Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 January 30

= January 30 =

new admission
Sir, I would like to join the hindi courses through corresponse. If I just fill the application and send it along with the postal order to the address of central Hindi directorate, will it be ok. Kindly help me to know the procedure for this. Thanking you, Mala Bhushanam —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.84.205 (talk) 01:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hello. I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our roughly three million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is a help desk for asking questions related to using the encyclopedia. Thus, we have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. Xenon54 / talk / 01:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Why is it
That when I went to edit Law's talk page, I ended up at the Undertows talk page? Is there something wrong with the database? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calcetín (talk • contribs) 02:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: Above user indef'd as a sock. Calcetín is Spanish for "sock". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

book by geo. catlin
hello....i'm looking for a book by geo. catlin, named letters and notes on the manners, customs and conditions of the north american indian.......can you help me???...thanks...dg
 * Ask on WP:RD. Did you try Googling? finds a bunch of hits. --Teratornis (talk) 03:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Movig to the Philippines
I am planning on movig to the Philippines, Hopefully by Dec.2010. I need to know what I have to do to get dual citesienship and how can I buy a hose and build a business. Does anyone in the Philippines offer finacial help fo small businesses or home buyers. Please contact me at I would be most appreciative for your help. Thank you TTaylor —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timtaylor67284 (talk • contribs) 10:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * [[Image:AROBAZE.png|20px]] Please do not include contact details in your questions. We are unable to provide answers by any off-wiki medium and this page is highly visible across the internet.  The details have been removed, but if you want them to be permanently removed from the page history, please email [mailto:oversight-l@lists.wikimedia.org oversight-l@lists.wikimedia.org].
 * You may find help on the Wikipedia reference desk, but you are probably better off contacting organisations in the Philippines. You are unlikely to get help here, as this page is about help on using Wikipedia. --ColinFine (talk) 13:15, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Geoff Beckett entry
Hi guys,

I'm trying to sort out an entry I did a week or so ago about a Berkshire artist, Geoff Beckett, but it seems my inexperience with Wikipedia is getting the better of me. I've added as many references and citations for him as I can find and I've looked at your notes on writing in an encyclopaedic way and tried to do that but I'm still getting your warnings about it not being acceptable.

I also added some images of his paintings but they have been removed because of copyright problems. He has the exclusive rights to all his paintings and has given me permission to use images of them in the article but he is reluctant for any large, high resolution versions to be freely available. Is this not acceptable?

Apologies for making a meal of this!

Best regards,

Neil —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benyon24 (talk • contribs) 10:50, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The warnings will stay there until somebody - which could be you - remove them. If you think you have improved the article to the degree that they are no longer appropriate, be bold and remove them - but if other editors disagree, they may put them back.
 * In my view, the language is still not encyclopaedic: "likes to claim" would be appropriate only as a quotation from a reliable source which used these words. Your references are all to directories or book-sources: please read WP:RS and see what a Wikipedia reliable source is (if you can't find any, then he is ipso facto not notable by Wikipedia's criteria).
 * As for the rights: Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia which anybody may use, so it requires that all images are released on a kind of license which allows them to be freely reused under that license (see WP:CC-BY-SA). --ColinFine (talk) 13:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Very many thanks for this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benyon24 (talk • contribs) 14:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Making small change in article title
I'd like to put a comma in the title of an article. Specifically, I would like to change the article Trinidad Sanchez Jr. to read "Trinidad Sanchez, Jr.", to reflect wikipedia's preferred practice. How can I make that edit? Thank you.Hammerdrill (talk) 16:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Try Help:Moving a page. The title you want to use is currently a redirect with no other edits, so you should be able to move it yourself (iirc).  If you have trouble, let me know and I'll take care of it. -- Vary &#124; (Talk) 16:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Block
1. Why was "Changed Block Settings" introduced? What happened to unblocking and reblocking?

2. What exactly is the point of "Cannot Edit Own Talk Page"? The user can still edit the talk page under another account. Can we go back to protecting user talk pages? 124.180.195.199 (talk) 21:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If you don't get an answer on the Help desk, you could try asking in these other places:
 * WP:VPT.
 * The talk page of the help page or project page that documents the feature you refer to. I guess that page might be WP:BLOCK or one of the related pages listed under WP:EIW or WP:EIW.
 * Also note that socking around a block would constitute a violation of the block and invite harsher enforcement. --Teratornis (talk) 06:19, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Can I just comment that in general, user talk pages are not protected. The point of them is to allow any user to leave a comment (including non-registered ones) - protection prevents this. User talk pages may be protected for a short time in the case of high levels of vandalism, but it would only be for a short time. I'm not quite sure what you mean by going "back to protecting user talk pages", as I wasn't aware that this was a regular thing in the past. --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 09:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Early on, we did protect talk pages of blocked users more frequently. Now, we tend to only do that if the blocked user is abusing their talk page (ranting, general insults, off-topic soapboxing) while blocked &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 18:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I have a few questions about citing sources.
--JacquelineX (talk) 23:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Can pictures be a citation of the article?
 * 2) If the picture is not a free image, do I still use the image? I saw some article (Such as Hong Kong Discuss Forum, on section Simplified Chinese Translation, I saw the pictures deleted with the reason "You don't need two non-free images to illustrate that a website can translate text - you can just explain it") does not have citation.


 * Picture tutorial or Media copyright questions may help. -- &oelig; &trade; 06:04, 31 January 2010 (UTC)