Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 September 7

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September 7

How many pages can a user edit in one minute?

I am curious about that how many pages a user can edit in one minute? I found a user edited more than 8,000 pages in 2 hours by using Wikipedia:Twinkle. Is he/she a robot?--Merry Rabbit 02:42, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

There is no technical cap on the number of pages a person can edit in a given period of time (except in cases of page moves or things caught by the edit filter). However, if people complain about the edits being made and the user doesn't respond, an account might be blocked temporarily as an unapproved bot if the edits are contentious. That said, user accounts that make a large volume of edits in a short period of time are typically normal humans that are using scripts or tools. Actual bots, on the other hand, will typically give mention that they're a bot by alluding to it in their user name (e.g., User:SineBot, User:ClueBot, etc). --slakr^\ talk / 02:57, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

That's about 66 edits per minute, nonstop, which I don't think is possible without running an unauthorized bot. Can you provide the name of the account?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It is possible that a user who is not technically a bot but rather a human using an semi-automated tool that does not run completely automatically edits under a bot account. As far as I am aware, users who make large numbers of edits in a short period of time with a semi-automated tool from an account need to have a bot flag on that account, so this editor would be counted as a bot under Wikipedias policies and guidelines. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:23, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Lenny Williams

[[File:File:Lennysingig.jpg]] Hello, My name is Debbie Williams and I am the wife and manager of Lenny Williams (Leonard Charles Williams) the singer. Lenny currently has a wikipedia page, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Williams) . I would like to request full access to add to this page and help keep it updated. I would like to begin by adding the attached picture of Lenny and possibly tying this page into his website and social media pages. Please let me know how I can move forward with this process. Thanks, Debbie Williams <phone number removed> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Debwms59 (talk • contribs) 03:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I hope you are reading this, because nobody is going to call you. You should read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Wikipedia isn't a social networking site, it is an encyclopedia, and the articles here are required to be from a neutral point of view. That means that people who are very close to the subject of an article (like, say the person's wife, or their manager) may find it difficult to maintain that level of neutrality. That doesn't mean you don't have valuable information or insight to share, it just needs to be handled carefully so Wikipedia's editorial standards can be maintained. What you should do is to start a discussion on the article's "Talk" page, located at Talk:Lenny Williams, explain who you are, and leave suggestions on how the article can be improved. Other people, who don't have a conflict of interest, can evaluate your suggestions and work out how to incorporate them in the article. I hope this was helpful! --Jayron32 03:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

You also need to ensure that you have reliable sources which are independent of the subject to verify any information which you want to add/amend. You should also understand that you don't own the article or have any special say over what is on it. This includes any reliably-sourced "negative" information. -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 19:01, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Archived, unclosed discussion with only 'Support' votes

Is an archived, unclosed discussion with only 'Support' votes valid grounds for further action? Is it possible to approach the foundation on the grounds of such a discussion? (Discussion in question is here). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 11:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Ïs there a free wikipedia article download/archiver?

I've been looking for a program where I can download wikipedia articles and store them like a virtual library on my computer to view off line. Does anyone know of such a program? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.184.235 (talk) 11:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

There are some possibilities and it depends on what exactly you want to have. If you want to download single articles, you can do this by clicking "Print/export" and then click "Download as PDF" (usually on the left side if you use Vector skin). You can also download a database dump of all articles, see Wikipedia:Database download, where you can choose between different options regarding how much of Wikipedia you want to download. Is any of these option what you want? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is another possibility of what you are looking for, Wikipedia:Books. GB fan please review my editing 12:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I was wondering if there was a wikipedia browser or something that was made specifically for the cause. But both these answers were very useful. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.184.235 (talk) 12:55, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

wrong information in advertisement under types of advertisement

Hello It is not actually types of advertisement it is mediums of advertisement as types of advertisements include commercial ads and non comercial ads by ngos and governments and under types of advertisements radio advertisement and online advertisement is included in in both physical and digital advertisement>and celebrity branding comes in digital advertisement and please notify me by mail — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dilf15 (talk • contribs) 12:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The place to discuss your concerns with an article is on the talk page of the article. You can find the talk page here, Talk:Advertising. GB fan please review my editing 12:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Has one of your pages been hacked into?

When I click on one of the photos of Judith Durham, the one 5th from the left on your site called 'Images For Judith Durham' , her photo flashes on for a second but then a porn site comes on!!! It seems to be only this one photo that's affected and I assume it's been hacked into???? I hope you can you fix it.

Pauline. Doncaster. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.60.45 (talk) 13:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

What page is affected? I went to the Judith Durham page and can't find any vandalism. Thanks! Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

This is the help desk for the encyclopedia Wikipedia. We have nothing called "Images For Judith Durham", but I recognize the term "Images for ..." from Google searches. One of our around 3.7 million articles is about Google but we are not associated with Google. I guess you made the Google search Judith Durham and clicked an image under the heading "Images for Judith Durham". The order of search results at Google can quickly change but when I did the search, our article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Durham was the search result right below the images. That is just a coincidence. It doesn't mean the images belong to us. The order of the images can change between Google searches. The 5th from the left in my search was called Monas2.jpg and lead to http://www.telinco.com/seekers/Judith_Durham.html with no porn. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there a noticeboard for NFC violations?

Resolved

What is the right place to report an editor for violating WP:NFC? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I should try to leave the editor a talk page message first. The above would be clearly overboard in this case. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:59, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

...CONTACTING ANOTHER USER.......

I simply want to e-mail the person who has done the BARRACKS SQUARE MACCLESFIELD page because I have lots of info on the subject. I cannot work out how to do this. The instructions on your pages are almost impossible to follow. Could you please tell me how to make contact at my email address <snip> .thank you. And what is the signature above you want at the end of the post?? I've no idea what it is. Will it copy and paste? Thank You ...Stepmoth Stepmoth (talk) 14:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Removing email address. —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 14:31, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

A number of different editors have contributed to Barracks Square, Macclesfield, England. If you have suggested improvements to the article you can discuss them on the article's talk page. If you click on the article's "View history" tab you can see who has done which edits; if you click on the talk page link for a particular user, you might find an "E-mail this user" link under "Toolbox" on the left hand menu, if you and the editor concerned have each enabled e-mail in your preferences. - David Biddulph (talk) 14:37, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The page history [1] shows that almost the whole article was written by User:Bsrc who has not edited since 27 June 2011. I would post to the talk page at Talk:Barracks Square, Macclesfield, England and notify Bsrc of the post at User talk:Bsrc and possibly also Special:EmailUser/Bsrc since the user may not notice edits to the talk page. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:59, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Add your sîgnature by typing four tildes (~~~~) after your message. (The ones there didn't form my signature because I typed around them, which tells the software not to recognize it as my signature. If I type them normally, I get Interchangeable|talk to me, my custom signature.) If you want a personalized signature like mine, you can customize your own signature by going to the "Preferences" window at the top of the screen. See this tutorial for a guide to customizing signatures.

Some other common controls while editing Wikipedia are:

• Adding two square brackets ([[]]) around a word will create a Wikilink to the article or page of that exact title. If you want the text that readers will see on the screen to be different from the title of the article, put down two left square brackets, enter the title of the article, type a pipe (|, you can find this in the "Wiki Markup" editing window, but it should be on your keyboard just above Enter/Return), and then type the text you want readers to see followed by two right square brackets. Thus, I can link every word in this sentence to Cactus.
• Add two apostrophes at each end of a text to make it italic, and three to make it bold. Add five apostrophes if you want both at once.
• To make a list of things, like I'm doing right now, add a * before every line.

1. I can also make a numbered list by adding a number sign
2. before
3. each
4. line.

That's pretty much all you need to know for now - I'll leave it to you to find the other controls, but you don't actually need many of them unless you do some major article-writing and referencing. Interchangeable|talk to me 00:40, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

'This article does not cite any references/sources' - I can see them!

Hello there,

I am part of an agency that looks after Wren Kitchens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Kitchens and it says that the article is unreliable and doesnt state any references/sources, but it clearly does and they are reliable independent news sources, why may this be? Any info would be great, thanks.

Callum

FunDrums (talk) 15:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

No one had updated the tag, that's all. Now it's been changed to a better tag saying that it has some references but more are needed. Other relevant tags have been added as well. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Callum, if you haven't already read WP:Conflict of interest , you need to do so. --ColinFine (talk) 22:20, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

How to rename a category where pages are added only via template transclusion

I am trying to split up the pages that make up Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in New York by county. I created a new sub category Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Westchester County. A few days later, I found the instructions at Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in the United States, and found I had named the category incorrectly. It should have been Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Westchester County, New York (with the state name added). The issue is that the pages get into the categories by virtue of the {{reqphoto}} or similar tag on the talk pages, not by normal categorization of the page. Because of this, I assume that all the talk pages have to be edited by hand to get them to point to the renamed category (I am willing to do this!).

Question: It the preference that I

1. Put in a normal speedy rename request for the category under WP:CFDS with reason C2C? I don't think the normal rename procedure would be able to take care of the underlying talk pages, so I would then edit the 13 or so talk pages to get them pointed correctly.
2. Or just create the new category, point the pages to the new category and put in a speedy delete for the old category?
3. Or create the new and make the old a redirect? I like this the least. I see no reason for a redirect.

BTW, the same fix has to be done for Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Dutchess County which only has 5 pages pointing to it.

Sorry for the confusion! --Arg342 (talk) 16:14, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

unreadable font

for several months every time I open Wikipedia it has a font I find hard to read.. I searched the archives but it did not help. how do I change my viewing font? Kathy D — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbd14425 (talk • contribs) 16:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

What about the font is hard to read? Are other websites hard to read as well? What browser are you using? If the font is too small, you can press ctrl-equal (at least in Firefox and Internet Explorer) to increase the font size. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Alice Lok Cahana

Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011

Dear editors:

I have tried to add the name of an article I wrote for the Houston Post about Jewish artist Alice Cahana to the page regarding her biography on Wikipedia. My article was written Dec. 26, 1976 while I was religion writer for the Post, and titled 'And you who got life instead...what are you doing with memories of that long night?"

A message appears on her Wikipedia article stating that an error has been made, but I can't figure out what the error is. I inserted the name of my article, written by my former name Charlene Warnken, under references, above the Houston Chronicle article which was cited, because my article preceded that article by several years. Now both of our articles are stuck in "limbo," accessible only by hitting "edit."

I have logged into Wickipedia under my new married name: Charlene Scott Myers. I appreciate anything you can tell me that will help me correct whatever error I have made.

```````` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charlene Scott Myers (talk • contribs) 17:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The technical problem was that every footnote in wikipedia needs both a <ref> tag at the start of the reference and a </ref> tag at the end of the reference. You were missing the latter. I removed the reference in its entirety, though, because it wasn't clear what fact(s) in the article the reference was supporting. We generally don't list every potentially relevant newspaper article at the bottom of an article - the only (newspaper) articles cited are the ones that support the (wikipedia) article text. I'd recommend re-adding the footnote, but placing it after the text in the article that it supports (or, even better, expanding the article to reflect the information in the newspaper). Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:47, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Can a magazine scan be used to support a reference?

There's a statement in an article that I want to add a reference to, and I have a scan of the page of the magazine that has the information. If I were to do an MLA format citation, should/could something like the page number or article title link to the scan (which would probably be uploaded to an external site)? Or perhaps a link at the end? Or should I just do the citation without the scan? - Purplewowies (talk) 18:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

You cannot use the scan as publishing it anywhere online would likely be a copyright violation and Wikipedia cannot link to them, see WP:LINKVIO. Assuming it is a reliable source you can cite with just the publication/issue/page number/article name etc (as much information as you can give). Яehevkor ✉ 18:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

No need to refer to a scan - we do not require references to be available online. Just cite the source using the {{Cite journal}} template and it should be OK. – ukexpat (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

And (although it does not apply in this case, since you've got the physical publication in front of you) I would like to point out for the record that in this age of Photoshop, nobody should cite to what purport to be scans of newspaper articles and the like when found online, as they may or may not be authentic. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:31, 7 September 2011 (UTC)