Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 March 9

Help desk
< March 8	<< Feb | March | Apr >>	March 10 >

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 9

user talk pages - can I tell them about another wiki?

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 19:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi - I have scoured the WP policies, and don't see much relating to guidelines on what you can write on a users talk page. I have started a how-to wiki on growing plants. Can I tell users who are part of the wikiproject plants here about the wiki, and see if they'd be interested in that project as well? There is good reason to think they may be, but I want to see if there's a clear policy saying I shouldn't. Thanks, --RaffiKojian (talk) 20:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Alternative outlets and Wikipedia:WikiProject Cycling#Similar wikis for examples. Obviously Wikipedia has a direct interest in informing its users of alternative outlets for content that Wikipedia does not want. This helps prevent much wasted time, when users add content that doesn't belong on Wikipedia, and then people have to waste more time deleting it and arguing about it. Every Wikipedia user needs to be fully aware of what belongs on Wikipedia, and what sites will accept what doesn't belong on Wikipedia. WikiProject pages are excellent places to list alternative outlets which specialize in content relating to the WikiProject, but which does not meet encyclopedic standards. This is just my opinion. There might be other users who believe we shouldn't even tell people about other wikis, but obviously I disagree with the belief that keeping people ignorant makes Wikipedia stronger. I would, however, advise against indiscriminately broadcasting a message to large numbers of user talk pages. One entry on Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants should suffice, or you could individually tell those users who have already asked about alternative outlets. Some might say that because you started this wiki, you have a conflict of interest, but COI applies to articles rather than project pages. --Teratornis (talk) 20:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for a very thoughtful reply, I am glad you agree that there is value in sharing wikis housing related, but different content than WP. I would like to ask about your reference to canvassing, though. The link you included seems to refer to a very different issue - that of "sending messages to multiple Wikipedians with the intent to inform them about a community discussion". The whole page focuses on that alone, so I wonder if there's another reference that is broader? Either way, thanks for the reply! --RaffiKojian (talk) 21:38, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:CANVASS explicitly addresses the most common type of canvassing on Wikipedia. But see the first entry under WP:CANVASS#Notes and references:

• Any kind of solicitation may meet this definition, including, for example, a custom signature to automatically append some promotional message to every signed post.

In general on Wikipedia it's best to interpret guidelines broadly rather than narrowly, because you can be sure someone among our 47,337,265 users will interpret them as broadly as possible. Wikipedia's guidelines are not an absolute prescription for our behavior, but rather a way to predict how other editors may respond to what you do. Probably a significant number of Wikipedia editors would be bothered by poorly targeted promotional canvassing, even if it does not meet the strict definition that the WP:CANVASS page primarily addresses. In other words, one must tread lightly on Wikipedia when one has any sort of cause to push. (Everybody has causes to push. Would you be interested in hearing about mine? And everyone else's? Imagine if everybody with a cause put it on your talk page.) In general, it is best to target your communication as precisely as possible, by looking for people who have already expressed a clear interest in what you have to offer, or who would almost certainly have an interest in reality, not in your optimistic thinking. See my next comment below for a possible class of people who might fit the second definition. --Teratornis (talk) 00:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• The WikiProject Plants may also have a newsletter you could use. Just make sure whoever runs the thing agrees. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox also covers talk pages and mentions recruitment and advertising. It appears your goal with user talk posts to wikiproject members would be to advertise your wiki and recruit editors. If you wouldn't make such posts to discuss somebody else's wiki then you probably shouldn't make them about your own. It sounds better to mention a site as a possible alternative outlet for material unsuited for Wikipedia on Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Another tactic for the original poster would be to find all the plant-related articles that Wikipedia has deleted. If other Wikipedia editors have already tried to write how-to articles about plants, and Wikipedia deleted those articles, then those editors would likely be interested in an alternative outlet which would welcome their work. I doubt those editors could feel more offended by a message that mentions an alternative outlet than they were offended by watching their work get blown off Wikipedia. The original poster should search Deletionpedia, which displays tens of thousands of Wikipedia's deleted articles. Anything there about plants (or anything else) is fair game. See WP:WWMPD#If all else fails, try another wiki. I don't think of discreetly promoting an alternative outlet (assuming it uses a free license) as being quite like promoting a commercial product, because alternative outlets meet a clear need. Wikipedia deletes a staggering number of articles, which clearly indicates we have a problem that alternative outlets can help solve. I think that (probably) every WikiProject should have one or more "side" wikis to house the unencylopedic content its topic enthusiasts tend to create on Wikipedia. If everybody could figure out when to use Wikipedia, and when to use an alternative outlet, we could avoid the massive waste of effort represented by WP:AFD. Is it not the height of absurdity that Wikipedia needs to have hundreds if not thousands of editors who specialize in deleting articles? --Teratornis (talk) 00:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

An additional comment about starting a wiki: my advice to the original poster is to concentrate on building up your wiki content by yourself before you try hard to recruit other users. A new wiki is in a very fragile state, because it lacks the massive infrastructure you see on a well-developed wiki like Wikipedia. Peruse the massive accumulated internal how-to knowledge on the Editor's index - and consider what this Help desk represents. Having comprehensive internal manuals, and a well-attended Help desk, can be the difference between a wiki that works and one that flounders. A new wiki has none of this structure initially, which means everybody who joins a new wiki is likely to go in a different direction. It's unlikely that random strangers will share your exact vision for the site, which means you could waste all your time trying to police them. According to Jimbo Wales, one of the key ingredients in a successful wiki is a shared vision. Everybody who participates, or at least a solid core group of participants, must share the same vision for what they want the wiki to be. If you start off by soliciting random strangers online, it would be miraculous if you found a group of people who share your vision. You would be much better off building most of the initial content yourself, or by recruiting some people you already know well, to help you build the initial content and structure. If you leave it up to random strangers to create the structure, your wiki is unlikely to succeed. In other words, you are unlikely to find a shortcut to avoid doing a lot of hard work. You might find it easier to concentrate on doing the initial work by yourself, before you introduce the massive complication of more users. --Teratornis (talk) 00:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Teratornis, Mgm, and PrimeHunter. Lot's of good advice and helpful information - and Teratornis, you really found the fine print on that page, that's the only part I skipped. Also, there are some good templates and an explanation of the goal of the site, versus what's on WP, so I think the site is now ready to handle some new editors, especially if they're familiar with Wikimedia. I certainly had no intention of writing to every Wikipedia editor, I was just thinking of contacting the ones who have themselves added their names to the plant-related projects. The suggestions were great, so I'll post on the project page, and a select few people who seem to be touching upon cultivation related information that is borderline how-to, or have had edits deleted/moved to deletionpedia, and check out this newsletter which I didn't know about... see how it goes. Thanks a lot! --RaffiKojian (talk) 03:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I found a user who may be interested in your wiki; see: User talk:Pvirgatum#Panicum virgatum. --Teratornis (talk) 00:02, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist anomaly

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 00:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A page I started editing today - Sebastian Bayer - is on my watchlist, but when I use the 'my watchlist' special link to see recent edits of pages on my watchlist Sebastian Bayer does not show up, even though it has been edited at least five times today. Any ideas?? Thanks . . .--Fizbin (talk) 23:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I just added Sebastian Bayer to my watchlist and it shows up. The most recent edit is currently a minor edit by a bot. Check the Watchlist tab at Special:Preferences. If "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" is not checked and the most recent edit falls under at least one category which is checked to hide then no edit for that page will show up on your watchlist (unless you click the relevant "show" link at the top of the watchlist). Note that if the most recent edit is hidden then it can "block" an older edit which would otherwise have been shown on the watchlist (this appears unfortunate to me). PrimeHunter (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Resolved - thanks. My preferences had 'hide bot edits' checked. Unchecking that fixed the issue. Thanks!--Fizbin (talk) 00:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Some weirdness is going on...

