Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 March 27

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March 27

Too many items on my Watchlist

Dear editors: I do a lot of work at Afc, and so the pages that I edit keep moving around, from userspace to Wikipedia talk: to Draft: and sometimes to more than one title in mainspace. Then there are the associated talk pages for each one and the submitters' user pages as well. I want to watch these pages for a while, but then I would like to delete them from my watchlist, especially ones that no longer have content. I use the "View and edit watchlist" feature, but it is time consuming. Is there any kind of utility that will:

(1) remove watchlist items which are redirects, or talk pages of redirects, or at least identify them for easy removal?

(2) remove watchlist items where neither the page or the talk page exist, or at least identify them for easy removal?

(3) allow sorting of the watchlist items within namespace sections by date of addition to the list instead of alphabetically, to allow easy removal of stale items and new but unneeded ones?

(4) allow items that I want to watch permanently to be marked and then separated, preferably into their own section, or at least by colour or style, so that I don't have to look through these when choosing items to delete? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:08, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

If you add

importStylesheet('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css'); // Linkback: User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css

to User:Anne Delong/common.js it will change links to different colors based on what the link is, redirect, dab page, so one. Then it is easy to pick out the redirects which show up as green links rather than blue. GB fan 01:19, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I presume that this would change the appearance everywhere, rather than just in the watchlist editor. Would I still be able to distinguish visited from unvisited links? I am already using custom colours because my eyes couldn't see the dark blue from the black of the default colours; would I need to remove that, or would whichever one was last on the list override? If so, maybe I could just add the link classifier when I intended to do some watchlist pruning and then remove it when done. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:36, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

It does change links everywhere. I don't know how it would work with your custom color. You might try asking Anomie. I don't have any problems with colors so it doesn't cause me any problems. GB fan 01:43, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Note you also need User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js to get all the colors. As for customizing the colors, it's simply a matter of copying User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css to your common.css (instead of using the "importStylesheet" line) and adjusting the colors however you'd like. (not watching this page, please {{ping}} me on replies) Anomie⚔ 12:06, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

its more work to set it up than a simple click to "watch", but you could create a user page add the links to the pages there and monitor them by "related changes". if you organize them in a way that makes sense to you, you can clean them out easily on a regular basis. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

That sounds like there would be more work adding the pages than I'd be saving on the removal; However, thanks, I hadn't thought of that and maybe I can use it to monitor THIS PAGE. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:45, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

As someone who is struggling with the challenge of maintaining my watchlist, I wish there were an option to watchlist something for a fixed period of time say 30 days or six months. That feature sounds like it would meet Anne's needs as well.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:44, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I've got a better idea. Clicking the star to watchlist a page would watchlist it for n days (user preference, which can be indefinite). When n days expire, you get a notice (one notice covering all times in a period, such as a week), and you can re-up for n more days, change it to indefinite, or ignore, which drops it from your list.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:50, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, it seems that this is something that many are interested in, but can't be solved by the Help Desk. Here's a link to the IdeaLab discussion I started: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/New_and_better_ways_to_edit_Watchlists It's at Meta-Wiki. You may also be interested in the other ideas that are being developed there. Some of them may eventually become proposals for Individual Engagement Grants. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:06, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

qual e-mail compartir musica do youtube p myspace

como compartir video do youtube para myspace — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.78.51.107 (talk) 03:23, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

You are at Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and this page is for asking questions about using or editing the encyclopedia. But a Google search finds this video which I think answers your question.

(Google translation into Portuguese) Você está em: Wikipédia, a enciclopédia on-line, e esta página é para fazer perguntas sobre o uso ou a edição da enciclopédia. Mas uma pesquisa no Google encontra este vídeo que eu acho que responde a sua pergunta. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:19, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

How to quickly link a term in a number of articles?

I've created an article about Historical Monument (Poland), a type of Polish heritage register. I see the term pomnik historii (now a redirect) is used, but unlinked, in 20+ articles. I don't feel like linking them manually, but I wonder if there's a gadget or another tool I could quickly use to do it in a semi-bot way? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:01, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I dived in with AWB, but noticed that in each case there was a nearby link to Objects of cultural heritage in Poland, eg in the Gdańsk article. Do you really want a second link so close by?

But to answer the general question: I don't know of any gadget to do this. Tasks like this are fairly easy with AWB, and a post at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks usually finds a willing helper. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:34, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, User:John of Reading. If the article uses the term pomnik historii, it should link to Historical Monument (Poland). The Objects of cultural heritage in Poland (zabytek) is an upper level concept. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:36, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I've added the link to 32 articles. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:58, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The reason there probably isn't a bot to do it is partially to do with the above conversation, i.e. there are too many decisions to be made about whether or not a link should be used and where. Dismas|^(talk) 11:22, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

translations

IS THERE A GERMAN-ENGLISH TRANSLATION FACILITY ON WIKIPEDIA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.96.147 (talk) 08:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia:Translation help?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:41, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Post & Telegraph

I want to see the sample of INDIRA VIKAS PATRA issued during the year 2002. And want to know when the postal department change the stamping from BOMBAY to MUMBAI. --203.115.120.238 (talk) 11:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)Rekha--203.115.120.238 (talk) 11:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

When i download song from dj punjab site then no processing is shown as notification.nothing is downloaded plz help me

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 4 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Knights of Saint Columba

Hi,

The Order of the Knights of St Columba wish to have complete control over the pgae Knights of Sr Columba. Although this is a direct copy of an original page, the imagery was incorrect on the original page and some of the content needed to be changed.

The original page was a redirect from Knights of Columbus. Please can you keep these links.

We must have the ability to change this page on occasion to make necessary updates.

If you have any queries please contact Mr Joe Rodriguez, Supreme Director for Communications and Media our email address who acts on behalf of the Order for all matters such as this. He will clarify that the new page should be the only page for the Order and will confirm the rights for it to be changed.

Thank you

KSCwebmaster (talk) 11:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

UnFortunately that is not how Wikipedia works, no one owns pages and no one group or individual can mandate edits to an article. If fact you are discouraged from editing the article at all per our conflict of interest guidelines. You may suggest edits or alterations on the talk page, or, with care, make neutral edits supported by reliable third party sources independent from the subject. Яehevkor ✉ 12:53, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I dont think it's "unfortunate". I think it is a good thing. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah.. bad choice of words there. :P Яehevkor ✉ 15:19, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Sambhali Trust, indian NGO working for women empowerment

Hello everyone,

I would like to suggest you to set up an article, on wikipedia, on Sambhali Trust. This is an NGO working since more than 7 years on women empowerment in Rajasthan (India).

I could do it myself, but I work for it, so I think it maybe will be more neutral if someone else can do it.

Our website, if you want to start, is www.sambhali-trust.org

They are already some articles on internet.

If you need any more information, please send me an email to (Redacted)

Thank you to the person who could take some time to do it!

Warm regards,

Geoffrey— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sambhali-India (talk • contribs)

The place to request an article is WP:RA. It will make it more likely that your request is acted upon if you can show that the subject actually meets the requirements for having a stand alone article, that third party reliably published sources have found the subject worthy of coverage of a significant nature, by providing links to the reliable sources making the coverage. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:33, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Request edit

I was reviewing the information about United States Parole Boards. Each individual state is listed, when I clicked on the West Virginia Parole Board, it stated page does not exist. Our website is www.paroleboard.wv.gov

thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.71.204.146 (talk • contribs) 13:17, 27 March 2014‎ (UTC)

Thanks, I have fixed the link.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:39, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

writing wrong

hi i wanted to ask we can edit our prejudice or intuitive without experiecnce fact or education what effect goes on editing wrong information — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.79.165.4 (talk • contribs) 13:47, 27 March 2014‎ (UTC)

Personal observations and commentary are not allowed, see WP:OR. Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy. see WP:RGW and WP:NOT. Content in Wikipedia articles must be based upon what reliably published sources have said, representing the mainstream academic viewpoints of the subject. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:50, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Reference list template

How do I add a {{reflist}} template?

I have added citations to Gordon Kurtti however I get the error message: Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

I appreciate any help.

Thank You. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackeyed One (talk • contribs) 14:10, 27 March 2014‎ (UTC)

In the error message, the words "help page" are in blue, indicating that they are a wikilink to a page with specific help for your problem. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:42, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

the automatic citation formatting has 2 parts the tags in the body of the article where the details about the source are given (which you had done) and a second part is a template at the bottom that will display the citation information identified in the body. That part you hadn't done and so the wikimarkup reader said "Hey I have things to display but no one told me where to display them!" I added the display template with this edit: [1].

for more details see WP:REFB-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:47, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Favorite Wikipedia articles

Hello everyone. Not sure if this is the right place to post my query as most of the above are more advanced and technical. Is there a way to create a list of "favorite" Wikipedia articles inside a user page? This is different from a watch-list. The list I am referring to might be on subjects a user is interested in (and would like to access easily), but not necessarily subjects he/she would edit. Thank you in advance for you help Mark.int (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you can either include wikilinks on your user page, or create one or more user subpages, perhaps named something like User:Mark.int/Favorites, and include wikilinks there. --David Biddulph (talk) 17:03, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

You might also try Wikipedia:Books if that strikes your fancy. - Purplewowies (talk) 22:59, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thinkers pictures on main subjects page

Can someone explain to me if there is an official guideline for introducing thinkers pictures in their subjects pages? Mathematics shows 5 mathematicians, Physics display 3 physicists in its page, Chemistry displays Lavoisier and Democritus, Biology show no biologist at all, Economics shows 3 economists, Sociology show 12 sociologists, Anthropology shows zero anthropologists, Management shows zero managers, Geography has Humbolt and Mercator, Engineering has Leonardo da Vinci, History shows Benedetto Croce and Philosophy has a huge history section with 16 philosophers.Lbertolotti (talk) 18:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The guidelines are Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Images#Choosing_images. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:01, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Please note the phrase in that guideline "Images are primarily meant to inform readers by providing visual information" - Portraits provide extremely little, if any, information whatsoever, and frequently detract from the subject - especially when they displace, or dilute, directly relevant photographs, diagrams etc. - Arjayay (talk) 19:32, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Still doesn't explain to me why there is such a lack of uniformity across articles, and also why thinkers pictures were removed from operations management article on the claim that " re-addition of portraits of people, as they add nothing whatsoever to the readers understanding of operations management - as already explained at Help Desk", so I'm guessing that by the same line of reasoning a picture of Einstein would be irrelevant to the Physics article, a picture of Adam Smith would be irrelevant to the Economics article?Lbertolotti (talk) 19:53, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The lack of uniformity is easily explained by the fact that there is no central editing authorization. Every article evolves over time based on the local editors reaching a point(s) of consensus. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:04, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes but on this particular point, who was the "onus of proof": people who want to remove images or people who want images to stay?Lbertolotti (talk) 20:13, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

If the inclusion of the pictures has been challenged as not needed, the editor trying to add the pictures need to show that the images are "relevant to the article that they appear in and [be] significantly and directly related to the article's topic." per this section WP:IMAGE RELEVANCE of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images. Meters (talk) 20:38, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You would certainly be within your rights to assert "Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly and directly related to the article's topic." And these don't and BOLDLY remove under WP:BRD. If you are reverted, discuss. If you cannot come to a consensus with the person who wants to include lots of pics, follow one of the dispute resolution methods such as an RfC. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The choice of pictures for an article, in this case an article about an academic discipline or field of study, is based on consensus. Any discussion of the addition of pictures should be done on the article talk pages. That is what article talk pages are for. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:57, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Help needed reverting edit

Resolved

 – 20:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The high-traffic article: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 needs immediate attention. This edit needs to be reverted, but due to edit conflict this can not be done easily. In addition to unexplained removal of sourced content by an IP editor, this edit broke the table. Usually errors are quickly corrected on this high-traffic article, but for some reason this error has persisted awhile. Help!  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 19:34, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Fixed it, I think. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:55, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!   For some reason my attempts only made things worse.  ~E:71.20.250.51 (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect information

Stockport County list of all players. Listed is James Tunnicliffe. It says he has a football brother called Jordan. This is incorrect. He only has a one brother Kristian who is 2 years younger. I know this information to be correct as I am his Grandma.

I believe that you are referring to the content James_Tunnicliffe#Early_life. We go by what the reliable sources say. The source [2] says that it is brother Jordan. Whether or not pitchero.com is a reliably published source is not something that I have knowledge of. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:13, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

help with citogenesis

Hi, we've uncovered a wonderful example of citogenesis over at Talk:Separatist_feminism#bell_hooks_fake_quote, where an invented phrase by one editor c2006 was later attributed (c2007) to a famous author as paraphrase, and then this paraphrase was turned into a quote in a reliable source (published book) (c2010) (citing wikipedia, bien sur), and then the bullshit was finally detected here and removed in c2013. No-one has written about this yet, so we can't put it in Circular reporting, but I'm wondering if there is a wiki-space article where we can catalog such instances.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:29, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

MSDS for chemicals

Can you help explain how to correct infoboxes and add MSDS (material safety data sheets) to chemicals? I don't get it, because the " | (whatever line of the box here) (info here)" code does not display in the infobox when you put it in there as an added line.

So do you get the data from a trusted source, like for butylone,

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/MSDS/MSDS/DisplayMSDSPage.do?country=US&language=en&productNumber=P-086&brand=CERILLIAN&PageToGoToURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sigmaaldrich.com%2Fcatalog%2Fproduct%2Fcerillian%2Fp086%3Flang%3Den

and then create a custom data page like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_(data_page)#Material_Safety_Data_Sheet

using the sigma aldrich msds as the source? What is the correct way to add that to the infobox if this is the correct procedure? Wgfcrafty (talk) 22:13, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Wgfcrafty. I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, but I think the problem is that you are trying to use a parameter which is not defined in the template. Assuming you are talking about {{Chembox}}, you need to look at the template documentation to see which parameters are defined: there seems to be a parameter called "ExternalMSDS", which takes a URL as its value. Does this answer your question? --ColinFine (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

That is exactly what I was wondering, thanks!Wgfcrafty (talk) 05:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Saving edits in draft form

How can I save my edits in draft form? I don't want the page to go live with the new edits, but I want to save them and add to them tomorrow. Thank youMadunmire (talk) 23:06, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Madunmire! You can save a userspace draft at a place like User:Madunmire/PAGENAME or User:Madunmire/sandbox or you could make a draft in the Draft namespace. I've included links that discuss these possibilities to help you. - Purplewowies (talk) 23:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello, Madunmire. There is no way to save anything in Wikipedia and not have it visible to anybody. However, if you work in your sandbox (or a user subpage, which is effectively a named sandbox) the convention is that nobody else will edit it unless it contains a gross problem such as a copyright violation or a personal attack. I have never used a subpage in this way for working on an existing article, (so somebody else may jump in with better advice), but I would think that you can:

• copy the section you want to edit to your sandbox or a user subpage
• edit it as you wish
• when you are satisfied with it, you must check whether anybody else has edited the original article since you took your copy, and if so make sure that you don't just discard their edits. If appropriate, you'll need to apply their edits to your sandbox copy.
• then copy the section back to the original article.

Of course, you might decide that your edits supersede those made by other people in the interim; but if you do so, you should mention this in your edit summary, so that it is clear that it was intentional.

It is possible that you could add the {{under construction}} template to the original article to warn people you are working on it, but that template does not quite seem to fit your need, so if you did I would suggest using its "comment" parameter to explain what you are doing.

I hope this helps. --ColinFine (talk) 23:37, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there is a draft save function. I would guess the only way is to save it on your computer, or enter the edit and then revert it, and then if you want to you can put it back the next day, or merge your edit with some one elses if it's been changed before you want your edit to take place. But really, I don't see why you wouldn't just save it on your computer.Wgfcrafty (talk) 05:13, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

If the edits are a new article you creating you could do it either in your sandbox or in the Draft-space. In your sandbox no other editor will change it, unless you invite them or it violates one of the "more serious" rules such as copyright violation or the BLP rules. If you do it in Draft-space other editors are free to edit it the same as in mainspace. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I will add that the previous posters have noted that their advice is about drafts of new articles, which can be saved in the user sandbox, in a user subpage (which is a named sandbox), or in the Drafts namespace. If you were asking about draft edits to an existing article, then they should be made in the existing article, because other, possibly unrelated, edits may also be made to the article, and merging one set of edits with other edits to other parts of the article is tedious. Was the question about a new article, or about edits to an existing article? Robert McClenon (talk) 14:11, 30 March 2014 (UTC)