Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 July 23

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July 23

Referencing errors on Jason Tait

Reference help requested. How can I fix my cite error on Jason Tait? Thanks, 97.88.207.211 (talk) 01:22, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

You didn't actually use the reference anywhere. I assumed you meant it on the endorsement statement you added, so I fixed that. OTOH, I'm not sure that item should stay. Rwessel (talk) 01:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Guideline for ensuring an article has only one major subject?

I know there is a guideline that an article should be about a single subject (e.g., an article about Jersey should not be about the garment and the islands) but I cannot find the guideline. Can someone please point me to the guideline? I'm having a problem with Hypocenter.-Arch dude (talk) 02:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

@Arch dude: Wikipedia:Disambiguation? ―Mandruss ☎ 03:00, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:CONSPLIT is not a guideline but relevant to your case. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:08, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the specific example, WP:NOT#DICTIONARY seems to apply, since there are two different concepts involved: "articles rarely, if ever, contain more than one distinct definition or usage of the article's title". AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:10, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Arch dude, back when I first started editing Wikipedia, some ten years ago, if two short articles had the same name (particularly two different people with the same name) it was not uncommon for there to be in effect two articles on one page, separated by a horizontal line. This practice has long since ceased, but I seem to recall that some guideline page still mentioned it as a possibility long after it was pretty much obsolete. I don't recall any formal guideline now that prohibits this.

After looking a bit i found Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Horizontal rule which says: "Horizontal rules—a series of hyphens (----) resulting in a straight line—are deprecated; that is, they are no longer used in articles. Rules were once employed to separate multiple meanings of a single article's name, but this task is now accomplished through disambiguation pages." I think that is sufficient. DES ^(talk) 03:12, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Editing the Femarelle (DT56A) article

Femarelle (DT56a) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Hello, My name is Corin, for COI issuse i am asking for your help with the Femarelle (DT56a) article. On its Wiki page there is not enough information,only harmful, incorrect, sabotage-like information. I have tried several times to upload new, scientific, up to date data with a lot of references but it was deleted over and over again. (you can see it in the View history Tab). In addition, i have tried using the "talk" page, that didn't help and only made thing worst. I am NOT trying to sell or promote this product through Wikipedia,but the information that is in place now is very bad and incorrect, all i want a short informative summary of this subject. Wikipedia is a tool for knowledge, not a place for harmful actions against competing products.

Please help me make the Femarelle page informative with no promotional nature or harmful information.

Thank you --Corin at Secure (talk) 08:04, 23 July 2015 (UTC)corin at secure

Corin, Talk:Femarelle (DT56a) is the place to discuss the article, and the other editors are giving you good responses there. I realize you don't like the responses, but they are right. —teb728 t c 10:23, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Have you read WP:MEDRS, as twice recommended to you on the article's talk page? Maproom (talk) 10:23, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

NB I have moved the article to Femarelle over the old redirect - the stuff in parentheses isn't required as a disambiguator as there is no other "Femarelle" article.--ukexpat (talk) 14:03, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

What if the edit summary of an article translation has not been appropriate?

Wikipedia:Translation#How_to_translate explains how to execute translations from another language correctly. This includes attribution in the edit summary and placing the respective template on the article talk page. If however the creator of a translated article has not abided by the first rule, thus not attributed the foreign-language article as source - is there anything that could & should be done about it? --KnightMove (talk) 09:53, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

You can't do anything about the bad edit summary but you can make sure the relevant template ({{Translated page}}) is on the talk page, and in this case I would definitely make sure to include the version and insertversion parameters. If the translation was recent and there have been no edits to the article since, you could consider making a dummy edit and leaving a summary providing attribution (e.g. "Previous revision ([[Special:Diff/xxxxxx]]) translated content from [X Wikipedia]'s article [[name]]; see its history for attribution"). — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 10:06, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

correction requested

Earth's internal heat budget — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.46.66.93 (talk • contribs) 11:04, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

What correction? Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 11:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

creating an account,i have given the required data .but could not get registered why?

