Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 April 17

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April 17

Outdated content

Hi, I have recently updated a page. At the top of the page there is a banner saying the content is out of date. How do I correct this?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.2.38.123 (talk) 00:04, 17 April 2015‎ (UTC)

If you think the article is fully updated, edit it and remove the line that reads {{update|date=April 2015}} at the very top. Scarce2 (talk) 00:37, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Deleted article??? How long??

I recently made an article but it was deleted and I wanna know why is it that when I type my namw DJ Beye in google search the same Article I posted that got deleted pops up? How long does it take for this article to go away? Dj beye — Preceding unsigned comment added by DJBeye (talk • contribs) 03:26, 17 April 2015‎ (UTC)

That's up to the search engines; we have no control over them. Your effort at self-advertisement of your stage name is now part of the Internet's historical record, and will probably cling to that name for years to come. --Orange Mike | Talk 03:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

School Page

Hi Volunteers, Thanks so much for donating your time. I'm a 3rd grade teacher and one of my students Wiki'd our school and noticed there was no article listed. I thought this would be a tremendous writing opportunity for my students. I'm looking for articles to use as models, but I can't find any articles about elementary schools. Is there a policy against such a thing? I don't want to have my students put forth the effort only to find out it's not allowed. Thanks again! Lynette M. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.238.44.69 (talk) 03:27, 17 April 2015‎ (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Notability (schools) - while there is an assumption that secondary schools are notable by default, this doesn't hold for elementary schools, and we'd need to see evidence of significant coverage in third-party published reliable sources for an article on your school to be accepted. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia "Sandbox"

If I create a Sandbox page, is it public? Is a sandbox-like place available that is not public? Thanks. Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (talk) 03:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Anything you post on Wikipedia is publicly viewable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:44, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, Wayne, but like Andy says, it's all publicly viewable. We have no interest in providing secret workspace, since Wikipedia is not a provider of web services, but rather a place for the spread of knowledge. --Orange Mike | Talk 03:52, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

You can quickly setup a local server on your device with an AMP stack and then just install MediaWiki on it if your content requires Wikipedia-like formatting. It'll be offline though so it won't be accessible by devices not on your network (AWS is cheap and easy if you need that). Scarce2 (talk) 10:09, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

asking a question in the humanities section of the reference desk

I have never had any difficulties asking a question, and receiving helpful advice - until now. When I click on humanities then Ready Ask a question, I am sent to a page headed Permission Error. This appears to apply to making edits. I do not want to edit an existing article. I want to ask a question. What am I doing wrong please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.12.62.210 (talk) 07:55, 17 April 2015‎ (UTC)

You aren't doing anything wrong. The reference desk is now protected, meaning that you can only make edits there (including asking questions) if you have a registered account with a history of making contributions to Wikipedia. This should be temporary, and was done to prevent disruptive editing. Maproom (talk) 08:05, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Someone else asked this question a couple of days ago, and the situation's the same, so please let me copy/paste my response. Let me clarify a little. The edit protection is temporary, due to a guy abusing multiple editing accounts to commit lots of vandalism (example), and hopefully he'll get bored soon and allow us to end the protection. Unless we want to spend hours hitting "undo" every couple of minutes, we have to choose between protection and having no Reference Desk content at all. Nyttend (talk) 11:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

There are many good reasons for creating a Wikipedia account and logging in. This is one of them. After just a few legitimate edits, your account will be confirmed and you'll be able to edit semi-protected pages. Registering takes just a couple of moments and is free of charge. It also greatly helps you follow content that you are interested in, and enormously aids communication. See Wikipedia:Why create an account?. --Dweller (talk) 11:55, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It is also more anonymous than editing without an account because right now anyone can see [1] information about where you are editing from using the Whois and Geolocate tools at the bottom of that page. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:06, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Adding web Links for non linked references to fraternity magazines.

Let's say I've got an article about the fraternity and that there is non-controversial information referenced to issues of the fraternity magazine (among other references). This fraternity has recently put all of the fraternity magazines online. Going through and adding the url for issues of the magazine for each of the references, is that a good thing, a bad thing, or a "Hey if that's how you want to spend your time, have fun"?Naraht (talk) 11:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Using the now online magazines to make verification of content already existing in the article easier is a good thing. However, the article should be primarily based on third party sources, so adding a lot of content based on their magazines is not really appropriate. Third parties will be looking at all aspects of the subject , while the subject's media will only be focusing on positive content leading to an inherent WP:UNDUE weight of the "good" stuff. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:59, 17 April 2015 (UTC)\

Thanx. I'm not talking about adding magazine references, just upgrading them. I know that they'll be positive rather than balanced, but 'Where the 2nd national conference was held' strikes me as rather neutral. Also, in some cases I'm running into one fraternity's magazine verifying what happened in another fraternity.Naraht (talk) 23:27, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Those sound good; but in each case, please add a full footnote as you would for any magazine article, and not just a raw URL. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

{{cite magazine|... etc.Naraht (talk) 01:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

How to request an unmerge ?

Hi, I'm a little lost on the forum jungle here, so pardon me if I'm not at the right place to ask :)

I'd want to request the unmerge the article Eigenclass model, whose content seems simply to have been lost in the fusion process (the term does not appears at all in the target article, which is what personally annoys me the most in fusions on Wikipedia.

The rationale behind the fusion was not about the content of the article, but more on his title. His name seemed to be attached to a particular implementation of the concept, but the concept is real and has an history. Plus there is a lot of book in which the term is used. So this is not a source problem, nor a notoriety one. I don't really understand why the article was merged, especially because this implied a loss of content, and the redirect does not really make sense as is. The terms power types Powertype (UML) and singleton class seems to exists in literature in the metaclass context. So there if it's just a question of rewording and neutrality, this is totally doable.

I just see the issue has been controversial and a suubject of edit warring, so I want to do this especially carefully and right.

I want to assure I was not part of the previous controversy, and that I discovered the subject on a connex article I'm working on Metaclass (semantic web). This article's content seems very interesting, even if some other more generic like metamodeling are as well. TomT0m (talk) 12:25, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

You would first have to establish that the concerns raised Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eigenclass model have been addressed. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:08, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll continue the discussion on [[talk:Eigenclass model @TheRedPenOfDoom: seems hard condidering the problem was "the topic was too much expanded", how to removed content from a deleted article ? would have to restart from the beginning ... Luckily it's just a redirect and the content can be retrieved :) So pure procedural question, if the original content was restored with some parts remove, would that qualify to reopen the discussion or for an immediate revert ? TomT0m (talk) 14:40, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It was "too much expanded" based on no reliable source coverage, failing WP:RS and WP:OR and WP:NOT. If there are reliably published sources that cover the subject in a significant manner which were not part of the article or the discussion, then creating an article on the appropriately source material might be appropriate. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:15, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

History of edits

How can I find out when and who removed text from an article? I am trying to find out what happened to this 2010 edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louisville_Male_High_School&diff=prev&oldid=362608025

Thanks in advance, 13:14, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

You can usually find such things by using the 'Revision history search' tool (linked at the top of the article history page). Note however that the removal was undoubtedly legitimate, given that it cites a wordpress blog as a source for serious negative content regarding a named living person - a clear violation of WP:BLP policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:28, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply, AndyTheGrump. Actually I already tried using the 'Revision history search' tool, but when I ticked Look for removal of text (binary only) I got this message: No differences found in searched revisions. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah - if the text has been added and then removed again during the period being looked at, a binary search may not find it. You may need to use the linear search option. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:55, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:Or the old manual method - X201 (talk) 13:57, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

The relevant diff JFTR. I've tested a sequential search from your diff (clicking next, next, etc., until the text was gone), and that's really a bad idea. Normally you could try bisection, go to the history, check something in the middle, if the text is gone check something in the middle of the older edits, otherwise check an edit in the middle of the newer edits. Instead of an average of 250 "next" for 500 changes bisection will only take about eight checks. OTOH I found an important change after this diff, in the direction of "principals are generally not notable", i.e., just adding the old text again isn's a good idea, discuss it first on the talk page if you want it anyway. –Be..anyone (talk) 14:09, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I found it by checking the last edit of 2010 to see if the text was still there, the last edit of 2011, the last of... etc until it disappeared, then go back to June in the relevant year and narrow it down on a monthly basis from there. - X201 (talk) 14:24, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Citation/Reference, House of Mystery

Hello.

I just made a minor edit to the House of Mystery page, adding citation 14 and a bit of related info, but I've done something wrong because the corresponding reference at the bottom of the page is wrong. Any help in instructing me as to what I've done wrong is appreciated! Thanks!

House of Mystery

J Daulton (talk) 18:54, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed sorry didn't notice your post here :P Mlpearc (open channel) 19:27, 17 April 2015 (UTC)