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Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 September 20

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September 20

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Change in name of company - what to do?

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What should I do in this situation? Wikipedia has an article about a company but the company has changed its name twice in the past year. Further, the products the company is developing have changed substantially over the past few years. The Wikipedia article is very outdated. I think the company is notable enough to merit an article (it's stock is traded).

I can think of some options:

1) Keep the existing article but rewrite/update it considerably. The article name would have to be changed to reflect the new name of the company. I don't know how to do that (could someone point me to the instructions; I couldn't find them.)

2) Create a new article under the current name of the company. Somehow set up a redirect from the old article to the new one. Again, this is something I have never done before. Carax (talk) 02:31, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Carax in any case, a relaible source should be cited for the new name, although it could be a company-published source in a case such as this. Doing a WP:MOVE is the best method, as Stabila711 suggests above. Again, what company or article is this about? DES (talk) 13:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did it. Thanks. It was Access Pharmaceuticals, now Abeona Therapeutics, Inc..Carax (talk) 15:08, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Now moved to Abeona Therapeutics per the naming conventions for companies.--ukexpat (talk) 13:19, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How to get a list of articles created by an editor?

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Preferably one that allows to screen out redirects. All my links to old tools broke with the toolserver. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:22, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood

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Royal Duties section- 2nd last line. Should there be a capital "p" on patron? Not sure ThanksSrbernadette (talk) 04:54, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It depends. If "Patron" is an official title, then yes. If it is a description of her role in the event, then no, it should be lower case "p", "patron". --Jayron32 05:40, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reguarding bias against Homeopathy

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Dear Wikipedia Editors It has just come to my attention in the article Extreme bias at Wikipedia on homeopathic medicine Thursday, November 13, 2014 by: Dana Ullman Which includes the paragraph "Because I know that we all want Wikipedia to be the best modern resource of reliable information, my intent in writing is to show you where Wikipedia is falling below your high standards, and in fact, Wikipedia's article on homeopathy is providing strongly biased, inaccurate information. This strong bias is a symptom of a deeper problem at Wikipedia in select articles on topics that challenge dominant medical and scientific worldviews. After reading the below body of scientific evidence on the subject of homeopathic medicine, I hope that we can engage in a dialogue that will help reduce the amount of misinformation that pervades certain subjects, such as homeopathy."

Are you funded by Big Pharma or something? Having done a great deal of recent research on the evils of Big Pharma due to my falling victim of antidepressant withdrawal - and how I even got sucked into them in the first place I can say I am now using homeopathy to try and rescue me from my trauma. And when it comes to such comments as the placebo effect - that is also said in many an article about antidepressants. This is divulged by whistle blowers on the whole horrible lie that Big Pharma have used to promote these toxic drugs. I have bitter experience in the problems they bring.

Without further ado - just reconsider your stance on this. Look into it further..The queen of England still works hard in her 80s with very little time off in her life with sickness - and homeopathy is her preferred health practice. And if anyone has enough money to utilize any health practice she wants...... Something to consider.

I have many a time referred to Wikipedia. I want to continue to trust it. Thank you Michele — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.185.2.39 (talk) 05:58, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of things: a) We are not an unbiased encyclopedia. We are biased towards the viewpoints which are well supported in reliable sources. Sometimes something is simply right and something else simply wrong. We can't write articles claiming that they are both equal in this case. b) We are funded by donations, mostly from educational institutions. They have no control on what we write in articles. Also c) while I am sympathetic about your health problems, what you said here really isn't a reliable source at all. WP:MEDRS has a better run-down of what is considered a reliable source in medicine. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:59, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there is no evidence that homeopathy works. It is just water and placebo. This is what reliable sources say and we say what they say. Supdiop (T🔹C) 09:17, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, Michele, a dichotomy between alternative medicine and Big Pharma is a false dichotomy. See Ben Goldacre as an example of a doctor who argues fiercely against alternative medicine and even more fiercely against Big Pharma. --ColinFine (talk) 10:39, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We have, inevitably, had numerous groups trying to alter Wikipedia's coverage of their subject, to how they want it to read, ignoring our fundamental principal to base our articles on Reliable, Independent, Sources. This came to a head in 2013 when the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) petitioned Jimmy Wales to change Wikipedia's policy. Their arguments, and Wales' response, can be read in this essay. We will not be changing our policies - Arjayay (talk) 12:03, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

missing my bag with educational certificates in katpadi jn

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hello sir, i am bhuvaneshwaran from salem district, now i am working in a pharma company,vizianagaram. while i am travelling from villupuram to vizianagaram train stopped at katpadi jn, there i went to bathroom and on return my bag is missing which contains dress and my educational certificates and paasport,please give me solutions to find it travel date;19/09/2015 train: purulia exp 22606 pnr.no:<redacted> if find call me on: <redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.213.108.219 (talk) 06:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This help desk is only for enquiries relating to the editing of Wikipedia pages. I hope you find your things, but unfortunately Wikipedia cannot help you with this matter. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:20, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

help

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I have searched the computer every where I know but I am not a expert. my wife has always wanted to find out if she has any family left in france. she was born to a French paymaster in December 1948 and a Vietnamese lady. she is now American citizen. I would like to find someone who could do research on this in france. we are not asking for a freebee would be willing to pay if we can get creditable help. that's all we know that he was a pay master during the French war and her mother was a maid. they were in the siagon area. any help we would be grateful. thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:CB:0:F12F:487A:44E1:63E:5BD9 (talk) 14:49, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's not something that we do here. This is the Help Desk for Wikipedia and we help people with writing articles here at the site. You're going to need to contact some genealogical society. I haven't done any family history research, so I'm a bit out of my league with where to go specifically. But that's what you're going to want to search for on the net. I also suggest going to your local library. They generally have some information on where to get this type of information. Best of luck, Dismas|(talk) 15:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced sections with see also or main

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Are references needed in a section marked with {{see also}} or {{main}}? Or should they still be marked {{unreferenced section}}? And if so, which template comes first? YBG (talk) 14:53, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If an example would help, see Numbered street §§ Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, and San Francisco. YBG (talk) 14:59, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Every article is stand-alone and must cite sources directly for its content. For some discussion of this matter, see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 103#Citations on linked pages. I'm not sure if the order of the templates is captured in any guidance page, but my gut is that any section template about sourcing should go first. Even though a {{main}} tag is a navigation self-reference, it is much closer to a part of the content of the section proper that would be a bit strange to split from the content by placement above the sources tag.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:26, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This has been very helpful. YBG (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Trimming URLs in references?

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I have found a number of articles where the URL given for the reference includes information like utm_referer in the last part of the url which the site uses to determine which site (often a search engine) was used to access the page. The URL directs to the same location without these fields (often separately by ampersands). Is it appropriate to clean this information up? I'm not trying to be nice to the sites that these go to (though that is a pleasant side effect), but rather to the cleanest/clearest URL that wikipedia can use. Note, I'd be doing this by hand making sure the cleaned URL goes to the same page.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Francis_Xavier_Seelos&diff=prev&oldid=681960922 for an example of that type of change. Naraht (talk) 17:14, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Naraht, I'd say yes, looks like an improvement to me, I don't see what bad could come from this, only good. It might make it eaiser for users to copy and paste the link or to archive it, stuff like that. Rainbow unicorn (talk) 21:13, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to do a really thorough job of normalizing a URL (for example when adding a reference that contains a URL) we have a list of changes you can make at URL normalization. The change Naraht made in the diff above would be an example of what that article lists as "Removing default query parameters. A default value in the query string may render identically whether it is there or not". Another helpful tip: when the URL has a Canonical link element, use that. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:05, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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