I'm logged in, but when I opened certain Wikipedia pages in separate tabs, I get the "You have new messages" banner. Assuming someone left me a message on my talk page, I click on the banner and instead I get taken to an IP's talk page with the new message being "Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive edits, blah, blah, blah....". Why did that just happen if I'm logged in? And while I'm on the subject of IPs, the original reason I came here for, before I got distracted by the weird occurrence I just described above, If an IP address is registered here, what is the best SharedIP template I could use for it? --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 00:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe your login is sometimes not registered when you open a new tab. Is your user name displayed at top of the pages where you see the new messages banner? If you have problems staying logged in then see Help:Logging in for some tips. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem was that I'm logged on the secure server, and the separate tabs I opened weren't. But what about my second question? --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 03:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Overt or Covert Bias By Volunteer Administrators

Since I rely on Wikipedia as a starting point for some of my casual research and have occasionally contributed to articles, I am becoming concerned that Wikipedia may be overtly or covertly damaged as a source by the widespread (Drudge; print and broadcast pickups) taint of disallowing the addition of sourced entries under Barack Obama -- under the Controversy section. It seems to me that there is a controversy, fully sourced, on the subjects of Obama's citizenship; his past associations with controversial "thought" leaders and others who are notorious. I can understand the elimination of unsourced or unattributed items, but to be caught deleting well-written sourced material brings us to an ethics question. Should there be a higher appeal process available to contributors and if one does exist, where is that conversation? We need to keep Wikipedia honest, accurate and useful lest it become a disreputable source of rumor, inuendo and become totally unusable as a creditble source. Reference: WorldNetDaily.com http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114. 68.183.89.156 (talk)

This page is only for questions about using Wikipedia. You have a problem with how the page is being edited, take up your complaint at Talk:Barack Obama. --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 00:46, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

We do have a "higher body" (not in the sense of "CIO < Manager < Employee") on Wikipedia called the "Arbitration Committee", these are elected individuals who serve to impose solution, on problems which the community cannot address on its own. They do not however make content rulings. Vivio Testarossa^{Talk Who} 00:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If you haven't already then click "show" in the "Frequently Asked Questions" box near the top of Talk:Barack Obama. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the categoration failure of this post -- It was meant as a generic concern and not specific to Obama. Anything which affects the credibility of Wikipedia is problematic to me. 68.183.89.156 (talk)

See WP:EIW#Dispute. Side comment: before I got an edit conflict with your followup comment, I was going to point out that your question appeared to conflate "Wikipedia" with the Barack Obama article. One should always distinguish between a problem with Wikipedia as a whole, vs. with one article in particular (or with a group of articles). Beware the Blind men and an elephant error. I have read some of the legion of bloggers who carry on about the problems with "Wikipedia" when they really refer to the narrow slices they happen to have focused on. There are many areas of Wikipedia where editing is surprisingly harmonious given the open nature of the project. Often these are in topics that the average person doesn't know or care much about (e.g., Mathematics). One would have to be very brave to get heavily involved in an extremely high-profile article on a polarizing subject which is simple enough for everyone to have an opinion. I can't imagine how one article on Barack Obama could make everyone happy; if Keith Olbermann liked it, Ann Coulter would probably hate it. As far as the "credibility" of Wikipedia goes, on political topics that term is unavoidably subjective. What Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh find credible is obviously different than what Al Franken and Rachel Maddow find credible. The right-wing folks might find Conservapedia credible. In any case, if you don't like something about the Barack Obama article, check back in six months. With the furious pace of editing, as well as Obama's evolving career, the article is bound to change. --Teratornis (talk) 02:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That website hardly seems reliable with messages like "PETITION FOR PUBLIC RELEASE OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE", and "Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution?" when his birth certificate was released a LOOONG time ago[1]. and wikipedia even has a picture of it File:BarackObamaCertificationOfLiveBirthHawaii.jpg, so that's why if someone would post "There are doubts about his birth place" sourced to that news article no one would take it serious and reverted. chandler · 11:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Saving and sharing a book?

I was experimenting with the book feature last night. I went to save my book in order to add more articles later, as I remembered there was an box visible when the feature first was added that allowed you to save it to your userspace, but I found that said box was nowhere to be found. Help:Books#Advanced functions seems to back up my memory, as it indeed desribes how to save and share a book. So has the save feature been disabled, or has something simply gone wrong at my end? Xenon54 (talk) 00:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Help:Books says:

• As of February 26, 2009, the book functionality is in testing on the English Wikipedia.

In my experience with similar messages, the phrase "is in testing" is often a euphemism for "does not work yet". And once users get wise to that, the euphemism treadmill will have to crank forward another notch. Anyway, you can probably help with testing this tool, by carefully recording everything you do (for example on a user subpage like User:Xenon54/Books notes or whatever), and what results you observe, with enough detail to allow developers to isolate any bugs you find. See: Help:Books/Frequently Asked Questions#Where to report bugs and give general feedback? --Teratornis (talk) 02:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Multiple Sclerosis

How long does it generally take a Neurologist to get Multiple Sclerosis in remission

See also Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Er . . . "also"? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:26, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Why is wikipedia editing out factual information about Barak Obama?

Based on the news article that came out exposing Wikipedia editors for taking off anything that would portray Lord Barack Obama as anything other than a God... I am thinking that you aren't even following your own model for information on your web site.

I guess we add wikipedia to the list of biased media who are in the tank for a man who has no right to worshiped like he is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.215.26.28 (talk • contribs)

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at Talk:Barack Obama, as that would be the more appropriate venue. TNXMan 01:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Click "show" in the "Frequently Asked Questions" box near the top of Talk:Barack Obama before starting a dicussion. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:46, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

And at least have the cojones to sign your messages. – ukexpat (talk) 02:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It was the only edit by 98.215.26.28 and the post sounds like it's from somebody who has merely read about Wikipedia elsewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

There are various bloggers and commentators who, for one reason or another, like to rile up their dittoheads over the evils of Wikipedia. This is pretty easy to do, as Wikipedia has articles about almost everything, with something to rile up just about everyone. --Teratornis (talk) 03:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

new article with same name as current article

Hi,

I would like to write an article about Pierre Woods, the model. There is already an article about Pierre Woods, the NFL player. I have never created a page before. How do I create a page with the disambiguation? Thanks for helping me walk through the steps. Becky543 (talk) 01:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

All you have to do is create a page with a "qualifier", such as Pierre Woods (model). Creating the page is otherwise the same as if the original didn't exist. Vivio Testarossa^{Talk Who} 01:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If there are only two people with articles then a disambiguation page is not necessary. You can add a hatnote like this to the top of the existing Pierre Woods:

{{otherpeople4|the football player|the model|Pierre Woods (model)}}

It renders as:

This article is about the football player. For the model, see Pierre Woods (model).

PrimeHunter (talk) 01:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Read Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles/Creating a New Article to reduce the chance that your new article will get deleted. It's a good idea to read the entire book. --Teratornis (talk) 03:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Censorship?

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocracy

No cencorship there, actually. If you look wayyy at the bottom of Barack Obama's article, you'll see a dropdown template titled "Public Image" that has links to massive and well referenced articles on the controversies. There are over a hundred articles on Wikipedia about Barack Obama, and it's not possible to give even one sentence to each subtopic and maintain a coherent article. So to maintain coherence, topics that aren't directly relevant to his biography are only given a link and are confined to more focused articles. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The Obama article is somewaht of a whitewash. It doesn't even mention Ayers, which should be mentioned per WP:UNDUE. It's just how wikipedia rolls, though. Nothing to be done. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The WND article is mentioned at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Barack Obama probation issue and is probably the cause of several recent sections here on the Help desk, but here is not the place to discuss it. As I have adviced others, click "show" in the "Frequently Asked Questions" box near the top of Talk:Barack Obama. There is an article about the Bill Ayers presidential election controversy and it's mentioned in other articles about the election. Barack Obama is a biography about his whole life and only has one section with limited space about the election. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to let the original poster know they're not crazy. Obama is my second favorite politician after Bill Clinton, but WP has a serious liberal bias. There's no solution until a content board similar to arbcom, or something else as drastic, is created. Se la vi. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It's C'est la vie. And the village pump is the place to talk about larger issues. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Should a spaced em-dash in a proper name be preserved?

There are a small number of articles such as The Art Institute of California – Sacramento that have spaced em-dashes in their names. I know the MoS is pretty clear about not spacing em-dashes, but in this case (and a few similar cases) the organization's web site consistently uses a spaced em-dashes in their name. Is there any reason we should preserve that dash style in the Wikipedia article? My opinion is no. I have already renamed the article to use spaced en-dashes, but am having second thoughts and want to be sure this was the correct action. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:DASH says, “If [dashes are] used in an article's title, there should be a redirect from the version with a hyphen.” I created The Art Institute of California - Sacramento —teb728 t c 06:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if Wikipedia has any specific policy on this, but my experience is that this is the kind of small typographical point which is routinely changed to conform to house style, regardless of the preferred style of the entity in question. Algebraist 10:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

PatelShots account posting not getting shared with everyone

> Hello, > > I created / posted page that I want to share with everyone on Wiki. It is under the account "PatelShots". I made it as my page, how do I make that as contribution so that everyone can see it?

Let me know what I need to do different? I can be reached at <removed> > > Cheers, > Shiv > —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.196.212.28 (talk • contribs) 04:21, 9 March 2009

There is no account, User:PatelShots. Do you have a better clue on where to look for the page? —teb728 t c 06:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• There is a User:Patelshots, but I would recommend against making that visible to the public as it violates some core Wikipedia policies. (WP:SPAM being the primary one) - Mgm|^(talk) 08:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Deleted as blatant spam. --Orange Mike | Talk 12:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

FORGOT PASSWORD

ABOUT THE REGISTRATIONS OF WIKIPEDIA ACCOUNTS WHERE MY NAMED ON IT DUE TO ONLY FOR SUCH IN THE WORKS WHERE PUBLISH ONLY FOR REFERENCE THAT REALIZED I DIDN'T KEY IN THE EMAIL ADDRESS WHERE MY ACCOUNTS OF NAME NOW FORGOT PASSWORD.

USERNAME : LING MUN CHUNG

PROBLEM : FORGOT PASSWORD

CATEGORIES EMAIL ADDRESS : PREVIOUSLY DIDN'T KEY IN.

NOW MY EMAIL ACCOUNTS IS : <email removed>

The email account didn't key in is previous during the yahoo email accounts where problem weather during constructions works or relevant of such due to the email accounts are also free. Such technologies where suppose create by myself that being damages by such extremist in Security Council where robberies of revenue accounts and business with the issue of anti nuclear warhead and relevant of lack of discriminations of budgets in defence and relevant that only belongs to themslevs inhabitant and mutant family privately grew only where damages at me since years incident 13 May 1969 incident in malaysia and before such is also the damages at the Cantonese where from the preivous abuisve colonies where form the North near USA.

May I have back my password to put such articles in it due to the informations about the entire world extremist in robberies of Natural Resource including the damages at me and such human rights where they also abuisve in such budgets where develo9pment of formula or weapons where belongs to themselves and such making several of issues remain themselves in continue taking teh blind salary and intruding entire world to become their private world invasion only and abuisve severed of human rights including violates international policies with motif in robberies by productions and serviuce provider exports without justice and damages at all our abilities in build up such capita for ourself and our community.

Sorry but there is no way that Wikipedia can recover your old password, and if you didn’t enter an email address, there is no way that it can assign you a new password. So if you can’t remember your password, I guess you will have to get a new username. —teb728 t c 06:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Copyedit

I created the article Decretum de Judaeis from Nostra Aetate. What should I put in Talk:Decretum de Judaeis to indicate that the transfer of information is in conformity to the norms of Wikipedia ? ADM (talk) 11:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• If you split an article (especially because of size reasons) you should leave a sufficient summary in the original article. Further, you'd have to do the same as with the target article leave a 'paper' trail that says where the info came from and where it went in both article's edit summaries. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• Please use edit summaries. See Wikipedia:Splitting. Make a new edit to Decretum de Judaeis where the edit summary mentions it was created with content from Nostra Aetate. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Created page for The Poncherellos and it was deleted (of course)

Like everything else with The Poncherellos, the Wikipedia entry I created for them was deleted. While the entry was brief, it included a tremendous about of history with more to be added in at a later date.

Why was it deleted?

The Poncherellos have a long, rich history in the musical fabric that is Berkshire County MA. Granted they're not James Taylor or Arlo Guthrie, but they have ties to many well-known musicians including Dee Dee Ramone, Ena Kostabi and more. They've been a band on and off for over 15 years and have reached many milestones including Best Punk Band of 2008 voted on by the readers of My 411 Source, a large regional organization.

Again, why was it deleted? Because it wasn't a bunch of boring old hippies with acoustic guitars? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andyponcherello (talk • contribs) 11:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The Poncherellos was deleted under criterion for speedy deletion A7 because the article failed to indicate why the Poncherellos are important and significant. If you feel that the article prior to deletion did in fact indicate why the band are significant, then you should point this out to the deleting admin here. If you want to recreate the article, you should first read WP:BAND and make sure the article demonstrates that the band meets those notability criteria. Algebraist 12:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• When you visit the The Poncherellos article, you can see a pink block of text which explains why it was previously deleted, with a link to explain what A7 means. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

ip addresses

Hi,

I would like to search wikipedia for ip addresses within a post. I do not want to search for a post from an ip address, but to see if the ip i am looking for is within the actual post. In other words if i do a straight search on lets say ip :198.0.8.2 i will get results for posts from that ip. However if there was a post that contained the ip within the words of the post i would like that post to show up in my search results. is there any special syntax i should be using to do this search thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.125.161.205 (talk) 11:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Just enter '198.0.8.2' in the search box and click 'search'. Algebraist 12:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Then click the namespaces you want to search in at the bottom of the page, and click the "Advanced search" button. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Should a new user be threatened with police action by a moderator for adding ane xternal link?

Hi

I don't have a Wikipedia account but wanted to add an external link to an existing page.

As the page [Java APIs] already contains external links I assumed that it would be ok.

After adding the external link it was immediately removed by a moderator who goes by the name "KS3 Maffs"

On trying to communicate with this person he/she replied:

"This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Blatant advertising. Stop it, or I wil call the police. KS3 Maffs (talk) 11:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Your link was unacceptable, please do not reinsert spam/commerical links into articles. Do you really want me to get in touch with your ISP?? KS3 Maffs (talk) 12:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)"

I tried communicating with this person but they appeared to delete my text.

Should a user who attempts to add an external link to a page that already contains commercial and non-commercial external links be threatened with police action?

Should a user who attempts to add an external link to a page that already contains commercial and non-commercial external links be threatened with having their ISP contacted?

Does this moderator think they are god?

Who moderators the offensive moderators?

