Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 April 27

= April 27 =

Users with articles
On Wikipedia, I once saw a list of users that also have pages about themselves, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Can someone please link it to me? &mdash;Bzweebl&mdash; talk 02:15, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikipedians with articles I think. Alexius  Horatius  02:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Compliments to the excellent efficiency of those who are regulars at the help desk! &mdash;Bzweebl&mdash; talk 02:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Please change the colour of the text of your signature - it is currently unreadable. Roger (talk) 06:44, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I can read it. The signature complies with policy in that it links to both the user and talk page (only one of the two is required by policy). You may not like its display, but there's no way that Bzweebl can be forced to change it. Mjroots (talk) 07:01, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I can read it too, and it looks great imho. --87.79.130.182 (talk) 11:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The signature is discussed at User talk:Bzweebl. It uses the CSS3 text-shadow property which is unsupported by some browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to search all articles in a category; can't figure out how...
For example, I'd like to search for the word "limestone" in all 29 articles in Category:Caves_of_France

Also, I'd love to search for the intersection of that category and Category:Limestone_caves to see which of the caves of France are limestone caves.

I've spent an hour looking at various pages like Catscan, Advance this or that, chat rooms. I'm not getting anywhere. Is this possible? Thanks. Bob Enyart, Denver radio host at KGOV (talk) 03:58, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know of a way to do that on wiki, but using WP:AutoWikiBrowser you can run an intersection filter on two sets of categories, which resulted in the following list:
 * Aven Armand
 * Aven d'Orgnac
 * Cave of Niaux
 * Chauvet Cave
 * Cosquer Cave
 * Grotte des Demoiselles
 * Lascaux
 * Padirac Cave
 * Trois Frères
 * Vercors Cave System
 * Hopefully someone else will know of a better way to do it. Monty  845  06:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You say you looked at CatScan but it does do an intersection search. Click the radio button for "for pages by category", then enter two different categories into the fields. Here's the search of the two categories you wanted (it returns the exact same results as Monty845 found using AutoWikiBrowser). I don't think it can do a word and a category though. However, what you can do is use the internal search engine and restrict your results to the mainspace (in advanced options). Place your category name in quotes (without "category:"), together with a separate search term and then it should find the intersection. Here's the search you were looking to do. The problem is that the category name needs to be relatively distinct one, something that is not likely to be in the regular text of articles or your search will generate false positives. The format of most categories is sufficiently distinct though.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both! Wonderfully helpful. And now, finally, I know how to spell fuhghettaboutit. And I'm not sure if I can ask a further question here, or would have to create a new question, but at this search result at Cat Scan, is there an easy way then to search THOSE PAGES for a term? Say, "beetle"? Bob Enyart, Denver radio host at KGOV (talk) 18:16, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. You could using the internal search engine do the same search I set up but place both category names (again, without "category") in quotes and then also search for beetle, i.e., this. Note that that finds nothing but I don't know if that's because the search method doesn't work, or because there's nothing to find. Maybe a more accurate method, though I don't know that one would characterize it as an easy' way", would be to do a Google search of all the pages found using the intersecting category search, in the disjunctive, restricted to the English Wikipedia (use ), and to the mainspace (use  ), like so.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:57, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Question about creating a page for a small business
Would creating a Wikipedia page for a small but up-and-coming business be considered as advertising and cause the page to get flagged as spam? According to the "Starting an article" page, it says that promoting of business isn't allowed. However, no prices or services would be displayed. Simply information about the company and what it does would be displayed. Would this be ok to create or would this cause some sort of conflict? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.20.191.74 (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia contains articles about notable subjects. If said small business had been the subject of coverage in books, newspapers or other reliable sources, then it would be fine to create an article (although it should be done by someone with no connection to the business). However, if the company is not notable, then it has no place here. See WP:ORG for the notability guidelines for businesses. Yunshui 雲&zwj;水 14:03, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * (ec)Very possibly. It is oft-assumed that "advertising" means blatant requests to buy something. However, it is much broader.


