Help desk
< March 18	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 20 >

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.

March 19[edit]

JOHN MARTIN[edit]

Hello,

I was researching John R Martin of the 1982 St Louis Cardinals baseball team. I had to leave my computer for a minute. When I got back I noticed my 4 year old grandson had been playing with the keys on my computer, and had hit the edit button. All of a sudden I noticed that the page for John Martin was shortened and most of the information about him was gone! The whole template was gone! His whole history was deleted! I tried to research him again, and there was nothing but a few random words. I googled him again, and couldn't find him on Wikipedia! Not the template with his date of birth (which I already know is April 11, 1956, or his pitching stats, or much else. Can you go back to yesterday or earlier, and refresh/backup his page. I don't want to be the guy who lost the information on a major league pitcher who played with the World Series Champion St Louis Cardinals. I would also add that it should be available for others to research this player.

Thank You, Michael ______ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.239.111.227 (talk) 00:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done.

Michael, please resist the temptation to handcuff your four-year-old when he approaches your computer: four-year-olds have a remarkable ability to screw up Wikipedia pages using their elbows or feet.

"FYI": I fixed the page as anybody can: by looking at its "History", choosing the healthiest version, and editing that.

Incidentally, I found the prose somewhat breathless. What happened in which year? I tried to go some way toward fixing this; but NB I am totally ignorant of baseball and therefore may have screwed up. -- Hoary (talk) 00:12, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

spam[edit]

spam in Portal:Current events — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.74.129.160 (talk) 06:52, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is some? (I don't notice any, but it's a long page.) Or you'd like to add some? Please be a little more specific. -- Hoary (talk) 07:13, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

it has been removed now, it was some spam about a witchdoctor offering medical help, thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.74.129.160 (talk) 07:22, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although the page Portal:Current events is protected from editing, each of the "daily news" boxes has its own edit link at the top right. If you see unhelpful text in those boxes, feel free to use those edit links to remove it. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

importance of water for our body[edit]

importance of water for human body — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.93.144.206 (talk) 07:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. Roger (talk) 08:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally,

Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. Kayau (talk · contribs) 08:51, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gary Brain Orchestra conductor[edit]

I have recently read your article on me. The beginning "has been a conductor since 1990" should read "since 1987" Ican see no reason whatsoever for your printing 'This article has issues'. It is correct in every detail and if it continues to not satisfy your standards then we must delete it all together. It's unfair to sow doubt on my professional career.

Sincerely

Gary Brain (OBE) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary Brain (talk • contribs) 11:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We can't change information in an article just because you say so. Please provide us with a reliable source. And we can't verify that you are Gary Brain. Anyone may create a username in the name of Gary Brain and claim that he is Gary Brain. If you are Gary Brain, then you should probably not edit the article. There are Wikipedia policies, conflict of interest and WP:AB, which does not allow you to edit articles about yourself unless your writing has been approved by other editors in the community. Regards --Ushau97 ^talk 11:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This reference, dated 2009, suggests that your conducting career began after 1989. Can you provide any reference for the 1987 date? I'm afraid that the way Wikipedia works, your own statement will not be accepted as a valid source. The tag "This article has issues" is a criticism of the article, not of yourself or of your career. But two of the "issues" related to its referencing, which, in my opinion, is much improved since those tags were placed, so I have removed those tags. There now remains only one tag, "A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject." This I assume relates to the editor 82.225.251.5, whose has made many changes to this article, and no other contributions to Wikipedia. Maproom (talk) 12:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The COI tag was added to the article this morning, so it's more likely that it refers to User:Gary Brain. - David Biddulph (talk) 13:03, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is now being discussed at User talk:Gary Brain --Ushau97 ^talk 11:14, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific research[edit]

Hi - I am a science journalist based in South Africa. I write a lot of stories about science research in Africa, and some of the stories are interesting enough to be added to Wikipedia entries about these particular subjects, to update known information about them. Do I need to reference published work by including a link? Or can I just state the reference source? The entry would be written by myself, using the research I have done, and would most likely be approved by the scientist concerned to make sure the facts are right. Am I allowed to name the scientist and the research facility where the research was done? --Niki Moore (talk) 11:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Niki, please read Original Research. You should not be the one to add any of this content since it is Original Research and you have a Conflict Of Interest. You can suggest others add it and if factual and reliably sourced, we can do that, but you would not Own any of the information or the article itself here. Thanks ツ Jenova 20 ^(email) 12:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes everything you write should be referenced to a previously published source - see Referencing for beginners, but preferably not your own articles - see Conflict of Interest. You may definitely not simply copy articles you have previously written for other publications, such copying will be summarily deleted as Copyright Violations. You cannot include anything told to you during your interviews, as that would be Original Research - "pers. comm." is not an acceptable reference as it is not Verifiable. Include weblinks in your references as far as possible but note that sources do not need to be online, just previously published in an accessible form. In our science articles we prefer to use recognised academic journals as the sources as far as possible but reputable mainstream news sources are acceptable too. You might also find it useful to join WP:WikiProject South Africa as well as WikiProjects covering the particular branches of science you are interested in. Roger (talk) 14:10, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Diff vs. Template:Diff2[edit]

Under what circumstances should Template:Diff2 be used as opposed to Template:Diff? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I usually find diff2 easier, as in general it requires fewer parameters. It doesn't need the page title, for example. - David Biddulph (talk) 15:30, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to my HTML5 animation in an article's "external links" section brands me a spammer[edit]

Hello, I am an engineer and a programmer who is an avid user and supporter of Wikipedia.

As you may be well aware of, HTML5 opens up opportunities for Wikipedia/Wikimedia content to go beyond just text, images, and videos to real interactive learning.

I have been creating HTML5 based animations, in my spare time, that I would very much like to augment Wikipedia content in areas of my interest and expertise.

However, my recent attempt to do so failed for the following reason.Since I cannot host HTML5 based animations in Wikipedia site, I created a domain and hosted it there. There are zero advertisements on my external page as you can see (link below) - the intent is not monetary gains. I wish we had more places like Wikipedia devoid of advertisements- particularly educational sites! I then posted a link to my animation on a wiki article's external links section - falling straight into the category of a self-promotional spammer with conflict of interest!

I don't consider I have a conflict of interest because my intent is to contribute to Wikipedia just like any text,image, or video contribution - except there isn't any way to host HTML5 animation yet in Wikipedia. In spirit, my contribution is no different from an animated gif - except I can't host it in Wikipedia (maybe you have plans to support it in future). The moderator of the page I posted was very courteous and explained the reason why I was removed. Maybe it is too early, and I am a remote case, but I thought I would bring it to your attention. If you could offer any suggestions that will enable me to link to my animations without being branded a spammer, it would be highly appreciated. For reference, the page I posted my link was in Double-slit experiment and the link I posted was http://hoxya.org/paperjs/hx/content/3/index.html

Thank you very much for your time.

Justanotherlearner (talk) 16:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In general Interactive learning works better in another Wiki, 'Wikiversity'. From the description of the page on Wikipedia about it: "Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project, which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than formal content". That seems to me to match up better. And right now the double slit experiment is a red link on Wikiversity from the Wikiversity page on Experiemental Physics which means things need to be added there. Blogspot.com is generally not allowed as a source for external links. That's what the bot (automated process) used to determine that it should be reverted, it didn't evaluate the content.Naraht (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much Naraht. That was very helpful. I will do just as you suggested - thanks again!

Justanotherlearner (talk) 17:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Amy Reeder, nix on the Hadley[edit]

Hi there...my name is Amy Reeder and there's a Wikipedia article out there about "Amy Reeder Hadley"--that's me but I haven't gone by "Hadley" in the last three years. I try to leave the article to the public and feel strange asking for an edit, but people have tried to correct it on Wikipedia and it's been rejected, and this is of course the first thing that shows up in a google search for me. My published work has been under "Amy Reeder" all this time, and everything active that I run (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr) is under that same name, not to mention plenty of other comics news sites that use my name.

It seems like everything is fixed except the actual title--probably because it's more difficult to change? And that's why I thought I'd post here, in the hopes that you can help!

In case you want extra assurance that this is me: https://www.facebook.com/amyreedercomics/posts/529611177089495

Thank you,

Amy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amy Reeder (talk • contribs) 16:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked over the references in the article and all of the newer ones do seem to use Amy Reeder, so I've moved it. My concern is that the VIAF link down at the bottom (http://viaf.org/viaf/24915485/) shows that most sources like the Library of Congress still have you as Amy Reeder Hadley. I have no idea how to fix that though. I did add a note "(Formerly Amy Reeder Hadley)" to the initial Paragraph though.Naraht (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PCT Camp Wardon[edit]

Dear Sir I am concerned about why the article on PCT was deleted... The course was first started By S.F. and then later run by Rangers most form the Bat. I think it earned its place on your website, purely because of its history and the people who both worked as Cadre and support to make this fine course function... There was a article in Soldier of Fortune magazine about the camp, several members of the Cadre are also members of the Ranger Hall of Fame... There are many people that have and would be willing to supply enough information, and pictures to make this an informative addition to your website...

Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.11.215.205 (talk) 18:22, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Was it at Fort Worden and which Rangers? If there was a deletion discussion then I can't find it. It may be able to be re-created as a re-direct to the proper base or unit and then a section made in that article.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it may have been a US training camp in Bad Tölz during the cold war. It may fit in that article with a redirect.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Eyebrow threading[edit]

Dear Sir or Madam On reading your explanation of eyebrow threading, I see that the information is incorrect, as this method can only remove the hair bulb, not the follicle as stated. The follicle is the down growth in the skin, where the hair sits. Once the hair is removed another hair can grow from the remaining hair follicle. Yours sincerely Marilyn Sherlock Mrs M C Sherlock Chairman of the Institute of Trichologists CEO of The Institute of Trichologists Member of the Academy of Experts — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.29.180 (talk) 20:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the article Threading (epilation) to say that hairs (not follicles) are removed. So it now confirms, instead of than contradicting, the previous paragraph. Maproom (talk) 20:55, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

copyright[edit]

i believe a response was made but i dont see it here.

i am the vice president of the hellenic medical society of ny and in close contact with the authors of an article the website of the hellenic medical society of ny www.hmsny.org

i would like to submit an article on wikipedia for an introduction in the HMS / its history but it doesnt appear that i will do a better job than the authors that wrote one up for the website.

so.. how can i get wiki permission to publish the article as already written. bc i feel silly recreating the wheel and suspect i wont do as good a job.

thank you for your help.

george liakeas ,md 917 748 1976 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drgeorgeliakeas (talk • contribs) 21:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please correct me if I am wrong. You wish to create an article (Hellenic Medical Society of New York) by simply copying and pasting information from this website? Unfortunately, this is not permitted on Wikipedia. If you look down to the bottom of the page, you will see this: "Copyright © 2012. All Rights Reserved.", which means that everything on the website is copyrighted material. Taking this exactly as it is would be copyright infringement, which is illegal, and would result in speedy deletion of the page under criterion G12 - Unambiguous Copyright Infringement. If you wish to create an article, you may use the website as a source, but make sure that you copy and paste nothing. Thanks, Frigid Ninja 22:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, it appears that a page you created, User:Drgeorgeliakeas/sandbox, was already speedied under G12, which means you are well aware of this issue; kindly do not recreate. Frigid Ninja 22:13, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you did write an article using that website as a source, you would also need to use other reliable sources independent of the HMS; otherwise the article would not establish that the society met Wikipedia's criteria for notability. --ColinFine (talk) 00:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

coord missing|Australia[edit]

This line ((coord missing|Australia)) (but the brackets are curly)has been added to the page I created on Prospect Hill (New South Wales). Can anyone tell me what it means please?Spathaky (talk) 22:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Things in double curly brackets are usually templates. This one is Template:Coord missing. With the given parameter it adds the article to Category:Australia articles missing geocoordinate data. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:08, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The template signifies that the given article does not contain geographic coordinates of its location. Frigid Ninja 23:13, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Question on monitoring a page you created.[edit]

Resolved

– NanishaOpaenyak (talk) 23:23, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way I can set a page I created so that only I or other Wikipedia contributors can edit it? If not, is there a way I can better patrol my page, such as getting to approve of changes before they are published? The article I'm talking about is Logic. Thank you. NanishaOpaenyak (talk) 22:57, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:OWN. Frigid Ninja 23:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:WATCH for how to be notified when the page changes. RudolfRed (talk) 00:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Israel[edit]

some one ruined Israel's page look it up its weird what did they do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.1.129.125 (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "ruined"? I see nothing immediately wrong. Frigid Ninja 23:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]