Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 January 1

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January 1

Sockpuppet alegation

Resolved

 – User Indef blocked as a sock.Corruptcopper (talk) 17:17, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

A user is accusing me of being a sockpuppet and adding a template to my page however it leads to a closed discussion about past events there is no way of disputing the allegation, what do I do? Oxyman24 (talk) 00:13, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk page. Hermione1980 00:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Response makes no sence and is not helpful —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oxyman24 (talk • contribs) 00:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Please can I have a proper and apropriate responceOxyman24 (talk) 00:30, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I have placed a response to your question on your user talk page. If you have not yet checked it, there is a link in the big orange bar that says "You have new messages." I have also responded to your inquiry on my talk page. Hermione1980 00:36, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok my mistake —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oxyman24 (talk • contribs) 02:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC) Oxyman24 (talk) 02:10, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

motorbike stunts

I have been trying to find an article on motorbike stunts and a list of motorbike stunt world records. I can not seem to find any such thing, does anyone know if these articles exist, if not I might create them. Happy New Year:)--intraining ^{Jack In} 00:49, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe Motorcycle stunt riding is what you are looking for. —teb728 t c 04:03, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Help with user

This user continues to make lots of unconstructive edits to the same articles and refuses to leave summaries after several notifications. It's getting hard to watch some of these articles. Thanks.Mjpresson (talk) 04:00, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Also making unsourced changes to all articles such as budgets, ect?? Mjpresson (talk) 04:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

If it's really obvious that it's in bad faith, you might want to warn them with a template from Wikipedia:User warning templates#Warnings and notices. If it continues, a post at WP:AN/I should help. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:36, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Why was my articles deleted?

I want to know exactly why the articles for "Relentless", Every River, South of Santa Fe, and She's Country were deleted. I can't find out why. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryanbstevens (talk • contribs) 07:54, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

None of these song articles have been deleted, though they have all been redirected to the articles on the albums on which they appear, but for one which was redirected to the singles discography. The deletion log entry for "Relentless" is here—the page hasn't been deleted but the original name has. The page was first moved from the incorrect title (article titles are not normally placed in quotes in this manner) to Relentless ((Jason Aldean song), which itself had a typo in it so it was moved again to Relentless (Jason Aldean song), which was redirected to Relentless (Jason Aldean album). Every River, likewise, still exists and has been also made into a redirect to the album it comes from, Steers & Stripes. The same thing is true of South of Santa Fe and She's Country. For a relevant guideline forming the probable basis the user who redirected these used to take that action, please see Wikipedia:Notability (music)#Albums, singles and songs.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 09:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Technically, as Fuhghettaboutit says, your articles were not deleted. Technically, your text was replaced with redirects to the album articles, and the text is still accessible in the history pages. (See for example Restless history.) But I’m sure that is not what you wanted to know. The reason why they were converted to redirects is that the singles were not sufficiently notable to have their own articles. (Almost no singles are notable enough.) —teb728 t c 09:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Specifically, see WP:NSONGS -Arch dude (talk) 01:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Template guru

Is there someone with experience writing citation templates who could look over a few templates I have been working on. Please contact me on my talk page. --DRoll (talk) 10:02, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

How to add a translation to an existing page

Hi! I've translated an existing Wiki article into my language (Vietnamese), as such version has not been yet available in this page. How do I submit this translation to become a component of the page? Thanks. Huybau (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Add it to the Vietnamese Wikipedia and then link the articles with interlanguage links. Algebraist 11:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

agri centres tie up with industries

sir I would like to know about detailson 25 12 08 news given by jayarajsivan/tnn atualanand,commissioner,agriculturalmarketingand agri business for above commissioner address (office) phone, e.mail ID thank you N SRIRAM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.5.186 (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and is not responsible for giving out contact information for the people it has articles about. Xenon54 14:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Search for special characters

Is there a way to search the WP domain for specific non-alpha-numeric characters?

When I saw an instance of someone doing a little stealth vandalism by replacing the letter t with the dagger character †, I looked through a few more of their contributions, and found (and reverted) a couple more of those edits. However, opening each edit to look for those characters was a very slow, hit-or-miss process, and not one I'd want to repeat much.

I was unsuccessful at using search engines to find that character; I tried searching for the dagger character itself, and for it with the char() function (although maybe I didn't use it correctly). So, is there a tool that non-techies can use for locating a given non-alpha-numeric character?

Thanks, --LottsoLuck (talk) 13:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

You could try Googling for "† site:en.wikipedia.org". But you'd likely be led astray as the same character is used, for example, in battle infoboxes to indicate that a commander died in the battle, or by people who don't know how to do footnotes correctly. Xenon54 14:32, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

And it won't find the latest occurrences of the character, as Google takes a while to update it's index. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, no ... if you've been successful at using Google to find that character or similar ones. then I'm even more puzzled. I've tried a variety of search engines, to no avail; I get no hits for this character (& some other special characters) in Web content. I've also searched on the topic of searching for special characters, and found that others are vexed by this, but haven't found any solution. Thanks, --LottsoLuck (talk) 08:58, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I may be missing something here, but, in light of there not being a character search solution readily available, perhaps there are other ways of undoing this vandalism? If the only purpose is to undo an edit that has already been identified as vandalism, there is the undo function - which allows you to undo the vandalism act without searching through the article to find the exact location of it. I have looked through Special:Contributions/207.210.134.83, and it looks like you got the edits that were blatant vandalism in the way you described. -Seidenstud (talk) 09:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

That's another good point, Seidenstud. Yes, I think I'm done with that user's edits. But when I stopped, it wasn't because I knew that I'd found all of those sneaky edits, but simply that I was bored with looking for them. Also, going forward, I wonder if there's a way to ferret out such edits without manually opening each diff. For an analogy: If I want to find & fix a common misspelling such as "acceptible", I can use the type of search suggested above by Xenon54; but if I want to find & fix the kind of stealth vandalism that we're discussing, I'd need a similarly automated method. --LottsoLuck (talk) 21:51, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi

Resolved

 – User blocked for vandalism. ukexpat (talk) 17:49, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Happy New Year from the Jefferson Standard Limited Bank, Chicago. --Jefferson Standard Limited (talk) 17:23, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll say this about you -- after a morning vandalising Wikipedia, you certainly have big cojones to post on the Help desk. I know, I know, don't feed the trolls... – ukexpat (talk) 17:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Naming question - didn't find guidelines about this

I want to create a page about the Israeli version of The Amazing Race, but I didn't find any guidelines concerning naming of TV related articles. Should it be named The Amazing Race Israel, HaMerotz LaMillion (transliteration of the Hebrew name), or The Race to the Million (translation of the Hebrew name)? RaLo18 (talk with me • my contributions) 20:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:NC-TV, which lists naming guidelines for TV show articles isn't clear about this situation. Looking at The Amazing Race (disambiguation), the Brazilian version is listed as The Amazing Race: A Corrida Milionária, and the Spanish version is listed as The Amazing Race en Discovery Channel so I think it would be safe to create the article under HaMerotz LaMillion with a redirect from "The Amazing Race (Israel)". Xenon54 21:15, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. RaLo18 (talk with me • my contributions) 11:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Using OpenID identity from another site as Wikipedia username?

Is it possible to use an external OpenID identity instead of a Wikipedia-specific username (or to associate an OpenID identity to a username for authentication, instead of a password)?

Searching the FAQs for OpenID didn't turn out anything, and searching the help desk archive returned a single entry, about 2 years old, and that appears tyo be about a planned new feature to offer single login across Wikipedia and related sites. 213.41.128.67 (talk) 23:50, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• As far as I know, you can't. You could use the same Name and Password if the Name's available. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Empire3131 (talk • contribs) 00:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)