Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 January 24

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January 24

New Page

I am looking to create a page for a small musical artist name chamagic. Could you tell me how to go about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TardMcgee (talk • contribs) 02:42, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi TardMcgee, the first thing to do is decide if Chamagic meets Wikipedia notability guidelines (Wikipedia:Notability) and then read the guidelines for biographies of living people (Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons) - to create your article refer to Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:Writing better articles - you can find more guidelines at Help:Contents and the Wikipedia:Manual of Style - cheers - Epinoia (talk) 03:14, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi TardMcgee, the more specific notability guideline for a musical artist is WP:MUSICBIO. —teb728 t c 07:06, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

Reference number 202 is a disaster and I do not know why! Sorry - please leave in page number (12) of this magazine and the quote too - but fix up all the red writing please. Thanks 175.32.165.144 (talk) 02:59, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Fixed. You just had "quote:" instead of "quote=". MB 03:18, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Dear SB, as told to you repeatedly earlier, whenever you mess up a page with your edits, as you did here, it would be good if you can undo your edit and then ask for assistance. Thanks, Lourdes 03:49, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Understand the process to upload my articles / books

I have already logged in in Wikipedia but I am not able to upload any details on the portal.

please guide me how can I upload my articles into it?

Jankrut — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jankrut (talk • contribs) 06:09, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Hello Jankrut, if you are thinking of posting an essay or blog (like you did on your user page), the answer is "you don't." Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If you want to write an encyclopedic article, see Wikipedia:Your first article. —teb728 t c 06:58, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Theodor Meron

I don't understand the blanking and proposed deletion at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theodor_Meron&oldid=871646114 . Why not just revert to the last non-infringing version?

Also, I can't find any discussion of this issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#:Theodor_Meron User_talk:Seraphim_System is on Wikibreak.

What's the procedure? Could I simply revert to the last non-infringing version? --Nbauman (talk) 16:32, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

If there is a copyright violation, the offending material isn't allowed to remain in the article history. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:41, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, which clarifies some of these issues for me. But not all.

So, why not revert it to the last non-infringing version, and let somebody with deletion privileges delete the infringing material from the history?

In any case, when I followed the links in the notification in the article, they didn't lead to the supposed source of the infringing content. They led to a different document. http://www.irmct.org/en/about/principals/president And furthermore, they led to a United Nations document, which isn't copyrighted. So there's no need to delete it from the history either.

The problem is that somebody left a notice, he's not around to explain his objections, and I'm trying to find out whether the problem could be solved by simply reverting it to a non-infringing version. --Nbauman (talk) 17:42, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The source text has been archived to http://www.irmct.org/en/about/principals/former-principals. The UN-IRMCT terms of use do assert copyright and license only "to download and copy the information, documents and materials … from the Site for the User’s personal, non-commercial use, without any right to resell or redistribute them or to compile or create derivative works therefrom". —teb728 t c 20:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Survey regarding the community guidelines for my master thesis

Hello Wikipedia-Community,
my name is Robert Wintermeyer and I am currently conducting surveys in various social media platforms as part of my master's thesis. The focus is on the community guidelines of the respective social platform and the acceptance by its users. Of course, the data provided will not be passed on to anybody and will only be used for the master's thesis. All responses are confidential. I already read the 'Ethically researching Wikipedia' article. In the 'best practices' section is mentioned that it's best to 'consult with and gain the consent of the community before beginning'. Since I'm not sure how exactly I am supposed to gain the consent of the community before I begin. I was not sure if the post is something for the admin noticeboard. I would start my survey by asking users for their participation by posting on their talk pages with information similar to the suggested text in the '·Ethically researching Wikipedia' article. I would be thankful for any feedback on how I may conduct my research or if my suggested approach would be okay.

Thank you very much for your time! Kind regards, Robert Wintermeyer--Rwinterm (talk) 17:21, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@Rwinterm: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a social media platform. RudolfRed (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikis are one part of social media and Wikipedia is my reference platform. Edit: Social Media Wikipedia you can also check it up on Wikipedia :-) --Rwinterm (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Rwinterm, technically Wikipedia is a series of encyclopedias in many languages. It is produced by the Wikipedia community, which is the topic I think you are proposing to study. Or maybe just that part of the community which works on the English language version of Wikipedia. Each language community operates independently and may have very different guidelines. It helps to link to Wikipedia topics such as Wikipedia:Ethically researching Wikipedia when you mention them in a discussion. You might consider adding your project to the Wikimedia Foundation site and getting some feedback there also. Do you have a description of your project available? StarryGrandma (talk) 20:17, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The topic I want to study for my master thesis is the user participation in the guideline creation and its effect on the acceptance of those guidelines. In this case I have a survey just for the English version of Wikipedia. I included the German version as well but they have a different survey since their guidelines are different. A further description for my project is not available since I am doing the research on my own for the master thesis. Since I already approached other Wikis for this research and each had its own way of dealing with research I wanted to contact parts of the community before I begin. Some Wikis had places where I could post my research others allowed the direct contact on the User talk pages. --Rwinterm (talk) 20:33, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

When you write up this work what will the "Methods" section say? It seems that you have a questionnaire online and will post invitations to take that survey on user pages. How will you choose which users? Are you trying to make this a random survey so the results will have some statistical significance? Are you choosing only experienced editors who are familiar with Wikipedia or all registered editors, most of whom do not know much about the guidelines or about the goals of an encyclopedia? StarryGrandma (talk) 22:23, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Rwinterm, have you got ethics clearance and approval for your study from your Institution's review board? This is essential both as part of the information you provide as part of obtaining informed consent and for the work to be accepted by examiners as part of a Master's thesis. EdChem (talk) 06:36, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

StarryGrandma The most interesting responses are from experienced Users who know the guidelines but anyone can participate. The knowledge of the community guidelines is one item of the survey. It might be interesting to see if the user participation in the guideline creation also affects the knowledge about the guidelines. The goals of an encyclopedia do not matter for my research. EdChem I read about the IRB and it is not in every country the same. In Germany I only found IRB in case of medical studies. I am mainly interested in the way I might approach survey participants. --Rwinterm (talk) 13:59, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Rwinterm, survey research is research with human subjects and in many (most?) countries requires IRB approval. Some journals also want a statement of IRB / ethics committee approval at the end of the manuscript. I don't know what country / university you are dealing with, but this is an area you need to consider carefully, IMO. EdChem (talk) 14:10, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

EdChem I have heard the first time of IRB approval when I started reading into researching with Wikipedia (EN). I looked it up but I could only find some kind of IRB approval for medical studies in Germany. But thank you for your advice regarding IRB. --Rwinterm (talk) 15:13, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@EdChem: - (from a UK background) - in our Masters' dissertations, purely electronic, anonymised, surveys that satisfied certain criteria (and didn't cross a long list of others) were pre-authorised by the ethics board. Talking to others from other UK universities, this is functionally UK-universal. Can't speak for other countries, but it seems likely. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:52, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Dispute over who founded a company

An editor has offered to provide legal documents showing who the founders of a company are (4 people). Meanwhile two secondary published sources say the founder was someone else (1 person, one of the 4). My presumption is we have to go with the secondary sources, even though they are not strong: one is based on an interview with the 1 founder, the other is a Bloomberg database entry. I've seen the legal docs and they are unambiguous it was founded by four people, though unpublished and hosted on a private Google drive account. The concept of "founder" is also not clear as there can be legal founders for stock purposes, and founders in the sense of who gets public credit (like who founded Wikipedia). The discussion is at Talk:SuperDerivatives#Co-Founder. -- GreenC 17:53, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

How to add an extra "heading row" in Wiki-tables

I have a question about Wiki-tables. As an example, let's look at the very first table in this article: List of television stations in Florida. Is there a way to create a "heading"-type of row that sits above what is presently there? And that heading row, in this example, would have a column span of 7 columns. And it would say something like "List of TV Stations in Florida as of July 1, 2017". This is just an example. I want to find out if I can -- and how I can -- add "heading" rows in Wiki-tables. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk)

Here is (sort of) an example of what I mean: SunTrust Banks#Current operations and structure. Here, the heading/title of the table is: Business Mix, as of June 30, 2016. However, I don't want the title/heading of the table to just have words "floating" above the table. I'd like to have the title/heading to actually be enclosed within a rectangle (just like all of the other rows of the table are). Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:53, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

You can add a second header row with the below code. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:34, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

! colspan="7" | List of TV Stations in Florida as of July 1, 2017
|-

List of TV Stations in Florida as of July 1, 2017
Area served	City of license	VC	RF	Callsign	Network	Notes
Daytona Beach	New Smyrna Beach	15	33	WDSC-TV	ETV	Florida Channel on 15.2, MHz WorldView on 15.3

Perfect. Thanks. That's exactly what I meant. I have another "picky question" about the table you just created. Why do the words in the second row appear in larger font size, while the words in the first row appear in smaller font size? I looked at the computer code, and I can't make out what is causing this. Or is it merely an optical illusion? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:34, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The second row adds bolding on top of the automatic bolding in wikitable headers.

No bold: List of TV Stations in Florida

Single bold: List of TV Stations in Florida

Double bold: List of TV Stations in Florida (made with <b>...</b> since the wikicode doesn't nest)

The result may depend on browser and font. I see extra bold in both the table and my example. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:19, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Help with table formatting

Could someone here perchance be able to help with this? Thanks! -Sdkb (talk) 20:13, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

I set the width at 50%. Ruslik_Zero 20:49, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Copyright violation?

Hi everyone. I believe this is the best place to ask this question but if there is a better avenue I apologize. While I am decently familiar with Wikipedia's copyright policy I just want to make sure I didn't make a mistake here. I just want to know if the content from here is protected under copyright laws and able to be posted on Sigma Sound Studios. The Temple University website is protected under copyright and the libraries copyright policy [1] seems to be specifically focused on research based copyright. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 21:47, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Hello, HickoryOughtShirt?4. As I read it, the collection contain disparate items, some of which are in the public domain, and some of which are under copyright. It is possible that some of the items under copyright have been released under a licence which is compatible with Wikipedia, but you cannot assume that. You would need to check the copyright of the individual items you wanted to upload - if they were clearly public domain (by reason of age, for example, or because they are within the range of items the US government declares to be public domain) or explicitly under a suitable licence, you could upload them. In the absence of any such explicit statement, you could not. That is my reading, but I am not an expert: Media copyright questions is a good place to ask further. --ColinFine (talk) 23:36, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi ColinFine and thanks for the reply. I realize now I wasn't very clear, I apologize. I was specifically talking about the words under the header "Detailed Collection Information." Can someone just copy and paste that? I reverted an editor believing they were violating copyright policy but I am not sure. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 00:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

That specific paragraph is copyrighted and we cannot use it verbatim. Here's why: everything that is published is copyrighted by default, period. There is no requirement for the copyright holder to make an explicit declaration that a copyright exists. Unless you can provide an explicit reason that an item is no longer copyrighted, then it is copyrighted. There is no indication on that web site that that paragraph is not copyrighted. ColinFine described the reasons a work might not be copyrighted, and none of them apply. -Arch dude (talk) 05:51, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks! HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 05:53, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Requesting protection for several pages related to privacy (such as differential privacy)

There is currently a program run in Berkeley's Simons Institute (https://simons.berkeley.edu/programs/privacy2019) and one of the issues that were mentioned is that some Wikipedia articles (Differential privacy, among others) could be much improved. The participants of the program agreed that one of the things the program should manage to do is to write a good page for differential privacy and perhaps others as well. One of the participants mentioned that they tried to do such a thing before and were constantly overwritten by other people. I realize that perhaps we would like to request protection status for the page(s) and perhaps assign one of the participants of the program to be an administrator. I was wondering what would be the process of doing such a thing. Should we file a request to protect the page only after we have formulated such a page? Can we even request assigning one of the participants to be an admin for such a page? In order to verify the authority of the program, one need only look at the list of participants, which contains many distinguished individuals in the field of privacy, and in particular Cynthia Dwork, who has conceived the idea of Differential Privacy and formulated it (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/11787006_1). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vexlerneil (talk • contribs) 23:35, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's not the way Wikipedia works, Vexlerneil. Page protection is used only where articles are subject to repeated vandalism, not to lock in one person or group's idea of what an article should look like. If you think that an article needs major revision, (especially if you have first tried to make changes, and been reverted) you should open a discussion on the article's talk page, and try to persuade other editors that your changes are improvements. While experts can bring valuable perspective to Wikipedia articles, in the end the content of an article is determined by a consensus of editors (expert and non-expert) according to what reliable published sources are found. Please see the essay WP:expert editors. --ColinFine (talk) 23:46, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Vexlerneil, it's also not how admins are appointed. Trusted long-term editors with a history of content creation and anti-vandalism work are considered at WP:RFA, and are not appointed just to protect the interests of a particular group Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:25, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Jimfbleak, There was no intention of benefiting individuals, as you've suggested, but to ensure the accuracy of the site. I simply understood that a person can be a page administrator without being a site-wide administrator, but that does not seem to be the case. Vexlerneil (talk) 20:03, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Vexlerneil, thanks. I won't pretend to understand the article in question, but it's clear that it has problems, with great chunks of text without WP:RS sources and opinions presented as facts. Much is essay-like rather than an encyclopaedia article. If you want to make a change, make sure that it has an independent third party source. If it's reverted, ask the other editor to explain. If you still can't agree, discuss on the article talk page. Your interests appear benign, but you can see why we rely on consensus if you think what would happen if a faction editing on eg Palestine or Donald Trump could have special status! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:27, 26 January 2019 (UTC)