Help desk
< November 26	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 28 >

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.

November 27[edit]

Retirees[edit]

Does Wikipedia publish lists of future (within two or three years)retirees of state,county or city governments. if requested? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.90.55.101 (talk) 00:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not publish such lists, primarily because we (the volunteer editors of Wikipedia) do not have them, nor will we actively look to obtain them. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and therefore does not include indiscriminate lists of information. The type of lists you are looking for are not appropriate for Wikipedia's articles, but might be found at the governments' websites if they exist. Intelligentsium 02:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

RSS[edit]

Is it possible to set up an RSS feed that updates every time an editor makes a contribution? For quite some time there has been an editor who seems to edit pages immediately after I have -- even if its an article that they've never edited before. I find it hard to believe that its a coincidence that they have every article I edit watch-listed nor would I think they sit there and constantly "refresh" my contribs page waiting for me to make edits. --nsaum75^{¡שיחת!‎} 02:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, anyone can do that by going to a user's contribution page, and clicking Atom under Toolbox on the left side of the page. --Mysdaao ^talk 07:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's more than a little creepy. Have you talked to the user?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:29, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anyway to disable the "Atom" feature on contribution pages? The editor in question exhibits a battlefield mentality (in my own opinion and explicitly stated by a number of admins too) whenever confronted about issues that may in some way be interpreted as critical of them or the edits; I'm not sure asking them if they are using an RSS feed to "monitor" me would be responded to in a productive manner. --nsaum75^{¡שיחת!‎} 18:02, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unable to make a donation[edit]

I wanted to make a small donation from the UK. You oblige me to use PayPal, well-known as an impersonal bureaucracy. I could not remember my password, as I have not used PayPal for years. I could not be bothered to go through their stupid procedures. Bye-bye donation. Yours, MF —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.4.92.211 (talk) 11:22, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure if you slipped a 50 pound note in an envelope and mailed it to Florida, it would go to the right place.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:24, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I take it that you didn't see the "For more information or other ways to give, click here" text on the donation page. Truly unfortunate. Xenon54 (talk) 14:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, the OP is in the UK, and Xenon's link is to the US donations page. If you click on the donations banner here in the UK, you end up at a page where Paypal is the only option offered, and there are no onward links to other ways to donate. Ka renjc 17:39, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

popups edit to robotics article[edit]

I had an error trying to revert using my (not so)smartphone - Robotics

i have put a help tag on my talk page but am posting here also in case it helps speedy expediting of a fix

i need someone to undo my revert as the java popups seems to not work properly on this smartphone

Chaosdruid (talk) 14:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This has been fixed. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:20, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scottish Law[edit]

Wikipedia always talks about UK law, there is no such thing. There is Scottish law, The law of England and Wales and the law of Northern Ireland. Scottish law is very different to English law and comes from different roots. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.136.12.13 (talk) 15:13, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you see this in an article, you may want to discuss this on the article's talk page. TN X Man 15:16, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article Law of the United Kingdom discusses the different legal systems in the UK. It would be helpful if you could cite to articles that you believe are inaccurate. TNXMan's suggestion is, of course, a good one.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Donor Privacy Policy for one. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 17:55, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's not really an article and doesn't belong to Wikipedia. To the extent you believe the policy misstates the law, you should contact Wikimedia UK.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:05, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's seems okay to be fair, I just found it amusing to be looking at a page about UK laws a few moments(see two thread above) after the question is posed here. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 18:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Using the search is one way to find them. i.e Reprimand (UK law). Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 18:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I had already looked, didn't find much, actually. The Reprimand article should probably be deleted for reasons other than probably misstating the law (the linked article seems to say that reprimands are issued only in England and Wales), like absolutely no sources since being tagged in March of last year.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:28, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

pronunciation key[edit]

At the risk of appearing ignorant, your pronunciation key offers is useless to me. I was refreshing my memory about the definition of a portmanteau word The hieroglyphics that followed the spelling told me bupkis about how to pronounce it. And when I clicked on the "listen to me" icon, your site only played "port." That I can figure out. I wish I could offer you a suggestion on how to fix this problem; if I could I probably wouldn't be refreshing my memory on the definition of portmanteau words. Please do something about this. thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.80.47.36 (talk) 17:10, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I click on the listen icon, I hear the whole word, although admittedly it's kind of clipped at the end. As for the pronunciation key, you could click on the Wiktionary hyperlink off to the right and see more pronunciation keys that you might find more user-friendly.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

შეკითხვა[edit]

თუ უკვე არსებულ სტატიას უბრალოდ გადმოვთარგმნი ქართული ვიკიპედიისათვის, საავტორო უფლებების დარღვევად ჩაითვლება? 62.212.42.67 (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is the help desk for the English Wikipedia. There may not be anybody speaking Georgian who reads this. The help desk for the Georgian Wikipedia is supposed to be ka:ვიკიპედია:ცხელი ხაზი but it hasn't been edited since it was created in 2007. Google Translate gives your post as:

Question

If the article is simply gadmovtargmni Georgian vikipediisa for copyright infringement will be included?

This translation doesn't seem good enough to answer you. Maybe Wikipedia:Copyright violations is of help. Can you ask in English? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From my limited knowledge of Georgian, "გადმოვთარგმნი", (which Google couldn't cope with and left as "gadmovtargmni") appears to be a first-person-subject verb from the root "თარგმნი" "targmni" = "translate"; and "ვიკიპედიისათვის" "Vikipediisatvis" has the benefactive ending "-tvis". So I guess the OP is asking if simply translating articles for the Georgian Wikipedia would be a copyright infringement. --ColinFine (talk) 00:20, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Copying Song Lyrics[edit]

Hello, I would like to copy the first couple of verses of "Alouette" for my blog. My blog is about my home daycare, and I put many song lyrics on there with the accompanying actions children can do (in written and in video form). Am I allowed to put the words to the song on my blog if I site where I got the lyrics from? Or am I only allowed to refer my readers to Wikipedia to get the song lyrics? (Doing this would make the blog entry irrelevent.) Thanks in advance, Charla —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.99.100 (talk) 18:29, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia releases it's text under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license and the GFDL, so you should be able to retranscript the lyrics on your blog so long as you cite the source of them. Also, considering the work is pretty old, it might even be in the public domain, meaning you could use it any way you want. CET TALK 18:49, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Generally speaking, you can reuse any material from Wikipedia for any purpose, as long as you comply with the licence. See Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. --ColinFine (talk) 00:23, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My page is not showing?[edit]

Hi

my page The CPLD Quality Mark which i created today is not showing when i seach for it using the wikepedia search function.

any idea when it will show?

thanks

matt —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thecpldqualitymark (talk • contribs) 18:44, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's because you've created it in your user space instead of article space. Please see WP:COI and WP:USERNAME. It would seem that your user name is in breach of policy and that you have a conflict of interest with the article you attempted to create. Suggest you start again with a new account name. If the company is notable, then someone else will write an article about it eventually. Mjroots (talk) 18:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

How do you put in references? because every time I put in a reference the infobox goes away, what can I do to stop that? and also sometimes when I edit an infobox the birthdate goes away, what can I do to prevent that too? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DonnyD97 (talk • contribs) 19:58, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:INCITE for an explanation. Mjroots (talk) 21:41, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Infoboxes have documentation at their template page, for example Template:Infobox comedian. Assuming the documentation is up to date, you can only use the parameter names listed there. Parameters with other names are ignored. Some parameters may only accept a value without a reference. If you have a problem in a specific edit then please link to a diff so we can see what is wrong. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added information to a motion picture entry and it disappears[edit]

I added a link to moviemistakes.com for a motion picture (Predator 2 to be exact) and it got removed by a volunteer telling me on my talk page "Wikipedia is not a collection of links, please don't link for purposes of promoting a personal website..." I responded by asking, "how is that any different than movies linking to IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes?" and he didn't answer. Now, whenever I add an entry for moviemistakes.com for ANY movie under External Links and save it, it disappears automatically when I revisit the page. Why am I not allowed to add these links? Movie Mistakes is NOT my website, I gain nothing by linking to it, I'm just adding information for the same reason as everyone else: It's useful and/or fun. Space Mountain Mike (talk) 22:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's because the external links section of the articles aren't supposed to be a collection of any and all links that are related to the subject. See WP:EL. IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes are established leaders in the film community and have much more info than we could succinctly put into an article. Dismas|^(talk) 00:17, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of the website is that anyone can submit entries to it. As such, it would not meet the criteria for reliable sourcing. Assuming that all submissions are checked by said staffers, however, then it could possibly be used as a reference for a specific statement in an article, but it would not be suitable as an 'External links' entry for different films -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternate account of Phantomsteve]} 00:22, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]