Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 April 29

= April 29 =

Longest time of homelessness
Are there well verified documented reports of people who were homeless for more than 50 years? 112.198.90.16 (talk) 10:32, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * As of 1995, there were an estimated 30–40 million Nomads in the world. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 11:34, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The Dalai Lama has said of himself that he has been homeless for fifty years in exile. So, yes, you would need to define what you mean by homelessness, e.g. would it still count if someone were "housed" for a week or two during that period?--Shantavira|feed me 15:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes. This lovely man Jozef Stawinoga lived in a tent in the middle of the Wolverhampton Ring Road for years. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Cracked published an article just today about Andras Tomas, who was misplaced from a POW camp after the war. Depending on your definition of homeless, he was away for 53 years. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:40, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Unknown Editing
Hi, I recently got a message at User talk:67.1.254.182 saying that my "edit" to a Cochise College page was deleted, however I have never edited any page on wikipedia, nor do I have an account. I'm not sure why this is, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention, I hope this is not a waste of your time.

Thanks, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.1.254.182 (talk) 15:14, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

you guys are great and are doing a good job — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.206.230.146 (talk) 15:29, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Please read the boxed notice at the bottom of your talk page for a full explanation. StuRat (talk) 16:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 67.1.254.182 is your current IP address. However, your ISP can change this, when one of these occur, depending on how you connect
 * You dial up
 * You turn your cable/ADSL modem off
 * You turn your mobile/cell phone's data connection off
 * This could also be an HTTP proxy, which means all your ISP's customers go through it. In any case, the message is probably aimed at a previous owner of this IP address. CS Miller (talk) 20:19, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Briefly - if you don't create an account and log in when using Wikipedia, then the only identification we have of you is the "IP address" that your computer uses to talk to us with. In most cases, that number is allocated to you by your internet service provider - and it's possible (actually, very likely) that the number they allocate to you may change from one day to the next.  Hence the IP address you have right now (which is 67.1.254.182) will have been temporarily allocated to one or more people in the past.


 * So if someone who previously wound up with 67.1.254.182 edited that article, and the edit was subsequently deleted for some reason - it's perfectly possible that someone else gets the notification...and clearly, that's what happened here. At 12:30pm on Feb 17th, someone using "your" IP address vandalized that article by replacing the name of the college president with "Kirt Cormier".  That change was detected within just 4 minutes(!) and removed.


 * The 'fix' for this is to register an account here. If you do that, and log in using it - then all of that confusion and ambiguity goes away because no matter what IP address you're using, Wikipedia will always know you by your login account name.


 * If you'd prefer not to do that - then, sadly, your edits may at sometime in the future be attributed to someone else - and previous users of your IP address will linger to haunt you. Either ignore those notifications - or create an account.
 * SteveBaker (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2014 (UTC)