Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 April 27

Help desk
< April 26	<< Mar | April | May >>	April 28 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

April 27

User edits for an IP address

This isn't about Wikipedia per se, but the API. I'm not sure where I should ask this. I'm building an anti-vandalism bot (for university) and I need to know the number of edits for a username and for an IP address. For usernames, it's easy: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=ClueBot&usprop=editcount, but if I try the same thing for an IP address it returns invalid. 79.112.19.31 (talk) 00:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The editcount for an IP doesn't really have a meaning, and it isn't stored like the data for a user is. An IP may have had dozens of users, so knowing how many edits it has isn't a useful metric. You can figure it out via the toolserver, or by counting the entries on Special:Contributions. Prodego ^talk 23:29, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

You can get the info from X!'s Edit Counter, here is the edit count from your current IP address, http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=79.112.19.31&lang=en&wiki=wikipedia all 4 edits. ~~ GB fan ~~ ^talk 23:33, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

To explain further: I need a way to do that through the API and fast. I could also do it by listing all the edits by an IP address, but imagine if an IP address has 10000 edits. I would need to do a lot of requests just for one IP. With the link given above I can get the useredits for 50 users in one request. I didn't know about toolserver.org. I'll try to see if I can get an account. Having access to the entire database will be really helpful. (Sorry I didn't sign last time.) 79.112.19.31 (talk) 00:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Virus?

I came across this edit at Croatia men's national ice hockey team claiming that the Croatian Ice Hockey Federation home page website linked from the Wikipedia article has a trojan virus. I have no idea if this is simple vandalism, or if this might be a real problem. Maybe someone with the right technical skills could check it out.

• I am getting a warning from my browser about that site, but I dont know if that means it definitely has a virus...--E2eamon (talk) 00:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

That means that it has been reported as having a virus, so it's not safe, I'll comment out the link for now. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:44, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I've removed the site until we can verify it goes where it says it does (and I'm not clicking on it to find out). However, a Google search of the domain name doesn't turn up anything related to hockey and I can't even find the Croatian national hockey website, at that address or any other. Thanks for the note, OP. TNXMan 00:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The google search may not be finding anything because the site is in Croatian. Clicking on the British flag for English doesn't seem to change anything. Chrome isn't flagging it as infected for me, but as the site seems to have very little content anyway, perhaps just deleting the link as per WP:NONENGEL would be the best idea. Winston365 (talk) 00:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) hr.wp's article on the federation does not provide a website. A search of the relevant terms on google.hr brings up the link as the first result and marks it as "unsafe". I support removal until the identity of the website can be verified, if verification is at all possible. Xenon54 / talk / 00:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I have passing familiarity with how Google does this, and fwiw I can check the site safely tomorrow. But google is pretty trustworthy on this kind of issue. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I've archived the page using FreezePage and Coral Archive. This and this are the results. From the surface, I cannot see anything suspicious about the site, but there may be something in the source code. Goodvac (talk) 04:02, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the page, it doesn't look like it would be worth linking to at all, considering the dearth of content. TNXMan 11:53, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Image changed, license didn't?

I think something odd happened to the image [1]. It looks like there was a Creative Commons licensed image, but someone overwrote it with another image that probably is not CC licensed. I'd do something about this myself, but 1.) I'm not sure that is what happened, and 2.) I'm not sure what to do about it. I've never gotten into image management on wikipedia before.

So, can someone tell me what happened here, and what to do about it? gnfnrf (talk) 04:07, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The newest version is not free. It's copied from here. To find out if images on Wikipedia are copied from an unfree source, paste the image url from Wikipedia into the search box at TinEye. The image should be marked as {{db-f9}}. Goodvac (talk) 04:15, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so it's safe to revert back to the older one (which is what I'll do). Now.. new question: is the license on the older one valid? Tabercil (talk) 04:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Changes I Didn't Make

I received a message from Wikipedia saying that I vandalized a couple articles, but I've never done any such thing. In fact, I've never made any change to any article at all. So I have two questions for anyone who possesses the necessary knowledge.

(1) Is this likely an issue of a changing IP address?

(2) Can this mistake be remedied without creating an account, or will I forever be tagged as the person who wrote that 35% of Urbandale's population have small "penis's" (sic)?

The most likely explanation of this is that you have a dynamic ip. If you don't create an account, your IP will continue having those edits displayed in the contributions list. Now if you have a dynamic IP as I said above, next time you power up your computer, you will have a different IP address, and hopefully it will have a clean slate. Goodvac (talk) 04:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

And yes, registering an account and logging in would be the best way to avoid mixing other edits in with yours. Prodego ^talk 15:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Misinformation

In the article Steve Perry (musician) is a pertinent lie. It says that an online petition is being held to have Perry replace James Labrie, the singer of Dream Theater (however, in the article about Perry he is called Lames Labrie). I wanted to remove this James-bashing, cause that's what it is, but in the edit screen stood only a reference to a {{reflist|2}}. How to handle this? 195.235.227.10 (talk) 05:50, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I can't find any of the words you mentioned above in the article you linked. Could you quote the part of the text with which you are dissatisfied? Goodvac (talk) 05:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

It was vandalism, removed shortly after being added. View the article as it is now. -- kainaw™ 05:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Yep, it's gone now (and in the history I saw it was gone already when I looked at the article, funny that I could still see it though). 195.235.227.10 (talk) 06:30, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

You were probably seeing a cached version. Pressing 'refresh' or 'reload' in your browser often fixes that.  Chzz  ►  09:44, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to hear Stefanie Heinzmann sing with Dream Theater. --Teratornis (talk) 01:20, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Cristovao Vilela

Hi all, I've come across an entry about Cristovao Vilela ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristovao_Vilela ) - The article, largely produced by a single wikipedian appears, in my view, to be highly suspicious. The article makes a number of stunning claims about Vilela, a highly successful person by all accounts - Former professional footballer, media personality, successful entrepreneur, holder of a doctorate, married to an olympic gold medalist and all by the age of thirty. The article has two references, the first points to a Cafe's entry on a review website, and the other to an album review on a blog - neither make any mention of Vilela. Would anyone care to take a look, Cheers. Darigan (talk) 08:30, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Please see the deletion discussions, in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cristovao Vilela.  Chzz  ►  09:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX}}

Several days ago, after stating I did not want my userpage to appear on internet searches, was told to put {{NOINDEX}} on my userpage. I did that, but now, several days later, my userpage continues to show up on internet searches. Why is this occuring? Immunize (talk) 13:17, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

It can take several days for Google, Bing, etc to update their indexes. Wikipedia has no control over this process. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:24, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

So it is not anything I have done incorrectly? Immunize (talk) 13:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Also, search engines don't have to obey the noindex property. It's not a guarantee because they can ignore it and index the page anyway, although most will not do that. What search engine are you seeing your userpage listed in? --Mysdaao ^talk 13:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I am seeing it on google. 13:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

On Google, I can find some of your subpages, but not your user page itself. The NOINDEX isn't a cascading command - all subpages need to have it on them individually. As Mysdaao asks, what search engine is it showing on? -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

If you are still seeing it when you look on Google, you might need to override the cache (on IE, it's Ctrl+F5) -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I still see the result in Google after overriding my cache when I search for "User:Immunize". If you click on the cached version, you can see it was cached on April 19, the day before you added the {{NOINDEX}} tag, Immunize. Google should remove it after more time, but like Phantomsteve said, it needs to be placed on user subpages too if you want to prevent them from being indexed. --Mysdaao ^talk 13:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I can still see it too - I did a search on the "wikipedia.org" domain, and it messed up for some reason. Searching without that worked, and showed it - Immunize, you'll just have to wait for Google to reindex. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:49, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Right. The html of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Immunize contains <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />. Googlebot will discover the noindex tag next time it visits the page and remove the page from Google's search index. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Cannot login

I cannot log in to my account. NexTier Bank —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.212.156.182 (talk • contribs)

What is the name of the account to which you are trying to login? I'll warn you though, if the username is NexTier Bank, it's probably a violation of our username policy. TNXMan 13:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no user with that name (or similar) that I can see. There is a NexTier Bank article which was created by Ccloskey (talk · contribs) - is that you? If so, it has not been used since September last year. I have reset the password (if it's you, you'll get an email about that). If that is not your account name, can you let us know what the account name is, then we can be a bit more helpful! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:48, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Beta

Resolved

 – Mysdaao ^talk 12:05, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Ha it's me again. But I am trying out beta and I CAN NOT find the "watch page" button. It's driving me nuts. I like beta and want to continue using it but I want to watch pages....help? Homework2 ^{pass a note}contribs 15:32, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

There's a star icon next to "History" at the top of the page. Click that to add the page you're looking at to your watchlist. --Mysdaao ^talk 15:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Ahhhhh ok. thanks. Homework2 ^{pass a note}contribs 00:27, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. --Mysdaao ^talk 12:05, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Pixelation to start screen on OGV video I uploaded

Hi there,

My name is David Kunkel. I am the webmaster at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. I've recently been working on a wiki page for our Director, Leocadia I. Zak. Today, I uploaded a video (in the proper ogv format) of U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice speaking to USTDA at Director Zak's swearing in ceremony - and the start screen for that video became extremely pixelated when added to her page. Can you help remove that pixelation - or suggest a reason how we can fix it. The video itself works fine - once you hit the play button, it's just the start image we're concerned about.

Thank you,

Dave —Preceding unsigned comment added by Webmaster ustda (talk • contribs) 20:37, 27 April 2010

You are strongly discouraged from editing this page, as you have a conflict of interest. You can make suggestions (and adduce independent references) on the article's talk page, but you should leave editing the article to others. (I can't help about the video, sorry) --ColinFine (talk) 22:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

New type of semi-protection?

Resolved

Someone on the ref desk talk page said there is a way of semi-protecting pages without affecting all IP users. This to me seems to defeat the point of semi-protection, but I searched anyway for the relevant policy pages and I can't find any indication at all that this sort of semi-protection exists, and the user has refused to clarify what they mean. Is there a form of semi-protection that prevents specific IP addresses or ranges from editing a page, while allowing all others to edit as normal? 82.43.89.71 (talk) 21:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

You can do that with the AbuseFilter - but it wouldn't be something that would normally be done. Prodego ^talk 21:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. 82.43.89.71 (talk) 21:09, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there a particular page we are talking about? I could review if I think it is needed for you (and implement it, if it is). Prodego ^talk 21:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

It's the ref desks. Check out the talk page for the continuous trolling by the banned user Lightcurrent. More of a mosquito than anything. I suggested the filter, which would be a possibility if the more active users there get sufficiently fed up with that character. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)