Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 May 12

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May 12

Edits to German WP

How is it that I have so many edits to the German WP? I don't speak enough German to attempt an edit there. And all the edits listed seem to be in English. Can someone explain this to me? Dismas|^(talk) 02:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

My impression is that those were articles you edited on en.wp that were transwikied. /~huesatlum/ 02:15, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

this is clearly some sort of bug. If you look at diffs, you get the English-language article, but clicking on the article title itself gives the German one. I'd report it at WP:VPT. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's a bug: if I understand how transwiki works, the entire history of an article is copied to another language for attribution purposes, where it is manually translated. Dismas' edits show as English because he edited the enwiki version of the article. See [1], where an article goes from an exact copy of the English article to a translated one with nonexistent templates removed. /~huesatlum/ 02:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! Dismas|^(talk) 04:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Referencing errors on Media representation of Hugo Chávez

Reference help requested.

Thanks, Zfigueroa (talk) 03:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

@Zfigueroa: Done. A reference you used on the page taken from the BP article was a defined reference there so you need to provide its original use in the new location, i.e., find where <ref name=Kraft/> was first defined in the BP article as <ref name=Kraft>citation text</ref> and exchange the one for the other. Btw, you must provide copyright attribution when you copy from another article by providing a hyperlink to it in your edit summary. See Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. I have fixed this here. Just keep that in mind. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I've never seen that done before in an edit so I will begin to do this as well. I need to make it a habit though.--Zfigueroa (talk) 04:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

@Zfigueroa: Anytime. BTW, you don't need to scream it in an announcement "COPYRIGHT ATTRIBUTION NOTE:"; I do that when I'm fixing unattributed past edits; you can just type something like "content copied from [[article name]]; see that article's history for attribution".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

My 23 years of research at Stanford Research Institute has suddenly been defamed and libeled on my bio page

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.

---

Russell Targ (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I am a physicist who was a pioneer in the development of the laser and laser applications. After weeks of arguing with editors, this phase of my life has been restored to Wikipedia. Good. At the same time my work at SRI has been dubbed "pseudoscience" in the header and leading paragraphs. I am Russell Targ, and together with Dr. Hal Puthoff, we created a 23 year, $20 million program of research and applications of "remote viewing," which allows a person to describe what is happening at a distant location. Now, you don't have to believe that, to follow my argument. But the fact is that we provided useful info for the CIA, Defense Intelligence agency and Army Intelligence for two decades, even though they presently deny it. But that's a different story. If we were not useful, the CIA, who famously don't suffer fools gladly, would not have kept funding us year after year, for 23 years. That's a fact, easily verified. We published our findings in Nature, the Proc. IEEE, and the American Institute of Physics. It is true that remote viewing is controversial, especially among people who hate ESP, and have not read our papers. I have no problem with editors adding mountains of criticism to the comments portion my bio page. The purpose of this note is to start the ball rolling on getting rid of the damaging and personally insulting claim that our work is "pseudoscience". Your definition says that it is misleading, falsehoods, etc. Very bad business, damaging to my on-going consulting. Remote viewing has been replicated world wide, for three decades. The work can be reasonably be considered surprising or controversial or contentious. But it is a lie to call it "pseudoscience". Any informed person would agree. Students are getting PhD's studying remote viewing all over Europe. I am prepared to take all necessary measures public, Internet or private to discover a path to redressing this libel. I am eighty years old, and have both time and inclination to see that this issue is dealt with fairly. For example, a Wiki editor asked me today,(May 11th) to provide additional published references documenting the remote viewing work. I have very poor vision, so it was a very laborious task to add seven or eight Wikipedia formatted citations. Within an hour, they were all gone. And no one will tell my why they removed or where they have gone. I will greatly appreciate your help. Please communicate with me.Torgownik (talk)Russell Targ. russtarg at gmail.com. — Preceding undated comment added 04:29, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is hardly a defamatory label. It may not sound nice to a scientist, but it has a ring of mystique, rebellion and supernatural powers. From a general public perspective, that's a good thing. It makes you seem "cool". Likewise, "parapsychologist" is intriguing, rather than routine.

Anyway, your citations are here. Just hit Edit on that page to copy them. Good luck. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Looking closer, you'd missed the closing brackets on those citations. So if you re-add them, add those. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:51, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I did it for you, but for some reason, there are a lot of dashes. If someone knows what that's about, give Russell Targ a go. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Somebody reverted me, but they've also preserved your citations on the talk page, cleaned of dashes. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:06, 12 May 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.

Add a photograph to an article

Hello,

I 'm trying to add the file :

Anais photography Auckland concert Six-60-3

in this page : Six60 But it doesn't work. Could you please tell me why?

Anais21 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.64.26.182 (talk) 10:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Looking at your contribution record I can see no sign of you having tried to edit that article or any other; this question was your first edit to Wikipedia, and the article concerned has had no edits this month. What were you trying to do, and what error did you see at what stage of the process? --David Biddulph (talk) 10:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello David Biddulph, I was trying to add a photograph to add some illustration content to this page, which I believe is helping to improve the quality of this page. But I actually have finally succeded today, but without being logged in. Is that normal? Thank you for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.254.23.208 (talk) 15:42, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Greater_Romania_(political_concept)#Combination_of_material_from_multiple_sources

Please comment at the thread in the title. I think that we have original synthesis in the article, but somebody else disagrees. Avpop (talk) 12:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Prof Alfred Kona, Chairman Board of Directors, UBA Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire

14:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)14:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)~~Roberto Good afternoon, a lady of Ivory Coast with cancer leave me a sum of US$ in order to take care for her little son. After having invested more than 25.000 Euro a certain Prof. Kona Alfred, Chairman of Directors of UBA, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire has started to ask me continuously money to give me the Pin Code of a credit card sent me months ago where the sum left by the lady with cancer (in the meantime she's dead) is filled in. This Professor is asking me a lot of money with the promise to give me the Pin Code in order to withdraw the money and provide for the sustainment of the young boy. But after every of my payments he refuses to give me the Pin Code inventing every time troubles that don't allow him to give me the Pin Code. I suppose it's a clear Fraud and that this professor has nothing to do with the UBA BANK at Abidjan. Please investigate and take him to prison Roberto Dr. Fahlenkamp — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.242.224.17 (talk) 14:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

This is the help desk for Wikipedia. We have no powers to deal with people operating 419 scams. Maproom (talk) 15:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Creating a redirect

Anyone here willing to create a hard redirect from the deleted article Frank Gruber (entrepreneur) to the entry about the company he leads, Tech Cocktail? Back story: he recently approached me about recreating the biographical article and, while I didn't think that was advisable per WP:NOTE, I did think a redirect is appropriate here. I would do so myself, however, anticipating a possible client-consultant relationship in the future, I'd rather ask and see if another editor would agree to create the redirect instead. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 15:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Not sure a redirect is appropriate but I will update the disambiguation page at Frank Gruber.--ukexpat (talk) 16:08, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

 Done--ukexpat (talk) 16:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi ukexpat, I'm curious why you would say a redirect is not appropriate? Gruber may not quite be notable himself, but readers looking for him are likely to be interested in the company itself. Removing the wikilink on the disambig page doesn't help people looking for information about Gruber find relevant content, which is my intention. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 16:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

A redirect to a disambiguated name isn't that helpful; better to just put the company on the disambig page. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Aha, I see. That should probably do, then. Thanks for clarifying Adam, and thanks for taking it up, ukexpat. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 17:41, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. With the change to the disambig page, anyone searching for Frank Gruber will see him listed there with a link to the company article.--ukexpat (talk) 18:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

An article about a living person needs to be changed because the person is now deceased.

Is there a protocol or format for changing an article about a living person who is recently deceased? For example, how do I change the category from living to deceased? — Preceding unsigned comment added by CapitanKirk (talk • contribs) 17:26, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

You add the date of death, with a proper citation to a reliable source. You change the category from Category:Living persons to Category:2014 deaths. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:48, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Statement

Can i be able to check my contribution on line? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.237.200.120 (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about. Your contribution to what? Check how? If you are talking about contributing to Wikipedia, any change made by anybody to Wikipedia is immediately visible online (though it might get reverted by somebody else for various reasons). But the IP address you have posted the question from has not made any other edits to Wikipedia. --ColinFine (talk) 21:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

If the person is actually talking about contributing to Wikipedia, the first thing I thought of is money. We need that too. I don't know how to answer the question about that, though. Perhaps Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia would help.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:57, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Combine fields from multiple infoboxes

Is it possible to reference more than one infobox template so that fields from each can be used together or to include fields which do not exist within the template? For example, I am using Template:Infobox dot-com company but in addition to being a dot com company, it would also be notable to add that it is a venture-capital funded start-up, thus making a field such as the following worth noting |Funding = $1.1M (2013-06) David Condrey (talk) 20:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

No, you would have to edit {{Infobox dot-com company}} to add that parameter.--ukexpat (talk) 20:25, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Can I? Can I expand upon the infobox template or is there a bureaucratic process that I should go thru to make a change such as this? David Condrey (talk) 06:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Since template, especially infoboxes, are used on quite a few articles (sometimes thousands) it is a good idea to bring any changes to a discussion on the talk page for the template first before implementing it. Dismas|^(talk) 07:12, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

update athlete information

Hello!

I've been trying to update the page for race-car driver Johnny O'Connell:

Johnny O'Connell

As you can see from the talk link, I have provided extensive information responding to the request for citations and verifiable sources, but the page has not been updated. Please advise how I can get the correct information to the right people to update.

Thank you!

spurcom Spurcom (talk) 21:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Looking over the talk page, it appears that most of what you wish to submit are career summary tables? These can probably be formatted into the article (as tables, instead of plain text), however are there more secondary sources that can be provided, instead of the primary sources currently linked? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:23, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The amount of time it takes for the Veteran's Administration to process claims.

The issues surrounding the VA hospitals is one issue, but you should research the length of time it takes to process a claim from the Veteran's Administration. My husband is only one Veteran that has waited for three years to have a claim processed. They send you to Doctors 30 - 40 miles away from your home, they ask for information from the Medical Center you have been attending for care. The VA request all medical records. We have sent the records three times. Veterans are waiting so long that they die before they receive their checks. I feel this is a serious problem, We think it the reason so many of the Veterans are living on the street. They give up because the process takes so long. I think this is another total segment, separate from what the medical centers and hospitals are doing. I worked for 30 years for a large HMO, and you need to add appointments, A.M. and P.M, plus Saturdays and week-ends. Adding more resources to the panel and an Administrator that is watching the wait-list. Well my main problem is the wait time to have claims processed.

Elizabeth Carr — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.215.65.137 (talk) 23:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Note: Wikipedia is not a soapbox or blog. CTF83! 23:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Mike Huckabee ranted about this very topic. Whatever reliable sources say, presented with a neautral point of view, should be stated somewhere.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)