Help desk
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May 27

Hi I am a new user and I wanted to know how to help out.

--Icyeti (talk) 00:23, 27 May 2015 (UTC)Hi I just joined and I wanted to know how to start helping out, I also wanted to know about that voting thing and how I can become a good editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Icyeti (talk • contribs) 00:21, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Icyeti. A good place to start is at WP:WELCOME. Rwessel (talk) 00:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

how to download the wikipedia app.

Hello, I am a computer ...dammy person ( or begginer ). If it is allowed, I need help how to download the wikipedia app into my now computer. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.136.251 (talk) 01:39, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you are using a desktop computer, there is no app, just use the website. While Google Chrome can install and run some Android apps, it does not yet support the official Wikipedia app from the Wikimedia foundation.

There is a Wikipedia app for tablets and phones, which you would get by visiting the relevant app store on your tablet or phone. Make sure that the app is from the Wikimedia foundation, because other apps are likely by folks who want to use Wikipedia to advertise (or worse, misuse your information). Ian.thomson (talk) 02:01, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Leader of the free world

I think you might need a full squad of people, and by the way hello from the real leader of the free world, to help rewrite this page so let's roll up those sleeves.in the meantime you could check out my work @ leader of the free world, les mackenzie05:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lesliemackenzie69 (talk • contribs)

The article Leader of the Free World was deleted in 2011. If the above is intended as a question about using Wikipedia, I have no idea what it is asking. Maproom (talk) 07:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Jeff Teague's Weight

How can Jeff Teague weigh more then dwight howard when dwight is like 40cm taller and more built. Change Jeff's weight info I think its just 100 lb's off. Have a good day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.231.229.234 (talk) 07:42, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this out. Reverted back to the original value in Jeff Teague (basketball). GermanJoe (talk) 07:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a list of Wikipedia articles that were rejected/deleted, which with a bit of editing could become wiki-worthy?

Is there a list of wiki articles that were rejected from the encyclopedia? I thought it might be interesting to try and edit rejected articles to get them wiki-worthy and put back into the encyclopedia. Thanks.Donna Helene (talk) 08:09, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is an excellent question. I think the answer is "yes there is, such help will be most welcome". The editors at the Articles for Creation talk page should be able to give a fuller answer. Maproom (talk) 09:03, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Donna. One really important point of focus here I would think (both so that you don't waste your time, and so that we get rehabilitation of content we actually want) is that you look for topics that are notable and which have been rejected either because that notability has not been demonstrated by citations to reliable secondary sources, but those sources do indeed exist and are available to you, or have been rejected on other grounds but the sources we need to be cited exist – everything ultimately redounds to that query: do sufficient, reliable secondary sources exist from which an article with verifiable content can be written? You can take an article with terrible prose, original research and non-neutral language and reform and polish it to a stunning reflection, and it will still be deletion fodder if notability cannot be demonstrated and the content is unverifiable. In addition to declined AfCs (maybe target those declined as non-notable and see if they really are by looking for sources (many declined AfCs are undiscovered copyvios, I would check before getting too deep in adding citations and rewriting prose that was tainted from the start), you might look at articles listed in Category:Proposed deletion, as well as recent articles for deletion discussions, where the consensus developing appears to be in the vein of 'poorly written but actually notable'. There are also tons of articles that we already have but are mere placeholders for real content. Digging in there is always appreciated. See the Wikipedia:Community portal for a categorized list of possibilities. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That would be "the content cannot be shown to be unverifiable" I suppose? DES ^(talk) 23:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed! Fixed. Thanks--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:34, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing problem

In the Brandur Olsen article I entered a citation from a Faroese site for verification. The problem is that the url contains brackets and can't be displayed properly by reflist (citation #4). Any suggestions? Hansi667 (Neighbor Of The Beast) ^{a penny for your thoughts?} 09:07, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Hansi667:http://www.in.fo/news-detail/news/brandur-stuttligt-at-faa-debut/ I don't know about the brackets question, but you can shorten the url to the preceding if that gives you what you want. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Hansi667. If you need brackets in a URL, you can encode them as %5b and %5d respectively. See Help:URL. --ColinFine (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mandruss: and @ColinFine: thank you both. The first comment solved this particular problem and the second could be used when facing the same problem in the future. Kudos for your comments!. Hansi667 (Neighbor Of The Beast) ^{a penny for your thoughts?} 10:42, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List

Hi, can anyone tell me whether the list which I have put at the Rajiv Gandhi#Institutions named after Gandhi section is allowed or not. RRD13 দেবজ্যোতি (talk) 10:22, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Lists should contain notable entries - everything on there except the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Intellectual Property Management already has an article (and the RGNIoIPM could probably support an article), so yes, I think the list is appropriate. Yunshui ^雲 _水 10:25, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Seems appropriate, the list is relevant to the article, and only seems to contain notable entries. Joseph2302 (talk) 10:26, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Upload

Can you help me on how to upload I am a new user and don't know how to use it — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rizzy Ahmed (talk • contribs) 13:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What are you trying to upload?Naraht (talk) 14:44, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not encyclopedic titles

Is there any boards for discussing whether a title is encyclopedic or not? Thanks. Mhhossein (talk) 14:30, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would say the article's Talk page would be a good starting point; you can solicit additional input from any project pages that the article may fall under. If there's no discussion after a reasonable amount of time, and you don't feel it's likely to be a contentious move, go ahead and move the article at that point. If you think it is likely to be a contentious move, you may want to bring it up at WP:RM#CM. Hope this helps! DonIago (talk) 14:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Order of Riddell disamb page

The Riddell (disambiguation) page lists a sportswear company prominently at the top. This seems to be a case of advertising (I have never of this company whereas I have heard of the surname and barons) so seems to be hijacking the page. What does anyone else think? Sliven2000 (talk) 14:44, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem as much to me. I think that Blahdeblah (disambiguation) should have a link to Blahdeblah as its first entry. If the first did not have a page, then I would think less so.Naraht (talk) 14:46, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. There is no disambiguation for Riddell, so it seems logical to have it listed first. Dismas|^(talk) 14:49, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Ridell was originally a surname. The company is named after the surname and is not internationally known. So why should Ridell (company) take precedence over Ridell (surname) when it is less well known? Sliven2000 (talk) 21:56, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it isn't the major usage. Personal ignorance is not the basis by which decisions are made at Wikipedia. If you're convinced the company is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC you're free to present evidence to the contrary by citing sources on the relevant talk pages. "I am ignorant" is not, I am afraid, a reasonable rationale. --Jayron 32 02:32, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is no need to be offensive. It is common knowledge that the company supplies equipment for US sports only and is not internationally known like Nike or Adidis. The surname is used internationally and is the original usage of the name. Sliven2000 (talk) 06:26, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's a different rationale than "I haven't heard about it". One is based on knowledge which is available for use by others, the other is based on knowledge (technically lack of knowledge) only in your head. Wikipedia does not make decisions based on what you don't know. To do so would be silly. It does, however, make decisions based on reasonable rationales others could find in sources or look up, or which are based on sound logic. If you want to change the situation, I would go with the rationale you just presented, and not with the rationale based on your own personal lack of knowledge, which is hardly a reason to encourage others to do anything. --Jayron 32 00:27, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

email notifications, and "Gather"

I keep getting email notifications for every change in my watchlist, which is pretty annoying. My email options were to send me "a daily summary of notifications". So why does this happen? I also had every checkbox checked under "Notify me about these events", but I'm not seeing any tickybox there about edits to watchlisted articles. (Also what the heck does "Gather" mean there? What are "collections"?)

I don't have this problem on my main account even though there my preference is set to "individual notifications as they come in"; but most of the tickyboxes under "email" are unchecked. Is the "Gather" box really referring to watchlisted items? — Jeraphine ^(talk) 14:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On the account's Preferences page, near the bottom of the user profile tab, is a check box "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed". This probably controls these emails. DES ^(talk) 15:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

:o Thanks. ... That's kinda weird. — Jeraphine ^(talk) 15:26, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pippa Norris

My bio entry contains the following sentence at the top banner:

"This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view. (February 2014)"

I have edited it to add links which are appropriate and a neutral point of view but the banner is never removed. Can this please be deleted?

the bio is Pippa Norris http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Pippa_Norris

Thanks! Pippa — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.229.84.141 (talk) 18:08, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:COI, it's strongly recommended that users don't edit articles about themselves. Having looked at the article, I've therefore added a COI tag to the page. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:10, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It looks to me as if the subject is notable, but the current article is written with a tone somewhere between that of a resume and a promotional flyer. For example: "Based on rigorous empirical research and drawing on a large range of literature and methods, her writing is also designed to be accessible to students and the general reader unfamiliar with the arcane language of academic disciplines." This is at best uncited opinion. DES ^(talk) 19:59, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref too many keys

Jack Ledger is a rap-metal band from Portsmouth, Virginia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erivers71 (talk • contribs) 19:32, 27 May 2015 (UTC) Erivers71 (talk) 19:33, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Erivers71 If this is about Draft:Jack ledger, please read Referencing for beginners. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:52, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Erivers71. Your reference goes in between the opening <ref> tag and the closing </ref> tag, not in between <ref ... /ref> as you placed them. Also the reference that goes between those tags is not something quite opaque like "Avatar", but something transparent, like: content title, written by named person on specified date, published by named website at provided url, e.g.,

Bhanoo, Sindya N. (May 26, 2015). "Even Einstein Can Take Time to matter". Science Times. The New York Times. p. D4.

The source used should be a reliable one. Here I used a citation template to format the appearance of the details about the source placed between the <ref>...</ref> tags (which you can see by clicking edit on this section) but you can just place the information about the source between them as best you can until you become more experienced. But including the information so that others can actually look at the source themselves is very important. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:43, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tamid Group move needed

I notice that TAMID Israel Investment Group has changed its name to Tamid Group. A COI user has attempted a copy-and-paste move to Tamid Group. Since multiple versions now exist at the new title, an admin is needed for a proper move. —teb728 t c 21:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've put Tamid Group up for deletion as copy of TAMID Israel Investment Group]], and also put speedy to move TAMID Israel Investment Group to Tamid Group. Hopefully an admin can fix this quickly. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:59, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done Done. DES ^(talk) 22:17, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Whether to sort by forename or surname?

Do we have any guidelines on whether to sort by forename or surname? I can find plenty of examples of listing by surname and making tables sortable by surname, but no guidelines. NebY (talk) 22:27, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Usually surname I think, although I don't know any guideline for it. Joseph2302 (talk) 22:29, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort_keys says "Categories of people are usually sorted by last name rather than first name, so "surname, forename" sort keys are used (as in "Washington, George"). There are many other rules for sorting people's names; for more information, see WP:NAMESORT." Perhaps that will help. DES ^(talk) 23:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, both for the reassurance that I'm not missing an obvious direct guideline and the pointer to the category one. That and a few examples ought to be enough if the little disputes I'm looking at do continue (I'm hoping not - they have gone quiet now). NebY (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Linking an authority to WikiSpecies

I may have once known this, but it refuses to come to the surface. Where an article on Wikipedia is about someone who is listed as a taxon authority on Wikispecies, is there some preferred way of indicating this and linking the articles? DuncanHill (talk) 23:58, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

{{wikispecies}}? —Cryptic 00:07, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - had just found it and was on my way here to say so! The other thing I need to work out is the standard author abbreviation thing. DuncanHill (talk) 00:18, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DuncanHill: According to Template:Taxobox#Authorities:

Authorities in scientific names are also abbreviated according to different standards for plants and animals. To decipher standard abbreviations, see
• List of botanists by author abbreviation or consult the International Plant Names Index.
• List of zoologists by author abbreviation
For more information refer to the article on binomial nomenclature.

Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:36, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 08:20, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]