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I cannot work out what I have done wrong with ref number 126 which I have just added. please fix. It is a from a journal from which I am citing. I am so sorry Srbernadette (talk) 09:10, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Srbernadette I don't know how to fix it but it looks like you used the wrong citation template; according to the reference you used the Journal template but did not fill in the "journal" parameter. 331dot (talk) 09:18, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
I have fixed the error. TSventon (talk) 09:36, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Have you considered working with a specific mentor that might be able to help you detect these errors before you make them? 331dot (talk) 09:19, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Archive disconnected

Suspicious Russia-related deaths since 2022 has several times changed names. I was at the Talk page, looking for older discussions and could only find them by using History. Eventually I found Talk:Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022–2024/Archive_1 but there is no link to this Archive on Talk:Suspicious Russia-related deaths since 2022. My question is: how to create a link to the archive on the talk page? Lova Falk (talk) 09:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Lova Falk I checked Help:Archiving a talk page and added {{Archives}} to the article talk page. Archive 1 was redlinked so I moved Talk:Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022–2024/Archive_1 to match the current page title. That seems to have solved the problem. TSventon (talk) 10:06, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
TSventon Thank you! Lova Falk (talk) 10:15, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Edit requests

If the talk page for an edit request gets archived, should me mark the edit request as answered? I see many in the pending edit requests lists that have been archived TNM101 (chat) 14:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Probably depends on if it's suitable to do the edit request. Archival doesn't mean that the text isn't suitable for inclusion, rather that no one has made an edit to that part of the talk page. I'd recommend evaluating the edit request when it's been seen the same as any other.
If someone has edited it and it went stale, then maybe. Lee Vilenski (talkcontribs) 14:17, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! TNM101 (chat) 14:21, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
@TNM101 and Lee Vilenski: the information page section Wikipedia:Edit requests#Archived edit requests says If the article talk page has archiving enabled, edit requests may occasionally be archived before being answered. If the request might still be considered, move the edit request back to the Talk page. Otherwise, if you believe the archiving shows there was no consensus, simply close the request by changing the |answered= parameter to "yes". The section was discussed recently at Wikipedia talk:Edit requests/Archive 2#Archived edit requests. TSventon (talk) 14:30, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

How to reach en-checkusers

Hello. I have tried contacting en-wiki checkusers for over a month now to be given the local ip-block exempt user group. I have tried to get through the offical route (checkuser-en-wp@wikipedia.org) and tried messaging the checkusers directly. No response. I won't be able to tell more about my situation publicly, but without it, I really can't edit in this wiki. I have the global IP exempt group to allow to work in Commons and Wikidata. Are my options to just wait or just message a steward I happen to be in contact with? Thanks. --Osmo Lundell (talk) 14:46, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Osmo Lundell If you are editing this page, you are not affected by a block. We can't force the checkusers to talk to you. 331dot (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Hi. Thanks for your reply, even though it wasn't very useful. Obviously I'm using another, tempotary way to send this message, normally I couldn't do that. Would you happen to know one of your checkusers that has been active recently and ping them here? --Osmo Lundell (talk) 14:59, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
@Osmo Lundell According to the global log here you already have the right since 5 February. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:01, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
They have global IP block exempt, which does not help with local blocks. Presumably they are having issues with a local block. Three Sixty! (talk, edits) 15:02, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Exactly, I'm asking for the local user group. --Osmo Lundell (talk) 15:04, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
You've made 15 edits in the last two days(and one a few days before); were these all by this "temporary method"? Is it not something that you have access to long term? 331dot (talk) 15:08, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
No, it is not. Is there an active checkuser around? --Osmo Lundell (talk) 15:13, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
@Osmo Lundell apologies, your email was indeed send to the correct place but no one replied. Taking a look now. Elli (talk | contribs) 15:13, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Thank you so much! --Osmo Lundell (talk) 15:15, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Article Name Change

I was about to make some major edits to a current Wikipedia article. One of the edits I had envisioned was to change the name of the article. The article is currently under the French title of the island, "Île Sainte-Marguerite". However, since this is the English Wikipedia server, I can see no reason why this Wikipedia article cannot be under a commonly used English title for the island, i.e. such as the direct translation "Saint Margaret Island (France)" or at least "Sainte-Marguerite Island". Can someone let me know the procedure or protocol for changing the title of an existing Wikipedia article? SMargan (talk) 08:59, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

SMargan Please see WP:COMMONNAME first; as you seem to suspect, an article title should be that which is most commonly used in English-language reliable sources. If you believe that "Saint Margaret Island" is the most common, you may want to first post on the article talk page to see what other editors think. If you get a consensus agreeing with you, or if no one objects, you can then request a page move at Requested Moves. 331dot (talk) 09:03, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@331dot (talk) - In particular "Île" ("Island") is not a word used in English at all that I am aware. Based on what you have said, I think that the "Sainte-Marguerite Island" option is probably more appropriate. I have a thread for the talk page already. Therefore, I will make the major changes I have already been working on and then post a discussion on the name change to the talk page, and then I will make that request to Requested Moves as you have suggested. SMargan (talk) 09:27, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
As 331dot says, it's more about what we most commonly call the subject in English language sources. There's nothing wrong with a foreign title, even if there is an English version available if it's the one that is mostly used for the subject. Lee Vilenski (talkcontribs) 09:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

"The topic seems to be likely notable, but poorly sourced"

How do I source it properly? Can someone help me with this, all the information is public on the internet and I have added the links I used under the "reference" section Draft:Rheinmetall Nordic. OleBj (talk) 07:45, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello, OleBj. Please read the guideline Notability (organizations and companies). A company is eligible for a Wikipedia article when it is the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable published sources that are entirely independent of the company. Your draft has six references. Five are published by Rheinmetall itself, are not independent, and are therefore of no value in establishing the notability of the company. The remaining reference (#2 currently) is about a predecessor company and is also of no value in establishing the notability of the successor company. We already have an article about the parent company Rheinmetall, so perhaps describing this subsidiary can take place there, unless you can come up with references to multiple sources that actually establish notability. Cullen328 (talk) 08:06, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Also the citation includes Wikipedia itself which seems funny way to use reliable sources. This is the reason the article is failing to be published. I would advice to use sources that are both trusted and outside wikipedia such as journals, other articles or books. Please note that blogs are not reliable sources because wikipedia think them as promotion. Sys64wiki (talk) 12:11, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Policy

Hi, I recall there was a policy or guideline relating to excessive US focus on articles. Does anyone recall what this is? I was not able to google it and find it. Specifically I was referring to this edit I made, in which an editor wants to include US SEC lawsuits in the LEAD of an article largely unrelated to the lawsuit. The policy I recall was about excessive focus on US policy in wikipedia articles, as essentially a weight issue. Maybe someone knows what I am looking for, maybe it was an essay? As I get older I cant remember all this stuff :-) Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

For a start there is an explanatory essay with a section Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ#Anglo-American focus. TSventon (talk) 09:52, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:44, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

A "403 Forbidden" domain, down since 2016

There are over 100 references to a website called Relationship Science. When currently trying to reach this domain, my browser tells me it's a dangerous site, and the Wayback Machine (Archive.org) seems to indicate that 2016 was the final year that this domain actually worked. Is the protocol on Wikipedia to find suitable permanent links from Archive.org to enhance each of these references, or would it be more helpful to readers to remove them? Without having done any research, I'm not sure if this Relationship Science platform is (or ever was) a truly reliable source. It seems like it was some kind of "semantic web" network for business people's names, like LinkedIn, but begging for paid usage. - Whole milch (talk) 18:10, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I believe that making archive links is the standard, assuming that "Relationship Science" is a reliable site. Wayback Machine is what I personally use for archives.
MallardTV Talk to me! 18:20, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
You could ask whether Relationship Science is reliable at Wikipedia:Reliable Sources Noticeboard and give a couple of archived examples, e.g. Inderpreet Wadhwa and Nikolay Banev. TSventon (talk) 18:39, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Discussion now at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Relationship Science. TSventon (talk) 13:53, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
If your research indicates that prior to 2016 it was a reliable source, you can make a request at Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests to have all of the links marked as "usurped", but still use the references in the article with safe archive links. Reconrabbit 13:39, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Suspected sock puppets?

Hi, I have a suspicion of a suspected sock puppet account operating. Can someone please direct me to where I can forward it to someone with Wikipedia:CheckUser permissions to have a look? Many thanks Nayyn (talk) 14:32, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Nayyn There are several options at Wikipedia:CheckUser#Contacting a checkuser. TSventon (talk) 14:40, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
thank you, I saw this, but was a bit confused as there are a few different methods. Should I reach out to a checkuser individually before proceeding to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations ? Not sure what the right procedure is to do here. Many thanks Nayyn (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@Nayyn Probably best to go straight to WP:SPI, as there will be several people watching that. Be sure to read the instructions carefully. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:05, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
many thanks @Michael D. Turnbull Nayyn (talk) 15:07, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@Nayyn could you check the date of the first edit of the newer account? TSventon (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
hi @User:TSventon I did, the second account was made when the previous account was under an indefinite ban. The ban was later lifted I guess but both accounts are still active. User:Nayyn (talk) 17:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@Nayyn New account 16 April 2024, ban 19 April 2024 to 22 April 2024, or am I confused? TSventon (talk) 17:53, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Im not sure how long the ban was active, but the user did not use the banned account again until late May 2024 the 2nd account was made in on May 11 2024. It was scary to submit it because it seems like a serious action but I was suspicious so just went ahead. Nayyn (talk) 17:58, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@Nayyn Thinking before a serious action is a good thing. I have commented at the SPI with a diff from 16 April 2024. TSventon (talk) 18:15, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

How do I style my signature?

How to style my signature so that whenever I write something on talk pages or discussions, my account username would be stylish like the other users? For example like I wanna add a green color background to my username signature, how do I customize it? Note that I've already read Wikipedia:Signatures but I'm still failing. I'm a mobile web user btw, hopefully someone can help me a little.  :') Imwin567 (talk) 18:21, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

@Imwin567 I would recommend proceeding as at the help section WP:Signatures#Customizing how you see your signature. If you do that, you personally see a nice green background but everyone else sees the standard blue, which is much less distracting to others. Mike Turnbull (talk) 20:19, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Yes but that is only for my own point of view. How do I show it for others? Imwin567 (talk) 20:27, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
By navigating to Special:Preferences and adding the sort of markup suggested on the signatures page you have already found. Mike Turnbull (talk) 20:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
understood! thank you! Imwin567 (talk) 21:15, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

My edits keeping falsely tagged by the edit filter

It's falsely tagging my edge Gladcape2013 (talk) 02:45, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

I mean edits Gladcape2013 (talk) 02:46, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Can you give some examples? The filter has tagged exactly one edit of yours in the last 10 weeks: Special:Diff/1281722239 was tagged "New or unregistered user modifying talk page archives". That seems pretty accurate. -- zzuuzz (talk) 02:56, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm guessing it's the report here? It's not a page I'm familiar with but I can't see anything particularly alarming there, just a factual list of things that need a bit of care (eg installing javascript gadgets). Musiconeologist (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Companies House

<-- Redacted per WP:BLP I will be reporting the repeated violations of WP:BLP policy here, and suggesting that the contributor responsible be blocked from editing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:11, 22 March 2025 (UTC) -->

Not English

Template {{Not English}} is not allowed to be used in drafts?

  1. Why not?
  2. The documentation does not provide an alternative, so what should I use instead?

Polygnotus (talk) 08:42, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

There is no point in adding templates, illustrations, categories etc to any draft article as they do not contribute towards notability. Most draft articles never get to be an article. Focus on getting the article to the point where it meets the criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia. Shantavira|feed me 09:38, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
I didn't start the draft. And it contains text in a language other than English. Which is why I want to tag it so that someone who speaks that language can translate it. Polygnotus (talk) 09:49, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
If they actually submitted a non-English draft, it would get declined as a non-English draft. It's also possible that they have the non-English text there so they can then translate it themselves. 331dot (talk) 09:51, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Or that they they accidentally created it on the wrong Wikipedia, for that matter. The other day, I came across some instructions on another language's Wikipedia that directed people to one of our help pages. If that happened when they were trying to find out about creating drafts, they might well create it on the wrong wiki—especially if they're new and think it's just a matter of adding some tag later to specify the language. Not everyone realises the different languages are on different wikis. In which case, they may now be wondering where their draft went, since it doesn't exist on their Wikipedia . . . ! Musiconeologist (talk) 18:13, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
@Polygnotus Which draft is it? Musiconeologist (talk) 18:17, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

User investigation

I need help with a user (BPS CS1804-0888 (talk · contribs)), they have done a few edits that they shouldn't (like this one for an example). I don't know if all the other edits they have done is bad as well, so if anyone can check their history and find that out that would be great! Also, this account matches with other edits done by other users (see this article for an example) so maybe there's a connection? Thanks for the help. // Kakan spelar (talk) 15:46, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

@Kakan spelar: Based on behavioral evidence, they look like a sockpuppet of Affact VA18300P, whose account was recently blocked for similarly unconstructive edits (WP:NOR and WP:CIR issues). Complex/Rational 15:51, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Kakan spelar, that account has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet creating hoax content. Cullen328 (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Great! // Kakan spelar (talk) 18:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Notability musings

I consider myself a relative old-timer so this question is not about getting the usual links but a general feeling from others.

When I actually added content back in 2006 "notability" wasn't a strict guideline, more of a concept. When I wrote an article, I looked for significant coverage in secondary reliable sources and if there was enough I created the article using the content I found. If no books or journals applied to the subject I used newspaper databases (this was when journalism was somewhat more credible than today in my opinion). That is where I stopped, I didn't then scour the internet for official or industry websites to fill in any gaps.

Move on to today, WP:N exists and in the nutshell says the notability guideline does not determine the content of articles and below links to the usual NPOV, V, NOR for content rules.

This codification change became apparent when I discovered Christopher J. Einolf, a Wikipedia biography with no biographical details from secondary reliable sources. I had an involved discussion on the talk page with the article creator and became of aware of "notability" for academics but I assumed the intent was that since this writer was mentioned in books a lot that biographical details would emerge in the future (or that as notability was established I wasn't looking hard enough). Fine.

Jump to today I found Quintessential (company). Several mentions in newspapers, basically they bought this or that building for $200M. So probably "notable", but the rest of the article is just regurgitating their website or refers to industry websites. The websites are published, the article seems balanced (as yet I haven't been able to dig up any dirt or anything particularly interesting). If I removed everything not from a reliable secondary sources there wouldn't be much left. So is it up to me (a Wikipedia editor) to decide how much content, and from which websites, to include? Commander Keane (talk) 00:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

That article has a problematic history. It was declined several times at AfC and then REJECTED by @Robert McClenon on 27 Nov 2024. Then on 12 Dec, the article creator @User:Commercialindustrial made a few changes then moved it to mainspace. On 3 Jan 2025, @लॉस एंजिल्स लेखक moved it back to draft, noting "Not ready for mainspace, incubate in draftspace". Then today, Commercialindustrial made a couple of very minor changes and moved it back to mainspace again. This editor's contributions appear mostly promotional. CodeTalker (talk) 02:41, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
I agree that this article is very promotional. I discovered it while going through articles in Category:Articles with a promotional tone and I don't think it should be published as is. 🄻🄰 19:13, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
As indicated by User:CodeTalker, that page has issues. In this scenario, (at least from the information you've given), I'd recommend putting it up for deletion through WP:AFD mgjertson (talk) (contribs) 17:39, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
User:CodeTalker, User:Commander Keane, लॉस एंजिल्स लेखक - Thank you for letting me know. I will look at the article within 24 hours. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:57, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
I just cleaned up the article, so looking at Quintessential (company) now makes my original post out of date. I was really looking for general thoughts on notability, but I appreciate the interest anyway. Commander Keane (talk) 04:37, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
An IP editor with no other edits has reverted your cleanup. Seems likely to be a WP:LOUTSOCK of the article creator. The article is now at AfD. CodeTalker (talk) 20:33, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Making a Bibliography

I am in a college class and have to make a bibliography as an assignment. After going to the page sent to our class and clicking on edit, the only thing it will allow me to do is add an undocumented parameter. And after doing that I cant find it. MacKJMm13 (talk) 14:20, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

It's very hard for us to help when we don't even know what page you were directed to. Wikipedia has no control over what tasks your teacher assigns. Maproom (talk) 17:24, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
If you've simply been asked to create a bibliography I suggest you do it elsewhere. Edits to Wikipedia are subject to scrutiny and may be deleted or altered at any time. If you have to create it on Wikipedia you should at least familiarize yourself with the policies at WP:BIBLIOGRAPHY. Shantavira|feed me 09:34, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
@MacKJMm13 Your assignment is a bibliography about which person or topic ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 13:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Conflict of interest?

I have little interest in and avoid when at all possible, issues editor behavior. There is an article David Haward Bain authored by an editor BainDH. That to me, smells a lot like a conflict of interest. Surely there is someone here who is well versed in policies/guidelines related to COI who can do the right thing here with regard to BainDH and the David Haward Bain article. I would much prefer to step away.

Trappist the monk (talk) 23:55, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: You can report at WP:COIN, but please read and follow the guidance at the top of that page when doing so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:07, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

scsbot not archiving

Dear page watchers, please can some of you respond to the "archiving woes" section on the talk page. I have copied a suggestion from RD talk there. TSventon (talk) 21:36, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Wikipedia talk:Help desk § archiving_woes.

Wikipedia app

So I started using Wikipedia's app but I can not where some features are or the apps equivalent. The features are the apps equivalent of the desktop version notifications system. I looked over the bell icon on the app, but it does not capture all the notifications the desktop does. Namely reply's to my comments, from what I am seeing the only way that a reply would show up in the apps is if the other editor mentions me. The other feature I am trying to locate is the equivalent of the desktops preferences, the only thing I can find that is similar on the apps is the settings, but it does not give me near as much options. I am looking forward to your answer. Sheriff U3 14:26, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello, Sheriff U3. You are correct that the app lacks some of the functionality of the desktop site, especially with regards to collaboration among editors. The good news is that the desktop site works fine on smartphones and mobile devices, although you will need to zoom in and out a bit. I am an adminstrator who has made about 100,000 edits on smartphones using the desktop site with very few problems. Years ago, I wrote an essay about this that you may want to read, User:Cullen328/Smartphone editing. Cullen328 (talk) 17:24, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Cullen328 Ok will take a look at your essay. I have been using the browser on my phone for some of features the apps lacked, but was wondering if I just had overlooked something. If you were able to make that many edits with a smartphone, then I can at least try!
I looked through some of your essay and noticed that you have recommendations section, you may want to look into updating it as you say that you are interested in learning how to use the admin toolbar on a mobile phone, you mostly likely have used the admin toolbar on a mobile phone by now though. Also I noticed that the phone you are currently using according to your essay is an Android 5.0, I would be rather surprised if you are still using it now. Though I have to admit that I myself use a old and largely outdated phone (it is an Android 7.0 from 2017). One question I have is how much of difference has there been between 2015 and now with editing on Wikipedia on a smartphone. With the advancement of smartphone technology I expect that there has been some improvement to how Wikipedia works with smartphones, but then again it sounds like it is not very common to edit with a smartphone.
By the way for your information I used a smartphone only on this entire post! Will be trying some of your methods as figure out what works for me best. Sheriff U3 21:44, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Sheriff U3, as I said, I wrote that essay years ago. I have not tried to keep it up to date, because to me, it is a snapshot in time. Other people edit it occasionally. Currently, I an using a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G. I have now been an administrator for 7-1/2 years and have had no significant problems carrying out administrative actions on my phone. I do not think that there have been major, substantive changes to the software in recent years that affect editing with smartphones. Cullen328 (talk) 21:56, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
@Sheriff U3 Try using the app to visit special:preferences. For me that gives what looks like the actual settings page but in mobile view, as opposed to just the settings built in to the app. Once I've posted this I'll check whether I can get there by tapping the link in this reply.
Edit: I've just tried and I do get the full settings page. Not presented in a very pretty view, but with the usual sections available (eg the huge list of gadgets). Musiconeologist (talk) 21:56, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Musiconeologist Ok thank! I did not think of that. Well I have decided to use a mixture of the apps and broswer using desktop mode as I like receiving notifications through a my phones notification system, but have found the apps not ideal for other usage such as replying to other users. Note I am using the app to reply to you, but I like using a beta feature that appears to only be available on the desktop version. (I don't recall it's name off the top of my head, but know that it has to do with talking pages and replying.) Sheriff U3 22:19, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@Sheriff U3Hmm well I'm not sure now whether I've helped. I changed a setting OK but then couldn't find a Save button . . . I typically have the app and a browser both open at once and switch between the two (I'm replying using Convenient Discussions in the browser, since it lets me see the threads properly on this page.) Musiconeologist (talk) 22:24, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@Musiconeologist Interested, I was able to find the Save button by pressing the X button at the top. The only issue that I had was it took me to my browser to save the changes. That is the same beta feature I use! Thanks for your reply. Sheriff U3 22:45, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@Sheriff U3 Sorted now. The app thought I was logged out—once I entered my login details I was able to save the setting I'd changed. Musiconeologist (talk) 23:02, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Collapse lists in template

Hello, can someone please make the lists in this template be collapsed by default (closed). Now the lists are open by default which makes it too long. -Artanisen (talk) 21:47, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@Artanisen:  Done. All it took was changing | expanded = all to | expanded = none. Alpha Beta Delta Lambda (talk) 22:09, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Nice, thanks Alpha Beta Delta Lambda. Artanisen (talk) 23:21, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

If WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONSIST contradict what do we follow?

So I started a conversation on WT:MILHIST (feel free to discuss there instead) on the names of two defunct agencies/units of the People's Armed Police. I would suggest you check out the discussion for more context and to see if there are other factors that play into the naming(e.g. the nature of the two units, the command structure etc).

So currently the situation is there is three ways the problem can be solved:

  1. People's Armed Police Border Defense Corps + People's Armed Police Guard Corps(PAP ___ corps is much more common for the border defense, however not for the guard corps. Consistent at least, and personnel of both agencies are PAP personnel. These are also the official names. Also, since we currently use PAP border defense corps more on EN wikipedia, saves me from having to change everything)
  2. Ministry of Public Security Border Defense Corps + Ministry of Public Security Guard Corps(MPS ___ corps is much more common for the Guard corps but not for the border defense. These are the official unofficial name(yes, that exists) and is more accurate on command structure(both are commanded by the MPS, however their personnel are PAP personnel.).)
  3. People's Armed Police Border Defense corps + Ministry of Public Security Guard Corps(Allows for use of their common names)

Thehistorianisaac (talk) 13:52, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@Thehistorianisaac: the process for discussing and agreeing changes to article names is Wikipedia:Requested moves. It can be helpful to have an informal discussion first as you have at WP:MH. TSventon (talk) 20:16, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@TSventon They aren't yet their own articles, the Border Defense Corps does have it's own section in the People's Armed Police article.
However I am trying to get some consensus first before they get their own articles(and the guard corps gets it's own section), and from what it seems it comes down to whether we prioritize WP:CONSISTENT or WP:COMMONNAME(and, if we are to prioritize consistency, whether we choose to name it after the border defense corps or the guard corps.) Thehistorianisaac (talk) 23:40, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@Thehistorianisaac: Wikipedia:Article titles says Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. When this offers multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title precisely identifies the subject; it is short, natural, distinguishable and recognizable; and resembles titles for similar articles., so editors have to make a decision where principles conflict. You could publish the articles with what you think is the most suitable name based on suggestions at WP:MH and then move them to a better name later. TSventon (talk) 11:38, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Ok thanks.
The articles I plan to make them sections first(border defense already has it's own section, and both articles exsist on chinese wikipedia already) so the publishing can wait, but so far I am going with PAP border defense corps for the article name. I'm also gonna ask the wikiproject coordinators for their own opinions Thehistorianisaac (talk) 11:41, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Talk page Archives

Hello everyone out there, I'm starting to feel like my talk page is starting to get full. How can I archive? Gnu779 ( talk) 14:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

@Gnu779: Help:Archiving a talk page has some options. I am using cut and paste. TSventon (talk) 14:52, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
How can I tell bots to do it for me? Gnu779 ( talk) 14:53, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@Gnu779 Help:Archiving (plain and simple) usually works well. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:16, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) There's a few ways. You can manually move the items to User talk:Gnu779/archive1, or use a bot, instructions are at WP:AUTOARCHIVE, although it can be a bit complicated. Lee Vilenski (talkcontribs) 14:53, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Hi Gnu779 Please see User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo which includes quick instruction and more detailed explanations. Best wishes - Arjayay (talk) 14:54, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Thx Gnu779 ( talk) 15:35, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
@Gnu779: like this. I've reverted, but you can reinstate the edit if you wish. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:14, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Wow, you gave me nice help. Thanks. Gnu779 ( talk) 12:19, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't appear to be archiving, gets enough traffic that ideally it should, and archive 1 is 75 sections long, which seems not ideal either. I wasn't sure whether I could just replace the current bot with a different one and set the counter on the new bot to 2? Valereee (talk) 12:08, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

@Valereee: The archiving instructions hidden at the top of the page say minthreadsleft = 10, so the bot has been told to leave at least 10 threads on the talk page no matter how old they are. Reduce that figure if you wish. It also says maxarchivesize = 100K, so the bot will move on to archive 2 fairly soon. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! Valereee (talk) 13:22, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

How to close a requested move discussion?

Second Trump tariffs has had a discussion going for nearly two weeks. Everyone agrees with a name change but but consensus is a little unclear, partly because new alts were offered throughout the discussion.

How do we decide when to end it? Also, WP:RMCI says we need an uninvolved editor to close it but not where to ask for one. Where do I find one? satkaratalk 23:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done. For reference, the most common venue is WP:ANRFC, but anywhere is fine. Though, since all requested moves are listed at Wikipedia:Requested moves § Current discussions there is probably someone that would come around and do it eventually without needing to look for one. Alpha3031 (tc) 14:10, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
AI stuff
Hello satkara, good to see you here!
To close a Requested Move (RM) discussion, follow these steps:
1. Is It Ready to Close?
RM discussions usually last seven days, but can go longer if needed.
If most people agree on a name, it’s ready to close.
If there’s no clear agreement, more discussion may help.
2. Who Can Close It?
You can’t close it yourself if you're involved in the discussion.
You need an uninvolved editor to close it.
3. Where to Find Someone to Close It?
Ask for a closer at:
Wikipedia talk:Requested moves – The best place to request help.
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard – If the move is controversial.
WikiProject talk pages – If the topic has a related WikiProject.
WP:ANRFC (Requests for Closure) – If the discussion has gone on too long and needs a decision.
4. What Happens Next?
If the move is approved, the page will be renamed.
If it’s unclear, the closer will explain why and may suggest further discussion.


If you think i failed somewhere feel encouraged to ask question i would be happy to answer. Sys64wiki (talk) 06:16, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Actually I looked out at the same discussion page and found out that the actual consensus about the article have not taken place since alts are still being discussed. I advise you to wait a little and perform the closure of discussion page when majority reaches consensus? Sys64wiki (talk) 12:23, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Creating a Sandbox page was recently backlisted for me? Why?

Hello I recently created 4 sandbox pages in order to split up a now archived Wikipedia page as agreed upon by several wiki editors on an original article. The process was easy and we finished the article splitting in a very short amount of time. But now I am trying to create a new sandbox for myself to create a new article and it says that the title is blacklisted. Namely Historyguy1138//sandbox8.

I did some experiments to see if other users could create sandboxs with this method and they can.

How can we fix this?

Did some bot or perhaps a (shall we say obtuse) admin assumed I was spamming after I used the sandbox to create 4 approved articles?

Thanks for your help. (: Historyguy1138 (talk) 15:13, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

There are no blocks on your account directly, at least. What is the message that you see when you attempt to create a sandbox? 331dot (talk) 15:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Among other thing it says:
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.
Please
search for Historyguy1138//sandbox8 in Wikipedia
to check for alternative titles or spellings.
Historyguy1138 (talk) 15:19, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Is there any reason for the double slash // in the name? Musiconeologist (talk) 15:22, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
No that was a typo that I just put recently I was trying to create an article with only / slash. Historyguy1138 (talk) 15:25, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Historyguy1138/sandbox8 just recently fixed the problem for me. Thank you. (: Historyguy1138 (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Probably you attempted to create the sandbox in mainspace - I blacklisted mainspace sandboxes a while ago. User:Historyguy1138//sandbox8 is correct and should be creatable; Historyguy1138//sandbox8 isn't and shouldn't be. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:20, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Ah I see my mistake. Thank you. (: Historyguy1138 (talk) 15:22, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Automatic reverting

I am teaching a course where one of the students got her edits reverted. The revision history claims that she did it herself, but she says that was not the case, it happened automatically. This is the user contribution page User contributions for Daliepremidze - Wikipedia. Now it seems to be working though. Was something wrong? Olle Terenius (UU) (talk) 09:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Olle Terenius (UU): It is easy to click the wrong button, particularly when new. Nearly everyone here has reverted themselves or someone else accidentally. It is extremely unlikely that anything went wrong other than that Daliepremidze accidentally clicked something. There is no automatic reverting. Johnuniq (talk) 09:22, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
@Olle Terenius (UU) and Daliepremidze: It looks like she misunderstood something in the interface. Maybe she looked at a diff like [1] and clicked edit on the left side instead of the right side. If you click on the left side then you start a new edit with the content of the former revision. If you save without changing anything (except the edit summary) then it becomes a revert to that revision. If she wants to change the new revision when looking at a diff then she has to click edit on the right side or click the edit tab at top of the page. It's not possible to change an old edit summary if that's what she was trying. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

where to launch policy discussion?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


I would like to inaugurate a discussion challenging certain parameters of current template practices regarding restricting Wikipedia articles, including in some instances even their TALK pages, to a small group of editors who qualify as E-C. Where would be the best place to initiate this discussion? Kenfree (talk) 05:36, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Kenfree. Perhaps Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). I would recommend including links like "protection policy" and disclosing any other recent discussions you have had on this issue. It also wasn't clear if by "template practices" you were referring to templates. Commander Keane (talk) 06:57, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Either that or Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab). Read he instructions and see which fits you best. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:05, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Thank you both for these useful recommendations. 👏 Kenfree (talk) 09:17, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I created this a little while ago, and I can't find it transcluded among FPC, and it's gotten no replies. Did I screw up its creation somehow? JayCubby 19:01, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not super familiar with FP, but in other Featured procedures, you are supposed to transclude it on the page when you make the page. Lee Vilenski (talkcontribs) 19:07, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
@JayCubby, you missed step 3 at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Nomination procedure.
Also, your nomination page has some broken syntax and the closing date is now too close. Definitely ask at Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates and I think someone there will help you fix it. Commander Keane (talk) 07:24, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Alright, thanks a bunch. Asking now. JayCubby 16:19, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Context: I was reading the article “Interpellation (philosophy)”. Its topic is due to French philosopher Louis Althusser, and the topic’s name is (or anyway its English-language name comes from) the French noun interpellation. Wishing to learn more about these roots, I went to the interlanguage links and selected Français, which led me to the article Contrôle_d'identité_en_France [fr]. That inappropriate linkage reflects another separate sense of French interpellation, one that’s related to the political sense of English interpellation, rather than the philosophical sense. So I figured it was time to edit the wikidata [Wikidata].

But when I tried to do so, I was amazed that in that wikidata I find no mention of “Contrôle d’identité en France” and no occurrence of the language code “fr.” By what seeming magic has that particular article been proffered (incorrectly, as it turns out) as “the French-language counterpart” of the philosophy article from which I started out?

I can see nothing inappropriate in the wikidata that one could edit or delete. And sadly, my rummaging around on French Wikipedia has failed to turn up any article there that I could affirmatively add to the wikidata’s list of wikipedia entries. So how can I at least prevent the inappropriate behavior if not replace it with a more appropriate one?

PaulTanenbaum (talk) 14:26, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@PaulTanenbaum: The last wikitext in Interpellation (philosophy) says:
[[fr:Contrôle d'identité en France]]
[[fr:Droit d'interpellation]]
This adds an interlanguage links regardless what Wikidata says (before Wikidata it was the only way to make interlanguage links). Only the first value is used. There is not supposed to be two. I don't know whether fr:Droit d'interpellation is better than fr:Contrôle d'identité en France. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:45, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Why so it does! D'oh, I should have looked within the page itself. Thanks, I'll now figure out the best edit to make and then proceed to make it. PaulTanenbaum (talk) 15:18, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @PaulTanenbaum: I don't think either fr:Contrôle d'identité en France or fr:Droit d'interpellation is relevant to interpellation as a philosophical idea, so I have removed them. They may have been added because they are both listed at fr:interpellation, which is a disambiguation page. TSventon (talk) 15:24, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
You are right, @TSventon, that neither was relevant; that was my whole point. So I have added an appropriate one (after first having edited French Wikipedia to create a good place for my appropriate one to point to. PaulTanenbaum (talk) 16:51, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
@PaulTanenbaum: I have created a new redirect in fr Wikipedia at fr:Interpellation (philosophie) which is linked to Interpellation (philosophy) via Wikidata and listed at fr:interpellation. I think that is more visible and less confusing than a manual interlanguage link. Please improve my French if necessary. TSventon (talk) 17:13, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Volunteering

Hello. I came to see about WP:Reliable Sources Noticeboard. What should I do to become a volunteer in that community? Shall I wait for a period of time to be eligible for that? Ramencolls (talk) 09:20, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ramencolls: This page is more for "how do I do [some technical thing]" questions. You might consider posting a more generic question where you are essentially asking for opinions at WP:Teahouse. At any rate, noticeboards like the one you mention usually need a fair bit of experience to master. However, by all means start giving your view and see how it goes. If people start contradicting you, it might be best to not reply much and try to understand what they are saying. This is the internet, so people commenting might be totally wrong, but it's best to ask questions and not offer opinions too forcefully until more experienced. For the RS noticeboard, a question should be of the form "is [this source] reliable for [this claim] at [link to article]". Johnuniq (talk) 09:29, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Got it. I think I am not fit to volunteer the Noticeboards right now. I should learn more about Wikipedia. Thanks Ramencolls (talk) 09:33, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
@Ramencolls If you haven't seen it, WP:TASKS may be of interest. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång it helps. Thanks. JunkBorax (talk) 17:14, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Is there a way of getting overall page views per day of every article a user has contributed to?

Hi all

I've seen the pageview counter on the new HomePage feature but this only seems to be showing statistics for the past 60 days. Is there a way of seeing pageviews of all articles a user has contributed to since their account was created?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 12:08, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@John Cummings Not that I know of. Fwiw, you can put up to 10 pages in this tool:[2] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:45, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Hi Gråbergs Gråa Sång thanks very much, this wouldn't work for people like me who have been round a while. I'm wondering if maybe I can make a pagepile or something? I have no idea about queries so this might not work. John Cummings (talk) 17:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
WP:TECHPUMP? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:15, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Fair use? Screenshot of a foreign leader's video?

For historical purposes, a screenshot of this video[3] posted by El Salvador's President would really help give appropriate context to the March 2025 Venezuelan deportations article.

Can anyone confirm if this seems like fair use? And if so, can you help with the appropriate labelling of the image when I upload it? Thanks! Bob drobbs (talk) 18:49, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't know anything of the topic, so it's hard for me to say. However, you could add it as an External link and see what happens. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:43, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
The external link has already happened.
Also... as an alternative, AP has photos at this link[4] which they say are from the EL Salvador Presidential Press Office.
Are photos released by governmental press offices considered free use? Bob drobbs (talk) 21:10, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Commons:Copyright rules by territory/El Salvador says nothing about it, and it probably would. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Why aren't watchlist and recent changes grouped by default?

image showing the recent changes page, with a series of edits under a grouping. This feature has to be enabled first.
Example of the group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist preference setting.

Hi there,

I was wondering if there is a policy why edits to the same article that occur in short time span are not grouped together by default? I know I can turn on grouping by toggling it on in the Preferences/Recent changes menu, but I'm not clear why it's not like this by default...perhaps there are disadvantages I had not considered? - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 14:31, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I remember being intimidated by it when I turned on that setting for the first time. While it's the most efficient setting, it might not be the simplest starting point for new editors. Perception312 (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Can't get template data editor to appear on userspace /doc page

I've been experimenting with adding TemplateData to several userspace templates such as this minimal one, hoping initially to use the TemplateData editor for this rather than do it the error-prone way, and I'm coming up against the same issue each time:

  1. The template has a /doc page, on which I place a templatedata block.
  2. I open the template page for editing: an Edit TemplateData button appears, as it should, together with a warning that the TemplateData already exists and is on the /doc page.
  3. I open the /doc page for editing, where the TemplateData actually is, and no such button appears.

This happens regardless of whether there's also a {{TemplateData header}} on the page.
Has anyone any idea what might be causing this? Musiconeologist (talk) 01:22, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

@Musiconeologist, I just created Template:User:Musiconeologist/tdata/doc with exact contents of your userpage example. Does it behave correctly when try to edit? If so there must be a namespace restriction that I couldn't find documented anywhere. Commander Keane (talk) 11:43, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
The editor comes up straight away for that one when I open it. I wonder if calling mine something like User:Musiconeologist/Template:whatever/doc might work, so the path ends like a template space one? I suppose the workaround is to create the template data in the template itself then copy it over, but it's a bit of a messy one.
Edit: I've just tried, by clicking the link. Same behaviour: for User:Musiconeologist/Template:whatever, the editor appears for the template page but not for the /doc page. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
@Musiconeologist I don't think mediawiki page titles are particularly magical like that. You say the editor appears for the template page... but are you saying a link appears? Maybe {{Documentation}} is just adding a link, but nothing more substantial. This is getting beyond my skills set. I think we established some sort of namespace issue. If, like me, you can't find any documentation about it you could ask on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) for an explanation. You may be able to test in the real Template namespace, but even the one I created above has been accidentally deleted once. Speaking of that template, I will delete it in a couple of days unless you advise me otherwise. Commander Keane (talk) 15:49, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm happy for it to be deleted—we've established the behaviour, I think.
What happens with the userspace one is: on the template page, there's an Edit template data button together with a warning something like "Warning: there is already a TemplateData block on the documentation page"—but I can still open the editor. On the documentation page, the button never appears, but, and I only realised this after posting before, the page title greys out for about half a second, shortly after opening the page for viewing, in exactly the way it does on other pages with TemplateData just before the edit button appears. So I think maybe it's recognising the section but some bug is aborting the loading process.
Anyway thanks for taking the trouble to create and defend the template. I do at least now know that it would work properly in template space. Musiconeologist (talk) 01:39, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

photos

How to add photos with a mobile phone? Arbabi second (talk) 08:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

اربابی دوم, do you mean (A) how to add photos that are already at Wikimedia Commons to articles, or (B) how to add photos you've taken to Wikimedia Commons, or (C) something else? -- Hoary (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary Sorry for the vagueness of my question. I mean uploading photos using my mobile phone. Arbabi second (talk) 09:00, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@اربابی دوم, perhaps Commons:Upload_tools#Smartphone_apps has something you can use. Commons:Help desk might be a good place to ask about this. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:39, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång Thank you.😊 Arbabi second (talk) 09:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång Problem solved. Thank you very much. Arbabi second (talk) 10:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@اربابی دوم the regular Upload Wizard works fine on a phone: just visit c:Main page and click the blue "Upload" button. Then you can select photos from your phone's gallery. The android app is an alternative. Commander Keane (talk) 10:11, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Commander Keane Problem solved. Thank you very much.😊 Arbabi second (talk) 10:21, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Brumby

I was reading an article about the history of brumbies. My husband's surname is Brumby and my married name we have done a lot of research on the name. He is descended from Danish Vikings named Brunebi, who migrated to UK and worked at Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire - the name became Anglicised to Brumby. The town became known as OLD BRUMBY TOWN. We have been there and so many places in the town are named after him - Brumby School of Arts, Brumby Boulevard etc. A relative - Captain James Brumby migrated to NSW and joined the NSW Corps. He had horses on his property and when he decided he had enough of Australia tried to sell all his livestock but there were a few left which he let run free when he returned to UK. When people saw the horses they would say "oh there's one of Brumby's", "or there's a Brumby" and wild horses gradually became "Brumbies". 60.226.154.120 (talk) 05:57, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello 60.226, and welcome to Wikipedia. It's not quite clear what you want, but I'll take a guess. Wikipedia has, for example, an article called Brumby (surname). Perhaps you think that article should be a little more like Smith (surname). If so, you can start editing, be WP:BOLD as we say around here, but Wikipedia has some rules etc and you should try to get the gist of them before starting. WP:TUTORIAL is a good place to start. Consider also WP:REGISTER. Brumby (disambiguation) might have something that interests you. Hope this helps some. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:23, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
I believe the second half of 60.226's post is referring to option #1 found towards the end of the Brumby#Origin_of_the_term section. They can find reliable sources and expand it, WP:TUTORIAL will have some guidance as already suggested. Alternatively they can make suggestions on the talk page of the article. Commander Keane (talk) 10:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Benicio del Toro

Three months ago I asked a question regarding Benicio del Toro's birthplace at Talk:Benicio del Toro#Birthplace, but I haven't received a reply. Can someone help me on this? Thanks in advance. 137.204.150.21 (talk) 10:07, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

You say you have six sources for the different birthplace. I haven't investigated any of your sources, but recognize a couple of the domain names as those of reliable websites. The article currently cites a single source for the birthplace. This source is "FamilySearch", which has been judged generally unreliable. Wait no longer: correct the birthplace. (Don't supply six references; instead, supply references to the three sources that seem the most authoritative.) -- Hoary (talk) 11:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Reference error (SS Dixie Arrow)

Hey all,
On the page for SS Dixie Arrow, I keep running into a citation error. It says, "Cite error: The named reference ":22" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page)." The help page it links me to is technical and beyond my understanding of how Wikipedia works. What I think is happening is that it thinks that I've used the same link for multiple sources (pages from Lloyd's of London's register), but I haven't. Is there any chance I could get some help with resolving this issue?
Thanks! –PhoenixCaelestisTalkContributions 11:39, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@PhoenixCaelestis: I don't know how named references work in VisualEditor but the source editor (see Help:VisualEditor#Opening VisualEditor for how to switch) shows two <ref name=":22">...</ref> with different content. You have to change one of them. If they are supposed to be different references then rename one of them from :22 to a unique name. You can also just remove name=":22" if the reference is only used once. If they are supposed to be the same reference then change the wrong definition to only say <ref name=":22" /> without ...</ref>. This will reuse the definition from the other place. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:01, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Removing the other instances of the reference seemed to work. Thanks for your help! –PhoenixCaelestisTalkContributions 12:14, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

NPOV in category title for Airstrikes by perpetrator

I recently visited Category:Airstrikes by perpetrator, and it appears to me that the title of the category is not neutral. The term "perpetrator" is inherently a value-laden word; there are no neutral connotations associated with the word.

Airstrikes don't always target civilians. Often, airstrikes are military operations with military targets justified under international law. Thus, it seems unnecessarily biased to refer to the executors of all airstrikes as "perpetrators."

Sorry about the lack of Wikipedia acronyms and shorthand, by the way. I joined fairly recently and I'm still learning the terminology.

Althistwikibox (talk) 12:52, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@Althistwikibox: you could go to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion and suggest an alternative. One possibility is Category:Airstrikes by attacker, based on Category:Invasions by invading country, but not "by country" as NATO is not a country. TSventon (talk) 13:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Oversight- in the "Help Box" on this page please place in the "relations" section Harriet's brother James Martineau. I cannot do this. Thanks 49.185.202.240 (talk) 06:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Click here. You'll see "Relatives", which now includes one close relative, one in-law, and one risibly distant descendant. I suggest replacing the third with her brother. Or simply add him, if you insist that a great great (etc) relative is significant. If there's a difficulty, please describe the difficulty. -- Hoary (talk) 08:13, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
I've added her brother. (I didn't delete the current Princess of Wales, as doing so could require a talk-page discussion.) Deor (talk) 15:40, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Use X english applies to which name for template?

I noticed on Melsonby Hoard that it has a Use British English template, which makes sense. I also noticed that it used template:Infobox Artefact which is redirect to template:Infobox Artifact. Given that Artefact is the British spelling, would it be required to use that spelling for the Infobox based on the Use British English for the article? Naraht (talk) 17:54, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It probably doesn't matter much as the name of the template isn't visible. Hinton St Mary Mosaic has " "infobox artifact". TSventon (talk) 18:16, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

New editor-help making a first page

I'd like to try to make a draft of a page for a relatively low-stakes thing just to get some practice in. It's the steamer the Northern Wave from the 1800's. I'm unsure on the notability but honestly I'd rather treat it as practice and be pleasantly surprised if it is notable so that it's less stressful. Is there a guide or something about writing a page from scratch? Sock-the-guy (talk) 17:41, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Help:Your first article is a good place to start. I like your view on this, create the page in Draft and with the pleasant surprise if it is notable. My other suggestion is if there is a page for a similar steamer, feel free to copy into your draft and change. Using other wikipedia articles as a place to start can take care of many issues.Naraht (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! Sock-the-guy (talk) 18:44, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I have an issue with an interlanguage link. I originally made it because the subject didn't have an article in English, and now there is an article with that name for a different person. How do I separate them again? What alternatives are there?

Billy Joyce Spagooder (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Spagooder, I checked {{interlanguage link}} and you could replace {{Interlanguage link|Billy Joyce|ja|ビリー・ジョイス}} with {{Interlanguage link|Billy Joyce (wrestler)|lt=Billy Joyce|ja|ビリー・ジョイス}}. TSventon (talk) 19:45, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
That makes sense, thanks. Spagooder (talk) 20:03, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Advice For A Novice Editor

What might be a good place for someone to begin with edits if they are a fairly slow learner and also limited to a mobile device? Thanks. 2020View (talk) 14:15, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@2020View You can try WP:TASK. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:05, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@2020View: I was going to suggest you fix the typo for math based games. However ,due to poor comma typo on Graphing calculator in the Games and utilities section but I see that you have mastered typo correction. You can do almost everything on a phone, I do. You may have to click the "Desktop" button on the bottom of a page to get a different view of it. Like on the WP:TASK that will give you are a better overview and different interface. The typo still needs to be fixed by the way ;-). Commander Keane (talk) 00:25, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Date template

Hi, On another wiki I need to build a template that returns the current date in DMY format. I looked at the templates here and they are quite complicated, and just copypasting them into the other wiki does not work - I think I would need to probably create some other templates as well that carry out the various functions involved. Would anyone be willing to help explain to me what the easiest way to build such a template from scratch would be? ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:39, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

If all that you need is the current date in DMY format, perhaps all you need is the #time parser function:
{{#time:j F Y}} → 27 April 2025
Trappist the monk (talk) 23:33, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Ok, 'I put that into the template [[Template:Current date]], but when I call that template in another page it just produces {{#time:j F Y}}. I am doing something wrong clearly. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Ah, your link led me to the magic words, and that fixed it. Thanks!·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:09, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
@Maunus: If code doesn't work then always link it when you ask for help so we can see what is wrong. I didn't find attempted code in your recent edits anywhere. Is it not a Wikimedia wiki? We need to know that. It may run another MediaWiki version and have other extensions and configuration settings and so on. In particular, it may not have installed mw:Extension:ParserFunctions which adds #time. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:24, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
No, it is not a wikimedia wiki, and I figured it might be something about the different versions or extensions not matching, but I found the magic words {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTMONTH}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}, which worked like a charm.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:05, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Articles tagged as having non-free content

Some articles are tagged as having non-free content with no indication given of what content is being challenged or where it originates. We're supposed to assume good intent, but who would toss up such a claim without offering proof? Unverified claims could just be an attempt to get a page deleted. What are we supposed to do with these? Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 02:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@Oona Wikiwalker: ask the editors who added the tags. According to {{Non-free}}, the specific criteria of concern have to be stated in the edit summary when using the template, so
TSventon (talk) 03:04, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
They applied the tag five years ago. What if they don't respond? Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 03:33, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Correction: four and a half years ago. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 03:35, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
They have both edited this week, so hopefully they will respond.
I notice that all the edits used Wikipedia:Twinkle so twinkle probably does not prompt editors to add any further details when tagging for non-free content. The template doesn't have a talk page, so it might be worth raising the problem at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. TSventon (talk) 03:43, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
This seems to be one one those templates where the |reason= param doesn't work/show even if you're willing to use it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:38, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: the template {{Non-free}} refers to a set of criteria that apply to media not text, but it was edited in 2019 to mention content, not media. Perhaps it should be reworded again for use with non-free media rather than text. TSventon (talk) 12:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
From the template code, it looks as though all it does is fill in some fixed parameter values in {{Ambox}}, meaning the reason parameter just sits around unused. I see it's not a protected template though, so someone familiar with {{ambox}} should be able to amend it
Edit: not quite right—it accepts four parameters (passed to Ambox as |small, |sect, |talk and |date) but doesn't mention any of them in the documentation. Musiconeologist (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
I don't use Twinkle at all, but I noticed that other editors who applied the non-free tag included their source in their edit summary or on the article's talk page. Maybe suggestions to do that should be placed somewhere where even the clumsiest of us trips over them. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 23:39, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
The revision of the article that I added the template to is here, and the copyvio report for that revision can be viewed here. Cordless Larry (talk) 06:37, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Cordless Larry: thank you for answering. Presumably the template could be removed now as the copied content has been reworded. Do you agree that the template is confusing? TSventon (talk) 11:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Yes, although it likely also requires revision deletion. I think when using this template nowadays, I try to indicate the copied-from URL in the reason field, although I see that Gråbergs Gråa Sång suggests that's not working. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:45, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Cordless Larry afaict, you can put text in it, but it won't show in the article like at Gata (food). It becomes more like an invisible note. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Cordless Larry "Non-free" seems to be designed for non-free media, while {{Copypaste}} seems to be designed for copied text and has a url parameter. Is "Copypaste" is available through twinkle? TSventon (talk) 18:01, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Ah yes, now that you mention it, I think that's the template I now use in these situations. There's a "Source URL" field in Twinkle when that template is selected. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:06, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

How can I make a Wikipedia page?

How can I make a Wikipedia page on Wikipedia Country100% (talk) 09:22, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Please see Help:Your first article. Shantavira|feed me 09:29, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
@Country100% hello! Making an acceptable WP-article without knowing how to edit WP is hard. A common advice is to "just" edit for a while first, to try to get a hang of this place.
That said, your first hurdle is "Can a WP-article about your chosen subject be written at all?" Start with reading WP:BACKWARD. If you conclude "Yeah, I have those sources, no problem!", move on to WP:YFA. If your choice of topic fails WP:N, the article will not be accepted. If you decide to go ahead, you need to learn how to add references correctly, WP:TUTORIAL can help with that. This is crucial, and I can't stress that enough. Really. If you intend to write about a living person, read WP:BLP. If you intend to write about yourself (WP:COI), the short advice is "don't."
Hope this helps some. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:19, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
User:Country100%25, a comment prompted by your creations User:Country100%/sandbox and User:Owen.Wall600/sandbox: Wikipedia is not interested in its editors' fantasies. -- Hoary (talk) 11:48, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

THE KINGS BODYGUARD OF THE YEOMAN OF THE GUARD

The hat worn by the Bodyguard has three ribbons, RED, WHITE & BLUE, what do the colours mean or represent Upton PC (talk) 12:20, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

This page is for editors to request help editing Wikipedia articles and pages. You may want to ask this question at the reference desk, where volunteers can help you find information in Wikipedia. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@Upton PC You might find some clues at Union Jack and Yeomen Warders]. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:17, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Request for Template Removal – Wikipedia Page of Erickavu N. Sunil

 Courtesy link: Erickavu N. Sunil

Dear Wikipedia Admins,

I hope you are doing well.

I had created the Wikipedia page for my teacher long ago, ensuring that multiple credible references were cited. However, upon reviewing the page recently, I noticed the following template added at the top:

"A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (November 2022)"

I would like to clarify that Erickavu N. Sunil is a highly respected and accomplished Mridangam artist, author, and educator of international repute. There are numerous verifiable references available online that substantiate his contributions and credentials.

I kindly request you to review the page and verify the citations. If the content aligns with Wikipedia's neutrality and verifiability guidelines, I would appreciate the removal of the above template. Please let me know if any specific improvements are required to ensure compliance.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards,

S. B. Nair Sbnair2003 (talk) 12:38, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Just noting that any editor may help with this, not just admins. Please don't use an AI to write(100% certain according to zeroGPT). 331dot (talk) 12:45, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Please disclose your COI on your user page, I've provided you with instructions on your user talk page. 331dot (talk) 12:47, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
331dot - I got your point.
Request you to validate the below links and take a decision of your own on the said template needs to be removed or not.
https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/kochi/2022/Apr/26/kerala-authors-efforts-to-popularisemridangam-among-global-audience-2446423.html
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/a-new-book-on-the-anatomy-of-a-drum/article34659455.ece
https://gcwtvm.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/REPORT-NATIONAL-SEMINAR-2023-2024.pdf
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/art/indeevaram-is-a-performance-space-for-artistes/article28173140.ece
https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/musicians-and-dancers-in-technopark-who-turn-teachers/article29584271.ece
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/kerala-based-techsariga-club-lets-you-watch-the-music-clubs-concerts-through-its-web-app/article30575830.ece
Thank you. Sbnair2003 (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure what this has to do with conflict of interest. It's not the notability that's being questioned. 331dot (talk) 13:00, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
@Sbnair2003 Conflict of interest isn't about who he is or why he's notable—it's a situation where the contributor has some connection with the person written about. I had created the Wikipedia page for my teacher suggests Erickavu N. Sunil was your teacher, and my experience of music tells me that instrumental teaching needs a lot of one-to-one interaction between the teacher and pupil. The teacher has to give the pupil feedback about what they're doing, and demonstrate things to them. So at first sight, that is a close enough connection to affect how easy it is to write impartially about the teacher.
Please do read the information that @331dot linked to on your talk page. Musiconeologist (talk) 16:21, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
I have removed the {{CoI}} template, because there is nothing on the article's talk page about what in the article is supposed to be non-neutral. Note though that anyone may reinstate the template if they create such a discussion (with the emphasis being on the alleged non-neutrality, not there mere suggestion of a CoI). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:12, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Page

How do you create a page for an author, who was also a successful racecar driver? VanNewman (talk) 03:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi, VanNewman, the page Help:Your first article tells you everything you need to know. But as this was your very first edit you are not eligible to create the article directly. If you tell me the name of the person, I will create an empty Draft for you, and then you can work on it there. Mathglot (talk) 03:33, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! :) Country100% (talk) 09:23, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Helloo, @VanNewman. My earnest advice to new editors is to not even think about trying to create an article until you have spent several weeks - at least - learning about how Wikipedia works by making improvements to existing articles. Once you have understood core policies such as verifiability, neutral point of view, reliable, independent sources, and notability, and experienced how we handle disagreements with other editors (the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle), then you might be ready to read your first article carefully, and try creating a draft. If you don't follow this advice but try to create an article without this preparation, you are likely to have a frustrating and disappointing experience with Wikipedia. ColinFine (talk) 14:25, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Random error message

For the past 12 hours or so I've been getting the error message "Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"", on about half the Wikipedia pages I try to open. Reloading does not fix it but if I close the tab and attempt to access the same page again it works. Does anyone know what's causing this? Electricmemory (talk) 04:03, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

@Electricmemory, there is ongoing discussion about it at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Error_message and phab:T389734. May be related to history and contribs pages. Commander Keane (talk) 10:33, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
While the Administrators are the people with the bigger mops, I think of those who watch WP:VPT as the ones with the screwdrivers and toolbelts.(and yes, I'm sure there is overlap. :) )Naraht (talk) 13:04, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Love the analogy! DMacks (talk) 13:10, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks. Electricmemory (talk) 23:13, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Help

References are not being shown inside the infobox of 2024 Bangladesh anti-Hindu violence. https://w.wiki/DbsK Can anyone help me?

00:07, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

@Somajyoti: If casulties2 is set then several more specific parameters are ignored. You can move the references to casualties2 or not set it. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:26, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Please add the word convent in the category section of the bottom of this page. Thanks Srbernadette (talk) 03:45, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

As a reader, it's unclear to me what "SK Convent 1/2 Klang and SMK Convent Klang" is supposed to mean. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Probably SMK stands for: sekolah menengah kebangsaan, national secondary school. Lectonar (talk) 12:51, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Political campaign poster

2025 presidential election poster

Would it be appropriate to place an electoral poster of a candidate in the ongoing presidential election in his article page as an ilustration? (The poster was released under CC0 1.0 Universal free license.) Antoni12345 (talk) 21:42, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Electoral posters are not neutral by nature, please use normal picture of the candidate instead. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 22:10, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
I think it can fit the Electoral history section. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:26, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Not yet. It may be of historical interest in the future, but to keep Wikipedia neutral it is not currently appropriate. I imagine voters may read the article and influencing elections doesn't sound good. By all means make a note on the talk page about the poster's existence and it can be revisited after the election. Commander Keane (talk) 14:43, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Fair enough. Not completely unheard of, though:[5] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Well OK. What about the campaign logos in the 2025 Polish presidential election article then, as they are alo campaign material used to advertise for candidates? Antoni12345 (talk) 17:42, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
@Antoni12345: you can discuss it on the election article's talk page. To me it is less of a problem because all candidate's logos can be displayed. Although some aren't. Is that because their supporters don't edit English Wikipedia, they weren't smart enough to create a free-licence logo or they can't afford to make a logo? I don't think being poor makes you a bad president. This is bias and it should be avoided. Similarly it might be fine to add the poster to Zandberg's article if you find every other candidate's poster and add it to their respective articles. The candidate in Gråbergs Gråa Sång's example won that election ;-). All of this should apply to text also, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Commander Keane (talk) 12:21, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Well, non of these logos are actually free licensed to be precise and each one is an extracted and adapted image from the campaign materials or other visuals used by the candidate, which is another problem as they could not in 100% correspond to the actual visuals used by the candidates (the only candidate which actually acknowledges using a campaign logo is Trzaskowski, making it a separate file for downloading). Non of the candidates also (except for Zandberg) release their campaign materials under a free license nor specify copyrights regarding their downloading as many of them actually have campaign posters avalible at their respective campaign websites.
And to be clear I do understand the ambiguity of NPOV regarding the inclusion of this poster as an ilustration, that's why I've decided to share my doubts, possibly to anticipate another editor wanting to include it.
Thanks for all of the remarks, I will discuss it with others at the relevant article discussions. Antoni12345 (talk) 14:40, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

How long should a discussion sit on a requested page move?

There has been a tag for a requested move page that has been open for one month. The article received some good feedback. The original requestor backed down and blanked their talk page on the matter about it after making some personal unsubstantiated attacks. Nothing has happened with the discussion lately. How long is long enough for the discussion to be closed? many thanksNayyn (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nayyn: which article? Wikipedia:Requested moves might have some ideas on timing, but generally consensus just needs to be established for closure. Maybe it has been forgotten? Commander Keane (talk) 12:28, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
@Commander Keane I assume it's Nia (charity), which came up at the Help Desk recently. (I don't think I should comment on closure, since I contributed to the discussion as a result of seeing the Help Desk thread.) The last activity there was nine days ago, I think. Musiconeologist (talk) 15:40, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Infobox clan on the Clan Logan page

Hello, The pictures on this page Clan Logan - Wikipedia are out of date. I see that they are in the Infobox and I would like to change both of them. However, I have been struggling with the instructions on how to do so. Thanks! Sean Logan Logan9839 (talk) 18:24, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Which part(s) of which instruction(s) seem(s) to induce a struggle, Logan9839? -- Hoary (talk) 22:08, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Hi, thanks, specifically how do I add a new picture to it. I am guessing I need to get it into the database and then reference that, but I can't figure out how to add the new picture. Logan9839 (talk) 22:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
If the new picture is unrestricted by copyright, you should start by uploading it to Wikimedia Commons, which has an Upload Wizard.   Maproom (talk) 08:32, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, that worked! Logan9839 (talk) 17:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I would like to know if I did this correctly. I've heard of WP:CUTPASTE moves. The reason I moved some things back over to Talk:March 2025 Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip from Talk:March 2025 Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip/Archive 1 is because these edit requests have not been answered. In the page history, when users attempted to answer these edit requests, @Ivebeenhacked reverted these kinds of edits.

Diffs:

Justjourney (talk) 18:36, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I found this guideline: Wikipedia:Edit_requests#Archived_edit_requests. Still want a response here though. Justjourney (talk) 19:53, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
In this case I would suggest leaving archives alone, except for marking any open edit requests as answered.
This is a contentious editing area. The guideline you pointed to does mention consensus and on a high traffic talk page consensus not to do something can be indicated by no response.
If anyone feels passionately about an archived edit request, they can reformulate it as an improved version in their own words and post a new edit request linking to the archive. That's my view, anyway. Commander Keane (talk) 00:02, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
I forgot to ping @Justjourney and add that a recent RfC agrees that substantial changes (eg answering edit requests) to archives should be reverted. Commander Keane (talk) 00:12, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
@Commander Keane So is what I was doing wrong, and should I stop doing it? Justjourney (talk) 01:17, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
@Justjourney: Yes you can stop. I wouldn't say "wrong" generally, it was well intentioned in a tricky talk page situation. You can see the listing at Category:Wikipedia extended-confirmed-protected edit requests which I presume is well patrolled so these edit requests are probably not forgotten or lost. Oh, and for your info WP:CUTPASTE is about making sure all the editors of a page get credit for their work in the history section, so it didn't apply in this case. Commander Keane (talk) 10:00, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
I agree with your specific guidance on leaving WP:PIA related archives alone, however I don't read the RFC as saying that discussion topics should not be moved out of archive for further discussion, what do you think about that? TSventon (talk) 17:29, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

African American or African-American?

While the article is African American, there are a number of articles like List of African-American fraternities and sororities that use the hyphen and even the African American article has a considerable number of usages of African-American, though fewer than African American. I can't find any guidance, suggestions? Naraht (talk) 23:17, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Naraht I believe that Wikipedia hyphenates African-American as an adjective, but not African American as a noun, see multiple requested moves at Talk:African-American culture. I notice that is not consistently applied in African Americans. TSventon (talk) 23:54, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Ah. In African-American Fraternity, "African-American" is single Adjective, and thus hyphenated, but in the phrase African American, it serves as a noun (with African perhaps viewed as an adjective to it. And I see *lots* of attempts to standardize to a broad no-hyphen standard. I think I'll go with that, even though it can lead to some oddities, when talking about the emphasis for a college social fraternity, [[List of African-American fraternities and sororities|African American]] would be the way to go. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talkcontribs) 00:08, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

File:Liverpool FC.svg

Hi ,why this user publicated this logo (File:Liverpool FC.svg) for 2 articles, regarding the Wikipedia:Non-free content ,for logos used for 1 article but why the user publicated this logo for 2 articles?? (Google translator) AbchyZa22 (talk) 08:11, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

@AbchyZa22 Because that logo is the logo for both teams, and whoever uploaded it did the whole process both times Ultraodan (talk) 08:41, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

How do I address vandalism by users that blank their own talk pages?

I have a fairly complicated question that I could use help working through.

I patrol recent changes fairly actively, particularly monitoring for vandalism, but also keeping an eye out for promising new users to welcome.

I've realized that I don't know how to proceed when a user (or IP user) blanks their own talk page, removing the multi-level warnings that have been given to them. In general, the convenient thing about these multi-level warnings is that it allows other patrols to monitor what "level" a potentially problematic user has reached. But when that user blanks their talk page, that visibility disappears.

It is possible, in these cases, for me to just make a mental note of that user and remember to check their talk page history to see what level they have reached, but at that point, it becomes much harder to decentralize the effort. It's harder for me to step away from my "shift" without worrying that other patrols will be "duped" by that user.

Does anyone have any tips on how to handle these situations? I can explain more if needed.

BTW, while I am currently dealing with a situation similar to this, I don't mean to imply that the user I'm currently dealing with is actually doing anything that wrong. This just made me realize that I don't know how to handle a "worst case scenario" version of the situation I'm in. — Gmarmstrong (talk) 22:12, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

If someone removes a warning, it doesn't make that warning not be in place. I might need to double check, but I think Twinkle is smart enough to know when previous warnings have happened.
I think most problematic users expose themselves, and removing the templates is an act of acknowledgement of it's existance. Lee Vilenski (talkcontribs) 22:17, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Lee's advice is correct. The details are given at WP:BLANKING, which says that there are some items that should not be removed but that doesn't include the standard warning templates. Mike Turnbull (talk) 22:20, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Speaking from an admin point of view, I think there's two relevant factors that admins usually check, and recent changes patrollers should learn to check. The first is that this removal will almost always be obvious in the user's contributions. In fact any response on their own talk page is going to be interesting. The second is to check the timing of warnings using the talk page's history (you'd be surprised how many people combine a string of warnings and AIV reports long after any editing). After time one learns that histories and contributions are more important than things visible on a page. 'Levels' are not really important here. I would just say, although BLANKING is there as a policy/guideline, a quick cheeky revert to restore the warnings (maybe just once) doesn't hurt. -- zzuuzz (talk) 22:29, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Most admins will take the removal of a warning from an editor's talk page to mean that the editor has read and understood the warning. Further violations will be dealt with on that basis. Mjroots (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Citation inside or outside closing round bracket?

Should it be (statement to be verified)[1] or (statement to be verified[1]) ? Thanks. Masato.harada (talk) 13:45, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

outside. – robertsky (talk) 13:54, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
@Masato.harada: Guidance is provided at WP:REFPUNCT: If the reference is specifically for content enclosed in parentheses, it should also stay within them. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:31, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Please add the word convent in the category strip at the bottom of the page. Thanks Srbernadette (talk) 08:01, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

You have already been told not to create multiple threads asking the exact same question at the Wikipedia Help Desk. [6] Please stop. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Added Category:Convents of the Catholic Church in Asia, "best" I could find. Here's how:[7] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:17, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
How you found the category in the first place might be useful information too, I think. Especially if it was something simple like typing [[Category:convents in and looking at the popup list or putting category:convents into the search box. Musiconeologist (talk) 16:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
I started at Category:Convents and "dug" from there. I was aiming for "Convents in Malaysia" but it doesn't exist. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:26, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
I tried via a search for "category:convents in", didn't get quite as far as you before realising I was in danger of staying online instead of sleeping, then noticed that you'd already added the category. :-) Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 17:30, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Srbernadette Are you familiar with the Preview button? I think previewing your edits before you click Publish would help you immensely. 331dot (talk) 09:03, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
@Srbernadette: Kindly acquaint yourself with how to add categories. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 11:37, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I just had to create a redirect from La Republica (Costa Rica), which surprised me. I thought our search function captured things like that? Valereee (talk) 15:41, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Just had to do it again, creating a redirect from Magon Prize to Magón Prize. Valereee (talk) 16:41, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Valereee, my hunch is that this is probably due to diacritics. The geniuses who hang out at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) can probably give you a more definitive answer. Cullen328 (talk) 19:24, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, Cullen, I'll go there! Valereee (talk) 19:39, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Can anyone revert content?

I thought only registered users could revert content.

What is the purpose of registration, if unregistered users can revert long-time users on a whim?

Why is registration so strongly encouraged, if it ultimately makes no difference?

Honest questions. Thank you. PB57 (talk) 23:04, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @PumpkinButter. You should read WP:ACCOUNT. IP users can't edit most protected pages and have a much harder time being recognized by other editors, since the IP is just a jumble of letters and numbers. Plus, your IP address is now completely public to everyone everywhere. It can be pretty uncomfortable. Tarlby (t) (c) 00:04, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Lee Grant PB57 (talk) 23:04, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

@PumpkinButter: Everybody can revert unless the page is protected and they cannot edit at all. See Wikipedia:Why create an account? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:03, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible to change Wikipedia Time to 12 hour clock and the date format to month day year?

Does anyone know if its possible to change the Wikipedia time to 12 hours clock and date format to month day year? Isla🏳️‍⚧ 10:45, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

@Isla You can manipulate how you personally see the times / dates in threads like this at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. Articles can have their default set as dmy or mdy by using the templates {{Use dmy dates}} or {{Use mdy dates}}, which is often done to correspond to the version of English being used (see WP:ENGVAR). Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:02, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Really complex merge situation

So, I have marked type 051B destroyer and Chinese destroyer Shenzhen for merging. Now, what make this complicated is that Chinese destroyer Shenzhen is to be merged into the type 051B article(because the type 051B is a one ship class), and then the type 051B article gets moved to Chinese Destroyer Shenzhen. this is because doing this would simply the wikidata link process and because the type 051B article has more info(even though the Chinese destroyer shenzhen article has better and more photos). How do I approach this merge, as it is the first time i need to merge an article, and may I ask if there are any tools for merging? Even better if someone could do the merge for me pls Thehistorianisaac (talk) 15:26, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

@Thehistorianisaac:, are you asking what a merged article about type 051B destroyer and Chinese destroyer Shenzhen should look like? If so, you could ask at WP:WPMH talk and/or look for articles on other one ship classes. You could use your sandbox if you want to experiment. The merged article does not have to be perfect as it can always be improved later. type 051B destroyer is older so it makes sense to merge the other article into it.
If you want to know what to do after updating, look at Wikipedia:Merging#How to merge. To move the "type 051B article" to "Chinese Destroyer Shenzhen" use Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests as you need a Wikipedia:Round-robin move. TSventon (talk) 09:57, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Oh ok thanks.
Also are there any tools to do a merge? Additionally how do I close the discussion and stuff? Thehistorianisaac (talk) 11:59, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Merging explains how to close the discussion (and stuff) and says that you can do it as an involved editor. It doesn't mention a tool, so I don't believe there is one. Which text, if any, to merge is an editorial decision, so I don't see how it could be automated. TSventon (talk) 12:37, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Can't log-in via Foxfire, but can log-in via Safari

I've been on Wikipedia for over 20 years, and been posting & editing for over 15 years. I've had Foxfire as my default web browser for more than a decade I'm sure, so most of my entries on Wikipedia have been done while using Foxfire as my browser. About four days ago I found myself unable to log on, as my name & customary password weren't accepted in the log-in fields. Even after I'd cleared my cache & cookies.

I've had no idea why this happened.

Just yesterday using Safari I was able to use a "special procedure" to log-in, which accepted my name and my customary Wikipedia password. So I'm able to look at my Watchlist and my most recently developed articles, and I'm able to submit this request for help.

But what do I need to do to utilize Foxfire again as my browser of choice. Thanks.Joel Russ (talk) 21:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Foxfire, or Firefox? Maproom (talk) 21:28, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
@Joel Russ: I am guessing it could be due to Wikimedia login changes from about 2 weeks ago. This comment says if "you use cookie / ad blockers, you might have to allowlist the domain auth.wikimedia.org now". Commander Keane (talk) 23:15, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. (Sorry about misspelling Firefox.) But does this mean I must permanently disable my ad blocker and cookie limiter? If so, won't this allow all sorts of cookies and ads in the future?Joel Russ (talk) 23:54, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
no, your blocker should have a way to whitelist (allow) a certain URL mgjertson (talk) (contribs) 19:44, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
I suddenly got "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please resubmit the form. You may receive this message if you are blocking cookies." but I was able to log-in fine about 10 hours ago from the same PC and browser. I was locked out for about half an hour. Restarting the browser, and bypassing cookie/cache by using private mode didn't resolve it either, but half an hour later, I am back in like usual. Graywalls (talk) 03:42, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@Graywalls: That was a Wikimedia-wide problem, it appears to be sorted now, see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Various_ongoing_errors_with_my_account. DuncanHill (talk) 03:48, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
I just had that happen to me, Firefox as well. Found that I had to click the shield in the address bar, turn off "Enhanced Tracking Protection" (toggle switch), and then log in. It then gave a second, different, error message on the login page saying something like "your session has likely expired, please log in again", but then it had a different button "Log in via central". I clicked that and here I am. Not sure how long I was "signed out", but between finding the "You've been signed out due to an anomaly" message and logging back in, it was about 45 minutes. And so far, going and turning "Enhanced Tracking Protection" back on after sign-in has not caused any issues of being logged back out or anything. Zinnober9 (talk) 04:03, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
https://downdetector.com/status/wikipedia/ Looks like it flared up for a bit and came down. Graywalls (talk) 04:23, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Issue with Creating a Stub for "Andrew Koenig (programmer)" on Persian Wikipedia

Hello,

I translated the introductory section of the English Wikipedia article "Andrew Koenig (programmer)" into Persian to create a stub article on Persian Wikipedia. My main motivation was that the Persian Wikipedia article "ضدالگو" (translated from the English Wikipedia article Anti-pattern) references Andrew Koenig, and I believe he is an important figure in this context.

However, when I attempted to publish the stub, an automatic filter on Persian Wikipedia blocked the submission, displaying the warning: "(Adding a link to a weblog or forum)". After asking for help on the Persian Wikipedia Help Desk, I was informed that this might be due to a URL containing "wordpress" in the references, specifically this source: 🔗 https://lbsitbytes2010.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/andrew-r-koenig/

Additionally, I was advised that this source might not be reliable and that I should consider requesting the deletion of the English article due to possible notability concerns. However, I find this suggestion questionable because:

The English article has been translated into five other languages.

Other Wikipedia articles link to it.

The notability of Andrew Koenig in the field of software development, particularly regarding C++ idioms and anti-patterns, seems well-established.

My primary goal is to publish a stub article on Persian Wikipedia, not to delete the English article. I suspect the automatic filter may have mistakenly blocked the article due to an overgeneralized rule.

Could you please advise on the best approach to address this issue? Is there a way to demonstrate the notability of the English article more effectively, or should I seek an exemption for the automatic filter in Persian Wikipedia?

Thank you for your help.

Best regards, Arbabi second (talk) 12:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

We cannot help you with issues on the Persian Wikipedia; each version of Wikipedia is a separate project, with their own editors and policies. They likely have a Help Desk of their own where you can ask this question. 331dot (talk) 12:55, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@331dot
Thank you for your response. I understand that each Wikipedia operates independently, and I originally asked for help on Persian Wikipedia. However, the editors there specifically suggested that I bring this issue to English Wikipedia and even consider nominating "Andrew Koenig (programmer)" for deletion due to possible notability concerns.
I am simply following their recommendation and seeking clarification on whether the article meets English Wikipedia’s notability standards. If it does, I would like to reference it properly in Persian Wikipedia without issues.
I appreciate any guidance on how to proceed. Arbabi second (talk) 13:20, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
I can't tell you what you should do on the Persian Wikipedia, but it seems like he's notable as far as we are concerned(I glanced at the article, but didn't examine it in depth). It is entirely possible that he is notable here but not on the Persian Wikipedia, due to differences in notability guidelines. 331dot (talk) 13:27, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@اربابی دوم: I'm not autoconfirmed at the Persian Wikipedia so I cannot see their filter logs but maybe you can see something at [8]. It's hard to help without knowing the language or seeing the log or filter. Maybe you just have to avoid wordpress.com. I could save the url in my Persian sandbox but the filter might be namespace-dependent and there may be no way to make an exemption without editing the filter code itself in a way you will probably not get approved. The spam blacklist has a page with exceptions but filters work differently. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:44, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@اربابی دوم According to WP:RSPWORDPRESS, Wordpress should never be used to back up claims about living people on en:Wikipedia but we don't have a filter to actually prevent its use, as it is allowed in some circumstances (see link). I suggest you remove that citation in the Persian article and try to find a better source for the statement here on the English article. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:03, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@Michael D. Turnbull Thank you for your guidance, but the Persian version of the article is only a stub intended to introduce this person, who is mentioned in a relatively important article. In this regard, this source actually plays a central role, because other sources deal with details such as the names of books that have not been translated into Persian at all. Arbabi second (talk) 14:17, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter Thank you for your guidance. I also didn't have any problems on the Persian Wikipedia sandbox. I am currently thinking about this issue and welcome your guidance. Arbabi second (talk) 14:06, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @اربابی دوم.
The article Andrew Koenig (programmer) appears to be woefully badly supported by citations. An obituary of his father which doesn't even mention him is a completely irrelevant waste of time. The Wordpress article is almost certainly not reliable. There is no value in copying that source (or most of the others) over to an article in a different language.
I'm not sure whether I have the time (or the interest) to clean up that article, but I will certainly tag it for its inadequate sourcing. ColinFine (talk) 14:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@ColinFine Thank you for taking the time to review the article and for your input on its sourcing issues. I understand your concerns and appreciate your effort in tagging the article for improvement.
Given your assessment, I will withdraw my attempt to publish a translated stub of Andrew Koenig (programmer) on Persian Wikipedia for now. My intention was never to spread unreliable sources, but rather to ensure that relevant topics, like anti-patterns, are well-represented across different language versions of Wikipedia.
That being said, I can’t help but notice an anti-pattern-like situation here—where issues are identified and tagged, but the actual improvement remains uncertain. Hopefully, this is just a temporary stage, and the article will eventually receive the necessary attention and reliable sources it deserves.
I appreciate your insights and will keep an eye on the article’s development.
Best regards, Arbabi second (talk) 20:32, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
اربابی دوم, Wikipedia editors generally write and improve articles that they are interested in, so if an article is tagged and no one is interested in approving it it will stay tagged. You are obviously interested in the subject, so you would be a good person to try to improve it. Helpdesk helpers see problems every day and can't solve all of them. TSventon (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@TSventon Thank you for your response. I understand that article improvement depends on contributors' interests. However, English is not my native language, and my experience with Wikipedia—especially the English version—is quite limited.
That said, I will try to help improve the article where I can, though with caution. I appreciate the guidance.
Best regards, Arbabi second (talk) 21:27, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@اربابی دوم Don't forget you can comment on the talk page if need be—even if the page is rarely visited and nobody responds, the material is there for reference when you come back later with more experience and feel able to make the decision yourself. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 23:16, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Redundant articles: "Tomb of the Gwanggaeto" and "Tomb of the General"

There are two articles that point to the same topic, Tomb of the Gwanggaeto and Tomb of the General which seems to be the official name. Even though the translations of the names are different, the only source in Tomb of the Gwanggaeto calls the structure Tomb of the General. Wondering if Tomb of the Gwanggaeto should be merged/redirected or just nominated for deletion. Titan1655 (talk) 02:35, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The former article has a single source to a single page for a single short paragraph of prose that's repeated on the latter article. I'd suggest you be bold and just redirect the former. Departure– (talk) 02:37, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I am not sure if linking the countries in popcorn chicken was overlinking. According to the Manual of style guideline, "major" countries should not be linked. Justjourney (talk | contribs) 02:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

For most of those, the fact they're linked makes me think I'll be taken to an article about that country's food or about the role of popcorn chicken there, but it just goes to an article about the country that has nothing to do with the subject. I click the link and then feel I was tricked. "Major" really refers to familiarity. It's overlinking if it doesn't help readers to understand the article. Taiwan seems relevant as the background culture for the food. For the others it's a matter of how likely readers are to be unfamiliar with them—I'd say they mostly are overlinking, but someone from another part of the world might feel differently. Ultimately the question is "does this link help readers?" and the Manual of Style aims to help in answering that. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 08:08, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

False and misleading image in Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen

I've removed the image File:Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen Front Page.png from Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (thought to be the first magazine in history). The description and translation at Commons is just wrong, to the point where I wonder if it's just incompetence (at reading blackletter and German) or even deliberately deceptive: The image linked there isn't from the magazine, but from a collection of songs to be sung in church. I'm not sure how to go about correcting the page at Commons, though. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:26, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

The error could have been copied from https://alts.co/vintage-magazines/, without noticing that the text in the image contradicts the page title. It looks like a version of the title page (image 9) from Commons:File:Erbauliche Lieder-Sammlung zum Gottesdienstlichen Gebrauch in den Vereinigten Evangelisch-Lutherischen Gemeinen in Pennsylvanien und den benachbarten Staaten (IA erbaulichelieder00evang).pdf and could be renamed via Commons:Commons:File renaming. TSventon (talk) 18:57, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@Florian Blaschke: I have explained the error to Gameking69 and asked where they got the image from. Unfortunately they haven't edited since early March, but hopefully they will be back in due course. TSventon (talk) 15:41, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

At least 5 paragraphs of Earth Day is copied from https://www.earthday.org/history/. Copyvios report shows "Violation suspected - 82.4%". The URL is - https://copyvios.toolforge.org/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Earth+Day&oldid=&use_engine=0&use_links=0&turnitin=0&action=compare&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.earthday.org%2Fhistory%2F. How can I tag that page? Somajyoti 14:10, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Somajyoti Full instructions are given on this page. It is possible that the target URL copied from Wikipedia but that's unlikely in this case. The terms of use of that website doesn't allow direct copying. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:54, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Template rendering issue

I removed the birds-eye view image from the infobox on Townleyhall passage grave and put it into the gallery instead. However, the infobox is now showing the "side view" image no matter what I do, including a purge. I tried C&Ping the full code of the article into my sandbox, and there it renders in preview without any image at the top of the infobox, just the map as expected. Presumably I'm doing something abominably stupid, but can't work out what. Could someone please point me in the right direction? -- Avocado (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Might the infobox be importing it from this Wikidata item for the article? Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 16:58, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Oh! Quite possibly. I assume it's not showing in my sandbox because my sandbox isn't linked to that wikidata item?
  • How would I be able to tell if that's the problem?
  • Is there a way to suppress that?
-- Avocado (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Adding fetchwikidata = no does the trick. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:04, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Yup, that did it. Brilliant -- thank you! -- Avocado (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

This page has a contentious topics banner related to the Arab–Israeli conflict, which makes perfect sense. But it also says the article is extended confirmed, which is not, and which looks very much like a mistake—although I'm not sure in what direction.

Even when I am not logged in and go to edit, I am not warned of any special restrictions on the article. Is there something wrong here, or am I just confused?

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 17:31, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The extended-confirmed notice is not a notice of page protection, but a notice that non-EC users shouldn't be making non-edit request edits to the page. Pages are only protected when necessary, even in contentious topic areas. We hope that people respect the restrictions on their own first. 331dot (talk) 17:42, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Great not to protect any more than necessary, but shouldn't there also be a note when you go to edit the article, as I've seen elsewhere, that says You are subject to additional rules when you edit this article. If you do not follow these rules, you may be blocked from editing:....? Only a minority of editors, I suspect, go the the talk page at all, much less read all the material posted to the top. Is that something I could add myself? Patrick (talk) 18:09, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
This one: {{Contentious topics/page restriction editnotice|topic=a-i}}?
Addition: or this one {{Contentious topics/editnotice|topic=a-i}} per Template:Contentious topics/editnotice (even though they display identical text)? Patrick (talk) 18:21, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
I think I figured it out!: Template talk:Editnotices/Page/History of antisemitism Patrick (talk) 19:21, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Watchlist question - read articles disappearing until next edit

Often when I'm checking my watchlist, I will go to ANI, and then back to the watchlist, only to find that I can't see ANI until the next time it's edited. I looked at the Watchlist preferences, but couldn't figure out how to tell it to continue to show me pages even if they haven't changed. Or am I really confused, which is always an option. Thanks! SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like you have the "Unseen changes" filter active. Does removing/unchecking it solve your issue? Perception312 (talk) 19:22, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
It was off, but I turned it on and off again. Maybe that will help. Thanks! SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:00, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Visual editor not working

I just tried to use the visual editor after not using it for several months. I went into the editing section of my preferences and clicked the box for "Enable the visual editor" but when I look at articles, or anything else, the only choice I see is "[edit source]", not "[edit]". Is there some setting I'm missing?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc3s5h (talkcontribs) 15:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h Did you save the settings after you clicked the box? Jolly1253 (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes. And just to be sure, I looked at my preferences before I replied, and it is checked.
Something I just noticed is that I clicked "[reply]" after your (Jolly1253) signature to make this reply, and in the upper right of the reply box, I have a choice of "Visual" or "Source". Jc3s5h (talk) 15:45, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h I think you will need to switch to visual editing in the edit box first in order for it to show as "[edit]" instead of "[edit source]". As for the reply, it is a separate tool called Reply tool which has a different set of settings on Preferences (so I'm assuming that the "Enable the visual editor" option does not affect this.). Jolly1253 (talk) 16:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I looked again, and found a dropdown with "Editing mode:" above it, which had been set to
Remember my last editor
I changed it to
Show me both editor tabs
Now it works as I expected. Thanks. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi martinnewbold draft

How do I get this draft page on wikipedia please? Sheila Newbold (talk) 15:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Draft:Martin Newbold Jolly1253 (talk) 15:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Sheila Newbold, all of your references are to Martin Newbold's own writing. This is not appropriate. An acceptable Wikipedia article summarizes what reliable sources completely independent of the topic say about the topic, Martin Newbold in this case. Your username indicates a conflict of interest which you must declare. Cullen328 (talk) 16:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Sheila Newbold. My earnest advice to new editors is to not even think about trying to create an article until you have spent several weeks - at least - learning about how Wikipedia works by making improvements to existing articles. Once you have understood core policies such as verifiability, neutral point of view, reliable, independent sources, and notability, and experienced how we handle disagreements with other editors (the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle), then you might be ready to read your first article carefully, and try creating a draft. If you don't follow this advice but try to create an article without this preparation, you are likely to have a frustrating and disappointing experience with Wikipedia.
It is even harder when you are personally familiar with the subject (as I am guessing is the case), because basically once you have found the required independent reliably published sources, you will need to forget everything you know about the subject and write a neutral summary of what those independent sources say - even if you disagree with them all. ColinFine (talk) 16:55, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Unify two articles?

Hi. I think the article "Easterlin hypothesis" would make a good section in the larger "Income and fertility" one. I'll copy and paste it there if that's ok. Not sure what your protocol is regarding duplicates. But, hey, it's relevant info that the main article which most people see first shouldn't displace, right? Please correct me if my philosophy is mistaken. Easterlin2 (talk) 21:46, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Merging for technicalities. As for whether the proposed merge is a good idea, you almost certainly need to discuss this first at the appropriate place: i.e. Talk:Income and fertility, adding a link to this discussion at Talk:Easterlin hypothesis. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:55, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I saw this reply just now. I'll delete the text again if somebody objects. The two topics are very closely related, though. I am a postdoc in demography. Maybe that helps qualify my decision. Easterlin2 (talk) 22:06, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, Andy. I thought getting an answer would take much longer. Easterlin2 (talk) 22:07, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

At the sandbox for user warnings, I tested the {{uw-agf-sock}} template. In the popup that Twinkle shows, I entered User:Example. However, I noticed that on zh wikisource that this account actually exists and edited ten times (using the sandbox) in 2013. Viewing Central auth, they are blocked on zh wikipedia (after Google Translating the reason, it said Example account for system reconstruction, not involved in editing (link), and on Wikimedia Commons for abusing multiple accounts. Now I am slightly concerned for pinging the user (here) at the sandbox for user warnings, because I feel like they may think I'm accusing them of socking (even though they are the example). Justjourney (talk | contribs) 00:07, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Looking at the Chinese edits and trusting Google Translate (!), it looks as though the ten edits are just test ones to make the example more realistic. (E.g. actual example diffs that can be linked to.) I don't think you've pinged anyone real.
There are a few of these examples around—for instance {{Example}} is a real template. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 13:53, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Why was I notified of a non-existent mention?

I recently received a notification that someone mentioned me on Talk:Today or Tomorrow, but I couldn't find any mention of User:MrPersonHumanGuy in any revision of that page, so I don't think I was meant to be notified at all.

Personal speculation

If I had to guess, it may've been because four tildes (~~~~) were used at the end of the edit summary for the diff it cited. But should that explanation be correct, then that user may have potentially inadvertently notified all registered users by accident. If we all get erroneously notified again because of the presence of four tildes in someone else's edit summary, then some of the attention hogs amongst us may begin to notice a correlation, and may start getting ideas for when and where to intentionally use four tildes in their own edit summaries. Mischievous editors may exploit that to try to tease us, whilst impatient editors may use that to attempt to draw our attention towards certain discussions that they wish to receive input on.

For example, an impatient editor with a "prevention is better than the cure" mindset may use tildes in the summary of an edit to a talk page where a request for comment would be inappropriate due to the lack of an active dispute on the corresponding article, but they want to quickly learn whether consensus would favor their desired edits to that article so they can make an informed decision and avoid getting into a dispute that might have to be settled via RfC.

However, if no one else received that notification, then that explanation may be ruled out, unless I was one of a few random users erroneously notified by chance.

MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 11:16, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@MrPersonHumanGuy Oh sorry yes it's an issue that comes each time I create a new page, someone gets identified in the talk page. See my talk page we discussed it and I had to avoid using the visual editor for talk pages or something like that but I probably forgot this time :/ Aristoxène (talk) 11:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Notifications can happen if an edit is signed and adds a link to a userpage. Some WikiProject banners transclude stuff which can include userpage links. On Talk:Today or Tomorrow you can click "Show" at "Anarchism" and then "Anarchism WikiProject open tasks" to see several userpage links including MrPersonHumanGuy. @Aristoxène: Please don't sign the edit when you add WikiProject banners. You have selected "Enable quick topic adding" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. Below that at "When I visit a discussion page that hasn't been created yet" you can select "Open the wikitext editor" to avoid an automatic signature by the new topic tool. Or you can create the talk page on an edit tab instead of a new section tab. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:52, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I know, as I stated already, I just forgot this time. Maybe WP should fix their stuff though bc it's a ridiculous bug that seems like we are in 2005. Aristoxène (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Aristoxène. Maybe the volunteer programmers who create and maintain the MediaWiki software would "fix their stuff" if there were more of them. Are you offering? ColinFine (talk) 16:51, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
@ColinFine Maybe WP should use their hundred of millions of dollars to pay for actual people to do the job instead of letting volunteers work on it with no payment, resulting on them being overloaded with work and not being able to follow - but hey :shrugging: Aristoxène (talk) 17:41, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
It's not here that we will resolve the issue or even discuss it and what we say has no relevance or impact on the matter but I find your answer kinda not on point because the issue are not the people working on the matter but how the process is made and that's why we are always like 5 years late on each thing like dark mode in 2024 seriously ? Don't hate the players, hate the game I mean but yes I'll do more caution in the future, and note that for the last 20+ created pages, I didn't forget to go through the good way of doing it, it's just that this specific page I forgot, so sorry Aristoxène (talk) 17:45, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I find your comment offensive and a personal attack on the people (yes, they are actual people) who do the work. Do not make such comments in the future...talking ill about the players will not help you have a better game. DMacks (talk) 13:28, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@DMacks I explained that I did my edit in good faith and that I try to compensate for the bug by going through other ways of doing it since someone told me it happened, and this is how we solved the issue. The discussion was over and now you try to push it back because you don't liked the fact that I said that those people should be payed or the way I said that, ok, so I want to explain myself a bit. English is not my first language so when I say 'actual people' I meant salaries being paid to them instead of exploiting free cost labour when you have hundred of millions of dollars doing nothing except paying the top 1% with ridiculous salaries. My point was that maybe if they used that to professionalize their coders and make them able to work full-time on the projects if they wished these kind of issues would be resolved way faster - so it was more of an answer saying to pay those people so they are able to work on the issues instead of using them as free-cost labour - but as I said, this has no relevance here and will not change a single bit of anything, and that's why my second answer was made in a way to back off because I thought about it and I mean it's not ColinFine or whoever that will change this, so I figured my answer was a bit illegitimate and 'gratuitous' and I had to back off a bit, though I still agree by the idea of what I said in the first answer. So now you come at my throat using that one word that I said not very accurately in English as being pejorative when you can clearly see that my message was for them to be paid instead of being exploited, which doesn't strike me as being anti-them or their efforts, but just to say that the issues we have on those matters seem very much linked to the fact that they are not enough, not enough avalaible, etc, all kind of issues that could be resolved if they were paid for their work - so my message was more in a positive way about them than a negative one.
So again, I precize but yes 'actual people' comes probably from 'vrais gens' which means 'ordinary people' in French and so you can see that in my sentence it's not very clear but what I wanted to say is 'using ordinary people instead of volunteers' or something in that kind of setting, which is not a very good parallelism or image to introduce them being paid (what I discussed later on that message), I agree, but which was not intented as a strike to the literal class I was advocating to be paid and professionalized and financiarilly helped 3 words later I mean, that wouldn't make any sense and I know that I'm stupid but not to that point.
Now I did a mistake made avalaible by this bug, I know where it comes from, I like creating new pages from scratch so it happens kinda often but in % of the total number of pages since they told me how to fix it and that the problem was there, I did like 20+ pages or so and 1 of them (this last one) I forgot. Also you can be sure and you can see on the pages I do on the encyclopedia I hope, that I don't want to joke around for nothing and I have no interest in trolling random people and even you could argue that some of the pages I do would be better for myself if the less number of people were able to see them, because I risk being spied upon by the French state, among others, doing them, so it's also a choice I make to risk a bit of my individual freedom to give things to the encyclopedia and humankind, and so I know that many of you have the same kind of driving thing which wants to propagate knowledge, science, culture, and I don't want my messages to be misinterpreted, so I want to apologize if I mispoke or said shit altogether but know that 1) It's not me trolling people 2) I apologize if I have offended someone along the lines of this discussion 3) I'll try to do better in the next pages and not forget that again, but I'm not perfect so maybe someday it will happen again :shrugging: Aristoxène (talk) 14:17, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Template that isn't

Today I came on this while visiting random pages from Category:Templates with missing or incorrect documentation. I gave it some very brief documentation. However, I don't think it's really a template. It's a standard paragraph and a table of eight airships, for use in each of their articles.

So, what is it?

  • A very short list article that should be turned into one, with judicious use of <noinclude></noinclude> and <includeonly></includeonly> to tweak the text for transclusion?
  • A section that should be placed in one of the articles as is, and transcluded to the others?
  • Or something else?
  • Or maybe it really is a template?

The guidance at wikipedia:Template namespace is that templates shouldn't store article text, which that one seems to me to be doing. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 22:51, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

The use-case appears to be something placed into multiple articles, which is the purpose of transcluded centralized material even if template namespace isn't typically used for content. If stare long enough, it almost looks like it's trying to be a navbox, which is definitely appropriate for template namespace, but it's not well designed if that is the purpose. DMacks (talk) 23:58, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I see you asked the same question at its talkpage, so I copied my above comment to there. Let's not fragment the discussion, but keep this here as in invite to anyone who would like to join the discussion there. DMacks (talk) 13:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
I think you're right. It's a very big nav(non-)box written as an article section. It seems to me the content storage aspect would only matter if it meant people couldn't get at the content to edit it if need be, but that's not the case at all—clicking to edit a paragraph takes you to the template page and you find yourself editing that. It was very confusing before I added a documentation page, though. I thought someone had accidentally started an article in the wrong place. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 14:23, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Manual of style on country acronyms?

Hello, is there an accepted MOS on whether to write "US" vs "U.S.", UK vs U.K., EU vs E.U.? There's some light warring going on at Tariffs in the second Trump administration. Thank you! satkaratalk 16:37, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Satkara: Yes. See MOS:Abbreviations § Countries and multinational unions. Bazza 7 (talk) 16:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you!! satkaratalk 16:47, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Attack on Lankaran

Hello, I created the page Attack on Lankaran(1812) but some sources appear several times and are the same sources. Please help me. Eminİskandarli (talk) 15:20, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Musiconeologist Eminİskandarli (talk) 15:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Thehistorianisaac Eminİskandarli (talk) 15:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Eminİskandarli: That would be because you manually entered the same reference in different places. You will want to take a look at WP:NAMEDREF to "bundle" them, in a sense. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:40, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, thanks for your reply. When I click edit, these sources disappear, so how do I edit them? Eminİskandarli (talk) 15:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
You're going to want to enter source editor, as the visual editor doesn't work too well with citations, especially if they're in infoboxes. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:55, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
I think I cant do this. Thanks again for trying to help. Eminİskandarli (talk) 16:07, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Eminİskandarli: I've demonstrated how to do it in this diff. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 16:11, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
thank youu Eminİskandarli (talk) 16:20, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Eminİskandarli The last time I looked at the instructions for this, they seemed more complicated than they need to be. The basic principle is:
  • Once you've entered a reference the usual way, give the opening <ref> a name:
<ref name="Jones1993">all the citation info</ref>
  • To use it again, refer to it by name like this:
<ref name="Jones1993" />
(That's the whole reference; the / means that the tag is self-contained and doesn't need a closing one.)
If you've already got the same reference several times, keep the full version of one of them, and use the <ref name= ... /> version for all the others. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 17:41, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you both, friends. Eminİskandarli (talk) 17:45, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Additions not included for 2025 Myanmar earthquake

My additions to the page "2025 Myanmar earthquake" was not included. I cannot see it. Why is this? I have not edited wikipedia for some time, so please help me to get back into editing and explain to me why my text was not included. Thank you Prof. Dr. Emeritus Max Wyss Where will I see your answer? On my page "talk" there is nothing new. MaxWyss (talk) 12:43, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

The edit being referred to is this revision at 17:02, 29 March 2025, which was reverted with the edit summary "Please fix the errors + add citations". @MaxWyss I think the edit summary is pretty self-explanatory (and welcome back to Wikipedia!). Jolly1253 (talk) 13:36, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
@MaxWyss: It looks like you tried to add an image from your hard disk. You have to upload it before you can use it in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:File upload wizard. And see Help:Referencing for beginners. Answers are usually given where the question was asked. Some answers will alert you but it varies. I alerted you by writing {{ping|MaxWyss}}. You can click "subscribe" at a section heading to get automatic notifications. At Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo you can choose whether to only get them when you are logged in or also get an email. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:19, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter A second attempt, with refs but as external links in the text, was reverted with the edit summary "Add them properly", which makes me furious. The appropriate response to properly sourced material with wrongly formatted references is to fix the format or tag it for fixing, not remove the material. Even simply putting <ref></ref> round them would have been better. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 21:13, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Just noting that the discussion is ongoing at Prof. Wyss' talk page and might benefit from wider input. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 19:18, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible to add a footnote to a flag using template:infobox settlement?

I tried to add a {{Citation Needed}} to the caption of a municipality's flag because there didn't seem to be a source for it existing anywhere but I didn't figure out how to do it even after going through the template page. KurkkuStadist (talk) 21:48, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@KurkkuStadist: I don't think that's possible. Could you tell us what the article is? If there's no source for the flag, it's probably the file of the flag that needs to be dealt with rather than the municipality's article. Deor (talk) 19:04, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
If you sort the municipalities by population on the page listing all municipalities of Finland, most pages down from Tampere have these poorly sourced flags which are all seemingly made by the same user. KurkkuStadist (talk) 19:29, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@KurkkuStadist: I don't have time to go through all those pages right now, but I looked at File:Tampere.lippu.svg, which has a link to this page (containing a photo of the flag) among its sources, and File:Oulu.lippu.svg, which has a link to File:Oulun Kaupungintalo - Oulu City Hall.jpg showing the flag. The few other municipality articles I looked at didn't have flags in their infoboxes at all. Unless you can point to a specific case, I can't help you. Deor (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Blanking of Mary Kate Cornett

Should Mary Kate Cornett be blanked DURING an AFD? I doubt this, but I do not want to make the decision per WP:INVOLVED. --Jax 0677 (talk) 21:23, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

possible exploit

I got an email from ___ @wikimedia.org> "Someone, probably you...requested a reset of your pw"...and it gives me a temp PW, etc etc. I did not initiate this. It seems I still have control of my account with my original PW. Is this real? is it a known exploit? should i report it? am I in the wrong place? Can I get some advice?Alawa (talk) 02:32, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Whether it's real, we can't know. Let's assume for now that it is. For the WMF to ask whether it was really you who asked for a change to your password sounds like a Good Thing, not an exploit. Was something cunningly exploited in order that somebody other than you could ask for the change? Very likely yes. Does the message from the WMF invite you to report a request not made by you? If it doesn't, ignore the whole business; if it does, then you're welcome (but not obliged) to report it as asked, on a website that you've carefully checked really really does belong to the WMF. If you're asked to type in any password while reporting the matter, don't. -- Hoary (talk) 06:26, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Come to think of it, Alawa, that message sounds very familiar. I've probably received it. Back in 2020, I did receive something very similar. And at least twice I've received the message titled "Multiple failed attempts to log in to Wikipedia as Hoary", whose content was "There have been multiple failed attempts to log in to your account from a new device. Please make sure your account has a strong password." (In response to one of these messages, I dutifully made the password six characters longer.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:37, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
@Alawa: Just ignore it. Anyone can enter your username at Special:PasswordReset and our servers will send such a mail to the address you have stored at Special:Preferences. It's meant for users who forgot their password and cannot log in. Our servers cannot say whether it was actually you are somebody else who made the request. Others cannot see your email address. There is no way to tell why somebody entered your name. Maybe they thought they might once have created an account by that name. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

What constitutes a WP:NOTEVERYTHING violation?

The policy WP:NOTEVERYTHING has been brought to my attention in disputes I've had on Wikipedia, specifically to justify deletion of content that I've added. The policy states that "information should not be included solely because it is true or useful. An article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject." However, I've noticed several articles that are lists or compilations of items. To me, these seem like blatant violations of the policy, but they exist. So I ask: where do we draw the line? SinhalaLion (talk) 00:50, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@SinhalaLion Which articles are you looking at specifically? It's easier for others to give their opinions when looking at a specific page. Cheers, Cremastra talk 01:09, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
@Cremastra Let's say something like List of lynching victims in the United States. I have nothing against the article but was wondering why it's not seen as a violation of the policy since it seems to teetering towards all possible lynching cases in the US and thus antithetical to the policy. SinhalaLion (talk) 01:50, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
It probably meets WP:NLIST. Cremastra talk 12:16, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Automatic reverting, revisited

I have been teaching PhD students in how to edit Wikipedia as a part of their science outreach for about ten years. What is happening now, I have never seen before with 1500 PhD students editing. Therefore, I first add the previous discussions and then the revision histories where this has happened to several different PhD students and ask for a revisit of the problem.

Old discussion:

I am teaching a course where one of the students got the edits reverted. The revision history claims that she did it herself, but she says that was not the case, it happened automatically. This is the user contribution page User contributions for Daliepremidze - Wikipedia. Now it seems to be working though. Was something wrong? Olle Terenius (UU) (talk) 09:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Olle Terenius (UU): It is easy to click the wrong button, particularly when new. Nearly everyone here has reverted themselves or someone else accidentally. It is extremely unlikely that anything went wrong other than that Daliepremidze accidentally clicked something. There is no automatic reverting. Johnuniq (talk) 09:22, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
@Olle Terenius (UU) and Daliepremidze: It looks like she misunderstood something in the interface. Maybe she looked at a diff like [1] and clicked edit on the left side instead of the right side. If you click on the left side then you start a new edit with the content of the former revision. If you save without changing anything (except the edit summary) then it becomes a revert to that revision. If she wants to change the new revision when looking at a diff then she has to click edit on the right side or click the edit tab at top of the page. It's not possible to change an old edit summary if that's what she was trying. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

"Manual reverts" the same minute as the edits were saved have now happened in the following articles:

3D cell culture: Revision history - Wikipedia
Conductive metal−organic frameworks: Revision history - Wikipedia
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor: Revision history - Wikipedia
Chromogranin-A: Revision history - Wikipedia
Lithium-silicon battery: Revision history - Wikipedia

Olle Terenius (UU) (talk) 14:29, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello, @Olle Terenius (UU). If you think there is a technical problem with the software, then WP:VPT is the best place to take it. ColinFine (talk) 15:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
OK, I have no clue as this is happening to a few of the 50 PhD students, but far from all. But I will try there as well and see if I get some ideas of what is going on. Olle Terenius (UU) (talk) 16:46, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Does questioning a user's knowledge based on their contributions, constitute personal attack or legitimate criticism?

Hello everyone, I think WP:NOPA has a lot of ambiguities. It's quite clear, when it comes to religion, ethnicity etc. but not on other issues such as an editor's knowledge.

This issue usually happens when discussing the notability of a subject.

There are cases where a user which obviously hasn't done enough research on the subject, disregards nuanced or obvious facts, provides no reason for their opinion, comes and disputes notability.

Therefore I think telling them that they clearly lack familiarity with the subject, is an accurate description of a situation, and not a personal attack, for the following reasons:

  1. It refers to knowledge about a specific subject not a person's entire body of knowledge
  2. It is based on evidence that the user either lacks familiarity with the sources, or the subject.
  3. It's a description of a situation, the person can gain or lose knowledge at anytime, one's knowledge is not definitive of one's personality.

So I'm not sure even if it is a clear case of personal attack, but even if it is, is it that severe of an attack? Let's say you say 2+2=6, and provide no reasons, am I not allowed to tell you that you don't know arithmetic? Xpander (talk) 07:15, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Also see WP:CIR, which plays into that field, at least partly. Lectonar (talk) 11:46, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
In priniple, it's irrelevant whether the editor is familar with the subject. What matters is whether they can provide adequate sources for their claim. Maproom (talk) 08:38, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
@Maproom Thanks for your response. That's fair enough. Hope I'm not digressing. But how can you provide "adequate sources" for disqualifying notability claims? You can keep wasting wiki's time just by deleting articles, and provide no reasons, just to annoy people. I don't think there are any safeguards or even repercussions against wrong deletions and undeletion is time-consuming. Xpander (talk) 09:53, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
As only administrators can delete articles, and they will only do so in accord with policy, what you are alleging is a misuse of admin privileges. Or are you conflating "nominating for deletion" with "deleting"? Cabayi (talk) 11:39, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
@Cabayi I thought patrols can perform speedy deletions as well, but in that case yes. Also inadequate nominations could be as time-consuming, but I haven't read anything about this counting as a misuse of admin privileges. Xpander (talk) 18:23, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Well, it doesn't have to be done in an attacking or even confrontational way. Eg "I think you might not know some information that's universally accepted in this field but not necessarily familiar to those outside", for example. That focuses on the situation but doesn't accuse anyone of anything. It doesn't say they should have known it, or that they're stupid or lazy for not knowing it, or make any assumptions about why they don't know it.
I think it's a very similar situation to looking for neutral language in an article—"You clearly haven't . . . " makes a judgement about the person, or will be perceived that way, when the issue is the factual matter of the gap between what they know and what they need to know.
Edit: For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not accusing you of implying those things, either! I'm trying to comment on the search for neutral language, but not necessarily achieving it myself. Musiconeologist (talk) 15:02, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks @Musiconeologist. Okey but how do you dissuade people from making uninformed comments? Think of a false AfD, wrong deletion etc. which take a lot of time from the community. Xpander (talk) 03:30, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Xpander1, I would not consider it a PA, but why would you want to make such a comment? I don't see what benefit there is to it. Presumably you want them to learn about notability (or whatever the case may be) and no matter how ignorant they may be about their own state of ignorance regarding some guideline, telling them about it, even if it is the truth, is not likely to win them over to your point of view. It seems more likely it will make them dig in their heels and maybe drag you into the hole they are digging for themselves. Mathglot (talk) 06:43, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
@Mathglot Thanks. To answer your question, not to win them over specifically, but to discredit their views. The problem with notability, is that you can simply say subject x fails to meet GNG etc. without providing any evidence. And this could muddy up the waters when a discussion needs to be concluded. So I think it's only legitimate criticism. Xpander (talk) 03:22, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
In other words how does WP dissuade people from making uninformed comments, that wastes the community's time and effort? Xpander (talk) 03:32, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Xpander1, Wikipedia does not dissuade people from making uninformed comments, nor should it do so; at least at the outset, when you don't know much about the person. You can argue against their views, you can reject their views for policy-based reasons, but you should not try to discredit their views, as this has connotations of harming someone's good reputation, rather than simply rejecting their views for good cause which is permissible. In addition, WP:BOLD encourages users, including newbies, to become active and engage with the encyclopedia and with others. They are bound to make mistakes (as we all do), but we should both assume good faith as well as pay especial attention to deal gently with newbies. So, rather than discredit their views, why not help them out and explain the policy or guideline relevant to the situation where they perhaps made a mistake. And always deal fairly and openly with others, keeping in mind that at some point you will make a mistake, and maybe they might have a point after all.
As far as saying that subject x fails to meet GNG etc. without providing any evidence, that is normal, because you cannot prove a negative. People make that statement constantly; if you hang out at Afd you will find dozens or hundreds of comments exactly like that one, without any evidence made by very senior editors and administrators. That is a normal comment to make, because the burden is on the person who wants to create an article, to prove that the topic is notable, not the other way around. So I urge you to take comments like that one as normal, and a simple request to you (or whoever) to prove that the topic is notable, by providing the list of reliable sources that proves GNG. Hope this elps, Mathglot (talk) 06:52, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks @Mathglot. I think that settles it. I didn't mean this for newbies or seasoned editors though, but for older users that tend to make reckless comments. Hence sometimes I feel they're doing it on purpose. But apart from that I just read WP:ATA and I think it has very good recommendations, including WP:JNN (i.e. you should say it violates WP:NOT, not dictionary etc., so it's prefferable if one proves a negative). And in the event of nefarious motivations as per WP:ATTP, I should follow the issue perhaps elsewhere, not in the deletion discussions. So I think it's all good for now, WP:ATA has plenty of stuff to dig on for the time being, and I will recommend it to others if need be. I appreciate your help. Best. