Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 April 21

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April 21

Thumbnail in Economic history of Colombia screwed up

The bottom thumbnail in Economic history of Colombia is all screwed up for me.... I get this same bizarre teal image if I click through to the source (full-res) image in commons. I can't figure out how to purge it. Help! Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Works fine for me. I suggest you delete your cache in your browser. Dismas|^(talk) 01:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Weird. Cleared my browser cache, and it's still teal in Firefox, but if I switch to IE it's fine. Probably not a wikipedia/commons problem I guess. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

A BIG PROBLEM!!!!

I have made a living person page, but You said I needed a reference. So I put a reliable reference, and you still said it would be deleted on May 1! Can you help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwerty23495 (talk • contribs) 02:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

It would help if you told us the article title. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

From their contributions it looks like the only article that they've created is Ryan Ciminelli but that's not up for AFD. Dismas|^(talk) 03:11, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

It was prodded as unsourced (removed by author, who added PBA profile); I've posted some of the better coverage to the talk page, and gnomed the categories, defaultsort, & persondata. Needs work, but should now pass initial scrutiny. Dru of Id (talk) 03:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Good on you, Dru! And they're so tempting to at least nibble on, too! Seriously, good work; thanks.  – OhioStandard (talk) 12:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Article talk page

Why can't I submit a comment about an article? I am a registered member, and I am logged in. I've been directed to a talk page for an article, but there's no place on that page for actually "talking" What gives? How do I make the contribution I want to? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Harderm1 (talk • contribs) 05:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

If no one else has created the page yet, the tabs across the top in my browser read

'Article' 'Talk' (a whole lot of space across the page) 'Create' 'New section'

with the tabs I've underlined selected, with this text:

Wikipedia does not have a talk page with this exact title.

To start a page called Talk:(Article name), type in the box below. When you are done, preview the page to check for errors and then save it.

and an edit box and 'Edit summary' line.

You should be seeing something similar. Dru of Id (talk) 05:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

If this is related to what you've posted on your user page, this link might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Donald_Aronow&action=edit&section=new . - Purplewowies (talk) 06:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Forum Club Handball-Adding a new article

Hello!

I want to add a new article in Wikipedia. It's a new organisation in handball called FORUM CLUB HANDBALL (FCH). My problem is that I don't have any sources except the homepage of this organisation. The general manager of FCH gave me a text for Wikipedia. What can I do? Greetings — Preceding unsigned comment added by HO72 (talk • contribs) 07:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Convince at least two separate (e.g., not BBC One and BBC Two) recognizable media organizations to cover it in depth, then cite them for the article you create. See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. Dru of Id (talk) 07:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi HO72! I'm afraid Dru of Id is correct, if somewhat laconic in his reply. Wikipedia articles are required to be about what we call "notable" subjects. The word "notable" has a pretty specific meaning in our guidelines and jargon; it's not identical to the usual English one. For example, one part of the relevant guideline excludes otherwise unknown people who become nationally or internationally famous for just a single event whose media coverage fades away very quickly. And we have parts of our guideline as to what's considered "notable", in our idiomatic sense of the word, for lots of different areas of interest and human endeavour. We have a specific guideline for musicians, for example, and for politicians, and - of greatest interest to your question - sports teams and organizations.

The notability guideline for sports personnel and organizations is pretty exacting in its requirements. You might also like to look at our corresponding notability guideline for organisations. Basically, your organization would need to get significant coverage in (preferably) the national media; at least two independent articles, is the usual informal expectation. You can use local news sources, too, e.g. city newspapers, but you'll need a lot more articles about your organisation at that level to qualify. Sorry we couldn't be more help; if you're able to generate at least some media attention, we'll be glad to assist. But any article with no references supporting it from reliable source publications would be deleted almost immediately, and thus not worth the trouble of creating.

Oh, one last thing: We have a conflict of interest policy that very strongly discourages individuals or groups from creating articles about themselves. The best practice, and one that won't involve you in a nasty wrangle over ignoring that policy, would be as follows: Once you have some media coverage, take those refs to the friendly volunteers at the Articles for Creation desk, and ask someone else to create the article about your organisation. Once the article is created, the right way to get it changed or updated would be NOT to do so yourself, but to post a message to its talk/discussion page to simply identify yourself as the founder of the group, or as one of its members, or whatever, and ask others to make the changes you want. I know it sounds cumbersome, but this process is the only way we've been able to keep the encylopedia from becoming just another free web hosting service for the world. It's supposed to be an encyclopaedia about notable topics, you understand, not myspace or facebook. Best of luck with your new venture, and with getting media coverage for it. Sorry to have to disappoint you, for now. Cheers,  – OhioStandard (talk) 11:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Help with reviewing Good article nominations

I nominated an article at WP:GAN some time ago. I decided to help with reviewing nominations there but I have no idea how or where to start. I know there is WP:WIAGA listing the criteria, but I am looking for something like Help:How to review good article nominations. WP:WIAGA#What is a good article? contains a lot of wikilinks to other pages I have to read (although I might know some of this already). Perhaps I should write Help:How to review good article nominations first combining all this scattered information in one place? Any experienced GA reviewer around who can provide some tipps on getting started? -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 08:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not a GA reviewer, but for me WP:WIAGA#What is a good article? seems clear enough. Are you basically proposing a rewrite of "WP:WIAGA#What is a good article?" that explains all of the concepts like "clear and concise", "copyright laws", "lead section", "layout" etc. inline instead of by using bluelinks? OR are you intending to write a step-by-step set of instructions like they have at Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles#How to review a Good article nomination? I worry that rewriting these guides might be regarded as redundant. How would your guide be different? -Thibbs (talk) 13:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I should read through WP:RGA then. I agree that the proposed new page might be considered redundant. Thanks. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 13:16, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikimarkup for a single newline after a displayed box?

Resolved

 – With thanks to editors Thibbs and Fuhghettaboutit!

Hi, all. I'd like to place a single line of whitespace immediately beneath a barnstar that a pleasant chap just gave me, to seperate the graphic from the subsequent text of my reply to thank him. I haven't been able to do that, though: My only choices seem to render as either no newline or two newlines. I could use some help, please: Feel free to edit the relevant section to demonstrate, if you like. Cheers,  – OhioStandard (talk) 10:58, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I've been experimenting with little success. One thing that slightly reduces this space is to replace the following:

|}</br>

:Thanks

with

|}</br>Thanks

and if you want to indent you can always use

|}{{indent|5}}Thanks

But I'm not sure it's worth it really. The response you left is perfectly readable to me. I think it would be clear with zero space or with a double space just as well as with a single space. Most editors would hardly notice. -Thibbs (talk) 13:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, I'd tried all those. But there's no reason we shouldn't be able to select a single rather than a double space after a box is rendered. The problem comes up a lot, actually, in article space as well, e.g. after a table of contents box. I'm a bit ADD, so my eyes are probably drawn to anomalies like this more readily than other people's would be, but it'd be nice to be able to choose just a single space. Does anyone else know how to do it?  – OhioStandard (talk) 14:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I played with various things and failed so I turned to tables and came up with a really ugly hack. Please do revert for any reason. It has problems, such as that someone who wishes to respond might be daunted by the code, and also the hack of making the table borders (which is what places the spacing) white so they disappear fails if, for example, someone is viewing Wikipedia with a personal CSS setting the background to non-white, or using the blackle-like option from preferences.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:35, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Hey, Fuhghettaboutit! What a pleasure to see you're still on the watch! An ugly hack? Nah, I'd call it a clever solution to a vexing difficulty, the importance of which cannot be understated. But then, I'm very drunk right now... Just kidding about that: Perhaps the great unwashed might be forgiven for thinking it just a teensy bit cumbersome when seen in edit mode, but it's a thing of beauty as it renders, and I'll treasure it always.... I do like it, actually, and will certainly keep it in place. Thanks for your effort, very much; it might even prompt me to learn something about table markup, too, of which I'm almost entirely ignorant. Cheers,  – OhioStandard (talk) 01:15, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Glad to help, and thanks for the kind words!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Try {{break}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:35, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Does that do anything different than just using <br /> which was tried? I just previewed using it and the same problem of two line spacing results.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:53, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

How can I disable the spam filter?

When trying to collect sources for an article on a page in my userspace, I often come across links such as

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=solutions%20of%20the%20congruence%202n-2&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ams.org%2Fmcom%2F1984-43-167%2FS0025-5718-1984-0744937-1%2FS0025-5718-1984-0744937-1.pdf&ei=Q4yST62vF4OLswaKy7XeBA&usg=AFQjCNHgrWFNnhzGzrWzINJN2QuGvutldw

The http://www.google.de/url? part of the url seems to trigger the spam filter. How can I prevent the spam filter from being activated by this? -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 11:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

You could ask for an exception to be added at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. Is the pdf no longer hosted on that website? Яehevkor ✉ 11:20, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's there at http://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/1984-43-167/S0025-5718-1984-0744937-1/S0025-5718-1984-0744937-1.pdf. Just a case of chopping off the spurious tops & tails & turning %3A into : and %2F into / - David Biddulph (talk) 11:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

And (for me at least) if I put the google url into my browser it will redirect to the real url, so the real url is there in my address bar. - David Biddulph (talk) 12:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Is there a userright that can ignore the spam filter? After all, it is not my intention to spam. The spam filter wastes time in which I want to make good faith edits to improve the encyclopedia and massively annoys me. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 11:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why you would want to put the google url into Wikipedia? The url of the source is the ams.org address. - David Biddulph (talk) 12:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand that. However, when I only want to collect reference urls on a page in my userspace to put the references in articles later, I often only want to go quickly through Google and save a large number of urls to be put into articles in mainspace later. Furthermore the time I have available for Wikipedia is limited, thus this is a big (and in my opinion unnecessary) annoyance preventing me from doing good faith edits to store Google search results for references on a page in my userspace for later use. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 12:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I am going to propose the whitelisting of http://www.google.de/url? at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 12:21, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed at WT:WHITELIST#http://www.google.de/url?. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 12:32, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

~ Wikipedia Most Visited Page ~

is nobody updating this??? -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Popular_pages there's nothing current on google Thingstofollow (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC).

Yeah, nobody is updating that any more. The reasons may have to do with traffic spam artificially boosting the numbers for some pages and generally producing unreliable figures. -Thibbs (talk) 12:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Language Identification Guide

Where is Wikipedia's Language Identification Guide? I remember seeing an article here that told you how to identify unknown languages by looking for various letters and the like, but now it is impossible to find. I've tried googling everything I can think of to no avail. It's very Orwellian.Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii (talk) 13:58, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not Wikipedia's page, but if you go to Google Translate then one of the options in the "From:" dropdown menu is "Detect language". If you copy&paste the foreign-language text into the window, Google will automatically detect the language and it will be displayed in the "From:" field. -Thibbs (talk) 14:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess you are looking for Wikipedia:Language recognition chart. The mainspace article Language identification has some external links to language tools. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Young justice Episodes Somebody Deleted all the episode names and dates

So i wanted to see when the next episode was on and they are all gone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Young_Justice_episodes#Season_1_.282010.E2.80.932011.29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.168.8.40 (talk) 14:12, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

The page history [1] shows an unregistered user removed the episodes 45 minutes ago. I have restored them. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Attribution question

I was patrolling new pages and I discovered Carlo T. Piranio, which contains content copied from here. The content is released under a CC-BY-SA license so it needs attribution. Can someone point me to the proper template to create the attribution? Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:20, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Wikia is under the WikiMedia Foundation, although they are clearly related. But I think the info pertinent to CC-BY-SA material at WP:CWW should be largely applicable to this situation. Attribution can be made as described here or if you're short of time you can tag the problem as shown here. I think. -Thibbs (talk) 21:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Attempt to request Flickr (CC-BY) image upload declined as "File is corrupt. Still not able to view the image."

I was looking for an image to illustrate Boots Motel (a U.S. Route 66 historic restoration in progress) and found Search Flickr for images with the keywords: "Boots Motel" under these licenses: cc-by or cc-by-sa but my request on files for upload is being failed repeatedly with "file is corrupt".

Description: 2008 | Boots Motel, Carthage, MO

URL: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3244/2959307344_f7697079b8_z.jpg

License: Creative Commons Attribution {{Cc-by-3.0}}

Link To License Information: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maureendidde/2959307344/

Author/Copyright Holder's Name: 'maureen lunn' (Maureen Didde)

Article To Be Used On/Reason For Upload: Boots Motel --66.102.83.61 (talk) 07:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Symbol declined.svg File upload request declined. File is corrupt. Still not able to view the image. WheresTristan 17:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to do next as these links do work from here (they return a photo of an old neon sign of a US route 66 motel). 66.102.83.61 (talk) 18:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the person who declined your request was seeing but I had no problems with the image. I have uploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons and you can view it locally at File:Boots Motel (US 66).jpg.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:20, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks good, thank you, I shall carefully tuck this away in an infobox so that it does not get misplaced. :) 66.102.83.61 (talk) 19:57, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Firefox article needs help

The firefox article is in SERIOUS need of repair, the way it stands currently is horrible. I have made edits to try and keep it relevant, but so many sections are outdated and contain irrelevant information, that trying to maintain the article on my own has become far to much of a burden.

I would love it if we could get some more people editing this article regularly, because I am really the only one doing that. Trewyy (talk) 20:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Comment: I wouldn't note it as "in SERIOUS need of repair, as it is rated as B-class. However, it is outdated. Drla8th! (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

The article is overseen by a number of different WikiProjects (groups of editors who concentrate on certain topics of their expertise or special interest). You might want to ask them for help on their various talk pages. The different WikiProjects that cover "Firefox" include WikiProject Computing, WikiProject Software (specifically the Free Software department), WikiProject Internet, and WikiProject Apple Inc.. You could also ask for help on the article's talk page here. -Thibbs (talk) 21:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help. As for asking help on the talk page, that is essentially useless considering the amount of times I have asked for help, and received none for asking. I will go to each WikiProject, and request help. As for the article being B-Class, I would seriously doubt that considering it likely hasn't been reviewed in quite a while. Thanks again! ҭᴙᴇᴡӌӌ 15:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Tarzan

For Tarzan, Glenn Morris also played the character in Tarzan's Revenge on 1938. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.168.14.237 (talk) 20:35, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Please discuss at Tarzan's Revenge or wherever appropriate. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Specifically, it's probably best to discuss at Talk:Tarzan's Revenge. -Thibbs (talk) 21:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Typo Note 3 and in body of text, Article about Joan Szymko

My work is cited, but my name is misspelled. It should be Jan Maher, and in the note, Maher, Jan. I'm sorry I don't know how to do this simple correction myself...

In 1993 Szymko took a position directing the Aurora Chorus in Portland, Oregon. She founded the women's choir Viriditas Vocal Ensemble in 1994. Szymko composed the music for the Broadway musical Do Jump![2] and Jan Mahler's play Most Dangerous Women.[3]

^ Mahler, Jan (2006). Most dangerous women: bringing history to life through readers' theater.

Y Done. -Thibbs (talk) 21:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

To do this yourself, click on the up arrow in the reference and that will take you to where the reference was used. Click on "Edit" at the beginning of the section, of "Edit this page" at the top of the page, and look for "<ref>" and </ref>. Make the correction between the two uses of "ref". If the reference is used more than once and you see "<ref name=refname/>", click on the letters a, b, c after the arrow.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Answer

Can somebody answer my question over at WT:Vandalism? It's been there for a day. (Section:Ironic?) Drla8th! (talk) 21:26, 21 April 2012 (UTC)  Done by Thibbs --Drla8th! (talk) 21:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

No ratings options on President Obama's article

To whom it may concern:

I am curious as to why we are able to rate each article at the bottom of the page except for President Obama's page. It is the only page I cannot access the ratings options that are located at the bottom of every other page.

Is Wikipedia acting on behalf of an individual? Is that ethical? Can your site be trusted if you are not willing to allow people to judge the validity of the article on the current President when you allow us to judge the article on other Presidents?

I am very curious to know what your thoughts are on this matter.

Please advise, DJS — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djgs82373 (talk • contribs) 21:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Barack Obama has a "Help improve this article" box instead where readers can write specific feedback which seems more helpful to editors working on the article. See Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5/Help#Why is there a new Article Feedback Tool? There are around 22000 articles testing this feedback tool. A lot of articles regarding the United States presidential election, 2012 were manually selected for the test in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles. This includes Obama and all the main Republican candidates. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:58, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

(e/c) At any point did it occur to you that it might be better to just ask neutrally rather than jumping to some nefarious conspiracy theory conclusion? <rest of post omitted as redundant to the above>--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Not all articles have ratings boxes. Most of them do, but not all, and I'm not sure there's any pattern to which are ratable and which are not. Symbol (chemical element), for example, has no rating box and it seems unlikely that there is any political motivation behind that. It's also worth noting that other prominent political figures like Mitt Romney also have no ratings box. Perhaps the decision to remove rating boxes from articles on "trending" politicians is that such ratings are almost certain to be polluted by ratings based on personal feelings toward the candidate rather than on the article. If you are really curious you could perhaps get more information by posting a question here. -Thibbs (talk) 22:12, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I see the "Help improve this article" box on all of Barack Obama, Symbol (chemical element) and Mitt Romney. They are among the around 22000 articles displaying this instead of the "Rate this page" box. But there appears to be browser issues. Internet Explorer and Opera don't display the "Help improve this article" box for me. Firefox and Google Chrome display it. All four browsers show "Rate this page" on the 99.4% of articles not selected for the "Help improve this article" test. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

My version of Firefox seems not to display it either. I wonder if it's only compatible with some versions of Firefox. -Thibbs (talk) 23:36, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Is there any way I can get rid of that awful "Improve this page" box that seems to accompany Article Feedback 5?

But not remove the entire feedback widget itself? The box that is perpetually in the lower right corner of the page is the one of which I speak, and the "x" in the box does nothing. I'll even take code that I can put on my css or js page to make it disappear. - Purplewowies (talk) 22:21, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Add this line to Special:MyPage/common.css (applies to all skins) or Special:MyPage/skin.js Special:MyPage/skin.css (your current skin):

#articleFeedbackv5-bottomrighttab{display:none}

PrimeHunter (talk) 22:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! It works (though I added it to my current skin's css page). - Purplewowies (talk) 01:05, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Why does the "X" in the box not work, and why does the box need to be there floating at the bottom right in the first place? —{|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|} 01:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC).