Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 May 20

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May 20

Mayhem at Suburban Express Article

Suburban Express (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A social media campaign has spilled over into Wikipedia. Have a look at the history of this article, and you'll see that it was stable for years, but that a small number of users acting in concert (and at the behest of COI users) have deleted the substantive and interesting company history and replaced it with POV and current events. It seems as if the participants in the social media campaign have come to wikipedia to congratulate themselves for the trouble they have recently stirred up.

If there are any experienced transport authors out there, I'd suggest you take a look at the pre march 2013 state of the page and ponder what might be done to restore the interesting content to Suburban Express. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wildwestend (talk • contribs) 01:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Meanwhile, single-purpose accounts have popped up left and right in order to defend the company from legitimate criticism, and in fact, engaged in a proven sockpuppetry campaign. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 02:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Consider asking that the page be given full protection for awhile, since semi-protection isn't working. WP:RFPP RudolfRed (talk) 02:36, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Trouble finding diffs on talk page

I went to the talk page of an article called White privilege," Archive 4 [1]. There I found an edit:

As I've offered repeatedly in this discussion, I think you are probably the editor best equipped to write such a section, and I would be happy to assist, should you ever decide to dig up some scholarship on it. UseTheCommandLine (talk) 04:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Yet when I go to history in an attempt to find and pull the diffs surrounding this edit, it isn't there. In fact only a few selections appear, none of them the one I need.

What am I doing wrong?

Thx!

You're just looking in the wrong place. When MiszaBot archives a talk page, it basically does a copy/paste move of all the text. So it takes it from the main talk page and creates and pastes it in an archive page. So the original edit to the archive is the pasting of that info. In order to go back in time to when that particular comment was posted, you'd need to go through the history of the original talk page. Dismas|^(talk) 01:58, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The dif is here. —teb728 t c 02:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Reese Jamie marston salt like clity

Reese Jamie marston Salt like clity — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.168.110.253 (talk) 04:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but what is your question about how to use or edit Wikipedia: —teb728 t c 04:27, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

formatting problems at William Ivey Long

There are some formatting problems at William Ivey Long. I have tried adding a {{clear}}.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixed - the {{col-begin}} and {{col-end}} templates weren't balanced. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

What does having references in DAB mean?

I have had edits reverted because of not having references in DAB pages per WP:DISAM and I am having trouble making edits and need help. What is the reason for this? 108.0.244.168 (talk) 07:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages, e.g. John Smith (disambiguation), don't generally have references because they only serve to point to articles that would state the relevant facts and have references for them. So a disambig page may say that someone was born in a specific year but not provide a reference. It's up to the subject's article to have that reference. Dismas|^(talk) 08:16, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I now understand. They need an article to provide a reference. I was only trying to prove the existence of these people by citing a source for these people who do not have an article and allowing someone to create an article that does not yet exist. 108.0.244.168 (talk) 08:27, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes, subjects should have an article first and then be added to the disambig page after that. If you would like, you can create an account and create the articles yourself. Or post the relevant info at Wikipedia:Requested articles though that has quite a backlog. Dismas|^(talk) 08:42, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Failing to edit our Wikipedia's Yookos Page

We are a social networking site called Yookos and one of our previous staff members created a profile on our company which does not capture our core activities. We would like to edit this but unfortunately we are unable to do so as the person responsible is no longer with us and we do not have the login credentials they used to create the profile.

We have failed to create an account on Wikipedia to edit the page as we are repeatedly thrown out. Please kindly assist as the information put up is working against the positioning of our brand.

What is the best way of resolving this matter? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.160.59.99 (talk) 09:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure you're aware of the various Conflict of Interest and username policies you've run foul of. You best course of action is to place the correct information about your company on the article talk page, Talk:Yookos, and wait for an uninterested party to incorporate it into the article. You might want to show more evidence of external, third-party references to the company, to help establish notability, although the three newspaper articles already referenced are a good start. Make sure you declare your interest whenever you add anything. Rojomoke (talk) 09:35, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to add that if you did all share that user account anyway then it would likely be blocked for a violation of Username policy. One person per account. If your intention is to advertise your company then Wikipedia is not the right place. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 15:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Updates

Is there a way to be notified when changes are made to a page? I would like to stay current on many things and manually searching each page periodically is obviously time consuming. Thank you in advance. Mahonemo (talk) 13:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Your watchlist is the easiest way to do this - by clicking on the star at the top of any page, you can add it to your watched pages and receive a notification every time an edit is made. Yunshui 雲‍水 13:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Can't edit langauge link

I can't edit language link, wikidata gives this message :An error occurred while trying to perform save and because of this, your changes could not be completed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.235.171.162 (talk) 13:43, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I suspect there was further information in the message, though I don't know. The most common reason for this problem is that two Wikidata items may not point to the same article in a Wikipedia. What has probably happened is that there is already a Wikidata item pointing to the article in question. Often the right way to resolve this is to merge the Wikidata items; or if the item you are trying to correct is more appropriate than the existing item linked to that article, edit the other item to remove that link first. --ColinFine (talk) 15:28, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

refrence

Hi, I want to know how to add refrence matrial from a reliable source to an article of a living person. I received a notice that this profile must have a reliable refrence otherwise the article will be deleted...

Please help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.1.160.20 (talk) 14:13, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

See WP:REFBEGIN.--ukexpat (talk) 14:37, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I am assuming that the article in question is the one you have been editing: Ripu Daman Handa. I've found a source for the most significant part of the article - the statement that Handa is appearing in MasterChef India - added the reference, and removed the notice accordingly. Please note though that I think it is unlikely that the article subject meets Wikipedia policy regarding subject notability (see Wikipedia:Notability (people)). Simply being a contestant on a television program is unlikely to be seen as sufficient evidence that Handa merits an article, and we'd need further evidence from published reliable sources to justify this, and without such evidence, the article is still liable to be deleted. Meanwhile I have also tidied up the article a little, and removed unsourced promotional claims and other material unsuited to a Wikipedia biography. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:35, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Antarctica

We have Transport in Antarctica in Template:Antarctica but that is the only link from Antarctica way at the bottom of the page in the template. Does Antarctica need a small transport section somewhere with a 'see main' template? There are many projects on the talk pages and I don't which are active so I thought I would ask here. I haven't checked the other articles in the template to see if they miss too.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea whether or no we need such a section. However simply the fact that the link is in the template and not in the article is not a good enough reason for me on its own. I can imagine a lot of situations where something is nice in the template but need not be in necessary in the article, like for instance Template:Scotland topics has a lot of history related links that are not in the article. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 16:06, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I see Berlin has an infrastructure section that includes transport, energy, and health. Antarctica is a little bigger than Berlin and it hasn't got an infrastructure section nor the three subsections. I will just leave it all out for now and let someone else expand the article. I didn't realize it would be such a big issue.

Betelgeuse is bigger still, and it doesn't have one. Maproom (talk) 12:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

How many vehicles, how many kilometers of railways, roads and trams, how many bus stops and how many airports are there in Berlin? And how many in Antarctica? How many passengers travel every day by all means of transport in Berlin and in Antarctica? Is Antarctica really bigger than Berlin with respect to the subject (i.e. transportation)...? --CiaPan (talk) 11:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Uploaded video but does not appear on page

Hello, I uploaded a video clip, I have "automated" status but the video does not appear on the page. What can I do to check/verify this?MBA2012E2 (talk) 16:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I think we'll need more information than this. What is the filename? Which article? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

What is the format of the video that you are trying to upload? IIRC you can only upload video in OGG format, see WP:OGG.--ukexpat (talk) 17:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Your account has not uploaded any files. Try again at Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard. If you fill in fields correctly and the file type is allowed then you should eventually get to a clickable button saying "Upload", "Upload on Commons" or "Upload locally". Depending on where you upload it, the upload should immediately become visible at either commons:Special:Contributions/MBA2012E2 or Special:Contributions/MBA2012E2. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

WRONG LOGO AND INFORMATION ABOUT MY TV STATION.

I HAVE CORRECTED SOME ERRORS IN KULX-TV LISTING. IT SHOULD BE LISTED AS THE PRIMARY NBC TELEMUNDO AFFILIATE IN SALT LAKE CITY. THE NETWORK AND I HAVE A NEW LOGO THAT MUST BE CHANGED. INFORMATION IN THE BOX IS NOT AT ALL ACCURATE. HOW DO I CHANGE TO NEW LOGO. We are now T-10. ThanKS JOHN TERRILL PRESIDENT AND OWNER. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TelemundoJohn (talk • contribs) 18:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

To start you should really not SHOUT while posting here. Further, if you're editing an article on a company ou are affiliated with then ou are stronglyy urged to read Conflict of Interest and Ownership first. To answer, our logo is copyrighted so we would have to use a low resolution image under fair use. I'll take a look at the article in question.

Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 18:16, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The article in question is KEJT-LP. Is this your new logo John? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 18:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

JavaScript is currently broken when attempting to edit a page

I could enter a bug on bugzilla, but this is rather critical. Go to any article, hit edit, notice all the normal JavaScript tools are broken and it looks like a mess... please forward this to a core team member ASAP! — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:14, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a real issue, and just wanted everyone to know the devs are aware of it, as reported on the IRC channel — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:19, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Something's wrong again, the issue has been fixed. You may have to bypass your browser cache, though. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:19, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

sandbox link

I used to have a link to Sandbox on the top of my page - now it is gone. In my Preferences, under Appearance, I have "Add a Sandbox link to the personal toolbar area." checked, but it is nowhere on my page. How can I get the link to Sandbox back? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

This is probably another side-effect of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Something's wrong again. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:20, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

. Yes, it is back now, thanks. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

campton Stockton,woodbury,nj

how may campton Stockton,woodbury,nj be marked historical — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.73.237.68 (talk) 19:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

It is hard to understand what you mean. The Woodbury, New Jersey article does not contain the words "Stockton" or "campton" and I have no idea what you mean by marking something "historical". Can you add more information to make it clearer what you mean? Astronaut (talk) 19:37, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

A "Camp Stockton" is mentioned in 12th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:56, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Inline external links

Is there a policy that specifically covers whether external links can be used within the body of text to link to external sites? The situation I'm thinking of involves having the name of a non-notable person (by Wikipedia standards) link to an external biography of the person being mentioned. It wouldn't be appropriate to wikilink in this case, because it would always be a red link, but is it permissible or forbidden (or something in between) to link externally? Deli nk (talk) 19:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The first line of Wikipedia:External links says "they should not normally be used in the body of an article"; there's a little more detail in note 1 at Wikipedia:External links#Notes. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:00, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

That bit in the notes makes it clear that the situation I was asking about isn't an exception to the general rule. Thank you! Deli nk (talk) 20:06, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

additional information on Kingsbury London, with regardt the famous and infamous

Hi, how would I go about feeding you with information, rgarding Kingsbury London NW9. I am an old resedent and have some additional data that may add to tour present files. Thank You. Stann. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.1.93.35 (talk) 20:38, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

You would have to give us verifiable leads to places where the information was published by reliable sources. Personal memories and the like are not useful to us here. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

But if you have information which can be verified from published sources, you can mention it on Talk:Kingsbury, and see if another editor will add it to the article. --ColinFine (talk) 22:34, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

My page was blocked for no reason

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi folks,

i was in the middle of editing a page on NGO ECOWEEK, before it was even submitted for review or even went public, and i received a message that my page was blocked as it was considered as advertisment by some JamesBWatson.

this is a non-justified blocking and i would appreciate your intervention in releasing our page to be further edited before submitted for review by Wikipedia.

I appreciate your help in this matter.

best, Elias

{{unblock|our page is not-advertisement}}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ecoweek (talk • contribs) 21:06, 20 May 2013‎

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Unwanted boldface

Can someone please track down the source of the (unwanted) boldfacing of the first note in the notes section of Meanderings of Memory? Per WP:ITALIC, I did a replacement of OED with ''OED'' and, where possessive, this resulted in ''OED'''s, but that should still format as OED's and not place boldface. Not sure where the issue is coming from.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

If you look at the raw text of the note, you will see that there are three consecutive apostrophes, two meant to set off italics and one as an apostrophe, but they are read as ending bold face. Can someone advise what the workaround is? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:08, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for responding Robert. For some reason I thought they fixed this long ago and you could use them with possessives. I know of two workarounds, {{'}} (better) and of course you can just nowiki the third apostrophe (sloppy), but I thought it was supposed to work without them. Weird, I must have confabulated it.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:29, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is HTML Tidy fixing things again. --  Gadget850 ^talk 01:17, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Two Articles Need to Be Merged

If I think that an article should be merged into another article, is there an Article For Merging or similar procedure, or is an article content RFC the only way to conduct the discussion? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Merging. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:56, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Orphan page

I created a page that was published about 4 weeks ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Kreamer Two weeks ago I notice that it was called an Orphan. Around May 8th, Kurt Andersen linked his Wiki page and the SPY magazine Wiki page to Anne's Wiki page but I see it is still referred to as an Orphan. -Do I not understand what an Orphan Page is? -Does it take time to have this classification Badge removed? -None of the above. Thanks Ken — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.183.212.98 (talk) 22:27, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

None of the above. The box saying "This page is an orphan" is a template; it's part of the wikicode of the page, not something that's automatically generated. As such, it's there as long as nobody removes it, and it's possible for the box still to be there when the article isn't an orphan anymore. This is precisely what happened here; the orphan box could have been removed two weeks ago and simply wasn't. I was going to remove it, but it turns out that someone else has already done that. If this happens in the future, you should feel free to remove the box yourself once the page has been de-orphaned. Nyttend (talk) 23:16, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

By the way, if you want your list to appear on different lines, you should put asterisks instead of hyphens. Do that and you get the following:

• Do I not understand what an Orphan Page is?
• Does it take time to have this classification Badge removed?
• None of the above.

Alternatively, you can number them by using the hash mark:

1. Do I not understand what an Orphan Page is?
2. Does it take time to have this classification Badge removed?
3. None of the above.

Hope you'll find this helpful. Nyttend (talk) 23:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• The answer to the root of your problem is a lack of understanding of what an orphan is on Wikipedia. Most simply, it is a page which has zero other articles linking to it from inside Wikipedia. Some people, prefer to see at least three articles pointing to a page before removing the orphan tag. I hope this explains why it was tagged as an orphan and what the requirements and suggestions are to remove the tag. Technical 13 (talk) 00:24, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Username signing with tildes?

Hi, I was wondering why when I sign my username with four tildes it does not hyperlink to my page like other users I see signing? Lazyfoxx 22:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lazyfoxx (talk • contribs)

The easiest way to get a valid signature is to have no checkmark at "Treat the above as wiki markup" at Special:Preferences, and leave the "Signature" field blank. If you want a customized signature then you can set the checkmark but then you also have to make a wikilinked signature in the Signature field. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, that was easier than I thought! :) Lazyfoxx (talk) 22:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Login timeout change

It seems like when I logged in before, the checkbox said "remember me for 180 days". That was great. Now it is only 30 days? Is there a way to set it back to longer? 138.239.32.14 (talk) 22:59, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Taking a look at Special:Preferences, there doesn't seem to be, I'm afraid. Sophus Bie ^(talk) 05:30, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Citation template help

What's wrong with citation #9 at Monongahela culture? I always handwrite my citations, so I really don't know anything about citation templates such as the one that's apparently messed up here. Nyttend (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

It was a bunch of text with no parameter provided for the template to understand what to do with it. It turns out it was a quote, so I added "quote=" to fix it.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)

Not a lot of savvy is required to submit good cites. At the top right-hand side of the edit window is a link for Cite. Selecting that drops another bar with a pull-down for Templates: Cite Web, Cite News, etc. Each template has a variety of fields that take seconds to fill out. Most of the templates have extra fields that a click of a button will expose. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:09, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

But that doesn't help with identifying an issue with a citation that someone else added. Nyttend (talk) 05:19, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

A good point. I misinterpreted the nature of your question. I apologize. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 03:25, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

And the cite template hasn't worked for IE users for several weeks - ever since the selected sub-menu fell into the edit box, making editing the top line of any article almost impossible

But of course, it's only IE (probably the most used browser on Wikipedia, despite the snobbery) so no-one is really interested Arjayay (talk) 19:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)