Help desk
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March 10

Sending a message

How do I send a Message to someone — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.230.204.47 (talk) 04:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can send a message to a specific Wikipedia editor by editing his/her user talk page; for example I will send you a talkback message at User talk:60.230.204.47. Or you can send a message about an article by editing the article talk page. Is that what you want to know. —teb728 t c 04:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Many editors also have email enabled, so you could send them an email. This is not done very often though since most communication between editors is handled on their talk pages. Dismas|^(talk) 05:29, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Saving terms

Is it possible to favorite terms to create a saved list of terms on Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zxjonny (talk • contribs) 06:32, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can click the "watch" tab on the top of the article and add it to your watch list. you can use your user page or your sandbox as well. or you can use your browser and create a folder and bookmark/favorite them. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 06:40, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing errors on HMS Terror (1813)

Reference help requested. ISSN is as printed on p.3 of the magazine. Also affects the London and Greenwich Railway and HMS Erebus (1826) articles. Mjroots (talk) 06:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mjroots: It appears that Jonesey95 (talk · contribs) has worked out what the ISSN should be. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:37, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So I saw. Have informed the publisher of the problem, should be fixed for issue 201. Mjroots (talk) 10:46, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Combis

Because I am writting an article for Combis I want to allow Wikipedia to use the text, and I will verify it. Combis agrees that the text may be freely redistributed and used, it may be freely modified. Can you please tell me, where I need to send that explanation and will you give me some time to do it, and not delete my work on Wikipedia? Integrator 30 (talk) 09:46, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See the procedure for donating copyrighted material. --David Biddulph (talk) 10:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

However, sorting out the copyright problem may not be enough to save the article, as it is also tagged for deletion as a non-notable company. To fix that, you will have to find references to reliable sources that are independent of the company, to demonstrate that other people have already found the company an interesting subject to write about. Only then can it be included in the encyclopedia. There's more on this at Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies). -- John of Reading (talk) 10:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are not only notability issues. The article is very spammy in tone, so even if reliable sources can be found to demonstrate notability, it will have to be rewritten from a neutral POV.--ukexpat (talk) 12:50, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced criticism in BLP

I removed an unsourced criticism from Suze Orman, but the anon restored it saying that he personally was the source. I don't believe he will be receptive to persuasion based on policy, and I don't want to get in an edit war. So I don't know how to proceed. —teb728 t c 09:57, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bencherlite removed it again and left a personalized note on the IPs talk page. We will see if that fixes the problem. -- GB fan 10:15, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) Well, as no-one has tried explaining policy to him before, despite this being the fifth addition of this material since last September, I tried explaining policy to him: User talk:75.92.7.57#Suze Orman. It's a bit difficult to say that he won't be receptive to persuasion when nobody's tried persuading him not to do this... Bencherlite ^Talk 10:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

error in data on 2 different pages.

HVAC control system : this page says "Central controllers and most terminal unit controllers are not programmable, meaning the direct digital control program code may be not customized for the intended use. "

and Direct digital control : this page says exactly opposite; "Central controllers and most terminal unit controllers are programmable, meaning the direct digital control program code may be customized for the intended use".

please rectify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.104.121.194 (talk) 15:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Help Desk is for questions about how to use and edit Wikipedia, not for resolving factual discrepancies in articles. There are two ways to resolve the disrepancy, depending on how active you want to be in editing Wikipedia.

The first is to (1) find one or more reliable, published sources that resolve the question, and (2) edit the incorrect article, correcting the error and providing references as inline citations.

The other way is to start a discussion on the Talk page of the incorrect article, preferably including links to online sources in your comments. If you don't know which article is incorrect, then choose one. Another editor may then choose to make the correction. If you don't know how to start an article talk discussion, we can provide assistance with that here. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:28, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Or you can look at the article history, and spot where the problem occurs. In this case it was obviously this vandalism to the HVAC control system article in January. I have reverted the vandalism. --David Biddulph (talk) 17:21, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

True, assuming it was in fact vandalism. It was unsourced, but so was the original content. It was the only edit by that IP, but that could have been a legitimate editor who forgot to login. Granted, it resembles a lot of vandalism, but such a resemblance is not definitive. Deferring to your greater experience. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:36, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, of course, about it being unsourced. There is reasonable confidence in which version was right, given that the version prior to the IP's edit agreed with the other article, and had been in the HVAC control system since its original version in December 2003. It also makes sense given the context. Sources, of course, would be welcome. --David Biddulph (talk) 17:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RationalWiki

Hi I would like to know if there is a relationship between your site and RationalWiki?

I have some issues with the content of certain articles on RationalWiki, and I was wondering what the best course of action would be to express a dissenting view? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boris Missiuna (talk • contribs) 17:07, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, there is no connection. Some of the differences are described at RationalWiki. The only connection is that they use the freely available MediaWiki software. If you wish to raise any issues, you need to do so with RationalWiki, rather than with Wikipedia. --David Biddulph (talk) 17:15, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

help

I need to use sandbox and source code how do I get coding to come up — Preceding unsigned comment added by Takingnotes21 (talk • contribs) 17:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Takingnotes21: I am not quite sure what you mean, but I have modified the redirect on your sandbox User:Takingnotes21/sandbox so that now when you go to your sandbox you are not automatically redirected to the draft space version where your content was moved. see WP:REDIRECT for more information. If that does not address your actual question, can you please provide more detail. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:44, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Transcluded templates using another page's text in a #ifeq

I'm trying to setup a table on my user page, which is fully protected, in a way that allows other users to change a page from saying "true" to something else ("false" or whatever really) to hide the table from all users viewing the page. I have a .css transcluded to my user page so I can edit it. I've tried putting the #ifeq in the .css and a normal page that is then transcluded to the .css but with both of those the table's visibility only updates after the .css is edited. Here's my user page, the variable page and the table transcluded to the .css. PhantomTech (talk) 20:00, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, purging the page cache fixes the problem... silly me. PhantomTech (talk) 20:02, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Article with a "/" in title treated as a subpage

I moved the page 1809 VEI 7 eruption to 1808/1809 mystery eruption, since I thought that was a more accurate title. However, it seems that the page is now treated as a subpage of 1808 (on Talk:1808/1809 mystery eruption it has a link to Talk:1808). Is there any way to use a title with a "/" in it and not have it be treated as a subpage? If not, then do I need to choose another title, or is it acceptable to leave the article at the title even though it gets treated as a subpage (i.e., is the title I chose a violation of the Manual of Style or any other guidelines)? I suppose the title could be something like "1808-09 mystery eruption", but I didn't want to imply that the eruption occurred during both years (instead it is unclear which of the two years it occurred in). Calathan (talk) 20:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Subpages are disabled for articles but not for talk pages, so Talk:1808/1809 mystery eruption is technically a subpage while 1808/1809 mystery eruption is not. That's OK, we have lots of such cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:57, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks for the information. Calathan (talk) 21:13, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Best way to handle this is to redirect Talk:1808 to Talk:1808/1809 mystery eruption. -- Gadget850^talk 21:55, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:1808 is the talk page of a different article. Based on PrimeHunter's explanation that this situation is common and acceptable, I don't think anything needs to be done. Calathan (talk) 21:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I knew that it was a dumb suggestion as soon as I sent it. -- Gadget850^talk 22:19, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I once put a note on Talk:9 which is the parent of many talk pages related to the 9/11 attacks, but I don't think Talk:1808 should do that for a single article with low activity. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:45, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How difficult would this be to fix? From a design standpoint it would seem that there would be something like "If Articlespace = 1, and there is a page with the same name in ArticleSpace = 0, skip code that handle additions for subpages like the link to the 'parent' page"Naraht (talk) 15:43, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That would probably give the wanted behaviour in nearly all cases. Link issues involving talk subpages have been reported several times but replies show concerns about consistency and spending effort on a minor problem. See for example phab:T3102, phab:T5455, phab:T15119, phab:T24597, phab:T31765. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:18, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Article denied

Hello,

I've been trying to get my article published on Wikipedia and it keep getting denied.

My article falls under number 9 in the criteria as we won a major competition. The last editor who denied me was saying that we needed to win a major award but that is listed as number 8.

here is the link to look at if you can't get to it. User:Lamontcald/sandbox

All I'm trying to do is get my article published as we are deserving of the page. Let me know if there is anything you can do to help us.

Thanks

Lamont Lamontcald (talk) 23:18, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of issues that I see and you seem to be concentrating on just one of them. In no certain order, here are my concerns with that article:

The "Guitar Center’s Onstage with Slash contest" is not a major music competition in my opinion.
The article is not written in a encyclopedic tone. Phrases like "Sebastian has rock and roll in his blood..." and "He learned the rock ethic and began to experience touring life..." are not phrases that I would find in an article on, for example, The Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd. Articles need to be much more objective in style and not have so many metaphors.
You really shouldn't be writing about yourself. See WP:AUTOBIO.
The references that you have listed are a paragraph from the Slash web site and two YouTube videos. Of course the Slash web site has something about you. You won their contest! References must be from independent sources. If Spin or Rolling Stone magazines were to write about that contest (and your winning of it), then they would be independent and reliable sources. Someone else, other than Slash and Guitar Center, have to view the contest (and the winners) as notable.
The YouTube videos simply demonstrate existence, not notability. Many bands exist but not all of them are notable.

Does that help? Dismas|^(talk) 01:07, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]