Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 June 2

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June 2

Book Creator Problem

I am trying to make my own book in Book Creator. I have added several articles & several Chapters. However, the program is suppose to allow you to drag & drop to put them in the order I want. It will not let me drag & drop!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.95.189 (talk) 03:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. Roger (talk) 20:33, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

There does seem to be a Wikipedia:Books page, but I have no clue how it operates unfortunately. doomgaze (talk) 20:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia cache isn't flushing out older image file

I made some changes to the following image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jpba-logov.png . However, although the image itself updated okay, uses of the image did not. In this article, the older image is still being displayed. Also the "current" thumbnail in the image's page is also not updated. I thought at first it was my browser, so I flushed the offline cache and such, but no change. I then tried a different computer, and it too showed the older image. Studying how Wikipedia works, I tried inserting the "action=purge" parameter at the end of the URL to purge the cache, but it doesn't work either. Can someone please see if the cache for the article can be purged? Thanks! Groink (talk) 04:56, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I made a dummy edit which appears to have fixed the issue.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:01, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that worked! I was even able to upload another update to the same image, and the article immediately ripped the new image. Thanks! Groink (talk) 07:03, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Largest talk pages?

I am trying to look at the development of Wikipedia's most controversial articles. I think articles with the largest talk pages are likely to be among the most controversial. Is there any way to find the articles with the largest talk pages?Polyquest (talk) 05:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

"Largest talk pages" taken literally doesn't capture what you're after I think because talk pages are archived periodically. I think you're looking for articles with the highest number of edits to the talk page and maybe the most archives, though the latter might not necessarily correlate because archives can be set at larger or smaller sizes. Not sure of a method but Talk:September 11 attacks has got to be up there with 55 archives and 19,335 edits. Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages does exist but its data is as of November 2003.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

You may wish to also look at the most dispute resolution heavy articles (Palestine & Israel, Climate Change, Eastern Europe). These may often hide the volume of talk content by hogging space at AN/I, WQA, RS/N, OR/N, ARB, AE, etc. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I'll check the areas you suggested Fifelfoo. I wonder if one of the tech whiz's could be convinced to update that most edited talk pages list. Polyquest (talk) 06:33, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Also look for talk pages that have their own FAQs. E.g. Talk:Muhammad/FAQ and other pages in Category:Wikipedia article FAQs. When an article has its own FAQ, that suggests the topic has issues that come up repeatedly. The writing of such a FAQ might be a key milestone in "the development of Wikipedia's most controversial articles." See Wikipedia:List of controversial issues and Wikipedia:Controversial articles and their talk pages. The people who know the most about Wikipedia's controversies might hang around there. WP:EIW#Dispute has more links where you might find something that gets you closer to your goal. See also Denialism - there are several areas of "mainstream" knowledge that are rejected or heavily questioned by what are organized or semi-organized dissenting movements, often fueled by their own online communities (derided as "echo chambers" by proponents of the mainstream views). Naturally Wikipedia has articles about most of these topics, and folks who reject the mainstream views can edit Wikipedia as easily as anyone else. --Teratornis (talk) 06:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:EIW#Statistic might give ideas about how to get a recent list of the most edited talk pages. --Teratornis (talk) 07:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Database reports/Talk pages by size. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:47, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all for being so helpful. That database report is exactly what I was looking for. I'm not terrible surprised that after the main page, the intelligent design talk page is the most active. But 14.4 megs of text is still impressive. The listings of article with FAQs is also proving useful. Who would have guessed the Monty Hall problem was so contentious? Polyquest (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC).

A quick favor

As it's 2:30 in the morning where I am right now, and I can't be bothered to figure out how to manually list an FfD, could someone list File:Smalling v2.jpg at PUF? It's already tagged, but Twinkle seems to want to fight me, so it hasn't listed properly. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:30, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Done [1]  Chzz  ►  06:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

ありがとうございます。 The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:56, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

File:Haleh Sahabi.jpg

Hello! Is it possible to upload this picture to Wikipedia Commons, that every Wikipedia projects could use it? --Cary (talk) 08:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The source link is broken; so it is not possible to look at the page to determine copyright/licensing information. But the fact that the photo is hosted on the VOA website does not indicate that it is in the public domain, for the standard VOA copyright statement says, "All text, audio and video material produced exclusively by the Voice of America is in the public domain. Credit for any use of VOA material should be given to voanews.com, Voice of America, or VOA. However, voanews.com content may also contain video, audio, images, graphics, and other copyrighted material that is licensed for use in VOA programming only. This material is not in the public domain and may not be copied, redistributed, sold, or published without the express permission of the copyright owner." Since the subject lived in Iran, it virtually impossible that a VOA employee could have taken the photo as part of his/her official duties, which is what it would take to make the photo PD. —teb728 t c 09:45, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Christie Whelan

A Wikipedia page was created about me last night and people are writing rude and untrue things. I either want this page removed or blocked from people writing these things about me. I have edited this page and they keep editing it back to nonsense. PLEASE help me fix this, i am very VERY angry. Christiewhelan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC).

Weren't YOU the article's creator? Sp33dyphil ^{Ready • to • Rumble} 09:47, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The article was vandalized by an anonymous editor. The disruptive change have been reverted to a state near to your last edit. —teb728 t c 10:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Rather ironically, the semiprotection means that Christie Whelan cannot now edit the article that she herself created. doomgaze (talk) 11:00, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems to me that 3 months of semiprotection is rather much when apparently there is only one anon vandal, who deserves a block anyway. —teb728 t c 11:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

When is a Encyclopedia not an encyclopedia?

Extended content

The information below titled "jim DiEugenio, May 2011" is from a website called www.ctka.net - I hope you are familiar with this site. Information from the above site raises some important question about how wikipedia does business and who indeed are the overlords of factual and not-so-factual information in regard to what wikipedia includes as "relevant" information or not. CTKA is a site concerned with the "factual" information on certain assassinations of interest. What is clear about this site is its' claim to provide "factual" information in a manner that is scholarly. Their ability and scholarly leaning is to provide the "actual" documents within footnotes providing said documents provenance and, more importantly, the context in which the information is framed. It appears Wikipedia on the other hand, does not. Your handling, specifically the JFK Assassination, can only be described as a white wash. A reliance on Gerald Posner and his book Case Closed is folly, unless you proscribe to the now ridiculed Warren Commission Report. And given the information known in 2011, from new revealing documents, the Warren Commission Report was and is, a bloody disgrace. The same can be said of Vincent Bugliosi tomb Rewriting History. jim DiEugenio, May 2011 As with many aspects of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, when one enters the term “Warren Commission” into Yahoo, the first site that comes up is the citation on Wikipedia. This is unfortunate. For as JP Mroz has delineated in detail in two previous articles, Jimmy Wales invention of the so-called “People’s Encyclopedia” has not worked out quite as one would expect. In fact, to those interested in the assassination of President Kennedy, it has pretty much been an echo of the MSM. That is, it has been protective of the Warren Commission, selective in its source material, and as Mroz proved in his first article, it even used false evidence to connect Oswald to the alleged murder weapon.[1] When Wikipedia was exposed on this, they then tried to cover their tracks.[2] There are two things quite odd about this stance. First, it does not at all accord with being a “People’s Encyclopedia”. Because the great majority of citizens do not believe the Warren Commission, it does not accurately reflect public opinion.[3] Second, it does not accurately reflect the most recently declassified material on the Commission either. For with the work of the Assassination Records Review Board, the criticism of the Commission has become even more heated.[4] For instance, Commissioner Gerald Ford arbitrarily moved up the position of the wound in Kennedy’s back[5] to align with the Commission’s most controversial invention: the Single Bullet Theory. As recent books have shown, the Commission’s performance in accurately recording witness testimony has been shown to be even more problematic than most thought.[6] Because of all this, Wikipedia has resorted to censorship in order to keep up its show of deference for the Warren Commission and its now thoroughly discredited 888-page report. As Mroz pointed out in his first article, the man in charge of the censorship office at Wikipedia on the JFK case is <redacted>. is most proud of his (disgraceful) Lee Harvey Oswald page—a page that seems to have been composed with the cooperation of the infamous John McAdams.[7] As Mroz further pointed out, the censorship at Wikipedia on this subject is pretty much total. And it is conducted in three ways. First, the sources used in the footnoting are severely limited in their scope. The vast majority of the footnotes come from either official sources, or those who support the official story e.g. Vincent Bugliosi’s book "Reclaiming History."[8] This of course severely impacts the contents of the articles. Second, the “Back Talk” pages (where people try to comment and edit articles) are patrolled by the staffers who work for Wikipedia. Since the organization is a hierarchy, these staffers ultimately enforce Gamaliel’s line. In his articles on Wiki, Mroz detailed his interaction with one of these staffers, which very much illustrated this point. John McAdams is perhaps the most frequent party involved in these discussions.[9] The fact that his site is often used in the final articles contributes to the traffic flow at his (abominable) web page. Third, although the actual “References” or “Further Reading” category at the bottom of the article may contain certain books critical of the official story, this is, for all intents and purposes, simply a fig leaf to disguise the actual control of the contents. For, as we shall see here, there is very little relationship between the titles listed in the Reference section and the actual sources in the material, as none of the reference book’s information seems to be utilized on the page, perhaps this section should be labeled “Find-the-Relation-Yourself Reading.” Additionally, there are valuable sources that you will simply never see listed even in the Reference/Further Reading section e.g. John Armstrong’s "Harvey and Lee," or articles from "Probe Magazine."[10] As the reader can see, far from being a “People’s Encyclopedia,” regarding the John F. Kennedy assassination, Wikipedia is nothing but a tightly controlled, one-sided, and unrelenting psy-op. Jimmy Wales might as well have turned the editorship of these pages over to say, former Warren Commission counsel Arlen Specter, who must be quite pleased with Wales and Wikipedia, who have done little more than cover up for him. I All of JP Mroz’ work in this field provides good background for the Wikipedia entry on the Warren Commission. The best thing that one can say about it is that it is relatively short. But in every other aspect it is a typical Wales/Gamaliel production. It begins with the actual appointment of the Commission by President Johnson.[11] It deals with this very important decision in—get this—one sentence! So in other words, one never understands a key point about Johnson’s decision: He originally did not want to appoint a so-called “blue-ribbon panel.” This decision was imparted on the White House by forces that were not even in the government at this time. As Donald Gibson exposed so magnificently for “Probe Magazine”[12] there were two men who were responsible for suggesting the idea on the White House staff: Eugene Rostow and Joe Alsop.[13] They began their siege right after Jack Ruby killed Oswald.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.151.239.206 (talk) 12:34, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 3.5 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. TNXMan 12:47, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Not sure that's the right reply: it looks like a anti-Wikipedia conspiracy-theory-based rant to me. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I just happened to read a fair chunk of that site the other day. It purports to show how WP is complicit in keeping certain information hidden; written by someone who "attempts" to show the inner workings of Wikipedia, but who shows that s/he didn't do much homework. Did you know, for example, that a watchlist is a list maintained only by admins, and contains the articles over which the admin exerts authority? You, too, can learn such nonsense by reading that site.--SPhilbrickT 13:14, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I removed the possible real life details of User:Gamaliel from the text and requested oversight. CaptRik (talk) 13:20, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Not quite the way to do it. Dougweller (talk) 13:23, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, that worked. Never a good idea if you are requesting oversight to say that you've done it. Remove something you think needs oversighting by all means, with an edit summary that doesn't say that's what you are doing, and don't mention it on the talk page, etc. Even when an Admin uses Rev/Del prior to oversight they are asked not to use suggestive terms. I'm wondering if all this should be zapped, it doesn't belong here anyway. Dougweller (talk) 13:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Footnoting the article about myself with specific citations

The stub article about me currently has two footnoted references. I can add references to other assertions in the article, but I'm unclear as to how to do it without confusing the footnote structure.

Loring Mandel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.189.209.178 (talk) 14:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Please read Autobiography. It would be best if you added the suggested material to the Talk page (click on the "discussion" tab near the top of the article). Then editors can review it and add it themselves.--SPhilbrickT 14:31, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I've added the Loring Mandel article to my watchlist. If you could post the references onto the article talk page I would be happy to add them to the article, assuming of course that they are reliable sources. doomgaze (talk) 14:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Urdu Language

Urdu language not listed as a choice, the language which is the used by around 180 Million Pakistanis and over 200 Million people in India are not used. Why is this? What criteria is used to add or remove any language? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.172.139.145 (talk) 16:03, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If you were trying to ask whether there is a Wikipedia in Urdu, the answer is that there is, and it is at ur:. - David Biddulph (talk) 16:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

And the complete list of Wikipedias is at meta:List of Wikipedias. - David Biddulph (talk) 16:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Are you talking about a specific article? If this is the case, then maybe that's simply because no one has created the article in Urdu yet. A language is only listed as a choice on the left side, if the article exists in that language. List of Wikipedias by language group says the Urdu Wikipedia has about 16,588 articles, which is much less than what the English Wikipedia has. Therefore, a lot of articles on the English Wikipedia do not have an equivalent on the Urdu Wikipedia (Deutsche Börse as a random example does not). Also please note that Wikipedia is a work in progress, including all of the existing versions in languages other than english and some Wikipedias simply grow faster than others because they have more active contributors. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 20:57, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Another possibility: In the list of ten Wikipedia's surrounding the puzzle globe logo at http://www.wikipedia.org/ Urdu is not listed because the list includes the ten Wikipedia's with the most articles. As noted by Toshio above, the Urdu Wikipedia has far fewer pages than many others, which is tied to the interest of those who speak Urdu to create articles, and not any prejudice against its speakers or users.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Most needed article by redlinks?

Is there an easy way to get the information on what the non-existent page that has the most links to it?Naraht (talk) 17:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Take a look at the wanted page. – ukexpat (talk) 17:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanx, good place to start, but not exactly up to date. Some of the links from there also sort of answer my question. Gets hit by one of the same *really* requested features in Wikipedia, the ability to remove links in templates from "What links here".Naraht (talk) 17:57, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

references and using reflist template

In trying to insert a reflist template I seem to have lost the edit function to my References and can not see the references at all now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Awilles (talk • contribs) 20:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

It looks like you are trying to reference the same thing in two different places? In which case you would instead put <ref name="name"> in the first instance and then <ref name="name/> in subsequent instances. Let me know if you want me to do it for you. CTJF83 20:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to User:Awilles/Chard Festival of Women in Music?  – ukexpat (talk) 20:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I have moved a few of the references into the body of the article. If you are trying to use the same ref more than once, see WP:NAMEDREFS. – ukexpat (talk) 20:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, CTJF83 20:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

threatening edit summ - what to do?

I've recieved a couple of non-polite edit summs when my contributions have been deleted from a discussion page. That I've asked for editor assistance with. But now the editor has used a edit summ that I find threatening. This no longer seems to be a case of dispute. Where do I go from here? 122.151.96.51 (talk) 20:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Relating to edits at Talk:OPV AIDS hypothesis? – ukexpat (talk) 20:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Away. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:48, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes Talk:OPV AIDS hypothesis thats the one. What do you suggest? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.151.96.51 (talk) 20:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Although nonconstructive summaries, they aren't really personally attacking you. I'd personally ignore it, but if it bothers you that much you could just post on the user's talk page asking them to be a little more polite in their summaries. CTJF83 20:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Wiki article of Dick Fuld contains ethnicity field listed as Jewish. Other Wall Street players so not have this descriptive element.

I cannot find another major player in banking who has an "ETHNICITY" listed. Dick Fuld's religion is Jewish. His ethnicity is NOT. This appears as being a "Jew baiting" statement. I don't like Dick Fuld, but that entry is beyond the pale. Fix it please.

Denise Lai — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.101.253.42 (talk) 21:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I have removed your email address to protect your privacy -- John of Reading (talk) 05:51, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The poster has a good point. I see someone removed that, and I removed the infobox statement that he was Jewish - not just because it doesn't seem to meet our BLP policy as there is no evidence in the article his religion has played a notable part in his life, but also because we would need a reliable source where he talked about his religion, not a casual statement about something having nothing to do with several people, including Fuld, being Jewish. Dougweller (talk) 08:05, 3 June 2011 (UTC)