Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 January 13

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January 13

Is it gluten-free?

Is cornflour gluten free? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.37.142.170 (talk) 01:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

If it has no wheat flour mixed in, then yes. Gluten is a product created when wheat flour mixes with water. Some close relatives of wheat, like barley, also produce gluten, but other flours like corn flour and soy flour have no gluten. The article Gluten-free diet has a list of common flours that are also gluten-free. --Jayron32 01:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Gluten is a generic term to refer to most grain proteins. Corn contains gluten. Confusion is generated by the public refering to only certain grain proteins as gluten. This is incorrect usage. Wheat gluten is gliadin and other grain glutens have more specific names. This usage confusion has become common and is used by celiac sufferers, also. The problem glutens for celiac disease people are: wheat (and related grains like spelt), barley (malts usually made from this), rye, and oats, although not containing offending gluten, are usually contaminated by wheat from shared processing facilties and proximity of growth within hundreds of km. from wheat fields. Corn and rice are the usual grains consumed by celiac suferrers. 99.251.114.120 (talk) 02:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid the Wikipedia article titled Gluten directly contradicts what you have to say on this matter. To whit: "True gluten, with gliadin and glutenin, is limited to certain members of the grass family. The stored proteins of maize and rice are sometimes called glutens, but their proteins differ from gluten." --Jayron32 02:28, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I can only find references to the food industry uing the terms rice gluten and corn gluten at this time. The US government uses the terms in many documents. I will have to consult technical texts to look further as the research has been tainted with celiac misinformation. I was informed years back by research people for the basis of my statements above. I place no faith in wikipedia's accuracy on technical matters of this kind and misinformtion tends to spread rapidly on the Web. Next thing you know it's in a dictionary and then it has to be the truth [sarc] 99.251.114.120 (talk) 05:53, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

In the future, please use the reference desk for asking questions not related to the actual editing of Wikipedia. —Entropy (T/C) 21:54, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Is this a scam

Quick request: Wikipedia is considering going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA, the Internet censorship bills. It'd be huge news, jar rank-and-file Internet users out of complacency, and serve as a turning point in the effort to beat these bills.

Will you encourage Wikipedia to protest censorship by going dark? Just click here.

And you can use these links to ask your friends to join the cause:

If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends. If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet

Thanks!

Demand Progress

Is this legit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yan100 (talk • contribs) 03:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Some kind of off wiki canvassing for the proposal. --lTopGunl (talk) 03:54, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Verification

i have given refrences of some of his students who have taken traing under this man and some newspaper articles. I have incorporated images that are proof for the same what else should i provide for the verification — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.30.49.77 (talk) 04:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

What article are you refering to? —teb728 t c 06:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for inconvenience I have done an unintentional mistake on one of your pages.

To Wikipedia Help desk team members

While reading the page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Amman_bombings) in the section of The Attacks Subsection 1.2 i.e. Grand Hyatt Hotel was deleted accidentally. By mitake I clicked the [edit] icon and at the same time I don't know how I clicked the save icon. But as it appears First I have sellected the subsection 1.2 or deleted the part and then by wrong touch I have saved the changes. For me it was very strange and funny but it happened. All happened in one second and I couldn't do anything.

Please return the Subsection of [Grand Hyatt Hotel] again.

Sorry for inconvenience. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.46.146 (talk) 04:10, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It is fixed. GB fan 04:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirect problem

There's a common problem with early aircraft (the area I mainly edit in) where an aircraft article is misnamed and cannot be movedbecause there is a rediect page with the proper name. I vaguely know how to do this, by requesting an admin to blow the redirect away, but not exactly. So I go to wiki:redirectfor illumination & and get a page on an external page. Wassup, doc?TheLongTone (talk) 06:54, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Follow the directions at Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requesting technical moves. Goodvac (talk) 07:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

If the redirect page has only one version, you can just move to the redirect. —teb728 t c 07:06, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Cheers, both for the link to the proper way of doing this & for the quick n'dirty workaround. but I am curios as to why following th elink on a wp page gts me [[1]]. I noticed it last night, & it's still happening.TheLongTone (talk) 07:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Which link from which page is getting you there? - David Biddulph (talk) 08:13, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, now it seems to be sorted I can't find it again....., sorry. The snark was a boojumTheLongTone (talk) 08:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Whatever the page, the link would be Wiki:redirect. Some people mistakenly associate "Wiki" with Wikipedia. (See "Wiki" in Meta:Interwiki map.) —teb728 t c 09:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, yes. So perhaps the OP intended to go to WP:Redirect, instead of wiki:redirect? - David Biddulph (talk) 15:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Worm

Hello I ave noticed that you are now sending header adverts in worm. Please desist. I may be in Saudi Arabia, but that is even more reason to object receiving rubbish in worm from outside. Thank you.

I don't understand worm in this context. Please explain. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia doesn't send any adverts, ever, in any form, I think you must either not be talking about Wikipedia, or else your own system has some malware. It is possible you might get some help from the Wikipedia computing reference desk, but you will need to be a lot more specific about what the problem is. --ColinFine (talk) 14:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

We had that ugly banner asking for donations... Von Restorff (talk) 14:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

How to load images and link it with a new article created

Dear Wikipedia Team,

I just submitted a new article created for our company. As I went through the Article Wizard in creating the article, I was not able to find an information on how to upload the resort images to link it with the text I submitted for the article. The idea is to put some images on my article such as few of our villa categories, restaurants and leisure facilities.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Information.irufushi (talk • contribs) 11:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, you can find the manual here: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images. You can upload an image by following this link (<-- click) and then place it in the article as described in the manual. Please read the information before uploading and note that you are releasing the images under a licence, meaning that third parties can also use it. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 11:13, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Before uploading images, you should read the notability criteria for companies and explain why your resort hotel is notable. Wikipedia is not to be used to advertise your business. Simply supplying a web address and its distance from various other attractions does not make an encyclopedia article. Your user name is also in breach of Wikipedia's policy on usernames and you have a very obvious conflict of interest when it come to writing about your resort hotel. Astronaut (talk) 11:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

In fairness, there was a lot more in the article than that - at least until I discovered it was a copy-paste job from Facebook and a couple of other places, and blanked the offending material per WP:AFCR... `Yunshui 雲‍水 23:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Reported to WP:UAA as a WP:SPAMNAME. – ukexpat (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

About size of articles

Hello. How can I find out size of article in English version Wikipidia? Thanks. What'sGoingOn (talk) 11:10, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, the English Wikipedia has 3.8 million articles. For individual pages you can find the size by clicking the "View History" button on the top of the page (or alternatively, there is an arrow, click the arrow and then click view history). Behind the edits it states the number of bytes. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 11:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

You go to the history tab. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 11:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Warning function

Is there such a function that warns people not to enter a large page before the page itself loads? This might be helpful if the article is large and that the browser might crash. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 12:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it. It sounds more like a problem with your browser. Can you please give us an example of such an article?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

My userpage was 245k in size, and people were complaining that it was crashing their broswers. I want to keep it, and I'd like a function that warns people to enter at their own risk. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 00:59, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry but such a warning is totally nonsensical. According to gtmetrix.com the size is 367KB in 32 requests. If you want to be nice to people using TOR or living in countries with bad internet access you could probably shave a few seconds off their loading time, but explaining people that netscape navigator 3 is going to crash does not make sense, because that problem has nothing to do with you or your userpage. A random youtubemovie is 396KB in 11 requests... if you exclude the actual movie! I am able to load your usertalkpage on Win98SE in Internet Exploder 6.0 (7.7% of the world still uses IE6, a browser that is ten years old, especially in developing countries). My advice would be to ask the people who complain to download Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Von Restorff (talk) 06:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC) p.s. You could put a link on your userpage to an alternative talkpage that contains as little as possible, but that does not solve the problem for people with shitty browsers.

How about moving (most of) the content to one or more subpages, linked from your user page -- and then warning people before they link to those pages. —teb728 t c 07:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

VIRUS IN TETRAHYDRAFURAN ARTICLE WHEN CONVERTED TO PDF

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT REPORTS THE FOLLOWING VIRUS IN PDF "THF.pdf" contains the following virus: "VIRUS= HTML/Agent.NJ (Norman); Tagged ID: 30874986_88AB_4C04_85B3_41022736B8F2" . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.78.17.253 (talk) 15:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 3.8 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. Astronaut (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Tetrahydrofuran is clearly the article reported. Downloading the article as a pdf is clearly when the problem is seen, and "HTML/Agent.NJ" is revealed by a simple Googling to be in some way linked to Trojans. If I were the OP, I think I would be less than pleased to be handed a template suggesting I might not know where I am. If I knew more about the possibilities of trojans hitching a ride in pdfs created from Wikipedia articles, I'd make suggestions or attempt to track and fix the problem, but I am simply not clued up enough to tackle this issue. Maybe someone else can. fredgandt 18:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it was a bit of work but I am able to replicate the issue. What I did is downloading the article as a PDF and uploading the PDF to virustotal.com. The virusscanner Norman (version 6.07.13 virusdefinitions 20120113) detected HTML/Agent.NJ. I do not know if it is a false positive. Von Restorff (talk) 23:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Could the virus be at the other end of one of the external links, and the scanning software is reading through the link (like AVG LinkScanner (and others))? I can't see how a virus could be hidden in the article (I did check the page)(or any for that matter), since any active code is deloused on parsing. fredgandt 23:26, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

My guess is that it is a false positive (probably the image that contains a string that makes the virusscanner think it found a virus) but I am not sure. I did download and run it in a sandbox but there were no outbound connection made and I saw nothing suspicious (but I have the latest version of the PDF reader which may be immume). Von Restorff (talk) 23:37, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

You know? I completely forgot images could carry viruses. I am so off the ball right now it just isn't funny. Like you say though, more than likely a false positive or a proactive fallacy  fredgandt 23:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I've submitted the PDF to Norman as a false positive. There's something special about that page, though. Very similar pages rendered to PDF do not suffer from the same false positive. I checked the links in the article using [2] but found nothing. --Martinship (talk) 21:43, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Is this acceptable

A user User:MilkStraw532 seems to be creating a large number of biographies with questionable notability and many already have orphan tags. I am unsure whether these overstep the mark and whether some action is needed. Does anyone else share my concerns? JMcC (talk) 15:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

According to this, MilkStraw532 has not created any pages. What pages are you concerned about? GB fan 15:40, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

From his edit history, he/she seems to have tagged some pages with orphan tags, created various talk pages to post on them, and made edits to a lot of fairly obscure biographical articles. None of these actions seem to warrant concern. Perhaps the OP is confusing creation of talk pages with the creation of articles. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

native speaker review wanted for pointing machine

Hello, some time ago I wrote the article pointing machine. It is in need of a review by a native speaker, since inevitably some incorrect wording or style will have crept in. How or where do I apply for this? It is not intended as a featured article. Not important enough, I'd say... Satrughna (talk) 16:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

This was probably a good place to ask. I'll have a look at it this weekend for you. Brammers (talk/c) 09:59, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!!! Satrughna (talk) 13:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Best way to display alternative years of birth

Margaret of Anjou was born on either 23 March 1429 or 23 March 1430. There is no clear consensus in sources re the correct year. The article currently states 1430 but it should somehow say "23 March 1429 or 1430" as DOB. Is there an agreed format in which alternatives of this type should be displayed; and which WP guideline is relevant? Thanks. --Jim Hardie (talk) 19:33, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

"23 March 1429 or 1430", with a representative reliable source for each date, properly footnoted, should suffice. Be bold but also be willing to discuss it on the article talk page if someone objects. --Jayron32 19:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Jayron. That was a very quick response. --Jim Hardie (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Marcin Kasprzak

A Google news search will reveal that today a Polish man named as above was convicted in the UK of attempting to murder his girlfriend by burying her alive. This has been widely reported and I'm sure I'm not the only person who has looked to Wikipedia for info on the topic. However, the wiki article for that name:

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

is about a 19th century Polish revolutionary, not a 21st century Polish attempted murderer! So, this leads to my questions. First - does this case satisfy wp:n i.e. is it worth creating an article about it? Secondly, how do we go about having the existing article renamed ("Marcin Kasprzak (revolutionary)?) if this new Marcin Kasprzak is sufficiently notable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.147.195 (talk) 19:56, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Generally cases such as these are not notable, see WP:BLP1E. Nanonic (talk) 20:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the swift response! Guess I'll have to find something else to do with my evening hehe ;) 86.163.147.195 (talk) 20:02, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

wikitable, cellspacing, cellpadding

In order to offer to the reader a extensible overview of the Chilean regions, provinces and comunes I want to edit such a table:

Arica and Parinacota Region (XIV), Capital Arica, 2336 Habs. 4645km2
Arica Province, Capital Arica, AricaX Habs. AricaX km2 Camarones 3,927 1,220 link Arica 4,799 185,268 link
Parinacota Province , Capital Putre, Putrex Habs. PutreX km2 Putre 5,903 1,977 link General Lagos 2,244 1,179 link

I want that the inner and the outer table have the same width, (+/- one or two pixels). I tried it with cellpadding=0 and cellspacing=0 at many places, but it doesn't work.

Can any one say how to get rid of the paddings?--Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 21:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the outer margins from the inner tables in your example (above), but am not exactly certain it is stylistically correct per Wikipedia:Manual of Style guidelines. fredgandt 23:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

How do I create a page?

There is no "Create A Page" option in the Wikipedia. I cannot find the option in any other wiki, too! Wikipedia, can you add it? Help me! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.152.104.131 (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Article wizard, Wikipedia:Starting an article and Wikipedia:Your first article. However, you must register for an account before you can create articles.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:32, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

That IS Paul McCartney In The Nickelback Rockstar Video

I am a huge Classic Rock fan and I have been a huge Beatles fan as long as I can remember and I just want to let you guys know that it really IS Paul McCartney in the Nickelback music video for thier song Rockstar. I don't know where you guys get your information but anybody with half a brain will tell you that is him. You need to fix it or prove otherwise — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skaarjeff (talk • contribs) 22:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The proper place to discuss the article is its talk page. This help desk is for help with the general use of Wikipedia and its editing tools etc. Thanks. fredgandt 22:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

You have it backwards. This is an encyclopedia, a tertiary source that properly synthesizes already published material. For that reason we have a verifiability policy which requires that when any information is added and challenged, the burden is on the person wishing to keep the material to show through citation to a reliable source that the information is verifiable. You may be dead right that it is Paul McCartney but that information has been challenged, and so of you want that information to be included, please find a reliable source verifying it. If you do and need help citing it, report back here and we will help.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)