Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 January 10

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January 10

translate (or tell me how to, please) a French wiki article to make an English version here

For Painted turtle, I linked to Tanner did the whole fancy linking to French wiki (within an article) thing with the double colons :fr: and all. But would really like to just get this guy duplicated and over here. He's kind of an icon in herpetology (admittedly a minor field of zoology), but he would get a lot of links for species he named and the like. had 130 papers, most of them very long, and did incredible expeditions and the like to collect strange animals. Anyhow, I want an English version article. You know most people won't do the double colon link thing I did. Plus most readers would prefer native language version.TCO (talk) 00:02, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you read WP:TRANSLATE? That explains how to find someone who can translate an article. Incidentally, do you have any English-language sources of information that could be used as references? Although English references aren't essential, they are preferable on the English Wikipedia! -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 01:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I read the interlanguage wiki stuff. Therew was no existing en page (even close in meaning, since it's a person). It is not worthwhile of development in the article and getting refs to him would be like a ref to a ref as his name is already a detail in a bigger point (iow, yeah...I knew of course that English is preferred). I will go hassle the translators and get that page set up. Then change the link. The dude is American so we should have an Anglo page on him, for various reasons. If it were a French region or person or something of the like that would be better maintained there and never grow here, I would not bother with a translate. But this one is just screaming out for us to translate him. He named a lot of animals, could get all kinds of en links after we make the page.  ;) TCO (talk) 02:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll translate it (starting now). Could you please find references for the article? [CharlieEchoTango] 02:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Username Retrieval

I can't seem to remember my username. Is there any way to retrieve it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.165.180.77 (talk) 00:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you remember any articles you've edited? You could look in an article's history to find the user name under which the edit(s) were made. Deor (talk) 00:37, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

And no, beyond the advice above, there is no facility to retrieve a forgotten username (see Wikipedia:Contact us/login problems). Nanonic (talk) 00:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

If you have an idea what it starts with then you can try Special:ListUsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

crossbow

according to the atf. and federal law is a crossbow considered a firearm?and is it legal for a felon to possess? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.102.235.142 (talk) 01:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for in the article crossbow. If you cannot find the answer there, you can try asking your question at Wikipedia's Reference Desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except about how to use Wikipedia, which is what this help desk is for). I hope this helps. Algebraist 02:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Citing distances: by air or by road?

An editor has asked at an article talk page if distances between places should be cited in road miles, as opposed to as the crow flies. I was unable to answer him and I want to find policy for this, or to find the proper place to begin a debate on it. It was discussed before without satisfactory resolution of the question. — O'Dea 04:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd imagine that if you are describing the distance between two things that distance would be the shortest distance between those two points. No other number is unique. Prodego ^talk 04:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your answer and I tend to agree it is the least ambiguous approach, but I would like to be able to cite policy or guidelines, or to find a place to establish such policy or guidelines by discussion, then to have an agreed position enshrined in the manual of style or some such place, to give credibility to the thing. I'd like to resolve this question in a definitive way, avoiding a mere replay of the previous discussion without a defined conclusion. You began by saying "I imagine" and, indeed, I imagine, too, but my original question intended to reach beyond speculation. — O'Dea 04:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Can we ask Google Maps to stop incorporating non-earth coordinates?

The special coordinates template in the article Dorsa Cato clearly indicates that the coordinates refer to the moon, and the resulting hyperlink in fact does point to the moon. Nevertheless, Google maps contains a link to Dorsa Cato at the corresponding Earth coordinates.

The same thing happened with Gomul Catena, a feature of Jupiter's moon Callisto. Here it is in the Pacific Ocean: [1]

I feel like Google could fix this in a half-hour if they were notified of the problem. Is there any way to do so? AGradman / how the subject page looked at 05:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure there is a place to put in such a request, but you'd need to find a contact point for Google Maps - probably via a Google search. However, as Wikipedia is not directly connected to them, there's nothing we can do ourselves -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 05:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Google Maps support is here -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 05:39, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Phantomsteve. The "report a problem" page was hard to use, but I posted it at Google Map Forums [2]. I suppose that one of the forum "gurus" will stumble across it and bring it to the attention of a Google employee. Cool. AGradman / how the subject page looked at 07:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

A solution could be to include a "switch" paramater somewhere that tells Google Maps to ignore this set of coordinates because it's not on Earth. Roger (talk) 16:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I have just tried both the articles mentioned above, and they do show the sites on the moon, so either the problem has been resolved, or perhaps there are other issues in some circumstances. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 17:10, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Lynbarn, that wasn't the problem -- Wikipedia's articles & templates work fine, but Google fails to acknowledge that the templates refer to extraterrestrial coordinates, and thus overlays them onto Google Maps. 75.4.194.121 (talk) 04:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for Wikipedia in Bengali language

Dear sir, We would like to read Wikipedia in Bengali language. People from Bangladesh and India will be grateful to you in this regard. Thank you. Mezbahuddin Tipu from Bangladesh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.30.39.42 (talk) 05:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I think bn.wikipedia.org is what you're looking for.--AndrewHowse (talk) 06:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Little help with relisting

So there is an ongoing discussion on renaming State of Palestine-->Palestine, but the discussion is only in the State of Palestine talk page and one member claims it must be on both pages at once, so I was wondering how I do that, and if he is right in that it must be in both places. P.S. There is a non-template message about the discussion on the Palestine(region) page. Thanks, Passionless (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Reporting unreliable websites and mirrors

Where does one go to report specific instances of mirror sites and other generally unreliable websites so that they are avoided as references in articles in the future and removed from current ones, whilst not being blacklisted on all pages for use in discussion? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 06:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Spam blacklist, has the appropriate links and info. Passionless (talk) 06:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually I think I failed...someone else plese answer, I'm only smart enough to ask not answer. Passionless (talk) 06:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I think what you're looking for is WP:MIRROR. Dismas|^(talk) 06:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Can we get a bot to remove instances of such references, much as how COIBot removes spam? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 07:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't know but you could ask at WP:BOTREQ. Dismas|^(talk) 10:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

incorrect person details (bad Language )

KINDLY NOTE THAT THE BIRTH PLACE OF THIS PERSON IS NOT THAT WHAT IS WRITTEN

"" kachre ka dhair main "" MEANS "" In The Garbage ""

He is a well known person of Pakistan Politics So Kindly amend it as soon as possible

Many Thanks

Ref Link  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisar_Ali_Khan or search with " Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan " or " Nisar Ali Khan " —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.165.159.88 (talk) 07:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Removed -- John of Reading (talk) 07:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Nisar Ali Khan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Without knowing the language I can't unravel the history of this article, so I've asked WikiProject Pakistan to help. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Fair use logo template

There is a problem with two uploads using the fair use logo template. I don't understand the how to diagnose the cause nor can I guess how to go about resolving it.

Please see "purpose of use" sections

• File:BC Coast Steamships logo.jpg
• File:NHK television program logo .jpg

Both have {{{1}}}.

How else could I have tried to figure this out without asking for assistance in this forum? --Tenmei (talk) 14:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

A careful read of the documentation for the {{Logo fur}} template says that the "Use" parameter must be one of six special values. I think it's got confused by your "Use" parameters. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:31, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Template:Logo fur shows that Use and Purpose are connected. Use must be one of Infobox / Org / Brand / Product / Public facility / Other, where Other means literally that string. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

How can I create a personalised welcome template

Hi, I try to welcome new users when doing requests for feedback, and would like to use my own welcome template that's a bit more personal. At the moment I end up typing my own message a lot, but it's quite timeconsuming. I can't figure out how to do this, could you point me in the right direction?--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 14:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You can create a welcome message as a subpage in your userspace, such as User:Physics is all gnomes/Welcome. Then you can substitute it onto the page of the person using {{subst:User:Physics is all gnomes/Welcome}} ~~~~ ~~ GB fan ~~ 14:32, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I have a couple that you are welcome to copy and modify for use from your userspace: User:Ukexpat/welcome1 and User:Ukexpat/welcome2. – ukexpat (talk) 14:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Be sure to add it to Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates so that others can see what a good or bad job you did. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:47, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I'll give it a go. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 15:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Requests for permissions

What do you do if you want to be rechecked, but are still on the page? Breawycker (talk) 15:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I suggest you append another paragraph to your entry at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback, as if it were a talk page, and an admin will surely see it and comment. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Gauging importance = predicting the future?

Resolved

Someone may have already done an essay on this, and I'd love to find a place where someone has considered this further. Omega Alpha Alpha (Fictional) Fraternity has had two events occur in the last month.

1. The chapter at University of Georgia has had its charter revoked after the school found out that they were forcing their pledges to dress up as My Little Pony characters. This has made top of front page news in the school newspaper, bottom of front page news in the Athens Georgia Newspaper and a minor mention in the Atlanta newspaper.
2. Omega Alpha Alpha fraternity chartered its first chapter in Canada at University of Toronto and this is mentioned on page 7 of the U of Toronto school newspaper (considerably less coverage).

However, (personal opinion), it is entirely likely that 5 years from now, that the expansion to Canada is more suitable than the hazing incident for the Omega Alpha Alpha wikipedia page. What should be do *now*? It is fairly consistently argued on the Wikiproject page that hazing incidents at individual schools are not suitable for Wikipedia since they are news about individual chapters and individual chapters are not notable. First chapter in Canada, OTOH, is an event about the entire Fraternity and thus suitable.Naraht (talk) 15:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You want to read WP:RECENTISM. Roger (talk) 17:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

And WP:NOTEVERYTHING. – ukexpat (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, WP:RECENTISM is probably closer to what I was wondering, but WP:NOTEVERYTHING is also useful.

Maslow's chart in public domain?

I was wondering if the chart of Maslow's hierarch of needs is in the public domain. I would like to use it in a publication. Thank you. The link is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ledgekay (talk • contribs) 17:47, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You can use it as long as you credit the author of the work. Every file page has a 'licensing' section which states if something is in the public domain or not. In this case it is not. Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 18:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It is not in the public domain. The author has released the image under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. In summary, you are free to use the image for any purpose as long as you attribute the work to the author (who goes by the username Factoryjoe on Wikimedia Commons, and if you alter or modify the image in any way, you must distribute it under the same license. All the license information can be viewed on this page. If you have further questions, I suggest you ask them on the Wikimedia Commons Help desk. --Mysdaao ^talk 18:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Facebook/Twitter Pages

Are we able to post 'official' Facebook and Twitter pages to their pages here? For example, All Saints Catholic School (Omaha, Nebraska) has an official Facebook page. Would it be possible to list this under External Links? Sweet Pea 1981 (talk) 19:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes this is OK; see the guideline at WP:ELOFFICIAL. In the specific case you give, though, you should not add the Facebook link, obeying the part of the guideline headed "Minimize the number of links". The Wikipedia page already has a link to the school web page, and from there it is easy to jump to the Facebook page. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:14, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, in general it is best to link to the primary official website/portal for an entity. This is usually the main webpage for the entity; for the case of the school it would be the www.SCHOOLNAME.edu or whatever equivalent page exists. The "official" pages at facebook/myspace/twitter/youtube, etc. are almost invariably linked from the website somewhere anyways. Insofar as an entity MAY use, for example, "myspace" as its only or as its primary official webpage you could use that; but in general don't link to EVERY official page; link to one page, the intended primary one, and let users navigate on their own from there. --Jayron32 20:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. That is a big help!! Sweet Pea 1981 (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Yeah, I was going to ask the same thing. I have added links to the following person's Facebook profiles: Roberto Córdova, Jorge Vargas González, and Julio Ibarra. Is that OK? Diego Grez (talk) 21:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
  • If and only if there is no other primary official website for the people, then it maybe OK. If the people have another primary official website, you should link that instead. --Jayron32 21:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Ah, excellent. Diego Grez (talk) 21:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

(←) The proliferation of social Web sites has created a problem of people having disconnected or redundant Social graphs. That is, there is currently no one standard unified point of entry into any person's social graph. Ideally on Wikipedia we would not link to every entry node in a person's social graph, but just to the main point of entry, if one exists. Otherwise in another five or ten years we might have people maintaining dozens of online presences on various sites, for example on whatever comes after the current crop of Facebook, Twitter, etc., and Wikipedia could turn into a social network spamhole if we try to mirror every notable person's social graph. --Teratornis (talk) 22:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Attempting To Edit Bio

I'm trying to revise the biographical information for the rock group, "The Dartells". It won't let me do that. All I can edit on their Wikipedia page is the bands personnel. Please advise me how I can edit the bio info.

Thanx Dan Pollock (I started the band) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sf1943 (talk • contribs) 19:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello, could you provide the link for the page you are trying to edit? The page The Dartells has not been edited since December of 2010. The page is not protected either, so you should be able to edit it. By the way, you have conflict of interest here, and we strongly recommend you use the talk page of the article to make recommendations for verifiable content instead of editing the article yourself (unless it's minor corrections). Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 20:15, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

If you are having trouble editing the first section of this article, or any article, your problem might be solved here. But I agree with CharlieEchoTango that you should not be editing this article directly. You may find it instructive to look at the recent history of the article. Various editors have correctly removed information that was added without a reliable source and/or was not written from a neutral point of view. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Response To Dartells

The Dartells Wikipedia URL is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dartells — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sf1943 (talk • contribs) 20:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is. Do you have any questions we can answer for you? --Jayron32 20:53, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Your question and its answers is one section up from here. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Translating articles..

I'd like to translate articles from English to Finnish. Should i start a whole new page with the same name, or can i just somehow start another language from the existing page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rattlehead 87 (talk • contribs) 20:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia you are working on now (en.wikipedia.org). You would write any translated article at the Finnish Wikipedia, which is located at http://fi.wikipedia.org . Just be sure that when you translate an article, you note in the edit summary the source Wikipedia article you translated it from, and include an Interlanguage link on both the English and Finnish versions of the article. --Jayron32 20:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

How become the sole administrator of my Wikipedia page?

How do you do this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AidanMW (talk • contribs) 21:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You cannot. Everything you enter into Wikipedia can be edited by any other person in the world. That is how it works here. See WP:OWN. --Jayron32 21:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) If you are having issues with unconstructive edits (NB: edits you disagree with are not unconstructive), then we might be able to help if you tell us the page to which you are referring. To echo Jayron, under no circumstances can a page be locked to a preferred text, nor does one own a page, even if he is the subject. Xenon54 (talk) 21:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You cannot become sole administrator of a page on Wikipedia, but you can fork the page content to other wikis which do allow sole ownership of pages. You can also set up your own wiki site if you like. On Wikipedia, the closest thing to page ownership is on user pages, which by convention are usually only edited by their corresponding users. But we have User page guidelines that limit what you can keep on your user page. --Teratornis (talk) 22:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

For information on Dan Weekes-Hannah to be changed, reliable, independent sources are needed. -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} —Preceding undated comment added 22:10, 10 January 2011 (UTC).

And if you are claiming that you are the subject of the article, far from giving you the right to control its content, that would mean that you should not be editing the article at all, for you would have a conflict of interest which would prevent you from editing the article neutrally. —teb728 t c 22:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

PLEASE return to the old layout!

I find Wikipedia's new layout to be hard to read, and even harder to use.

The text on my machine (Mac OSX, running Firefox) is rendered on a 17" monitor, giving me an incomprehensible wall of words I really can't cope with. I have ADHD and some symbol processing disorders that make can make this sort of thing very challenging. I'm sure I'm not your only reader whose disabilities effect their ability to process text -- and SEVENTEEN INCHES is just too much!

It's also annoying to have to search so hard for the search function, as well as for the other features that used to be in the left hand column.

I love wikipedia, but in all honesty, I will be unable to use use if these changes aren't made.

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.36.141.251 (talk) 22:39, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

If you create an account, you can change the layout back to the old one. :) - [CharlieEchoTango] 22:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If you create an account, you will be able to use a variety of different skins to read Wikipedia, including the old ones. I'm not sure if there's a way to do so without creating an account. You might try using a smaller browser window for reading Wikipedia. If you need help doing that, I'd be happy to explain. If none of the answers you get on this board are satisfactory, you might try contacting one of the users listed here for help accessing Wikipedia.--Danger (talk) 22:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, I don’t use your operating system or your browser, but can’t you change the width of your browser window or the size of your text in your browser? Either would enable you control the number of words per line independent of Wikipedia. —teb728 t c 23:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

In many browsers you can hold Ctrl and press the + key to increase the text size. On Macs I think you use Option and + or Apple and + or something similar... I ought to know by now, it comes up all the time at this help desk. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:12, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Preaching to the choir. Worst bit of malfeasance I've seen in all my time at Wikipedia, foisted on us. But we can't do anything about it. As those above advised, make an account, go to your preferences, to appearance, and change your skin back to Monobook.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:03, 11 January 2011 (UTC)