Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 March 15

= March 15 =

Clogged up edit history due to an overactive user
A user has been editing the Shawn Lane article relentlessly for the past week, creating an overly huge edit history which makes it tricky to keep up with so many minor and trivial changes. They also do not seem to have any concept of using the minor edit tickbox. I've contacted them twice on their user page, but it doesn't look like there'll ever be a response. How could I get them to understand that what they're doing is a bit silly? Their additions are fine so far, but the non-stop rate at which they keep changing stuff is hard to keep up with. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 00:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Of course, you realise you can view the aggregate of all changes so far via the View History window? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.171.89 (talk) 00:27, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I do. But there's also the issue of them having added a very large amount of external links, all of which may or not be relevant. I'm not averse to going over them individually in an attempt to incorporate them within the article as references, but I won't bother if they're constantly going to keep making tiny edits all the time (it seems to be hourly!). My query is, should I simply let the user wear themselves out and come back when it seems like they're done? Getting them to slow down their edit rate clearly isn't going to work. I guess I'm just a bit puzzled because I haven't seen this kind of thing before on any of my watched articles, heh. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I have posted uw-preview to the user. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:51, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * In the history listing, you can get an aggregate of all the changes by clicking on "[cur]", or you can click on two radio button and click the button to "Compare selected revisions". This is a aggregate of all changes this month to the article in question.  As you can see, they have added just two external links.  Astronaut (talk) 12:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Copy Editing complete - article remains "requiring editing"
I've edited a couple of articles from the history section - "Alexander's Conflict with the Kambojas" and "Ancient History of Cyprus". I made notations about my edits - mostly minor, grammatical, tidying - and saved them. These two still appear in the list "to be edited". Is there a reason? Plumpshus (talk) 00:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "to be edited" list?--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I think that you're referring to the hat notes at the top of the Alexander's Conflict with the Kambojas and Ancient history of Cyprus articles. Those are manually put there by editors who feel there are issues with the article.  And once those items have been addressed, by editors like you, then you can remove them yourself.  There is no bot or overseer that removes them for you.  Dismas |(talk) 01:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That is what I assumed, as well as the categories at the bottom. I won't remove them because I don't know the subjects well.--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:13, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (note) Plumpshus, if you know the subject well enough, but don't know how to remove them, we can remove the ones you feel should be.--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Canoe67 and Dismas. I mean here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Customusertemplate-ACP2-Be_a_part_of_Wikipedia_(History,_Copyediting) someone gave me a shortcut to that area as I'm interested in copy editing history related articles. I don't know the subjects well enough to remove the hat notes. I am literally just checking for typos, consistency, etc. No worries, I shall just keep working through articles as I come across them. Bestest regards Plumpshus (talk) 02:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * That list is apparently part of an unmaintained system starting at MediaWiki:Customusertemplate-ACP2-Welcomecreation. The list hasn't been updated since it was created in June 2011. The articles you mention were tagged as needing copy editing at the time but the copy edit tags were removed long before your account was created. Where exactly did you see the link to the list? Was it displayed in connection with your account creation? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Forced edit summary?
Can there be a bot or admin script or something else that forces users to leave an edit summary? If they don't, when they attempt to submit their changes, the edit box will refresh (with their edits still in the box), but it won't submit. No matter how many times they try, it won't submit, unless they finally leave an edit summary. It is so frustrating to see what kinds of edits are made, when there is no edit summary. Sometimes, I don't have time to look at the edits (the pop-ups box is sometimes too slow or doesn't respond at all), so the edit summary is a huge help. Allen (talk) 02:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There's "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" in the user preferences (which is by default unchecked), but that's more of a reminder rather than a force. - Purplewowies (talk) 02:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * See Perennial proposals. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * There's no way of forcing people to add accurate or helpful edit summaries. If you're not sure why someone made an edit, ask them, or post on the article's talk page, or check the history. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Purely from a technical point of view, this would be a bad idea, because there are certain situations (see the instructions for filing a new report at Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring for an example) in which it's actually a bad idea to use either an edit summary or a section header. Per Colapeninsula, if we started forcing edit summaries, people who don't want them would probably enter whatever simple thing they could, such as a single space character.  If we prohibited single-character summaries, we'd get in the way of some proper summaries; for example, if I'm reading an article and find that "a" is missing (e.g. "Once upon time, there were three bears"), I'll add the missing word and enter simply "a" as my edit summary.  Nyttend (talk) 01:29, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Overly helpful edit box
Yesterday I must have inadvertently clicked some editing-related icon that has resulted in a would-be-helpful box of accented characters, etc, appearing immediately above the editing box (the box in which I'm typing right now). This adds an irritating delay before I can type my edit. I can't see any way of turning off this (for me) misfeature. Tips? -- Hoary (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If you see the text "Special characters" above the box then click it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:45, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Got it! Thanks. Yes, it turns out to be one of those little-triangle things. Got unwanted clutter above the box? One of the little triangles will point downward. Click the text next to the triangle to remove the clutter. (I hadn't even noticed the triangles till just now.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:47, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I want to delete pics i uploaded.
Hello. I would like for my own work (just a few pictures) to be deleted; they aren't really needed. Here they are—, i really hope you can delete it asap, as i don't know how.. − Arrekea ♥ (Talk) 05:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ [[File:Kimberlymatula-hopeloganforrester BB.jpg]] has been deleted via CSD.--Salix (talk): 19:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

pictures
Please delete these pics i uploaded i have the same situation [one of myelf and others]  ,. THANKS! PLEASE Luckygambi (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC).
 * Hi Luckygambi. Regarding the the second two images, they are in use in articles. Why do you want them deleted? We don't always delete images or other pages once uploaded if they are considered useful. You could tag them with the template db-g7 or maybe better, . See also Files for deletion. Regarding the first image, you uploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons, a sister website, but a different website. Their processes are not precisely the same as ours, and most people who are admins here are not admins there. In other words, it's possible a person seeing your request here has the ability to delete them there, but it is not highly likely and this is not the best forum for such request. In any event, I have taken the liberty of requesting deletion there, on your behalf, linking to this thread.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Bollocks about reference lists
I tried to put some references into an article about Phallus rubicundus which is woefully inadequate and Yankocentric. I got an error message and some geek speak which was totally incomprehensible. Why not either try writing in English or alternatively follwo normal scientific formatting.Martinflab (talk) 07:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid that without a source it's just unsupported hearsay: anyone could add anything to the encyclopedia if we don't keep an eye on this. Any unsupported material can be challenged or removed. You could also change the header above to something a little less colloquial. Britmax (talk) 08:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Please read Referencing for beginners and/or Citing sources. The error message you got actually explains exactly what you needed to do and included a link to the help page.  If you can understand scientific formatting conventions for referencing you shouldn't have trouble with Wikipedia markup.  If you really can't be bothered doing that, include a reference as plain text in parentheses in the body of the text (no markup tags) and somebody will probably fix it for you. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Please leave constructive criticism of the help page on the help talk page. As the creator of the series of help pages, I am always open to improvements. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Winners of the Bronze Star (USA)
Hello,

