Jump to content

Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 March 13

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Help desk
< March 12 << Feb | March | Apr >> March 14 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Help 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 Help Desk pages.


March 13

[edit]

diamond products/uses

[edit]

There is no heading for the above subject. None can be placed with the subject diamond locked. I placed an edit for diamond (impregnated) segments under business to try and define the use of artificial and natural industrial diamonds in a bronze matrix. I was a technician making these segments and brazing or silver soldering them to tubes and circular blades as core drills and saws for cutting rock and concrete. Perhaps wikopedia itself would be best placed to include diamond products/uses on the locked site or guided to an unlocked site derivative for products/uses. Thank you for a place to record a few pieces of knowledge gained over a lifetime of work.

For CEO Wikipedia. There seem to be a distinct lack of detailed descriptions for tricks of the trade that are being lost with mass production and new technology. This knowledge collected over generations and millenia (such as correct technique and temperature estimation for silver solderlng) are of major importance to developing countries that can not afford major machinery, cottage industry where production or repair are done on a small scale and future generations for restorations and inventions that may have been missed or bypasssed in the rush to the future.

Perhaps wikipedia should be the entity to create a tricks of the trade site. Organised alphabetically and substantially cross referenced at each level to easily find each particular trick.

I personally have found an overlooked major advance in an old technology that makes it viable again. It does happen. Buil this site. People will come. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cappy Jack (talkcontribs) 03:31, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article Diamond is indeed locked to new editors. If there's something you want to add, you can ask on the article's talkpage for someone to add it for you - just write out your proposed text and put the code {{edit request}} in front of it. Or you could wait a couple of days and make a few more edits - after four days and ten edits, you will be able to edit the page yourself.
The "tricks of the trade" site you describe sounds a lot like WikiHow - you might want to try adding some of your expertise there. Yunshui  11:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ngoni Changunda

[edit]

Middle name Admire was born 8th june 1991 in Harare, Zimbabwe in a family of five. He has two brothers and two sisters.. He lives in Bulawayo and grew up in a surbab called Gwabalanda. He is a student curently studying his honours degree at the Midlands State University in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He did his high school at John Tallach High School a mission school in Matebeleland North. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.211.203.182 (talk) 11:10, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for asking questions regarding Wikipedia. --Glaisher [talk] 12:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

JAMES AMOS PROFILE

[edit]

DEAR SIR,

PLS. HELP ME THOUGH YOUR OFFICE TO PLS. CONTACT GEN. JAMES AMOS, TO SEARCH HIS NAME ON FACEBOOK IF HE IS REALLY THE PERSON ON THAT SITE, 'CAUSE THE PERSON ON FACEBOOK ASKING ME MONEY , IN SHORT, HE IS A SCAMMER, HE SAID HE WILL SEND ME A PACKAGES, WHERE IN SIDE HAVE GOLDS & HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY, THEN THE COURIER INFORM THAT I HAVE TO PAY THE DELIVERY CHARGES WORTH HUNDREDS OF THOUSAND PESOS. I AM ONLY A CONCERN CITIZEN HERE. IF YOU DO A FAVOR, AM THANKFUL, BUT IF DON'T IT'S OK, AM HOPING THAT THESE PEOPLE DOING THIS WILL BE PUNISH. THANK YOU, IMELDA CALMERIN, DAVAO CITY, PHILIPPINES — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.147.177.30 (talk) 11:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 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. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

biased subject

[edit]

I work in the healthcare industry.

I was gathering information for a patient education module. I landed at your page Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy

This locked content is spun COMPLETELY from the pharmaceutical industry viewpoint and takes every attempt to squash a natural, less harmful method of treating conditions commonly afflicting female patients.

This is the most biased material I have ever seen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.129.46 (talk) 15:04, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The subject of the article is "Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy" and so it discusses "Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy". The subject of the article is not Treatment options for conditions commonly afflicting female patients and so it wont cover other "Treatment options for conditions commonly afflicting female patients" because that would not be on topic for the article about "Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy".-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:09, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think the OP is complaining that the (well-referenced) article is critical of the therapy, which is described as "a form of alternative medicine" in the lead, which also list some respectable organisations (not "the pharmaceutical industry") that have pointed out problems with it. To 71.58.129.46: if you believe there are errors or omissions in the article then you can change it yourself (after creating an account for yourself, and subject to support from reliable sources), or raise your concerns on the article's talk page. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:04, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I should have looked closer. thanks AndrewWTaylor!
However, before the IP begins changing content, they should be aware that as a medical related article, the standards for sources are very high : WP:MEDRES. Also they should be aware that Wikipedia presents topics in the view that they are held by mainstream academics, and so "alternative treatments" that are held in low esteem by the medical profession (based on the high quality sources mentioned above) are appropriately going to be presented in the Wikipedia article as meriting low esteem and editing against that measure is not acceptable. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:08, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Adapting images

[edit]

I wish to add a figure to the article Swiss cheese model. The figure would be drawn by me from scratch, but based on a figure in a paper. My figure would not be identical to the original but would be similar to the extent that the concept needs to be explained. The original cheese figure can be seen on the second page of the pdf here (192 kB). For the life of me, I can't find in any help page what the policy is for figures adapted from technical papers. Can someone help me out here?

Thank you, DavidMack (talk) 15:30, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It may be easier to alter an existing image File:Zwitsers Kaas-model.jpg which is on Wikimedia Commons with a CCASA3 license allowing you to "remix" or alter it, provided the original artist is credited - as well as you for the "remixing". - Arjayay (talk) 18:21, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. For future reference, can you point me to somewhere that explains Wikipedia's policy on technical drawings that are credited as "adapted from" the original? — DavidMack (talk) 01:36, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Full moon-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit]

I work as a haiku poet on a site with other poets. Yesterday I wrote a poem using the term 'sugar moon'. A reader from Canada asked for my link to 'sugar moon'. I had pulled up an extensive and wonderful list of full moon names and information at Widipedia on July 18, 2012. When I tried to refer her to Wikipedia, however, the site was vastly changed. The new information did list 'sap moon', but the older information was so much more comprehensive and useful to poets. Please consider restoring the more extensive and useful information. Thanks you for your time. Rebecca Drouilhet — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.0.99.214 (talk) 15:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can find the old version of the article here. Dismas|(talk) 15:47, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update of usernames

[edit]

When does wikipedia update usernames for people who are asked to create new accounts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.116.81 (talk) 16:03, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The options available to you are explained in the message box at the foot of User talk:CherOCreekBandOfIndians. Have you taken one of the options explained there? - David Biddulph (talk) 16:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I added one of the codes the one that most pertained to me, and extracted it where it states to. It didnt update anything yet though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.116.81 (talk) 16:50, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It didn't update anything because you didn't do what you needed to do. Go back and read what it says in the box. --David Biddulph (talk) 17:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is it you who both created the new account User:Cherocreek and requested User:CherOCreekBandOfIndians to be renamed to User:Cherocreek? You should only have done one of these. An account cannot be renamed to a username which has already been created. If you want to abandon the old account and edit with the new one then you can remove the rename request from User talk:CherOCreekBandOfIndians. This is the simplest solution for both you and Wikipedia. Please log in to the account when you edit its talk page so we can see it's the account owner. Blocked users can edit their own talk page (at least in most cases including yours). If you want the old account to be renamed so you can continue using that account and keep its settings then please request renaming to a username which doesn't already exist. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

it was I who did what you were asking of, I wanted to let you know I will be abandoning the old account and have created a knew one with Cherocreek username. Thank you for your assistance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.116.81 (talk) 18:11, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Help with first time page creater

[edit]

Hi i need help sorting out how to list references for a page i am creating. It does not appear to be working.

thank you!1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magriffin117 (talkcontribs) 18:07, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You need to use the references above the "reflist" template. Then things will display correctly. Though you should also put the references immediately after the statements that they reference. Not just in a list at the end of the article. Dismas|(talk) 18:32, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I swear i did that! i think i am just HTML challenged.. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Leah Zell can you take a look for me? I would really appreciate your help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magriffin117 (talkcontribs) 18:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I placed the "bare url" template in the article - if you click on the "ref tools" link it will help you fill out the citation information. The cites that you created in the bottom have will show more details than just the link,'' if you move them above the {{reflist}} and into the body of the article. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Name change of an Indian state

[edit]

Please change the name to Odisha from Orissa.It has been changed officially,but fb has not changed it yet. Thanking you Pruthwiraj Nayak Cuttack-753001 Odisha India — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.136.91.104 (talk) 18:51, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was changed on January 30th [1]. We cannot control what Facebook shows. --NeilN talk to me 18:57, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

C97 crash in Pacific 1956

[edit]

Enroute to Japan a C97 transport with 67 souls disappeared in Pacific Ocean near japan. No wreckage was ever recovered. I do not find this incident listed under military crashes for 1956? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.168.105.152 (talk) 18:54, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

do you have a reliably published source that discusses the incident? without a source we cannot include it. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:13, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It was 22 March 1957. It's listed at List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1955–59)#1957 and Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter#Accidents and incidents. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How to search the text of edit summaries?

[edit]

Is there a way to search for words in edit summaries (1) across all the articles in Wikipedia or (2) within a single article? Dezastru (talk) 19:03, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You could ask at WP:VPT.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:40, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Laura Jones Gymnast

[edit]

DEAR SIR OR MADAM

THE INFORMATION THAT YOU HAVE ON LAURA JONES IS INCORRECT HER NAME IS NOT LAURA LOUISE MEIKLEM SHE WAS NOT BORN ON THE 11TH MAY 1999 AND SHE WAS NOT BORN IN DUNNDEE SCOTLAND WE KNOW THIS AS WE ARE HER PERANTS SHE WAS BORN ON THE 12TH JUNE 1992 IN NOTTINGHAM ENGLAND HER NAME IS LAURA VICTORIA JONES COULD YOU PLEASE ENSURE THAT THIS INFORMATION IS RETIFTED

HOPING YOU WILL OBILGE

MRS J C JONES — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.208.52 (talk) 19:10, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article seems to have been vandalised at some point - this has now been rectified. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:41, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Curious about status of a submission

[edit]

Hi--Back on January 31, I (bshop999 from MIT in Cambridge, Mass) submitted a request with text for a page for MIT Professor Edward Farhi to be added to Wikipedia. It was bounced because of a copyright issue that we had no idea existed. We re-worded the submission and re-sent it. I know that it can take time to review submissions (thank you for your help doing all that) but I'm trying to figure out if it is in a queue for review of has somehow not made it back to you. The revised text that we believe does not impinge on any copyright is below---

Thank you for your assistance.

(Bshop999) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bshop999 (talkcontribs) 19:34, 13 March 2014‎ (UTC)[reply]

This isn't the place to paste the whole submission, so I've deleted it. Please just give us a wikilink to where the submission is. I note, however, that from what you posted the submission was made today. Perhaps you didn't read what it said in the box at the top of the page: "This may take 2–3 weeks. The Articles for creation process is highly backlogged. Please be patient. There are 1182 submissions waiting for review." --David Biddulph (talk) 19:44, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) the history of your account [2] does not show any submission. Perhaps it was deleted because of the copyright issue, but please do not post the article contents here on this page. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:46, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
err, what actually looks like what happened is that you didn't resubmit it. you just posted content onto a user's talk page [3] . They did not respond and it got moved to their archive. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:51, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, MERC did reply. --David Biddulph (talk) 19:54, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
well that makes two strikes for me on this one! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:28, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That reply seems rather harsh to me (WP:AGF, WP:DONTBITE, etc), but the posted text seems to be almost identical to Farhi's MIT biography, and is completely unreferenced, so would need a lot of work before it would be acceptable as a Wikipedia article. As an "Administrator for the Center for Theoretical Physics" User:bshop999 also has a serious conflict of interest. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VP-1 page deletion, restore

[edit]

VP-1 was deleted and the comment for deletion makes no sense ? Please restore the page...deletion comment below:

04:41, 8 August 2005 Gwalla (talk | contribs) deleted page VP-1 (content was: 'I am looking for the name of a boat that was use to set up bridges during the korean war. I was hoping there was someone that may know what they was called...') — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.22.180.109 (talk)

The comment seems perfectly reasonably - it quotes what (presumably) was the beginning of the article when it was deleted. As such, the rational for deletion is clear. Rwessel (talk) 04:48, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing errors on Pierre Poilievre

[edit]

Reference help requested. I'm not entirely sure what the issue that the bot has identified is. Could someone please take a look and correct it if there is an error?

Thanks Thanks, 24.52.236.5 (talk) 21:24, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem was that you did not specify the role of "City of Ottawa". All parts of a citation in this format must have a role (such as "title", "date", and so on) and marked as "role=Text". This has been fixed with this edit: In this case the role is "publisher". Anon126 (talk - contribs) 22:45, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Needle ice

[edit]

I attempted to add a citation to the page Needle ice

I used the citation box and entered all of the required fields for an article citation. When I completed this it showed only my citation. I then saved that and now there are no citations shown at that site. In fact, there is not field for citations.

Obviously, I did something wrong but I thought I did what the instructions told me to do.

Is there a way to bring back the citations that were already there? They were good citations.

Jim Carter — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jrcarter36 (talkcontribs) 21:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You had removed the {{reflist}} tag, so that's why the references weren't showing. It is not clear which text you were trying to support with your most recently added ref, but the <ref>...</ref> should be immediately after the text which it is supporting. --David Biddulph (talk) 21:45, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Frost flower

[edit]

There are two Wikipedia pages named Frost Flower

One has the sub-title Frost Flower (sea ice)

I think the other should be sub-titled Frost Flowers (plant stems)

I recently identified the problem of persons confusing the two entirely different types of Frost Flowers.

See: http://my.ilstu.edu/~jrcarter/ice/Frost-flowers/

Thank you, Jim Carter — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jrcarter36 (talkcontribs) 21:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Jim. Please have a look at Disambiguation to see how to handle this. Each of the two articles currently has a hatnote pointing to the other; but the fact the the one on plants is currently titled just Frost flower means that in Wikipedia terms it is the "primary" sense of the phrase. I guess you are arguing that neither meaning can be regarded as primary, so both should be further specified. If that is the point, you can simply move the page to the other title. However, there are a number of things to keep in mind if you do so:
  • "Frost flower (plant stems)" does not seem to me to be an appropriate name, as it does not fall into any of the categories listed in WP:NCDAB, and until you know that the phenomenon exists, the item in brackets doesn't make sense. But I confess I'm having difficulty finding a better title.
  • If you do move the article, the current page Frost flower will be left behind, but changed into a redirect to the new page, which makes the situation nearly the same as at present. In that case, you would then need to edit the redirect page to turn it into a disambiguation page.
  • As with any page moves, existing links to the moved page will still point to where they always did; so normally they will now follow the redirect to the new page. But if you change the redirect page, you will need to edit those (use "What links here") to find them.
I support the proposal to move the last section of the article to Frost flower (sea ice). --ColinFine (talk) 15:35, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

largest aircraft

[edit]

This is not correct , it does not mention the B-52 stratofortress or the BOING 777 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.162.23.120 (talk) 22:33, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to List of large aircraft? It clearly doesn't include every aircraft that might be described as 'large'. Regarding your examples, the B-52 may merit inclusion - I'll look into it. Inclusion of the Boeing 777 however seems less obvious - it is smaller than a Boeing 747. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:51, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Looking into this further, it seems that the list lacks any clear criteria for inclusion. I've raised the matter with WikiProject Aviation. [4] AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:01, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia article on Google Search?

[edit]

I was wondering how most Wikipedia articles show up on Google Search when you type in the name of the article or something closely related? Does the Wikipedia page require a certain number of views? If so, how much? Temple of the Mousy (talk) 22:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Google keep their search algorithm secret - we only know that frequently-viewed articles often appear at the top of their searches. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And articles which are linked to from other articles across the Web do better. Search engine engineering is deliberately kept obscure, to hamper that specialized species of spamming called search engine optimization. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:10, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Picture showing the geographic center of a country

[edit]

I am not sure if this is the right noticeboard to ask this. An editor added an image of the geographical centre-point of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon in the article about Treaty of Trianon (File:Hungary_geocentre.JPG). I don't think this trivia info should be included there, but only in Szarvas article. What's the opninion of other editors? 82.79.214.83 (talk) 22:52, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree that it seems out of place in that article. I suggest you start by raising the matter at Talk:Treaty of Trianon - you could also try at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hungary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:07, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

College colors in Basketball infoboxes?

[edit]

Hello, I am not an expert in WikiText, so can anyone introduce the templates, Template:CollegePrimaryStyle and Template:CollegeSecondaryStyle, to the main template... Template:Infobox basketball biography/style ? Temple of the Mousy (talk) 23:04, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, just to be sure there is consensus for what you'd like to do, can I suggest you post your question to the talk page of Wikipedia:Basketball? The editors there should also be able to assist in making the necessary changes. CaptRik (talk) 09:01, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Breaking Numbering in RFC

[edit]

There is an RFC at WT:Edit warring, with Support and Oppose sections. I tried to insert my !vote preceded by #. It broke the numbering so that the numbering with my !vote started back at 1. Can someone please provide me with a guide to how the details of how numbering works so that I can fix it? I tried a few changes, but they didn't help. Something above my !vote may have caused it to lose track of the counting. The issue might have been inserted comments arguing about the !votes, but those don't always break the counting. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:53, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looks as though this has been fixed now. Deor (talk) 10:00, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved
Does anyone know what caused it, so that I can deal with it if it happens again? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:41, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It didn't help much, because the discussion of the policy on edit warring has gotten into a sort of flame war, with a combination of an editor wanting to modify the policy to guarantee that no one is ever questionably blocked for edit-warring, and the anti-admin brigade complaining what a terrible burden it is to be a good content creator. Oh well. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:41, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

() For future reference, broken numbering is usually caused by either adding two line breaks between items or starting a reply with a colon instead of a hash, like this (take a look at the code to see how it works):

  1. Yes
  2. No
You smell.
  1. Yes
  2. No
  1. Yes

Note how the numbering restarts twice, when it should look like this:

  1. Yes
  2. No
    You smell.
  3. Yes
  4. No
  5. Yes ~HueSatLum 00:52, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. So don't accuse your opponents of smelling in the RFC, or you might undercount yourself. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:09, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]