Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 April 29

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[edit] April 29

[edit] Notability of students within school articles

I am searching for notability guidelines on school students. Basically - when school competitions (sports, debating etc) are mentioned within an article on a particular school, should individual students within those teams be mentioned? I would have thought this goes against WP:BIO, but I can't find any specific guideline on this issue. Cnwb 07:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

If the school itself is notable, not everyone or everthing mentioned within the article need be separately notable. (See WP:N.) However, consider, will the mention still make sens in, say, five years time? If not, then it probably doesn't belong, IMO. 07:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

In the particular case I'm looking at, a user (who has a suspiciously similar username to one of the school debaters) keeps adding the names of the 2004 debating team. I have argued that this detracts from the conciseness and readability of the article, yet am unable to locate any firm guidelines to back up my argument. Cnwb 07:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

A somewhat similar guideline is WP:MEMORIAL; also see what WP:COI says about "vanity." If the debating team is notable enough to warrant its own article, which means if there are reliable sources which have published information about it, then the article could be similar to articles about professional sports franchises, some of which have rosters. --Teratornis 07:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Wait, wait, wait, wait. We don't do articles on individual school clubs or teams. You could write an article on every single high school football team for every year of existence, and source it to newspaper articles which would go into loving detail about every play in every game, but that doesn't make each school's football team notable. Unless the 2004 Nowhereseville High School Debating Team won an international competition, it surely fails notability, even if sourced. Besides, if you go down that path, why not 2004 Nowhereseville High School Debating Team Meet Against Somewheresville High School? Corvus cornix 20:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I find your assertion puzzling. Why wouldn't we want an article on every high school football team for every year of existence, if we could reliably source those articles? The value of Wikipedia is its comprehensiveness; WP:PAPER says:

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. This means that there is no practical limit to the number of topics we can cover, or the total amount of content, other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page.

WP:NOTE says:

Generally, a topic is notable if it has been the subject of coverage that is independent of the subject, reliable, and attributable. The depth of coverage and the quality of sources must be considered in determining the number of sources required and whether the coverage establishes notability.

If every high school football team had sufficient coverage in reliable sources to meet the above requirements, then we could write encyclopedically about all of them. The three content policies of Wikipedia are: no original research, verifiability, and neutral point of view. As far as I have been able to tell from reading the policy and guideline pages, notability is not a value in itself, but merely a means to the end of verifiability. That is, we require topics to be notable because that makes them more likely to be verifiable. "Notability" on Wikipedia looks to me like little more than a tautological shorthand for "reliably covered in sufficient depth." Wikipedia has lots of well-sourced articles on extremely obscure subjects that wouldn't seem "notable" (in the everyday sense) to more than a handful of people. That's what makes Wikipedia great.

Wikipedia is the world's most-viewed encyclopedia in large part because it is now the world's largest encyclopedia. The sheer number of articles causes Wikipedia to appear in a large fraction of Google searches. That draws more people to Wikipedia, increasing the number of people who can write about increasingly oddball yet well-sourced topics. Wikipedia is accreting content like a gas giant sucking asteroids down its gravity well. Where will it end? Ultimately, I envision Wikipedia becoming a comprensive guide to everything that can be reliably sourced. Of course my opinion carries no weight; this is merely my potentially fallible understanding of what is going on here. --Teratornis 02:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'm working on the Westfield High School (Fairfax County, Virginia) article, which is currently undergoing revisions to earn Good status. Your question is quite an issue for me and some of my colleagues, becuase high schools rarely have anything that can be verified. The Westfield article uses metropolitan papers, local papers, websites, news annoucenments, and we're looking into using yearbooks, and school papers as sources. We have yet to get a definitive answer on these as appropriote sources however. The article has a great deal of rather specific information, and we were told that as long as its not W:OR and cited, its good. We have a question involving individual State Champions, as opposed to teams. There is simply no precedent for any of our questions, so we ended up being W:Bold. I recommend going to the School Wikiproject for further info, but they are somewhat unsure too. Zidel333 03:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

One possible strategy is to try to persuade some qualified journalists or authors to create reliable sources about the article subject. --Teratornis 00:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Article (Draft)

How do I start a new article without making it immediately accessible to everybody, i. e. how do I make a draft? --Hans555 07:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Start it as a user sub-page. For example, you could make a page like: [[User:Hans555/Some title]]. Either make a red link like that and click it to start editing, or go to Help:Starting a new page and type your user sub-page name in the form. You might want to make a section on your user page with links to all your user sub-pages, so you can keep track of them. A very large example of a user sub-page is here: User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia. --Teratornis 07:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Make yourself a sandbox here User:Hans555/sandbox. Anything put there can still be seen by everyone else but no one will take any notice of it all the time it is on that page. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 07:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

You might like to work on it offline as well as or instead of a sub-page. I use both methods with quite a few articles on the go at the moment. If you use Notepad, save using the UTF char-set to maintain Wiki-code. Adrian M. H. 14:17, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PLEASE HELP ME!