TO WHOMSOEVER,I VOLUNTEERED MYSELF .EVEN AFTER THE REQUIRED DETAILS GIVEN I AM NOT ABLE TO CREAT AN ACCOUNT .WHY? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gramianrajendran (talk • contribs)

You are already signed into your account: Gramianrajendran. Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 12:03, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Your post here shows you have the account User:Gramianrajendran. Special:Log/Gramianrajendran shows the account creation. Why do you think there is a problem? This is just a wild guess but if your concern is the message when you click your user name then it only means your account hasn't created a user page for the account. Doing this is optional. If you want to do it then just write something in the box at User:Gramianrajendran and save the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:04, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Wiki infobox image upload

Hello, I was wondering how to upload an image into the infobox adding fish.png worked, but I dont know how to get the file name for my files or where I have tot o first upload to use this function — Preceding unsigned comment added by DayneStone (talk • contribs) 13:37, 23 July 2015‎ (UTC)

Images with free licenses should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Images that qualify as fair use (see Wikipedia:Image use policy) can be uploaded by autoconfirmed users to Wikipedia at Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 14:01, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

But note two things: Wikipedia's non-free use criteria are more stringent than "fair use" and most images would not meet them.--ukexpat (talk) 14:08, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Note also that an image for the infobox is not the most urgent thing that needs dealing with on The Herald West Wales. The article currently meets a number of the criteria for speedy deletion. I have provided you with a number of links on your user talk page. - David Biddulph (talk) 14:19, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Lost interwikis in Chicago Fire (TV series)

Due to this edit the interwiki links mysteriously got lost. I don't know why yet... AussieLegend didn't do anything than just reverting the last two edits. Also on wikidata, everything seems correct. Any ideas how to fix it? Chaddy (talk) 15:42, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I see the same interlanguage links before and after that edit:

Chinese Dutch French German Italian Japanese Korean Norwegian Polish Portuguese Russian Slovak Spanish Swedish Ukrainian

Try to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:50, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

After this edit, they are back now. Seems really to be just a cache problem. Chaddy (talk) 16:41, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Center for Healthcare Innovation

I realize that my page has been marked for speedy deletion due to copyright issues but I am in the process of e mailing all parties involved. What code can I put on the page/my user page so I can obtain the 7 day grace period needed to confirm material usage on my page? BTW the link to the page is in the subject of this message. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CHI Site Wiki (talk • contribs) 16:09, 23 July 2015‎ (UTC)

@CHI Site Wiki: We do not have any "grace period" for copyright violations. Note that even with an appropriate release of copyright for use by anyone anywhere, the content is mostly completely inappropriate for an encyclopedia and would not be maintained as displayed anyway.

As a side note, it is not "your page" - it is an encyclopedia article, apparently about a subject wherein you have a conflict of interest -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:24, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I see that the page was deleted yesterday for the same reasons, but was recreated today. Generating the page again when you knew that it was a breach of Wikipedia's policies could be regarded as disruptive editing. - David Biddulph (talk) 16:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I've put a causeblock on this one, and added a warning against disruptive editing (i.e., removing speedy deletion warnings on articles they (re-)created themselves) as behavior that could get them reblocked if they get unblocked for a name change. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:57, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello, CHI Site Wiki. The article is marked for speedy deletion not only for copyright but also because "in its current form it serves only to promote or publicise an entity, person, product, or idea, and would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic." This is to be expected, because if the copy comes from the Center's own website it is very proper that it should be promotional: if it were suitable for a Wikipedia article it would not be doing its job on the Center's site. (This is why it is rarely worth taking the trouble to get the copyright holder to release text under a licence suitable for Wikipedia: it may be worth it for images, but not usually for text).

My advice to you would be to let it get deleted, read Your first article, and also read Conflict of interest, to understand why you are discouraged from writing this article at all, but tells you what you need to do if you are going to; and then if you decide to go ahead, create an draft using the Article wizard. You probably need to change your username as well: User names must not suggest that they are used to edit on behalf or an organisation. --ColinFine (talk) 16:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Quotation marks

I found an article where a few of the "text", 'text' quotation marks had been replaced by curly “text”, ‘text’ marks, against the recommendation at the manual of style. I found that when I clicked ctrl-F in my browser (Chrome, running on Windows 7) and searched for “, it found all of “ ” ", which made it harder for me to find the ones that needed replacing. Is there a way (using the facilities of Wikipedia, or of some browser) to force it to search for exactly the character I specify, rather than just characters resembling it? Maproom (talk) 16:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, if you use Wikipedia's native search and replace facility it differentiates between curly ("smart") quotes and straight. Click on advanced in the edit bar above the editing screen. The icon to invoke it is . More specifically in:

You can see it all the way to the right of the screenshot. However, I do have some memory of an issue in the past where someone's browser or computer was automatically switching curly for straight when they copied and pasted, i.e., when they copied the curly quotes from the article and attempted to paste it into this search and replace function, their browser had already "fixed" it to straight, so the search and replace didn't work. Anyway, see if this works. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:27, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

In IE11 you can copy paste the 66 quotation marks into the "search for" box of Wikipedia's "search and replace" and use replace all to replace them with straight quotes, and then repeat for the 99 quotation marks - Arjayay (talk) 17:34, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Fuhghettaboutit: that is just what I need. But how do you get your edit toolbar to look like that? The default state of mine looks like this; and if I use my Preferences to "Enable enhanced editing toolbar", as I usually do, it looks like this. I can't find any icon. Maproom (talk) 08:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@Maproom: Ah, hmm, it's probably your browser. This bug T25992 talks about it not working in IE/Opera but there must be a problem in Chrome too (even though someone said there it worked in Chrome). Unless you're willing to switch browsers (I use Firefox) I can only suggest using Word or some other word processing program (if Word, make sure you go into autocorrect settings and turn off replacement of straight quotes with smart quotes if that's on).--

Thank you for the advice. I'll try some different browsers. And if that doesn't work, I'll use Notepad++, which I trust much more than Word to not do things I don't tell it to do. Maproom (talk) 14:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Anytime. Maybe they'll fix it so it works everywhere, but I wouldn't hold my breath.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

How to edit a page

Hi have a question on how to edit a page... I have access to the page and would like to add more information to the page. Is there a simple way to put all the info in and have wikipedia insert the coding tools such as the parentheses to allow the page to link to another page?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:5B0A:E300:2D0F:A9FA:87D5:61C (talk • contribs)

You edit article pages just as you edited this page. See WP:REFB for information on how to place citations to reliably published sources that verify the content you wish to add. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:04, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, IP user. I think you are asking if there is a way that you can edit without knowing the details of Wiki markup? There is a tool called VisualEditor, which I am not familiar with myself, but I think takes care of a lot of this for you. My understanding is that if you create an account (which is free, and has other advantages as well) you will then be able to turn on the Visual Editor. --ColinFine (talk) 09:14, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

ignored ??

I looked up how to fix the "ignored" error in the citation, it says "remove the extraneous text" and add equal sign.. but how do I know what part of the text is supposedly extraneous?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Moon822 (talk • contribs)

@Moon822: There is probably an extraneous "|" in the citation. The wikicoding thinks that everything after a | is a new parameter and is looking for a valid parameter name to come next. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:43, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed Instead of listing just the URL, you needed to add the parameter |url= before adding the URL, see my edit. Joseph2302 (talk) 20:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The error message tells you which text is being ignored, and the word "help" in the error message is in blue to tell you that it is a wikilink, in this case to Help:CS1 errors#text ignored. It tells you that it is expecting a parameter name and an equals sign. Presumably in your case you intended "url=". - David Biddulph (talk) 20:55, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I find the help text difficult to parse: "To resolve this error, remove the extraneous text, add '=', add an appropriate parameter name from the citation template you're using to complete the parameter, or properly encode vertical bars in URLs and titles."

Far into the sentence comes an "or" which hints that you should only do one of the listed things. The poster apparently thought that "remove the extraneous text" was the first mandatory step and more should be done after that, but no text should be removed in this and many other cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Martineau family

What Have I done wrong with reference number One on the "Martineau Family" page Thanks Ted — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.168.85.156 (talk • contribs)

 Done Hello Ted, fixed it for you. The reference had an incorrect date format as accessdate. GermanJoe (talk) 23:12, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks - I have done another edit on the Martineau family page (reference number 4) but it may not be correct - used a "st" on the date Please can you have a look at it Thanks Ted — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.168.85.156 (talk • contribs)

 Done Fixed that too :). Use "date" to specify the date of publication, and generally all dates should be formatted in the same format. If you edit an existing article, you should follow the already existing date format of other references. Two quick points: Please sign your talkpage messages at the end with 4 tildes (like that: ~~~~. And WP:Referencing for beginners has additional information about Wikipedia's referencing system and is quite helpful for new editors. GermanJoe (talk) 23:38, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

sorry to bother u again Please can you help me do a link on the Martineau family page - opening pargraph section: Where it says ......Birmingham's Unitarian Church.... can we put a link on the word Unitarian to the wikipedia "Unitarianism" page? thanks T125.168.85.156 (talk) 23:41, 23 July 2015 (UTC) (I have tried to sign correctly)

You can create such links with square brackets (please see Help:Link for a detailed description). But "Unitarianism" is already linked a few lines above - in such cases another identical link nearby is usually avoided. GermanJoe (talk) 23:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

and you shouldnt link to a term in the middle of a name - the whole name should be linked or none of it: Birmingham Unitarian Church - acceptable; Birmingham Unitarian Church - not acceptable. Birmingham United, a Unitarian church, acceptable.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:55, 23 July 2015 (UTC)