Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 June 8

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June 8

RE: home page suggestion

Hello,

I love your sight, and I probably visit it more than any other; well, Netflix and YouTube, also, but..... You know.

On your home page you should have an highlight option so that people can highlight and keep FOREVER things that mean something to them. I go to Ashford U online - at 50 - and they have it on all of their student manuals. It helps so much, and all you do is highlight the sentence, paragraph, page, whatever.. and as soon as you highlight it and let go of the mouse, and option pops up for save, highlight, etc.

You should have it. I know that I would like it on your sight by how much I use it.

So, just an FYI suggestion, thank you,

Jonny Black — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.33.126.23 (talk) 08:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Jonny, and thanks for your appreciation and your suggestion. Wikipedia is always open to suggestions, and the best place to make them is at the Village pump. I don't quite follow what you are suggesting, but I suspect that it is something that would have to be implemented by the people who make the software, rather than by the editors who look after the content and organisation of the encyclopaedia; but in any case, the Village Pump would be the place to engage those people's attention.

In the meantime, if you are talking about links to pages you want to remember, your browser will almost certainly allow you to bookmark them; or one of the things you can legitimately use your Wikipedia User page for is to keep a list of Wikipedia pages that you want to remember (though that would need you to edit your user page to put the links in, I know). --ColinFine (talk) 09:59, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, Jonny. In addition to Colin's suggestions, if you register and log in with a free user account, you can also add it to your "watchlist" (something like a Wikipedia-specific bookmark list) by clicking the star icon at the top-right of each article. It's blue when it's in the list and white when it's not. To access your list, click the "My watchlist" link at the top-right of the article. For more info, see Special:Watchlist. Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 12:37, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref no input

Ref: Tha Baha'i Community in Congo Brazzaville and Dr Shirley H Ganao — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.62.191.212 (talk) 12:50, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

This must be about Knights of Bahá'u'lláh. I have dealt with the red error message, by deleting an empty ref tag: <ref></ref>. There is still a sentence fragment there, "the Baha'i community in Congo-Brazzaville and Dr Shirley H Ganao", which should probably be deleted too. Maproom (talk) 14:51, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Please note, that the added content should be sourced by a published reliable source (a book, journal, newspaper, etc.) - maybe the stray sentence fragment was intended as reference, but it lacks verifiable publication details. See also WP:REFB for more information about Wikipedia's referencing syntax. GermanJoe (talk) 15:01, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Maproom is right: the "the Baha'i community in Congo-Brazzaville and Dr Shirley H Ganao" fragment should be removed, together with the whole List of the Knights of Bahá’u’lláh section (I give a section title only, because I don't know how to make a wikilink to the section with a ^[3] ref link in it). For further discussion please follow to Talk:Knights of Bahá'u'lláh#Not in Wikipedia. --CiaPan (talk) 15:51, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree. I have deleted the list of knights. Maproom (talk) 16:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Conversion to pdf fails

Hi there. I have a sandbox. I am so grateful to Wikipedia for providing such an opportunity. Anyhow my sandbox filled with a bunch of mathematical formulas and it keeps growing. A few months ago I converted the content to pdf and printed it. It was very nice. It worked well.

Now all my attempts to convert a somewhat larger file, perhaps 50% larger fail and I get an error message. Why? Can it be corrected?

Thanks, - --AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:05, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

@AboutFace 22: You can use the printable version. Follow the link here, right click the page and select "Print". I'm not sure what is wrong with the PDF downloader, except that it hasn't had any maintenance since 2014, and nobody is looking into making it better. -- The Voidwalker ^Discuss 00:30, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

In addition to what Voidwalker has already said, I would add that many browsers nowadays have the ability to "Print to/ as PDF", which does basically the same thing that you're wanting, I believe. The PDF printing feature would most likely be listed where you choose a printer to use when you choose to print something. -- Gestrid (talk) 01:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Another alternative, if your browser doesn't have a print to pdf function, is to use a print to pdf utility. See List of PDF software#Creators 4 for examples. I find the older free version of CutePDF (without adverts) to be very effective. Dbfirs 08:29, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Printable version does not work for some reason, also. It would print out the text but not the formulas leaving large white spaces instead. Thank you for other suggestions, will try to explore. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:44, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Very short entry deleted immediately and I was then blocked for asking about it for a reason that seemed odd...

I'm the editor of an alternative newspaper who a couple months ago put in a two-sentence entry about it (roughly: "Icepeople is an alternative weekly English-language newspaper published in Longyearbyen, Norway. It was founded in 2008 and is a member of The Association of Alternative News Media"). I noted clearly in the talk page my status and anyone feeling it wasn't neutral should speak up. Hardly the stuff of absurd self-promotion or controversy - or so I thought. The page was deleted within minutes and I was blocked for asking what was improper about it, with acronyms having nothing to do with conflict of interest being cited.

OK, fine. I put the page up there because it's considered a reliable source by Wikipedia standards (not unfairly, since it's in the same network as the Village Voice, etc.), not because I have wild fantasies about a couple of lines making me suddenly rich and famous. And it's like a wiki page is what my ego desperately craves to be fulfilled. But with a reality show coming out soon (named after the paper because their lawyers said they can) where my newspaper plays a key role I'm wondering if someone is willing to actually explain why what I tried to do above is so screwed up by your standards. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4641:12AE:0:C82A:C6E9:FF3:167E (talk) 19:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I take it you were User:Icepeople? If so, it was explained to you why you were blocked and why the article was deleted. You were blocked because for legal reasons to do with attribution, we don't allow usernames which represent organisations rather than individuals, as it would be impossible to determine which staff member was responsible for any given edit. The article was deleted because it didn't contain any reliable sources; Wikipedia isn't a directory, and we only cover material which has already been covered in other sources. Thus, if you want Wikipedia to host an article about you, you need to demonstrate that other media consider the newspaper significant. ‑ Iridescent 19:38, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

2001 Mark: if you still want to create an article on the newspaper Icepeople, it may be possible, using references like this to establish its notability. However Wikipedia policy advises strongly against writing an article on an subjected connected with the writer. You may also want to create an account which is specifically yours, and does not have a name suggesting that it is used by any kind of organisation. Maproom (talk) 21:42, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Also, I would suggest to anybody considering creating a new article that, unless they were confident that they could get the notability and references sorted out first time, they should use the Articles for creation process to create a draft in Draft: space. For somebody with a Conflict of interest I would urge that even more strongly. --ColinFine (talk) 22:51, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

On articles that use shortened footnotes, is it possible to check if cited sources are never invoked?

So say there is an article that contains a bajillion {{sfn}} templates, and over the past couple of years, some editors may have removed sourced text from an article's body without also removing the {{citation}} templates, resulting in a cluttered "Bibliography" section where most texts are never even cited in the article. Is there any automated tool to correct this, or do I actually have to CTRL+F every single book to see if it still has at least one "[name] [year]" citation?

Yes there is: User:Ucucha/HarvErrors – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you!--Ilovetopaint (talk) 20:20, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Adding Image to Existing Wikipedia Page

A year ago, I created a new Wikipedia page called, "Walter Griffin (poet)." A few minutes ago, I emailed an attached image to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org with the appropriate template for having it accepted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported and GNU Free Documentation License process.

This is an image I want to add to the original Wikipeida page "Walter Griffin (poet)."

My question is: Should I wait to receive confirmation of this image being accepted by Wikipedia under the Creative Commons process before I try to add the image to the file page? Or can I go ahead and add it now? If I can add it already, where can I find information on how to do that. What I want to do is add it in a box on the top-right side of the file page with some basic bio info below the image--the way I see it commonly done on Wikipedia pages about individuals. Thanks for your help.

Mike Pulley Wpulley (talk) 20:25, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Walter Griffin (poet) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Just adding a convenience link. Dismas|^(talk) 20:33, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Mike: I think the usual procedure is to upload the image to Wikimedia Commons yourself, and email the permission to them. If you do that, they leave the image on Commons for a while (a week or two, I think?), and then accept it if they receive a valid permission and delete it otherwise. You can add the image to the article as soon as it exists on Commons. Maproom (talk) 21:54, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I see that you have already added it. Maproom (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

User Subpages

Am I allowed to copy a live article into my namespace to test edits before making them go live on the main page? (The page I wanted to do this with is Liberty University, as it is in the middle of a major campus building project with new announcements every few months.) I've looked at WP:SUBPAGES, and I'm still not sure. If this is possible, what limitation (such as nowiki to be used with wikilinks) would I have to know about? -- Gestrid (talk) 22:54, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

You may do so, but you need to keep in mind three things:

1. When Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia, you need to attribute content to its original contributors. Do this by including an edit summary like copied content from Liberty University; see that page's history for attribution when you save the copy.
2. Turn any categories into category links by adding a colon before "Category". Eg. [[Category:Evangelical universities and colleges]] into [[:Category:Evangelical universities and colleges]](Wikipedia:Drafts#Preparing drafts)
3. Remove or replace any non-free images. This article features one, the logo, File:Liberty University seal.png. (Wikipedia:User pages#Non-free images) – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:02, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Gestrid (talk) 23:20, 8 June 2016 (UTC)