Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 October 2

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October 2

Lists of (x) alumni

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, so please feel free to point me to the right place if it isn't. I'm running into conflicts with other editors about the notability of people listed in "List of (x) alumni" style articles. My understanding, though I can't seem to find where I read this, is that non-wikilinked and redlinked people on these lists are presumed to be not notable and can be removed. Other editors seem to think differently. See [1] and [2], and [3] and [4] for examples of what I am talking about. I suppose my question here is, where are the relevant policies about this, and am I in the right? Hbent (talk) 00:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

There's Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists, the second of which mentions that "Selected lists of people should be selected for importance/notability in that category and should have Wikipedia articles (or the reasonable expectation of an article in the future)." So, if a reasonable argument can be made that a Wikipedia article should exist on a person, then they can generally be left on the list (of course, that then prompts the question as to why not write the article first, prove that it's notable enough to survive deletion, and then add them). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just being an alumnus does not make these people notable, so you must establish the notability. What you are really missing are references, important in any article, but especially if you want to work towards Featured List; you need a reference for each entry even if it has an article. You don't have to have an article on everyone, but if they are truly notable, then they should have an article. I help maintain List of Eagle Scouts (Boy Scouts of America); for every redlink that is added and can be verified and demonstrates notability we will create an article. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 10:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Notable alumni which did not become a guideline byitself but resulted in the guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Lists of people. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Editing the Wikipedia Page on Morgan Freeman

Resolved

I am trying to edit the following section of the entry on Morgan Freeman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Freeman#Films

I have tried to add the narration he did for the 1990 film "The Civil War" (produced by Ken Burns). Freeman was the voice of Frederick Douglass.

Every time I have tried to exactly imitate the format for putting this into the Wikipedia page, it comes out over on the right hand side of the page instead of the left. Here is what I want to add:

1990 / The Civil War / Voice of Frederick Douglass

I don't know what I'm doing wrong as I have tried to exactly copy the format used....but it won't correctly appear on the page.

It might be easier if you could go to the Wikipedia page (listed above) to make the edit - could you? Again, it is simple:

1990 / The Civil War / Voice of Frederick Douglass

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.107.49.97 (talk) 00:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That should take care of it Deezil (talk) 01:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.107.49.97 (talk) 21:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Can you mark articles as 'read'?

Is it possible to mark an article as 'read' if you are a logged in user? After a time it becomes difficult to remember if you have read an article or not. It's possible to keep a manual record of what you read, even a list here maybe as a subpage or something, but wouldn't it be better if there was a feature that allowed you to mark a page as 'read' (and maybe even 're-read') similar to how you would mark it as 'watchlisted'? Wikipedia could keep a similarly private record of all the articles you had read, which would certainly be handy. This is really a feature request, but I first want to be sure that nothing like this exists already - that you would have to do all this manually at present. Richard001 (talk) 02:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Nothing like that exists. Maybe you could just use your browser history. -mattbuck (Talk) 02:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, not possible as part of the basic Wikipedia services. You could probably whip up a .js extension to allow instant adding to a userspace list if you wanted to, though. --erachima talk 04:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Google Desktop and similar desktop search software can keep track of the Web pages you view. I don't know whether these programs allow you to mark the pages you view as "read," but as long as you read every page you view, that might work. On Wikipedia, you can add pages to your watchlist, which could be an ugly way to keep track of what you have read - clearly not what the MediaWiki designers intended, but it might sort of work. Since Wikipedia constantly changes, the article you read a year ago may not be the same article today. If you cannot remember whether you have read an article before, why not just read it again? Forgetting an article means you are effectively in the same situation as if you had never read the article at all. --Teratornis (talk) 04:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

A browser history is no use because it doesn't last and doesn't travel with you when you go to another computer. A userspace list would be more portable but doesn't offer any privacy like a watchlist does. It also uses up more space/processing power (read/not read requires only one bit). Pages you read are only a small subset of those you view. Not being able to remember whether you read an article is certainly not synonymous with never having read it at all.

Would it be possible to construct a .js extension that would allow you to do this without creating a page? I suppose one that did create a list would be okay, though the existing watchlist function (which keeps any article in one of two states - watched/unwatched) could so easily be modified to allow this (just remove the showing of changes, and maybe add multiple states (e.g. unread, read, re-read, triple-read, to-read). Richard001 (talk) 06:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia futurology section

What is the name of the section where people can write essays about the future and futurology and the original research guidelines are relaxed somewhat? I visited it a couple of weeks ago but I forgot the name of it. Keraunos (talk) 03:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we have a section like that... WP:CRYSTAL and whatnot. --erachima talk 04:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

(Though I now notice that the policy section I just linked has a link to wikia:future:, which might be what you meant...)--erachima talk 04:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• example.com/yourownwebsite :) But seriously, this is outside of the scope of wikipedia or any of the related projects I know of. Wikia is not wikipedia project, but it might have a place for your essays. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

a list what sells the most online

Im trying to find a list of stats and demographics about what sells the most online please help thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.39.151.142 (talk) 04:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

See Electronic commerce, Amazon.com, and search with {{Google}} for:

• what sells the most online

If you can't find an answer, try asking on the Reference desk. --Teratornis (talk) 04:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

40 corrections to Wiki Battleship Texas BB35 - recommendations how to proceed

I am a first time Wiki editor and I have 40 corrections to make to the wiki Battleship Texas BB35. I would like some suggestions as to how to proceed for I am concerned that such a quantity will cause a disturbance. Using a sandbox, can I place a copy of the complete wiki article along with all of my corrections for other editors to view?

All of my corrections are cited with original source documents. I am cited in the reference for I had the most extensive and detailed BB35 website. My data was based on my research using original source documents. I have source documents that the ship's administrators do not have (though I offered). Using a variety of computer programs I created the only know set of as-built 12 March 1914 Booklet of General Plans with several detailed drawings and data pages. I mapped the ship's complete movement history with a computer mapping program (MAPINFO) and data that I purchased from the National Archives. I made an ACCESS database of the ship's drawings that are in the ship's files (paper and microfilm) having looked at every paper drawing. I also created an ACCESS database of 2,500 ship photos that can be searched on and photos displayed in hundreds of ways. I also scanned over 1,500 photos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.180.135.204 (talk) 05:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

welcome to wikipedia. my first step would probably be to discuss the proposed changes on the article's "talk" page (clicking on that blue/purple phrase will take you to that page, then click the "new section" tab at the top). although you're not required to create an account, it's often easier to communicate with other editors if you *do* have an account and log in before posting/editing - you can read about that here. it sounds like you're already aware of wikipedia policies regarding original research and verifiability, but in case you want an introduction to wikipedia fundamentals, you might find this page useful: WP:Introduction oh and please "sign" your posts to "talk" pages by typing four tildes at the end. happy editing ... Sssoul (talk) 08:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Or just be bold and change the article. Just don't get fussed if everything gets changed back! Signing up for an account might help your credibility, but don't worry about it too much. If you make good changes, they'll stay, if you don't, they'll get reverted. You could always try making the changes five-at-a-time, to see how well it goes. Good luck! Franamax (talk) 09:03, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Since you know a lot more about USS Texas (BB-35) than you know about Wikipedia editing yet, the simplest way to get started might be to team up with someone who has more editing experience on Wikipedia and shares your interest in the ship. You can find such users on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/USS Texas (BB-35). (Note: the fact that someone requested a peer review for the article shows that the article needs improvement. You could add your comments to the peer review.) The most effective way to communicate with other users on Wikipedia is to first create an account, so you establish a fixed identity (or pseudo-identity) on Wikipedia. That lets other users build up an idea of what you are about and the things you are doing here. Then read Help:Talk and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines to learn how we communicate with each other. You might also join Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history; at the very least, read that project's pages. For a general introduction to editing, take the WP:TUTORIAL. --Teratornis (talk) 20:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Note that the Peer Review is over a year old, so posts there may no longer get much attention. If you look on the "discussion" tab for the page, and make comments for discussion there. The project is currently showing as part of multiple WikiProjects, all of whom would likely have participants that will watch the discussion page for new comments.

All of the WikiProjects involved seem to have rated the current state of the article as GL-Class on the quality scale, which suggests that any large-scale changes will be looked at very closely, making posts on the discussion page even more important. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Adding a section to a page

Hello I would like to ask you guys how to add a section to a page, because as I was looking at my old school I found it did not have a feeder list like South Dade Senoir High School. The page in question is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_High_School_(Homestead,_Florida) . I would like to add a feeder list to it. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.139.118.253 (talk) 12:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Do you know what the feeder schools are? Then go to the section History and click the edit button there, at the bottom add a blank line and then place something like ==Feeder list== and then on the next line start editing. Hopefully that will help you. 211.30.12.197 (talk) 12:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

For more information on this, and about editing in general, refer to WP:EDIT. Please make sure that the information you include is suitably referenced. Cheers. Chamal ^Talk ± 12:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Joyce Cherono Laboso

Hon. Dr Joyce Cherono Laboso sister to the late Hon Lorna Laboso who died in a plane crash won the Sotik seat in a recent by- election held on 25th September 2008. She beat 11 other contestants after she garnered 23,880 to clinch Sotik parliamentary seat with a vote margin of 10,000 to her close challenger Rtd. Brigadier Sitienei. Dr Joyce is a former french Lecturer at Egerton University and currently serving as a Commissioner of the National Commission on Gender and Development.

Hon. Dr. Joyce is a Phd holder whose name came to the limelight when she read a moving Euology of her late Sister Hon. Lorna Loboso. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kalyet08 (talk • contribs) 14:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If you want an article on the honorable doctor, you can create it here. See WP:YFA and WP:BLP. If you want to request that an article be created, see Wikipedia:Requested articles. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I flagged the article for further review due to likely non notability. The notability seems mainly inherited, no assumed notability is established and the article also does not seem to comply to the notability guideline for politics. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 11:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

A member of the National Assembly of Kenya is inherently notable. I've done some work on the article and sourced it a bit, but would welcome some assistance. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:48, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Sync of portal and boxes

Hi, I have a portal on which I have done some edits to the individual boxes within the portal. Each box on itself displays correctly the changes, but when I return to the main portal page none of the changes are apparent. Its as if the portal page is frozen. However there are no warnings or anything. Can anyone help? FYI this is also the first time this happens - are the Wiki servers and dbs having problems? User: Nicolas39 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolas39 (talk • contribs) 14:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Try purging the portal page. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If that doesn't work, you might want to supply us with the diffs so we can help you out further. :) — neuro^(talk) 10:48, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't get multiple college students signed on to do a project on Wikipedia!

Each semester I do a wonderful "History of Education" project with my beginning freshmen education students at Morningside College. When my first class attempted to sign in today, they were all told only 6 from the same IP address can sign on in 24 hours. I understand why this is but why am I having this difficulty this semester when I never had it before?

I have NEVER had this problem before: Is this a recent change???

Can you note my IP address and allow more students to sign in, please??? I need approximately 75 students to be able to sign on in www.wikipedia.com!

Is there some way we can work this out? Their inability to sign in almost makes this project impossible.

Please reply as soon as possible. I'm going into a second class and will probably have the same thing happen.

Dr. Chobar Education Professor —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edprofessor5302 (talk • contribs) 17:37, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You should consider asking your students to each create their own account on Wikipedia. The benefits of creating an account are set out here. – ukexpat (talk) 18:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You're hitting account creation limits design to limit abuse/vandalism on wikipedia. Persons needing accounts should email [email protected]. You're may need account creator rights, or Wikipedia:Request an account. If you're already in your second class I'm guessing this hasn't been cleared up by then. You may also want to read Wikipedia:School and university projects. -Optigan13 (talk) 18:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, visit http://stable.toolserver.org/acc/acc.php rather than emailing that list, as the list has been deprecated. I am inclined to give Edprofessor5302 accountcreator permission for a week or two to help him clear the matter up. Stifle (talk) 19:15, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You might find something useful in User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers, in particular User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers#Choosing the right wiki. Since Wikipedia is constantly changing, the fact that Wikipedia worked for your class in the past does not predict whether it will always work equally well in the future. Wikipedia has its own agenda, changing constantly due to many factors none of us individually control. Perhaps the most reliable method to insure that you have a tool that meets your particular needs would be to set up your own school wiki. Since you teach this same class each semester, perhaps you have (or want to have) each successive class of students repeating some things the previous class did. That might be inconvenient to arrange on Wikipedia, because Wikipedia continuously evolves in the direction of greater complexity and technological sophistication. Over time, we can expect Wikipedia to become gradually harder for new users to get started with, because most of the easy beginner-type jobs will be long since completed. For example, Wikipedia already has 6,819,079 articles covering most of the obvious encyclopedia topics. The remaining topics to write about tend to be of increasingly questionable notability, making them more prone to deletion. The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to bring all the articles up to featured quality - while this might require centuries at the current pace, technological and organizational progress may speed up the improvement. If Wikipedia does reach its goal, then there won't be much easy work left to do on Wikipedia - most of the further editing will require lots of skill and knowledge. Since your class is already underway, you probably cannot set up your own school wiki in time to help the current students, but you could have it ready for next semester. Contact the people who set up your school's Web site and tell them you want them to add a MediaWiki wiki to it. For example, see UMassWiki. --Teratornis (talk) 20:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You might also consider Wikiversity which is open to these kind of projects. –xeno (talk) 20:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

How do I tell if a wiki page is 'semi-protected' or 'protected'?

I have never edited Wikipedia before and don't know how to tell what level of protection is on a page. I am looking to edit/update a 'City of' page... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.230.144.88 (talk) 18:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If you see a padlock at the top right hand corner of a page, the page has some degree of protection on it. See this page for the various types of protection and what they mean. To which page were you referring? Cheers! TN‑X-Man 18:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Type the name in the protection log and it'll come up when it has been protected. Sunderland06 (talk) 18:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

A more practical way to tell is to just edit it. It will immediately tell you if you can or can't edit the page. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The presence of a template such as {{Pp-semi-protected}} is not a sure-fire indicator, as there may be both false positives and false negatives:

• Only administrators can set the protection status of a page, but anyone can stick a template on it. Someone may put a template on a page that indicates the page is protected, when it isn't, either due to a mistake, or a deliberate attempt to make the page appear to be protected.
• An administrator who protects a page may forget to stick a template on it.

Thus we need a definitive way to determine the protection status of a page. One way is by trying to edit the page. If the page is fully protected, and you are not an administrator, the edit tab at the top of the page will say "view", and you won't see any section edit links. If the page is semi-protected, you will only be able to edit it if you have logged in. Another way is to look up the page on Special:ProtectedPages, but that page appears to lack a way to show the protection status for a given page. Instead the page lists various types of protected pages, in no particular order as far as I can see (this is unlike Special:AllPages which does sort its page list, making it straightforward to get to a particular page). However, on Special:ProtectedPages you can prune the list by specifying a namespace and a size range. You can see exactly how large a page is by looking at its history. That's a rather awkward method to look something up on Special:ProtectedPages, but given the rather baffling lack of the obvious feature of sorting the list of pages, I don't see another easy way to look up a specific page. A less obtuse way is to check Special:Log, where you can look up a particular page by its title, and view its protection log (among other things). For example, the Henry Ford article is fully protected, and its log page shows the history of various administrators protecting and unprotecting it. --Teratornis (talk) 19:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being denser than usual here, but isn't the easiest way to go to the history page of the article in question and click on "View logs for this page" at the top? If the article is currently protected, "edit=autoconfirmed" in the protection entry will indicate semiprotection, and "edit=sysop" will indicate full protection. Deor (talk) 23:45, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, it turns out the page wasn't protected. I have been reading up on the ins and outs of Wikipedia and overcomplicated the matter. I appreciate the input! And if you'd like to take a peek, it's the City of Minot, ND homepage. 24.230.167.32 (talk) 21:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Translators (radio)

Yesterday I saw a newspaper article online about a new radio station, 98.1 the River, which did not list call letters. I started the article using all the information I had available (though if I had more time, like I do today, I could have seen more). I have found call letters for the station, which was a translator and still uses call letters that a translator would use.

Should the name of the article be those call letters? Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at WP:NAME#Broadcasting. – ukexpat (talk) 18:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Essay

can you please help me to write a specific essay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.88.91 (talk) 21:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

No, we don't do your homework for you. But you can look up information in Wikipedia. And if you have a specific question, they may be able to answer it at the Wikipedia:Reference desk, but they won't do your homework for you either. —teb728 t c 22:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the answer to this query is "yes". We, WP and the RefDesk can certainly help the OP write her/his essay subject to the usual constraints. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

We can indeed help, as that is the nature of Wikipedia, but it would be wise to note that 'help' does not equal 'writing it for you'. Neurolysis 10:41, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Darts problem

Resolved

Hi. I have just edited darts by adding a citation. It is Cohen and Tonkes (which is currently ref number 6). The Journal is open-access. Can some kind wikiguru tell me how to make a live link to the PDF? Best wishes, Robinh (talk) 21:56, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The citation templates contain an optional "url" parameter. Just enter the full web-address of the pdf to include a link. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Sweet. That's really good. Thanks, Robinh (talk) 07:28, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Page disappearance

I spent 3 hours editing "Mezcal" yesterday as I am THE expert. I have been very depressed by the faulty info on the page. It was almost complete... 5 minutes from finish and;

1. the page dissapeared

2. I was logged out

3. I can not log back in

4. requested new email and it has not been sent.

Is this the usual user experience with Wiki?

Ron Cooper 209.188.122.44 (talk) 21:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC) [e-mail address deleted]

The edit history (here) shows that Mezcal has not been edited since 9/28... – ukexpat (talk) 23:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Ron, you may have been caught in a server problem. You might wish to save your changes as you go along to avoid losing your work if the page crashes. This means you only need to redo a little bit if you run into a snag. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

All movie

Resolved

For Template: Infobox film where would you find amg id on the site.--Adrian 1001 (talk) 22:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Go to http://www.allmovie.com/, type in the name of the film. I've constructed an example for you, I searched for Empire of the Sun (film) and made the necessary edit. You can see the diff here. Basically, the last section of the url when you search for a film is what you need, regards ——Possum (talk) 22:41, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much--Adrian 1001 (talk) 22:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)