Graham

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.20.240.70 (talk) 13:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest posting this question to the administrator's noticeboard. They should be able to help you out. TNXMan 13:22, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The warnings do seem a bit bizarre, and there are only two or three things on Wikipedia that would make anyone call the police....I won't mention them but external links aren't really one of them. However, even if the tone and manner of the warnings was off, the links you have tried to post are clearly WP:SPAM and are against the WP:EL guideline. You deserve more courteous treatment but in the end you can't add those and if you do keep trying yes, your IP address may be temporarily blocked. Wikidemon (talk) 13:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I've gone ahead and moved the question for you. You can see it here. Best, TNXMan 13:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi

I just looked through Wikipedia's "Vandalism" page and see that it does include the addition of external websites.

As I tried to explain previously I do not have an account with and am new and was unaware of such policy.

Seeing other external links I assumed that the addition of external links was ok.

If Wikipedia classifies the additional of all external links as Vandalism then can I suggest that all links to commercial organsaitions such as Google, Sun, java, etc are removed.

I suspect they will not be, but when I added a similar external link I was threatened with police action!

Cheers

Graham —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.20.240.70 (talk) 13:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

No one has threatened to call any police here. You were informed of a violation of Wikipedia policy. If you continue to violate that policy, an administrator may block your IP address from editing Wikipedia to stop you from violating that policy. No police are being called, but you are kindly asked to stop violating policy so that no one has to block you. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 13:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The first warning left for them included a threat to call the police. --Onorem♠Dil 13:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Graham

I've taken a look at your change to List of Java APIs. I'd suggest that it's not ideal - if you look at the other links they're all to articles in Wikipedia, instead of an external link. If I'd seen your edit I might well have reverted you (and then posted something friendly and explanatory on your talk page). Could I suggest that you think about creating an article for the Hedgehog API? Hedgehog should be notable, i.e. it should have good third-party references etc. The "creating an article" link has loads of information. Once an article exists you could then link it from the Java APIs article.

As to whether you should have been threatened by police action or a call to your ISP? Absolutely not. That was excessive, and ran the risk that we could lose a potentially valuable contributor. It could well be that your future Hedgehog article is incredibly useful, and a real benefit to readers. I'm grateful that you've stuck around rather than running away wondering what on earth happened.

Best of luck, and if you need a hand writing the Hedgehog article feel free to ask me - I'm a Java developer in my day-job, so I have some familiarity with the topic, and I'm reasonably comfortable around Wikipedia.

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 13:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The user who made the threat to call the police is now indefinitely blocked. There's nothing to worry about anyway; nobody is allowed to use legal threats here. Everything else has been addressed by the others above, and I hope you'll put that incident behind you, and continue to contribute constructively to Wikipedia. Cheers. Chamal ^talk 15:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Graham, see Wikipedia:Spam Event Horizon to understand the trap you fell into. You made what your prior life experience has conditioned you to believe is a perfectly commonsense assumption:

• "Seeing other external links I assumed that the addition of external links was ok."

However, that's only a good assumption in the real world. Wikipedia is different than most real-world organizations, where it takes time for people to "break in" and prove themselves. When you see people doing something in a real-world organization, you can assume they had to establish some sort of qualifications to be doing what they do. In contrast, on Wikipedia (almost) anybody can edit (almost) anything, regardless of experience or knowledge. Wikipedia uses reactive rather than proactive control: we let people do whatever they want, and then eventually someone gets around to correcting them. (The German Wikipedia is experimenting with something called Flagged revisions which will move the site closer to a proactive control model.) You can't immediately tell just by looking at an article whether a given string of characters came from a Wikipedia expert, or some newbie making their first edit. (To figure this out requires studying the article history, not something you'd instantly understand how to do.) Therefore, the current state of random article X may or may not reflect Wikipedia's complex and unintuitive policies and guidelines. See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Of Wikipedia's 47,337,265 registered users (and a similar number of unregistered users), perhaps fewer than 100,000 have read enough of the friendly manuals to have a solid understanding of the site rules. Even though the knowledgeable users tend to be heavy editors, the sheer number of casual users who don't read the manuals readily leads to a situation of the blind leading the blind. The best way to stay out of trouble on Wikipedia is to base your actions on the written policies and guidelines, rather than using random articles as precedent. If you want to learn from existing articles, the best ones to follow are our featured articles, which have undergone extensive review. Only a tiny percentage of our articles are that good (yet).

As to the severity of your first warning, be aware that by editing under an I.P. address, you risk being confused for other users who have edited Wikipedia under the same address (due to floating and shared addresses). To avoid this problem you can create an account.

To edit productively on Wikipedia, you need to learn lots of unguessable things about this site. An efficient introduction is to read Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. Wikipedia can be vexing at first, but we have a remarkably complete set of written rules to govern almost everything that happens. What you get out of Wikipedia is very much a function of how much effort you make to study the rules. --Teratornis (talk) 15:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Very Very complex history merge! (Possible?)

List of Pixar awards and nominations was split to List of Pixar awards and nominations (feature films) and List of Pixar awards and nominations (short films). The original list is still intact but holds only some awads categories. First request: merging the histories to each list. Further more, List of WALL-E awards and nominations was split from List of Pixar awards and nominations (feature films). Second request: merging the history from List of Pixar awards and nominations (feature films) and User:Diaa abdelmoneim/WALL-E to List of WALL-E awards and nominations. Big mess.

Is this even possible? --Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 15:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Anything is possible if someone wants to work hard enough. See Help:Moving a page#Fixing cut and paste moves. However, it might take all the King's horses and all the King's men to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. --Teratornis (talk) 15:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

So should this be done or ignored?--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 16:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You could try asking at Wikipedia:Requested moves and see what happens. Depending on how messed up the article histories are, maybe only an administrator could straighten them out. I think you need to get an opinion from someone who specializes in this type of cleanup; presumably those people hang out at Wikipedia:Requested moves. --Teratornis (talk) 18:54, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• It's likely more trouble than it's worth. It's easier to make it clear when what article was split from where so anyone who wants to can dig up the appropriate history. (If GFDL is a concern, a note of the split can also be made on the talk page) - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

How does an academic cite a Wikipedia article?

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A professor friend wants to cite one of our articles, and asked me about the proper form for the citation. I remember seeing something about this somewhere, but I can't find it. Who can help? Lou Sander (talk) 15:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Special:Cite. Good luck! Xclamation point 15:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, fellows! Problem solved. Lou Sander (talk) 17:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

printed versions are all bold with fonts that are too large

This only seems to happen with Wikipedia (versus other websites), but it also only happens on one of my three computers. When I print an article from Wikipedia on this one computer, the whole article is printed bold and with very large fonts. On the other two computers, it looks fine, with bolded headings and much nicer spacing on the printout. SO there must be a setting on this one computer that is different from the other two computers, but whatever this different setting is, it does not affect printouts from other websites. Do you know what setting might be causing this? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.255.125.197 (talk) 17:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What browser do you use on the computer that doesn't print properly. Are you using the printable version from the article's toolbox. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I use Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), and yes I do use the printable version. The large bold font shows up even when you do an IE Print Preview of that printable version. I'm expecting this to be something subtle perhaps (not obvious, like not using the printable version), since doing exactly the same thing on two other computers gives no problems, yet with the problem computer there is no problem except with Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.183.1.108 (talk) 22:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Musings from a drunk man about notability, reputable sources, 'good vandalism', and awards for Wiki-comedy

I do all my 'best work' on talk pages whilst under the influence of 'Wife Beater'. This is a multi-part question, so Bear with me. All todays questions were spawned by coming across this harridan

• 1) Is someone notable simply by being mentioned several times in several 'reputable' sources? If I was to (for example) piss on Prince Charles' trousers, I would be mentioned in numerous genuinely reputable sources, however I would still be a complete non-entity. Simply having your name mentioned in a newspaper or magazine does not mean you are notable/significant/important/worthy of an entry in an encyclopedia. Or at least that is my opinion - but official wiki policy seems to disagree, does it not?
• 2) How can we decide what is a 'reputable' source? It is completely subjective, is it not? For example the National Enquirer is notable enough to have a wiki page; does its 'notability' therefore make it 'reputable'? For instance I have seen pages listing Fox News as a source, and everyone out of kindergarten knows this organization is a perversion of the word 'journalism'.
• 3) Are there any personal essays on wiki which support 'good vandalism'? For example whilst reading the article on Miss 'Summer Rayne' (after looking for a pornstar with the same name) I quickly came to the conclusion that this girl was about as irrelevent as a human being can be, and despaired for wiki. However when I reached the part which alleged she occasionaly blows hobos, My faith in human nature was restored. The humourous 'citation needed' tag was the icing on the cake. For another example, if I placed a photo of Dubbya Bush on our Cunt article, with the caption "George W. Bush is officialy recognised as the 'Worlds biggest Cunt' by the Guiness Book of Records", would that not be 'good' or worthwhile in some sense? It would obviously be deleted immediately, but might bring a smile to someones face for a fleeting moment.
• 4) Has there ever been a proposal to delete and ban all personal essay pages? After all they are super-unencyclopedic, are they not?
• 5) What other barnstars or other awards are there for comedy on non-article wiki pages? I have been awarded a 'Bearnstar' for allegedly being funny in the past, you could find it on my talk page. I think it was a quite touching and sweet thing for the guy who made it to do, and wonder if there are any other comedy awards, or if not, if we could publicise and make quasi-'official' his award? Thats all for now folks! Look out for the next installment of the "Willy-Files" in a piss-reeking alley near you! Willy turner (talk) 18:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

For 1 and 2, see WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RS (specifically WP:RSN), respectively. ~EdGl (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• • 1)No. Wikipolicy agrees with you on this. See WP:BLP1E. The event may be covered in the Prince Charles article adequately without creating an entire article on you.
  • 2) Reputability means that it is generally regarded as reliable outside of Wikipedia. The National Enquirer is a no, The Philadelphia Inquirer is a yes.
  • 3) See WP:BJAODN (now gone RIP). You would still get blocked. But if it was funny, we may laugh while blocking you. Most of us do take this project serious, however.
  • 4) Not really. Many personal essays provide insight into how to work together with others in building the encyclopedia, and they are thus quite useful to the overall project.
  • 5) See WP:BARNSTAR or make your own. No one is stopping you. As long as such behavior does not predominate your time at Wikipedia (per WP:NOTMYSPACE) then an occasional collegial laugh is prolly not a bad thing... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting the vandalism to the Summer Rayne Oakes article. See my reply to the offender at User talk:69.181.171.218. If you believe that unsourced claim was funnier than the rest of the article, why are you reading Wikipedia? Go to Uncyclopedia, a collaborative editing site that clearly prizes its drunks. When it comes to humor, I don't know how fiction could top reality in the Summer Rayne Oakes article. How does a mere artificer top someone who seems to honestly believe in "sustainable fashion" as she jets around the world leaving a trail of carbon footprints, melting glaciers as she breaks hearts? As Tom Clancy said, fiction is harder to write than fact, because fiction has to make sense. As far as whether vandalizing articles on Wikipedia brings a smile to someone's face, how many times can you make an audience laugh by telling the same joke? Wikipedia gets vandalized dozens of times per second. William Hung probably still sounds great to William Hung, too. Even if there could be such a thing as "good" vandalism, it would be bad because it would invite a thousand instances of bad vandalism (the Broken window theory). As far as whether humor needs rewarding on Wikipedia, ask yourself whether the laugh track improved television, or the emoticon improved e-mail. Does a woman who looks as good as Summer Rayne Oakes need to carry a placard explaining that she is a beautiful woman? Just in case someone didn't get it? If you have a sense of humor, everyone who shares exactly the same sense of humor and hasn't yet tired of your particular schtick will chuckle, and everyone else will find you annoying or perhaps merely odd. Does Jay Leno keep track of all the instances when someone said he was funny? Leno probably gets more in the way of hate mail for all the people and groups he ridicules. --Teratornis (talk) 20:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

How do I let the Wikimedia Foundation know that I'm not going to donate any more money to their organization?

The treatment of the Obama page is despicable. I do not care about Obama one way or the other (I'm an unaffiliated voter). I am also a contributor to Wikipedia. The administration of the Obama page is losing my money. It just amazes me how the administrators of that article have bent the Wikipedia rules to effectively read that there is no possible way to post anything remotely negative about a person in his or her article and at the same time it is not possible to provide links to other articles about this person. Is this an accurate interpretation of the rules now?

This is not what got me to support Wikipedia from its very early years, and I want to be sure they know this.--I Use Dial (talk) 18:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Contact us. Although, if you have a problem with a particular policy or guideline, you should go to the village pump or the guideline's talk page. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I've seen quite a number of recent Obama threads, posts, and topics lately. Personally I avoid the bulk of it because it reduces the "fun-factor" for me. Perhaps you would find some re-affirmation of your views at the Criticism of Wikipedia article. I don't know if a posting to Jimbo's talk page about your intent to withhold future donations would 1.) Be considered poor form, or 2.) Be particularly noteworthy. This is not to say I agree or disagree with your observations on the Obama article. I do hate to see editors become disenfranchised! Perhaps an email or snail-mail letter in lieu of your standard check would achieve the attention you're looking for. I know it's been said that Wikipedia has become "liberal" due to an influx of youthful editors (and various other reasons). There are not official "Administrators" so to speak which are assigned to patrol the Obama page, there are simply editors who take an interest in (let's use the phrase 'watching over') various articles when the topic is of interest to them. If you have evidence of an editor bending any particular rules (admin or otherwise) - you can approach the WP:AN section, find the appropriate board and open a discussion to a wider audience. I truly wish I could be of more help, but I suspect that I may feel a bit outnumbered, and that it would reduce the amount of enjoyment I get from editing. I see that the article did just go fully protected, so perhaps you could find some confederates at the Talk:Barack Obama page and try to find some sort of compromise and consensus that would be satisfactory. I do honestly wish you the best of luck I Use Dial. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 19:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think if you try and trust or write for Wikipedia on a controversial topic or person (or, in this case, a person with a lot of ardent supporters), you are opening yourself up to a lot of frustration. If you go looking at articles with even what seems a small amount of controversy (Obama, George Bush, Global Warming, human rights, the Iraq war, peak oil etc) you are dealing with an area at which Wikipedia is fundamentally weak - sorting out valid information from garbage, deciding what constitutes "balance" and, generally, putting the articles at the mercy of people with the most time and the strongest opinions or the best knowledge of Wikipedia procedures/bureaucracy. What Wikipedia really excels at are articles about non-controversial, non opinionated, fact based subjects. Like Pokemon characters and the like. But also scientific facts, history, technology and so on. I would hope that if you're going to support Wikipedia financially, it would primarily be for this latter type of articles. These are what makes Wikipedia a truly unique and useful accomplishment, rather than some sprawling, infuriating blog (a "crazy den of pigs" if you will). If you do want to contribute to popular, controversial articles like the Obama one, you have to be prepared to provide rock solid references and to argue the point on the articles talk page. TastyCakes (talk) 20:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually there is a lot of solid science behind the Peak oil article. The theory was controversial in 1956 when M. King Hubbert first published his prediction based on his theory that U.S. oil production would peak sometime between 1965 and 1970. Most of the geological establishment ostracized Hubbert, but then in one of the great "I told you so"s of scientific history, U.S. oil production peaked right on schedule in 1970 and went into irreversible decline. At least one prominent geologist who had led the campaign against Hubbert lost his job as a result. Since the geology of the rest of the world is basically like a scaled-up United States, and many other nations have already seen their oil production peak and go into decline, there is no serious debate about whether oil production for the whole world will eventually peak and go into decline. The (vigorous) debate is about when this will happen, what the consequences will be, what if anything people should do about it, and how much time the various mitigation strategies will need to work. I agree, however, that Peak oil and related articles are not topics for casual contributors. A person has to become very familiar with the topic just to get into the editing game here. But I would slightly disagree with the idea that Pokemon articles are any easier for editors who are not experts at Wikipedia's rules - look at the deletion rate for articles about pop culture fluff topics. When we start a new article about a scientific or engineering topic like Wind power in Ohio, it's pretty easy to demonstrate notability. With cartoon characters and other pop-culture marginalia, the would-be contributor has to run the gauntlet of well-armed deletionists. Wikipedia is probably an unsatisfying place in general for editors who don't want to spend serious time learning our complex rules, unless they stick to simple things like fixing typos. Wikipedia has had plenty of drama in the past and plenty more is in the future, but there's plenty to do which isn't very dramatic at all. --Teratornis (talk) 21:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The peak oil is certainly better than it was a year or so ago, when it failed to separate the idea of "Hubbert Peak Oil" from "Peak Oil". Hubbert's prediction is always paraded around - the fact that he made other predictions that were totally wrong is seldom mentioned, and certainly wasn't/isn't in the article. The article continues to avoid the opinion that I personally ascribe to - that there is simply not enough information to judge the timing of peak oil, and because of that the severity of its consequences can't (or at least shouldn't) be quantified. The article also fails to mention the collapse of oil prices in the last few months. I'm sorry I don't want to start an argument, but I think this illustrates a point: the Obama article is of course well written and sourced. But its content eventually comes to reflect the biases (however slight) of its driving contributors. And if not, it will annoy people who do have such biases (whether they admit them or not). I still think if you want an easy life on Wikipedia and you don't want to get in big arguments with people, you should stick to improving (not, as you say, creating) articles on niche, fact based subjects, rather than anything that could be construed as subjective. TastyCakes (talk) 21:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned creating new articles because I was thinking about the notability problems that plague articles about the margins of pop culture. I agree that editors should focus first on improving what's already here, but unfortunately it seems a lot of people want to create new articles before they know much about improving articles, and Wikipedia lets anyone try. That's why we have so many low-quality articles. But many if not most of our low-quality articles should get better eventually. The pace of improvement seems slow now, but I expect our tools to improve along with our articles in a cycle of mutual feedback that leads to accelerating progress in the future. As for peak oil, there are many issues we can discuss on Talk:Peak oil. Uncertainty about the future of oil production makes it desirable to develop Contingency plans for the various possible outcomes. Coaches in team sports cannot predict exactly what the opposing team will do, so they try to have plans ready to deal with the various things they believe the opposing team might do. I am aware that ASPO's prediction of the "all liquids" peak has pushed forward several times (and the current global economic downturn is pushing it out a bit further), but even a 20 year uncertainty in the date of the peak is insignificant if we haven't prepared when it finally occurs. --Teratornis (talk) 23:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

To the original poster, I would say: trust the process. Wikipedia is a constantly evolving work in progress. The Barack Obama article you see today is not the article you will see next year or in any following year. Wikipedia might have some tendency (I don't really know) to go a little soft on the subjects of biographical articles. See WP:BLP. As far as whether you would want to contribute to Wikipedia, or not, based on just one article, I think it's safe to say there would be no Wikipedia if everybody thought that way. For example, I happen to be annoyed by the extent to which Wikipedia promotes Religion, but that's the price I have to pay to get a reasonably level playing field. Wikipedia is the closest thing yet I have found to a group of humans who value rationality. That doesn't mean every argument or action you see on Wikipedia is logically valid, but Wikipedia is perhaps the most fruitful place I have ever found for making rational arguments. You can get farther on Wikipedia by making sense than you can in most other venues. Granted, making sense takes a lot more work than making appeals to emotion and the other routine rhetorical tricks, but I think it's worth it. Take a ride on Wikipedia not because of where it is, but where it is trying to go. --Teratornis (talk) 21:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Removing COI banner

The Wikepedia page about the NZ Racing Board recently received some inappropriate comments (biased/opinion postings) that have subsequently been removed. However, it is unclear how to remove the conflict of interest banner (see screen shot below). Could you please advise? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.96.82.130 (talk) 19:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Removed by Willy turner. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• To edit any wiki page simply click on 'edit this page', located at the very top of the page, and delete the offending section. The conflict of interest banner should only be added when it is known for certain that the subject of the article has been editing it in a biased way. It was presumed that editors were connected to the NZRB simply because they had the words 'racing board' in their username. This is as silly as adding a COI banner to the british queen article if an editors username was 'queen elizabeth 11'. Secondly their was no mention on the articles discussion page or page history of any supposedly biased editing. Normaly if there was mention of supposedly biased editing in an articles talk page, this issue should be cleared up before removing the COI tag. However in this instance the tag had been added completley innapropriatley. I encourage you to , and edit any article without mercy. Remember that you cant 'break' wiki, and it is structured so that (generaly speaking) any edit is better than no edit. Willy turner (talk) 20:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

STACEY KEACH MOVIE

COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT MOVIE THIS ACTOR WAS IN - IT WAS WAR TIME AND A MASSIVE AMT OF PAINTINGS WERE FOUND AT THE END. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.252.89.74 (talk) 19:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried the Entertainment section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in answering knowledge questions there; this help desk is only for questions about using Wikipedia. For your convenience, here is the link to post a question there: click here. I hope this helps. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

And for your further convenience, you may just wish to scan Stacey Keach's imdb page. If you do plan to ask at the Reference Desk, though, please be judicious with the caps lock key. Some editors may have heart conditions. --Fullobeans (talk) 19:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Search Wikipedia with Google for: world war II nazis stolen paintings finds some possible clues, such as Nazi plunder, Rescuing Da Vinci, Weisbaden Manifesto, The Rape of Europa, etc. If nothing else, it's interesting to read about Hitler stealing art. You didn't say whether the film you have in mind was set in World War II - that's one war that featured art theft on a massive scale. --Teratornis (talk) 21:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Inaccuracies in a article

How does a person correct inaccuracies in an article without having Wiki erasing those corrections. If the truth is nto allowed to be told by Wiki than what good are you? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.153.77.100 (talk) 19:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is not truth, but verifiability. Please read WP:V. I'm afraid you'll have to be a little more specific about the editing conflicts you're referring to if you want more information. --Fullobeans (talk) 19:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I've got a dollar that says they're referring to the recent Barack Obama flare-up. See above posts for more of the same rhetoric. TNXMan 20:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll match that dollar, but I want to put it in the same pot ;) — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 21:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Query about deletion process

Last week I happened on Ben Colonomos, and observed that it had the following tags

{{Orphan|date=February 2009}}
 {{Unreferenced|date=April 2007}}
 {{Like-resume|date=December 2007}}

I did a quick Google, while there were several hits, I didn't see much that looked authoritative or notable. So I had a look at the deletion pages, and ended by adding {{db-person}} thus: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Colonomos&oldid=274876819, with the log message "(Proposed for delete: the maintenance tags have been there for more than a year, but there is still not claim of notability) ". I didn't add anything to a deletion page - I thought this was automatic now.

A few hours later another user reverted my edit, with the log message "(decline speedy - notability may exist (check Google News))". Apart from the page history, I can find no evidence of my having proposed deletion.

I am not asking here about whether the article should be deleted or not: that is a matter I intend to take up with the editor who reverted my tag. I do have two questions about the process:

• Did I follow the process correctly, or was I supposed to add an entry to WP:AfD?
• Did the other editor act legally in reverting my edit?

--ColinFine (talk) 20:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The other editor was correct. {{db-person}} only applies where there is no assertion of notability - for example "John Q. Public is a man who lives in Quahog, Rhode Island." In this case, the article assets Mr Colonomos is notable because he owns a music company. Plus, lack of maintenance alone is usually not enough to delete an article. What you should do now is attempt to find sources (check Google News). If you can't, then you can prod or list on AfD as non-notable because there is no way to verify the claims of notability made in the article.Xenon54 (talk) 21:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

There are three different mechanisms for article deletion: speedy deletion, for entirely non-controversial deletions; proposed deletion, for likely non-controversial deletions; and articles for deletion, which involves a week-long discussion period to determine consensus. You invoked speedy deletion in this case, whereas it probably would have been better to go for one of the others: WP:CSD#A7 states that the criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance [...] if the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion. The article in question isn't a clear-cut case by any means, but since it's existed for so long, it would have been a safer bet to use one of the other methods. I imagine that SoWhy was working through the deletion requests and adjudged the article not to be a valid case for CSD, and so removed the tag, which is perfectly legitimate. Fair questions though! haz (talk) 21:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. The bit that troubles me though, is that both SoWhy and you have invited me to look at GoogleNews. But I am not somebody with any knowledge or interest in the guy: I found an article which has been tagged for nearly two years as unreferenced, and nobody has been interested enough to find any. Why does it suddenly become my responsibility to find the references, as opposed to the people who want to argue for keeping it?

I suppose the answer is that I should take it to AfD rather than Speedy, and then it will get argued. But there is something that rankles a bit in being told by two people to go and look for references about a guy I have no interest in, in order to justify keeping an article which I have suggested should be deleted. --ColinFine (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Not caring about an article is not reason good enought to nominate it for deletion. Laurent (talk) 21:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If you take a few seconds to type in his name to Google News before nom'ing, then that can give you a good idea of whether it's worth it to nom. It's a good thing to do before any AfD, as it prevents poorly written but otherwise notable articles from being nomed. In this case, absolutely nothing comes up in a Google News search, so he probably isn't notable and an AfD nom will likely result in deletion. Think of it as a court case: as the nominator (prosecution), it is now your responsibility to prove that the defendant (the article you nom) is non-notable. Xenon54 (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

indeed. I think Laurent raises a good point about the fact that there is a middle ground between nominating an article for deletion and researching it yourself. You can always do nothing, and let someone else take care of it. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 22:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

@Xenon: OK, thanks for that: I started typing a rejoinder to your court-case analogy, but I've just understood what you (and SoWhy) were saying. I interpreted 'check Google News' as implying 'and you will find something there'. I thought you were both telling me to go and prepare the case for the defence! And I couldn't understand why, if you'd found something there, you were challenging me to produce it, rather than doing so yourselves. So I was even more confused when you said that nothing came up. Now I see what you mean, and I hope you see why I was a little upset.

@Jayron: Yes, you can, and that is what most users (including me) do most of the time when they come across unreferenced articles. The question is, in general would we rather have an unreferenced article or no article? In practice, the answer seems to be that we'd rather have an unreferenced one, judging by the number of ancient cleanup tags. The trouble with doing nothing is that often nobody else will take care of it. Hence the AfD mechanism. --ColinFine (talk) 00:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand why you were confused and upset. I take the blame. I was trying to get my thoughts together when I'm really tired (stupid time change) and my posts became a bit too wordy. That seems to have caused you to interpret them in a different way than I intended. Sorry again, and I hope this gets resolved. Xenon54 (talk) 01:05, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

How do you know what articles need clean up?

Hello!

I noticed that many errors in regards to the Manual of Style occur, on some articles more than others. But some are quite bad, and because they may be small or of little importance, they are rarely looked at. So, since I'm free this afternoon, I'd like to do some cleanup, but how do I find those articles that need most help? --96.232.62.6 (talk) 21:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Some of these articles are listed there: Articles requiring cleanup but the list is probably not exhaustive. In my opinion, the best thing to do is to find some articles you're interested in, and clean them up as you read them. I'm sure nearly all the articles on Wikipedia could be improved in some way. Laurent (talk) 21:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Sean Goldman

I think this article needs a lot of attention, because it seems to be advocating a particular POV. I'm not sure what the appropriate tags are for it but I hope you folks will take a look. Nerfari (talk) 23:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I see someone has nominated it for deletion, so it will certainly receive the attention it needs. Thank you. Nerfari (talk) 23:19, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Censorship and banning users

Why is it that users making mention of Barack Obama's citizenship and eligibility are censored and banned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.238.133 (talk) 23:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Because they don't take into account things like WP:RS and the understanding that his birth certificate has been released for a long long time... On that, there's a whole article concerning all these conspiracy theories... And lastly, don't believe all the propaganda you read. chandler · 23:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is censored. Do you mean the edits are reverted? If so, it is done based on Wikipedia policy. Continually breaking Wikipedia policy can lead to being blocked for a short period of time. Repeating the same problems once the block is over will eventually lead to a ban. It doesn't matter what the topic is. -- kainaw™ 23:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Nothing wrong can be said about Lord Obama. You can, however, vandalize articles on Republicans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pgecaj (talk • contribs) 00:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

You can vandalize any article you please, but your vandalism will eventually be reverted. It will be reverted most quickly, however, on articles which are watched by thousands of people, like, say, that of a recently elected president of the United States. --Fullobeans (talk) 07:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia is experimenting with Flagged revisions which, if successful, will substantially change the meaning of the core guiding principle that "you can vandalize any article you please". Even the more anarchic English Wikipedia has reduced the number of pages unregistered users are free to vandalize through the mechanism of semi-protection. --Teratornis (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Banning and censorship

Well Chandler, Obama has NOT produced his birth certificate. He produced a computer generated COLB (certificate of live birth) which is FAR different than a birth certificate. In 1961 Hawaii, a COLB could be issued regardless of PLACE of birth. His actual birth certificate is sealed in a vault in Hawaii. He has also sealed his selective service records, his Occidental College records and his passport records. He's spent approximately a million dollars on attorney's fees fighting lawsuits with regard to these records. Not once has SCOTUS ruled on a case on it's merit. To date they've been denied due to a lack of standing. The big question is if he has nothing to hide, why is he hiding it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.238.133 (talk) 23:34, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

And that's a big question that you can ask at a thousand other websites. Please don't bring it to Wikipedia - we use reliable and verifiable sources to produce neutral content. We're not about perpetuating silly arguments ad infinitum - or at least we try not to do that. Franamax (talk) 23:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to feed the troll, but I'll go ahead and link to this page one more time, and suggest that he take his crackpot conspiracy theories to Conservapedia, or somewhere else on the internet that doesn't have standards when it comes to differentiating fact from fiction. TastyCakes (talk) 00:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually the funny thing about all the certificate thing is that Obama could have stopped this by simply providing his long-form certificate, which he didn't. Of course, by that it is not to be assumed that it doesn't exist, but why not declare that he didn't provide it despite much request? Does that offend the holly nature of Lord Obama, or it violates the left-wing bias of Wikipedia. I gotta tell you, our NPV has failed in politics articles but thanks God is much better in articles that do not represent controversial issues. In politics... holy crap... we're MSNBC! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pgecaj (talk • contribs) 20:50, 9 March 2009

It's worth noting that the willingness of shipowners to pay ransoms to Somali pirates has had the effect of turning piracy into a growth industry. I am quite certain that if President Obama began complying with requests from far-right conspiracy theorists, the result would similar - the proliferation of new and ever-more fantastic conspiracy theories for President Obama to waste his time refuting. Of course feeding trolls has the same result, so shame on me. It's sad, actually, to see far-right individuals coming so close to discovering a tool they could use to actually do something constructive, but they can't see the value (yet) in what is right in front of their faces. On Wikipedia we can, for example, document the extremely complex subject of Energy, and help people understand the options for reducing the almost 70% of (and growing) U.S. petroleum consumption that comes from foreign nations, some of which are (amazingly) not exactly fans of the country they are fueling (for now). But that requires actual work and thinking, which makes it much less fun for some people than cooking up wingnut conspiracy theories. I wonder when the hard right will begin demanding to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's birth certificate? That accent sounds suspicious. --Teratornis (talk) 02:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, no he couldn't produce his long form certificate, since the state of Hawaii does not release those. To the person on the certificate, nor to anybody else. What has been produced is all that the state releases. But then, none of this discussion belongs on this page. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:49, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Infobox uk place not working

Hello, I can't figure out what I've done wrong with this page - was trying to add an infobox to Nuthampstead copied from another page, but it doesn't display, only the code... Could someone with more brain take a look? ta C2r (talk) 23:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You missed a closing square bracket down at Royston, at least that's what fixed it. [2] Looks OK for me now. Good for you too? Franamax (talk) 23:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Wannabe Kate problem

Hi. When I tried to access my Edit count using wannabe kate, it said I have 0 edits, and I clearly do not! The URLs which the tool cites don't show that I have 0 edits. Is it broken, or is this a temporary problem, and does the link work for you? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 23:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Wannabe Kate is definitively broken and its author has departed. You can try real Kate (~river on the toolserver) or the Sox tool here. One sec to find the links... Franamax (talk) 23:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Kate about me and sox about me! - from my handy squirrel-nest :) Franamax (talk) 23:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the Contribution summary link at the bottom of Special:Contributions pages is better. —teb728 t c 00:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the sox tool, what do the colours on the monthly bars indicate, and why does it say I've edited the article 0 72 times when I haven't edited it at all? ~AH1^(TCU) 00:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The colours on the monthly stats are keyed in the "Namespace totals" section immediately above. It would likely be better coloured with shading from good to bad (article/talk through ANI-junkie, for instance) (and a special colour for RefDesks of course :) but it is what it is.

As to the zero article, that's interesting. Have you made edits to an article which was subsequently redirected to 0? It's possible that Soxred93 has forgotten the &redirect=no parameter in their API call, lord knows I've done that.

In any case, User:Soxred93 is the master of that particular bit of function, so that's the best place to ask. I'll watchlist their page now so I can keep track of what develops. Franamax (talk) 01:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Reliable information

Reliable?? What reliable vetting process was there for Barack Obama?? US District Court Judge Robertson stated that the issue had been "Twittered" thoroughly. I hardly think we should rely on Twitter to vet a President. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) also raised the issue. NO ONE has seen Obama's birth certificate. I'll leave your little socialistic, koolaid drinking propaganda site... no problem. But, rest assured that the issue WILL come to light. I just hope it's before this usurper destroys our country. In parting I'll leave you with this.

A pair of radical Columbia University professors by the name of Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven wrote an article in the radical magazine known as The Nation. The article was published on May 2, 1966 and laid out what is now known as the "Cloward-Piven Strategy". The plan calls for the destruction of capitalism in America by swelling the welfare rolls to the point of collapsing our economy and then implementing socialism by nationalizing many private institutions. Cloward and Piven studied Saul Alinsky just like Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Listen as Brannon Howse and his guest James Simpson explain how Cloward and Piven inspired the creation of ACORN that Obama worked for as a community organizer. This interview must be e-mailed all over the country. Americans must awaken and understand the goal of these radicals and what is to come if they succeed.Time is of the essence. Obama is not over his head as some have claimed, he knows exactly what he is doing. Understand the Cloward-Piven Strategy, the rules of Saul Alinsky, and their Cultural Marxist worldview and you will understand what is occurring in America is not by mistake.

Click here to listen now:

http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php?EpisodeID=10958

More and more Americans are waking up to this Marxist with his social welfare agenda. Obviously you're censoring the talk of Teaparties too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.238.133 (talk) 23:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You do understand that it's not Obama that has destroyed the world economy... a certain other person was president for the last 8 years... but ofc... american right wing nut jobs were all in a coma those years... Good morning. chandler · 23:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

70.253, we are trying to converse with you politely here, but you appear to be soapboxing on a particular subject not related to the purpose of this help desk. Also, you are creating multiple threads here to pursue your argument, which may be considered as disruptive editing and may get you blocked. Please rethink your approach. Do you have specific questions on how Wikipedia works? Franamax (talk) 00:04, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

My vote is for banning this tool. Even if he does have valid concerns (which he doesn't) this page isn't the place for his "problems". TastyCakes (talk) 00:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree, but we haven't gone through the process of patient education yet. Not everyone understands how the wiki works when they first arrive here, and it's way different from your average forum, so how would they know? I've left a few personally-worded warnings on their talk, they've stopped (for now), and if they start again those warnings will make it that much easier to get a quick block. No big deal, just another day at the office. Some small percent of the people who come here first with attitudes go on to be good editors, so I'm willing to go the distance, and only then call it quits and ask for the big stick. Franamax (talk) 00:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Watching talk pages of articles in a category

I currently use Special:RecentChangesLinked to keep an eye on changes to articles in a category (I doubt it matters, but the specific thing I’m looking at is Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Structural engineering). However, this doesn’t register changes to the talk pages of articles in the category. I can use it to watch for vandalism or for edits to articles, but not to watch for discussions starting up on the talk pages. Is there any relatively easy way to do that? I’m trying to segregate my watchlists by having separate subpages for separate interests, so I don’t want to just add all of the articles to my watchlist. All I can think of is the relatively inelegant method of listing all of the articles that are currently in that category (and their talk pages) on a subpage, and then using RecentChangesLinked to track changes to all pages linked on the subpage, the way I started to do at User:Floquenbeam/SE Workbench. But I’m a bit too lazy to do that by hand if there's a more elegant method. Plus, it means if a new article appears in the category, it doesn’t show up on my subpage.

Any suggestions are welcome. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh, you shouldn't ask questions just around recess, when the kids are coming out to play in the schoolyard. :) RecentChangesLinked has a few problems and one of them seems to be not including talk pages the way you want. Maybe someone else here can come up with a fix, or you could ask the same question over at the village pump where the tech-sharks cruise the waters. All I can tell you is that I've made a notation on my list, in the section where watchlists need to be properly structured and automated. Watching everything in a category such as you describe is certainly part of that. As to exactly when I will ever do that - well, it's a pretty long list, pay more attention to your retirement plan. :( Franamax (talk) 01:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that was quite annoying last night. Thanks for the feedback, Franamax. My retirement plan is more or less gone, so I can afford to keep an eye on your "list". I'm hesistant to try VPT - I'm afraid they probably still think I'm insane over there [3]. Still, perhaps I'll try there if nothing further develops here. I was hoping there was some kind of magical javascript thingamajig somebody wrote. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)