Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 October 8

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October 8

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Who can stop vandalism?

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Hello. I am wondering whom I can ask to protect some articles. I.e. this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dražen_Petrović is permanently changed by Croats and relevant facts are deleted so to be hidden. This player is of Serbian origin who lived in Croatia like the rest 600 000 of Serbs. They try to hide the fact he was a Serb and even more, they delete the fact he is a cousin to Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga. This facts stands in Bodiroga's article. Can you ask them to stop hiding the known facts!? Also, in similar situations, when some person of other ethnicity was living in other state of ex Yugoslavia, they put Yugoslav player, actor, etc... while here they put Croatian, no matter he was a Serb and died just a short after Croatia self proclaimed independence and while civil war was on. Can someone respect same standards for all? This is really unfair anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.247.218 (talk) 21:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Info on Noerthern California Wailaki Noremuk Wintu Tribe

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Info on the Northern California Wailaki Norelmuk Wintu Tribe of Indians.75.208.131.199 (talk) 00:12, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does Eel River Athapaskan peoples help? – ukexpat (talk) 00:48, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

About sections of contents of arthcle

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Sir,how to increase in sections of an article.For exmple in a article of city sections(contents) are 1.Location 2. History 3. Economy/ now how to add Section Education in that list of sections .plz explain! Shemaroo (talk) 05:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of editing individual sections, you can edit the entire article by selecting the "edit" tab at the top of the page. If you do that, you can insert a new section where you want by giving it a level-2 header outline, place the title between double =, like this:
== New Section Title ==
Sections can be nested, so that subsections are given three =, producing a level-3 header. See Help:Section for a more detailed explanation. --Jayron32 05:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

headline not working

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Hi,

I've been trying to add in headlines for my wiki page. However, although when I preview it it looks alright. When I save the page. it just shows == headline ==.

Please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.250 (talk) 08:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

do you mean your personal page here in wikipedia? before you do that, i would recommend you to create an account. -- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 08:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, this is for a assignment under the school, where we're supposed to do up a wiki page for one particular module. I believe the account is under the school as I was only required to log in with my school account. however that doesn't seem to work for the main wiki page.

Anyway, is there anyone who can help me with the problem listed above? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.250 (talk) 08:43, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide a link to the page you are trying to edit as well as to the "school account". Roger (talk) 08:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect based on your question that the page in question is not at Wikipedia but an unrelated wiki—there are thousands of sites using wiki software; does the page contain in its URL en.wikipedia.org? In any event, one reason the section header might not be working is if it has a starting space (it is not completely left justified) or there is a <nowiki> tag on the page but no closing </nowiki> tag. Please note that if the page is indeed on Wikipedia, and your teacher has set up an account that multiple users from your class all have the password to to work with, this is absolutely forbidden by Wikipedia policy and he or she should be aware of this. Please see Wikipedia:Sock puppetry#Role accounts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:05, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On a similar note, if your teacher is having you edit Wikipedia as part of a class project, get your teacher to take a look at this page for some hints, tips, and support. Gonzonoir (talk) 13:33, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Luo people/Masai people

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I would like to find out where did the luo people and Masai come from before Africa.

I suggest you look at the articles linked from the Luo page and at the Maasai people page. If you still have questions you could try asking at the Humanities reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). -- John of Reading (talk) 12:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please also see human evolution. The short answer is nowhere. It is thought that humans evolved in Africa so there is probably no "before", geographically speaking.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:35, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

vandalism

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can someone stop the idiot 219.79.82.102, who vandalize this page? thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 13:41, 8 October 2010 (UTC)-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 13:41, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not saying that posting here about this is improper (and I might have issued a block in response but the vandalism ceased more than three hours ago and the IP only received one warning), but it would be good if you familiarized yourself with the normal route to obtain a block of simple vandalism. Here, you should revert and each time you do so, warn with an escalating warnings such as {{uw-vandalism1}}, {{uw-vandalism2}}, {{uw-vandalism3}} etc. and after a final warning and the vandalism continues, report to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Note that depending on the nature of the vandalism, there's no need to always start with a first level warning. For example, malicious defamation in articles on living persons should start with a final warning.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Creating an article about a hospitality company: is it OK?

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It's not a travel agency, just an on-line booking site (www.ginosi.com), the first one of its kind in Armenia, and as they say, the only one so far. On the one hand, I work there (and I've read it's better when this kind of articles are written not by the workers themselves), on the other hand, I wouldn't say I'm pathetic about it, etc. My question is will it be OK if I write an article about it or it will be regarded as a kind of spam or stuff? Այնշախոր (talk) 14:56, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few concerns and it looks like you're aware of some of them. First, you need to make sure the company is notable enough for an article per WP:CORP or WP:GNG. And secondly, the article needs to be written from a neutral point of view. See WP:NPOV for more on that. Dismas|(talk) 15:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thx!Այնշախոր (talk) 23:25, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So many methods

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I cannot undersatand why Wikipedia must have four different methods of referencing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Downypilt (talkcontribs) 15:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what your question is. Perhaps this page would help? TNXMan 15:46, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming you're referring to the fact that some articles use footnotes, others Harvard style, others still lack inline citations (though that's a problem to be addressed, rather than just another format): I can see the frustration. It's partly a product of the way Wikipedia has been built, as an accretion of knowledge over time rather than a coordinated project with top-down management. Different users prefer different styles, and (since verifiability is our touchstone) we've followed the principle that it's better to get people to reference material in whatever way they prefer than to have them not give references at all. All our manual of style requires is that a single article should use a consistent style, either footnotes or Harvard style. This page provides details about how to add citations, which may be useful. Gonzonoir (talk) 15:54, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also see WP:FOOT and WP:EL (the latter in case you are including external links under the topic of references). Do you have a specific article or articles in mind? Maybe you are looking at an article that has something wrong with it. There are lots of articles on Wikipedia with problems. --Teratornis (talk) 17:36, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This new editor started Ralph Dodd, and then someone converted it to clickable ref tags, with no warning or information. He ended up losing a closing ref tag, which ate the rest of the page and resulted in the large, scary red warning.
He might be happier with WP:PAREN. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How can I get another contributor banned?

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He keeps changing an article to something that is wrong and incorrect,i have asked him to stop in the discussion forum and have messaged him,but he changes it every day. I want him banned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crolladder (talkcontribs) 16:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See the reply in the #vandalism section just above. – ukexpat (talk) 17:18, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you advise me re my article

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I recently created the page British Utonagan, my page is asking for notability, third party reference etc. This is a brand new breed and the only references to it where on the other websites I had added for reference as these are the original dogs being used to create this breed in the UK but these sites where removed.

Can you advise me as to what you require and how that would be covered in this instance

Thank you for your time Loraine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.186.199 (talk) 16:12, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a new breed, it may not have received the necessary signficant coverage in reliable sources to meet Wikipedia's notability criterion. You should try to find and cite references from reliable sources.  – ukexpat (talk) 17:09, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What article are you talking about? Utonagan has existed for quite some time. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The IP is talking about British Utonagan ~~ GB fan ~~ 17:30, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hansard citation?

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I've recently attempted to use {{cite hansard}} on devil facial tumour disease, but I'm finding it inadequate. It seems that it could be any House of Assembly (as I'm not sure it would be appropriate to disambiguate the proper name of the assembly in the citation) and Murdoch university and McMaster university recommend many more fields than are given. I don't know how to edit this template myself, any advice on how to get this fixed? --Malkinann (talk) 21:47, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{Cite Hansard}} does not use the same style as the other templates in the article— {{cite journal}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite web}}. I suggest you use one of those, or see User:Gadget850/Citation templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:55, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dangling redirect

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I'm fairly sure we used to have an article on the instructive programmers' song Write in C, but now that just redirects to Let It Be, where there is no mention of this parody. Nor is it discussed on the talk page. Why was this article probably deleted? (Something about Wikipedia not being a repository of song lyrics, I daresay.) And what do I do, add a mention of it to the article (in which section?), delete the redirect (which seems a shame) or recreate the article (which seems foolish if it's been deleted once already)? I think the song is notable (but I would say that, since I've heard of it, and I like C).  Card Zero  (talk) 22:54, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Card Zero. When you are redirected to another article you will see at the top left hand side of the page, just underneath the title, "(Redirected from title of redirect)" If you click on the link it takes you to the redirect page itself where you can access the redirect's page history. By doing so here, you'll see that the article (such as it is) still exists in the page history. It was simply redirected. There is no edit summary accompanying the redirection, but I suspect the reason might have been because it was a very short article without any references that did not appear to be notable. In that regard, I would note that Google News Archive finds nothing for this song, and Google books shows four results, but only one appears to be actually about this topic, and that one does not provide substantive treatment from which a verifiable article can be written.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:17, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I google the full lyrics ... but I suppose the resulting evidence of it being an extremely well-known song is irrelevant to notability. However if it is non-notable, having a redirect to Let It Be with no further explanation seems pointless and confusing or irritating - either a reader already knows that it is sung to that tune, or else the reader has never heard Let It Be and is left with no explanation for the redirect. My own experience was to feel patronized and enraged. Searching for Write In C seems almost a guarantee of not wanting the article Let It Be. So should I remove the redirect (and how is this done)? Alternatively I guess I could go looking for a reliable secondary source that mentions the song; since the lyrics are being echoed as far apart as Brazil and China by page 48 of the results, it seems strange that nobody with a slight bit of authority has ever written about its origins. ("Omri Weisman, a university student in Israel" according to the first version of the article.)  Card Zero  (talk) 23:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Three minutes after the redirection [1] the editor merged it into the redirect target.[2] It was removed from there at a later time but I haven't examined when or under which circumstances. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:04, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the removal of it. Later edits by various editors added lots more parodies, and then eventually several editors eventually trimmed and finally removed that whole section of them based on similar notability concerns. The attribution of that parody as given in the WP edits is not proper anyway, giving in-text credit to the person who retyped/formatted the lyrics on a certain website (who explicitly states he didn't write it) but not to the person who actually authored it (appears to have been Kriston J. Rehberg?). DMacks (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mediawiki bug?

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Everyone, please see Rock'n Roll Band (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and where it links File:Rock 'N' Roll Band - ABBA.ogg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). It certainly has a play button in the article, but is not linked under transclusions on the file page (meaning two editors have already mis-marked it orphaned fair use). Is this a mediawiki bug I need to bring to the village pump? Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:56, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The page history of {{Extra music sample}} shows it was broken a few hours on October 5. A links table for Rock'n Roll Band must have been updated during that time when there was no working link. I have forced it to update again with a null edit to the article. This immediately made the article display at the bottom of File:Rock 'N' Roll Band - ABBA.ogg. A purge was not enough since purging only affects the purged page and not links tables for other pages. I don't know whether the update was in the job queue and would eventually have happened by itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]