Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 June 9

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June 9[edit]

reference formats[edit]

My references are all pdf & jpg. How do I put those in References. Only 1 docx seemed to work.

Thanks,

Allan Mann re: Earthlight (theater company) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allan H Mann (talkcontribs) 01:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

see WP:REFB for help on formatting references. note that pictures and pdfs from your website are generally not going to qualify as reliably published sources. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:22, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple subfamilies/subclades[edit]

Hello. Is there a way to add multiple subfamilies to a species. I wanted to add one but it didn't show the subfamily I added. I think this would help a lot to find the phylogenies of species. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.207.64.18 (talk) 03:36, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You attempted to add a second sub-family to the genus Cocalodes. A genus cannot simultaneously belong to two different sub-families in the same classification scheme, so there is no facility in the infobox for doing that. The sub family you were trying to add, Spartaeinae, is already listed as a (different) sub-family on the Salticidae page. SpinningSpark 13:59, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that you read Taxonomy (biology) or Linnaean taxonomy to understand that the tree in biological taxonomy expands from the top, and that one species, or any other lower-level taxon, cannot belong to two subfamilies, or any other higher-level taxons. That is what makes taxonomy contentious, in that there are often arguments about what genus, subfamily, or family a species belongs to. You might not have known that, but that is just the way that biological taxonomy (or any other taxonomy that is modeled on it) works. It is a one-way tree, unlike family trees of individuals, which can have inbreeding (and always have inbreeding if you go back far enough). Robert McClenon (talk) 16:08, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Robert, are you replying to me? Your indent indicates that you are, but your words indicate something else entirely. SpinningSpark 16:57, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was replying to the OP, as you probably inferred, and so probably should have used a different level of indent. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BMD Artists New Zealand[edit]

Hi, I'd like to make a page for the Street Artists BMD from New Zealand.. can this be done, please aid.

their site is www.bmdisyourfriend.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Milarkyside (talkcontribs) 05:29, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can do this at Articles for creation. See Wikipedia:Your first article for some advice on writing articles. SpinningSpark 15:36, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello i'm contacting you for a Title name problem. As you can see by yourselves " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Records_Europe " The title is " Planet Records Europe " this is a problem because the company , first is active, second its name is not " Planet records Europe" but Planet Records, third and last there are a lot of certifications and external links and pages that show that this company is "Planet Records" I saw that there's an existing eng. page with Planet Records name, in this case what we can do to insert in english Planet Records? cause Planet Europe is incorrect ,, the company is known worldwide and is active and i suppose that this causes a bit of issues with the label's image... Contat as son as possible .

Kind Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dottorgrasso1988 (talkcontribs) 09:21, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The usual solution when two articles have the same name is to add a disambiguating term in brackets like Planet Records (<foo>). You could have, for instance, Planet Records (Milan). Decide what you want the disambiguation term to be and then make a request at WP:RM. SpinningSpark 15:57, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

liquid bridge[edit]

We were looking for an article on the Australian movie LIQUID BRIDGE starring Ryan Kwanten that is not listed in Wikipedia. The movie was produced and directed by well known Australian Phil Avalon, who discovered Mel Gibson in his film SUMMMER CITY. Can you please add this information it to file. Thank you Olga Kay. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.105.215 (talk) 09:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It seems it's already there (and has been since November 2012): Liquid Bridge. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:48, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How close is the Wikipedia/Wikidata to the semantic wiki capability?[edit]

I am curious how to best obtain the answer to the question such as, for example, "How many people were born in the year XXXX by gender" or "by country" or both. While Wikipedia has categories for "births by year", there's no category for "births by gender by year" or such. It is my understanding that the theoretized semantic wiki could answer such a question, and that Wikidata has aspirations to be (at some point) such a wiki. Correct me if I am wrong, and I'd also appreciate information how one could go about obtaining answers to such questions at this time. (If there are any replies here, I'd appreciate an echo/ping). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:10, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's categories apply to Wikipedia articles, not to people. So WP may offer a way to answer "How many people notable enough to have WP articles were born in the year XXXX by gender". It may have, or have had, aspirations to answer questions about, for instance, "people"; but I don't think its categories help with this. Maproom (talk) 11:34, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
He is talking about the separate Wikidata: project. I have seen a page on the project giving the state of progress but cannot find it off-hand. You might be better off asking there, but we do have a page on Wikipedia for Wikidata. Certainly there are properties in the database for all the things you mention. For instance a query of "instance of" P31=human, "sex or gender" P21=male, "date of death" P570=31 March 1727 should find all males who died on 31 March 1727 including Isaac Newton. How complete the database is and how comprehensive the answer you would get is another question. @Piotrus: SpinningSpark 12:58, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata item properties can be invoked with the parser function #property. I couldn't explain how to use it, but I know that it is working, I have seen people using it in templates to retrieve the correct national flag for instance. SpinningSpark 13:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Spinningspark: I have asked at Wikidata too ([1]) and it appears that project does not have the query functionality live yet; in fact it appears that our article on it seems to be more up to date than the project's official description at [2]. Would you know how to run a query you described there? Also, any thoughts on dbpedia? Seems useful, but their help pages are not very good, and I have no idea how to use their query system neither :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:21, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus: You have probably had a better answer at Wikidata than I could give you. I cannot tell you how to format Wikidata queries because the system hasn't been developed yet, and by the sound of it it is not going to be as powerful as you need when it is. The tool Autolist seems to be what you need. I did not even know this tool existed until I saw the answer to your question on Wikidata, but I can interpret the query format for you if you do not understand it already. For your example of female Americans born in the summer of 1914, the query string
between[569,1914-06-21,1914-09-21] and claim[27:30] and claim[21:6581072] and claim[31:5]
was used. The number 569 refers to property 569 (P569) and is the property "date of birth". The statements in the form claim[p,q] mean items that claim to have value q for property p. For instance, claim[31:5] means "instance of human" (P31="instance of" and Q5="human") —needed since you do not want the query returning racehorses born in 1914 for instance. The other two claims are "gender:female" and "citizen of:USA".
The easiest way to find these P and Q numbers is to look in the statements on the Wikidata page of an example of the thing you are trying to find. The statements are arranged with the property on the left in the table and its value on the right. For instance, on the Barack Obama page if you hover over "Sex or gender" the tooltip will tell you this is "property:P21" and if you hover over "male" it will tell you "Q6581097". If you have tooltips turned off you will need to click through the link to find these numbers. Hope that helps. SpinningSpark 09:09, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Request for an article[edit]

Hello - if we provide the information, can someone can develop a Wikipedia article for us? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SunderElephant (talkcontribs) 13:09, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, through the request an article process. Make sure that the material you supply includes significant content about the subject that has been published in a reliable source. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:12, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see that you have already created a draft User:SunderElephant/sandbox. it looks like you might have a couple of appropriate sources in there, but wow - i would suggest you read a couple of articles and try bring what you have created more in line with them. here is an article about an animal that would be a decent role model: I'll Have Another -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Computer locks on downloading of .pdf file of article after several hundred kb[edit]

Hi,

My quickest solution so far is to turn off the computer and reboot. This problem appeared perhaps a month back. How can I fix this? I like to save some articles for offline. Just a few minutes back I tried to download an article on Thunbergia and it locked. I'm reluctant to shut down files in Windows Task Manager. This is a Windows 8 machine.

Thanks.

D — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doobydander (talkcontribs) 19:54, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. Darylgolden(talk) 00:11, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This looks like a problem with the Wikipedia book creator. I would suggest reporting it to the techie village pump.--ukexpat (talk) 12:33, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How to change subject[edit]

I would like to change the page name Yonkers brewing to Yonkers Brewing Co. Any idea how to do this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JackieRubbo (talkcontribs) 20:58, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the article in question wasn't blatant advertising, and actually provided evidence through published third party sources that it met the relevant Wikipedia notability guidelines to merit an article, the correct procedure would be as explained in Wikipedia:Moving a page. As it stands, this would be a complete waste of time - we aren't here to provide free advertising space. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The original poster doesn't have the Move tab enabled because he isn't autoconfirmed. If he makes at least 8 more edits, including edits to the article to indicate Wikipedia notability guidelines, then he will be autoconfirmed and will be able to change the name of the article. As it is, the article is tagged for speedy deletion as excessively promotional and not meeting notability guidelines. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:13, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the original poster has a conflict of interest, because he is either one of the founders of the company or related to one of the founders of the company, and so should not have created the article. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Such a move would go against the company name guidelines anyway. "Co." isn't supposed to be in article titles, is it? I looked there but didn't see what I had always thought was true.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:15, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Date formats[edit]

I'm inputting a lot of dates in a discography, and per WP:DATE#Formats I am using the recommended YYYY-MM-DD format, both because month and day are otherwise ambiguous, and because the year is of primary importance.

The problem I've run into is situations where a recording session lasts for several days. An easy example is e.g. June 4th & 5th, 1950. Rendering this as "1950-06-04 and 1950-06-05" is clumsy and bloated.

Harder examples include, in mdy format, "4/30-5/1/1950" (which looks more natural and easy to interpret than dmy); and in dmy format, "15,17,18/11/1950" (which to the contrary looks more natural and easy to interpret than mdy).

This would be easier if the YYYY-MM-DD format did not require hyphens and disallow slashes. For instance, my examples could otherwise be rendered as "1950/06/04-05"; "1950/04/30-05/01"; "1950/11/15,17,18". (And easier still if Roman months were still allowed, as "1950/VI/04-05", which completely eliminates ambiguity.)

In a long list I'm trying to be as concise as possible while still being clear and unambiguous. Any recommendations? Milkunderwood (talk) 23:29, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DATERANGE does not cover ranges in this format, but I think the only clear way to do it is to give both ends of the range in full separated by a spaced en dash, eg 1950-06-04 – 1950-06-05. Other than that, use a different date format. SpinningSpark 01:52, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I thought about using a spaced en dash with YYYY-MM-DD for a simple continuous range, but that still leaves something like "15,17,18/11/1950" looking awfully messy. I would tend toward the informal UK format M/D/YYYY as best accommodating these different situations; but as we all know, there are Wikipedia editors who are sticklers for the rules, and I don't see that format listed as being approved. The last thing I want to do is create a long list only to have it objected to (or worse, deleted, which has happened to me). Milkunderwood (talk) 02:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Two comments, first YYYY-MM-DD is not really a generally recommended format. Although it is the only acceptable all-numeric format, it's not for general use. Second, the other formats have fewer issues with ranges (as mentioned in the MOS). FWIW, I have occasionally used something like "1950-06-04 to -05" or "1950-06-04 to -07-02" in that situation, but not in the context of Wikipedia. And those aren't really very pretty either, and I'd generally try to use something like "July 4-5, 1950" instead. Rwessel (talk) 01:58, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Aha. I was trying to avoid spelling out months, but this actually does sound like the best solution. Thank you. Milkunderwood (talk) 02:13, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Question: for discontinuous dates, e.g. "Aug 24 & Sep 3, 1950", is the ampersand acceptable or is "and" required? Milkunderwood (talk) 02:52, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:AMP seems a reasonable starting point. Rwessel (talk) 03:07, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you again. Since this list is not running text and I'm trying to conserve space as best I can, I think "similar contexts where space is limited" is probably appropriate advice. Of course it will always depend on the context. For instance, "Aug 10, 1950 and Apr 4, 1951", but "Nov 15, 17 & 18, 1950" seems not inappropriate. Milkunderwood (talk) 03:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's probably a poor example. "Nov 15, 17, 18, 1950" would work better there. Milkunderwood (talk) 03:30, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]