Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 June 14

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Help desk
< June 13 << May | June | Jul >> June 15 >
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.


June 14[edit]

Article milestone of Talk:Singapore[edit]

Why is the last date for GOCE "invalid time"? 175.156.242.240 (talk) 04:52, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I re-keyed the "action 13 date", and the problem has fixed itself. There must have been an invisible control character in there. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:28, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Clarificatiion[edit]

This is about the article of raffy tima. I noticed that on his article Raffy Tima it is written that he got his annulment with mariz umali last Jan 2014 but when I check the instagram of mariz they are still married up to now. It would be best if you guys can check the validity of the information. Thank you wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.208.179.248 (talk) 05:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Raffy Tima (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Thank you for catching that; I have removed it. Any editor - even you - can remove unsourced information from Wikipedia articles, and this is especially important in articles about living people where errors can cause so much harm. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:35, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Entry on Minhas Clan.[edit]

The current entry in Wikipedia on Minhas clan comprises a line or two. It is not supported by any authority, evidence or source. My attempts to correct and expand the entry have been thwarted by two persons - Sitush and Materialscientist - without advancing any sensible argument. I am a trained social anthropologist and a Minhas by caste. Therefore, I have both an insider's and an outsider's view of the issues involved.

My main point is that Minhas folks claim to be Rajput or Jat. Those among the Minhas who are landowners, but not cultivators have traditionally liked to be called Rajput. The cultivators, however, prefer the label of Jat or Jatt. My contention is that Rajput is a class category and all Minhas are Jat by tribal affiliation.

I have supported my viewpoint by refering to the 1883 Punjab Census conducted by Sir Denzil Ibbetson as well as a most recent work 'History of the Jats' authored by Hoshiar Singh Duleh.

I am sorry that the two voluntary editors - sitush and materialscientist are assuming editorial rights that do not belong to them.

Sarvan58 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarvan58 (talkcontribs) 06:36, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(That would be article Minhas.) According to the edit summaries in the history, your edits were reverted as good faith but with references that weren't reliable and recommend reading RS and V. You are now at the discuss step of Bold/Revert/Discuss so please discuss on the article's talk page. You can also discuss with those editors directly by leaving a message on their user talk page, perhaps asking why they object to your references. RJFJR (talk) 12:24, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Random file tool returns files from Commons[edit]

Hi. I was using the Special:Random/File tool for a long time on rowiki, in order to fish for unfree images and candidates for Commons. Yesterday when I accessed the tool, it returned me only Commons files. I have tried again today and nothing changed. Tried @ enwiki - same drill. Anyone knows if it's a bug or something has been changed in the Random tool? Thanks. --Gikü (talk) 11:20, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Gikü: bugzilla:65366 indicates that the code behind Special:Random/File has been made "better" . I suggest you ask this question again at Village pump (technical) and perhaps someone will be able to give more detail. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:53, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Boxes and colours[edit]

Hello,

in [1], could someone help enlarge the yellow background so that it fills the white background next to the Saviour icon. Also would be nice to see the babel box more to the right, like in User:Tiptoety. Regards. Tomcat (7) 15:26, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for the whitespace between the image and the user boxes is that you have defined the div containing the image as a width of 40% but the pixel size of the picture used is less than 40%. If you want a page like Tiptoety, why don't you use the same code? SpinningSpark 19:38, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Providing sources on fictional topics[edit]

Articles about fictional topics (e.g. characters) tend to have 'Appearances' or 'Plot summary' sections which are unreferenced, for example in the article on Silurians from Doctor Who. Is it acceptable for such articles or sections to be self-referencing, as in the article consistently refers to episode titles instead of providing other sources, or is this WP:OR? Thanks. -- Pingumeister(talk) 16:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

From MOS:PLOT: "The plot summary for a work, on a page about that work, does not need to be sourced with in-line citations, as it is generally assumed that the work itself is the primary source for the plot summary. However, editors are encouraged to add sourcing if possible." SpinningSpark 19:17, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that's the sort of guideline I was looking for! -- Pingumeister(talk) 23:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Links to a section of a page[edit]

I have created a link on the Timeline of Bradford page with the markup St Bartholomew's Church . The link takes the user to the page Ripley Ville but not to the section St Bartholomew's Church. ie it has the same effect as the markupRipley Ville. Can you please advise on how to link to a section.

from PeterEltham — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterEltham (talkcontribs) 16:49, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PS ignore the above - I have just clicked it again and its now working fine. Why the time delay? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterEltham (talkcontribs) 16:59, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It suddenly worked because I fixed it. Your syntax for linking to a section was perfectly fine, though - it was an issue on the Ripley Ville article. The section you linked to was named with a quotation mark (’) instead of a standard apostrophe, which is what you used in your link. I changed the section title in Ripley Ville so it now uses an apostrophe. -- Pingumeister(talk) 17:01, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a redirect page of variant capitalizations[edit]

I created a redirect page (Chuck Cunningham Syndrome), where the word "Syndrome" has an upper-case letter "S". I then wanted – and attempted – to create a redirect page with the variant capitalization of Chuck Cunningham syndrome (with a lower-case "s" in "syndrome"). For some reason, I cannot do this. Can someone please tell me how to do this? Or let me know if there is some reason for which this cannot be done? I have seen this done with other pages. See, for example, The King Of Queens. This redirect page has an upper-case letter "O" in the word "Of". It is a redirect (with variant capitalization) to The King of Queens, which has a lower-case letter "o" in the word "of". What is going on? Why is it that I cannot seem to create this page? Thank you. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:38, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how you are trying to create this page - but as you can see here it has been deleted four times already - please see this discussion of why the redirect was deleted. - Arjayay (talk) 17:53, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Then, I am totally confused. Is the article supposed to be deleted? Or the redirect page? If someone types in the words "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome" or "Chuck Cunningham syndrome", I want Wikipedia to redirect them to the "Chuck Cunningham" character section in the Happy Days article. This is not allowed? When I went and created the redirect page, there was no "warning message" that came up – as is usually the case – stating "This page was created in the past and deleted. Are you sure you still want to create this page?" So, what's up? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:02, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion I linked to was, specifically, about the redirect to Happy Days, which appears confused, as there was formerly an article of exactly the same name, and you can't redirect to an article of exactly the same name, but it states:-
"The section it pointed to was entirely unsourced OR that I removed; note that there are no reliable sources anywhere that use the term "Chuck Cunningham syndrome." The only hits were Wikipedia mirrors/quotes and TV Tropes. As a result of the removal, this redirect now points to a nonexistant section that shouldn't have been there in the first place."
Your link now redirects to Cast and characters#Minor, rather than a non-existent section, but it is still true that the section is unsourced - are their any "reliable sources anywhere that use the term "Chuck Cunningham syndrome.""?
Presumably the upper case version had not been created in the past, hence there was no warning, but the lower-case version had been created four times. - Arjayay (talk) 18:45, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As stated above, I don't know how you were trying to create the page, but I found this out by trying to create the page via a redlink. Simply type [[Chuck Cunningham syndrome]] in your sandbox (you don't even need to save it, just preview it), which will produce Chuck Cunningham syndrome then click on the red-link and it will take you to the first page I linked toabove. - Arjayay (talk) 18:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am again confused. When I type in "Chuck Cunningham syndrome" (with lower-case "s") into the Search Box (at the upper right), it already redirects me to the Happy Days article. So, I assume that there is already something in Wikipedia that is making this redirect happen? I don't understand what's up here? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk)
Can't help you with that - AFAIK article titles are supposedly case-sensitive - but if it is aleady doing what you want it to do, is there a problem? - Arjayay (talk) 18:45, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is because Chuck Cunningham syndrome is a redirect to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome which is a double redirect and needs fixing. To get to it follow Chuck Cunningham syndrome then click on the link "redirected from" (in small font under the title) and then edit the page to point to the correct place.
You might also be interested in template:anchor which will allow you to redirect to the correct part of the article even if that part does not begin with a heading.
The fundamental problem of lack of sourcing may eventually lead to the material being deleted, so that needs fixing as well. SpinningSpark 19:47, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that The Huffington Post is a reliable source: The 13 Most Ridiculous Sitcom Mysteries Of All Time. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:16, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:43, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Winaray[edit]

This is not the right place for this question, which is about wikipedia.org, not about en:Wikipedia. I don't know what is the right place.

The front page of wikipedia.org says that the Winaray version of Wikipedia has over 1,000,000 entries. This puts it ahead of the Chinese and Japanese versions. This is surprising, as there are only about 2,500,000 speakers of Winaray. war:Wikipedia does indeed have many articles in it, such as this rather short one on "dog". My impression is that war:Wikipedia is largely the work of a single prolific user named Hiruhimangraw, aided by bots.

Does anyone here know more about this? Maproom (talk) 17:39, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK (and Google translate is no help with Winaray) Winaray reached their 1 Millionth article on 8 June 2014. Many, if not most, of these articles have been auto-translated - have a look at the history page of dog and see how many editors are XXXbot - Emausbot, Xqbot, Emilbot etc - and they all finish (Hiruhimangraw | mga ámot) - unless they have a strange set of Wiki software, they are probably what we would see as (talk|contribs) - Arjayay (talk) 18:23, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The "official" statistics page shows them just shy of a million articles, but it has not been updated since April. It also tells me they have only three Wikipedians with more than 100 edits! SpinningSpark 21:45, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Arjayay: You might like to know that you can change the interface language to English (or anything else) in your preferences on the foreign language wiki. This will help you understand the meaning of the links. I don't think your autotranslate theory is correct, at least as far as the dog article goes. The war dog article was created on 7 March 2009 and had only 339 bytes of prose. Our dog article on that date is much longer at 34kB and is completely different, not even the same picture. The current page at war:Ayam has only 439 bytes of prose; very little has been added since it was created and it is still a stub. Most of the editing has been adding infobox, templates, references etc. The bots have largely been there to mess with the interwiki links. SpinningSpark 01:51, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many Wikipedias have articles created by bots. In the early days of en.wp, for example, Rambot created thousands of stub entries for cities and towns in the United States. What is a bit unusual about a number of the WPs with very large article counts, such as Waray-Waray and Cebuano, it that they consist almost entirely of bot created stubs (just spend a few minutes flipping through one of those with the "random article" button). WPs like English and German (just to pick the two largest), *do* have bot created articles, but it's a relatively minor portion. Geographic stubs remain popular, but biological ones seem most popular at the moment (there any many databases of flora and fauna, and it's easy to generate a stub article for each - for example nl:Piletocera_chrysorycta). Even the Dutch WP is about 2/3rds bot created stubs added in the last year or so. This is all a game to make the encyclopedia look more significant than it actually is. A side effect of this is that WP's like Waray-Waray and Cebuano are ignored in numerous lists (for example Template:Wikipedia languages) on the basis that there's no real content there. WPs like Dutch present a bit a a policy problem, since a third of the articles there are "normal" articles, and it's hard to ignore a WP with half-a-million articles, just because a million stubs have been added on top of those. Rwessel (talk) 05:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You may be right that the majority of articles on war are bot created and frankly I don't care enough to take a significant sample to find out. But I stand by what I said about the dog article (war:Ayam). This was created by war:user:JinJian who is not a bot, unless we now have bots who can respond in a chatty way on talk pages. He is an extremely prolific stub creator and I don't think this is automated database extraction. He might be translating stuff from a database, but I doubt that there is that much stuff available in Winaray to do it automatically, there must be at least an element of real writing in what he is doing. SpinningSpark 09:59, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, to provide an actual answer to the original question, the right place to discuss this would be somewhere on Meta:, possibly at Meta:Wikimedia Forum, but note that Meta is something of a backwater largely ignored by everyone, at least on en.wp. Some statistics on number of pages that have not only been edited by bot would be useful. You can request a report at Wikipedia:Database reports. SpinningSpark 11:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for all the responses. I now understand much better what has been happening. Maproom (talk) 17:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IPs and courses[edit]

Why am I getting the message "[details removed] is a student in Intellectual Freedom - LIS 493 (course talk)" when I look at the contributions of another IP?--Bbb23 (talk) 19:37, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing a slightly different message with my IP address in it. I'm therefore guessing that you've just posted your IP address here, so I've redacted it for the sake of your privacy. Obviously a bug, but I've no idea of the cause. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:58, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(More) This has been reported at WP:VPT. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:04, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Yep, I can confirm that something funny is coming up in these LIS 493 headers, and it looks like it is showing my public-facing IP address. Weird. I just pinged Lquilter (User talk:Lquilter#What's going on with LIS 493?); since she created the course pages she might be able to shed some light on what's happening here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Probably most sensible to point this discussion to VPT: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 127#Strange message. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weird. I don't know! I have 5 students & they all set up user accounts, and were all novices. As to "a student in the class" -- when I was setting up the course page today, I clicked on "add a student", and tried to add myself; when I saved, it listed that IP address. I tried then to delete the IP address ("remove from course") -- have tried twice! -- and it won't delete. --Lquilter (talk) 20:10, 14 June 2014 (UTC) ** posting this on the Help desk page too. --Lquilter (talk) 20:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note -- I will post this on the Village pump (technical) page. --Lquilter (talk) 20:14, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Update: The problem appears to have been resolved, but I'm hoping an explanation is forthcoming. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:17, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of image[edit]

Hi, can anyone determine what has happened to the image "File:Fifa WorldCup Trophy 2014.jpg" which has gone missing from FIFA World Cup Trophy? 86.171.174.125 (talk) 20:28, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was deleted for "lack of licensing information" (deletion log). -- John of Reading (talk) 20:37, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is it acceptable for one person to do that without any additional discussion? 86.171.174.125 (talk) 21:05, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it is acceptable for a file to be deleted this way. The image was uploaded but the editor did not say where the image came from or the copyright status of the image. It was uploaded on 5 Jun, the uploader was notified that if the information wasn't added within 7 days it would be deleted. The image was kept until 14 Jun, 9 days, and then deleted because the information was never added. You can review the speedy deletion policy at WP:CSD and the specific criterion used at WP:F4. GB fan 21:18, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright violation, and possible copyright violation, are taken very seriously by Wikipedia. Some of the usual Wikipedia rules, such as WP:3RR, do not apply to copyright violation or possible copyright violation. In this case, there was discussion, in that the editor was notified of the speedy deletion tag, and the deletion wasn't speedy because it went through the 7-day period. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:48, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy deletion criterion F4 actually requires a 7-day wait after tagging, or rather, it only becomes eligible for speedy after seven days. It is for images that do not provide proper license information. They may, or may not, turn out to actually be copyvio. In this case I don't think there is much doubt, the image was clearly taken professionally, not someone's iphone snap. If there is no doubt that the image is copyvio, it can be speedy deleted immediately under F9 without waiting or notifying. SpinningSpark 16:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]