Help desk
< May 14	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 16 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

May 15[edit]

Question about copying and moving discussion[edit]

Can anyone advise me whether it is acceptable for an editor to copy discussion from another editor's talk page to an article talk page without first asking permission to do so. Can you also, if possible, point me to a policy or guideline about this. Thanks, Afterwriting (talk) 01:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's perfectly acceptable. When you submit content to Wikipedia, including to talkpages, you are releasing it under a CC-BY-SA licence which allows anyone to reuse it (see the note just above the Save Page button when you edit). That means as long as you are attributed as the author of the text (for example, if your signature is preserved or a note is made in the edit summary), the text can be moved anywhere else on Wikipedia (or the internet generally) without additional specific permission. If the text is blanked form the original userpage as well, that's frowned upon (redacting messages on other people's talkpages is discouraged), but reproducing the text elsewhere is entirely legit. Yunshui ^雲 _水 07:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected typo.
Note please, that 'the text can be moved anywhere else on Wikipedia (or the internet generally) without additional specific permission', becuase the general permission is already granted by the licence accepted by the original author. --CiaPan (talk) 09:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Thanks for the clarifications. Afterwriting (talk) 14:57, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello I have some questions regarding getting unblocked[edit]

Hello Wikipedia,

I unfortunately made an error when I was posting on a page. I was adding a history of what had happened to a certain party under a specific leader and unfortunately I've been blocked from editing. I sincerely apologize because I didn't think I was vandalizing since I provided and cited information that actually did happen. I didn't just write lines that didn't happen in specific articles. However, after rereading the policies of wikipedia, I now understand that what I wrote came across as too political and probably seemed like a dispute. I would like to contribute to the growing world of Wikipedia because I truly do respect what it does as a community and I truly believe that we need more accurate information on this site. Nevertheless, I understand that I made a mistake and I would like to learn from it in order to become a positive contributor to this site.

I was reading the articles regarding how to show that I'm a positive contributor in order to lift the block so I clicked the area that said I need to edit an article from a certain template or area and cite my sources. However, when I clicked it, the page went directly to the wikipedia information and I didn't see the articles. I would really like to be a positive contributor and help with the amazing cause that wikipedia is promoting. Since I can't edit on specific articles, am I supposed to copy and paste them and show the edits or corrections that I would make in order to show that I understand how to contribute?

I thank you for taking the time to read this and I really hope that I can be unblocked because I'm passionate about the cause of wikipedia and I want to contribute positively. I've reread the guidelines and I understand my mistakes and how what I thought was a reasonable history on a particular page was seen as being a political dispute. It won't happen again. I'm just a little bit confused regarding the unblocking process.

Cjwfsu (talk) 03:11, 15 May 2015 (UTC)Cjwfsu[reply]

Your post is a touch hard to decipher Cjwfsu and I cannot find where you have been blocked. In any case you will find the instructions for requesting an unblock here WP:APPEAL. You will need to file that request under the name of the editor that is blocked though. To other editors who want to respond this Florida Democratic Party (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is the article in question. There seems to be big chunks of it that are being removed and restored. I don't have time to check through everything but it might be worth looking into the editing by:

Now I am not saying any of these editors (none of them has been blocked from what I can find) has done anything wrong and everything may be above board. But it also looks like the article is not on many watchlists so it might be worth someone with some expertise in this area to give the article a once (or twice) over. MarnetteD|Talk 03:46, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you MarnetteD|. After reading the explanations from the editors, I understand why it was interpreted as vandalism. That wasn't my intention, but I understand that I do need to remain in a neutral point of view when I write posts and after reading what I posted, I completely understand. They did come across as biased. It wasn't my intention as I was just trying to list what had happened under the current history. I need to be more neutral view when I contribute to pages and this certainly wasn't as neutral as it could've been. *JoshuaFDP (talk · contribs), :*Bluedemocrat (talk · contribs), :*73.19.149.205 (talk · contribs) I sincerely apologize and I hope I can make more positive and neutral contributions in the future without sounding too political. This wasn't intended to be a dispute, but I understand after rereading my contribution that it came across the way.

Also you were right MarnetteD| , I haven't been blocked. I'm glad so I can show that I can contribute positively to this site. Thank you for the reference though on how to appeal. However, I don't plan on making this mistake again in the future. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjwfsu (talk • contribs) 04:21, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ILLEGAL TERMINATION BY AFRICAN UNION (WITH AN INJURY BUT ABLE TO WORK )[edit]

(Redacted) UGANDAN CONTIGENT UNDER UGANDA PEOPLES DEFENCE FORCE,I WAS DEPLOYED AT MARAK TOWN AND ON 15/DEC/2014,I WAS INVOLVED IN THE BOMB BLAST,TREATED AT LEVEL II FIELD HOSPITAL MOGADISHU BUT DUE TO LUCK OF NEURUROBIN DR MAJ JAMES LUBOOBI REFERED ME TO BOMBO-UGANDE, ON MY WAY BACK I WAS STOPED TOLD THAT AM CUT OFF THE MISSION, NOW AM JUST HERE SURFERING WITH MY FAMILY, I FEEL ITS AN INJUSTICE/ I FEEL OFFENDED BY AFRICAN UNION TOGETHER WITH UGANDA PEOPLES DEFENCE FORCE WHICH HAS FAILD TO PROTECT MY RIGHTS AS THERE EMPLOYEE MORE SO THE UPDF HAS REFUSED TO GIVE ME MY PASPORT BACK AND EVEN THERE IS NO OFFICIAL TERMINATION LETTER SO I FEEL I HAVE TO OPEN A CASE AGAINST AFRICAN UNION FOR USING ME AND DUMP ME WITH PROBLEMS,STILL I NEED MEDICAL CARE BUT NOTHING ATALL, JUST DUMPED, I CALL UPON ANY ONE FROM AFRICA UNION THAT CAN HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME, (Redacted). I WILL BE GRATEFULL WHEN HELPED, THANK YOU SIR / MADAM.

I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over 6 million articles and thought we were affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is for asking questions related to using or contributing to Wikipedia itself. Thus, we have no special knowledge about the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the upper right side of your screen. If you cannot find what you are looking for, we have a reference desk, divided into various subject areas, where asking knowledge questions is welcome. Best of luck. Yunshui ^雲 _水 07:33, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Class assignment[edit]

Hello I am a Professor of Religion and I am hoping to give my class the assignment to improve the entry "Religion" on Wikipedia. The page is semi-protected. Can you give any advice on whether this is possible. I would like the students to be able to edit the entry directly, but I could also give some oversight. I am sure I am not the first college professor to try this, so maybe there is someone out there with some advice?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Gabriellevy1 (talk) 09:50, 15 May 2015 (UTC)Gabriellevy1[reply]

Hi Gabriellevy1, and welcome to Wikipedia. Have you checked out the Education Program yet? It's a Wikipedia project to assist students and educators in using Wikipedia for classroom assignments, and would be the best starting point for your class. As far as editing the article is concerned, your students would first need to be autoconfirmed, which can be done either by making ten edits over four days, or by requesting the permission at WP:PERM. Yunshui ^雲 _水 09:59, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yunshui has advised you on Wikipedia policy. My advice is more practical. The article Religion is viewed over 3,000 times a day. Your students will, inevitably, make mistakes of many kinds – that is why they are students. Some of the 3,000 viewers will notice, and correct, the mistakes. The sudden disappearance of their changes will confuse the students. If you really want your students to work on a "live" religious article, I would suggest choosing one that is less popular, less contentious, and less abstract – something like Synod of Whitby. Maproom (talk) 10:35, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I second that advice. In addition to others correcting mistakes, a popular page on a controversial topic like religion will usually have editors who just disagree about what the article should contain. It could be a mess to jump into for people who are inexperienced at Wikipedia. The "View history" tab shows how far apart the recent edits to a page are, and the history page has a "Page view statistics" link where you can see the number of page views. If you pick an article which is not protected, not frequently edited and has few page views then your students have a better chance. You can also click "Page information" in the left pane to see "Number of page watchers", i.e. how many registered users have the page on their watchlist. Most of them will probably not actually examine edits to the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:25, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Students working on "live" articles is generally not a good idea and on high visibility articles it's simply crazy - very little of what they do will actually "stick". The vast majority of Educational projects have their students create new articles as drafts, which can be moved into the encyclopedia after their work has been graded. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:34, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Orin W. Angwall Newspapers.com[edit]

Does anybody have a subscription to this service? I would like the titles to 2 articles listed under further reading. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:47, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

7&6=thirteen, the best place to ask this is at WP:REREQ where the awesome NQ will probably help you out. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:40, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Will do. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:47, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox settlement vs. geobox[edit]

If I were to work on a place based article, such as a town, village, or city, which template is preferred for what? Thanks, Buffaboy ^talk 18:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Buffaboy, if you look down near the bottom of Template:Geobox, you will see "The use of this template for settlement is deprecated. Use {{Infobox settlement}} instead." In my personal opinion, Geobox is one of the most confusing and infuriating infobox templates we have, and using a dedicated infobox for settlements, rivers, mountains, protected areas, etc., is almost always preferable. Deor (talk) 10:16, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Help:Cite errors/Cite error included ref[edit]

I need help with HTML requirements. Michael Gargiulo page. I am trying to correct the the statements that were recently posted that Gargiulo is self representing. He has not been self representing since November 7, 2014, when he relinquished his pro per status and standby councel, Charles Lindner took over. I have tried to fix my HTML error and have been unsuccessful.

Done. Maproom (talk) 19:11, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, SprocketTrials. I see that Maproom has fixed the technical problem (removing nested <ref> ... </ref> tags). But I believe that there is a more serious problem with what you have added to Michael Gargiulo: it is inadequately sourced. "(Source: court clerk minute notes)" is unacceptable as a citation - if these have been published, the reference needs to say where the reader can get hold of them (not necessarily online); if they haven't, then they cannot be used as a source in Wikipedia. The source for the second claim appears to be a blog (which are hardly ever regarded as reliable sources) and furthermore, it appears to be your own blog, which you should not be adding references to as you have a WP:conflict of interest. I was strongly tempted to remove the sentence on these grounds, but instead I have tagged it to mark the citations as unacceptable. Unless they are replaced with citations to reliable published sources the sentence should be removed from the article. --ColinFine (talk) 19:33, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wayne Devlin[edit]

Is it possible to create a wiki page for the actor and singer Wayne Devlin www.waynedevlin.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.190.157 (talk) 18:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It depends. Does he pass the basic WP:42 test? That is, can you find sufficient, in depth writing about his life and work, by people who have no stake in promoting him which are published in reliable sources. If you can find those, you can use those sources to help you write the article. If the source material doesn't exist, don't write the article. It's that simple. --Jayron 32 18:54, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Your edit has triggered a filter..."[edit]

Hello,

I am having a problem trying to edit the page for a software product that my company publishes called Smaart. Apparently I have triggered "a filter designed to warn editors, organisations and companies against using Wikipedia as an advertising medium."

I did not try report it as a false positive because I actually think that's reasonable from an automation standpoint. I chose our company name as my Wikipedia user name because I wanted to be up-front about the fact that I represent the company. I also cited three pages from our own web site as the most authoritative and up-to-date sources I could find for some details about the product and its history. I can easily see how any of those things might trigger a filter and I don't dispute the need for such precautions.

However I did take pains to try and avoid a promotional tone. I do not believe that my rewrite is more promotional than the existing text. The problem we have is that the article as it is currently written contains incorrect and outdated information about our product and omits a few details that we feel are relevant. This has recently become a problem for us, as a trade magazine has now published an article wherein the author referenced incorrect information from the Wikipedia page. So I need to know how to fix this.

I am using the Visual Editor and every I try to save my changes, I get that error message. The message says that, "If you're sure you still want to make this edit, go to the bottom of this page and click 'Save page' again, and it will be submitted as is", But the only Save button is the one at the top of the pop-up window and clicking that button again just produces the same error message.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer.

RationalAcoustics (talk) 21:09, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What was the specific information you were trying to change, and what were you trying to change it to? Ian.thomson (talk) 21:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You don't have to say that. The attempted edits can be seen by clicking "filter log" at Special:Contributions/RationalAcoustics. @RationalAcoustics: Your username is not permitted by Wikipedia:Username policy#Promotional names. Please make a request at Wikipedia:Changing username, and read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:57, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Are you User:RationalKaren by any chance? Dbfirs 06:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that when you say, " I also cited three pages from our own web site as the most authoritative and up-to-date sources" you show that you don't understand our policies. Your own website is a self-published source, which we don't regard as a reliable source, since your own website is naturally going to be biased in your favor and may make claims which may or may not be accurate. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Kenny Glasgow[edit]

I created this page Kenny Glasgow and it was proposed for deletion. I have since cited more sources. Is it ok now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarahw227111 (talk • contribs) 21:49, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't WP:PROD'd. The WP:AFD process puts it up for discussion for at least 7 days. The best place to notify those who have already added their comments, is to post at the AFD page for the article. Dismas|^(talk) 00:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]