Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 April 5

= April 5 =

Can I cite a website that provides lyrics, which one should I use
I'm expanding an article and I'm trying to explain the context of the song lyrically, but I want to reinforce this fact by adding a website with lyrics, is this suitable or not need at all, if I should add one, which one could it be, thanks in advance. Eduemoni↑talk↓  15:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * If you are explaining the meaning of the song, it would probably be best to cite a webpage that not only has the lyrics but explains or interprets them too. It is important that you are not adding conclusions about a topic that you drew yourself (see WP:No original research). Which article do you plan on explanding?  EW  i kist Talk 23:23, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * When I Had The Chance - Ed<b style="color:#C13">ue</b><b style="color:#D35">mo</b><b style="color:#E57">ni</b><sup style='color:green'>↑talk↓ </b> 23:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Properly create infobox?
I've never created an article from scratch and usually copy from others to help myself. But I can't get the hang of this "infobox" thing. Here's the code I have (please use edit to view code in its entirety)

So far, only Name through Occupation are showing. (Showing on right) The others refuse to show up in the infobox. What am I doing wrong? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hg3300 (talk • contribs) 04:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In the first place I removed the image, for non-free images may not be used except in articles. (They may not be use in user pages either.) In reply to your question: So far as I know labelx and datax are not recognized parameters for Infobox person. See the template for valid parameters. —teb728 t c 06:55, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If you want full control over the fields, try using rather than . I have fixed a syntax error by adding a missing curly bracket, both in your post here and on your user page. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Corrected the template for you - As TEB728 already mentioned, you cannot use non recognized parameters for a template. To counter that i switched the "info person" to a plain "Infobox" and renamed the parameters to support all the content. Another issue was that you lacked a { in the template, causing it to come back partly garbled. Another option - if you really wish to use "Infobox person" is to use its module parameter to create a sub-template inside it, that holds the non supported data. Excirial ( Contact me, Contribs ) 07:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

This has been quite helpful. Thanks.--Hg3300 (talk) 08:17, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

County Court page
On this page reference is made to 'fast tack' and 'multi track' cases which exceed the County Court small claims limit of £5000. It would be very useful if these terms had links which explain the procedures involved, especially with regard to 'litigant in person' situations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.72.198.85 (talk) 11:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A better place to raise your concerns is at Talk:County Court. This is ther dicussion page for that article.  Editors that follow work on the article will have a better ability to address your concerns.  GB fan (talk) 11:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

following archived sections
Hi, I should know this by now but have never worked it out. Is it possible when I leave a link to a thread to keep that thread the target of the link even if it is archived by a bot or by anyone for that matter? Off2riorob (talk) 11:57, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You can use "Permanent link" in the Toolbox and then click the section in the TOC and copy the url. But if new posts are added to the thread after you clicked Permanent link then they will not be shown. It is not possible to both include newer posts and make the link immune to archiving. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * So ... if I post this link on someones talkpage Help desk it will be archived in the next few days and I can't get this link to follow any archiving. - would be a possibility? Off2riorob (talk) 12:32, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A section follow template would be possible only if you were able to factor in all the various archiving methods of bots archiving. In other words, it'll be quite expansive for a single template to understand the archiving methods of different bots on different pages. For example, on this page, the link Help desk/Archives/2011 April 5 is the link that you should be providing once this page gets archived. Of course, the best method is to provide the permanent link method, as quoted by PrimeHunter already. Does that answer your query well?  Wifione    <sub style="font-size: 60%">....... <sup style="margin-left:-3ex"> Leave a message  13:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The link Help desk will not work after the section is archived. There is no Template:sectionfollow so I'm not sure what you mean by that. Pages are archived in different ways so there is no solution which would work on all pages, but if you can predict the name of an archive page then you can link to it. For example, one of these links should work both before and after archiving: Help desk or Help desk/Archives/2011 April 5. You can also use mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions to check whether the archive exists and only link to it in that case, but it's more complicated.  renders as  and will change the link when the archive is created. "Permanent link" is in the toolbox at the left side in the default Vector skin. If I click Permanent link and then the section heading in the TOC then I currently get the url http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&oldid=422508351#following_archived_sections in my browser address bar. You can copy this url and use it to refer to the section as it looked at that time. It will not include this reply because I clicked Permanent link before saving the reply. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks both for your detailed replies. I will have a good read of these links. It seem I was looking for a simple solution to a complicated situation. Template:sectionfollow was just my simple suggestion. It does seem possible although you need to be sure of the archive the section will move to and as PrimeHunter said, complicated, using the extension PH mentions, #ifexist. I will experiment with that, many thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 14:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

help with password
Hi, my username is Jeremy706 and I can't get logged into my account. Here is the link to my page User:Jeremy706. I couldn't remember exactly what my password was and when i tried to email thing, it turns out I had an old email listed on my account and I have a new one that I never did add. Please help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.17.243.30 (talk) 12:38, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * If you no longer have access to the old e-mail account, the only thing you can do is create a new account and then perhaps usurp your old user name. – ukexpat (talk) 12:48, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Rodney Davies (author)
Dear Sirs,

Further to my email I have attached the link below for your ease.

I have not received a reply from your goodselves to date.

LINK:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Davies_%28author%29

I await to hear from you soon.

Best regards,

Maksim

Email sent on 1 April 2011:

Dear Sirs, Sorry, but work has prevented me from contacting you before now about the article of mine entitled 'Rodney Davies (Author)'. Its presently invisible subtitle is 'An Outline of This Writer's Works', which explains what it is meant to do. I have long admired Rodney's books, which deal with esoteric matters in a clear, informative and interesting way. I was stimulated to write the piece by the lack of anything worthwhile about him on Wikipedia. There has been no infringement of copyright. This belief may have arisen because before I sent the piece in, I emailed it to the author for his approval and comments. He unfortunately, being pleased with my efforts but unfamiliar with the formalities involved, passed it on to Wkipedia, which caused the mix-up. The effort of writing it and the time it took to put together the illustrations has been formidable. That's why I hope that some fitting denouement will now happen. Many thanks, (Redacted). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mnm2005 (talk • contribs) 13:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * To which email address did you send the mail? It's usually different people who reply to emails and to help desk posts here. Most of us here cannot see emails, and most people who can see emails will not look here at the help desk. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi and thanks for your contributions. The article is live and isn't currently marked as a copyright infringements, although it does have several tags noting other issues, which either yourself or any other wikipedia editor can work on in the future. I'm not sure what illustrations you're referring to as I can't see any. Could you explain what specifically is your question? Many thanks. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 13:28, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Unable to view Wikipedia pics in China
Posted this a week ago, here are some responses to the questions I received:

Original Question: For about 2 weeks now, every English and Chinese Wikipedia page has had ALL pictures show up as dead links. Wondering if anyone else has experienced this, and what might be causing it (behind new Great Firewall nonsense). 18:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

1) Can you see images at other websites unrelated to Wikipedia? All images in articles are stored at http://upload.wikimedia.org.

Answer: All images on every other non-Wiki affiliated page shows up fine. As of April 5 China time, upload.wikimedia.org is not accessible.

2) Can you see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg?

Answer: No. It comes back as a dead link.

3) Can you see images at other Wikipedia languages?

Answer: No. I tried Wikipedia Chinese and Spanish for several articles-of-the-day and no pictures showed up.

4) Can you see http://en.wikipedia.org/images/wikimedia-button.png? It is stored here at http://en.wikipedia.org and displayed in the lower right corner.

Answer: Yes, this image works

5) Does Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall help?

Answer: Yes, when I use a VPN with any of these pages, the pictures all work fine. That's why I'm almost certain it's a blocking of upload.wikimedia.org issue. But would like to see if any others in China are having the same results. Maybe it's just my ISP (I am in Shenzhen, Guangdong province)?

6) Which browser do you have?

Answer: I have tried this on Firefox 4 and Chrome 11. Same result.

PrimeHunter (talk) 02:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC) 220.242.154.136 (talk) 13:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Everything points to the whole domain upload.wikimedia.org being blocked. All images in articles are stored there. I don't know whether other ISP's in your area might allow it. Great Firewall of China currently says "photographs and certain pages remain inaccessable", with the reference A page on Chinese Wikipedia which is for visitors to report how/from where/via which ISP they can access Wikipedia . I don't read Chinese. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Please delete or redirect misspelled article
Please delete or redirect the misspelled article Quarterfoil to Quatrefoil. 82.247.108.118 (talk) 13:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I redirected the article. GB fan (talk) 13:57, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

William Procter Profile
To the Help Desk - I am the Corporate Archivist and Historian for the Procter & Gamble Company. I would like to point out a number of errors in the Wikipedia profile of William Procter.

The errors are as follows:

"Procter immigrated to Cincinnati Ohio in the 1820's...." Correct information - "Procter emigrated to Cincinnati in 1832"

"he joined forces with his brother - in - law, James N. Gamble..." Correct information - "he joined forces with his brother - in - law James Gamble..." James N Gamble or James Norris Gamble was James Gamble's son. James Gamble has a different middle name so these names often get confused.

".. and grandsons William Cooper and Henry Procter served as company presidents." Correct information - "and grandson William Cooper served as company president. There is no Henry Procter. William Cooper Procter was the last Procter or Gamble to serve as company president and he died in 1934.

" Mr. Procter has been rumored to be buried in a tomb on the lawn of his St. Bernard Soap Company headquarters in Cincinnati but it is also believed he is bured in Spring Grove Cemetery alongside business partner James Gamble." Correct information - "Mr. Procter is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery". The tomb on the lawn (not part of the St. Bernard Soap Company property) is a monument to William Cooper Procter, not a tomb for William Procter. Mr. Procter is also not buried alongside James Gamble. Mr. Gamble is buried on the other side of the cemetery with other members of the Gamble family.

This information comes from various sources within our archives but the best public source is a book called RISING TIDE, 165 Years of Brand Building, by Davis Dyer, Fred Dalzell and Rowena Olegario; Harvard Business School Press, 2004. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.183.232.24 (talk) 14:01, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information, I'll amend the article. In future, you can correct articles yourself by hitting the edit button at the top of the page - although with articles where you have a conflict of interest, be very careful to keep the article neutral and discuss any contentious changes on the talk page. Best, --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 16:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Moving Pictures from Commons to Wikipedia
So, i have recently uploaded about eleven pictures to wikicommons to use in the article Arts on the Line. I just realized that even though I either took or found with the correct licensing on Flickr each of the immages, the pictures are of public artworks or murals and therefor need a fair use rationale. What would be the best way of moving all these pictures and adding a rationale? do I have to manually re-upload all of the pictures to Wikipedia and manually put up each of the ones on Commons for deletion? any help would be great.--Found5dollar (talk) 15:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * There is a tool that works the other way, Wikipedia --> Commons, not sure if it does the reverse. Maybe the Commons Help Desk regulars can assist. – ukexpat (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Fixing Categories.
Does anyone have any idea how I can get a list of either of the following two groups of pages which almost certainly need to be fixed. (They aren't done in WikiProject Check Wikipedia)
 * Pages whose title starts with "List of" where there are categories that don't have a sortkey (either in the category entry or a defaultsort)
 * Pages with Eponymous categories (Little Dixie (Missouri) being in Category:Little Dixie (Missouri) for example) that don't have a sortkey of space (I know I've used * in the past which is incorrect as it is for those entries which go after Eponymous keys. (These would be unlikely to have a default sort since for other categories, it should have a different sortkey)Naraht (talk) 16:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The first point could be done with a database scan and some regex.
 * Find all articles beginning with "list of" that don't have  in them.
 * From that list, a regex scan could be performed to find all articles with piped sortkeys and remove those. (Maybe  would do it? I'd double-check with someone more well versed in regex, first.) <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis   @ 09:45, 5 Nisan 5771 / 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Naming convention for biographical sections splitting off into separate articles?
Is there any convention, whether formal or informal, about the name of an article that focuses on the biography of someone? What I mean is, let's assume an article on that person has many sections, including a lengthy biography and other long sections on their theories, practices, influences, legacy, etc., and that the biography section grows to a sufficient size to warrant splitting into its own article, with a summary and Details in the original biography section. Is there any established convention as to what that split-off article should be called? Biography of John Smith? Life of John Smith? Or something else? Or has it yet to happen on enough articles to establish a convention? DionysosProteus (talk) 16:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Certainly frequent for political and religious figures; see Category:George Washington and Category:Jesus for examples. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Probably preaching to the converted here, but my view is that such splits should be the rare exception rather than the rule and only occur when the article would otherwise be too huge. For example the Barack Obama series of articles listed in Barack Obama (in addition to those mentioned by Gadget850). For the vast majority of people the sole article is and should be "the biography". Such articles shouldn't even have separate "biography" sections as the whole article is a biography. – ukexpat (talk) 17:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses, but neither have quite answered my question. I'm not asking whether or not splitting should occur, but what the article should be called if it does, exception or not. A writer such as George Bernard Shaw, for example, led a full life, wrote many plays, had political views, had aesthetic ideas, had a legacy and influence on subsequent writers, etc. If his Life section were to grow overly long, what would we call it when split? I scanned through the two categories offered, but can't spot a "biography" article in either. I see that Barack Obama has "Early Life and Career of..." as a sub-article. I've just worked out how to search for pages that begin... "Life of" etc. Most seem to be book titles. (Life of Samuel Johnson.) Some aren't (Life of Joseph Smith, Jr. from 1827 to 1830). There's Biography of Pope John Paul II and Biography of Frank Sinatra. None of these seem to be highly rated though. I take it, then, that there's no guideline/convention in place? DionysosProteus (talk) 18:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * My view is that the "biography" article should always be at the "main" name, so in your example, George Bernard Shaw would be the article dealing with his life, with the split articles named appropriately. (Incidentally I don't see the point of having Biography of Frank Sinatra separate from Frank Sinatra.) Compare for example the Michael Jackson articles: Michael Jackson is the main, biographical, article, with Death of Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson's health and appearance, 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson, and others listed at Michael Jackson, as the split off articles. – ukexpat (talk) 18:31, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I understand your take on it, but that wouldn't be appropriate for someone for whom the biographical details of their life is not the thing for which he/she is principally known. Plenty of writers and thinkers would fall into this category--I wouldn't expect an article on Hegel to be only his biography; it'd be an account of his philosophical ideas that I'd expect to find, along with criticism of his ideas, influences, legacy. I would expect a biographical sketch to occupy only a part of the main name article. Even the Michael Jackson article falls into this category. In that one, the account of his life and career occupies about 2/3rds of the current article, with other sections--artistry, legacy, etc.--occupying the remaining third. Having glanced at Frank Sinatra and the Biography of Frank Sinatra, it almost offers an example of what I'm talking about. The main article is currently 42k, while the biography is 68k (well over the desired 50k article length). Now, perhaps the other sections in the main article (political activities, etc.) could conceivably be merged into the biographical sketch, so it's not the best example. For most writers/thinkers, I, personally, would be most irate if I had to scan through a lengthy account of their lives in order to extract information about their ideas/aesthetics/works--so, to me, the notion that a biography should occupy only one section of a main name article seems desirable.

According to the summary style principles, we should offer a sliding scale of detail. So my question is: when there is sufficient detail in a biographical section, the presence of lengthy other sections, and an article length over 50k readable prose, what should the name of the article be that offers the next level of detail on the story of their life? Maybe it's just too rare an occurrence at this stage in the encyclopedia's evolution to have developed a convention. Is this something it is worth initiating a discussion about for an addition to the naming guidelines? If so, where exactly would it take place? DionysosProteus (talk) 11:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Wilmington, DE, stats
according to the statistics for Wilmington, Delaware 2010, the population has dropped, but where are the other 2010 statistics such as number of households, families, etc.? I am just seeing 2000? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.242.246.178 (talk) 18:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Most Wikipedia updates are done manually and incorporating the 2010 United States Census into tens of thousands of articles is a huge work. Some things may not be updated before the next census. See 2010 US Census. You are welcome to help. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:01, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Adding a new section
I would like to finsih adding to an article, but to make the information easier on the eyes, I would need to create a brand new section in the article. How do I do that?
 * Start a new line, then use ==Section title== for a section, or ===Subsection title=== for a subsection title, and so on. See WP:Cheatsheet where it says "section headings". --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 19:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

What's the point of categories?
So I've been diligently adding categories as I new page patrol, and it occured to me that I don't really know what they're for. Do readers use them much? Do they help articles get noticed by the right wikiproject or something? Are some types of category more useful than others? Just wondering really. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 20:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * They help identify articles and they help to find articles on similar subjects. -- Jayron  32  20:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * For example: when I am creating a new article on a Wisconsin State Senate member, I can search for members of Category:Wisconsin State Senators for models to follow, reminders of information to gather, leads to possible sources of such information, etc. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  21:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All of the above. I often like to read about notable people in X field, whether it be crime, academics, business, etc.  So having categories is quite useful for me.  Dismas |(talk) 00:31, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * People must use them. Category:Jewish_surnames is the most-popular category in WikiProject Anthroponymy, with an average of 825 views a day!.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 09:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)