Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 August 19

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August 19

external links?

When I add an external link pointing to a informational web site, it gets deleted right away. If I put your site graphic and link on my web pages would you let me add those page links to your external links section??. I'm eurotravelinfo.com and would only use revelant links, like the cities and countrys in Europe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.35.126.170 (talk) 00:25, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not give reciprocal links. Wikipedia:External links#Advertising and conflicts of interest says: "you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent". You can suggest a link on the talk page of the article. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:33, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

My Name- Info keeps getting deleted Why and by whom?

My name is shared by others on Wiki so I have to go to the "disambiguation" page where I have continuously entered my name, a one line description and a link to where I work.

Someone keeps deleting my entry within a few hours or days. What am I doing wrong or how can I stop someone from doing this?

96.242.190.19 (talk) 01:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

If independent reliable sources outside of Wikipedia do not contain substantial information about your life, then you likely do not meet the inclusion criteria for an article at Wikipedia. Disambiguation pages should only contain links to articles at Wikipedia, and since there is not an article about you at Wikipedia, your name should not appear at a disambiguation page. Additionally, you should not be adding information about yourself to Wikipedia. If you are notable enough for an article, someone who doesn't know you personally will eventually add it. --Jayron32 02:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, this site is called Wikipedia, not wiki. A wiki is any website using wiki software; there are thousands of them.

Ojay123 ^{(Talk•E-Mail•Contribs•Sandbox)} 02:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Inserting a Photo

I can't figure out how to insert a photo. Instructions are impossible to follow. How can I do it as owner of the copyright? -- David —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.255.198.85 (talk) 02:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The instructions are hardly impossible to follow - I followed them as have thousands of other users. The instructions are merely complex and tedious to follow, because they have to deal with many different cases of media file ownership and the mind-numbing detail of international copyright laws. You haven't provided enough information to tell us what conditional branch you are on. What does your photo depict? Is anything in the photo under any sort of copyright protection? (That is, first we must determine whether you can actually assert copyright on the photo; if it only shows natural things, you're probably OK, but if you made an accurate photographic reproduction of other copyrighted work(s), you may have a problem.) Have you already published the photo anywhere else? Are you willing to license your photo as free content? That means allowing anyone to reuse your photo for any purpose, including commercial use. What instructions did you read and where did you get confused? If you want to figure it out yourself, which is a good idea actually, you can read the instructions under Commons:COM:EIC#Copyright which cover a lot of cases, but not all of them. Note that images are often a very difficult aspect of Wikipedia for new contributors to grasp. I did not attempt to upload any images until after I had done a lot of other editing. --Teratornis (talk) 03:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree the insertion method is terrible I followed the instructions carefully and have driven myself crazy trying to insert a photo taken by me with no copyright claimed I uploaded it but I could not insert it, is there a delay process? derek

Able to contact Queen Rania of Jordan

What should I do if I want to contact Queen Rania of Jordan. The problem is wth email I have to have valid code to sent. I want to ask her some questions if she have met all African national leaders or just one from Senegal. Or even if I'm able to contact her on email she may not answer the emails. Could this be because she is busy in life? I'm asking because I don't see her with other African politicians. Could meetings ban photos and taking images?--69.229.39.33 (talk) 03:25, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This Help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. I don't think you can contact Queen Rania by using Wikipedia, except in the unlikely event that she has a user account here. In general, contacting heads of state is difficult for ordinary people. If you yourself are a head of state or acting in some official capacity, you might consult your country's state department or foreign service. If you are just an ordinary individual like most of us, you have very low odds of getting an audience with anyone who is important. People who are important generally talk to other important people. --Teratornis (talk) 03:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Try the Jordanian Embassy. If there is not one where you live, google the nearest one. Queen Rania loves hearing from people. She has a Youtube channel you might be interested in- http://www.youtube.com/queenrania

Just to add something, Queen Rania of Jordan is definitively from Jordan, not Africa. Just wanted to clarify that, since you grouped her with African politicians, and she's the queen of Jordan, which is in the Middle East in Asia, not Africa.

