Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 August 18

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August 18

Units of measurement

I asked this question about a week ago, but can't find it, either here or on the Village Pump HD. Where in MoS will I find standard units of measurement in Wiki style, e.g. 6 ins, a 6-in ruler, 5-mile long, a 10 ft wave, a 12 lb weight, or a 12-lb weight, or a 12lb weight, etc - in other words, the bog standard stuff? The units of measurement section in MoS seems to have everything but the very simple sort of thing that you see at the back of calendars, in diaries, etc. Have I missed it? There are a couple of brief mentions, but no simple lists laying out the Wiki style for these basic units of measurement. --P123ct1 (talk) 01:38, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

P123ct1: Is this (and especially the table if you scroll down a bit) what you are looking for? AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:41, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

AddWittyNameHere: Yes, I see buried in there the sort of information I was after, but it could do with more examples, I think. But thanks for that, it answers some questions I had about how to write certain things. --P123ct1 (talk) 07:46, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

add new word

how to add a new word? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rshanewright (talk • contribs) 01:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have entries for word definitions. You want Wiktionary:. SpinningSpark 01:56, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Wikipedia is is not a dictionary, so we don't add "words". For a new article on a topic, it will need to meet the basic inclusion criteria: that third party, reliable sources have covered the subject in a significant manner. If you have topic that meets those criteria, then I would suggest following the "articles for creation" process which will help guide you to creating an article that meets the requirements. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:01, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Referencing errors on Kirloskar Group

Reference help requested.

Thanks, Lotje (talk) 04:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

@Lotje: Fixed. Caused by a stray template ({{Citation}}, which was {{Citation Missing}} before your edit (ALSO faulty, but not detected as reference error because it's simply a non-existing template). Changed it to {{citation needed}} because I strongly suspect that was intended. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 04:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you ever so much AddWittyNameHere Lotje (talk) 04:29, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

No problem, glad to have been of help! AddWittyNameHere (talk) 04:30, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

user names for companies and info

Hi,

I have been given the task by my company to generate a Wikipedia page.

What user name can I use ?

We are only posting history and current situation of the company.

How do I avoid conflict with wikipedia criteria as I have attempted twice and had the page deleted. The first time I can understand.

The second time caused me confusion as I thought I'd removed any 'advertising'?

Your direction and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jeff — Preceding unsigned comment added by Green117 (talk • contribs) 05:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Because you have a conflict of interest you should NOT be creating or directly editing any page for any company you work for because you CANNOT avoid having a conflict of interest. Please read the Terms of Use. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 05:18, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Your best bet is to gather reliably published sources that are not affiliated with your company and use the "request an article" process. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 05:22, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

With regard to your first question, your own username, Green117, is as good as any. (That's assuming the company is not called "Green".) Be sure you don't use a name that indicates affiliation with the company; that would attract negative attention among other problems. —teb728 t c 09:40, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Using a name that shows affiliation with a company is not only acceptable, but is even recommended for COI editors. In any event they should declare their affiliation somewhere. What is not acceptable is naming the account after a company such as "Luton Plumbing" since this implies shared use and could be considered promotional, but a name like "John at Luton Plumbing" is fine. Also not acceptable are overtly promotional names such as "Luton Plumbing are best". The policy is at Wikipedia:Username policy. SpinningSpark 11:54, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Jeff. I'm afraid your company has given you an inappropriate and difficult task. You company has no say whatever on whether Wikipedia has an article about them, and if there is an article the company has no control over its contents. You can request an article as TRPoD says, and if an article is created you can monitor it and make suggestions on its talk page; but that is the limit of your proper involvement. --ColinFine (talk) 14:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

writing books and articles

respecred sir/madam, i am writing books and articles on general topics. i have written various books on religious topics. if you require a new writer for the writing books for publishing, i offer my services for the post new writer thanking you with warm regardx sunil sachwani — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.115.76.254 (talk) 07:32, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

New editors are always welcome, there is no job interview, no qualifications are required, but the pay is not very good. SpinningSpark 12:02, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Help to stop vandalism against my good name - James Wardell

Dear Wikipedia, I just ran a search and found a Wikipedia article about me and what I do. I had a read through and was horrified to see that there is reference to an aggravated sexual battery conviction(under the awards, honours and associations title). This is a link to my page: James Wardell

The shocking untruth about is contained within the following paragraph: He worked for Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Mather and Publicis between 2001 until 2004. During this time was arrested for aggravated sexual battery [15] Is a member of Frontline Club and Entrepreneurs Network Barcelona. In 2005, he was one of the founding members of the Gracia Arts Project.

and the false external link is: [[1]]

I am more than happy to speak with the British police force about such slanderous attacks against my good name (albeit in a virtual world).

Could someone please contact me and let me know what options I have to enable my article to remain a truthful, honest account of myself? The damage of allowing such a man to continue causing havoc to my online presence is making me unwell.

Thank you for your time. I do hope you can help me.

James Wardell — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.87.11 (talk) 08:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I had a look at the article and the external link and was convinced it was about a different James Wardell. I have reverted the edits and left a warning on the editor's talk page. JIP | Talk 08:35, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

And just an FYI, "slander" is a civil matter and the police have more important things to do.--ukexpat (talk) 12:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to create a Wikipedia user account and add that article to your 'watchlist' and go into preferences and click the box to email you every time someone edits the article. That way you can keep track of things. Just a thought.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 01:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Help with my page

Hi I would like to be listed under Hollywood Agents as I have just as many qualifications & references as the other Hollywood agents listed in that section. My biography is complete but I do not know how to add my references such as my external links or IMDB Pro page. Is there someone that can help me add my articles, etc. so my page does not get deleted? I would really appreciate the help.

My name is Nancy Abt and the page I wrote is under fancienanc

Please help me finish my Wikipedia page. Thank you so much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fancienanc (talk • contribs) 08:42, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Autobiography. —teb728 t c 09:27, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Discovering Southern Africa - T V Bulpin

Do you have or could you advise if this book is available on CD disk format? Kind regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.236.119.38 (talk) 10:28, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 4 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. Bencherlite^Talk 12:04, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Section editing in tables

Is there a clever template that I can add to a long table to allow me only to edit part of it rather than the whole table? This is in relation to the recent TFAs page - when I'm adding a few new entries at the bottom, I don't really want to open the whole table, and putting it into monthly sub-tables would destroy the point of the large table. Or can anyone think of a clever way round this? Thanks, Bencherlite^Talk 11:02, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

If you don't want to add or remove table rows you could copy the template to a user page and edit it with VE (under the "beta" tab if you don't know where to find it). You have to copy it across because unfortunately VE is not yet enabled on the Wikipedia namespace. It is also currently very limited on what it can do with tables. SpinningSpark 12:25, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I've been pleased with the ability of VE to handle simple edits to a table. (Oops, sorry, missed that you want to add rows)--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:39, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

One other, and possibly better option: if you check out List of current NCAA Division I women's basketball coaches you will see that it is one long table, so you can sort the entire table, yet it is made up of sections, in his case, by conference. When I want to edit an entry, the edit button opens just one conference. I didn't create it, I got help form User:Technical 13, but if you have separate groups by month, it should work. One difference is that in the coach list, we might can add teams easily, but adding a new conference is more work (I think) and you need to add a new month regularly.--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:48, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

How to restore a deleted page CGEIT

Dear sir/madam,

The page CGEIT (CGEIT) shows as deleted. How can I recover the page. It contained a valuable overview of a professional certification, corresponding exam, etc.

The deletion log shows "22:53, 9 July 2011 Fastily (talk | contribs) deleted page CGEIT (G8: Page dependent on a deleted or nonexistent page)"

The page of the Fastily user shows that it is deleted and his Talks show deep unsatisfaction with the community or what he did before he left. That brings me to thoughts that the deletion of the CGEIT pages might have been one of his/her acts, not properly checked.

