Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 April 29

= April 29 =

Book vs Wikipedia
I just noticed the the main article book has approx. 60kB while the main article Wikipedia has approx. 160kB. Could someone edit the book article and add another 100kB so we don't appear so biased? Thanks.--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has thousands of articles about books. I don't think the size of the specific article Book means anything. Many of the sections have a "Main article" link. Book could quickly be made far bigger by copying content from these articles but it would be against Summary style. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Not to mention there are likely way more articles that aren't about Wikipedia than there are articles that are about WP. - Purplewowies (talk) 00:53, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry. It was just a joke. I doubt anyone could add another 100kB to book because it has been split into many other articles.--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:29, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

--Canoe1967 (talk) 03:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Page view counter
Were there any reported issues with the page view counter today? This is the first time I have had an article on the main page (via WP:DYK) that got fewer hits than the day before when it was not on the main page.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:15, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It's only a few hours into Sunday Wikipedia time (UTC). Which page and day are you referring to? Weekends have fewer visitors in general. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:29, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Your page, presumably Philip Humber, is currently on the main page the page view statistics won't be updated for 21.5 hours. Ryan Vesey  Review me!  03:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I meant yesterday's Kony 2012. It seems like there was a spoof main page or some sort of data error.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:04, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * In fact, two of the three links in the hook had lower page views on April 28 than April 27. See
 * 10636->10598 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Kony%202012
 * 1459->1391 http://stats.grok.se/en/201204/viral%20video
 * 96->223 http://stats.grok.se/en/201204/page%20view
 * What is going on?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 11:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't follow page view stats for DYK entries but I don't see signs of data error. I guess most newly created articles get few views. If there was a lot of interest in the subject then an article would have been created earlier. An exception is a news-related item like Kony 2012. 10000 page views is a lot. Page views generally fall from Friday to Saturday. Suppose it would have fallen 30% without a DYK entry. Then the DYK may have caused around 3000 views. Compare to page view with 96 views Friday. That's so little that a common 30% drop to Saturday is much easier to make up for and exceed by being linked in DYK, even if it isn't the bolded link. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Is there also a pattern for times of the year, times of the day and times of the month when viewership is high.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:18, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I haven't investigated it but I assume it varies by time of day (some time zones have more readers) and time of year. I don't know whether there are stats about this at Statistics or elsewhere. The 30% drop on Saturdays was just a rough estimate based on examining a few pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:04, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I am guessing U.S. daytime is the busiest unless there are a lot of Indian readers. Well whatever is going it seems to be affecting all my pageviews since I created User:TonyTheTiger/DYKviews. My last 4 DYK pageviews were way below my expectation.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
 * What type of spoofing would it be if they fooled the page view counter whenever my pages were on the main page?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 05:01, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Pencil icon
What is the little square with a picture of a pencil stub that is to the right of "log out" on my page? When I mouse-over, I get a cryptic message about disabling [disabling what?] and a date from January of this year. Kdammers (talk) 03:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe it's WP:WikEd. - Purplewowies (talk) 04:13, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

How long does one wait for another editor to reply on a proposal of an article
How long does one wait for another editor to comment on the article that you intend including. Actually there was a long discussion on the inclusion of the article and all the criteria of inclusion has been met and is also agreed by one of the editors that he does not object but the other editor is not replying after repeated requests. What does one do in such a case. (AlphaOmega19 (talk) 10:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC))

On a mobile device, how do you switch the default back from desktop view to mobile view?
On my iphone, I switched from mobile view to desktop view to see a page more clearly. It has now switched the default to desktop *permanently*, so that if I want to see the mobile view, I have to scroll down to the bottom, zoom in, and find the 'mobile view' link for every page.

This is very irritating, and I can't find a way of reverting to mobile view by default. Is there one, or is desktop view permanently associated with my account?

I have spent nearly an hour looking for this in FAQs and other help sections. I think it needs to be easier to find. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grannybuttons (talk • contribs) 10:37, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * With my Android tablet I sometimes make the switch by inserting .m. into the URL as in
 * http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk
 * but more often by using the "Favorites" menu to go to the .m. Main Page and thence to other pages in mobile mode. I also made it the browser's Home Page, so it opens in mobile mode and only goes to "desktop" mode when I want. Jim.henderson (talk) 10:52, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit summaries in sandboxes?
We are told always to put edit summaries (Help:Edit summary), but is it really necessary to do this on the many edits that I make in my sandboxes? There doesn't seem to be a lot of point in making edit summaries until an article goes live, but I couldn't find any guidance on this.--Shantavira|feed me 13:16, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Strictly speaking, edit summaries are not mandatory in most cases, only strongly encouraged. I doubt many will fault you if you decide not to use them in your own sandbox, though as a matter of best practice, it is a good idea to use them anyway to reinforce the good habit of always using them. Also, if you intend to move content out of your sandbox in a way that preserves the edit history, edit summaries would be helpful to anyone looking back and trying to understand your thought process, including yourself if you ever leave a sandbox for awhile and then return to editing it. Monty  845  16:03, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There is an option in preferences that will let you know if you try to save an edit without a summary. It doesn't seem to send me the warning in my own user space though.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Differences
I have noticed that when I look at a difference report that the format is different and harder to read. I.e. all the writing is on a white background with very pale borders. Have I done something wrong? Op47 (talk) 16:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Village pump (technical). ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Village pump (technical), in case that has any more useful information not found in the first one.— Vchimpanzee  ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I have a general question
I wanted to know the following:

I was researching a historical politician's name and Wikipedia has a page about him which includes a large table of names that is a bit confusing.

How can I ask a question of the table's author for clarification ?

Thank you in advance for any assist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.205.165.74 (talk) 16:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It would be of great help to us if you tell at least the article's name where you found that table..-- GoP T C N 17:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Here is probably a good place to ask, if you tell us which article. You can look at the article's history to see all the users who have contributed to it, but it may not be clear which user inserted the information you are interested in. (The Wikiblame tool can tell you who last edited that bit of the page, but they might just have been tweaking the format). And if you do identify the editor responsible and place a query on their talk page, it might be that they are not currently active. --ColinFine (talk) 20:51, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

counting number of readers of an article
Kindly inform me how can I get a counter for number of readers for an article I upload in the Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.97.129.220 (talk) 16:37, 29 April 2012 (UTC) Maryam Musabeh — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.97.129.220 (talk) 16:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Go to the article's history (tab at the top), then click on "Page view statistics". Regards.-- GoP T C N 17:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

the little start on featured articles
how do u add the little star to the top of featured articles. i'm not going to add it to any articles that aren't featured articles (cuz that would be vandalism, lol). i was just wondering how u do it, because i like it and it looks real nice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.85.191.43 (talk) 17:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You would add to the top of the article. I hope this helps. Jamietw (talk) 18:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * THANK YOU. btw i am NOT going to do that, because it would be vandalism. thanks.--24.228.83.134 (talk) 18:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Merging articles.
I have a question on merging process of an article. It has been proposed that 2008 South Korean candlelight vigil to be merged with 2008 US beef protest in South Korea in February 2011, and no action has taken so far. The article has no citation at all, and this could be WP:OR. Could anyone help to merging the article? Or should I wait for other users joining the discussion? But for more than a year, no one showed any interest... PBJT (talk) 18:53, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Article section deletions
Hi there,

There have been many good edits on an article and one user regularly deletes out an entire section of the article. They claim it is to 'advertisement' like. It has been re-written several times to be as neutral as possible, out of a courtesy to this user.

Upon re writing and leaving messages on the user's talk page, the user just keeps coming back and deleting the section, not editing or imporving it according to their knowledge.

What is the way around this? How should one proceed?

Many thanks,

Black Stripe (talk) 21:22, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Follow the guidance for dispute resolution RudolfRed (talk) 21:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

C5, CV
See C5 - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=C5&oldid=487828501 someone has been putting "foo V"s in the "foo 5" pages, as redirects eg so C V and C.V redirect to C5 and not CV. I fixed A and B but it looks like this has spread throught the disambiguation pages.

Can I double check that this needs fixing and is wrong, and get some help to fix it.Oranjblud (talk) 23:35, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It makes sense to me to disambiguate roman numeral V along with arabic 5. What makes you think it is wrong? —teb728 t c 00:30, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone looking for Curriculum vitae by typing in C V isn't going to be helped much by a page that lists all the pages that C 5 might refer to. RudolfRed (talk) 01:20, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It doesn’t matter much to me where A V, B V, C V, etc redirect, but things moving Bavarian B V from B5 to BV (as Oranjblud did) makes no sense at all. —teb728 t c 01:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * So if I want to know what BV means when someone says "BV locomotive" I need to type B5, or use a specific combination of dots and spaces when tpying "BV" to get to "B5" - in my opinion that is WP:COMPLETEBOLLOCKS. People use disambiguation pages to find things they don't know, not stuff they already know.
 * When I type "B V" was V a roman numeral - how can you tell?213.249.234.249 (talk) 02:22, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The user who created these (user:Nono64) has systematically created thousands of redirects. Many of the "* V" ones appear here. I'd suggest (politely) asking this user on his talk page about this. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for " V" to redirect to " V" rather than " 5", and (if it doesn't already have one) to add a link from "V" to " 5". Judging by his contributions, I'd expect this user would be happy to help do this. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:59, 30 April 2012 (UTC)