Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 December 17

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December 17

Piccirilli Brothers Wiki Site

Greetings. Bill Carroll and I are researchers into the Piccirilli Brothers' story. You have had our website cited as an external link. That link has changed, and we would like you to put up the new one. It is now www.lehman.edu/piccirilli. Lehman College with which I am associated has agreed to host our website. Thanks very much. Mary Carroll —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.2.29.62 (talk) 02:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done --Monterey Bay (talk) 02:38, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Coca-Cola and wikipedia's coi

Hello, I am seeking information about the controversy that coca-cola had edited its article "prettied up" way back when. I can't seem to find any ArbCom interventions or the like. I am asking because another article is having a similar problem and want to use it as an example. Phearson (talk) 04:27, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This article states "the company was blocked from editing out "misinformation" on Wikipedia last year." Make of that what you will. A sentence in the third paragraph of that article seems unintentionally hilarious: "...in an era of blogs and user-generated content, companies may be losing control of what is said about them." Oh noes!

You might also be interested in User:Durova/The_Dark_Side, a user essay about company editing of Wikipedia. Zango, Badoo and Tagged are a few articles I know of where company reps have influenced (or tried to influence) article content. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 09:38, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Some things I want to discuss

1. First of all, I think should be a category for "Central African people of ethnic or national origin" because every other country on wikipedia has a category for people's ethnicity so I thought Central African people should have that category. 2. Hikaru_Sulu on his wikipedia page says he is of Filipino descent so there should be a category that says :Fictional_American_people_of_Filipino_descent. 3. There should be a category for Fictional people with ADHD or Fictional people with Dyslexia. Percy_jackson is listed under both. 4. I would like to make an article about the novel More Than Weird. Here's an article about it: http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/cmarchive/vol16no4/morethanweird.html I don't know why it was deleted. 5. I would like to add a summary for the movie The_Seventh_Coin. Could someone help me with that? Thank you! Neptunekh2 (talk) 05:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Here is the reason why More than Weird was deleted. As for the categories, I am not saying they will be kept, but why don't you create them yourself? Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 06:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Before creating new categories, read WP:CFD to learn about problems with categories that you would like to be sure your categories will not be prone to. Your suggestion sounds reasonable as the parent category (Category:People by ethnic or national origin) indeed has subcategories for many (but not all) countries. However, be sure you can populate the category you want to create. That is, Wikipedia should have articles about some people who could go into that category. There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Central African Republic you may be interested in. Read Help:List to learn how to make numbered lists the Wikipedia way. --Teratornis (talk) 07:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I see you have created Category:Fictional American people of Filipino descent although Hikaru Sulu is the only current member and it didn't get support when you suggested it at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 December 9#Two questions. I have watched many episodes of the show and didn't know the character had Filipino descent (I knew about the Japanese descent) so it doesn't sound like an important trait of the character. We don't need small categories for every attribute of every fictional character. ADHD and dyslexia also sound questionable to me. In order to avoid original research, they would have to be specifically mentioned in the fictional universe. How often is that done? See also my reply at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 December 4#Two thing to discuss. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The statement that Sulu is of Filipino descent is sourced from IMDb, which is not considered a reliable source. The entire section appears to be copied from IMDb. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikistalk

Can someone explain this page for me and what value it has? Thank you. Buster Seven Talk 07:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Pretty sure it compares the edits of two users to see what they both edited and is used to identify sockpuppets. Not sure though. [CharlieEchoTango] 07:03, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess I dont see how the info is pertinent to sockpuppetry. I can see where it would show stalking of a fellow editor. I just dont get the tie in to socking.Buster Seven Talk

Just saying that I think the tool is used for that reason : because it compares the edits of two « different » users, it would make sense. Otherwise, why would you compare the edits of two users for? So that's what I think the tool is for. If you're asking this in regards to a situation you're involved in, sorry but I can't help, I am just answering for what the tool does. Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 07:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikistalk shows commonality of interests among a group of editors. For a sufficiently large area of interest, the number of articles edited in common by a group may be substantial. Where one or more of the editors has few edits outside the area of common interest, the issue of whether the edits are independent may be an issue, but appears to be rarely used. Where a sufficiently large group of editors shows a very high correlation on, say, WP pages for XfD, and shows a commonality of interest therein, the issue about being seen as a group may well be a problem (vide ARS etc.). Where a group of editors has an extraordinary number of user talk pages in common, the issue of commonality of interests as a reason for editing those particular user talk pages may well be raised. It is not wise, in any case, for any group of editors to be seen by outside observers as having any excess commonality of interest and viewpoint, as WP seeks fully independent editors for al areas. See principle 4 in the Climate Change Arbitration decision on Collective behavior of blocs of editors. Collect (talk) 11:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Excellent points all around. Note too, that some of us have unhealthily large edit ranges which overlaps with many editors. Conspiracists might conclude that I, or many others, are in cahoots with half of Wikipedia, based on mere commonality. Mostly, it's just coincidence. Mostly.   Will Beback  talk  11:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely true. However the larger the group for which the coincidence exists, the less likely it is to be coincidence :). If, as a hypothetical example, 6 editors all manage to edit the same two dozen articles .and. they all have the same viewpoint (say they all revert the same other editor in succession) the probability of it being coincidence declines markedly. Or (again hypothetically) if they have a propensity for !voting in accord with each other (comment not aimed at ARS, by the way), that also reduces chance being the cause. My favorite remains, however, having a large number of "random" editors (6 or more) all posting on the same user talk pages, as the universe of user talk pages >> the universe of any single topic interests. Two or three editors sharing such is vastly more likely to be simple coincidence to be sure. Collect (talk) 13:12, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The uncomfortable nature of circumstances related to one of the respondents to this thread forces me to respond. I find it highly disconcerting that the editor that responds to my simple informational query, at this site/section that I've never visited, is the ONLY editor in my 2.5 year, 12,000 edit career to have called me a sockpuppet (and probably used wikistalk to come to that conclusion). And I don't mean you, Will Beback. I guess I will just move on...no explanation is necessary.Buster Seven Talk 14:59, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wait, who has called you a sockpuppet? [CharlieEchoTango] 15:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, not you either, CharlieEchoTango.Buster Seven Talk 15:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok thanks, I was worried for a while that my comments were misunderstood. Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 15:07, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone was accusing anyone else of being a sockpuppet. They were simply pointing out the fact that the wikistalk tool helps identify overlapping edits - which are generally innocent, but may indicate sockpuppetry. TNXMan 19:19, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Italics in links

Here's a puzzle. Why don't the links below, using ' syntax, italicize correctly? I resolved this by using <i> tags, but am curious as to where the problem lies, as somewhat arbitary measures (see comments) fix it. All the links should be italic.

Eubalaena Eubalaena Eubalaena Italics Italics ''Italics'' ''Italics'' Italics with < tags >

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:27, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

A newline in a link can break things. Copying your code to Special:ExpandTemplates shows that the first three links get a newline from {{Taxonomy/Eubalaena}}. All your examples are displayed in italics if those newlines are removed. But [[''Italics'']] doesn't make a link. If it did then it would go to the page name ''Italics'' with 4 ' in the name. NAME in [[NAME]] or [[NAME|DISPLAY]] must be the unformatted pagename. Your last example also works with ' syntax: Italics with < tags > renders the same as Italics with < tags >. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that was so simple in the end. Thank you, that's allowed me to fix it. I appreciate you looking into this!

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:36, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

3.5 M

What was the 3.5 millionth article? 115.43.44.129 (talk) 09:08, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This was asked with no answer at Talk:Main Page/Archive 155#3,500,000 ARTICLES!!! and Talk:Main Page#Million milestones. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:12, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is NOT truly an Open Editable Model, and Jimmy Wales needs to be alerted

I am a professional writer and editor, employed by one of the largest beverages and food snacks companies in the world.

My experience with attempting to contribute to Wikipedia articles has been unsuccessful and negative, to say the least. Here's why -- On occasion, I have stumbled upon articles that are either missing some critical piece of information that is germane to the topic and presumed objective of the article, or are blatantly erroneous. Some of these topics tend to be obviously politically charged and obviously written with bias.

I understand that editors are people, and people have opinions, tendencies, leanings, beliefs, etc., which find their way into their "objective" contributions. What is most disturbing, however, is that no contribution I have ever submitted has ever been accepted, in spite of the fact that I have provided reference and historical support.

What is the magic ingredient for being able to successfully modify an article? The fact that this process is so difficult, convoluted, and controlled by what appears to be cliques of "super editors" seems to defeat the original purpose of this otherwise remarkable tool. This characteristic, if unchecked, will gradually unravel Wikipedia's credibility as a trusted information source. Just because a belief is popular does not mean this belief is accurate, and editors must be willing to admit their errors and accept substantiated corrections from the reading public.

Lastly, how does one become a Wikipedia "super editor"? Does this equate to contributing an article? The contributor becomes the super editor of this article by de facto?

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.243.203.241 (talk) 14:37, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This IP address has only asked this question and nothing else. Before we can critique your contributions, we need to, you know, see them. Since we don't have any concrete edits to view, no one has any way to give you any helpful advice. --Jayron32 14:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "super editor" but as it says below the edit box: "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." Any editor who disagrees with your edit may remove or change it. Nobody owns an article and there are no editors with more rights to edit articles than others, with the exception of protected pages which can only be edited by some editors. However, there are editors who know more about Wikipedia policies and practices and are less likely to make an edit that will be reverted by somebody else. If you want to become an established and recognized editor then I recommend creating an account. This has several benefits (but more rights in content disputes is not one of them). There are lots of disputes between editors who revert each other and Jimmy Wales is aware of this. Since this is the only edit by your current IP address, I'm not sure whether your edits were reverted or never saved correctly. Can you give an example from the page history of an article you think you edited? If your edit was saved correctly then it should be in the page history. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Moreover, if your edits relate to "one of the largest beverages and food snacks companies in the world" then you have a WP:COI and your edits will be even more heavily scutinised. – ukexpat (talk) 17:03, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The trick to editing successfully on Wikipedia is to read and understand the friendly manuals. As you did not sign your post, this suggests you have not yet gotten very far at reading the manuals. No shame in that - reading the manuals is a lot of work. But you'll probably have difficulty editing here until you put in the work. Wikipedia is unlike any system most people will have used before coming to Wikipedia. Most people who are new to editing on Wikipedia have at least a few incorrect assumptions about it. Wikipedia is a do it yourself system, there are usually no human teachers present in the room with new users to guide them, so most people who edit here have to teach themselves by reading the manuals and trying things. Some people are better at self-educating than others. People who approach unfamiliar situations by trying to impose their pre-existing beliefs rather than emptying their minds of assumptions and learning afresh will tend to have a tough time here. Sometimes it is a disadvantage for a person to come to Wikipedia having already reached a high level of expertise in something else. For example, experts may be accustomed to asserting their expertise and not having to verify where it came from. On Wikipedia we have a complex system for verifying our factual claims in articles (see WP:CITE, WP:CITET, and WP:FOOT). Learning this system is a nontrivial exercise. Almost nobody shows up here for the first time already understanding why and how to do it. Also read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way. Your question omits the critical details that could enable someone to answer it - the names of the articles you have edited. Your implicit assumption that Wikipedia can be reduced to a few general principles is incorrect; Wikipedia is instead a rather hefty set of general principles combined with a seemingly unlimited number of special cases. To see exactly why your edits did not stick we have to see your edits. --Teratornis (talk) 20:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Register as a user, put in a bit of non-personally identifiable information about yourself and interests, and try again. There is a deeply ingrained bias against content inserted by unregistered users (IP address only) as there are many IP users who drop in only to disrupt content. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 01:55, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

P.S. What you believe is generally immaterial. Content and discussion thereof has to be based on sources other than your own contentions. So, assuming you were the IP contending Christ believed in karma, that was advocacy for your own belief (discussing no scholarly sources regarding the topic) as opposed to advocating for sourced content. Think of writing a thesis, not a book. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 02:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

What to do

Intended Recipient Counselor's. My Daughter passed away of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome years ago and it is still hard for me to cope with is their things that can keep my mind off of this situation that will better me as a Person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.130.201.104 (talk) 14:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, the free encyclopædia. We can not help you with this. Consult your psychologist. MikeNicho231 (talk) 14:46, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Miscellaneous reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Best of luck to you! [CharlieEchoTango] 14:47, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Your IP address appears to geolocate to the United States. I don't know whather it will be of any help, but perhaps you can find a sympathetic local organisation via this page. They seem to specialise in supporting people who have been bereaved as you have been, and may be able to answer your question or direct you to further help. I wish you well. Karenjc 22:41, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

new version of bit defender

My bit defender program expired and I was wondering if it would be possible to contact you by phone to install a new version of Bitdefender —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.158.78.82 (talk) 15:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our 3,504,462 articles, and thought that 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.--Jayron32 15:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Forcibly logged out repeatedly

Just got forcibly logged out, tried logging back in, got the "log in successful" screen, but as soon as I tried to navigate anywhere got logged out again. Happened several times in a row. Couldn't ask for help while logged out because of a rangeblock against the largest provider of mobile internet in the UK. Anyone know what caused the problems with being forced out? DuncanHill (talk) 17:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

May also be worth noting that the watchlist notices which I had previously dismissed reappeared when I eventually did manage to log in properly. DuncanHill (talk) 17:11, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Is Help:Logging in of help? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:56, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, no definitive answer but looks like some kind of cookie problem. DuncanHill (talk) 14:25, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The Trade Wiki Beta--how is it related to Wikipedia

Hi, I am curious if The Trade Wiki is in any way affiliated with Wikipedia. It is a subscriber based service for business use but I see replications and perhaps complementing info on both portals. The look and feel of The Trade Wiki is also similar to Wikipedia.

I am looking for reasons why Wikipedia is unable to provide what The Trade Wiki can.

Can you help me understand better pleaase.

My email address is [email address removed]

Thank you kindly and many happy returns of the season

Daniel TanDktan (talk) 18:24, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no affiliation as said when you asked at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 December 9#The Trade Wiki Beta. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

It just has "wiki" in its name (as do thousands of other wikis) and uses the same open source Media Wiki software. – ukexpat (talk) 19:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Changing a Wikipedia page for a course

What do you think about this change on Ohm's law? --Mortense (talk) 20:04, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why those books should be included in a further reading section - are they special in some way? I would think there are several text books that cover the same material. TNXMan 20:10, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Reverted and gave him the "We are not Facebook" warning. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:14, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Donate

Hi All,

I dont have a PayPal account, so is there any other way I could donate money to Wikipedia?

Regards, VT — Preceding unsigned comment added by Varun.tikka (talk • contribs) 20:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

See the Fundraising page. – ukexpat (talk) 21:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

And Ways to Give. – ukexpat (talk) 21:03, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

article deleted

Hi - I work for a non-profit and my article about my charity was deleted and I would like to know why. Are charities not allowed to post their own information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msaanj (talk • contribs) 21:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Please read your talk page, and the links provided there. - David Biddulph (talk) 21:11, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Important information that hasn't been published in English

As part of the BLP referencing drive, I was working on the article about former Brazilian First Lady Rosane Collor. One reference that I found was a BBC News story from 2000 saying that she had been convicted of corruption and sentenced to 11 years in jail. Then I looked at Google's translation of her Portuguese Wikipedia article, which makes it sound like this verdict was later overturned on an appeal. If this is true, then her English article is misleading and biased against her, as it implies that she's been spending the past decade in jail. But I don't speak Portuguese and I can't find anything in English about this acquittal.

So what's the Wikipedia policy on this sort of thing? Do I leave the potentially misleading section alone, or do I fix it and cite a machine translation of a Wikipedia article as my reference? Brian the Editor (talk) 21:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Check with a Portuguese-speaker; then cite the original in the original language. Certainly a machine translation constitutes the worst of all possible worlds as far as non-reliable sources! --Orange Mike | Talk 21:18, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I meant the original source, not the Portugese Wikipedia. But on looking at the Portuguese version, I see no footnote for that assertion; so we've got a problem of lack of reliable sources. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I've found some Portuguese sources that might help and posted them at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Quick Portuguese translation for a Wikipedia article to see if anyone can verify what they say. Brian the Editor (talk) 23:58, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

long-term creation of an article

Hi. I have just spotted a nice little research paper which would make a nice wikipedia article. Trouble is, I want to work on it over the next few days / weeks, and then when it's ready for public consumption I want to create the page. Creating a stub won't work because the stub would probably be deleted. Is there a "private" way to work on an article? Robinh (talk) 22:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

1. Most research papers are totally unsuitable for encyclopedia articles; see WP:ESSAY.

2. Sure; just create a sandbox by typing User:Robinh/Sandbox, clicking on the redlink, and beginning the draft article. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:11, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello OrangeMike. Thanks for this. I know most research articles make terrible articles; that's exactly why I want to work on one in private before releasing it. And if it turns out that the article is terrible and unrescuable, I can delete it with no loss of face ;-). With very best wishes, Robinh (talk) 22:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Link Appearance

Is there to way to make this: [As] appear without the square-brackets highlighted as a link too? This is what I've tried but obviously it doesn't work: [[[Arsenic|As]]]

Abraham Schulte (talk) 23:46, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

• Like this - [As]? Can't work out how to show you how I did it, you'll have to open this section for editing to see, but basically, you put nowiki tags around the outside square brackets. DuncanHill (talk) 00:04, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I've created Template:Bracketed element symbol to make this easy. Simply type: {{Bracketed element symbol|<Element name>|<Element symbol>}}. For example, {{Bracketed element symbol|Arsenic|As}} produces: [As]. Robert Skyhawk ^{(T C B)} 05:07, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Someone should probably create a redirect at {{BES}}/{{Bes}} or move the template there for ease of typing. – ukexpat (talk) 19:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Hm, I just changed {{BES}} assuming it was an ages-old template-redirect (but was pointed that it was fairly new...)... Since 15 December the code BES is the officially assigned ISO 3166-1 for "Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba" (the Caribbean Netherlands; and I therefore made a flag-redirect out of it. Would it be ok to keep using that, so that the redirect {{Bes}} can remain the shorthand redirect for the bracketed element symbol template? L.tak (talk) 14:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)