Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 April 11

= April 11 =

Template help
I made this template and, for some reason, "}}" keeps appearing at the top of the page. I don't know why. Thanks. ~ Richmond 96   t  •  c   01:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There was a superfluous pair of closing braces. I have removed them for you. Intelligent  sium  02:11, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Need to change contact email address
Hello

I registered my email for my wikipedia account quite a while ago and that address is no longer valid - my domain name is no longer under my control.

Is there anything I can do about this?

Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.202.173 (talk) 03:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you access your account? If you can, you can change your email by clicking on "my preferences" in the top upper-right of the screen when you are logged in. At the bottom of that page, you can change your email. However, if you can't access you account (I'm guessing that you can't, as you are logged out), I'm not sure. Hopefully someone else can answer that. ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 03:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I forgot my password D:

Thanks for your help so far, however —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.202.173 (talk) 04:59, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do if you have forgotten your password and have no valid email address attached to the account. You'll have to create a new one. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:55, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Go ahead and create a new account if you can't access the past one.   ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪    ―Œ  ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣  13:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Eric Tunney article google link.
Hi there... The Eric Tunney article was linked properly to Google a couple of days ago, and was coming up in the search engine, but now it seems that for some reason, it has been completely severed, and the Tunney article does not come up at all in a basic google search.Paradise coyote (talk) 04:20, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Um, that's google's problem, right? You can't change that.  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 07:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's Google that indexes the web pages when you search for them, and so if the Wikipedia article isn't coming up in the search results that's Google's problem with their web page indexing. Chevymontecarlo . 12:00, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright, I shouldn't be doing this. What the heck! Dear Paradise Coyote, why don't you yourself add the Eric Tunney article's complete html link to Google's web crawler?   ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪    ―Œ  ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣  13:50, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Table of Contents: Default Show or Hide?
Hello fellow Wikipedians - just a question about the Table of Contents: I'm currently working on a page containing many sections (currently my user page if you want to look). Because of this, the table of contents box is REALLY long, and looks really unattractive. I still do want it to be usable for those who want it, but is there a way to make it "hidden" by default, so when someone visits the page, they'll have to click "show" to see it? Or is it normally hidden by default? I'd just like the table of contents to be there - but not showing the entire expanded thing everytime someone visits.

Thanks! - user:TCWikiEditor 15:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the closest you can come is TOChidden. You could also consider TOC limit. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note that these are OK in userspace but should rarely be used in mainspace articles, especially TOChidden. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Some really long mainspace articles may use TOC limit to limit the TOC's depth to level 1 or 2 -- in other words, any subheadings of level 3 or below still exist but are not displayed. Remember, though, that these templates should be used sparingly. You can also turn off TOCs for yourself only by going to Special:Preferences, clicking on the "Appearance" tab, then unticking "Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)" under "Advanced options". Xenon54 / talk / 16:03, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * A quick glance at your article shows some problems. You have no sources other than the school's site, and you need reliable sources, see WP:RS for statements such as "established a name for itself in the Chicagoland community", " academic excellence", etc. Right now the page reads exactly like an unfinished brochure you'd hand out to prospective parents, not like an article in an encyclopedia. It has far too much trivial decade, eg " Letter grades are issued after every 9 weeks (one quarter)", the number of credits required, etc. You also have a conflict of interest I believe, please see WP:COI. TCWIkiEditor I presume means Timothy Christian Wiki editor, and the school's name is Timothy Christian Schools. Your article should look more like this one Timothy Christian School (Illinois) -- lol, I'm glad I decided to do a web search. I'm afraid you will have to abandon your article, as that's the school you are writing about. The existing article looks like it belongs in an encyclopedia and is not a brochure. Please don't turn it into a promotional article. The difference between the two is striking and educational. I think the two should be preserved as an example of the right and wrong way to write an article about a school. Please don't take this personally, you're new here and we don't expect new users to create great articles. Also, please sign with four tildes like this: ~ - it would have made it easier to find your article. Dougweller (talk) 16:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

