Miscellaneous desk
< September 5	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 7 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 6

Visiting a firehouse

How would I go about visiting a firehouse? This weekend I want to because I want to say thanks in honor of Sept 11. I dont wanna bother them, if theres an emergency.Accdude92 (talk) 01:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Call them and ask them. Not related to 9/11, but I work with a group of children at church, and for a service project every year, we bring lunch to local firehouses. I just call them a few weeks early and ask them about coming, and they are always really nice about setting up arrangements. --Jayron32 01:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You will in effect honour your local firemen as representatives of all firemen. One way is to present to them a certificate, as simple or fancy as you wish, in a frame to hang in the firehouse. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:55, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

prison made license plates

what years were license plates made in mt. state prison in deer lodge, mt.166.128.81.109 (talk) 01:19, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For non-Americans wishing to research this, the OP seems to be referring to the Montana state prison in Deer Lodge, Montana. Dismas|^(talk) 07:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks. I'm familiar with the abbreviations of a few US states, and guessed that mt. was supposed to be one, but no idea which one. Plates for cars used to be made in prisons in Australia too, but no longer. I have a feeling we import them from those foreigners in New Zealand now. HiLo48 (talk) 08:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In this 2009 document, the "administrator of the Montana Correctional Enterprise division of the Department of Corrections" states, "Montana license plates have been produced at the Montana State Prison since the original plate in 1914," so presumably the period of their production at the prison is 1914 to the present (or 1914–closure if you're referring specifically to the "Old Prison" in downtown Deer Lodge). Deor (talk) 11:48, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ISO Certification

In an ISO certified organisation, who does the quality management report to? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.8.2.69 (talk) 01:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is autonomous. For ISO certification purposes it is only necessary for an organization to provide verifiable documentation that their quality control function exists. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:43, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Internships for UK distance learning students

Hello, I am a student in Oxford (but not at the University of Oxford) and I want to look for an internship. I am taking an Open University degree in History, and working part-time in a library while I study. It seems like most internships are either designed for full-time students or new graduates, and promoted through university careers offices, or they are aimed at school leavers but with little opportunity to learn anything - really just evasion of the Minimum Wage Act for what should be a paid job. As a distance learning student I don't fit either category, and the internships I can find through Google all seem to be for new grads. The OU does have a virtual careers office, but the internships forum has been locked read-only until next March... I have no idea why.

Please can you help me find a student summer internship without the benefit of a careers office? — FIRE!^{in a crowded theatre...} 08:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another word for "internship" is "volunteering". If you contacted your local Volunteer Bureau (they go under different names in different places), they should be able to find you something. www.do-it.org.uk has volunteer positions listed. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know :-) and I'm already volunteering at the Ashmolean Museum. I was thinking of internships as a way to try out careers my current experience is never going to lead to, and possibly make some contacts in those areas. For example, one of those personality analysis tests you find online suggested I think about counselling as a career, which I had always thought requires medical training but apparently not. Ideally I'd like to know where student internships are advertised (other than inside fulltime university careers offices) so I can look at what's available across all careers. — FIRE!^{in a crowded theatre...} 09:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully it won't make any difference, but I'm in my late twenties now. Came to uni a bit later than usual, and I've been working since I left school. Though I wouldn't describe the jobs I've had so far as a "career". I'm hoping to pick something serious now, gain experience in that area before I graduate, and then try to pass off the last decade as a sort of extended gap year. No idea if it will work, but I don't really have a choice. — FIRE!^{in a crowded theatre...} 10:50, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you spoken to the Open University's own careers service? They are very keen to promote its existence, and I imagine that they would either have information on internship opportunities, or at least on where to find such information. Warofdreams talk 10:53, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) You should contact the OU careers office and ask for help. Your personal tutor too, because the OU is supposed to be one of the best at student support, but they are not mind-readers and don't know how they need to support you unless you explain. Also, there are some organisations that act as clearing houses for student internships. One of them is The Year in Industry. I'm sure not all placements are of good quality. Googling "UK student internship" I came across a website "rate my placement" which would probably be worth looking at. You should also do some research about the sorts of organisations you would like to work for and send your CV with a targeted covering letter, showing that you have really thought through what you could offer to that organisation. This report might be interesting background reading, and HEFCE have a new report out too, but both reports are intended for policy-makers, not potential interns. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:04, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you are considering counselling as a career, look for some organisations that offer counselling and contact them, offering to volunteer. Even acting as receptionist would give you insight into their work. For example, Relate. To get a toe in the water try the Oxfordshire Befriending Network (if they still exist - their website doesn't seem to). You don't say what sex/gender you are, but you could try one of the gender-specific organisations in Oxford to to see if you could help them. (A word of warning from a failed counsellor here: it's always worth trying even if you decide it's not for you. Counselling can be quite personally unselling for the counsellor.) Or you could contact one of the Oxford university students unions to see if they have any vacancies: when I was a student I spent most of my spare time helping out in the Students Union office doing reception work, which gave me valuable work experience (even if it did nothing for my degree grade!). --TammyMoet (talk) 11:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A slightly different take on the "providing advice" motif is getting in touch with OxCAB on St Aldates. Citizens' advice bureaux are being swamped with clients because of the hard economic times, so even if you don't have the time or inclination to undergo the rigorous training to become a general adviser, you could always volunteer to help on reception or in the office to free up the trained staff who frequently perform those tasks. Brammers (talk/c) 17:19, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cost of production of the Canadian Nickel

Hi, I know the cost to create the Canadian penny, and I know the cost to make the American nickel(made of very different metals), but I can't find information on the cost to produce the Canadian nickel. Can I get some help? Thanks, Public awareness (talk) 10:01, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This page has the melt values of the raw metals used in Canadian coins, but it doesn't have a valuation for the most-recent 94.5% steel Canadian nickel which was phased into production (replacing the previous copper-zinc blend) between 2000 and 2006. (Presumably the new composition was introduced because the base metals in the copper-zinc coin are now worth about 5.5 cents.) The actual production cost will be higher than the base metal cost, of course. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All human knowledge? How many articles?

Hi. Bulwersator and me are working on this page, attempting to measure how many articles are needed to cover the full Wikipedia scope under the notability policy. We have compiled some estimates, and currently the total sum is about 100,000,000 articles, but we think the real estimate is far away, perhaps, 1,000,000,000 or more (what are we missing?). If you want to add anything to the page, please, go ahead. What is your opinion? I think that this is not a highly speculative topic, we can really do a rough estimate using the numbers of several databases available. Regards. emijrp (talk) 19:36, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Notability isn't a policy.--178.167.211.239 (talk) 19:40, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. emijrp (talk) 20:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do note, however that the statement "not a policy" doesn't have much meaning. All policies can be ignored if they get in the way of good encyclopedia writing, and things which are not policies should be followed to the letter if following them to the letter allows for better writing. In other words, being a policy doesn't mean it can never be ignored, and not being a policy doesn't mean it can always be ignored. When people say "it's not a policy", what they appear to mean is "You can always ignore this page as if it doesn't exist". That is the wrong way to read it. There are pages labeled as guidelines, and essays, and just about anything, that offer reasonable insight on how to handle a situation. What determines if something should be read and followed is if it works, not if it has an arbitrary label on it. --Jayron32 20:53, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of articles about everything in the history of the universe which is at a minimum verifiable (or unverifiable, for that matter). Your large numbers imply articles for every individual person, every business, club, school, amateur team, unsuccessful candidate for office, automobile, train, plane, bus, bus stop, mailbox, utility pole, fictional work, character or thing or event in fictional work, phone number, boat, house, identifiable piece of roadway or street, school essay, joke, meme, video, recording, prank, theory, sports competition and all plays in said competitions, news story, thing made up in school one day, crime, car accident, pet, storm, detectable earth tremor, and every identified object or phenomenon in the universe. Articles have been created on some members of each of these classes, but many of those not satisfying notability have been deleted, either via {speedy deletion by Articles for deletion or by other deletion processes. Edison (talk) 20:14, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your large numbers imply articles for every individual person, ... There are 6,500,000,000 persons in the world. My largest rough estimate is only 1,000,000,000 for ALL topics. Please, read before writing. Regards. emijrp (talk) 20:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry: read some extra zeros. But all the time we get articles about nonnotable middle school students, games made up in school, bus stops, low magnitude earthquakes, newly formed garage bands, unsuccessful candidates, and novel theories. Your "1000000000-article-pedia" would likely be full of many such articles. What would be your notability and verifiability guidelines?Edison (talk) 14:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read my user subpage? In a few weeks we have compiled links to databases and a few general lists which show how we can easily reach the 100,000,000 article milestone with fully notable subjects. I came here to ask for more of these databases, lists, and knowledge branches, because I think there are more and more topics uncovered and unlisted in my page. People who can help on this are welcome. emijrp (talk) 00:09, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hundreds of millions of permastubs does not amount to a useful encyclopedia. Many databases are merely directories, and a directory listing is not sufficient to make a useful article. A link to the user subpage, please. Edison (talk) 02:11, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The way to tell if a topic is worthy of an article is if there is enough reliable source material to write an article from. That is, can I read enough reliable (trustworthy, likely to be true, etc.) writing in existance outside of Wikipedia, which I can then turn into a reasonable-length encyclopedia article. The problem is that people often feel that subjects which are important to them personally make it a worthwhile topic for an article. That isn't necessarily so. What makes something a worthwhile topic for an article is that there is already really good, well written and researched, in-depth information about it in the world. Wikipedia is an aggregator of existing information, nothing more, nothing less. The number of valid article topics will be controlled solely by the number of subjects which have that level of in-depth writing about them already in existance. --Jayron32 21:00, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think article length is related with notability. Imagine the first founded city in the world, if we only have information about the location and a population rough estimate (because all registries have been destroyed), is it notable? does it deserves an article in Wikipedia? I think so. Also, there are zillions libraries and archives (not online) that contain a lot of information but Wikipedians use to google to measure notability. By the way, there is a lot of people too who judge distant stuff (which they never heard about) notability with an huge bias and chauvinism. emijrp (talk) 21:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not to say one way or the other regarding existing practice, but if all you have to report about something is a few numbers, why not collate that information in a table in a larger article. It's not like one is arguing that Wikipedia shouldn't contain some bit of information; just what method of organizing or presenting the information is most appropriate. There's nothing magical about a "stand alone article" per se, and no reason that lots of little permanent microstubs with verifiable information couldn't be collected into a single article with longer content. --Jayron32 01:55, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron's point is an important one. Notability ultimately depends on sources. If you provide sources from the zillions of libraries and archives then sure your article will probably stay. However if you just say something is notable and there are lot of sources out there, it's not surprising people will ask you for evidence. The fact that an article was deleted doesn't necessarily mean the subject wasn't notable, simply we didn't have evidence it was. Also as Jayron has said it's questionable why we need a bunch of article that can never hope to be more then stubs simply because there are no RS out there discussing the subject when the info can be can be collated in larger articles which is what our guidelines recommend. Nil Einne (talk) 02:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How many articles? 42, obviously. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

People here need to realise the notability criteria are there to ensure articles can be sourced, and that they won't be permenant stubs. If in-depth articles with a wide range of reliable and independent published sources could be written about all of those things you listed above, they would and should be.--92.251.204.141 (talk) 01:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]