Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 November 5

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November 5

User Talk: IP Address

There is a User Talk: IP Address page with my IP address. It was last updated over two years ago and has nothing to do with anything I ever posted. However, when I was just not logged in, I had a NEW Message banner that said I had a new message and that is how I discovered it. This may have happened a few times before. Anyway, I am pretty confident that my IP address is unique so I guess that someone may have stolen it and used it for deceptive purposes when I inadvertently did not log in to edit something.

Question 1: Does this page need to stay out there? Forever? It is annoying to get a prompt about it.

Question 2: Also, I assume that someone at Wikipedia can get the IP address from my userid and so figure out which page I am referring to. Is this correct?

Riverfield (talk) 00:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Your IP address is indeed unique, but may change, depending on your Internet Service Provider. If it has changed recently, you may have received a warning or notice not applicable to you; if so, you can ignore it. This page does have to stay out there, because talk pages are almost never deleted. As to your second question, it is correct that certain users (known as CheckUsers) can see your IP address, but they do not need to be involved in this case (they deal mainly with sockpuppetry and abuse-related cases). However, to give you the best advice we will at least have to know the content of the message left at your IP address's talk page, if not necessarily the page itself. Intelligentsium 00:55, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

If you are asking me for the nature of the content, it was about abusive use of Wikipedia - vandalism, and threatens to block the IP address. Riverfield (talk) 01:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

If your IP address is not shared (as with an educational institution or family), then most likely it is because your IP has changed. You can ignore this if you were not responsible for the edits that led to the warning. Intelligentsium 02:19, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep, people who check for vandalism tend to be well aware that IPs can change hands. It's likely to be pretty clear that the message was intended for someone else who owned the IP before you did. (It's very rare to keep the same IP for two years unless you never reboot your router, or you specifically asked your Internet service provider for a static IP.) The "you have new messages" notice should only turn up the first time the IP is used after the message is sent. --ais523 14:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I checked with my ISP and learned that I have a "dynamic" IP address that changes "frequently". Thanks for helping me understand this. Maybe someone can update the Wikipedia "IP address" page with this kind of information? I don't know that I am technically qualified. I had looked at that page before I sent you this HELP query. Thanks again. Riverfield (talk) 01:23, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean an edit to IP address? That page already mentions dynamic IP addresses. It wouldn't be practical to list which ISP's use dynamic addresses under which circumstances. The page is an article in the general encyclopedia and shouldn't discuss things specific to Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:46, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Syntax error

The article "Digital storytelling" was a dreadful, virtually unsourced mess when I first encountered it. I've tried since then to convert it to something better (if still virtually unsourced). Sourcing will come later, I hope. Parts of it were "sourced" to "Kompar, 2007" but there was no indication of which book, paper or similar this referred to. I've converted each of these inline references to a single footnote -- but Mediawiki is gagging on some syntax error I've made. What syntax error, though? (Most likely I'm just sleepy and missing something obvious.) Hoary (talk) 02:10, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There was an unclosed HTML comment which was causing the reference not to be seen by the software, which I have closed. Intelligentsium 02:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Aargh. Thank you, Intelligentsium. -- Hoary (talk) 02:28, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Another question with no heading

I'm having a hard time publishing my article. I can't seem to download my illustrations that go with my article into the article publishing space. Can you help me with this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bklynmatt (talk • contribs) 03:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you asking about Kabbalistic Palmistry? --Teratornis (talk) 07:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

british ancestary

can I find my british ancesters —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.231.115.226 (talk) 09:42, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

This help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. Knowledge questions can be asked at the reference desk. However, if you do go there you really need to ask a more targeted question. Your current one tells the reader very little about the specifics of your situation, what you seek, and invites a response like "I don't know, can you?" You might get some very general advice about things you can try to trace your ancestry (note the spelling of that word) but with such a generic question, by necessity the answer has to be generic as well.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 09:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

List of characters in The Simpsons

I attempted to make some good-faith edits to the above page and succeeded in ruining the rather large table there - can anyone help?! Hard to explain just what happened but it should be apparent to anyone having a look... Many thanks! Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 10:07, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I have reverted your edit in order to fix it. I wasn't sure what you were going for to separate out what part should be kept.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:24, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, and thanks for that, Fuh. I was hoping to move Hugo Simpson from the end of the table to its correct place between Amber Simpson & Mona Simpson. Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 10:38, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Quotation Marks and Common Phrases/Cliches

When and how should one use quotation marks when dealing with common phrases? I notice that some of articles on cliches use quotation marks around the phrase at hand, like Bite the bullet, while others do not, like Tastes like chicken. I was unable to find an answer to this question in the section on quotation marks in the Manual of Style, and I have nothing to go on from common usage, outside of Wikipedia. Bobnorwal (talk) 13:57, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know a guideline and English is not my first language but I would have used quotation marks in the first occurrence at Tastes like chicken when it's a multi-word phrase and the phrase itself is being discussed without having been defined before in the article. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards quotation marks, too, but I feel I need more assurance - and stricter guidelines - before I go ahead and alter many of the articles about or using common phrases. Bobnorwal (talk) 14:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

There may not be Wikipedia guidelines for such details but you could ask about proper English at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:46, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics: Words as words:

Use italics when mentioning a word or letter (see Use–mention distinction) or a string of words up to one full sentence (the term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787; the most commonly used letter in English is e). When a whole sentence is mentioned, quotation marks may be used instead, with consistency (The preposition in She sat on the chair is on; or The preposition in "She sat on the chair" is "on"). Mentioning (to discuss such features as grammar, wording, and punctuation) is different from quoting (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source).

—Wavelength (talk) 15:42, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Dealing with vandalism in article talk pages

Is it considered appropriate to delete comments in article talk pages that would clearly be considered vandalism if they where in an article? The page in question is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Negative_space, which as of 11:22 Eastern time on November 5 2010 included a section called "dicks" with a comment "i am gay and stupid". Clearly such a comment in an article should be deleted, but I'm not sure if I should edit out such comments made by others in talk pages. If it was signed, I would suggest the person leaving the comment remove it, but its an unsigned comment left by a non-logged in user (history of the page shows only an IP address). twfowler (talk) 15:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep, go ahead and remove it. Talk pages are meant for the discussion of the article and the improvement of it. Discussions about the topic itself are normally deleted. Relevant policy pages include WP:BLP, WP:NOTAFORUM, and WP:TALKPAGE. Dismas|^(talk) 15:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Verbal permission to use photos

I have verbal permission to insert photos taken by the subject of a Wiki page. The subject took the photos himself and has no intention of copyrighting them or otherwise restricting their use. My goal is to upload the photos to the Wiki page about this subject. How do I "tell" Wikipedia's copyright screening system that this is a legitimate use of the photos and does not violate any copyright laws? In one attempt to upload one of these photos to Wikipedia prior to editing the page to include the image, I received notification that the image could be deleted due to rules regarding use of images/copyright etc. Thank You. 99infosponge88 (talk) 16:26, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The copyright owner must follow the process set out at WP:IOWN. Oral permission is not sufficient as we have no way of verifying it. Hope this helps. – ukexpat (talk) 16:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Note also that the person who took the pictures has a copyright in them, whether he has formally registered the copyright or not. If you are working with the subject of an article, I would also draw your attention to our instructions about conflict of interest. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:29, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Feedback plea

I hope I'm not a pest here, but there are 30 requests for feedback without a response (and I'm ignoring unanswered requests from October). I just reviewed ten, if a couple regulars here could do two or three, we could get the backlog down. Today's requests seem to be handled, the unanswered requests are at:

• November 4
• November 3
• November 2 Done!

--SPhilbrickT 16:27, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Revert this change

Regarding the article Nokia N95, changes on 17:35, 19 September 2010 by 110.36.63.254:

Deletions in four different places have left behind four places with inconsistent content.

Is it possible to only revert that user's changes (at that time)? I have not tried to revert yet. Will pressing undo only revert that change or will any later changes also be reverted? There are also some changes that may be legitimate, but I think the seemingly random deletions outweight any positive contribution; I am not sure how to handle this situation. --Mortense (talk) 18:43, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

In the case of this edit, it cannot be undone. Sometimes older edits cannot be undone by pressing (undo) because more recent edits are in conflict. If the software allows you to undo an edit, it will only undo that change without reverting any later changes. Just so you know, pressing (undo) doesn't immediately revert the change. It shows you if the undo can be done and what the changes would be, and you have to press "Save page" to make the revert. Because you can't revert that particular edit by pressing undo, you'll have to revert it manually, in part or in whole. --Mysdaao ^talk 20:26, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I have now manually reverted the deletions. --Mortense (talk) 08:26, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

my ip address.....

I use and believe wikipedia...since lats 2 years...but I have not edited any of your article...but just 30 minutes ago I got a notification about...some page being edited via my ip address...I don't understand whats going on....can you explain?..Also create account on wikipedia suggestion just now...is that means no one can edit your article without log in(for this ip address)?..if anyone edit without login via this ip address I would not be responsible....Iam using internet of Nepal Telecom(service provider)...and I think one ip address is provided to one customer..am I right? or it is provided to many customer?....my faith is with wiki team...and don't want to see any further unwanted notification via wiki team...so please suggest...now Iam student and use wikipedia more than dictionary...so in future I will be among those people who would love to help wiki in time of crisis(when I will be economically active in few years)...so I request your team for co-operation.

Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rjrasi2010 (talk • contribs) 19:23, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about your ISP specifically, but many ISPs have dynamic IP addresses and assign different IP addresses to different customers over time. You are allowed to edit Wikipedia without an account, but this means that you may receive messages intended for a different editor that previously used your IP address to edit. This is why it is always suggested that people create an account, which has many benefits. --Mysdaao ^talk 20:08, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Links to an online history guide

I have been running an online site www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk which provides free help for people who are research Hertfordshire family and local history. In contains about 3000 pages of material - much of which represents pictures and old descriptions of Hertfordshire Towns and Villages. Much of this information would be appropriate to appear on Wikipedia pages.

I recently discovered that people had created links on some 126 pages on Wikipedia. I haven't checked them all but over half I have checked were broken, while some now pointed to the wrong page, or the material on the target page had changed. In addition most of the links were to individual frames - and were then less effective than links to the whole page.

There are two situations:

(1) I have started correcting faulty links - providing new links to the current pages that contain the original information in a way that will ensure the whole pages (and not just the frame, is displayed. In some cases I may want to modify the displayed text associated with the link, where, for example, the target page contains more information than it did when the link was created.

(2) Many of the links are to pages which significantly augment the wikipedia descriptions of particular towns or villages. However there are other pages (some only stubs) where my site contains significant information but there is no link. I also started filling in some of these gaps.

In posting one of the changes I got a message about conflict of interest and spamming. Well clearly, technically I have a conflict of interest it that I run the Hertfordshire Genealogy web site, but I get no material benefit from it.

IS there any objection to my correcting broken links to my web site in a way which maintains, as far as possible, the intention of the original poster? In some cases, to do this effectively, it could mean removing one link and inserting another, perhaps to indicate there is now more relevant information available.

Where there is significant information on my web site that augments the information on Wikipedia what is the position in my adding a link to say so. The situation, as I see it, is that if I was an Wikipedia editor posting information on the history of Hertfordshire much of the information would have been appropriate for inclusion. After all, what I have done is to set up a specialist encyclopaedia on Hertfordshire - full of cross links, and also tutorial, etc., material not so relevant to Wikipedia. It is only an accident of history that the material is not on Wikipedia.

So what is the policy of adding new links to descriptions of Historic Towns and Villages where the linked material supplements what is on the site?. Please don't say I should post the material on Wikipedia - it takes minutes to add one link - but (as an old age pensioner) it could take more than my remaining life time to restructure the volume of data concerned. If I could just click my finger and the relevant material transferred - generating appropriate links - I would be delighted.

Hertfordshire Chris (talk) 19:27, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

• I suggest that you do not directly add links to your site as an external link (example), as that does create an appearance of a COI. You can add a note to that articles talk page with a link, and let some other editor decide if it belongs
• I suggest that correcting a broken link (example) should be fine, but it will help if you add a note to the talk page, simply noting that you replaced a broken link with a working link, noting you have a connection to the site, so others may wish to do an independent check to confirm that the new link is appropriate.
• If you still get flack, let me know, and I'll try to find the best way to resolve it. You do have a COI, but COI means tread carefully, it doesn't mean you can't contribute. I think if you follow the suggestions above you'll be fine, but I don't make the rules, they are consensus driven, If you follow the above suggestions (or the suggestions of others if they are better, I'll support you.)--SPhilbrickT 20:02, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Requesting help with an article for a company recently added to WikiProject Companies

The Article in question is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie

This article was added to WikiProject Companies recently. I currently have no connections to this company however this article has been around for a few years already. I have read all the sources used for this article of this company and found that the article has quite a bit of POV. Most of the Statements in the Lead are not at all Factual or supported by the references. Here are some examples of the statements made in the article.

"MonaVie has been the subject of controversy, as health benefit claims for its products have not been scientifically confirmed or approved by regulatory authorities,"

There are no sources that provide any proof of the MonaVie company making any claims that were not approved by regulatory authorities. The sources state there was an independent distributor who created his own website and posted some health claims that the FDA warned him about .However the MonaVie Company was never warned directly nor did the FDA say anything about any claims the actual company had made.

"its CEO was previously involved in false health claims of another beverage" I cant find any mention of the CEO of MonaVie Dallin Larsen being involved in any false claims. The only facts I can see in the source articles are that he had a senior post in Usana and left the company a year before the FDA shut it down according to the newsweek article.

"the business plan is similar to a pyramid scheme" after discussing with some editors about the article I was told that this sentence is justified by the wording of "“Team is one step ahead of all these juice selling schemes. It is a pyramid atop a pyramid. It is selling motivational aids to help MonaVie vendors move the juice" in forbes and these statements here ”In a 1979 regulatory action involving [Amway], the Federal Trade Commission attempted to draw lines between legitimate and fraudulent pyramids. The ones that are legit focus on getting revenue from consumer goods sold to retail customers. The FTC did not, however, define ‘retail’ in that case. That leaves plenty of wiggle room for guys like Orrin Woodward; he counts the vast majority of people in his pyramid, who seemingly try but fail to make money, as retail customers.”

The source used mainly for calling this company a pyramid scheme was this article here http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0811/050.html The problem with using this article to call the company of MonaVie a pyramid scheme is that this source is an article about Orrin Woodwards TEAM company and not of the Company of MonaVie. And I cant find anything in the article that makes calling anything a pyramid scheme possible.

"and very few distributors actually make a profit" This statement may need updating with new information about the income of distributors as a few of the articles used to source this are old however one source article mentions 1% see a profit however in another article we have numbers like 45 percent and 37 percent seeing profits. about 45 percent of the company's distributors earned an annualized average check of less than $1,600, while 37 percent took home about $2,000. About 2 percent earned an annualized average check of more than $29,000, according to a company statement. And just seven of MonaVie's 80,000 distributors took home the big money, more than $3 million. This information is from 2008 it appears and the company started in 2005 so this is still a young company. It is also possible many of these distributors are merely customers who are only using the products and are not interested in building a business. New information for 2010 needs to be found to update this article however it still is only a 5 year old company.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please offer any assistance you can to give this company a more Factual Article worthy of WikiProject Companies. DavidR2010 (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)DavidR2010DavidR2010 (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

This is clearly a content dispute. As discussions on the talk page appear to have failed to reach consensus, the next step is to follow the dispute resolution process. – ukexpat (talk) 19:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Im just worried about this for wikipedias sake there must be a faster way to remove false statements about companies from an article. Does anyone know if a cleanup Taskforce and fact finding mission could be assigned to this? Thanks DavidR2010 (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)DavidR2010DavidR2010 (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The thing is, you are quite possibly right, but the Help Desk isn't really designed for resolving content disputes like this. I have no idea if what you say about the veracity of the article is true or not, but if you need help getting outside evaluation of the article, you may want to try at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, which is patrolled by people who are good at evaluating articles for their sourcing, and Wikipedia:Content noticeboard, which is similar, and Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests. It's not that your request is necessarily being dismissed out of hand, its that the Help Desk isn't exactly the right place to solve the problem. Try some of the other noticeboards mentioned here, and see what comes up. --Jayron32 20:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Jayron I think that is exactly what I needed to know you were very helpful. DavidR2010 (talk) 21:28, 5 November 2010 (UTC)DavidR2010DavidR2010 (talk) 21:28, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Where should I highlight a wiki collaboration project?

I have, together with some others, put together a proposal for a wiki Q&A site called WikiSpeedia. I think this could be of great benefit to Wikipedian's and other people with a passion for sharing information, whether publically or behind company firewalls. Here's my question: where can I highlight this where it will be effective but not draw disapproval? Note: there's no money involved so there is nothing to sell except a free exchange of information. Thanks in advance for any advice. --Robinson weijman (talk) 21:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you aware that we have a well maintained, long term question and answer, general information sharing reference desk here at Wikipedia?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the quick reply! This proposal includes MediaWiki and (potentially) Wikipedia but is not limited to it. --Robinson weijman (talk) 22:14, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way - did you mean that link or another - that was about red links. --Robinson weijman (talk) 22:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

You can (and should) list any public wiki at WikiIndex. The Reference desk shortcut link should be WP:RD rather than WP:RED. You probably should not try to promote your own wiki on any MediaWiki Foundation wiki unless it somehow advances the MediaWiki Foundation's aims. And then it would be best to let someone not connected with your promote it; see WP:COI. --Teratornis (talk) 01:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I added a link to the Reference desk from the hatnote at the top of Wikipedia:Red links because the two pages have similar shortcut links and thus may be easy to confuse. --Teratornis (talk) 01:22, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I fixed the link above. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 02:08, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

(←) Also see mw:Project:Support desk which is for questions specifically about MediaWiki administration. Scroll through that page and note the number of questions that go unanswered or unresolved. There is a lot more help available for wiki users than for wiki administrators. For example, this Help desk quickly answers almost every user-level question that admits an answer. There are just a lot fewer people who can answer administrator-level questions, and most of them are busy with other things I guess. Also, the admin-level questions tend to be complex, system-dependent, and difficult to express in a way that distant strangers can understand without having access to the computer on which the problem occurs. --Teratornis (talk) 01:31, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Man I was really confused for a minute there to my initial response. Just bad luck that my typo in WP:RD was to a blue link or I would have immediately noticed. Thanks for the fix Bk314159.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all for the answers received. I'll make a post on the support desk. Teratornis - do you mean that you are looking for something like WikiSpeedia or did I misunderstand? --Robinson weijman (talk) 06:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

What I meant (or weakly implied) was that if mw:Project:Support desk does not answer many questions that are about MediaWiki administration, it is unlikely that setting up yet another site will help matters. That would dilute the limited pool of people who have the expertise to answer such difficult questions. Creating a new site does not automatically create new experts. The limiting factor in online collaboration is the community. It's easy to set up a new wiki, and difficult to attract the critical mass of competent people to make it thrive. That's why many if not most of the thousands of public wikis out there are not very well developed. Only a few wikis like Wikipedia have gotten over the hurdle of building enough content to attract enough serious participants to keep them self-sustaining. But don't let that stop you from trying. --Teratornis (talk) 19:11, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that clarification, Teratornis, and I entirely agree that setting up a wiki is the easy part - getting the critical mass is a lot harder. Actually, I think that is an excellent question / topic for WikiSpeedia, nice one! =:-) In the meantime, I hope someone may suggest somewhere I can post this link. --Robinson weijman (talk) 12:15, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Entries designed as orphans or not meeting notability guideline

What can be done to eliminate the notices that an article is an orphan or may not meet the general notability guidelines if the article already has links and numerous references?

Thanks in advance for any help that may be offered to clear this up. Sjzevon (talk) 22:23, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

As for orphans, go to the link on the left side of your screen and click "What links here." You will see the names of the articles that link to the target page (the one you are on). If there are four or five really good links (not just from a list or a DAB page), you can remove the Orphan tag. If there are just a few links, you can always add more on some other pages related to your page. If you can't find a good place to link within the other article, then you can add your target page to a "See also" section on the referring page. This is known as "building the encyclopedia." Of course the "See also" should indeed be related from one article to the next. Then just remove the Orphan tag. Yours in Wikidom, GeorgeLouis (talk)

I guess you mean Elaine Griffin. It's still an orphan with no incoming links from other articles as Special:WhatLinksHere/Elaine Griffin currently shows. "Orphan" does not mean that the article itself doesn't contain links to other articles. Tags like {{Orphan|date=November 2009}} are usually added manually and can be removed manually when they no longer apply. They are not removed automatically. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:30, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Notes in tables

I'm working with a table that has a filed for "notes", for some brief explanation or comment that may be needed at some entries. Sometimes a whole comment can be reduced to one or two words, like "Resigned" to note that the man listed resigned from government, or similar cases. But in this case, is it a sentence? Should I add a period at the end, or leave just the word? MBelgrano (talk) 23:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I would be consistent. If some of the fields are complete sentences with a period (full stop) at the end, then I would treat the word "Resigned" as the equivalent of a sentence and end it also with a period. Yours in salute to good punctuation, GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:45, 5 November 2010 (UTC)