Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 May 1

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May 1[edit]

Referencing errors on Orchestral jazz[edit]

Reference help requested. I have broken links--help me? Thanks, Mitchellr.kenyon (talk) 04:33, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

 Fixed in this edit. The problem was a misspelling of one of the references. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 06:55, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hermes[edit]

Hi there,

Yesterday I requested for an article to be written regarding the business Hermes, a very large distribution company based in the UK (Second only to the Royal Mail). I was hoping to find out how lengthy the process will be from here?


Kind Regards, Alex Willmott — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlexWillmott111 (talkcontribs) 08:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is no way of knowing, it could be a very loong time. Editors are all volunteers and it will wait until someone becomes interested in writing about the subject. There will be a better chance if you were to provide some links to online reliable sources that editors could use to construct such an article. SpinningSpark 08:32, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sources are difficult to sift through for this, since there are a number of companies with the same name. Searching for "hermes" + "parcelnet" (their previous moniker) brings back the most results of anything I've tried so far, but an article constructed on the available sources would not be complimentary to Hermes - the majority of coverage that they've received in reliable sources relates to the poor treatment of their staff. There's very little independent information out there about them which is divorced from this issue. Yunshui  12:39, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do you need 3D computer graphics?[edit]

Dear Wiki,

I'm learning Blender 3D computer graphics and would like to voluteer 3D computer graphics to the Wikipedia. I can't find a category for requested 3D computer graphics, though. Do you need such graphics?

Lars A — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lars A (talkcontribs) 09:46, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Lars A - The WP:Graphics Lab is always looking for skilled help, I'm sure you would be welcome there. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reviving previously redirected article[edit]

I am referring to a former article entitled "Italian wolf", which now redirects to Eurasian wolf. Although it was originally redirected in the absence of evidence of the animal's distinctiveness, there is enough recent genetic evidence now to demonstrate that the Italian wolf is distinct enough to warrant its own article.Mariomassone (talk) 10:23, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariomassone - Italian wolf is a redirect with no previous article content. Italian Wolf has the article content you are looking for in its history - I have moved that content to Draft:Italian wolf where you and others can do the necessary updating and corrections before moving it back into mainspace as a separate article. Don't forget to also update the Eurasian wolf article. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:28, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Objectionable text.[edit]

If you search 'women in Thailand' the following shows up under marriage. This text is demeaning and unsophisticated. The legal rights of married women might be of more interest than this. I would suggest deleting this text. The same trash talk might be said of MOST post war countries' women citizens.

In 2007, The New York Times reported that after the Vietnam War, Thailand became the main rest and recreation and sex tourism destination of male foreigners, resulting in some marriages with Thai women. Among those who establish such marriages are men from Europe and the United States seeking companionship and economic relief particularly during retirement age. The Thai women, on the other hand, enter into the marriages in order to redeem themselves from their former life as prostitutes, from abandonment by former partners, and as an escape from "poverty and unhappiness", but not all Thai women who entered into this type of marriage were former prostitutes.[7] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.44.66.202 (talk) 12:15, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reliably sourced information about the legal rights of married women would be a great addition to the Marriage section in Women in Thailand. If you have access to that information, you can add it yourself, or request it on the article talk page at Talk:Women in Thailand along with your concerns about the suitability of the current content. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:49, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstars[edit]

Where are the instructions on how to award Barnstars and the other Wiki awards? I can't find them anywhere. --P123cat1 (talk) 14:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just copy the appropriate code from Wikipedia:Barnstars onto the user's talkpage. Alternatively, use the Wikilove button (the little heart-shaped thingy by the Search bar on userpages). Yunshui  14:44, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. --P123cat1 (talk) 15:09, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Edit counter opt-in problem[edit]

I seem to be unable to create User:DuncanHill/EditCounterOptIn.js. Anyone able to help please? DuncanHill (talk) 15:00, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have created it. If you have wikEd then try to disable it on the icon at the top right when you edit .js and .css pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:10, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks :) I didn't know that about wikEd. DuncanHill (talk) 15:13, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicate Drafts[edit]

I am trying to get articles approved on the following topics:

LessCancer.org Ronald B. Herberman, M.D.

In the process of attempting to navigate your system, I created duplicate drafts, one of which put the Herberman content underneath the LessCancer.org title.

Suggestions on how to fix this matter would be welcome.

I have about a dozen suggestions for how to make your system more user friendly. As more people add content, your interface becomes more and more of a problem.

Bart Leahy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bartacus1704 (talkcontribs) 15:09, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Bartacus1704: Hello. You have created 2-3 correct drafts, but Draft:LessCancer.org is the mistake copy. You can nominate the pages that are duplicates or messed up for deletion as a page you authored (I would, but you haven't clearly asked that--if you decide that is what you want and can't figure out how to do it yourself, reply here about it and someone will help you through it or do it for you). You can propose your dozens of suggestions at Village pump/Proposals or Idea lab, but make sure it's not already offered (you could also bring up the suggestions here to see if their functionality is available, though it's not quite the proper area and things usually aren't actioned from here). - Purplewowies (talk) 15:18, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If you want an administrator to delete a page you have created and no one else has edited it, just put
{{db-author}}
on the page. SpinningSpark 15:21, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've added that db-author item to the page. The good one (Draft:Ronald B. Herberman, M.D.) should remain. Still not thrilled with the interface here, but so it goes. Thanks for responding! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bartacus1704 (talkcontribs) 17:25, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, once the article is in the shape I want it, how does it move from draft to review/approval by Wikipedia's editors?

General Petersen[edit]

Frank E. Petersen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I am trying to update the Wikipedia page on Lt. General Frank E. Petersen, II. They are not accepting my reference of family; eldest child. Help?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.128.96.26 (talk) 15:27, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Noone has yet reverted your edit, but they are likely to do so because you have not provided a reference to published reliable sources. It may be surprising to you, but your personal knowledge is not acceptable as a reference; it counts as original research. --David Biddulph (talk) 15:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see that the reversion did take place while I was resolving an edit conflict on my reply. --David Biddulph (talk) 15:43, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There were two different types of problems. 1) You used incorrect syntax </refGayle M. Petersenref></ref> which should have been <ref>Gayle M. Petersen</ref>. This caused misformatting which I guess was the reason for your post here. 2) You used personal knowledge and not a published reliable source. This is against our policies. Your edit has therefore been reverted now instead of fixing the syntax error. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:52, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just to explain a bit more about why your personal knowledge is not acceptable. In order that Wikipedia text is verifiable, it needs to have been previously published, so that any reader can just find the original source, and check it. People have no way to check with the inside of your brain. --Jayron32 16:00, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Gaylemp:I'm not sure that adding the information back in without a reference solves the problem. I'm sorry that you might not get to be listed on your fathers entry (just as I and my father are not on my grandfather's entry), but that's how it works. I'm not going to revert it, in case I'm mistaken, but I suspect someone else will revert it shortly.--Otus scops (talk) 19:25, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I particularly like the way it's tagged as a minor edit to avoid checking...--Otus scops (talk) 19:42, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To solve the problem of personal knowledge not being acceptable, you can try to persuade a reliable magazine or newspaper to interview you, and once they are satisfied your information is reliable and they publish it, it becomes a reliable source.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:12, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Article for creation/Philip Nevill Green[edit]

I submitted an article Wikipedia talk:Article for creation/Philip Nevill Green on 11 April. How do I find out if it has been reviewed yet?

Pngreen (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You presumably meant Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Philip Nevill Green? --David Biddulph (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently 2783 submissions waiting for review. If it is accepted it will appear as an article. eg. Philip Nevill Green - X201 (talk) 16:17, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) You submitted it originally in March. Resubmitting it in April had no further effect. No, it hasn't been reviewed yet. You can see the time spread of articles waiting for review at Category:AfC pending submissions by age. I notice that your user name bears a resemblance to the article title. If you are indeed the subject of the article, you ought to read about autobiography and conflict of interest. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. I didn't answer your specific question as to how you check whether it has been reviewed yet; the way is to click the "History" tab on top of your AFC draft. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:22, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) :Hello Pngreen. I have corrected the link to the article above (somebody else doubled the brackets, and I added the missing 's'). If you go there, you can see that it says in large friendly letters "Draft article not currently submitted for review.", and further down there is a green button that says "Submit your draft when you are ready for it to be reviewed!". I have not looked at the article carefully, but most of the references do not appear to be independent - they are from the various organisations whose relationship with Green is what is being reported. There need to be more references from independent reliable sources, such as the Utility Week reference. The reference to a Wikipedia article Sentebale is absolutely a no-no: Wikipedia is not a reliable source and may not be used as a reference (but many of the organisations in the article should be wikilinked, by putting them in double square brackets as I have with [[Sentebale]] above. The references should ideally be better formatted - see Referencing for beginners, but that alone will not stop the article from being accepted.
One major issue is that, judging from your username, this would appear to be an autobiography, which is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. If it is, then the "Articles for creation" route is the best way to proceed, but you should be upfront about your conflict of interest, and expect your writing to be looked at very critically. --ColinFine (talk) 16:24, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In the third sentence of Colin's reply above he probably missed the fact that you had indeed already submitted the draft for review (twice in fact). The significant note in the grey box at the top is the one that says: "Note: the submission-received box appears at the bottom of the page at first. If it's there, your draft has been submitted correctly, even if this message is still shown.". The fact that it still leaves the confusing "not submitted" box at the top of the article is a shortcoming of the software. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:32, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oops. Sorry. --ColinFine (talk) 22:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

R. Seth Williams Page[edit]

I am writing because I would like to make changes to Philadelphia District Atorney R. Seth Williams Wikipedia page. The quick changes that I made never save. How can I continue to monitor and update this page, and be notified when someone else makes changes to this page?

Thank you Jennifer Jones Communications and Community Relations Press Aide Philadelphia District Attorney's Office — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.115.248.22 (talk) 19:01, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a person with a conflict of interest, you should NOT be directly saving edits to the article in the first place. Use the article's talk page, note your conflict of interest, and make your non promotional suggestions based upon reliably published sources -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:05, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question how you can monitor the page; you can subscribe to a feed of the page by following one of these links RSS feed, or ATOM feed. If you open an account you will also be able to have changes to articles you are interested in e-mailed to you. SpinningSpark 19:28, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Offline Reference of newspaper.[edit]

In an article of a living person there is no reference given for a section because the online search engines like Google does not have any sort of it evidence for it. But in offline way evidence is present in the form of Newspaper Article of The Telegraph. My question are as follows:

1) How to use original newspaper article in a scanned way as a source in wikipedia for a living person? (The Telegraph,India Dated 10 Oct,1997=not available online in world wide web).

2) Can scanned official government documents be used as a source in wikipedia? If yes, then how? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drsharan (talkcontribs) 19:23, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1) Sources do not need to be accessible on line. Wikipedia:V#Accessibility. If using offline sources, however, you do need to provide enough citation information that the specific source can be identified. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:27, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
2)Government docs are likely to fall into the category of "primary source" documents which may be used in certain occasions, but with caution. Someone putting up a website and claiming the image is an authentic copy of a government doc is not acceptable, and items such as court documents are almost never appropriate. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:29, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So how to cite reference of a newspaper which is not available online. (The Telegraph (Calcutta) dated 10 October 1997) Please show how to site this in an example.

Is there any other way to upload scanned newspaper article on wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drsharan (talkcontribs) 23:54, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do something like: <ref>{{cite news|title=John Smith wins Election|newspaper=Chicago Gazette|date=1/15/1970|pages=5|quote=John Smith won yesterday's election for dog catcher with 83% of the vote.}}</ref>, which would render as John Smith wins Election". Chicago Gazette. 1/15/1970. p. 5. "John Smith won yesterday's election for dog catcher with 83% of the vote. You can just use the Cite/Template/Cite News option in the editor. Rwessel (talk) 00:34, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any other way to upload scanned newspaper article on wikipedia for reference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drsharan (talkcontribs) 04:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's unlikely that would be possible because of copyright issues. Technically uploading a scan is trivial, but legally it would be a problem. Rwessel (talk) 04:51, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Even if any copyright issues could be overcome, a scan would probably be deemed unreliable because scanned images can be manipulated.--ukexpat (talk) 19:49, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect edit[edit]

I have made an edit to an article but realized that what I did was incorrect, is there any way that I can change what was in my previous edit without adding something to the edit history?

Also is there anyway I can change a former edit to say it was a minor change? Rosencrantz24 (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An edit can be hidden by admins (I think admins can do it, if not then someone with even more power) but they generally only do so if the edit contains offensive material or private information about the subject of a biography or some such. Not just casual mistakes by editors.
What you can do is to perform another edit to fix what you have mistakenly done. But that too will show up in the edit history of the article.
And no, there's no way to go back to a former edit and mark it as minor. Dismas|(talk) 21:07, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
no one pays attention to the "minor" change flag anyway. every major vandalism edit ever made has been flagged as "minor" - its completely useless. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:10, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there are only a few people qualified to do oversight.
I have made many minor edits where I forgot to check the box and even checked the box by mistake when it wasn't minor.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:22, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are two ways that an edit can be hidden. The first is called revdel for weird historical reasons, which is also known as suppression, and can be done by admins. The second, which is more extreme, is called oversight, also for weird reasons, and is done only by oversighters. However, both are restricted to specified reasons, such as offensive material, defamatory material, or material that violates privacy and is inappropriate for Wikipedia. In other words, if you entered a mistake, other than a privacy violation, you can't hide it, and you just have to correct it. Everyone makes mistakes. Trying to hide mistakes is worse. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:26, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Dismas was right after all. There are two levels of oversight and I had forgotten that.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:32, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unambiguous copyright infringement[edit]

I had an article removed for Unambiguous copyright infringement. I have permission to reference and quote from the book I used from both the author and publisher. In the future, how do I make clear that I have been given this permission? William_Hunter_(artist) SherylReiter (talk) 21:31, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

By having the owner of the copyright material follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Note that it is highly unlikely that we as an encyclopedia would find enough content from any other type of source appropriately phrased and sourced that we would copy and paste it in a form that would need copyright permission. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:39, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
the "Unambiguous advertising or promotion" indicates that even if the owner gave appropriate permission to use the content, we wouldn't want it anyway. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:15, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note also that you having permission to use the material, even if it was appropriate for copy and paste here, would be useless. The copyright of the material itself would need to be released to the world and not just for use here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:38, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How do I get back to seeing my entire article?[edit]

I've made edits to my article in my sandbox. Then, I cannot see my entire article in "Read" How do I get to see all of this again? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SagersPath/sandbox SagersPath (talk) 22:06, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

you had the slash to close your reference tag after the word instead of before the word. I fixed it here: [1]. It was always there , it was just not displaying because the system kept looking for the end of the reference tag and couldnt find it.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:12, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]