My Uncle was a recipient of the Bronze Star for bravery... he's not on the list on this site... I'm not sure how/who to contact about that. I know he is for 2 reasons: His obit has it, and his headstone has it...and he's buried in the national cemetery at Beaufort, SC...not sure who to contact to fix the fact that he's not listed. Any advice who to contact would be great. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Heatherjmn (talk • contribs) 08:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to the list at Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal? That list only applies to people who already have a Wikipedia article written about them.--Shantavira|feed me 09:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (e/c) Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal does not list all recipients of the Bronze Star but only those who have an article in Wikipedia. If there is a corresponding list article, the same would be true there. In order to have an article a person would have to be "notable" as described at WP:BIO. Does that help you understand? —teb728 t c 09:18, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * BTW Referring to recipients of military medals as "winners" is incorrect. Sports medals are "won", but military medals are awarded. Roger (talk) 17:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation Page
DISAMBIGUATION PAGE : COULDN T THIS BE CALLED A "CLARIFICATION" PAGE ? WHY USE AN ARTIFICIAL, ESOTERIC WORD WHEN AN EASILY UNDERSTOOD, TRADITIONAL WORD WILL DO ? REINVENTING Languagewith new concocted phraseology for simple things creates barriers to learning and using yr product with older people, less educated people, and even for those reading intranslation. free flow of information is facilitTed with clarity in words that do the same job and thT more people feel comfotrable with. Lk — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.38.16.107 (talk) 10:12, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I added a header to this question because it had none. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:25, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Disambiguation removes ambiguities about words with more than one meaning, hence the name; it does not clarify the meaning of a concept. Why do you use words like "concocted" and "phraseology" when there are simpler terms that more people could understand? --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:29, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The place to make suggestions about Wikipedia as a whole is the Village Pump, where you can try to persuade others to your point of view. But I agree with Colapeninsula that "clarification" has too wide a meaning for this purpose. "Disambiguation" is recorded in the OED from 1827, though I admit that it is mostly a technical term. --ColinFine (talk) 11:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh no, we would lose the greatest page name in Wikipedia: Disambiguation (disambiguation). And Clarification (disambiguation) is a redirect to Clarification so we wouldn't make up for the loss by gaining a page called Clarification (clarification). PrimeHunter (talk) 17:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * There is an entire project for a "simple English" pedia: simple.wikipedia.org
 * And for all readers who don't know what disambiguation is, the word is a hyperlink at the bottom of each disambiguation page. For more info, read Disambiguation (disambiguation), Primehunter is NOT kidding with that. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 13:02, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hope that helps.

The Meeting School, Rindge, NH
I graduated TMS in June of 1965. I went on to Wilmington College in the Fall of 1965. I got to know the founders, George Bliss, Joel Hayden and Mr. Hindmarsh.

I was at TMS 3 years and enjoyed intersession trips and a very special graduation in the Barn. I completed my studies in Science,English, US History, French, with outdoor activites and cooking, clean-up and maintainance of the school.

What has been written on TMS is totally correct. '65 graduate — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.250.219 (talk) 16:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * What do you need help with? Unfortunately your personal memories cannot be used in articles on Wikipedia - we can only cite published verifiable sources. Roger (talk) 17:05, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It appears to me that the person is complimenting the work done, not complaining. We need more of these comments. But probably not here unless you are impressed with the whole project. The talk page of the article is a good place to compliment work done on one article. — Vchimpanzee  ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:48, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Comparison of free video converters : new insertion
dear wiki admin, the listing on the above page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_video_converters) is a bit incomplete. i found some relevant data pertaining to this article at (http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-audio-video-format-conversion-program.htm). you may pl include features of iWisoft and Zamzar converters and other such in the comparison table, to provide more info to the readers. thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.227.21.153 (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * For now I created an external links section and added the site above. Someone with more knowledge on the subject may wish to update the tables.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:12, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The best place to discuss problems is Talk:Comparison of free video converters. By the way, administrators only do a small fraction of the work here. Most of the issues such as this are handled by ordinary people like you.— Vchimpanzee  ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:57, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Problems with uploads
What a coincidence that video converters are above this section. I am having difficulty uploading a .png, and would like an .avi uploaded for a sample of CGI. The .png keeps stalling, (2 days of attempts now). It is a replacement for a file with a very simalilar name I uploaded earlier to the commons. The first file should be deleted as it was the wrong image. I don't know if my .avi file can be uploaded as .avi with restrictions on usage. Both files can be found here. User:Canoe1967/uploads--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, there are several issues, so please bear with me. For one thing, if an image is "Wikimedia only", it's not free under our image use policy and I believe Commons has a very similar policy.  If you cannot acquire the images without this restriction, we will only be able to accept them under our non-free content policy; note that non-free media should not be uploaded to Commons.  Secondly, for File:The Bullwacker by John Weaver.png, just repeat the upload process with the right file and the same filename (it'll give you a warning, just ignore it).  If you insist on having the old one deleted first, just tag the whole thing with  and they'll take care of it.  Finally, as far as I know there are no file-type restrictions, so you should be able to upload the .avi file.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @920, i.e. 21:05, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The photographer doesn't mind much as to types of use. I think he may just wish attribution, and there is a tag for that. The pic isn't a valuable commercial one or anbything like that. Just a tourist type pic he took in Helena. I may have worded the permissions incorrectly above. The commons states that .avi are not to be uploaded because of copyright in the video codecs. I will double check and post the link to that statement here.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:21, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, to simplify, you should click "Upload a new version of this file" on the file description page" -- it's simpler than uploading again with the same filename. Sorry about the complication there.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @933, i.e. 21:23, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * See commons:Help:Converting video for instructions on converting your AVI to Ogg theora. -- N  Y  Kevin  @938, i.e. 21:30, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:File_types Seems .avi are not allowed. I will see if I can convert.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:31, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * http://www10.online-convert.com/download-file/91c5efae54f100a4f6046348fb5e0cc2/converted-5755e144.ogv I managed to convert it online from the ftp link above. That saved my computer from crunching it. The online converter will save it for 24 hours. If any one else wants a copy. I hope it uploads easily to the commons now.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I just posted a note to my talk page. Will author see it?
Is the talk page the best way to communicate with the author? What I submitted follows; The documentation on the four methods of computing mass (atoms) is confusing for a couple of reasons. It should be clear that the first and fourth methods include ISM and IGM; the second and third do not. The third method uses a radius of 13.7 billion light years but does not acknowledge that the expanded radius would produce 39 times more mass. I believe the fourth method also implies the smaller radius. The average mass of stars based on their distribution in the Milky Way is E33 gm not 2 x E33 gm. In method two, dark matter and dark energy are mentioned as if they apply only to this method; this should precede the method discussion. And last, calculating atoms rather than just mass adds to the confusion. If others agree with my comments, I would like to revise the write up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimjohnson2222 (talk • contribs) 20:13, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Where did the discussion start? If it started on your talk page then yes, whoever posted there will likely see it due to it being on his watchlist. If it started on the talk page of an article (Talk: namespace) and has not been moved from there, you're best off posting to that talk page rather than your own. — Jeremy  v^_^v  Bori! 20:21, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Discussion at Talk:Observable universe.--ukexpat (talk) 20:48, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Collaboration on safety valves page
Before I put in any effort to improve the safety valve page I would like to ask the following question. I have worked on the calculation of safety valve requirements for my company. There are specific calculations required which are referenced in the References and external links section. I can collaborate with the author to improve the page by adding some information on the calculations required for sizing the relief (safety) valve for liquid, vapor and two phase. What is my best bet for this? collaboration or a new — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seasund (talk • contribs) 22:40, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This talk page is for discussing changes to the article, Talk:Safety valve. You could ask there for assitance in improving it.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Entry for "Autosexual" redirects to "masturbation." NOT THE SAME!!!!
I have read forums online that say there was a wiki page on autosexuality, but someone redirected it to "masturbation" instead. I checked and because of the redirection, it's impossible to access the page on "autosexuality." These things are slightly related, but aren't at all the same. There needs to be a separate page for each.

For autosexuals, this is incredibly offensive to assume that someone's sexuality and attraction depends solely on whether or not they masturbate. Even if they were directly related, the two terms still have different definitions. This severely compromises the validity of your site and makes me doubt the correctness of all the pages. With misinformation like this, no one should ever site wiki in anything they want to be taken seriously.

Can someone please fix this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.78.178.73 (talk) 22:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * You can find out what happened to the page in this way: pick Autosexuality: as you say, it will redirect to Masturbation; but at the top there is a link saying "Redirected from Autosexuality", and you can pick that to go to the actual redirection page. Then pick View History, and you can see who redirected and what they said. Alternatively, pick "Talk" and see the discussions that took place on the matter, in particular Talk:Autosexuality. If it is now the case that "autosexuality" is a term which about which information is available in reliable sources - but not otherwise - then an article may be written to replace the redirect
 * By the way, Wikipedia (which is not called Wiki) contains huge amounts of unreliable, and even wrong information: this is because it is the encyclopaedia which anybody may edit, and there are far fewer editors who think seriously about quality than those who insert anything they want to put in. In consequence, nobody should ever cite wikipedia for any serious purpose, but should instead follow the references that are supposed always to be there, and cite them. See WP:Citing Wikipedia, --ColinFine (talk) 23:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)