 * The article must meet wp:N, which means there much be coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources. This is often hard to achieve for a new, up-and- coming business. Wikipedia is deliberately not interested in leading, but following. -- SPhilbrick (Talk)  14:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * And see WP:CORP and WP:RS for further guidance. If you are connected with the company, please also read WP:COI, WP:BFAQ and WP:BESTCOI. Hope this helps.--ukexpat (talk) 14:30, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You obviously should also read WP:UPANDCOMING! -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  16:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Heh. Do we have an essay on every subject?-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  18:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I wrote that one back in 2008 after one too many arguments for retention on "He's up-and-coming; They're gonna get bigger; If you delete her now, you'll have to create a new article when she becomes more famous; It's a rising concept/meme/ideology; They show enormous potential; This could revolutionize the field." grounds. It was improved a bit by another editor, and has apparently proved of some utility, judging by the number of talk page discussions that link to it. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  18:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

reinstating Excelsior Jet
The entry for Excelsior Jet was deleted some time ago, I think because the author resigned from Wiki.

I am a big fan of Excelsior Jet, though I do not work for them. I have a page about their products on my website at http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jet.html

I got a hold of the original Wiki text, now updated. I would like to get it inserted. I tried reading the instructions for inserting and reviving pages but I could not make any sense of it. It asked me to contact a "deletion authority" but did not tell me who that was or how to contact them.

The following text describing Excelsior Jet is objective. Everything can be verified. There is no puffery or sales talk. I can't see why anyone would consider any of it controversial or incredible.

Excelsior JET is a commercial Java SE technology implementation built around an ahead-of-time (AOT) Java to native code compiler. The compiler transforms the portable Java bytecode into optimized executables for the desired hardware and operating system (OS). Also included are a Java runtime featuring a just-in-time (JIT) compiler for handling classes that were not precompiled for whatever reason (e.g. third-party plugins or dynamic proxies), the complete Java SE API implementation licensed from Sun Microsystems, and a toolkit to aid deployment of the optimized applications.

Excelsior JET has passed the "official" test suite (TCK) for Java SE 6, and is certified Java Compatible on a number of Windows and Linux variations running on Intel x86 and compatible hardware. It may produce DLLs and NT Services for Windows, and shared libraries for Linux.

The latest version also supports the Equinox OSGi runtime and Apache Tomcat at the JVM level, enabling ahead-of-time compilation of Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) applications and Web applications.

Excelsior JET Embedded implements the Java SE for Embedded technology in a very similar manner, the only major differences are in licensing and pricing.

Can I create a page about myself?
Hello,

Can I create a page about myself?

Cheers, ANON — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.152.199.209 (talk) 15:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:COI
 * WP:Autobiography
 * WP:Notability
 * You'd have to make it at WP:Articles for creation because IPs cannot create articles in the mainspace. - Purplewowies (talk) 15:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * ...or register and get an account so you can do it yourself. Registering is always a good idea anyway. HiLo48 (talk) 21:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Bullcrap
when i try to edit the page about ebay that speaks the truth about them stealing money and being dishonest crooks then you leave it on there. no sense in hiding the truth people need to know that they scam people and have been know for fraud — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.84.221.206 (talk) 16:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Please read WP:NOTSOAPBOX.--ukexpat (talk) 17:20, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I would try to express your opinions elsewhere as this is a factual encyclopedia and not an opinion based forum. Hghyux (talk to me)(talk to others) 19:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You should also watch your IP edits of some articles. A friend edited the CIA article with an IP and we never saw him again.--Canoe1967 (talk) 06:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Erroneous Data
Many of your articles are being tampered with, specifically relating to jews

For example, Bob Diamond (banker) was listed as jewish, now it has been edited to make him "irish-american". Bob Diamond, is, and always has been jewish

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England is a Jew, it has been removed from his article

Rick Wakeman was born into a jewish family, removed from his article

There are many, many examples of this.

You will become a pro-zionist joke if you continue to blatantly peddle lies about people's background — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.200.50.169 (talk) 19:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * There is a general consensus that biography articles should only include mention of the religion, ethnicity and/or sexual orientation of the subject if it is directly relevant to their notability and if it is referenced from an impecabbly reliable source that quotes or cites the subject themself.
 * BTW we don't care what pro-zionists or anti-zionists think of us. Roger (talk) 20:20, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * (Edit Conflict) In the first place, Wikipedia can't be "peddling" lies because it does not sell its information – "peddling" implies a monetary transaction.
 * Secondly, Wikipedia is by definition a communally produced entity, and all article edits are individual acts which virtually anyone can carry out, so Wikipedia can't in itself be promoting any particular viewpoint, although individual editors/contributors, or self-organised cabels of them, might do so.
 * Thirdly, how would concealing various well-known individuals' (alleged) Jewishness be "pro-Zionist"? This would suggest that those (supposedly) doing so consider Jewishness as something somehow shameful: a "pro-Zionist" agenda would surely be more likely to promote Jewishness by publicising the Jewishness (if factual) of admired prominent individuals.
 * Fourthly, from where are you getting your "facts" about various individuals' alleged Jewishness? For example, you mention Rick Wakeman: the 1978-published book of that title by Dan Wooding I happen to have to hand not only does not mention his (or either of his parents) being Jewish, but describes his teenage attendance at a Baptist church, and he is fairly well known as being a lifelong practising Christian; it's difficult to reconcile this with your claim of his being Jewish. It may be that he has some Jewish ancestry, as practically everyone in Europe has to some degree, but that doesn't make him (or them) Jewish, any more than my own possible (though unconfirmed) 1/8 or 1/16 Jewish ancestry makes me Jewish instead of being English and Wiccan. Your assertions require corroboration from Reliable Sources – the "put up or shut up" principal applies, methinks. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.78.15 (talk) 20:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, Irish American is not a religion. (Though Irish Catholic might be considered one...) - Purplewowies (talk) 22:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

~ THERE NEEDS TO BE AN UPDATED MOST VISITED ARTICLES BY UNIQUE VISITOR ANYWHERE ON THE ENTIRE WEB ~
WHY ISN'T THERE??????? -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Popular_pages --  Edit: DO NOT Reply without an intelligent answer. Thingstofollow (talk) 20:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Did you not follow the link at the top of that page where it says, "For updated lists, see external links on Wikipedia:Statistics"? -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  20:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Did you not read the question CLEARLY, IF AT ALL?Thingstofollow (talk) 21:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

glad there's one intelligent person in the room -- Found it --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2012_April_21#.7E_Wikipedia_Most_Visited_Page_.7E

still doesn't explain unique visitor nor really anything, it's not even a confirmed answer, it's maybe, 100% not helpful. Thingstofollow (talk) 21:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Well excuse us for trying to be helpful. Perhaps if you didn't SHOUT and adopted a more civil tone, that may help.--ukexpat (talk) 21:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The chances are unique visitor information would be collecting data that may contravene privacy policies on WMF websites. If not, feel free to write some code to generate this information Thingstofollow. Moaning about the lack of something on a website generated by voulnteers in their free time (particularly ALL CAPS SCREAMING) isn't the way forward. 86.166.65.244 (talk) 21:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Message for Thingstofollow --Guy Macon (talk) 21:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, it made me laugh, but a dollar to a donut the intended recipient won't understand.TheLongTone (talk) 22:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The thing that gets me is that almost every piece of prose on this site, in newspapers and on the Internet is written in sentence case, yet a surprising number of people think that THIS IS HOW TO DO THINGS. Perhaps one should need to apply for a caps lock licence before being given the key to put on their keyboard. Brammers (talk/c) 16:16, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Possible some folks are used to plain old typing, where all-caps was the only way to emphasize, and italics, bolding and the like were not available. Some editors (though not this one, I think) may come from cultures where capitalization as it is used in Roman alphabet languages does not exist. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  17:27, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Pretty Good Privacy page 2 digital signatures
The last sentence says "To do so, PGP computes a hash (also called a message digest) from the plain text, and then creates the digital signature from the hash using the sender's private key.

How can the receiver read the digital signature if it is encrypted with the sender's private key?

I believe that it should be the receiver's public key otherwise how can the receiver decrypt the digital signature? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.193.244.123 (talk) 21:38, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Take a look at the second image down at Public-key cryptography. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Editing sections
I have made minor editings of small sections large articles that have MANY sections in them. Then when I click on the button to save the page, YOUR SERVERS TAKE FOREVER AND A DAY TO DO THIS. It is extremely frustrating, and in fact it is nauseating!

It is clear what you are doing. You are replacing the ENTIRE ARTICLE in your database. Do not do this -- it is very, very inefficient and time-consuming.

JUST REPLACE THE SECTION THAT I EDITED, and then leave all of the other ones alone!

I am an electrical engineer with a master's degree from Georgia Tech, and I know how to do things efficiently. Yes, I do. If you insist that you MUST rewrite the entire article into your computer's memories, then do that later on, and do not bother me with your server's hesitations and wasting of time. Computers are supposed to be fast and efficient -- So Make Them So! All it takes is an act of will to do so.

Dale A. Wood MSEE Georgia Tech 1980 Bachelor of EE - Auburn University 1977 MA in mathematics - Univ. of Alabama 1996 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.67.99.85 (talk) 23:42, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * And how much money have you donated, Dale A. Wood, MSEE, to support our microscopic staff (mostly volunteers and a couple of temps) as they try to maintain one of the planet's most heavily-trafficked websites? Have you ever volunteered to help during one of our Summers of Code? Have you ever made specific suggestions at any of our places for such suggestions, such as the Technical section of the "Village Pump"? -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  00:13, 28 April 2012 (UTC)


 * WP:DONTBITE RudolfRed (talk) 03:01, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I don't have any problem - it is very fast, probably your ISP is a bit slow? Dipankan  ( Have a chat? ) 04:56, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey, how about we all sit down and drink a rainbow?  Captain Screebo Parley! 16:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey, Dale Wood, sorry if I came across a little nasty, but you don't get a lot of helpful attitudes from volunteers when you begin by attacking us; and a flat statement like "All it takes is an act of will to do so" is really a little silly. You're an engineer; you know better.
 * It is possible, as Dipankan suggests, that the problem is in your feed rather than our servers; it is possible that our servers are overworked (we only have so many); and it is possible that our code could be improved. As I said, we have a tiny staff; and we have a place where suggestions for improvement can be made, to be pursued by our volunteer and paid programming staff - it's called the Technical section of the "Village Pump". -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  16:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Dale, are you using the edit from the top of the page, or the ones in each section? My connection has 15Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload, and I have to wait a while on larger sections as well. The nearest fiber-optic node is actually accross the street. If you do have skills and a solution and would like to volunteer to improve wikipedia, I am sure that can be arranged.--Canoe1967 (talk) 04:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * WP does indeed store articles as whole entities, not in sections. So when an update is made, a whole new copy is stored.  In additional to technical difficulties with storing an article in sections (after all sections are fairly fluid, and can be changed at a drop of a hat), a piece-wise store of an article would add considerable work every time the page is viewed (where even more things would need to be pieced together than are now), while saving (perhaps) *some* work when the article is edited.  Since the former is (hopefully) far more common, storing the article whole is a win for the system overall, even if it slows down editing.  In any event, it's unlikely that the size of any article (excepting, perhaps, a few of the very largest), has a more than modest impact on the time taken to store it - writing 100KB to disk is not really much more expensive than writing 10KB, at those sizes the seek time implied overwhelms the transfer time by a order of magnitude or more.  In fact, given that a piecewise store would frequently need to generate several updates to the database (especially if the sectioning changed), and it might well be slower.  Could the WP servers use a bit more grunt, especially at busy times of day?  Sure - and we should all send them a few bucks to make that happen.  Or perhaps the WP team needs to work on the databases write caching, but storing articles in sections seems quite the wrong direction to move in.   Rwessel (talk) 05:22, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * So, are you saying there is no benefit to WP in just editing a section, rather than the whole article? If so - what purpose does the Edit section option offer? - Arjayay (talk) 09:56, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * With long articles, it's easier to find the text you're editing.— Vchimpanzee  ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:46, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

{HELP ME} How do I edit an info box?
Hello,

I am interested in editing an info box (the box on the right side of the screen with summary information about an article). For example, how can the name George W Bush be deleted from the list of Fascist persons on the Fascism page. I mean...really?!?

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DRANNELISW (talk • contribs) 23:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The template was vandalised. The reason you couldn't see it in the article is becaue all you would see is  . You'd have to go to fascism sidebar to fix it. 28 bytes has fixed it. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)


 * For an infobox, click the "Edit" tab at top of the page. However, the box in Fascism is not an infobox. It is called a sidebar and is a template which is transcluded from another page so it can be shown on several pages while being maintained in one place. Sidebars usually have "V T E" links in a corner for View, Talk, Edit. Click the E. I have reverted George W Bush who was added an hour before your post. Thanks for reporting it. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:33, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be Are these tags expected more often? I have been adding a few as I go along.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:56, 30 April 2012 (UTC)