Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 May 7

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May 7

simple wikipedia

A "simplify/Detailed" toggle button on every page is needed.

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.18.3 (talk) 05:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're looking for easy-to-understand articles, try the Simple English Wikipedia. It's articles are written in simple english. Here is the main page. Chamal ^T•C 06:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Another way of achieving this is the "Introduction" articles that are available for some complex topics, such as Introduction to evolution and Introduction to quantum mechanics. Zakhalesh (talk) 06:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

British or American English?

Should we use British or American English when editing? --Michaelphillipr (talk) 09:48, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Either, depending on various matters. See WP:ENGVAR. -ColinFine (talk) 09:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Editing bar

I've had a long break. The new editing bar has some advantages, but I'm used to the old one. I'd like it back so I can get back up to speed. Are there any disadvantages I don't know about that I could bump into after disabling the new edit bar? -- Mgm|^(talk) 11:35, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I use the old one and it still works fine. Sumsum2010·T·C 20:48, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Actor disambiguation

I want to write an article about an actor called John Bell, but unfortunately, there is already an article for actor by the same name. What is the preferred characteristic to make the second disambiguation. Do you choose nationality, birth date or something completely different? - Mgm|^(talk) 12:09, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

John Bell is a disambiguation page, where it says John Bell (actor) is an actor from Australia. You could edit the disambiguation page and change John Bell (actor) to John Bell (Australian actor) and then add a new wikilink for the second actor under John Bell (??? actor), where you would replace ??? with the nationality of the actor you would like to add. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure that was the most suitable method. I'll use the one you described. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:30, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, actually its not that simple, because you have to be careful not to break the wikilink to the existing article. You can use a piped wikilink however, like [[John Bell (actor)|John Bell (Australian actor)]], which would read as John Bell (Australian actor), but wikilink to John Bell (actor). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:41, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

No problem, I have admin abilities, so as long as I keep the links up to date, I can move the existing article to a new location. :) - Mgm|^(talk) 13:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok. :) Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:17, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

[Missing title]

hoe moet ik een nieuw afrtikel opsturen? ik zie door de bomen het bos niet meer

maarten manson

(Redacted) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leestwie (talk • contribs) 13:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what you are asking, I tried google translate and it translated it as:

How do I send a new afrtikel? I see the trees for the forest anymore

GB fan (talk) 13:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• Hi Maarten. Read Wikipedia:Getting started to learn the basics. Information on how to start an article is in there too. Did you know there is a Dutch-language Wikipedia as well? - Mgm|^(talk) 13:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

RE: Adding a photo to an article

I have added a few articles to Wikipedia, and have tried to add a photo, but no luck. This site is not easy to use. There is a lot of information on how to do things, but none of it is really practical. All I want to do is to get copyright permission for a photo that I took (that I own) to put with my article. This shouldn't be that complicated. Is there anyone who can help me? I'm not even sure how to send this messgae, as there is no submit button! so I'm going to select Save Page. Pm2726 (talk) 15:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I can help. As you took the photo yourself, you control the copyright. While you are welcome to upload the image to Wikipedia, it is considered more appropriate to upload it to our sister project, Wikimedia Commons, which will make the image more readily available to more people. So go to this page, and fill out the form, selecting an appropriate "free" license at your preference. This will upload the file and make it available for use on Wikipedia. If this doesn't help as much as I hoped, please feel free to ask another question or come to my talk page. By the way, Save Page is the way to go.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

postscript conversion

Postscript format is not accepted in Wikimedia Commons (why not?). I converted my picture to .pdf, .png and .svg using convert command and GIMP but the results are not good. See Landau-damp.png in the Commons. Conversion to .svg produces a huge file. What do you recommend? Rwbest (talk) 16:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• I don't see anything wrong with the png file on the Commons. Can you tell us what options you chose to use in the conversions? - Mgm|^(talk) 18:32, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I increased the resolution to 400 dpi when importing the .ps file in GIMP. The saved .png file looks good on my screen using evince Doc Viewer, but in Wikipedia the lines are very thin and broken when zoomed in. The original .ps picture can be zoomed in much better. Why does Commons not accept postscript? Rwbest (talk) 08:55, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

John_Hemming_(politician)

Reflist error. gadget 850 needed. Kittybrewster ☎ 16:42, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've no idea what "gadget 850 needed" means, but I've added the missing '>' to a ref, and removed the superfluous <references />. --ColinFine (talk) 16:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe they are referring to our very knowledgeable editor and help desk regular Gadget 850. doomgaze (talk) 17:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

That issue is documented on the help page linked in the error message. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Creating articles for local National Weather Services that currently do not have there own yet.

Hello. Wikipedia currently has articles for some local National Weather Service offices. But, not all of them have their own. So, I was suggesting for anyone here at Wikipedia to start those articles. There are currently 122 weather service offices in the United States, and like I said not all of them have their own. Here is the link to the category page regarding the ones that already do. It's time to expand.

The link: Category:National_Weather_Service_Forecast_Offices

Thank you. Billim1 (talk) 16:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to do this! Be Bold! mabdul 17:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

ibid

I'm trying at the moment to remove (all) ibid tags by searching the history where a user/ip add the ibid reference. At the Museology article I found out that a user who isn't active any longer made this change. Can somebody explain me this constellation? There is a reference 1, and 13 (which is ibid"ded") - ok clear, but what about "ibid-reference 2"? there is nothing that fits... mabdul 16:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

In footnote 3, "Ibid., 2" probably means "page 2 of the Peter Vergo work mentioned in footnote 1". But that's the problem with "ibid" references - without a copy of the original texts, it's impossible to be certain. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:10, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, again I found a op cit reference at Indo-Scythians. These were added at January 2007 with a merge of another article. These references were already in the first (initial) creation of the article. Can somebody explain me/confirm that this is related to reference #37 "Kshatrapasa pra Kharaostasa Artasa putrasa; Political History of Ancient India, 1996, p 398, Dr H. C. Raychaudhury, Dr B. N. Mukerjee."? mabdul 23:27, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've tried to confirm this with Google Books and such like, without success. Note 30 seems to refer to three books, and my guess is that the first of these was intended to be a reference to "Political History of Ancient India", since note 7 also mentions page number 693. But this is only a guess. I think your best course is to post on the article talk page. Perhaps there is an expert watching the article who will have copies of the relevant books. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:53, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Editing Attraction template

Can anyone give me a step by step guide on how to add a parameter to the attraction template. I've been trying to add a 'status' parameter but it hasn't been working. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dom497 (talk • contribs) 17:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Example attraction
Ride statistics
Status	whatever

{{Infobox attraction}} supports up to 8 "custom" fields. You could use these to display the "status" if only one or two articles are going to need it. Something like this:

{{Infobox attraction|name=Example attraction|custom_label_1=Status|custom_value_1=whatever}}

-- John of Reading (talk) 17:22, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Would like to dispute a Wikipedia inquiry - stating my musicans article may not meet the notability guideline for music.

I provided all the links and resources needed to prove the validity of my wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_J_Medeiros and still "looming" above it is a warning sign that the entry may not be reliable. It's a little embarrassing- there still are plenty of secondary sources listed. Though I feel I could search for yet even more- it may be fruitless seeing that Wiki is not picking up on the perfectly useful ones there now.

Can you help? Can it take less the 3 years to get this straight- It seems like a LARGE number of your "musician pages" suffer from this oversight, causing this site as a whole to look a little sloppy and disinterested in "artists" who haven't sold 8million records. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrjmedeiros (talk • contribs) 19:49, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Tags on articles are not removed automatically: they may be removed by any editor who considers that the matter described by the tag has been resolved; however, I would counsel against your removing that tag, since you would appear by your user name to have a conflict of interest and would be better to leave it to somebody else.

This is the right page to appeal for people to review the article, and perhaps there are people here who will be moved to do so. I am less than enrolled by your way of asking. I observe, however, that though the article now has plenty of references it is immediately obvious that many of them are not reliable sources. --ColinFine (talk) 20:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• I see a couple of good sources in there, but others leave a lot to be desired. You might want to read up on Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Also I've seen a couple of references in the middle of a sentence. Unless it is particularly long, it is customary to add references at the end of a line. You can also read Wikipedia:Autobiography to find out what caused the template to be placed there to begin with (it is strongly discouraged to write about yourself because it is a conflict of interest). The thing is, this sort of thing is done by editors and the sheer number of pages around here, make it nearly impossible to keep up to speed on everything you edit. You can search in the page's edit history who placed it and try to start a dialog on their user talk page, or head over to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians to get some feedback from people who frequently edit articles like this one. If enough of them think it has reached a proper standard, one of them will remove the notice. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:43, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Dinner in the Ritz Hotel, Paris 1904, Painted by Pierre-Georges Jeanniot

First of all, thank you very much for your wonderful, most respectable, historically correct, and free reference that has ever graced the Internet.

My name is not important. I own the above painting, which is listed on your website; however, it has a question mark where it indicates what medium was used. It was oil paint. The original is an object to behold. Unfortunately, one of the donated pictures of a cleaned-recreation destroys and is an insult to the beauty, i.e., richness of color used by Mr. Jeanniot in this painting. I would love to send you a photo of the original; but, I am not a contributor, nor member of this website. Is that necessary?

In any event, I inherited the painting from Mr. Pablo Picasso, who was my grandmother's lover in the years 1894-1900. I do not know any other way to describe their relationship, as my grandmother, when she spoke to me of Mr. Picasso, spoke almost entirely of their relationship in this forum.

I also own 4 picasso's, 1 of which I have deliberately not ever had listed, photographed, revealed to the public, nor will it be until my death, at which time my will states it is to be released, along with 5 pages of a witnessed, hand-written manuscript by Mr. Picasso, which will blow the lid off the interpretations of what the experts(?) say he was painting, or trying to say. He gave these sealed to my Grandmother, who opened them after his death, shared them with me before her death, then we resealed them and they are stored in Switzerland, where they will stay until my death is reported to the keeper, who will then send the contents to the Smithsonian, where they will be opened publically, and will only be allowed to be studied in the open, where the public can watch the entire study, so that there is no swapping of them, as so many painters' documentations have. There is a reason to hide the content of Mr. Picasso's 5 pages, as it will reveal a secret about him and the members (nearly all of them) of a secret association, which the world is facinated by. Yes, Picasso was a Free Mason, and his writings will bring the value of his paintings to those of the World's Greatest Masters.

If you would be so kind as to note that the medium used for this painting was oil paint, I would be greatful.

CR —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.87.215.233 (talk) 19:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Looking at the other paintings in the list, I think the question mark was supposed to signify that the year was unknown. I have edited the article.

Since Pierre-Georges Jeanniot died in 1934, I believe the copyright on his pictures has expired. If that is the case (other volunteers here please correct me if necessary), then you are most welcome to upload photos to WikiMedia Commons using this form. You will need to register a user name first, but that is very easy. Good-quality pictures of famous artworks would be an excellent addition to the project. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe the key point in determining copyright expiration for the painting is the year of the painting, not the year of Jeanniot's death. Assuming the painting was "published" in 1904, the copyright (at least in the U.S.) expired.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

There's a discussion of copyright as it applies to French paintings specifically at Commons:Licensing#Country-specific laws.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:03, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Book Creator: Using List Pages

Is there an easy way to create a book from a List page that included all of the pages that are linked to the list? I want to make a book using the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles The pages that are linked to this list are also List pages which then link to individual pages. Is it necessary to go to each of the linked pages to create the book? I have read the instructions for using Categories, but that does not appear to work for what I need to do.

Thanks for the help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by N8oay (talk • contribs) 21:35, 7 May 2011 (UTC)