Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 December 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.

December 16

Delete a page

How do I delete a page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by JimMike (talk • contribs) 02:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You don't. Administrators do; you can request deletion via the deletion process. Intelligentsium 02:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

If you were referring to Adam Last, I've deleted it. TNXMan 02:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

linking to wikipedia in other languages

The subject of my entry, Paul Splingaerd, (http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:76.90.11.94/Paul_Splingaerd&action=edit&section=2) is mentioned in a couple of wikipedia entries in Dutch. Is it possible to get those references to link to the one I created in English? Conversely, I refer to Ottenburg in my article on Splingaerd, but it is a red link, indicating there is no reference in Wikipedia, yet Ottenburg has its own article in the Nederlands Wikipedia that happens to feature a picture of a statue of Paul Splingaerd: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottenburg) http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregatie_van_het_Onbevlekt_Hart_van_Maria

Also, an associate in Belgium is creating an entry in French, which he intends to call Paul Splingaerd, as well. Would it be possible for us to refer to each other's articles?

Lin An-ni (talk) 06:22, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You would do so via an "interwiki link". See Help:Interwiki linking for the technical aspect of doing so. If this is confusing, just ask here and someone can walk you through it. --Jayron32 06:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've just looked at the Help page linked to above, and I find it confusing and unhelpful for this purpose. The simple answer is that links to 'the same' article in other-language Wikipedias (whatever 'the same' might be in context) are normal and encouraged - and are all displayed in the 'language' box at the side of the page, but it is not recommended to make links within the text to articles in another-language Wikipedia. You create the first type of link by putting something like [[fr:Paul Splingaerd]] in your 'Paul Splingaerd' article. It can go anywhere, but they are conventionally collected at the end. --ColinFine (talk) 08:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

That help page is written rather cryptically, isn't it. The section you want is Help:Interwiki linking#Interlanguage links. Essentially, you would just add [[fr:Paul Splingaerd]] at the end of your article to build the interlanguage link. Bots will then build the reciprocal link from his back to yours. I'll do it for you, you can see the result.LeadSongDog come howl 15:06, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Oops. You've still got the article in userspace. The above won't work until you move it to articlespace. I'll watch for when you make the move.LeadSongDog come howl 15:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Project search question

Does anyone know of a way to search for articles that belong to two projects of my specification?

Somehow generating a list of all articles that belong to both "WikiProject Books" and "WikiProject Philosophy" would be an example of what I'm looking for.

Thank you Pollinosisss (talk) 06:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Try Catscan. Bencherlite^Talk 10:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

contributing an article

How do I contribute an article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoyceWN (talk • contribs) 06:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Your first article for some general tips, or Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0 for a step-by-step walkthrough on creating an article. May I also recommend that you create the article as a userspace draft, since this will grant you time to work on it and will give you the opportunity to get it reviewed before "going live" The article wizard will walk you through that as well. --Jayron32 06:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

A Wizard is available to walk you through these steps. See the Article Wizard.

Thank you.

Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines with which all articles should comply. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Wikipedia:Your first article. You might also look at Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. An Article Wizard is available to walk you through creating an article. – ukexpat (talk) 16:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Creating a new page

I have been looking for information on Ramona Lutheran School in Ramona, California on Wikipedia and I can't find it. How can I find a page or create one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeknig4989 (talk • contribs) 08:04, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• The easiest way to search is by using Google and searching for the school name and wikipedia. If that turns up dry, it's unlikely we have an article. Before you write an article to fill up the gap, please read WP:YFA, WP:RS and WP:N. Those are links to the most relevant rules pages. - 131.211.211.243 (talk) 10:48, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

A Wizard is available to walk you through these steps. See the Article Wizard.

Thank you.

Before creating an article, please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject. Please also review a few of our relevant policies and guidelines with which all articles should comply. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, articles must not contain original research, must be written from a neutral point of view, should cite reliable sources which verify their content and must not contain unsourced, negative content about living people.

Articles must also demonstrate the notability of the subject. Please see our subject specific guidelines for people, bands and musicians, companies and organizations and web content and note that if you are closely associated with the subject, our conflict of interest guideline strongly recommends against you creating the article.

If you still think an article is appropriate, see Wikipedia:Your first article. You might also look at Wikipedia:How to write a great article for guidance, and please consider taking a tour through the Wikipedia:Tutorial so that you know how to properly format the article before creation. An Article Wizard is available to walk you through creating an article. – ukexpat (talk) 16:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Can't login

I am unable to login, when i login it says i am logged in but when i click any link the computer thinks i am not logged in. I have tested on 2 browsers so far. Please help me with this, HiddenKnowledge - (talk) (87.212.139.149 (talk) 08:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC))

• Do you have cookies and javascript enabled? Also have you tried clicking the remember me box? - 131.211.211.243 (talk) 10:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• Is Help:Logging in#Login issues and problems of help? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Problem fixed after logging in on a different computer. Thanks, HiddenKnowledge (talk) 20:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

held article

I recently re-submitted an article on HADAS ( Hendon and District Archaeological Society) which is now being held for still being similar in some places to the Society's web page. If I can find out which bits I'm happy to redo it. How do I find out which bits the reviewer had concerns about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timhadas (talk • contribs) 10:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Timhadas: I'd suggest contacting Abductive, the user who wrote the review, on his/her user talk page to ask your question. See WP:TALK for general advice about talk pages. Gonzonoir (talk) 10:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, I suspect the concerns are that both the prose and structure are very similar to the site at http://www.hadas.org.uk/about-hadas. The best thing you could do would be to find other sources that refer to HADAS, and try to incorporate material on topics that they cover too, so the article isn't just a rehashing of a single source elsewhere. That will also help with establishing the topic's notability. Gonzonoir (talk) 10:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Can I get back to the article I submitted to edit it? or should I re-do it and re-submit it afresh?

Timhadas (talk) 16:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

debate over the correct usage of bylaw

My association is updating their bylaws and there is a debate on the correct spelling of "bylaw." what is the most common spelling for "bylaw"? Is it "bylaw" or "by-law"? JLCODY (talk) 10:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. - 131.211.211.243 (talk) 10:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• The Bylaw article seems to imply that bylaw is the most common spelling (it says that it is sometimes also spelled by-law or byelaw). However, as it comes from the Middle English bilawe (thank you, Answers.com!) then I would suggest that "bylaw" is the most suitable spelling! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• OTOH, and I hope not to derail this board too badly, the Oxford English Dictionary lists by-law as the main entry. Wiktionary disagrees. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks like an evolving BrE/AmE difference. American Heritage Dictionary and Collins English Dictionary both give bylaw as the main entry. Webster's 1828 and 1911 both gave by-law but not bylaw, suggesting the AmE usage has evolved to omit the hyphen. Webster's New World Dictionary has entries for both, but whereas bylaw has just a simple definition, by-law says "(also bylaw)". The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary has no entry for bylaw, just one for by-law. LeadSongDog come howl 16:50, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

On the Western side of the Atlantic, "by-law"'s considered increasingly archaic. I thought the UK was moving in that direction too, but I'll defer to the OED on that. Steve Smith (talk) 16:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Untitled question

hallo

I created a page almost 1 month ago, and it has not been moved to "article space" yet. everytime I enter with my login, if I go in "my talk" I see a box with "A user will respond to your request to move this draft into article space as soon as possible. Note that the request may not be fulfilled if the article meets criteria for speedy deletion."

What does it mean as soon as possible? it is now 20 days that I see this message and I am still waiting for developments. Cipresso (talk) 11:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• The template the IP user put on the page puts the page in an invisible category so people who have the ability to move it can look through them and make a decision. At the moment the category has 84 entries which can take quite a while to handle. Also, since everything on Wikipedia is done on a voluntary basis, there's no certainty as to when someone will get around to it. In its current state, I wouldn't move it to the article space. The article has one single reference, which is generally a bad idea. To meet the criteria for inclusion the article needs to show notability, either by meeting one of the specific notability guidelines for people, organizations, etc or meet WP:GNG by a large and varied amount of coverage in reliable sources. The single source you cited only makes the information verifiable. If you dig up some more references, I'd be happy to take another look. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Also they'd already been advised by an IP to create a sub-page. I've added a welcome template and some other bits about notability (and copyvio) to their talk page. Franamax (talk) 12:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

football

I am an avid reader of Wikipedia for any facts I want to know about football. I would like to ask if the football League called the Conference is now called the Blue Square Premier etc, because I have looked some clubs up and they are still all quoted as the Conference National, conference South, etc. If its possible can you et me know through my email address, which is:

<e-mail removed>

Regards, Dave. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.99.184.47 (talk) 13:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for in the article about Conference National. If you cannot find the answer there, you can try asking your question at Wikipedia's Reference Desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe (except about how to use Wikipedia, which is what this help desk is for). I hope this helps.

Please do not include contact details in your questions. We are unable to provide answers by any off-wiki medium and this page is highly visible across the internet. The details have been removed, but if you wish for them to be permanently removed from the page history, email this address. --Mysdaao ^talk 14:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The conference is currently called the Blue Square Premier, but only for sponsorship purposes. We don't use the sponsored name in the article title - but it's there in the article itself. This is to keep all the articles past, present and future about the league similar and when the name changes again we won't have to retrospectively update all the old articles. The same is true of the FA (currently the Football Association Cup sponsored by e.on) and League Cup (or Carling Cup) articles. Nanonic (talk) 17:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

editing while 'waiting' for my article to be published

Resolved

 – Draft moved to mainspace but now being discussed at Afd – ukexpat (talk) 16:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User:Skincaretruth/Dr._Sheldon_Pinnell

That is my article so far, but I'm not even sure what stage it's at. Am I waiting for something to happen? To be notified about something?

Also, it seems I can only edit references or external links. I keep going in circles and can't understand what I'm missing. Skincaretruth (talk) 14:48, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi SCT, There should be a tab at the very top of the page that will allow you to edit the entire article - there are seperate tabs for subsection, but in order to edit the article content (in the current format that the article is in) you will need to use the 'edit' tab at the very top of the page. Best, Darigan (talk) 14:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Having had a quick look at the article - there may some issues around Conflict of Interest, and sourcing. The sources with those exceedingly positive quotes come from the website of the company that Dr. P works for - not necessarily a reliable source (sorry). best, Darigan (talk) 14:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've moved it into article space at your request, under the name Sheldon Pinnell (we don't put honorifics in article titles, and avoid them in the bodies of the articles as well). --Orange Mike | Talk 14:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Wafaa (name)

The creator of this page lifted the text from another Wikipedia article, Wafaa (party); it was added to that article by two IPs well over two years ago. Isn't this a GFDL attribution problem? And how should it be dealt with? A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 15:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject suggestions wanted

The article Swimming pool sanitation needs a great deal of work and, to date, has been adopted by no WikiProjects. Unfortunately, the ideal WikiProject, Water and sanitation, fell into inacivity some time ago. I'm now thinking that Chemistry, Health and fitness and possibly Swimming (though it seems to be primarily focused on competitive swimming) may be good fits. Any advice? NMS Bill (talk) 16:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I think any of those would work. The best would probably be either the Health and fitness one or the Swimming one. The chemistry one does not sound terribly applicable, except in the most round about way. Furthermore, you could work on it yourself should you have the expertise and resources and time. --Jayron32 16:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I have worked on it a bit, but I also have a potential conflict of interest (from the chemistry side, actually) as I've posted on the Talk page. I just want to make certain I am proceeding cautiously. NMS Bill (talk) 16:22, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• You can put an article is several projects at the same time. Health and fitness and possibly Swimming seem good fits - Mgm|^(talk) 11:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

How to find recent featured article

Hi,

Within the last couple months I saw in Wikipedia a daily featured article with a Jane's military specification sheet that I would like to look at again. I can't seem to find it through searching. Could you give me any leads on how to find this featured article?

