Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 September 23

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

September 23

What exactly is critical commentary?

I'm trying to understand when certain images can be used under fair use.

The fair use guidelines gives this example for cover art:

Cover art: Cover art from various items, for identification only in the context of critical commentary of that item (not for identification without critical commentary).

What is meant by critical commentary? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spines11 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You are quoting the guideline from Wikipedia:Non-free content#Images. Try searching the talk page archives for: critical commentary. That finds some past discussion you can study. (The major policy and guideline pages on Wikipedia often have extensive talk page archives which greatly expand on the material on the policy or guideline pages themselves.) If that doesn't answer your question, and nobody answers here, you could try Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Speaking for myself, I think we should not have any fair use images on Wikipedia. Instead we need to reform the copyright laws - perhaps consider abolishing them. Having fair use images on Wikipedia reduces pressure for copyright reform by partially satisfying some people. Also, not all the different language Wikipedias allow fair use images, so having them on the English Wikipedia makes translating articles into other languages more difficult - by giving people one more complication to deal with. --Teratornis (talk) 01:05, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Weasel words?

How do you tag something as weasel words? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atomforyou (talk • contribs) 00:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

{{weasel}} CRGreathouse (t | c) 00:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

For future reference you might add a link to Wikipedia:Template messages to your user page, or put the {{Template messages}} or {{Wikipedia template messages}} template on your user page. --Teratornis (talk) 00:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I do have it bookmarked, but I had looked up weasel words on Wikipedia and it didn't show the template there. Atomforyou (talk) 00:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

If you refer to WP:WEASEL, you're right, there is no obvious link from that section to the {{Weasel}} message template. I don't know whether that omission is deliberate or merely something nobody thought of adding yet. You could discuss it on the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (words to watch) if you think that page needs links to the corresponding message templates (I could see an argument for that). In the meantime, you can also look for templates by searching the template: namespace with {{Google custom}} or Special:Search. For example:

Type this	To get this	What it produces, or searches for
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:|weasel|Search Wikipedia's Template: namespace for "weasel"}}	Search Wikipedia's Template: namespace for "weasel"	Search Wikipedia's Template: namespace for "weasel"

which delivers the goods in the top result. --Teratornis (talk) 01:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Now that I've actually searched, I see there is also a {{Weasel-inline}} which might be better, depending on what you are editing. --Teratornis (talk) 01:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Turns out I was looking for the weasel words template that shows "[who?]". Thank you very much though! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atomforyou (talk • contribs) 02:05, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for a small bit of wiki code

Could someone please tell me the code for a template which would return "X" if it appears on a talk page, but "Y" if it appears on a page that is not a talk page?

My signature line performs a substitution of {{freeze}} to produce a link to the last revision of the non-talk page in question, so people know how the article looked when I saw it. I want the text of that link to say something different depending on whether it appears on a non-talk page, versus on a talk page.

Thanks. AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 04:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

{{Namespace detect}}? Some magic words switch depending on namespace as well. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! AGradman / talk / how this article and talk looked when I made this edit 23:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit

I realize that in some parts of an article, I can't "edit". Why is it? Does it mean that particular section is permanent? AiyaAiya2010 (talk) 05:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aiya2010 (talk • contribs) 05:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Your inability to edit certain pages is probably due to the page being protected. If you seek to change the article, please the templates {{Edit semi-protected}} (if the article is semi-protected – only autoconfirmed users may edit) or {{Edit protected}} (if the article is fully protected – only mods may edit it) on the talk page of the article. Protector of Wiki (talk) 05:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Since the question regards "parts" of articles, I'm not sure this is about protection. My guess is that you are trying to edit the references section and only seeing markup that looks like this: {{Reflist}} or </references> If so, that code calls citations that are placed in the text of the article inside of other markup that might look like this <ref>citation text</ref>—you see the references in read mode, but in edit mode they're in the text (see Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners). Otherwise maybe you are looking at the result of other types of templates—things in curly braces ({{name}}) that call pre-made text written elsewhere. Note that you can see and edit the entire text of an article by clicking on the "edit this page" or "edit" button (its name depends on what skin you are using) at the top of the page, rather than the section editing buttons on the right hand side of pages.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your help! :)

AiyaAiya2010 (talk) 06:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, the lead section by default does not have a right-hand section edit link. That confuses a lot of people who are new to editing on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:LEAD#Editing the lead section. --Teratornis (talk) 08:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And if an article contains media files such as images, you cannot edit them in the edit window along with the text. You have to use separate image editing software such as Inkscape, Photoshop, or GIMP. You might also notice extra user interface gizmos such as the search box, the toolbox, the standard footer, etc., which are not part of the article text and thus not straightforward to edit. --Teratornis (talk) 08:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It is possible to add an [edit] button for the lede section too. Go to Preferences > Gadgets > scroll down to User interface gadgets: editing and then tick the box marked "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page". Mjroots (talk) 09:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

overriding default collapsed/expanded state of template

how do i override the default collapsed/expanded state of a template within individual articles ? --Penbat (talk) 09:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Some templates support this, others do not. From your contributions I see that you may be asking about the two templates at the foot of User:Penbat/Christchurch Airfield. The difference between the two is that one includes the parameter "state=expanded" and one does not; sadly, neither template currently allows for the "state" to be overridden, though I'm sure a template expert could add this. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Interserve - logo incorrect

I want to update the logo on this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interserve. The new logo can be found on the Interserve website - http://www.interserve.com/news-media/media-library#toggle Please can someone help me? Thanks sdunthorne —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sdunthorne (talk • contribs)

You are not yet autoconfirmed; you cannot upload images until your account is four days old and you've made at least 10 edits. In the mean time, if you take a look at WP:Uploading images, I think it should explain everything (if not, feel free to come back here with specific questions).

While you're here, I should point out that there might be a touch of conflict of interest here; please read the link WP:COI before continuing work on the article. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for help and advice. I am attempting to just update the out of date bits but definitely see your point about a possible conflict of interest. In the meantime as I don't have rights to update images please can you assist using the details above? Sdunthorne (talk) 15:08, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Give me a moment and I will upload the new version of the logo. – ukexpat (talk) 15:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

 Done – ukexpat (talk) 15:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

how to move downward

hello,

how can i move on my personal page the "Pages i intend for cleaning"? thx.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 12:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I added the template {{clear left}} to make the text appear below the babel templates that were crowding that section. Does it appear now as you intended? If you change that to just {{clear}}, it will move the appearance of the text to an area below the bottom of all of the infoboxes.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

well, what should i say, THX :=) :D-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 20:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

User pages as personal websites

Are users allowed to use User subpages as personal websites, such as here? ProGene (talk) 15:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

No, per WP:NOTMYSPACE. User pages exist for you to tell other users about yourself as it pertains to your activities on Wikipedia. That page should probably be referred to WP:MFD. – ukexpat (talk) 16:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Please consider not doing that (MFD, I mean). I realize I'm in the minority these days, but at least take a look at WP:Why do you care? and WP:Editors matter and consider their underlying philosophy. The user in question appears to be contributing to the Encyclopedia in good faith, has not edited the page in question in 2.5 years, deleting the page will not free up server space, and on his user page he acknowledges the situation in a good faith way. Why mess with that? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

OK good points and I have struck that suggestion, in this case. But we should not be afraid to enforce WP:NOTMYSPACE when it is appropriate. – ukexpat (talk) 16:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Someone has an account name I wanted when I first signed up...

Hi all,

I just recently (well, a few months ago) signed up for an account under this user name, when both of my other "preferred" names were taken. After becoming more versed in using Wikipedia and searching around, I have found out that the account I wanted does not have a user page, does not have any contributions at all. Is it possible to take over this account or is that not possible?

Thanks for any help you can provide me. Jmanfffreak (talk) 15:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

• You want WP:CHU/U where you can "usurp" an account name if it has no edits. Arakunem^Talk 16:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
• Thanks Arakunem, I'll check it out. Jmanfffreak (talk) 16:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

How do I resolve a debate over an entry about my company?

Some time ago my company discovered that a Wikipedia entry had been created for it (MIB Group Inc.). The article had some false and misleading information in it so we edited it and created a brief but factual entry. That was fine for a while until a user came along an created a rather verbose article that again contained false, misleading and inaccurate information. It was also flagged as "blatant advertisement", but it was not written by anyone at MIB. I tried to revert back to our old entry but someone rather quickly killed that and reverted back to the lengthy article. How do we resolve this situation? As it stands the article is full of factual errors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bmerr71 (talk • contribs) 16:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Because of your conflict of interest you should use the article's talk page to explain the changes that you think should be made, providing references to reliable sources to support your suggestions. – ukexpat (talk) 17:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

How would that process work? Would we actually make the changes and then explain them on the talk page, or would we explain the changes on the talk page and wait for other users to make them? Sorry, just new at this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bmerr71 (talk

The revert you mentioned was not performed by "someone". It was performed by an automated bot. When an anonymous IP address is used to erase large blocks of text from a page, it is almost always vandalism. If the user who did it had an account, the bot wouldn't have reverted the changes. As for the talk page, you use it to explain your concerns and your actions. If you have a concern, state it there. If you perform an action, explain what you did there. Then, other editors can read it and, if they disagree, discuss it with you. If another editor does in fact revert your changes without discussing the situation on the talk page, that editor will appear to be operating in an unsatisfactory manner. -- kainaw™ 12:53, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Efficient way of downloading Featured Content ONLY?

Hi,

I was thinking that a possibly interesting alternative/complement to offering "all of wikipedia" for download, would be to offer only featured content. While these represent around 0.1% of articles (not sure about other featured elements), I think it would offer a very specialized/compact "super" information repository (in the sense that all content is "cream of the crop").

Cheers,

Wil —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.88.8.193 (talk) 16:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Try Portal:Featured content. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Help

How do I add a website stub? I have been going throughout the help section for about an hour or so.... please help!!

Hannah! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Preciousdiamonds (talk • contribs) 17:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You mean how do you create a stub article about a website? If so, advice follows. If you are intending to edit on behalf of a business (http://www.preciousdiamonds.net), please read WP:COI and WP:SPAM.

A Wizard is available to walk you through these steps. See the Article Wizard.

Thank you.

Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines with which all articles should comply. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Wikipedia:Your first article. You might also look at Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. An Article Wizard is also available to walk you through creating an article. – ukexpat (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Movement in the US similar to Chipko Movement

There was a similar movement in the United States too. Women climbed up redwood trees and refused to come down till the authorities promised those trees would not be cut. (similar to Chipko Movement) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.206.0.79 (talk) 17:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

What is your question? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia help desk is for questions relating to how to use Wikipedia, not for general knowledge questions, as is mentioned several times on this page. Please ask at the reference desk if you have a factual question. Chevymontecarlo 18:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I read this that the poster has information which they want added to Chipko movement. If that is the case, and if you have reliable sources for the information, please go ahead an add it to the article!. --ColinFine (talk) 22:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Printing Hebrew from Wikipedia

When printing the article titled "Sukkah", there is a prayer in Hebrew that prints from left-to-right, even though on the screen it displays correctly as right-to-left. In addition, I created a Wikipedia Book containing a number of articles related the Jewish holiday of "Sukkot", and all Hebrew notations appear in the PDF the opposite way as on the screen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevenbparks (talk • contribs) 23:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You might like to ask this question at the Village pump, as that's where the hard-core techies hang out! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 17:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there a template which, when saved, creates a URL pointing to that revision of the page?

Hi,

I'm trying to create a template which, when saved, creates a URL pointing to that revision of the page (i.e., the revision as of the moment of the save).

Using "fullurl" and the instructions for creating MediaWiki URLs, I have figured out how to produce a link to the "page history" containing only that revision:

• Input: {{fullurl:{{PAGENAME}}|offset={{subst:CURRENTTIMESTAMP}}&limit=1&action=history}}
  
• Output: //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help_desk/Archives/2010_September_23&offset=20100924005649&limit=1&action=history

But I want to generate the URL of that revision, directly.

Unfortunately, the URLs of specific revisions contain an "oldid", and I can't figure out how to obtain the oldid of a page. Is there some other way? (My ultimate goal is to tweak my signature line so it does what it claims it does, as I describe it at the village pump.) Thanks. AGradman / talk / how this article and talk looked when I made this edit 23:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Does {{REVISIONID}} work? Compare - with the oldid you get from the URL of the diff of my edit. TFOWR 23:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and mw:Help:Magic words is where I stole REVISIONID from... ;-) TFOWR 00:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

We're on the right track:

• Input: {{REVISIONID}}, output = -
• Input:{{fullurl:{{PAGENAME}}|oldid={{REVISIONID}}}}, Output://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help_desk/Archives/2010_September_23&oldid=-

However, we need to make the oldid permanent, but here is what happens when we use {{subst:REVISIONID}}:

• Input: {{subst:REVISIONID}}, output =
• Input:{{fullurl:{{PAGENAME}}|oldid={{REVISIONID}}}}, Output://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help_desk/Archives/2010_September_23&oldid=

Presumably, {{subst:REVISIONID}} is a function that MediaWiki can't perform ... because MediaWiki hasn't yet assigned an ID to the revision. So we might need another trick. AGradman / talk / how this article and talk looked when I made this edit 00:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, dammit, I knew it wouldn't be as easy as I'd thought... sorry! You won't like it, but the best I can offer is T8181... WONTFIX :-( If we can get at the previous revision ID, would that help? {{PREVREVISIONID}} doesn't seem to exist (at least not in the current version of MediaWiki here) but there's maybe another way to get it... You might have more luck at the Village Pump, by the way. TFOWR 01:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I have started a thread at VPT. AGradman / talk / how the subject page looked when I made this edit 03:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

HOLY COW, that bugzilla page is a WONTFIX of exactly my request !!!! That's quite demoralizing :( AGradman / talk / how the subject page looked when I made this edit 03:29, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Can you give us more information about the higher-level goal here? It wasn't until many comments through that I realized you wanted the revid of the page itself and of the revision in which it was saved, rather than a pointer to some historical revision and/or of some other page. For example, there is the "Permanent link" link in the Toolbox, so readers can always access the type of URL you are constructing. DMacks (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, somehow overlooked last sentence of question, which answers my concern and why my solution won't help. DMacks (talk) 15:21, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Where should a source related subpage go?

Hi. Libertarianism has problems as an article, both in the content and current editorial discussion. This isn't really new or remarkable. Talk:Libertarianism has problems. Long discussions are reliant on sources, that quickly disappear into the article's archives. It would be greatly useful for this page to have a sub-page that contains a full bibliography of both accepted and rejected sources, editor summaries of their usefulness, and appropriate short quotations. This would be useful for ongoing editorial discussions on Talk, to supply a way to reference the body of collective sourcing knowledge quickly. Should this be placed under Talk:Libertarianism/sources or under Libertarianism/sources as another editor suggested? Has any other articles done this previously which we can review to copy their action? Fifelfoo (talk) 23:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

A subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Libertarianism might be more appropriate, since the references would probably be useful for related articles, and the WikiProject page is a good and durable place to document its subpage structure. --Teratornis (talk) 00:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Or put a box at the top of Libertarianism's talk page that won't get archived. That way it will stay visible. AGradman / talk / how this article and talk looked when I made this edit 00:47, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

We're likely to run to thirty or fourty sources in quick succession; so a topbox is unlikely to be useful. I'll have a think about using the Project page; however, the nature of the underlying editorial discussion is one of scope and is quite acrimonious. I don't want to tread that muck of acrimony into the general project if I can avoid it. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:05, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Sharp disagreements are typical for political topics. As long as everyone abides by WP:CIVIL, strong disagreement by itself should not be a problem. You might ask on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Libertarianism what other members of that project think about bringing a subpage of references into the WikiProject. Hashing out the dispute within the project might reduce the need to repeat it for other articles relating to libertarianism. --Teratornis (talk) 02:50, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, moved discussion of this item to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Libertarianism#Can_the_Project_house_a_sub-page_for_a_bibliography_of_sources for project editor's opinions. (The editorial problem isn't so much disagreement, but the acrimony involved). Fifelfoo (talk) 03:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)