I would appreciate your help with restoring the page.

Thanks in advance, Oleksandr — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.30.124.15 (talk) 11:48, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

The deletion you really want to complain about is that of Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT, which was speedily deleted for being advertising. As an administrator I can check the content of deleted articles, and I agree. I would also have deleted it as a blatant copyright violation as well - it seems to have been copied virtually word-for-word from other websites about the exam. If you think that there's a proper encyclopedic article to be written about the topic, i.e. that you can demonstrate that it is notable using reliable and independent sources, go ahead. You may want to look at the articles for creation process for help. Bencherlite^Talk 12:03, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

By the way, the page was deleted in 2011. The administrator who deleted the page quit Wikipedia in 2012. There is no reason to think that there is any connection between the two. Another administrator, in 2014, agrees that he would have deleted the page as it was written when deleted. Robert McClenon (talk)

Footnotes

Last week I was using copy-paste from Word and Indesign (Mac) directly into the edit article's window of Wiki and the footnotes were placed perfectly. This week I wanted to add new footnotes and was not possible. Tried to export Word text from Open Office to Wiki but conversion for Mac seems unavailable. As the texts has dozens of footnotes now lost I ask advice. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Camilo Umaña (talk • contribs) 13:40, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Camilo Umaña. Nobody has answered this yet, so I'll try, but I'm not certain. As far as I know, if you cut and paste from Word to Wikipedia, you will lose nearly all formatting, and it certainly won't preserve footnotes. I believe there are some external tools for converting Word documents to Wikimarkup, but I don't know anything about them. --ColinFine (talk) 19:09, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Such tools are listed here: Wikipedia:Tools/Editing tools#From Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.--ukexpat (talk) 20:04, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, if you paste text containing footnotes from word using VisualEditor (but not in the normal source editor) the footnotes are, in fact, pasted into the Wikipedia page below the pasted text. But not in any useful wikitext form where they can be easily incorporated in a reflist. SpinningSpark 01:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Colin, thanks for this reply. It was something weird because in my first session with Wikipedia I copy-pasted texts directly. The proof is this piece of text that is in my history of that day. Anyway, yesterday I was tryiing to repeat the process and was impossible!

• Este nombre[1] se origina en la antigua Provincia de León, en la parte norte de España. Pertenece a la categoría de los denominados apellidos toponímicos[2], q

Well, I will try to use some find/change tools with grep perhaps to insert html codes. Again, thanks for your very nice help CU 15:23, 19 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Camilo Umaña (talk • contribs)

Incorrect date and reference on Wikipedia page for Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, New Orleans, LA

Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist (New Orleans)

The church was built in 1912, but the descriptive paragraph lists 1925. Please change the date to 1912 in the first paragraph.

There is a link to a Christian Science church in Houston, Texas, under references, but that is a different church. Please remove it from Fourth Church's page. (The deletion doesn't appear on the edits.)

Thank you for your help.

Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist 134 Polk Ave. New Orleans, LA 70124 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.164.102.49 (talk) 15:18, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm...the article does seem to contradict itself in the date of construction. Can you find a source that says it was built in 1912, so the requested changes can be made? Thanks π♂101 (talk) 16:30, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Here is the link to the Lakeview Presbyterian church's history which was the congregation that originally owned the building. In the second paragraph, there is a petition approving a building dated Feb. 1912:

http://www.lpcno.org/history.html

That source doesn't state when the building was actually completed, but the Christian Science church (which is the current owner) was given a printed sheet during one of the anniversary celebrations which stated the building was completed in November 1912. The Christian Science church also invited the Presbyterians for their 100-year-anniversary in November 2012, and you can read that write up and see a photo with the 100-year-date on this page:

http://www.christianscienceneworleans.org/Lakeview-History.html

If you read the history in the upper left, you will see that the building was raised to two stories in 1925 with a basement on the first floor. That might be the source of the confusion with the 1925 date. I was present at the 2012 100-year-anniversary, so that 1912 date is the one celebrated.

Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist 134 Polk Ave. New Orleans, LA 70124 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.164.102.49 (talk) 21:15, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

That evidence looks good enough for me. I am going to change all the dates to 1912. Thanks for helping. π♂101 (talk) 21:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

 Done That listed date of construction has been changed. Thanks again. π♂101 (talk) 21:58, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Can you also remove reference #3 which is a link to a church in Houston? That link must have been added in error since it has nothing to do with our New Orleans church. Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist 134 Polk Ave. New Orleans, LA 70124 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.164.102.49 (talk) 22:07, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Done.

Please could you make any further requests on Talk:Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist (New Orleans), and please put {{Request edit}} to get attention.

Please stop putting your mailing address. I suggest you create a user account but don't name it after the church, because accounts are for a person, not an organization (WP:CORPNAME).

I also suggest you read WP:PSCOI. 88.104.23.205 (talk) 23:27, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

how to replace an image

I have uploaded a new image to wikimedia commons. We would like to use this image to replace an old image of the VOA Bethany Relay station.

Need help, please — Preceding unsigned comment added by Founding Joker (talk • contribs) 17:30, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm a little confused, Joker. Who is this "we" of whom you speak? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:45, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Founding Joker, I have added the image to the bottom of the page. I removed some of the text, because it was alot of text to add to an image. Any relevant texts can be added to the main article. I chose not to replace the existing image, because I think both images together give a broader view for the reader then either of them seperate. -- Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 17:58, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Question about feedback/comments on specific Wikipedia page

Hi there,

The page I'm contacting you about specifically is this one: Susan D. Shaw

As you'll see at the top, there's a box with 3 points noting multiple issues that have been found with the article, primarily that it reads like a news release and includes sources that may not be reliable. I would just like to better, and more specifically, understand this feedback and how the article can be improved so that it is in accordance with Wikipedia's guidelines. For instance, which sources stand out as being unreliable? Are there certain parts of the page that particularly stand out as overly promotional?

Since we would like this to comply with your guidelines and be as effective as possible as an informational page, any feedback and/or direction you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Mkron (talk) 22:04, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Notification of editor who added the tags: DGG π♂101 (talk) 22:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

(1)The article is oriented to praise her as much as to report on her work. This effect can be lessened by using her name less often, and not trying to make links to other notable people. For example in section 3, the second sentence is not needed. Similarly, in the awards section it is relevant that she received an award, but the names of some other famous people who did also is not. The quotes from her add nothing to the information. (2) "Senate testimony of" ... TreeHugger, and various blogs are not good sources.

The article is fixable. Go fix it. DGG ( talk ) 02:30, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Confused about citation.

I have been trying to update a page called Harley Johnstone, but I cannot seem to update the page because it gives me this message: Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

I copied the citation exactly as it is, any advice? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clarkdavej (talk • contribs) 22:39, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. You had a <ref> without a </ref>.

However, the references are not appropriate - a blog is not a reliable source. It doesn't state referenced facts, so it sounds promotional. For those reasons, I suspect it might be deleted quite soon. See WP:FIRST. 88.104.23.205 (talk) 23:32, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Harley Johnstone has been speedily deleted.--ukexpat (talk) 12:58, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

change the title of a page Florida Minority Supplier Development Council

Our company has added Central and North to the name Florida Minority Supplier Development Council. I have edited the article. I can't edit the title or heading of the page. Please list steps to accomplish this. I am the originator (susanm12) but don't have a password.

sueneveu — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sueneveu (talk • contribs) 23:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Don't do it like that. See the messages on your talkpage. Yunshui ^雲_水 07:54, 19 August 2014 (UTC)