Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 January 19

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January 19

Referencing errors on Category:Internet security

Reference help requested.

whatsup

Thanks,

173.209.207.211 (talk) 07:30, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Internet security (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Someone broke the page with this edit last December. A "bot", an automatic software program, spotted this and wrote a message at User talk:173.209.207.233. You can ignore the message now, because another editor fixed the page. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:35, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

What happened with the Wikipedia navigation boxes?

Screenshots of navbox templates that have been shrunken, from my viewpoint. (Click to enlarge)

I am not sure whether it's me or other users experience it too, but from my viewpoint all the navboxes on Wikipedia have shrinked; the navbox no longer stretches to the other side of the page. I am not aware of any changes to Template:Navbox, nor am I aware of any discussions made to change Template:Navbox. has there been a change to Template:Navbox or any of the templates that Template:Navbox relies on, or is it just me and I need to change something on my part? The navboxes have been like this since the new year started, and I find it extremely unsettling.

If it is indeed a change made to Template:Navbox or a change to the templates that Template:Navbox relies on, is there any way I can make the navboxes stretch across the screen without starting an edit war? I'd much perfer the navbox stretch across the screen than it being shrunken to it's rather ugly state. RazorEye ⡭ ₪ ·o' ⍦ ࿂ 10:18, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Are you using the 'Typography refresh' beta? There's a known issue with it where pages appear half width. Samwalton9 (talk) 10:22, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I am using Beta features, but Typography Refresh is not one of them. I'm only using Media Viewer, VisualEditor and Near this Page. I have not automatically enabled all new beta features either. RazorEye ⡭ ₪ ·o' ⍦ ࿂ 10:40, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I believe it is 'Near this page' that is causing this. See this discussion. --  Gadget850 ^talk 20:57, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed it is! Thank You so much! RazorEye ⡭ ₪ ·o' ⍦ ࿂ 14:31, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Update main heading

How does one update a main heading? i.e. in my case wishing to simply change "school" to "college" following a recent name change — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjbca (talk • contribs) 10:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

You need to move the page to the new title. To do this, you must be a autoconfirmed user (ie your account must be over four days old and have made at least ten edits), which you are currently not. You could list the article at Wikipedia:Requested moves or tell us here which article it is, and we could move it for you. We'll need to check that the name change has occurred, by looking at the school's official website, for example. -Karenjc (talk) 10:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for welcome and reply......the overarching name change is from Bishop Milner Catholic School to the new name of Bishop Milner Catholic College and this was from September 2013...the attached article has been updated and reflects the name change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjbca (talk • contribs) 11:11, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

What to do about possible vandalism

I've recently run across edits to pages I've previously worked on in which someone using only an IP address has changed dates in the articles without citing sources or offering any explanation in the edit comment window, as with this editor today [1]. These edits appear to contradict the sources already cited in the articles. Is there a protocol for bringing this sort of editing to the attention of someone who can look into it? NinaGreen (talk) 18:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

essentially, its you who is responsible. as you notice and confirm deliberate errors, you can obviously correct them and then give the standard series of escalating notices and warnings to the IP on their talk page Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#Multi-level_templates. If they continue ignoring the warnings, then after the final warning you can give post the appropriate info at the administrator's vandalism notice board. WP:AIV and they will come in with the technical mop to at least temporarily keep the IP from further disruption.

but the content mop is pretty much up to you - although if the disruption is all on a certain type of article, notifying the appropriate project team may be able to rouse some help for you.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

What you describe represents an increasingly popular form of vandalism. Obviously disruptive forms of vandalism such as misspellings, graffiti, markup breaking etc. are quickly recognized and reverted. Subtle vandalism such as date changes require research to confirm, and can take a long time to correct because editors usually try to assume good faith. Personally, I now take a "when in doubt, revert" attitude towards such undocumented changes. In my two years on Wikipedia, I haven't yet seen a date change by an anonymous IP that was not vandalism. Be sure you follow up on other edits made by the IP, and report the IP if necessary. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 18:56, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

As Stigmatella aurantiaca says, maliciously changing dates (or percentages) is an increasingly popular form of vandalism, described in WP:Vandalism as a form of "sneaky vandalism". It differs from regular vandalism such as graffiti both in that it is harder to recognize and that it is sometimes ideologically or politically motivated rather than purely mischievous. To some extent, such vandals are trying to take advantage of a Wikipedia "policy" that is written clearly but has, with good reason, never been fully accepted. That is the policy that IP editors should, with limited exceptions, be given the same respect as registered editors. Some IP vandals try to take advantage of the good faith to which they claim, from other editors. On the one hand, there is reason to revert any edit that has neither a source nor an edit summary. On the other hand, I would suggest that any edit by an IP editor with neither a source nor an edit summary should ALWAYS be reverted. Also, report questionable numeric edits with no documentation (neither a source nor an edit summary) at WP:AIV. Do not bother to report them at the noticeboards, WP:AN or WP:ANI. Some editors think that such edits are "merely" disruptive editing that need to be reported at the noticeboards or via dispute resolution, but they are considered vandalism and can be reported as such. It is fair, and is not Wikihounding, to track the edits of an IP editor who makes undocumented numeric edits. (It is likewise fair to track the edits of a registered editor who has engaged in vandalism.) Not all IP editors are vandals. Most are not. Not all vandals are IP editors. However, in my opinion, undocumented edits by IP editors should be given even less assumption of good faith than other undocumented edits (which should not be given much of that assumption anyway). Robert McClenon (talk) 19:17, 19 January 2014 (UTC)::

Thanks to all of you for the helpful comments. As per the advice above, I'll continue to revert edits I run across from IP editors which change dates without citing sources or providing edit summaries. However I don't have the time to warn such editors repeatedly, which WP:AIV requires proof of before any action is taken. If the problem becomes sufficiently widespread Wikipedia will have to do something about it, and not merely rely on us as individual editors to do the legwork. NinaGreen (talk) 20:41, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I mostly but not entirely agree with NinaGreen. Reverting undocumented (no summary, no source) numeric edits by IP addresses is helpful even without warning the IP, especially if the edit summary of the revert is clear (e.g., "Rv undocumented data change). It would be more helpful to add the Twinkle warnings, which are required to post to WP:AIV. I don't understand her comment: "If the problem becomes sufficiently widespread Wikipedia will have to do something about it, and not merely rely on us as individual editors to do the legwork." What does she mean? We, the individual editors, are Wikipedia. What is there that she is saying can be done by "Wikipedia" other than the efforts of individual editors? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

What I meant is that there are 15 arbitrators and about 1400 administrators on Wikipedia (so I've been told), and I think some of their time would be better spent dealing with this sort of damage to Wikipedia than trying to implement an incredibly complex and ineffective Discretionary Sanctions system (I've commented on the latter in the current discussion on amendments to Discretionary Sanctions). As individual editors we shouldn't be having to warn vandals time and time again before an administrator steps in. NinaGreen (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

There are no administrative tools needed to revert unsourced changes, I dont see how administrators/arbs spending their time clicking " undue" is a valuable reallocation of time. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:59, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

There is no requirement that you report vandalism that you spot. Not everybody has the time to put together a proper vandalism report on WP:AIV. But it takes only a few seconds to perform a revert. If you have time to report a persistent vandal, great, but if not, somebody else will probably notice and will make the report. Just do what you can. Every little bit helps. Don't feel guilty if you can't do everything that you feel needs to be done. We are all volunteers here and we all have lives outside of Wikipedia. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 01:38, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

First, it is true that not everyone has the time or the desire to put together a proper report at WP:AIV. My thought was that, if an editor has the time to revert vandalism, which takes very little time, and they have Twinkle enabled, it also takes very little time to warn the vandal. Warning the vandal is extremely helpful because it provides an indication of whether the editor has been warned. I disagree with Nina's implication that the Arbitrators should do more to deal with vandalism. The arbitrators have a unique role in considering cases, and any time that they are asked to spend on non-arbitration work is time that is taken away from the time that they can hear and decide cases. What the 1400 administrators can do is to block vandals, once they know that an editor is a vandal. Is there something else in particular that Nina thinks that administrators should do? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I haven't yet read Nina's comments on discretionary sanctions, but I will say that there is only a small overlap between numeric vandalism and discretionary sanctions. The latter are imposed on categories of articles in which there is a simmering conflict between two (or more) hostile, often regional or ideological, points of view. I don't really see the relationship between the two areas of discretionary sanctions and "numerical vandalism". Can Nina explain? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the further comments, Robert McClenon. You wrote: 'First, it is true that not everyone has the time or the desire to put together a proper report at WP:AIV. My thought was that, if an editor has the time to revert vandalism, which takes very little time, and they have Twinkle enabled, it also takes very little time to warn the vandal.' Many editors (including me) don't even know what Twinkle is, much less how to enable it, but really, why should any editor have to take the time to warn an IP address which is clearly engaging in vandalism? It should be sufficient for an editor to revert the edit and report the vandal to WP:AIV, and then have one of the 1400 administrators look into it and block the vandal. But this sort of vandalism, which is damaging Wikipedia and absorbing good editors' time and destroying their work, is not a priority with the 15 arbitrators and 1400 administrators; they are instead absorbed (as anyone who reads the endlessly-complicated current discussion on Discretionary Sanctions can see) with trying to make something work which clearly is too complicated and open to abuse to work, and should never have been implemented in the first place (Discretionary Sanctions). NinaGreen (talk) 18:42, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning Twinkle. I'd heard of it, but never considered enabling it before. I'll get to the documentation tonight. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 20:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