My name is Babalooo not Babaloobabaloo. Mr, Golbez made a block on me for he feel I made a legal threat for I used 'file charges' not 'make complain'. It is on the Babalooo page. He took away the blocked, but I was not allowed to post. I got this big warning label." This account or IP address has been blocked from editing.You were blocked by Golbez for the following reason (see our blocking policy):Autoblocked because your IP address was recently used by "Babalooo". The reason given for Babalooo's block is: "Legal threat [1] I log out for a new cookie. I forgot to know my log in password and had no email on the order. I had to make a new name, but I want my name as Babalooo and my post count.. Please set it back the password to abcdef and I will make it new. I thank you to do this. Babalooobabalooo 07:34, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project mentor...

I am interested in starting a project to create articles about Superfund sites; there are about 1200 sites. Where on Wikipedia would I go to enlist volunteers, find information on running a project, or find a mentor to help me run the project? Thank you. --R e m i 07:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Is every Superfund site really notable? I just imagine 1200+ stub articles that could easily be grouped together in a list with a table noting dates that they were declared Superfund sites and such. Dismas|^(talk) 07:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Remi. I would suggest bringing it up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Environment. A separate article for each might not be ideal (although I'm sure many sites already have articles, being already notable for other things besides pollution). But whether articles for every site, or some tables, or whatever, are best, WikiProject Environment might be able to help. ··coel acan 11:38, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Email encoding

Is there any way to encode email like <email>domain@domain.com</email> so that it can be converted into image. Saud Iqbal 08:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw this in aboutus.org —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Saudiqbal (talk • contribs) 08:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

There is nothing in the MediaWiki software that does this automatically. If you are trying to put your email address on your userpage as an image, you'll have to make the image in GIMP or some other program, and manually upload it. ··coel acan 11:40, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This wouldn't completely obfuscate your email from text even if MediaWiki converted it to an image, since it would still be viewable as text in the edit window. If you want to try, though, check out the math formula setup - you could probably use that if you do it right. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 19:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proper photograph size

There is a photograph on the Fremont, Nebraska page which is overlapping with the city infobox as I view the page. What is the best solution to that problem, just shrink the picture or move the picture to a different portion of the article? DandyDan2007 09:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'd move it. Shots like that are nice to have large enough to be able to tell what they are without having to go to the image page. Dismas|^(talk) 09:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I can not create a new account on sign in

I am having problems signing into a new account216.215.132.52 12:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC) I was told that I am entering an incorrect password 216.215.132.52 12:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC) HOW can this be corrected 216.215.132.52

Did you supply an email address when you registered the account? Maybe you made a spelling mistake when you put the password in on the registration page and now you're trying to use a different spelling. If you supplied an email address, then you can have the system send your password to you at that address. Also, it's only necessary to sign using the four tildes at the end of your message, not after every sentence. Dismas|^(talk) 12:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template not working

Why is the {{Chicago Skyscrapers}} template swallowing up all other templates and stubs by incorporating them inside itself? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 14:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

It does seem to have more <div> tags than </nodiv> tags. Notinasnaid 14:58, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone know the <div> </div> syntax? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 15:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed it, I believe. There were two missing </div> tags at the end of the template. Mike Dillon 15:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

To Tony the Tiger's second question: basically, they close in reverse order so that the divs are nested, and you can have any number of separate divs in succession, either within a parent div or not. A good tip for dealing with a lot of divs: add a comment next to each closing tag with the name of the div to which it applies, which helps to keep track of them. Adrian M. H. 15:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 16:05, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template transcluding where it shouldn't

The {{Sfd-t}} seems to be transcluding to every page the stub proposed for deletion is placed. It makes all such pages terribly confusing to the reader. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 15:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

From what I've seen with TfD, this in intentional. I think that the idea is to get a broader segment of users involved in the debates, especially non-technical people with an interest in the subject matter of the stub tag. Otherwise, these debates just continue to be dominated by XfD regulars who tend to want to delete everything. Mike Dillon 15:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