Doubleknitter 17:14, 16 December 2009 (UTC)Doubleknitter (talk) 17:14, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

This list of featured articles may be able to help you out. TNXMan 17:17, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Or click through the date links here until you find it. Deor (talk) 22:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "a Jane's military specification sheet", but would Helgoland class battleship be it? It was on the main page on 25 October. Deor (talk) 01:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Should I start 10-20 Wikipedia accounts?

I luvs my privacy.

Should I either:
(1) start 10-20 Wikipeda multiple accounts,
(2) start 10-20 accounts on other wikis or sites,
(3) start 10-20 sites of my own (most of them cheap, most with fewer than 10 pages each),

What would cause the least grief for all concerned?

(1) if I started 10-20 accounts on Wikipeda.
None would interact, much less vote on each other; three would account for 90-95% of the contributions and one for at least 50%. All would use alternate account templates—though not refer to each other—again privacy; but the main one would indicate the approximate number of accounts I’d have. Also I’d be using several IP’s.

(2) largely forgo Wikipedia for others,
as currently have an active account here, a dormant one, one even more dormant, and one never used—we were all beginners once—and I also occasionally use IP address accounts such as this one; and try other wikis and sites; forking contents from Wikipedia and other sources; and maybe argue and/or discuss issues of contributions with them.

(3) set up 10-20 (likely more) sites of my own,
copy and paste from Wikipedia and other sources, and create my own articles: however significant or trivial, long or short, neutral or biased, inoffensive or where so-called “martyrs” would be after me—and spare myself the fussin', feudin', and fightin'.

In any of these cases, I’d still have warm regards for Wikipedia, critically defend it, and even contribute, as per my poor capabilities allow, to the Wikimedia foundation—while again availing of content. However, other Wikipedians would have to deal with the maintenance, cleanups, and dealing with the hurt feelings of the (mostly) newbies (Wikipedians have feelings too : - ) without my help, however miniscule it may be.

Answers, input, and comments appreciated.192.30.202.13 (talk) 17:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I have only one thing to say: "Huh ???". —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Choice A would be in violation of WP:SOCK and the accounts would be blocked. No comment otherwise. Spitfire^Tally-ho! 20:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Spitfire, I've read the article—a number of times—including this section "Legitimate uses of alternate accounts". Besides, how would you know which is which, if I don't refer to them—I refer to the existence of alternate accounts, not specific alternate accounts ones—and I use different IP's?192.30.202.15 (talk) 21:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

We would get a checkuser to run on your IP, which would reveal all account attached to it, but hey, why not do us a favour and just not make the accounts?

As far as Legitimate uses of alternate accounts goes, you could probably justify creation of one additional account under "Privacy". Regards, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 21:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and if I was dumb enough to use the several accounts on one IP, I could get caught (I will have to give that checkuser article a decent reading). It goes to the discussion of the WP:SOCK article talk page: if we really wanted to cheat Wikipedia, we could; but that's not the point. It's to maintain privacy, while informing the community of such. Perhaps a bit extreme, but I wonder how burdensome it would be if a number of Wikipedians did this: and again, one account will do most of the edits. If I don't make the acccounts, I can't contribute as fully. If I can't contribute as fully on Wikipedia, then I might somewhere else. Thank you for your regards though.192.30.202.21 (talk) 23:15, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As long as there's no interaction (vote-stacking, etc.), I don't see any problem with #1. The user Spitfirm above seems misinformed on this matter. --William S. Saturn (talk) 02:48, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

There are potentially about a billion Chinese people who might wish to remain anonymous if they were to edit on Wikipedia. See:

• Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall

By "privacy" which of the following do you mean:

• Preventing other people from determining your real identity.
• Preventing other users from determining that all your edits on Wikipedia are by the same person.

You might mean both, but they are not the same. --Teratornis (talk) 04:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link William S. Saturn. Teratornis, mostly the first, though the later is related to the first. The idea is that by denying others knowing that edits of all my possible future accounts are related—while nonetheless informing people in (pretty well at least) each account, that the account they go to, is not the sum of I, the person's, contributions—I can deny, to an (at least a decent) extent, the ability of those who wish to create a profile about me the person. I suppose in time I might have the accounts refer to each other and perhaps even integrate them to my real life name. This is the option, though the reverse isn't.192.30.202.15 (talk) 18:48, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• I fail to see why one would need multiple accounts to maintain privacy. The name you use here is attached to your edits so you can build trust and a reputation, but you'll still be anonymous. I can't think of any other reason to get added privacy that doesn't violate the rules. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:24, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

The IP address I'm using here is not mine, but belongs to a government agency (I am however—reasonably—anonymous). Even without a name, one can build a profile that others can exploit for bad purposes. As for the benefits of a good reputation, even one where one's name is disclosed, are issues I've considered. Check out these articles Wikipedia:Wikipedia is anonymous and Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia.:-)192.30.202.15 (talk) 15:15, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

question regarding an notice I received from Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales)

Where can you ask a question that is not answered in the help desk or FAQ?

The disclaimer on here says, if you don't want it edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.

So where can someone get real help and/or answers if they've received a 'warning' note from Wikipedia?

IndianapolisCVA (talk) 19:03, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As you've discovered, you can ask questions here.

The edits you made to Indianapolis and Downtown Indianapolis were rather promotional, and not suitable for an encyclopaedia. They were undone, and a message to that effect was put on your talk page by another editor.

As for the message from Jimmy Wales, I think that's one of the fund-raising banners. It's separate from the first message, and we all get them. --AndrewHowse (talk) 19:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Image with no copyright but the contact person from website says "go ahead !"

Hi,

I'd like to import a logo from the website Decrypthon (http://www.decrypthon.fr/english/ewb_pages/l/logos.php) I contacted the website and I had a "Ok go ahead" answer, I musn't hesitate to use their logo according to the contact person.

However, i don't know the copyright and I'd like to avoid to use their source code which includes Xiti stuffs.

Thanks in advance for your advice ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Serval2412 (talk • contribs) 19:25, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

What is the image going to be used for? That makes a big difference. If the image is a logo of Decrypthon that will be used in an article about Decrypthon, then it qualifies under fair use as part of the policy at Wikipedia:Non-free content. In that case, you don't need the owner's permission to use it, but the image can only be used for very specific purposes.

Otherwise, you need to obtain permission from the owner in writing, and what you have may not be enough. The full information on this is at Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. Basically, you have to request permission and make sure the owner understands that he or she is allowing the image to be modified and redistributed for any purpose, including commercial use, by Wikipedia and anyone who redistributes Wikipedia content. Once you have that permission, you have to send an e-mail with the information to the addressed listed on the page I linked to and follow the instructions there. Examples of how to request permission are at Wikipedia:Example requests for permission.

I don't know exactly what Xiti is, but the source code that created it isn't necessary. All that's necessary is the image file that you want to upload and use on Wikipedia. --Mysdaao ^talk 20:23, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I just want to use for an article about Decrypthon.

Ok for the other things about permission, it could be an idea.

Xiti is about tracking for web traffic. I know how to retrieve the image and so how to avoid to use the special source code, I just wondered if i had the right to do this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Serval2412 (talk • contribs) 18:47, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

If you upload the image, you can and should upload it without the code that tracks the web traffic, and I don't think the code would work on Wikipedia anyway. If you are only going to use the logo of Decrypthon for an article on Decrypthon, then you don't need the owner's permission for that. However, it would benefit Wikipedia to get permission from the owner by the instructions I provided, so that it could be modified and reused in other places. It's up to you if you want to spend the extra time doing that when you don't need it for the future article. --Mysdaao ^talk 19:16, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

I work at a university and have been asked to add to the university's wikipedia entry. I've been going through to add information about our degrees, departments, etc. All factual info - all referenced back to the university site, and to outside sources when possible. However, much of the time it's not possible to reference that data outside of the university's site. Today I logged on to continue edits and there was a message waiting for me asking me to stop updating because I have a conflict of interest as a university employee. How do universities update their information? Our page is seriously lacking in information about the pgorams we offer, and this is all legitimate, factual data. Not PR-speak. I'd appreciate help. It's tempting to just create a secondary account under another name just to do the updates! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lisacatto (talk • contribs) 19:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

First off, if you were to create a secondary account, that would be considered sock puppetry and both accounts would be blocked, one of them indefinitely, with subsequent creation disabled.

But moving on from such unpleasant matters, our guidelines on conflicts of interest do not prohibit editing were a conflict exists, but discourages it strongly. I suggest that you read the relevant guideline; WP:COI (if you have not already), and then decide whether or not you should continue to be involved in editing the article in light of Wikipedia's policies. Be aware that were a conflict of interest exists you should always make that very clear in your editing, (i.e. mentioning it in edit summaries).

Finally please remember to sign your comments on pages such as this or other talk pages with four tildes; ~~~~

Please ask if you want any more information. Regards, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 19:51, 16 December 2009 (UTC) (< that is what is produced when I type ~~~~)

FWIW, I'm not sure that lists of departments, courses offered and so forth are particularly encyclopaedic. A link to the university's official site would be an appropriate external link, and that might have to suffice for such details. --AndrewHowse (talk) 20:02, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

If there is material which you think should be added to the article (and which is reliably sourced, your recommended course is to discuss this on the article's talk page, and see if you can enrol somebody unconnected with the institution to add the material.

I will add (as a former university employee and husband of another) that if some information is "not possible to reference that data outside of the university's site", that may in and of itself be prima facie evidence that the data is not notable. I will also add that there is no such thing as "our page" or "the university's wikipedia entry". Nobody owns a Wikipedia entry, least of all the subject thereof. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:50, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

At first sight it may look as if adding purely factual information to an article is neutral and so COI doesn't come into it; but that is not necessarily so. As somebody associated with the institution you may feel that information belongs there which other editors feel is superfluous or irrelevant to an encyclopaedia article. --ColinFine (talk) 20:17, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As a university employee you have two or three attributes that the average editor does not have:

1. A conflict of interest
2. Access to more information about the university and/or knowledge about relevant information sources
3. A burning interest in ensuring that the university entries are factual

One way to take advantage of the two positives, while eliminating the problem of the first is to propose changes, along with relevant references, to the talk page. Then an editor, who does not have the COI problem, can evaluate the proposal, review the references, and add the material either as suggested or possibly in an improved way. Then everyone is satisfied – the entry doesn’t suffer from a COI problem, nor does it suffer from a lack of information simply because no one bothered to track down the information.SPhilbrickT 20:27, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

(←) Some more points:

• The biggest problem in writing articles on Wikipedia is finding reliable sources. You can help by contacting journalists who work for reputable publications and convincing them to write about your university.
• Wikipedia does not want original research - in this case, your unpublished personal knowledge - but that applies to information in written form. Images work differently - Wikipedia wants your original photos. You could take original photos around your campus and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. You can make a gallery page there of your photos. See Commons:COM:EIC#Gallery.
• Western Oregon University has a Western Oregon University#Computer Science Division. Have they set up a school wiki yet? See for example: UMassWiki. If you set up your own wiki, you can make up any rules you like. Tell your computer people to download MediaWiki and install it on a school server, if they haven't already.
• Read Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations.
• To understand Wikipedia in detail, read WP:TMM.

--Teratornis (talk) 22:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

dummy accounts

are they allowed or is it sockpuppetry? a user I had a problem with (i asked the helpdesk about, that he had problems with others editing pages he works on) removed something from his talk page using what he admits to being a 'dummy account' when answering someone elses question over it, i was also referred to as 'new' but thats a moot point lol. as i said, this guy does not like other editors, he refuses to accept fair bold edits, even referenced edits, unless they're pro-subject etc, but i thought anyone having two accounts was classed as sockpuppetry? chocobogamer mine 20:48, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

There are certain limited legitimate uses of multiple accounts; I'd advise that you read WP:SOCK for further explanation. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

cheers mate, right.. upon looking at the 'dummy' account, the user page is blank, the talk page has something about image rationale, the user name is similar, but not enough (it says Project then a 3 letter initialisation of his 15 letter 3 word username (I won't say the name unless he is indeed breaking the rules), there seems to be no need for a 'project' account and his sig links to the 'project' account. it appears from its history to be there mainly for removing images (unsurprisingly not on the pages he's working on) and serving said notices, and sandboxing.. stuff that surely can be done on a main account? If its a bot, should it not say its a bot, and i see that a maintenance account should be clearly linked to the other, which with blank and essentially blank pages, and a fairly amiguous name, is not. chocobogamer mine 21:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

There are perfectly legitimate uses of multiple accounts. As long as all accounts are obviously tied together, so everyone knows that Account B is run by the same person as Account A, then there is usually no problem. Some people segregate their accounts, so they can use one at home and one on a public computer, for example. Many people maintain seperate accounts to run automated tasks with (so-called "bot" accounts) and other people have various good reasons to run multiple accounts. There are also "Doppelganger" accounts, whereby you create a bunch of accounts with a similar spelling to your own username, to block others from creating those accounts. That is also a perfectly valid use of multiple accounts. Generally, the only time multiple accounts become an issue is where they are being used in secret; so that no one knows that you are running multiple accounts, and especially where you are using secret secondary accounts to violate policy. --Jayron32 02:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

"As long as all accounts are obviously tied together, so everyone knows that Account B is run by the same person as Account A, then there is usually no problem." Jayron32, how about the Chinese and the Iranian who want to contribute to articles about their neighbourhoods and politics, or the person who wants to elaborate on a particular church or mosque, and alternative sex?Civic Cat (talk) 19:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Template

Resolved

 – Done and dusted. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 03:37, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I've created a filmography template but am having trouble with the parameters.

{{User:Jeffrey Mall/SB
| year1     = null
| film1     = null
| role1     = null
| notes1    = null
}}

The above produces almost everything correctly, but why is there so much grey space?

Filmography
Year	Film	Role	Notes
null	null	null	null

Any help would be appreciated. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 21:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

for each row? thats whats in your page @ User:Jeffrey Mall/SB. you need to edit it to not show if the cell is empty, you havent got ifs for all cells so some will probably show up regardless chocobogamer mine 21:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You could copy and modify some code from the Infoboxes templates e.g {{Infobox actor}} uses {{infobox}} which in turn uses {{infobox/row}}. Now {{infobox/row}} is the one that does the display, so that needs to be changed to display 4 columns (and add extra fields), then {{infobox}} needs changing to pass 4 parameters to {{infobox/row}}, then the main template based on {{Infobox actor}}, needs the fields you have in your original one. (Of course when I said "change" - I meant change a copy, not the original infobox template!) Hope that makes some sense...  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 21:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Damn... was hoping it'd be simpler than that lol, are you saying that if I adjusted (a copy of) {{Infobox/row}} and incorporated it into the template it would stop the grey space showing up? Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 22:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Is anything easy to code? :-) Well it works for Infoboxes - if there is no data then the label and data does not show. As for changing the "row" template - that might be easy - change the number of columns to 4 and the final data to data|data1|data2 (I think). If you want a hand drop a message on my talk page, and I'll have a go (at least I can delete anything that doesn't work!)  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:19, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello

What is the difference between Wikipedia and New World Encyclopedia? How come the new world encyclopedia website is close now?

Joy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joyful12 (talk • contribs) 21:50, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Joy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is free to use, and free to edit. According to our article on the List of Unification Church affiliated organizations, New World Encyclopedia -- an online encyclopedia that, in part, selects and rewrites certain Wikipedia articles through a focus on Unification values. It "aims to organize and present human knowledge in ways consistent with our natural purposes." As to why their website is offline, I can't say (they've paid their domain bill, as it's registered until next August) - I'd guess it's a problem with their hosting company. Try again later, or just use Wikipedia which does not rewrite articles so that they have a non-neutral point of view. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Incomplete article history

Some articles seem to have an incomplete history. For example the earliest version of September 11 attacks is from 21 nov 2001 and marked as a minor edit [1] and the edit summary of the earliest version of the 2001 anthrax attacks is "revert due to vandalism" [2], so what happened to the earlier versions of these articles? Entheta (talk) 22:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• I can't find a reference to it, but I seem to recall reading somewhere ages ago that histories prior to the end of 2001 are not available, as a software upgrade meant that the old histories couldn't be used. However, I will keep looking for it, and if I find the reference, I'll post it here. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Some very early history of the 9/11 article is at World Trade Center/Plane crash (now a redirect). Apparently, back in those days page moves and history merges and such were handled quite differently from how they're handled now. If you feel like trawling through the histories of the many redirects to our current article, you may be able to find more swaths of early edits. Deor (talk) 22:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I found the article I was thinking of at Wikipedia:Usemod_article_histories. From there: Article edit histories from the UseModWiki era of Wikipedia (through late January 2002) have now been restored to the database. (They were not originally imported at the time since the conversion script didn't yet know how to crack open the usemod history files.)...Also note that the UseMod wiki originally deleted old histories after a couple weeks, so very early versions of some pages may still be gone; they were not saved and cannot be restored.. Hope this answers your question! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Incidently, the WTC/Plane Crash article's was created 15:02, 11 September 2001 -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Further, the 2001 Anthrax attacks appear to originate from Timeline of the 2001 anthrax attacks in Florida, which has a start of 19:19, 18 October 2001 and an edit summary of (*Initial entry), which was merged with the main article at 19:17, 25 June 2009 - although there is also Cases of anthrax which has a start of 02:09, 26 October 2001 and an edit summary of (the three fatalities in separate category) which was merged with the main article at 02:30, 3 September 2003. None of the other redirects appear to be earlier than 2002 for their creation. This means either that the pre-14:28, 13 November 2001 version of 2001 anthrax attacks is one of the casualties of the UseModWiki era as detailed above, or the original article (which would be a redirect) has been deleted - but I would be very surprised if this was what happened, I'd go with the UseModWiki problems. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 23:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Could this cause any problems with CC-BY-SA's attribution requirement, if the contributors aren't all listed?----occono (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. How did you find the original article? Looks like somthing similar has happened with World Trade Center and Osama bin Laden. How do I find the first versions of those (or any other article with missing version)? Entheta (talk) 19:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Main Page

Whenever the Main Page got deleted, what other effects did that have? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 22:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Not a lot, as it was quickly undone. There was plenty of humility and understanding, as well as the creation of the Village stocks. Mind you, someone else once moved the main page... -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 23:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

And it's never happened since -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 23:17, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

But remember, never, ever attempt to divide by zero or that will be the end. – ukexpat (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)