Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 April 21

= April 21 =

Follow up to Sit-up Ltd Channels System
II have recently set up a wikia about sit-up Ltd and it's channels and was wondering if anyone here could help me to build it up and provide me with information to include in it. Any help will be gratefully received. Paul 23 87  09:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

ClueBot
Why do we have ClueBot still if there are thousands of people with rollback or another tool like Twinkle for getting rid of vandailsm? ClueBot only goes for big blankings or profanity, right?  2D Backfire Master  words deeds 11:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Without ClueBot and the other antivandalism bots, editors would have to spend more time reverting vandalism and less time improving articles.  GB fan  talk 11:27, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * ClueBot deals with the really obvious vandalism - although there are lots of people with vandalism-fighting tools, sometimes they still get through - ClueBot helps! However, most vandalism requires a human to recognise it. --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 11:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Udine page is broken
Udine page is somehow broken. I saw it and tried to undo, but I dont know how--130.83.145.92 (talk) 11:32, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting us know. Someone had replaced the article with the Italian version, including the Italian infobox template. Because the template is one we don't use here, that made the page look "broken". I've reverted it back to the English version.-- Beloved Freak  11:40, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Date time format: ISO 8601 but without the 'T'
Under My preferences, Date and time, I can set my date/time format. My preference is ISO 8601 in general (yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm), but I would like to have a space instead of the 'T', for reasons of readability - as described in the third paragraph here. Is it possible to get Wikipedia to do this? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well if you removed the T, it wouldn't be ISO 8601 anymore. :/ —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Your emoticon is noted, but for the sake of pedantry, what I'd like is the date and time shown as two independent fields, date and time (in that order), each formatted as per ISO 8601's extended format (clauses 4.1.2.2 and 4.2.2.2 respectively). Currently I get separate fields in some cases anyway, eg "My watchlist" and "Recent changes" group by date and then show only time for each day's entries. It also starts with the text (for example) "Below are the last 803 changes in the last 7 days, as of 15:48:29, 2010-04-22", ie time, date not dateTtime. "Revision history" shows dateTtime, but what I'd like is date time.


 * Actually if we agreed to remove the T, we would still comply with ISO 8601 - in particular clause 4.3.2 which says: "NOTE By mutual agreement of the partners in information interchange, the character [T] may be omitted in applications where there is no risk of confusing a date and time of day representation with others defined in this International Standard." The problem is that I want to remove the T and also insert a space - and the clause 3.4.1 says: "Unless explicitly allowed by this International Standard the character “space” shall not be used in the representations." and the standard never appears to explicitly allow a space. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:08, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I doubt there would be enough support to introduce this dateformat, but you can file a feature request in . —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I can't see how to make my first wiki page live
the subject is Daniel Sloss I have read through the FAQ's but can't see where the "move" button to click on it (sorry) your help will be very welcome! Thanks Mzwickler (talk) 12:33, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Look again - when you first asked, you had nine edits - the move button should appear when you have ten, which you now have.-- SPhilbrick  T  12:56, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * However, before you move it, you have zero references. While there are existing articles with zero references, there is increased emphasis on making sure that Biographies have references, so it would be in danger of being deleted. At a minimum, make sure you save a copy somewhere else, in case you ignore my advice and move it anyway, but you really should try to add some references first.-- SPhilbrick  T  13:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

warning message
I posted our company page i think it's from neural point of view but it keep saying the warning below. what is the problem with our page. Could you please let me know?

This article is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view. For blatant advertising that would require a fundamental rewrite to become encyclopedic, use db-spam to mark for speedy deletion. (April 2010) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.9.83.114 (talk • contribs)
 * The IP you used to leave this question has not edited any company pages (including any deleted contributions). Which article was it that you were working on? --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 14:37, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Tracking Viewers
Is there a way to see the usernames of people who have viewed your wiki page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teddybeardog (talk • contribs) 14:43, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  14:45, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And remember, it is not YOUR page. Your userpage is a little more "yours" than other pages, but only slightly. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:31, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Table placement
How do I arrange the two long and narrow tables in this section side by side and have headers: "Present location" and "Excavation sites"? bamse (talk) 15:09, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That would be an improvement. I would make the one table wider by adding columns rather than have them side by side. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  16:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean to just concatenate the two tables to make six columns out of it? Then I'd have two "Prefecture" and two "City" columns. Wouldn't that be too confusing? bamse (talk) 18:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I interpreted the answer to mean four columns - the third with heading "Present location" and fourth with "Excavation sites", perhaps putting National Treasures over all four columns-- SPhilbrick  T  20:22, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. Please note that the cities and prefectures are not the same in the two tables. Thinking once more about it, they are almost the same and I'll give it a try. Some table cells will be empty. bamse (talk) 21:14, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

wrong link to an article
Hi, I'm researching the units my Civil War ancestors fought in. When I clicked on 41st Battalion VA Cavalry, the page for 23rd VA Infantry came up (3x, to make sure it wasn't my mistake). Search for the 41st only yielded secondary or supplemental info from other articles. By the way, there is no direct link to the article on the 23rd, either. Please publish here if & when an article on the 41st will be available, or if published, how to get to it. Thanks. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.223.17.192 (talk) 15:43, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has a lot of articles about the Civil War. After some searching I found that you probably refer to the link at Virginia units in the Civil War. You are right that we don't appear to have an article about neither unit. In this edit User:The Frog deliberately made a piped link from "41st Battalion Virginia Cavalry" to 23rd Virginia Cavalry. The piped link looks like this: 41st Battalion Virginia Cavalry. Piped links are very common in Wikipedia and it is also frequent that they deliberately lead to a non-existing article such that they will immediately start to work if that article is later created. http://www.cemetery.state.tx.us/pub/user_form.asp?pers_id=654 says:
 * "The 23rd Virginia Cavalry was formed when the 41st Cavalry Battalion, two companies of O'Ferrall's Cavalry and one independent unit consolidated in April 1864."
 * This probably made The Frog think that 23rd Virginia Cavalry was the most likely article to be created and it would include mention of the 41st Cavalry Battalion. This help desk section will be archived within a week and no longer edited after that. It's likely that no article will be created before that unless somebody with the right knowledge and interest happens to see your request here and quickly reacts to it. If an article is created later then I cannot say for sure what the title will be but my guess is 23rd Virginia Cavalry. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:43, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Impasse
What should one do when another editor has effectively assumed custodianship of an article, and undoes all changes made, at least by oneself? If discussion with said editor results largely in abuse, and/or said editor picks and chooses guidelines to follow (?). Stagyar Zil Doggo (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you be a little more specific? To which article are you referring? TN X Man  16:18, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This one. This person's not a bad editor, and they'd have to do a lot more to get my goat, but he's really up in arms about this article. Even small things, like moving commas and periods inside adjacent quotation marks, are changes too large for him or her to bear. He or she believes the article to be... finished. They said so. Stagyar Zil Doggo (talk) 16:32, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have read your interaction with the user here and it seems to me that on the face of it, Codrdan has made some good points. I haven't gone trough all your contributions to the article The Time Machine (2002 film), but i'm not seeing any large issues here. Custodianship of articles is not rare and as long as the editor behaves within the guidelines and properly communicates with you, then there is no problem. Wikipedia is not a movie guide. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * To be totally transparent - I'm not sure that there is a problem - yet. But there's definitely the potential for one. I mean, there's custodianship, and then there's custodianship. Is this editor a caretaker? Or just overly zealous? Certainly he's made some good points, but I'm not sure that he and I are talking about the same things. He or she delivers thoughtful counterpoints to the comments that he hears, but does he hear what I say? I can't tell. You've got far more experience with this than I do, it seems - can you tell? I'm not sure he or she would like to hear it from me, even if I were in a position to judge. Stagyar Zil Doggo (talk) 16:47, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I guess what I'd really like would be to agree with him. After all this - I mean, he called me stupid, he called me lazy, he called my work useless... I don't know him personally. He doesn't know the first thing about me. Here's a guy who is really agitated. About punctuation. How would you - you admins, who have tens and hundreds of thousands of edits to your credit... How would you connect to this guy?

How do I agree with him? Stagyar Zil Doggo (talk) 21:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I do not see one single edit by you on the article's talk page. The article talk page should be the first place to go for any content disagreements within articles. From what I can see from the discussion on Codrdan's user page, you're taking being reverted personally even when Codrdan has been quite specific in why your edits have been reverted in each case. It is certainly better when editors opt for a more collegial approach to collaborative editing than simply reverting anything they disagree with with a snippy edit summary, but it is not an insurmountable problem. Take your edits piecemeal to the talk page and see whether you have any common ground. FWIW, on the specific point of punctuation the "US" style is not universal even in the United States and the "international" style is more grammatically sound; nevertheless, WP:ENGVAR states that one should not be changed to the other unilaterally without consensus to do so. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:42, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for posting Chris. And again, since the original post is becoming kind of aged. I think Codrdan and I are getting along a lot more collegially now, actually.


 * I don't think I'm taking his edits to The Time Machine personally, although I am, naturally, the worst person to ask. I might also be the only person... Whatever. I did take exception to being called "lazy," and "useless," and stuff like that, but I got over it almost instantly, and managed to avoid responding in kind. You may not be interested enough to read the whole back-and-forth from start to finish, and I would understand that. TNXMan and TheDJ weren't, and I don't blame them either - my original stuff can get pretty dry. But the conversation has evolved from what it started as into something pretty well other. What I really objected to was Coderdan's contention that the article on The Time Machine was "done," that he thought the plot summary was finished. It's not an objection I arrived at by inference - he said it plainly. I mean, is there a more destructive point of view? I can't think of one, barring what mad scientists might conceive. If you did read over the whole conversation though, I think you'd agree that I made a couple of things almost painfully clear, including my appreciation for Codrdan's work, and his opinions, regardless of the way that they're delivered.


 * The article you linked to was useful. Before encountering Codrdan I'd approached every article I edited with the understanding that there was no debate on the relationship between quotation marks and other punctuation; that punctuation at the end of a quote always went inside the quotation marks. Not only do I now understand that there is some debate, the "Punctuation" section of the Manual of Style says to "place all punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not." Who knew? Not I. I suppose that this is done to preserve the integrity of quoted text. But I still wonder if it applies to single words or hyphenated phrases or proper names - commas and periods and parentheses present in the original text don't need to be included in instances where you're just quoting one word, and where I come from, you don't leave your punctuation outside the quotes. Ya know what I'm sayin?


 * The article talk page... good thinkin'. Stagyar Zil Doggo (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia to edit product manuals
We'd like to set-up pages on Wikipedia so that our devoted customers can add, comment, edit, and revise our product manuals. Is this something that is possible to set-up? Tom Duncan Rockwell Power Tools —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomeduncan (talk • contribs) 18:09, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Please see What Wikipedia is not as this will inform you of what is not possible....Moxy (talk) 18:18, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is possible! However, what you would need to do is set up your own MediaWiki software where you can host the content yourself. Our article on MediaWiki has much more information. TN X Man  18:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * To clarify: it is not suitable for Wikipedia, but you can create your own Wiki at your own website. Ask your tech people to go to the link Tnxman307 gave, and install the software. Then you can create your own pages, and your devoted customers can edit away! --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 20:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Request clarification on the definition of autoconfirmed status
1) In determining whether a user has enough edit counts to be qualified as an autoconfirmed user, are edits of talk pages, user pages or templates counted? If so, where is the guideline? Any link? 2) How to check when a user became an autoconfirmed user (or gained higher access rights)? I ask this because the autoconfirmed user status is crucial in distinguishing effective votes.

Thanks in advance.The suffocated (talk) 19:07, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * See WP:AUTOCONFIRM. In short, 4 days and ten edits (except Tor users). Edits can be anywhere in En:WP.-- SPhilbrick  T  19:12, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. So even the exchanges here are also qualified as edits. I think adding your explanation of “edit” to WP:AUTOCONFIRM would be helpful. (But I cannot help thinking that the 10-edit threshold is meaningless because everyone can edit his/her user page ten times — without having any real contribution to Wikipedia — to meet the threshold. ;-D ) The suffocated (talk) 22:15, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As a minor addendum, the status can be conferred before the automatic limits, so there may be some with fewer days and/or edits. One might argue they are confirmed, not autoconfirmed, but I bet they have the same flag.-- SPhilbrick  T  19:13, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * (e/c)Yes. Any edit counts towards the 10 total. I believe even deleted edits count, because MediaWiki's internal edit counter -- which is used to determine when a user passes the 10-edit threshold -- is not decremented when an edit is deleted.
 * For autoconfirmed users only, not that I know of. You can view a list of "confirmed" users, which have had the normal thresholds waived for some reason, but as far as I know the only way to tell whether a user is autoconfirmed or not is to look at their contributions. For any usergroup above "autoconfirmed" ("rollbacker", "sysop"/"administrator", "bureaucrat", "steward", "oversight", etc.), a list of users in a particular group can be viewed at Special:Listusers. Xenon54 / talk / 19:16, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. If all kind of edits count, checking whether a user has been autoconfirmed is not a problem. I initially thought that edits of user pages are not really contributions to Wikipedia and hence they should not count toward the ten required edits; but counting the number of real contributions that appear in a user′s contributions page can be very tedious.The suffocated (talk) 22:15, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Incidently, the "4 days" means 4 x 24 hours = 96 hours. If an account has 10 or more edits, but is only 95 hours 59 minutes old, it won't be autoconfirmed! --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 20:43, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I fully understand that. Thanks.The suffocated (talk) 22:15, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

User page writing
How can I separate two different sections of writing with colored backgrounds, look, and you'll see what I mean.  MR.   Pre  Z  20:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's just me. I looked and what you mean is not immediately obvious. Which are the sections of writing you want separated, and in what way or form do you want this separation to take? Are you referring to the table of contents appearing with a white background in the middle of the sea of red? Do you want to remove that? (just add ) Something else?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:28, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm also unsure what you want. You have two . If you want another color in one of them then change  . See options at Web colors. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I just need to know how to separate two pieces of content with backgrounds, I don't want a sea of red flowing through the user page.  MR.   Pre  Z  10:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm still unsure what you want. I have added   between the red blocks to prevent the TOC from having red background. The red areas are those inside  . If you want smaller red areas then move the starting or ending div. If you want another color in one or both areas then change  . If you want something else then try to be more specific. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:18, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Virus
I just got hit by 7 attempts to infect my computer after I used Wikipedia. The information on the malware indicated it came from Wikipedia.

Mike —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.135.178.196 (talk) 20:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * To be able to help with this, it would be helpful if you could answer these questions:
 * Is your anti-virus protection up-to-date on your computer (and which anti-virus product are you using)?
 * Have you run a full scan of your computer using your anti-virus product? If so, what virus(es) did it say you have?
 * Did you go directly to a Wikipedia page (by going to http://en.wikipedia.org and then searching), or did you click on a link in (for example) Google?
 * Which page(s) did you view on Wikipedia (or attempt to view)?
 * If you can answer those questions, we might be able to help you more! In my experience, people tend to have problems if they click on a link via Google, rather than directly from Wikipedia. --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 20:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If you are absolutely sure you got a virus from Wikipedia, you should go enter your local lottery. The chances of winning the lottery are greater than, or at the very least roughly equal to the chance you got a virus from us. What's more likely is that (a) you clicked on a link to a site that looks like Wikipedia -- for example, en.vvikipedia.org (this trick was used in a Newgrounds phishing attempt quite recently), (b) your anti-virus program is having a seizure and has given you a false positive -- this has been the most common cause of "Wikipedia viruses", or (c) your machine has already been infected, and what you're seeing is merely the effects of malware you already have. We can't do more than speculate, unfortunately, until you give us more information. Xenon54 / talk / 21:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe this is an anti-virus software that has breached your browser to make it seem like the malware came from Wikipedia, for example if you Google something and you click the Wikipedia link it will take you to this page telling you about spyware & viruses. I have seen several issues like this. Sometimes it requires computer recovery depending on what type of operating system you have, if you prefer you may contact your computer's manufacturer and they should be able to instruct you further.  Dwayne   was here!  talk  05:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

User page gone and no deletion log
My user page seems to have been deleted. It's not a big deal; there was nothing much on it anyway. But why was it deleted and why is there no record of it at all in any public log? Fhaigia (talk) 20:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Assuming you are referring to the account you used to leave this query, you have never had a user page (as an administrator, I can see deleted pages, and your page has not been deleted). Your user talk page has also never been deleted (the only entry on the log is the welcome message left on 10:06, 30 June 2007!). Are you sure it is this account you are thinking of? --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 20:53, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreeing with Phantomsteve, the only other possibility I can imagine, if it actually was this account, is that all edits of the page were oversighted and the log entry was as well. This would be extraordinary action and I would think exceedingly unlikely.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree with the two above. Your account hasn't edited in a year before posting this and the account has no edits to deleted pages. Maybe you are thinking of a user page associated with another account or another wiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:22, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Page being deleted
Hello,

I have recently tried to update and re edit a page for 2 Grand the vocal duo act from Doncaster who were in Britains Got Talent however every time i click there name it just reloads me back to the Britains Got Talent page, how can this be resolved? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cookson123 (talk • contribs) 21:07, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That's called a redirect; the guo is not yet notable enough to have an article about them, so viewers are redirected to the programme page instead. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  21:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There was a discussion about what should happen to the article that was originally created about them, and the result was redirect. You can view it here.  Ka renjc 14:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC)