Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 May 13

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May 13[edit]

Jehovah's Witnesses[edit]

I think that this article has been edited over time into information that is misleading and not in line with actual teachings. The information is more journalistic in nature rather than a report, and calls into question the teachings of the religion rather than what it is. The organisation is noted for having only one genuine website - watchtower.org - and this is because it recognises that there are many groups who are "anti" jehovahs witnesses. i think the more neutral article that i recall in earlier circulation reflects the truth more accurately. Otherwise I would conclude that this site would be peddling misinformation. 203.59.123.234 (talk) 01:04, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to).  Chzz  ►  01:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

mosfet[edit]

I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT MOSFET U4Q 029 AND ITS EQUVILANT AND ALSO ITS AVAILABILITY IN INDIAN STORE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.51.130 (talk) 05:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 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. Also please do not use all CAPS; it is considered rude. —teb728 t c 07:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

fire box[edit]

my fire box is not opening after clicking &i donot know the problem so i want a solution —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.200.225.2 (talk) 07:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 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. —teb728 t c 07:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Request for translation?[edit]

Hello, there's an ongoing dispute on the Republic of China article regarding its capital - we can't agree whether it is Taipei or Nanjing. In order to prove that it is Nanjing, one of the contributor regularly brings sources in Chinese. Although the source is reliable, I can't verify it since I can't read Chinese. So is there some place on Wikipedia where I could request somebody who speak Chinese to check the source, or possibly to translate the relevant parts? Also is it ok in general to provide non-english sources for controversial topics? Here is the source: [1]. Any suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks, Laurent (talk) 09:47, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can get a machine translation from Google translate. The source you cite doesn't seem relevant; it seems to be a ROC Ministry of Education dictionary. —teb728 t c 10:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC) Your link here is not the same as the one in the article http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/cgi-bin/newDict/dict.sh?cond=%ABn%A8%CA%A5%AB&pieceLen=50&fld=1&cat=&ukey=1104020453&serial=1&recNo=0&op=&imgFont=1 which is broken and which possibly intends to look up 南京市 (Nanjing). —teb728 t c 11:19, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried using Google Translate but the translation is not very clear to me. I think the sentence I need translation for is: "民國十六年,國民政府定為首都". Google Translate gives "In sixteen years, as the capital of the Nationalist government", which obviously doesn't make much sense. Laurent (talk) 11:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You might like to try the language section of the reference desk. They often receive requests for translations, and I am pretty sure there are at least a couple of regulars who speak Chinese. --Kateshortforbob 15:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Kateshortforbob, I'm going to give that a try. Laurent (talk) 16:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete, AfD, or prod?[edit]

When dealing with an entire article of BLP that is unsourced, it should be deleted, but what kind of deletion is it? Speedy, AfD, or prod? The article in question is Kirstin Jean Lewis, and may not meet WP:NOTABILITY, as it is a single event, but the enire article is unsourced, and the tag on the article says unsourced info should be taken out immediatly.Drew Smith What I've done 10:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prod. I might get that template reworded to "Unsourced - or poorly sourced - contentious material may be...". Some articles deserve some time to be sourced (there is a long standing argument about this which I shan't get into here), but certainly, if you think that the notability is itself questionable, I would prod it, then if anyone objects, take it to AfD. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 10:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above response may be OK, but I wrote it before I checked the claim of competing in the olympics, something which provides inherent notability. My advice would be to, in fact, try to source the article. It shouldn't be too hard. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 10:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c) Not all unsourced info in a BLP needs to be removed immediately; unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material does. It isn't (unsourced) or (poorly sourced contentious material), it's (unsourced or poorly sourced) contentious material. Nothing in there seems remotely contentious. Surprisingly (to me), competition in the Olympics appears to be all that's necessary to meet WP:ATHLETE, so notability is at the very least asserted (no speedy), and likely met. Best to look for sources. If found, add them. If not, an AfD might be reasonable. --Floquenbeam (talk) 10:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'e proposed the addition of suitable punctuation to the template. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 10:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
She easily passes WP:ATHLETE. She competed in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympics, and got an 11th team place and 16th individual place.[2] Other sources like http://www.africasbowhunter.com/kirsten.html gives plenty of other information. If a BLP is unsourced but appears uncontentious then I would never propose deletion before looking for sources, and they are easy to find here. See WP:BLP#Deletion. You wrote "When dealing with an entire article of BLP that is unsourced, it should be deleted". Have you seen this claim somewhere? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. On the tag on the article it says, "Unsourced, or poorly sourced contentious material must be removed immediatly"Drew Smith What I've done 11:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The key word there is "contentious", but I suggest there is a comma missing. As the comma isn't there, the sentence can easily be mis-interpreted to mean, "material is removed in these two cases: either the material (of whatever nature) is unsourced, or there is poorly sourced contentious material." I can see how you reached the conclusion you did. Maedin\talk 11:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have added 3 references and removed the unsourced tag. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:24, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Archived talkpage in category[edit]

I was looking at Category:Railway stations opened in 1904 and noticed that it contained Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains in Japan/Archive 6 which is an archived talk page. I was wondering the best way to remove the page from the category. Is it acceptable to modify such a page and if so is there some markup that one can insert so that the page contents remain the same but that it no longer belongs to the category? The situation is complicated further by the fact that the category inclusion is done inside a transcluded template (one of the station infobox ones). Boissière (talk) 12:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If a category is located directly in a talk page archive where it does not belong, it should be okay to simply remove it. In this case, the best thing to do would be removing the category from the template code and placing it directly on all pages where the template is transcluded to (except for that talk page archive of course), because making navboxes add categories is sloppy at best. Alternatively, you could change the navbox to make it only add mainspace pages to the category by wrapping the category like this: {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}}||[[Category:Railway stations opened in 1904]]}} Goodraise 13:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Currently there is no nice way to fix this. I think you either have to remove the transclusion from the talk page or edit the template to give an option to not add categories. bugzilla:835 discusses the problem but no solution has been implemented yet. Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories shows many other examples. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestions above. I thought of another way of doing it (without having to fiddle with the template) and that is to subst: the template on the talk page and then commenting out the category inclusion using the html comment sequences. I tried this on a test page in user space and it seems work a treat. This way the content of the original discussion should be unaffected. Clearly this is a case by case fix.Boissière (talk) 19:43, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading Photos.....[edit]

I'm trying to upload a photo of a band member that currently has no photo on his page. I can't seem to figure out how to do that, it's all a little confusing. Can someone please help me to understand the process or direct me specifically on who to contact to be able to gain access to uploading photos? 14:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)14:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vnerres (talkcontribs)

You can only upload files when your account has been autoconfirmed (10 edits and 4 days old). When you reach that status, the upload page is here. But before you upload, please read our non-free content guideline. – ukexpat (talk) 14:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You can also upload the pictures to Wikimedia Commons where there is no autoconfirmation requirement and the photos will be available to all Wikimedia projects. TNXMan 14:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But only if it complies with Commons' free content requirements. – ukexpat (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sandwich effect when using the 1024x768 screen resolution?[edit]

To the administrators, I would like to get some comments from you.
According to Wikipedia:Layout#Images, I use the 1024x768 screen resolution but I can not see any "sandwich effect" beetween the two images [[File:Rachmaninoff - Steinway grand piano.jpg]] and [[File:BillyJoel.jpg]] on the page User:Fanoftheworld. (I use my own page temporarily regarding this question). I look forward to hear from you if you can or not can see a sandwich effect when using the 1024x768 screen resolution. Thank you. Fanoftheworld (talk) 16:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean by "sandwich effect". The images are well spaced, so that there is no bunching. Only issue that I see is the preference that profiles of persons should face towards the body of the article. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've never liked photos on the left. They disrupt the flow of text more than photos on the right in my opinion, because when we read, our eyes have to jump from the right to the left margin with each new sentence. Having photos on the left causes the starting positions of sentences to "bounce around" which interferes with fast reading. Photos on the right do not cause this problem, because our eyes reach the right end of a sentence, wherever it is, without needing to jump to it. Opinions differ, which is why this should be a user preferences setting. That is, each user should be able to select the layout he or she prefers. --Teratornis (talk) 18:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, so you don't see: A) A blank, white rectangle where there are no text or images? or B) A space that is not occupied by any images, but has text inside of it? hmwithτ 18:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It looks okay to me, but I know they say not to do that, because it means there are only a few words per line on low resolution screens. hmwithτ 18:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to rewrite/repost a deleted Article[edit]

Alright I am new to wikipedia and I tried to write an article, I worked really hard on it but then when I posted it, it got deleted very very fast. I am not angry or anything but I have made some changes to the article trying to make it more wiki friendly in hopes that it wont be deleted again. My issue is I don't know if all my changes are going to be enough. I want to try reposting it but I am afraid it will just be deleted. Is there anywhere I can go to have it edited prior to posting it? I have been maing all of my edits on a subpage, but I don't know where to go from here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clinehan (talkcontribs) 17:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are a couple of options. You could post the article to a sandbox in your userspace (something like User:Clinehan/Sandbox) and ask others to review it for you. Or you could check out the drawing board and get input that way. TNXMan 18:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

reference links[edit]

I have been trying to make a footnote that takes the readers of my article down to the reference list but I can not figure it out for the life of me. I feel like this should be relatively simple but I am having problems with it. Help me out please! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clinehan (talkcontribs) 17:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:FOOT. If you find any part of the instructions unclear, let us know. --Teratornis (talk) 18:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How do I get people to come edit my sandbox?[edit]

So I put an article that I am working on in my user sandbox, but no one is coming to help edit it. How do I get people to come help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clinehan (talkcontribs) 18:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Typically, you wouldn't - your sandbox is for you to experiment, and, in this case, get the article up to a standard where it won't be summarily deleted once it's moved to article-space.
That said, there's nothing to stop you inviting other editors to take a look and make recommendations or even edits - I presume that the page in question is User:Clinehan/Sandbox? I'll start the ball rolling by taking a look now...!
Cheers, This flag once was redpropagandadeeds 18:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's at User:Clinehan/Skyhawks Sports Academy and I have made some formatting changes. The tone needs work though as it still reads like a sales brochure. I would blank the Sandbox version and work on this subpage otherwise all my hard work will be for nought! – ukexpat (talk) 19:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
NO! Then all MY hard work will be wasted! Heh, I noticed that after editing the "/sandbox" version: I mentioned on Clinehan's talk page that I preferred your version, so blanking the sandbox and continuing at User:Clinehan/Skyhawks Sports Academy seems sensible. Cheers, This flag once was redpropagandadeeds 19:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tagging pictures[edit]

I uploaded a picture on an article I created. I took the picture, but couldn't figure out which tag to put on it. I tried reading the list of tags page, but it was very confusing. The article is Pala Casino Resort and Spa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sean118 (talkcontribs) 20:19, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are two things wrong with your image. First, you need to edit the information template and add something after Description= (like what the picture is of) and Date= (when you took the picture). Then, you need to add a copyright tag. Pick from {{GFDL-self}} (GFDL, same license as Wikipedia), {{cc-by-sa-3.0}} (requires attribution and link, any reuse of the picture needs to use same license), {{cc-by-3.0}} (only attribution and link), {{Attribution}} (only attribution), and {{PD-self}}, (public domain, anyone can use your picture for any purpose). Then, replace {{no copyright information}} with your choice. If you need any more help, please don't hesitate to come back here - it's a real shame when a perfectly good image is sucked up by Wikibureaucracy! Xenon54 (talk) 22:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image or File sandbox existed ?[edit]

I want a thorough explanation for this. Thanks Arteyu ? Blame it on me ! 21:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are going to have to explain a little more, you haven't given us much to work with. – ukexpat (talk) 22:04, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to know whether sandbox for images existed or not, and how could I use it Arteyu ? Blame it on me ! 10:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm interpreting your question correctly, the answer is no- all images have to be uploaded to the server before they can be used on Wikipedia (even in the sandbox), and there's no way to "temporarily" upload a picture. --Alinnisawest,Dalek Empress (extermination requests here) 13:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Translations[edit]

The book "Wikipedia Revolution" discusses foreign language Wikipedias. I would like to read some of the articles in them translated into English. The page "Wikipedia: Translations" gives instructions about templates and sidebars. Have no clue how to use a template and the sidebars are all foreign words. 66.99.235.2 (talk) 22:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a simple to way to do what you want, but I can make a suggestion. There's no easy way (of which I'm aware) to see which articles did not exist on the English Wikipedia until they were translated from another project. If you would like to search for a topic in a foreign language and then read about the topic in English, go to the Wikipedia in the language you want, search for the topic in which you are interested, and once at the article, select "English" from the list of languages on the left. TNXMan 03:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make it a little clearer, the procedure above only indicates that there are articles on that subject at both encyclopedias; not necessarily that one was translated to each other. It is entirely possible to have two articles written about the same subject in two different languages, which are then linked by Interwiki linking. As noted, unless there is an edit summary which indicates that "This text was translated from...", it may be entirely impossible to determine if such a translation occures. Also, due to the nature of Wikipedia, the current version of an article may have changed drastically from the original version, such that even if it was originally a translation, the current article could no longer be said to be. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]