editing & adding
How am i supossed to know about Editing!? what if the info is wrong OR not True? How can i add my youtube video to a subject? can i add/embed a youtube video? Please let me know —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raymasaki (talk • contribs) 16:02, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) You just did. Take a look at the tutorial and please don't hesitate to come back here if you don't understand it.
 * 2) We have a verifiability policy that require every piece of information to cite a reliable source. Any information that does not cite a source, or that is otherwise clearly incorrect, can be removed on sight.
 * 3) You can't.
 * 4) You can't. Xenon54 / talk / 16:05, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * To expand Xenon's last two points: Please see WP:YOUTUBE and WP:RS. --ColinFine (talk) 17:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And to expand on Xenon's 2nd point: Truth is relative. As Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is Truth?" - that is why we look for verifiability - see Truth for an essay on the subject --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 19:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Colour coded edits
What do each of the colours mean when using the user script User:Ais523/topcontrib.js as I am confused with what each colour means what. Paul 23 87  17:44, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's Syntax highlighting. Amongst the colours that you might see, there are:
 * black for reserved words
 * brown for other words
 * dark green for comments
 * light green for arithmetic operators
 * red for numeric literals
 * blue for string literals
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * What I mean is the colours that appear on user contributions when using the User:Ais523/topcontrib.js user script. It uses the colours: Yellow, Green, Blue and Pink. Paul 23 87  18:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * "After you've implemented this script, rows where another editor was the last to edit have a light red background, meaning "most recent," or, if the same page appears multiple times, a light orange background. Those pages are the ones you may want to check. Pages where you were the last to edit have a blue background (for most recent) or a light blue-green background (if the page appears multiple times)." - stolen from The Missing Manual.  Chzz  ►  20:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

move from sandbox to article
How do I move and article from my sandbox to article wizard or post it? Mishacat (talk) 18:04, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You account is not yet autoconfirmed, which requires at least ten edits and it being four days old. You have only made three edits, so you can't yet move a page and the move button is not visible to you at the top of a page. If you can't think of anything to do, you can always use the Lists of common misspellings to find corrections to make to achieve the editing threshold in short order.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see you did not create a proposed article in a personal sandbox but instead edited the talk page of the Wikipedia:Sandbox. I have created the page in your user talk space at User talk:Mishacat/Robert Neil Cavally. That is the page you would move once the article is ready for the mainspace (it is not yet ready). However, you might wish to start from scratch using this content but starting at the article wizard as you refer to above. Just go here and use the content from the subpage I linked. I suggest taking a tour through the Tutorial first. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank youMishacat (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Alan Callan
was stubbed in January due to WP:BLP issues. It could do with someone to rebuild it with good sources. I'm sure Mr Callan will be grateful for anyone who can rebuild a good, policy-compliant article. Guy (Help!) 18:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:CORP questions
I am thinking of writing an article about the C. Crane Company, but I've spent the better part of an hour looking at WP:CORP and I can't come to a conclusion as to whether it is possible to establish notability. Specifically: Thanks, Xenon54 / talk / 19:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * While there are surprisingly few sources directly dealing with the company itself, I have found at least a dozen about one of their products, a LED light bulb known as "Geobulb". Is a company inherently notable because one of their products is notable, or must I prove the notability of both company and product?
 * In the past I have seen articles on software use reviews to claim notability when there are few or no other sources. (I think I even wrote one such article a few years ago.) Is this permissible for any product, not just software, or is it not permissible at all?
 * One of the sources I found that directly deals with the company in some way is a Business Week interview with the company's founder. Can this interview help to establish notability when combined with another direct source or two, or does it count as a primary source therefore removing its ability to establish notability?
 * Finally, if I establish notability using secondary sources, am I allowed to use primary sources -- including the company's website -- to verify basic factual information, such as the date of founding?


 * Notability is not inherited for organizations, but such information can help establish its notability when included with sources directly related to the company.
 * If the review is a full length article, then yes, I would say it is permissible for any product- especially if the review comes from a major news outlet.
 * No, it is eligible. It would be considered a primary source if it was an interview contained in a press release and distributed to Business Week; However, if a Business Week writer voluntarily chose to interview the subject, it is useful.
 * Yes. See WP:SELFPUB for information on acceptable uses of self published material. liquidluck ✽ talk  23:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

please fix wikisource article
In our wikisource article on Roe v. Wade, we jump directly from Section II to Section IV. . This typo is perpuated elsewhere (e.g. ), which is probably how we got it. However, it IS a typo -- see, e.g.,.

I have never edited Wikisource before, will someone please take care of this for me, thanks. JD Caselaw (talk) 20:24, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