Ojay123 ^{(Talk•E-Mail•Contribs•Sandbox)} 21:50, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Server load from blank transclusion

I have an almost identical question to this one languishing at WP:VPT about the be archived without answer so I thought I'd give you lot a go. Though we are generally told to not worry about server load, I nevertheless want to know if any server load is taken up by a template which is transcluded but has no text or code of its own, such as {{void}}. I was under the impression that the more code and text a template calls, the larger the load it places on the servers (this is implied at Help:Substitution#Partial substitution if I'm reading it correctly). So if the answer to the first question is yes, even a blank transcluded template takes up some server load, is it negligible in comparison to, say, a transcluded template that is constantly calling some sizable block of text and code?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:33, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The only way I can think of to answer this question would be to set up your own MediaWiki wiki (e.g. a wiki on a stick), and run it under Software performance analysis tools which can analyze the server load. MediaWiki's performance will depend on the PHP and MySQL tools on which it runs, so you might look for information about measuring their performance. Without actually looking into it, I would guess that every transclusion would have to involve at least one MySQL query, so there would be some cost for the computer to determine that the query returned no data. But MySQL queries are pretty fast. Lots of people have been optimizing database performance for a long time. Ever since the 1960s people have been asking how to retrieve data from their databases faster. Presumably Wikipedia benefits from some of those accumulated results. --Teratornis (talk) 00:34, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for answering Teratornis. I didn't realize this would be so obscure a matter when I asked it but considering that no one ventured their toes in the water at VPT where the tech gurus congregate, it must be. I appreciate the advice but I don't think I'm invested enough in finding an answer to to go through those steps (I don't even own a USB stick and wouldn't know where to begin to pick the right analysis software). By the way, the background to this question is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Tracking substituted templates; {{z number doc}}.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:12, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A USB stick is not necessary; you can also install MediaWiki on your computer's hard drive under a Web server package such as XAMPP, and run it as a personal wiki. It takes some work, but it's a good way to learn about how to administer a wiki if you are interested. It's hard to predict whether a given technical questions about MediaWiki will turn out to be obscure or laborious to answer. The mw:Project:Support desk has a disturbingly high ratio of unanswered questions. A person can get spoiled by the high quality of help generally available on the Wikipedia Help desk, but once you get into more technical aspects of MediaWiki things can get scary fast. Only a few people might know what you need, and good luck finding them. --Teratornis (talk) 21:43, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia links to official nomenclature documentation for receptor protiens?

As part of an international body of pharmacology responsible for nomenclature of receptor, how can we get permission to update and add links to the appropriate documentation relating to nomenclature of GPCR, VGIC, LGIC and Nuclear Receptors. When we try to add links to the official pages of IUPHAR we are kicked out and warned not to spam wikipedia. Help!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.239.166 (talk) 09:15, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I looked quickly at the edit history of International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, and I don't see these warnings. If you could point to one, it would be helpful.

As a more positive suggestion, when someone removes a link because they think it is spam, the best thing to do is go to the discussion page, and explain why the link is appropriate. People more familiar with the subject matter can then discuss their concerns with you. I took a quick look at this site, assuming it is the one you are talking about, I think it belongs, but I haven't done enough homework to conclude for certain. Please try that approach, and if that fails, come back and we can suggest alternatives.--SPhilbrickT 13:31, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This account has spammed hundreds of their links, Under multiple IP's and Various Sockpuppet accounts. This organization is also in apparent violation of Conflict of interest and anti-spam guidelines in addition to wikipedia policies Wikipedia:NOT#DIRECTORY and Wikipedia:NOT#REPOSITORY. Here are just a few Mass Spamming examples;

• Special:Contributions/Flikr
• Special:Contributions/129.215.142.105
• Special:Contributions/129.215.239.166

More accounts can be seen @ Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#iuphar-db.org and discussion @ User_talk:Hu12#IUPHAR --Hu12 (talk) 15:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

My Account

Hi, my old username was block 'PerkinsEngines' based on the username policy. I submitted a username change request to hollingd however when I log into wikipedia the account name still displays PerkinsEngines. Can you please confirm everything has been done for this change request--PerkinsEngines (talk) 09:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you logging in with PerkinsEngines or hollingd? Log in using the account hollingd and discontinue the use of the other account. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 10:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

For this post you were logged in to PerkinsEngines; you should use hollingd. (Perhaps an admin should reblock the old account.) You may be confused by the fact that your PerkinsEngines talk page was moved to User talk:Hollingd, including the messages about username policy. If login to hollingd, you can safely ignore or delete those messages. —teb728 t c 19:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Rabies article/map

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to write to, anyhow, I was reading the article on rabies and when you scroll down the page you find a map of "rabies free countries". The list shows Finland, however it is not shown on the map. I am not skilled enough to edit the page but hopefully someone else could do this? Small thing but bothers the perfectionist! Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.216.57 (talk) 09:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Image workshop would be a better place for this request. They specialize in making maps like this.--SPhilbrickT 11:53, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Float

I need an help with the float comand. In a project external to wiki but based on wiki software I need to float a table with other taables around it but it doesn't run. Is there a solution? Thank you very much. --F.noceti (talk) 11:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This desk is for help with the English Wikipedia. For help with the MediaWiki software, go to mw:Project:Support desk. For general CSS help, you could try WP:Reference desk/Computing. Algebraist 11:55, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. Thank you very much --F.noceti (talk) 12:21, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

You can look at Help:Table#Floating table. Be aware that en.wikipedia has a lot of custom CSS and JS that many of our templates and tables depend on. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

big and small

superlative things example: which is the highest tree in the world? which is the lowest place in the earth?

i want to see this like things. which link?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.53.25 (talk) 12:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Try typing "tallest tree in the world" or "lowest place on earth" into the search box.--SPhilbrickT 12:53, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

3 Questions/ Website Info/ References

I am currently working on a page for a House Congressional Candidate in the 2010 General Election. How do I show that I have ownership of his personal campaign website so that I can copy/ paste his biography information onto wiki directly from the website?

Second: I am very confused on how to use the reference bar tools. I know I am supposed to click the reference key, but what next? Where do the citations go? I keep getting a red error message.

Third: Is there any way I can post a picture of the candidate without having 10 articles created?

thank You —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cgougs (talk • contribs) 15:33, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, first of all, it appears the article you created was advertising/campaigning for the candidate, which is not allowed. Please remember that all articles on Wikipedia must be written neutrally and the subject must be notable. If you are interested in releasing the copyright for the website material, please follow the instructions listed here. Finally, in order to upload images, your account must be autoconfirmed, which means that it has made ten edits (not created ten articles) and been active for four days. TNXMan 16:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Also be aware of the folowing Wikipedia guidelines;

• Conflict of interest
  • Editors who have a conflict of interest
  • Accounts used for promotion
  • Law Of Unintended Consequences
• What Wikipedia is not
  • Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising
• Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disruption
  • Accounts that appear, based on their edit history, to exist for the sole or primary purpose of promoting a person, company, product, service, or organization in apparent violation of Conflict of interest or anti-spam guidelines.

--Hu12 (talk) 17:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It should also be noted that Henry Meers is not sufficiently notable to have an article about him in this encyclopedia, so the latest article about him was deleted on that basis. Candidates for Congress are not deemed notable in and of themselves. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

What is the policy about garbage in a talk page?

The Tiger Woods talk page includes some extreme profanity that appears to have been added after the original comments in which the profanity is included.

What is the policy about editing things like this?

In this particular case, I'm cleaning up the garbage. I hope that's within normal guidelines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jplflyer (talk • contribs) 15:47, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It appears to be straightforward vandalism, so cleaning it up is fine (and appreciated!). TNXMan 16:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

improvement to main page

Wikipedia's opening page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page> can be improved for every user. Please put a starting cursor in the "search" box. See how Google does this: <http://www.google.ca/>.

This simple improvement will save one click for every Wiki user, every time they access the system. The math suggests the scale of this improvement: Wiki gets about 40,000 page requests every second.

Thanks much. Bill Johnstone Victoria, Canada —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.69.141.164 (talk) 16:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This is a perennial suggestion. It would require the use of JavaScript, resulting in some issue. Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/FAQ for details. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I misunderstood you. I clicked on the Google Canada link. I can't type in the search box without clicking in the search box, just as is the case here. I don't see a difference.--SPhilbrickT 19:02, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

When clicking http://www.google.ca/ my cursor is in the box ready for typing in IE8, Firefox and Google Chrome (but not in Firefox if I open a new tab with Ctrl+click and change to the tab). As Gadget850's link says, Wikipedia is deliberately not doing this. See more at Wikipedia:FAQ/Main_Page#Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, now I understand. I virtually always open a new page with a right-click and open link in new tab. --SPhilbrickT 22:31, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, this site is called Wikipedia, not wiki. A wiki is any website using wiki software; there are thousands of them.

Ojay123 ^{(Talk•E-Mail•Contribs•Sandbox)} 21:56, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Where do I find the key to understand pronunciation of words in Wikipedia?62.64.138.145 (talk) 16:30, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

If you're referring to pronunciations rendered in IPA, IPA chart for English dialects may be helpful. Deor (talk) 16:47, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

walled garden of crap

I'm a bit stumped about the best way to proceed - I've come across a walled garden of crap, namely the beauty pageant area. The sources for most of the articles are awful and largely promotional - blogs, corporate puff site etc and the writing is uniformly dire, gushing and full of weasel words and phrases. The wikiproject for this area seems to have died a couple of years ago and it's too big of a job for one editor. Where the best place (if there is no wikiproject) to get some assistance? --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, you could ask for help at the Wikipedia:Content noticeboard. Or you could ask for help from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors or get a Wikipedia:Peer review. Just some ideas. Good luck! --Jayron32 19:09, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Another approach is to just pick some problems you know how to fix, fix them, and leave informative edit summaries with links to the friendly manual pages you are following. Other editors may come by later, learn from your edits, and fix more things. One great thing about Wikipedia is that nobody has to feel personally responsible to fix everything. Trying to organize teams of editors to attack problems in a large-scale way is sometimes useful, but it is not usually necessary. In fact that may be a habit from our pre-wiki way of looking at things. Wikipedia can also improve in an organic self-emergent way, without always requiring explicit top-down attempts to organize people around a task. So if you can't find anyone to help solve all these problems quickly, don't worry about it. Just do what you can, and let time do the rest. --Teratornis (talk) 00:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

how do you indent certain lines on a content box?

Contents

1. High School Career

2. College Career

3. Professional Career

3.1 2008

3.2 2009

4. Personal

5. External Links

How do i indent 3.1 and 3.2? What do i type in computer language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrick M. Fisher (talk • contribs) 18:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

If you are referring to a table of contents here on Wikipedia, those tables are automatically generated. Placing two equal signs on either side of the header will create a large header, three equal signs will create a smaller header, and so on. Smaller headers are indented under larger ones in the table of contents. You can read more at this page. TNXMan 18:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I put in the section heads for you at Patrick Fisher. —teb728 t c 19:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I wish I could be more positive, because I'm a big fan of punters, and you are a good one, but your article is largely plagiarized from the LSU bio (it needs to be in your own words) and you fail wp:auto. Sorry.--SPhilbrickT 22:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I have removed some of the info and re-worded the other info. Check it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrick M. Fisher (talk • contribs) 02:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest question

I work for a company that has commissioned me to make a web site describing there services and products during the building of this site I was required to research several topics and write articles about them (mainly products sold). Most of my research found that the online realm was greatly lacking in information regarding these items even though they are quite common in our market.

For example the wikipedia page about flanges does not contain very much information and only one external reference.

I would like to know if posting my articles or excerpts from these articles and then linking back to the site I am building would constitute a conflict of interest? The company has paid me to produce the content so I feel as if they own it now and not referencing them in my mind would be disgraceful. Please advise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.191.224.86 (talk) 19:54, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

As a start, read wp:coi. If you've become an expert on flanges, your assistance in improving the existing articles will be welcome. However, if you add information you've written for someone else's website, it may not be a reliable source. It may be a valid external link or additional reading link, but it would be best for you to contribute to the talk page, and disclose your potential conflict. If you want to add something that is noncontroversial - for example, as part of your research you've found some good reliable sources on the subject and want to link them in, go ahead and do it. If you have material about which there is a question, you can link it to the talk page, then let a neutral editor decide it is improves the article or not.--SPhilbrickT 21:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec)You have become an expert, and your company's site wil be a published source. It's not what we consider a reliable source, but for something like flanges, it's a whole lot better than nothing. Go ahead and cite your web site. It would be better directly cite the material you found during your research, though, instead of citing your web site. The other major problem you have is that you must avoid infringing the copyuright of the company's web site. You are performing work for hire, so the company owns the copyright. If the company does not object, you may place a compatible license on the company site. Alternatively, they may let you write the Wikipedia articles first, thereby licensing the material under the CC-BY-SA and/or GFDL, and then copying it (with attribution) to the company web site. As a separate issue, please read WP:COI, but I would guess that it will not be a problem for flanges and the like. Just declare your interest on the article's talk page and ask for a review. And thanks for the help, we need it. -Arch dude (talk) 01:52, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Canadain Pacific Railway info

I have checked the history pages of the CPR but can't find what I am looking for. I am interested to know the year of construction for a rail branch line running from Swift Current Saskatchewan via Empress Alberta and joining the Main line again at Bassano Alberta.

Ron Eckroth Victoria BC <blanked> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.108.210.5 (talk) 20:07, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the Swift Current article (the history section), my guess would be 1881 or thereabouts. You may have better luck asking at the railroad project though. TNXMan 20:14, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

refs working oddly

what's going on with this? someone added a reference and that code appeared. i tried to fix it but unsuccesfully. thanks. --camr ^nag 20:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

{{Infobox Former Country}} uses the flag_type parameter as the displayed text for a piped link. But the displayed text for a piped link cannot contain a reference. It causes ugly UNIQ...QINU stuff like this: Flag of the Benin Empire [1]. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:11, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

can't someone fix the template then? i think the reference could be useful...--camr ^nag 18:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You can make a suggestion at Template talk:Infobox Former Country. In order to not break lots of existing uses of the template I think it would be needed to add a new parameter for the reference. But there are lots of templates with lots of parameters where no reference can be given. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Does this need to be deleted?

It's basically a spam talk page. I don't know the policy here.----occono (talk) 20:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh and how do I put a vandalism warning on the talk page for This user?----occono (talk) 20:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

1. That page doesn't seem to have any content at all. It's a sub-page in User:Tabercil's userspace. You may want to ask them on their talk page if you think there's a problem with it.
2. You can find a list of template warnings for user pages at WP:WARN. For example, you can add {{subst:uw-vandalism1}} --~~~~ which produces a level 1 vandalism warning. There are other template warnings for different issues. Of course, you can also compose a message in your own words and leave it on the user's talk page. See also the Gadgets section under My Preferences where you can enable some tools useful for dealing with vandalism. --☇Kateshortforbob _talk☄ 21:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Your piped link goes to User talk:Tabercil/Luke Ford permission where the only content is "Bold Comment text". I don't see spam there and don't know what you mean.

You can use one of the templates at Wikipedia:Vandalism#Warnings or Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace on User talk:77.102.90.113. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I thought the Talk page might be considered spam because it seems to be just a filler message, but I came here to check because I wasn't sure, forget about that. Thanks for the Template help.----occono (talk) 21:32, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay I need help again: Even though it's working in this very section, I can't get #'s to numerate properly in Tucker (TV series), it comes out all 1's.----occono (talk) 21:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The #'s must be on consecutive lines. See more at Help:Editing#Most frequent wiki markup explained. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:53, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!----occono (talk) 21:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

See also {{Episode list}} for more advanced formatting of an episode list. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll read that, but I'm still having problems :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by Occono (talk • contribs) 22:02, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

A list with a paragraph of text below each numbered item may not be the best suited format for use of autonumbering but here is a way to do it: [1]. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I was sure those instructions you linked to said I needed to do # then ##....I realise I needed to leave out the spaces now though.----occono (talk) 22:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I am a new user and I need help!

Hi,

i'm a new user, working on the page "László Marton" for the English language Wikipedia. I got a notification stating that:

"This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2008)"

I did cite references and sources.

Please let me know what is missing on my page.

Thank you!

User: Dvornicsek e-mail: <blanked> —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dvornicsek (talk • contribs) 20:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Try reading WP:CITE to see if that can help you. Thanks for contributing!----occono (talk) 20:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Some people assume that the template will be automatically removed when references are added, or think that if they add references, it is up to the original person to remove the template. That isn't the case. I removed it.--SPhilbrickT 21:28, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

First white settler, New Zealand

I have reason to believe (research done by my aunt) that my great(x5) grandfather John Adams was the first white settler in New Zealand, founding Auckland (at that time (18th century) called Adamstown) now swallowed up and renamed. Can you shed some light on this and help me find out more. If this is true, it would be quite something to have in one's family history. I can find no reference, please help find out more. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.195.131.205 (talk) 21:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you check the various John Adams at John_Adams_(disambiguation)?

However, I should point out that This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question 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). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 21:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)