Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 October 1

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October 1

Determining if my subject is Notable

I was planning to write an article for Wikipedia but after reading about the "Notability" requirement and other information for new contributors I remain unsure whether my topic is Notable enough for its own article. Can someone give me an opinion before I take the time to write a complete article?

The topic is Pariyatti - www.pariyatti.org. - a nonprofit Publishing House/Bookstore devoted to Vipassana Meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin and S.N. Goenka, and the teachings of the Buddha. Wikipedia currently has articles on Sayagyi U Ba Khin, Goenka, Vipassana, and (obviously) the Buddha.

Pariyatti is the exclusive distributor for the Pali Text Society and the Buddhist Publication Society (both have Wikipedia pages) in the U.S. and Canada, and nearby geographies that differ slightly for each of those publishers. We receive orders and ship literally worldwide.

A Google search for Pariyatti produces thousands of hits, including mentions in at least two articles on Wikipedia, but most are references to books or authors we publish and/or sell. We are also referenced in articles about Pali Language classes and Buddhist books. There were many more pages of hits remaining when I ran out of energy looking at each one.

Naturally Pariyatti would prefer an article of its own, but if not, maybe we could be mentioned in the article "Independent Bookstore"?

I would be grateful for any advice/guidance you can give me. Or is it necessary to just write the article and submit it in order to find out whether or not it will be accepted?

The first few pages of hits with a Google search for Pariyatti includes the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._N._Goenka (Several mentions, including this link to the Pariyatti Web site: "Podcasts about Vipassana Meditation (audio talks)".)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin_Samararatne

http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/palisources.htm

http://www.dharmaweb.org/index.php/Buddhist_Book_Sites

http://www.cambodianbuddhist.org/english/website/other.html

http://www.ibpa-online.org/articles/shownews.aspx?id=2795

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/outsources/books.html

http://www.purifymind.com/Publishers.htm

http://www.gazellebookservices.co.uk/Marketing/Publisher%20Pages/Trade%20publishers/PARIYATTI%20PRESS%20%28US%29.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=Pariyatti&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGLL_en___US387#q=Pariyatti&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=7m5&rlz=1R1GGLL_en___US387&prmd=iv&source=univ&tbs=vid:1&tbo=u&ei=0PKkTOXBNILCnAeo4vmQAQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=10&ved=0CEMQqwQwCQ&fp=a8aa520e3f8afc17

http://www.bps.lk/orderinginfo.asp

http://www.vridhamma.org/Ordering-CSCD.aspx

http://www.vridhamma.org/en2009-04.aspx

http://www.vridhamma.org/en2008-07.aspx

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Pariyatti+publishing&x=0&y=0

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/product-compint-0000737785-page.html

http://www.ibpa-online.org/featuretitles/showpla.aspx?id=531

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17160792/Vipassana-Meditation-Healing-the-Healer

Carljs27 (talk) 00:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC) http://www.drby.net/index.php/Reading-Lists/introduction-to-buddhism-suggested-reading-list.html

You might want to look at the following pages: Your first article, Frequently Asked Questions/Organizations, Notability (organizations and companies), Identifying reliable sources, and especially Conflict of interest. I hope these help. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 01:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The primary criteria for inclusion is significant coverage in independent reliable sources. I had a very quick look, and couldn't find such coverage (good sources are things like a newspaper article about the company - not a press release - or a magazine article). Such sources do not need to be available online, but they must be publically available (for example in a library) - this includes pay-as-you-go or subscription-only services. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 08:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Problems with disambiguation pages

I posted three new articles on "Periodic Graphs (Crystallography)", "Periodic Graph (Geometry)", and "Periodic Graph (Graph Theory)". Since the latter two are quite distant from each other, I thought it best to install a disambiguation page. I could not find specific instructions for starting one, so I used the Article Wizard, and wound up creating two pages, "Periodic Graph" and "Periodic Graph (Disambiguation)", neither of which is a functioning disambiguation page and both of which probably should be deleted (I put "{{Proposed deletion/dated|concern=not a functioning disambiguation page|timestamp=20101001002801}}" at the top of those two pages).

I apologize for mucking things up. Meanwhile, how do I create a disambiguation page? Geometric and crystallographic periodic graphs are quite different things from graph theoretic periodic graphs, and I think that disambiguation is necessary. Glmccolm (talk) 00:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, for a first attempt at making dab pages, you did pretty well. I've tidied them up, and moved the main dab page to Periodic graph (we don't usually capitalise the second word of a page title, god knows why). Periodic Graph (Disambiguation) now points to it. I've also edited the wording slightly, we try to have only one bluelink per line on dab pages. DuncanHill (talk) 00:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Formatting gone wrong?

On the page SkyTeam, the formatting for press releases have gone wrong, I think; when I look at the references section, I shouldn't be able to see any urls, but instead, the titles are on the right and the urls on the left. Can some-one fix it please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.152.251 (talk) 00:59, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I have fixed this and a couple other things.[1] There were newlines inside the reference titles and that broke the formatting. The sources have newlines in the titles so I replaced them with semicolons (other punctuation could also have been chosen). PrimeHunter (talk) 02:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Moving page

Resolved

 –  – ukexpat (talk) 16:30, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I saw the instructions on how to move a page from user space to wikipedia. However, when I go to my page, there is the read, edit, view history, but there is no tab with an arrow to let me move the page. How do I move my page or get the arrow to show up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Olszews (talk • contribs) 04:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem is you are not autoconfirmed yet. There are two requirements to become autoconfirmed, minimum of ten edits and your account is at least 4 days old. You have made the 10 edits but your account was created 27 Sept at 17:17 UTC. You need to wait 12 and a half hours to become autoconfirmed. ~~ GB fan ~~ 04:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

What page do you want to move? Maybe I can help. WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • shot down) 04:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

If you look at their contribs, I think it will become obvious. Dismas|^(talk) 05:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Page now moved to Carl H. Milam. – ukexpat (talk) 16:30, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

FLOURENS ARTICLE

My question is "whom am I supposed to contact, in order to solve the following problem":

I recently added a link to four separate articles, i.e. "Gustave Flourens", "Jules Verne", "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "Captain Nemo". Next day all links were removed by Mr McSly, accompagned by the following comment: "Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used as a platform for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Because Wikipedia uses nofollow tags,external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. McSly (talk) 14:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)" This is the first time I ever contributed to Wikipedia and I am sorry that my act was misinterpreted. This is not about enriching Wikipedia's "collection of links" and certainly not an attempt for "advertising" or "promotion". I am an academic with a long career and dozens of publications and I am certainly not looking for "advertising" one of my minor articles, six years old. This is what really is about: The most important Vernian specialist of our time, Dr William Butcher, made an assuption that Jules Verne's most famous character, Captain Nemo, is based on the French revolutionary intellectual Gustave Flourens. I found it very interesting and, since I am maybe the only person that studied Flourens's life in depth (Léonidas Kallivretakis, Gustave Flourens (1838-1871) et la Grèce, doctoral thesis,Université de la Sorbonne, Paris 1983; published also in Greek, Athens 1998), I investigated this hypothesis, and the result of that investigation is an article published in The Historical Revue / La Revue Historique, an academic refereed journal. Since this article a) gives an original detailed account of Verne's inspiration and writing procedures regarding "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"; b) rises the question of the various historical personalities that possibly inspired Captain Nemo's character, and c) records for the first time a lot of unknown data regarding Flourens' stormy life and political ideas, I thought it usefull to get it linked to the above mentionned Wikipedia articles. This and only this was the reason I proposed the link: Leonidas Kallivretakis, “Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo and French Revolutionary Gustave Flourens: A Hidden Character Model?”, The Historical Review 1 (2004), p. 207-244. http://www.historicalreview.org/index.php/historicalReview/article/view/177/73 (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gustave_Flourens) —Preceding unsigned comment added by LEONKALL (talk • contribs) 06:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You've already posted this at Talk:Gustave_Flourens, so you've started the dialog. You might also try leaving a note on Mcfly's talk page, to connect with him directly. Your addition looks acceptable to me, but I'm not an expert on WP policies. Rojomoke (talk) 07:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Commons attribution

Hi,

I am creating a blog thesedays about Bank Notes of the World. I generally use my own pictures and text for it from my collection. However, for the time being i am creating some general entries about my country Pakistan and its history. I used some information and pictures as provided on Wikipedia. I saw the following message on the pictures :

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). share alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

As I am new to online pulishing does this mean I can use these pictures on my blog? and what about the wording in the Wikipedia? Can I copy that too? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bnkhan (talk • contribs) 15:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Please see this page for guidance about reusing Wikipedia content. – ukexpat (talk) 16:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

"Promotion"? Really?

I was attempting to post a link to the bottom of a page on Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIPA) that is a link to my website http://www.thefactsofpainlesspeople.com. The website was created by a friend and I who were both born with CIPA, our website is filled with documentaries and newspaper/magazine articles proving such. Yet, when I post it to Wikipedia it tells me that I'm "promoting"....Yet there's a link to some childs fundraising for medical assistance on the same page. I don't understand that one bit. Please help me out if possible. Everyone with our condition is tired of the wrong information being out there in the public. Our website helps to disprove the myths.

Thank you,

Steven C. Pete <e-mail redacted> —Preceding unsigned comment added by PainlessPeople (talk • contribs) 16:10, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Please take a look at this page for guidance as to acceptable external links. – ukexpat (talk) 16:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess even people who do not experience pain can still experience something like discomfort at the wrong information being out there. In any case, on Wikipedia we do not try to document everything which is true, but rather everything which can be reliably sourced in footnote citations. See also WP:SPAMHOLE and WP:NOBLECAUSE. Merely accumulating large numbers of external links at the end of an article does not by itself improve the article. The reader instead ends up with an undifferentiated mess of links. What we want is for Wikipedia editors to write brilliant prose that summarizes and aggregates what has been reliably published about every topic, with footnotes to attribute every claim to whoever claims it. If something is true, but there isn't much literature on it published elsewhere, that borders on original work which Wikipedia does not accept. This is one of the unintuitive aspects of Wikipedia for some people, who come to Wikipedia without being much in the habit of either questioning what they believe to be true, or realizing what it might take to convince someone else who believes differently. Wikipedia's approach to reality is different than the ordinary person's and it takes a while to grasp. In particular with articles relating to medical conditions, preferred sources will be from the medical literature, or from respected journalists who write on medical topics. If you need editing help with a medical topic, you might find it in Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine. Also note that your username may violate WP:ORGNAME. --Teratornis (talk) 00:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Note: The link was recently added to Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (diff) and Congenital insensitivity to pain (diff) by User:S pete98611 and according to thefactsofpainlesspeople.com's Contact us page, one of the people running the site is named either Steven Pete or Pete Steven, going by the email address. --- cymru lass ^{(hit me up)}⁄_{(background check)} 20:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation page redirect

I recently created a disambiguation page called "Correlation Coefficient." However, links to correlation coefficient still lead to a different article (Correlation and dependence). How do I fix this?

Also, I have not been able to use the "move" feature to remove the capitalization on the second word of the disambiguation page's title. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MathEconMajor (talk • contribs) 16:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Page titles use sentence case unless the title is a proper noun, so the disam page should be at Correlation coefficient. Because that page already exists as a redirect, we will need admin assistance to move Correlation Coefficient to Correlation coefficient. If a passing admin doesn't do the move shortly, we can file a request at WP:Requested moves. – ukexpat (talk) 17:35, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

XLinkBot Issues

I am updating and reformatting the layout of a page. The only problem is that the XLinkBot continues to revert everything back to the very first edit before I started working on it. Is there anyway to get rid of it or stop it from continuously reverting changes?

filmmakerscoop —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filmmakerscoop (talk • contribs) 17:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

To quote XLinkBot's note to users, "If your additions were reverted by XLinkBot, please take time to review our external links & spam guidelines". The external links guideline says, under Links normally to be avoided, "10. Links to social networking sites (such as MySpace and Facebook), chat or discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), Twitter feeds, Usenet newsgroups or e-mail lists." In your case, XLinkBot saw your addition of a link to Facebook as inappropriate, and reverted it. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 17:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Locked Page?

The Plato page allowed additions, edits, to the Further reading section in the past. It doesn't appear to be possible any longer. I'm fairly new to this. Could the page be locked or something similar? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GaleCarrLV (talk • contribs) 17:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The Plato page has been protected from editing by anonymous or newly-registered editors because of excessive vandalism. If there are corrections or additions that you'd like to make, you have two options. The first option is to make another five edits, so that you've made ten, and to wait until your account has been registered for four days; your account will then be autoconfirmed and you will be able to edit Plato. These edits can be anything; I suggest the Lists of common misspellings as a source of easy and useful edits you can make. The second option is to suggest your corrections on the article talk page and to draw attention to them by using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

It should be noted that the only purpose of this account is to insert links to the website of a company called Parmenides Publishing, whose Vice President is one Gale Carr. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:11, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

How do I tag that an article needs clean-up

List of songs about Los Angeles seems to have songs not about LA, but California, for which there is also a list. I don't know all of these songs, but I'm sure many do. How do I tag them for clean-up? Thanks.Civic Cat (talk) 18:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

{{Cleanup|date=October 2010|reason=See talk page}} with a brief explanation on the talk page. A message on the talk page of the songs project may also be fruitful. – ukexpat (talk) 18:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

First part done.:-)Civic Cat (talk) 19:08, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Biology by team

I am the author of the wikipedia-page Biology by team which has been accepted by Wikipedia since march 2008. In february 2010 the following tag has been added:

This article may not meet the general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (February 2010)

I inserted additional information, changed and added several links including information about cooperations with several university institutes and so I am sure the page is worth to be published further on. Am I allowed, to delete the tag or will there be a routine to check the content and delete this tag? Best regards, Peter Holub, Head of the regional centre of science instruction at the University college of teacher training, Carinthia, AUSTRIA —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pholub (talk • contribs) 18:53, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

As with all maintenance tags, if you fix the problem that they refer to, feel free to take the tag back off again. In the case of adding reliable secondary sources, it helps to show which of the sources is being used to back up which bit of the article (see Wikipedia:Citing sources), to make it easier to check that the sources really are backing up the content, but that's less important (there's an alternate tag, {{no footnotes}} that you could perhaps replace the tag with: "This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate."). --ais523 20:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Size of quotations

I recently read in a Guideline or Help page that quoted text in articles should not be excessively long and should be, to some extent, condensed or edited/paraphrased. But I don't remember exactly where I saw it, and can't find it again. Can you direct me to a page where such a guideline or suggestion exists? I have looked through the Manual of Style but can't find what I'm looking for. Thanks. 12.73.186.254 (talk) 19:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you thinking of the content guideline Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Acceptable_use? --ais523 20:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Two things I found were WP:QUOTE, an essay; and WP:MOSQUOTE, the page in the Manual of Style. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 20:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A logical place for such a guideline would be under WP:MOSQUOTE. But I don't see anything there about the maximum allowable length of a quotation. Searching the archived discussion pages finds some possibilities, for example:

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103#Quotation length

--Teratornis (talk) 20:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, all. It was in WP:QUOTE. 12.73.186.254 (talk) 20:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Non-breaking space for template "convert"

Why does use of template "convert" not result in output of non-breaking space between the quantity and the unit?

In When to use RTDs or thermocouples template "convert" is used like:

  {{convert|-200|to|500|C|F}} 

The output is: -200 to 500 °C (-328 to 932 °F)

The space between "500" and "°C" is a normal space. This can result in "500" being on one line (at the end) and "°C" on the next line, depending on the zoom state of the web browser.

Shouldn't template "convert" output a non-breaking space?

--Mortense (talk) 20:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The place to discuss this is Template talk:Convert. There is already a discussion at Template talk:Convert#Nbsp? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Fluorescent background-color, text-color

can i make that, if yes, pls explain how. thx-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 20:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Make it where? Please be specific about what color you want to make and where you want to make it. You seem to have figured out how to change the background color of your signature. There are many colors which may be described as "fluorescent" (for example Cerise, Chartreuse, Safety orange). See {{Shades of orange}}, {{Shades of green}}, {{Shades of pink}}. Unfortunately you may find that depictions of fluorescent colors on your computer screen may not have the same visual "pop" as real-world objects in the same color. For example, consider the rather tepid appearance in File:Warnweste gelb.jpg of what is probably a vest in a screaming color if you were to see it outside in sunlight. By the way, this factor makes buying High visibility clothing via online shopping somewhat dicey, as photographs of the gear rarely indicate how it actually looks. --Teratornis (talk) 00:20, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

How do I delete an image I previously uploaded.

How do I delete an image I previously uploaded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahmadhibrahim (talk • contribs) 21:59, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

If it's at the English Wikipedia then place {{db-author}} on the image page. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC)