Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 July 5

= July 5 =

Editing a page due to inadequate sources
Hi, I wanted to edit this page: Survivorman

Specifically, the 2nd sentence under "production". I see that that it states that "Stroud carries an emergency satellite phone and normally has daily radio contact with his support crew that was always within rescue range", however the source cited does not say anything to support it. The 2nd citation (link doesn't work) which i retrieved using web archive mentions: "I carry an emergency satellite phone, but unfortunately it has proven to work only half the time, which has been disconcerting." and "...I found through random testing that my emergency radio/phone set-up did not work, leaving me utterly alone and exposed" which leads me to believe that the statement in question is false.

I just want to see I am justified in submitting an edit since the sentence cannot be verified and the 2nd citation links to a page that does not exist anymore. Can i still cite to that page? do I cite the archived page? or should i simply remove the sentence?

Thanks for your help.

Dice89 (talk) 06:29, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello, . If you've tried to find support for the statement and can't, please be bold and remove it. Make sure you leave an edit summary which explains why you are removing information. --ColinFine (talk) 11:28, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

how do iget my army records
How do I get my army records — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.224.37 (talk) 12:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * [[Image:P question.svg|20px]] This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Miscellaneous reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try  for an article related to the topic you want to know more about.  I hope this helps. --   Gadget850talk 12:51, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Company Mergers & Acquisitions: date announced or date finalised?
When adding information about mergers & acquisitions to Wiki articles, as a general rule, is it preferable to put the date the acquisition was announced or the date it was finalised? In a paragraph, there's often enough space to write that the merger "was announced on X date and finalised on Y date". However, in the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Group#Mergers_and_acquisitions the entries (apart from the last one) generally say "acquires..." but then put the announcement date. This doesn't seem coherent: it would seem more reliable to either say "Man Group announced" and put the announcement date, or say "Man Group acquires" with the finalisation date. I was wondering whether, Wiki-wide, there was a preference for using one date or the other. (This question also posted on the Tearoom because I wasn't sure where the best place was) Jjlewis745 (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Not sure what the preference is but logically the date the merger or acquisition is finalised appears to be the only one that should be used, the date of the announcement is not really notable. MilborneOne (talk) 15:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi MilborneOne, thanks for your reply. I agree that the finalisation date feels like it should be more notable, but the announcement date usually gets more press, which makes it easier to reliably source. On reflection (since asking my question), between the agreement date and the finalisation date the two companies have been undergoing the merger process, which often leads to significant chances in the business structure, so in some ways the announcement date would seem more relevant. However, here, I think I'm just going to tidy up the wording so that's it's more clear whether the date given is for agreement or finalisation. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjlewis745 (talk • contribs) 12:23, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

How to correctly format web references for featured articles?
If some helpful person could suggest how to format references 2 (web dictionary), 4 (web dictionary), 12 (website), 13 (newspaper), 20 (website), 23 (wikisource), and 25 (web dictionary) on this article, which is due for FA, I would be most grateful. The rest of the references are all books and journals so I will be ok formatting them myself. Thank you in advance, 94.196.107.155 (talk) 21:32, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this will help, but it would probably be a good idea for you to look at Citation templates. This doesn't appear to cover all of the issues, but it might help for knowing what to include. Dustin  ( talk ) 21:36, 5 July 2014 (UTC)