More comments

User:NinaGreen asks why an editor should have to warn an IP address that is clearly engaged in vandalism, and why it should not be sufficient to report the vandal to WP:AIV. The answer is given in the vandalism policy, but the basic answer is a sort of modified assume good faith, which is that Wikipedia operates on the assumption that anyone may stop misbehaving when told to stop misbehaving. Administrators at AIV will block a repeat vandal. They will not block a one-time vandal, but will warn the vandal. If the vandal has been warned by the reverting editors, and persists, the administrators at AIV will block the vandal. That is why it is useful to warn the vandal, and why the notification tools supported by Twinkle are useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:07, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I can see that Nina does not like WP:Discretionary sanctions. I can see that she dislikes the procedure rather strongly. It is an ugly procedure to deal with ugly behavior, but, in my opinion, it is better than not having it. I haven't read Nina's specific criticisms of discretionary sanctions. I didn't see them in the ongoing discussion. However, the edit wars over regional conflicts (e.g., India-Pakistan, Arab-Israeli) have also been damaging Wikipedia, and it is my opinion, and Nina may disagree, that discretionary sanctions reduce that damage. I agree that numeric vandalism is damaging and needs to be controlled, but I think that existing policies, such as revert, report, and block, will work. I don't think that reducing the amount of work on enforcement of discretionary sanctions is necessary in order to focus on vandalism. Nina is free to disagree. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:07, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Re the first paragraph above, it seems to me that if an editor reverts the edit and reports the vandal to WP:AIV, that should be sufficient. If WP:AIV wants to assume good faith, and warn the vandal before blocking him, that should be up to WP:AIV. I will say that assuming good faith on the part of a vandal seems akin to saying to a bank robber, 'Well, you robbed a bank, but now that I've warned you, I know you'll stop robbing banks'. :-)

Re the second paragraph above, I don't 'dislike the DS procedure rather strongly'. I'm personally indifferent to DS. But I've spoken out about DS because they're not good for Wikipedia. There's a better way, but it's no wonder you didn't find my comments concerning a better way at the DS discussion page, even though I've made extensive comments (as I recall) on four separate occasions. The DS discussion has become endlessly convoluted because DS are ultimately unworkable, open to abuse against good editors, consume huge amounts of administrator time, and don't get the job done anyway (despite their being in place for years, conflict still rages on certain Wikipedia pages). But trying to move to a more effective method than DS is like trying to stop a large cart which has started rolling downhill, i.e. impossible. The people in charge (arbitrators and administrators) are committed to the flawed process which is already in place, and merely want to tinker with it. They don't appear open to finding a better, more effective solution.

This is probably not the place to be discussing all this, but the odd thing is that there's really no place on Wikipedia for discussion of significant changes which might improve Wikipedia. NinaGreen (talk) 01:49, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I won't continue the discussion of discretionary sanctions. I will further explain about WP:AIV. Reporting a single act of vandalism on AIV is not likely to result in the IP address being blocked. It appears that you think that every questionable edit should be reported on AIV and that every questionable edit should be treated as vandalism and result in a block. That isn't Wikipedia policy. There are several reasons why a single vandal-like edit is not blocked. First, the edit might have been a test edit by a new editor. Test edits result in a warning to use the sandbox instead. Second, an unsourced numerical edit, such as you are concerned about, might be a good-faith but ill-advised edit by an editor who "knows the truth" and doesn't see the need to source it. Third, if the edit is from an IP address, the address may be so dynamic that a block of a single address for a single bad edit would not be corrective, but would cause collateral damage. Bank robbery is more clearly defined and more serious than Wikipedia vandalism, and not every apparent case of vandalism is intentional vandalism. If you don't warn the vandal, there won't be a record of warnings the next time that the IP address engages in vandalism. If you report every vandal-like edit to AIV, many of your reports will be ignored as "not warned" or "not continuing". That is the way vandalism is dealt with in Wikipedia. It appears that you think that we should take a different approach. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Do try to read what I've said rather than attributing views to me which I've not expressed and don't hold. You wrote: 'It appears that you think that every questionable edit should be reported on AIV and that every questionable edit should be treated as vandalism and result in a block'. I didn't say anything of the kind, and don't believe anything of the kind. I simply said, and believe, that it should not be up to an editor to warn vandals; it is sufficient for an editor to revert an edit by a vandal, and report the matter to WP:AIV, where an administrator can take it from there, and warn the vandal, if warranted, or block the vandal, if warranted. What else are administrators there for if not to carry out this sort of function? Editors want to spend their time editing, not carrying out the functions of administrators. That's why we're editors, not administrators. Incidentally, there is a wonderful bot called ClueBot NG [2] which detects a great deal of vandalism by IP editors, and issues its own warning. That bot needs to be developed to handle the type of 'sneaky' vandalism (i.e. deliberate alteration of dates in an article so that they're incorrect) which gave rise to this question at the HelpDesk in the first place. Here's an example of some vandalism ClueBot NG reverted earlier today [3], and the warning it left for the vandal [4]. NinaGreen (talk) 07:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I posted this example of vandalism at the Talk page for ClueBot NG [5] in the hope that the bot can be modified to catch this sort of vandalism and issue an automatic warning. NinaGreen (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

How to cite reviews

How do I cite a book review? Is there a template specific for this? meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

we only use professional reviews - so the format in which the review was published. {cite news} and {cite web} would probably be the most likely. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:03, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Problem with Algebra

I am doing a little NPP and came across List of algebras as a new article. This strikes me as better named "Algebra (disambiguation)." The only problem is that Algebra (disambiguation) redirects to Algebra which is an exclusively math oriented article. At present my view is that we should break that link since there are a lot of possible non-mathematical Algebras out there. Sadly I don't know how to do that. Any ideas or suggestions?

Check this edit out. Somebody turned the disambiguation change into a redirect in their edit; they didn't seem to think the DAB page was warranted. Why not undo the edit, and add a hatnote on Algebra saying "Algebra redirects here. For a list of other algebras, see Algebra (disambiguation)"? Just a suggestion, I make no guarantees this is the "best course of action". meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 21:11, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The List of algebras is in no way a disambiguation page. To a mathematician, "algebra" is the stuff that many of us were taught at school, with quadratic equations etc.; but "an alegebra" is a set of points (or numbers, or something), together with two operations (which might or might not be addition and multiplication) for combining two of these things to get a third. It might be good if Wikipedia had an article specifically to cover the latter sense, but it doesn't. The closest it comes is this section of the algebra article. Maproom (talk) 22:16, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Which are the non-mathematical algebra in List of algebras? I believe none. About the other points: WP has two articles for the structure "Algebra": Algebra over a field and Algebra over a ring. There is third kind of structure named algebra in Universal algebra. These three articles are linked to in Algebra, and all algebras (structure) that are listed in List of algebras belong to one of these classes. As all the meanings of "algebra", not only belongs to mathematics but also are strongly related, we are in the case of a WP:CONCEPTDAB, and the disambiguation must not been done in a disambiguation page, but in an article. That is what Algebra is supposed to do. If ambiguities remain this means that the article deserve to be improved, not that another article is needed. Note also that algebra has a section Topics containing the word "algebra". IMO, List of algebras must be merged into it. D.Lazard (talk) 00:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't much like list of algebras, either. It conflates general constructions (like exterior algebra) with areas of study (like geometric algebra) and with specific examples of algebras (like Iwahori–Hecke algebra). I think the algebra article already contains most of the content of the list, and the rest of the list is a jumble (a Heyting algebra is a completely different type of object). We might be better off without the article. Ozob (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Moving this to Algebra (disambiguation) is one of the sillier proposals I've seen in a while. An article titled List of presidents would not be improved by moving it to President (disambiguation), and the same implies here. However, an article titled List of presidents that includes both heads of state and presidents of corporations would probably be improved by separating it into two or more articles, and maybe the same implies here. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Copyright owner of File:Rotated map of Europe.png

Dear Help Desk:

How can I find the copyright owner of the above map which I want to reproduce in book I am writing?

Warm wishes

Per Mollerup — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.186.162.246 (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

File:Rotated map of Europe.png's licensing section says that Tyrannus Mundi has published it under the GNU Free Documentation License as well as Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. - Purplewowies (talk) 22:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

You also might find Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content useful. -- Jreferee (talk) 23:03, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The file is listed as having been released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, which means that you should be free to use the file provided that you give proper attribution to its creator, User:Tyrannus Mundi. It has also been published under the GNU Free Documentation License. A certain fraction of the files on Wikipedia have been uploaded under incorrect license, but examination of the file history of this map shows that "Tyrannus Mundi"'s claim of being the creator of this illustration is almost certainly true.

If you wish to contact the author just to make absolutely, positively, totally sure, I note that "Tyrannus Mundi" is not currently very active on Wikipedia, but if you navigate to his/her user page, you will find an "Email this user" option in the Tools section on the left-hand side. However, I don't think that will be necessary.Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 23:07, 19 January 2014 (UTC)