"Acceptable use"
I am trying to find this information on Wikipedia but I couldn't. What is the the "acceptable use" of Wikipedia? Is it ok to use some automated programs that makes hundreds of queries per minutes to collect some kind of information? Please direct me to the correct page for this info...I tried to search for a while but I don't know what the correct search term is and I couldn't find the answer myself. I am not about to write a such program; it is for a school paper. Thanks. Rockvee (talk) 21:41, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I really don't know a lot about this but see Mirrors and forks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * See also our robots.txt at http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the info. Those pages are seem to be for other websites which would display content of Wikipedia on their sites (likely for profit). Is there any info on private/non-profitable use of scripts? Rockvee (talk) 23:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Hundreds of queries per minute is most likely not OK. Do your work on a local copy of the database in that case. You can also request a toolserver account, to make queries on a copy of the sql database. Perhaps you should explain what you want to do ? If you need real technical assitence, you can ask the wikitech mailing list, or join the #wikimedia-tech IRC channel on the Freenode network. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 00:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Like I mentioned before, I am not planning to write such a script. It was for a school paper; I am researching on the possibility of a dynamic learning AI which can learn by crawling the Internet - limitation on "acceptable use" might be some problem to such AI. I original question is more like "does this policy explicitly exist" and by the look of it ...it doesn't (at least it does not have a dedicated page for it). I am closing this now. Thanks for everyone who tried to help! Rockvee (talk) 01:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Admin power abuse
Dear friends, whoever is going to read my question and answer. My IP has been temporarily banned from not English (other language national)wiki with the justification of overly agressiveness and offensive behavior, actually for three days. I will live with it. However, I have the feeling that I myself have been unfairly offended and terrorized. All I had been doing was editing and writing new articles for the last 20 days maybe too vigorously and maybe I have been asking too many questions and doing suggestions because I just had some free time. I can't keep smiling while writing this, because as an educated adult I cannot assess the situation as something else than an unexpected practical joke. Whatever. Of course I think that the decision was wrong moreover I was in the middle of saving a whole article of three hour job when the ban came like a big bucket of ice onto my head. Funny really. It was so unfair.

Is there any possibility of appealing against the admin power abuse in any particular national wiki?

Of course I must prove that I am right. Unfortunately if it has been English site you would have read the proof and understood but in this particular case I am not sure whether anybody from the English site can read and understand my language of a rather small wiki (less than 10000)to go through the work that I have done in the course of the last 20 days and read my discussions in the community page to see that I have been simply debating maybe with a more eloquent educated language than the COMMUNITY of 5 male admins has been used to and they have become afraid of somebody having pretensions over their small brotherhood principality. That is true the discussion was merely between three admins and me however they do the banning and declamations on behalf of the whole community and exactly when I had asked them to justify how many votes are comprising the VOICE of community. They accept every different idea with sticks and "shutups". Of course the 3 days is not a big time and later I can just shut up and not participate at all in their collegial brotherly discussion but I am truly afraid of the situation that the admin abuse is going to take place again.And I am even afraid they will just mess up with the huge work that I have done in more than 25 articles just in the course of 20 days. Sort of ADMIN VANDALISM because I have the proof. This small brotherhood of admins is actually censoring the articles and deleting those which they consider to have nationally not dignified content. And as long as I am absolutely sure that my behavior has been normal and my contributions to the site have been of a certain value and will be in future whatever reaction of current admins is I want to know how to protect myself from the terrorism of admin conspiracy. I cant believe that I am writing this. --Lilit Gabyan (talk) 23:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Conflicts in a national wikimedia site need to be resolved and appealed there. In cases of gross abuse of a wiki by its maintainers, you might consider writing to the foundation or to jimmy wales, but prepare your statements well, because they get a lot of such appeals and hardly any usually has any merit or prove. In case you are not welcome, just move elsewhere. You are more than welcome to edit here, if you abide by the rules a bit. :D I note that you are active on the topic Armenia. That is never easy, because it can be a controversial topic that has a lot of history and some very combative editors try to mess with it at times. You might want to try and avoid such controversial topic until you are gigantically experienced with wikipedia. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 00:27, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I must insist that we remember they are not "national" wikipedias; each Wikipedia is language-specific, not nation-specific. An editor of the Danish-language Wikipedia might be an Uruguayan; an editor here in English might be a Gheg or a Minangkabau; and of course all of us at la Vikipedio de Esperanto have our own national affiliations. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  15:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I should also note that all Wikimedia websites, including the various language Wikipedia's are all independently run. No one site, even the largest (en.wikipedia), has any supremacy or jurisdiction over any other, with the exception of Wikimedia Foundation issues.  Unfortunately, if you are having a problem on another language's Wikipedia, there is no way that anyone at English Wikipedia can help you resolve it.  You can only resolve this at that particular Wikipedia.  Your best option is to study up on the behavioral norms at THAT wikipedia, and abide by them.  -- Jayron  32  00:37, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for the good advice but you can not even imagine at this very moment there is going on a vivid discussion there on erasing all the work that I have done in the course of the 3 days, while I am banned and you cannot imagine how painful it is because I had truly contributed with the best of my mind and heart. What a waste of time!! How can they!! I cannot even imagine and I can do nothing just watch! Hours and hours of work. How can people be so cruel and ignorant and by the way I have not touched any historic or political matter I have translated more than 30 pages of Wikipedia missing articles and started the huge list of Latin expressions, And now all I can do is just watch how all this work will be ruined They are just now discussing how they are going to do it Ican't believe it now i do not smiel mor sure --Lilit Gabyan (talk) 00:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC).