capitalization of the first letter. DISPLAYTITLE:Soundtrack_Cologne would work. Or you could move the page to the wanted capitalization. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:11, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Wait - so the culprit is the T in SoundTrack which is breaking DISPLAYTITLE so that it doesn't fix the underscore? That's so weird ... and yet it's apparently right, since your fixup worked fine! Thanks so much! There's another thing, but I'll give it a separate topic. Theodulf-W (talk) 16:57, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I realize it can seem weird. The reason is that the software wants wikilinks to work when the page heading is copy-pasted (or manually copied), which is a very common way for editors to make links. Underscore and space are interchangeable in links so Soundtrack Cologne and Soundtrack_Cologne gives the same link. But pagenames are case sensitive after the first letter so SoundTrack Cologne and SoundTrack_Cologne is another link (which is currently red since the page has not been created). PrimeHunter (talk) 17:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Georgian Jews

Hello in article about Georgian Jews you put Nino Abesadze as Georgian Jew, but it's wrond! she is Orthodox Christian, just got merried on Israeli Ambbasador (JEW) and came to Israel so it's wrong to make a mistake with best wishes — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.108.89.18 (talk) 19:18, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

How does someone get merried? Are they forced to become happy?

Truly, though, if you think that it was just her marriage that is causing this confusion, and that she is actually Orthodox Christian, then you should probably find some sources that support that assertion. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

But for the moment as this is disputed, it should be removed from the article per WP:BLP.--ukexpat (talk) 19:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Our article states that "Her mother and three sisters had immigrated to Israel after her father died in 1980", which rather suggests that she has Jewish ancestry - though of course that isn't incompatible with being Orthodox Christian by religion. We clearly need sources though, whatever the situation is. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:58, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Request for Help

The article in question is Georgian Jews, which has an image of Nino Abesadze. (Her own article does not state that she is Jewish, only that she is Israeli.) I tried to remove the image, but am having difficulty in getting it to format properly when I preview the article.) Can someone please remove the image. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:50, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Done - you needed to revise the 'perrow' parameter at the top of the infobox. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:55, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I see what the problem was, but it wasn't that parameter. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:58, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Archive bot on my talk page

I've made a mess of my talk page archives. I was having trouble with getting the bot to automatically archive and thought it was because I had the pages labeled wrong. I have now moved my first archive page to User talk:Archive 1, which is a problem, since it is not my user talk page. Can some kind and more experienced editor set fix this or tell me what to do? I know that this should be a really basic thing, so my apologies. —Gaff ^ταλκ 21:54, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I have this fixed. —Gaff ^ταλκ 21:58, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

BlackListed site help!

Hey wiki!

Love your site and i spend a large amount of time reading your articles on Music and i love the amount of spontaneous information that you can find about some of your favorite artists!

However, I have an issue with a Clients website. Before working with me they did a lot of Black Hat SEO without knowing, they hired an SEO team that did more damage than good. I've been on board with them for almost 6 months and we are finally returning to a Good Website with Good Content and SEO work.

We have recently cleaned up their site and all Spammy links and Articles in order to achieve a White Hat SEO strategy. We recently found out about the site being Blacklisted on Wikipedia!

What steps can I take to help my client get off the blacklist if any?

We'd be willing to write an article or fill some kind of content gap and we apologize for any of the previous spam that might have come in from some of the old long-gone SEO team.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.250.75.146 (talk) 22:26, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

There is nothing whatsoever we can do unless you tell us which website you are referring to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:36, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

This is the only edit to have been made to Wikipedia from this IP address, so we cannot infer what the web site is. If the issue has to do with the Wikipedia external link blacklist, then it is probably unlikely that we will remove the site from the blacklist. If the issue has to do with a spam blacklist that is external to Wikipedia, then you should probably talk to the organization that manages that blacklist. The Wikipedia Reference Desk for Computing might be able to advise you about an external blacklist. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:44, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

First of all, calling "Wikipedia" Wiki is like calling someone that one doesn't know by a nickname that one doesn't know they like or not. It's a tad rude.

Secondly, this fellow clearly has a conflict of interest involving this company that he mentions, so their statement should probably be taken with a grain of salt. At the same time, we should nevertheless also assume good faith and keep in mind the possibility that they might have actually stopped their spamming. I don't know the answer, and nobody here will know either so long as they don't explain what company it is that they are talking about.

I also agree with Robert McClenon: though it's possible that you might be able to get your site removed from the blacklist (that is, assuming that you are talking about the external link blacklist here on Wikipedia), it is quite unlikely. Wikipedia has to deal with many spammers every single day, and why should we risk having another spammer cause problems just because they claim to have cleaned up their act? To put it simply: be prepared to go to great efforts to prove your case. And, even if you do give it your all in proving your case, you might still get rejected. So be prepared for that if you truly wish to pursue this. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 01:37, 13 December 2014 (UTC)