That's interesting. Thanks for the explanation. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 16:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright term of engravings

How long is the copyright term for engravings in United States? Wooyi^{Talk, Editor review} 15:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Nobody is going to answer me? Wooyi^{Talk, Editor review} 18:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

It's the same as anything else subject to copyright. 1923 is generally the magic cut-off date; see Wikipedia:Public domain for details. Calliopejen1 20:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] userboxes

how do i make a userbox for my user page —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Captain-poison (talk • contribs) 16:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

See WP:BOX Adrian M. H. 17:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Account Creation

i cant create an account. When i try to create an account it asks for a name and password. Then it goes to another page and says the password is incorrect. I click on the button to email me a new password and i get a notice saying i dont have an email listed, which is true as there was no place to list an email address. can you help me to set up my account? thanks

I think you are using the wrong form. Try using this one to create your account. I hope that helps! -- lucasbfr ^talk 17:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Uncited statements

I am confused on why Wikipedia allows uncited sources to appear within entries, even if there is a "Citation Needed" note beside such a thing. It reminds me of those bad Hollywood courtroom scenes where a lawyer blurts out something for the jury to hear that is unfounded or prejudicial but gets away with it with a reprimand from the judge. (Too late, though, because the jury's already been tainted.) Just like that Hollywood jury, we humans reading entries with unsupported but disclaimed statements can't "unconsider" something that's been introduced that may very well be false.

Thank you. Brianmacian 18:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC) Brian

I think in general the thinking is that if someone adds an unsourced statement it's more likely right than wrong, and that hopefully it will eventually be cleaned up. (See meta:Eventualism for more on that.) It's easier to improve the article by retaining an unsourced statement so that someone can google it to see if it's true, than to just delete it entirely, because then the reader wouldn't even know to check. (Obviously, this depends on whether the reader knows what wikipedia is and how to use it. This is where your "unconsidering" analogy comes in--it only matters if someone is giving unsourced statements more weight than they deserve in the first place!) Note that if a statement looks particularly dubious, or has been marked as unsourced for some time, an editor will normally remove it. Calliopejen1 18:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I would rather tag an unsourced claim than delete it outright, assuming it is not patent nonsense, but the Great Leader says otherwise; see: WP:V#Further reading. --Teratornis 00:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What do I do about an IP adress admiting to illegal activities?

On the LSD talk page, the IP address 209.247.22.130 kinda admitted to using and buying LSD twice a year, a Schedule 1 drug. He said he lives on the East coast, and I checked his IP info, It said this guy lives somewere in -, Connecticut. He could be lying but still... --ASDFGHJKL=Greatest Person Ever+Coolest Person Ever 18:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't do anything. It's not a confession of murder. ··coel acan 20:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the police would probably care enough to investigate, considering that bragging anonymously on a discussion board isn't likely guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that tracking down the user would take some effort. If you really care, you could contact the relevant local law enforcement. Calliopejen1 20:07, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Right, if one feels like trying to get some unknown person imprisoned for many years over a victimless crime, if one could be proud with one's self for that. ··coel acan 20:38, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to start a new language of Wikipedia??

How to start a new language of Wikipedia??--Michael 02:49, 29 April 2007(HKT)

m:Requests for new languages. Instructions available there. x42bn6 Talk 19:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Delete to re-direct

Apologies for this newbie question, I'm sure the answer is in some policy or other but I havn't been able to find it. What is the correct procedure for the following: I would like to propose to replace an existing article with a re-direct to a second one, on the grounds that the first article contains major misunderstandings and its accurate content is covered by the second page. I'd put this up as an AfD or a proposed deletion except that the page doesn't need to be deleted. ((Specifically, the article to go is Anthropic bias, to be changed to a re-direct to Anthropic principle). I flagged the article {{totally-disputed}} a week ago but this has generated no defense). PaddyLeahy 19:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

You can be bold and replace the page at Anthropic bias with

#REDIRECT [[Anthropic principle]]

Just click the edit button and paste it over the current content. (Normally for such a drastic change it might be advisable to ask other editors, but seeing as you have already done that, I think you should just go for it and make the redirect.) Best of luck! Calliopejen1 19:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

From a technical point of view, it's very simple. Type the following at the top of the Anthropic bias:

#REDIRECT [[anthropic principle]]

and save the change. That's it.

I would caution you to check if there's some material worth merging into the target article. For example, I see three references in the "bias" article; they should probably appear in the "principle article" also. Good luck. YechielMan 19:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Tagging the article with {{totally-disputed}} might not get the attention of people who edited it. They would have to happen to browse to the article within the week you allowed. (I don't browse once a week to every article I have edited.) If you want to give potentially-interested parties more chance to be aware of your plan before you do it, you could check the article history, and leave messages on the user talk pages of major contributors. That way if they merely log in to Wikipedia, they will see the "you have new messages" box. --Teratornis 02:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PLEASE HELP ME SOON

My name is Babalooo not Babaloobabaloo. Mr, Golbez made a block on me for he feel I made a legal threat for I used 'file charges' not 'make complain'. It is on the Babalooo page. He took away the blocked, but I was not allowed to post. I got this big warning label." This account or IP address has been blocked from editing.You were blocked by Golbez for the following reason (see our blocking policy):Autoblocked because your IP address was recently used by "Babalooo". The reason given for Babalooo's block is: "Legal threat [2] I log out for a new cookie. I forgot to know my log in password and had no email on the order. I had to make a new name, but I want my name as Babalooo and my post count and links. Please set it back the Babalooo password to abcdef and I will make it new password. I thank you to do this. Babalooobabalooo 19:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

If you did not give wikipedia your email, I don't think you can have your password reset. I used to be user:calliopejen before, but I lost my password, so now I am user:calliopejen1. Sorry! :( Calliopejen1 19:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I have working my Babalooo name again! I am happy again. I thank you to take away the Babalooobabalooo name. Babalooo 21:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arrangements

I have some queations. What should be the order of editing at the bottom of the page?

External links
Templates
Stub templates
Category
Other Language of this page

- OR - The Stub Template comes before Link Templates? Is there a page about the order? What about links to sister projects of Wikipedia (Wikiquote, Wikibook...)? Thanks. JOU46^{(Talk.Contrib)} 20:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

See the Manual of Style. Adrian M. H. 20:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I still dont understand, all I found was some grammar and Italics, can you tell me which section(s)? JOU46^{(Talk.Contrib)} 21:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Look carefully, and in Other Guidance in the link box, you will see Sections. Or follow the lead set by any Good Article. Adrian M. H. 21:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

See WP:LAYOUT. --Teratornis 00:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] is it just me, or...

.. is Portal:Rock and roll full of red links?

-Lauren^whisper 20:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

No, you're not imagining it. I checked the deletion log for a few of those links, but nothing came up. Vandalism is not at fault, because all the diffs are affected. So I can only assume that the intended content has not yet been created for some reason. Adrian M. H. 20:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the recent move broke all the links to the content. The content is at Rock and Roll/blahblah, note the capital 'R', the links are all in the form Rock and roll/blahblah....S Sepp 20:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

You'd think that whoever made the move would have checked for that or noticed it. Adrian M. H. 21:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I fixed it. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't nuts. Lauren^whisper 21:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Uh oh, cut and paste move? That destroys the edit history, you're not really supposed to do that, see WP:Move. You're supposed to use the button next to 'history' to move. S Sepp 21:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] forgotten user name

to admin or whom it may concern; i have lost my old username and password due to a severe cause,my email adress is <email removed> or <email removed>,the last thing i can remember is that my username was somewhat includes the word "shankha".please email my username & password to me.

                                                                          thanks;

Shankha Suvra De —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 61.2.2.243 (talk) 21:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

Did you enter an email when you signed up with the account? If so, you can have a new password emailed to you (see this). If not, you're out of luck. You can always sign up for a new account. —Mitaphane _?|! 22:31, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editing mistake

Hi, I may have inadvertently vandalized the AfD page ([3] while removing an entry that contained hateful and libelous statements. See my edit: 19:48, 29 April 2007 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 April 29 (I am deleting the John C. A. Bambenek Deletion log because of its hateful and libelous content.) As a consequence the entries Internet Storm Center and Blogcritics have disappeared from the AfD page leaving dead links between 92. Never forget 93 August H. Auer Jr. I thought an admin would quickly notce the problem and fix it, but some time has passed and so I am asking for help to fix the problem that I have caused. Stammer 21:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I restored the deleted AFDs listed by Mattgladney, but appears as if the AFDs weren't fully completed (user didn't list create nomination page). If he wishs to bring up the AFD again he can. But looking at the user history, I'm a bit skeptical of his intentions (his only edits are related to AFDs) —Mitaphane _?|! 22:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)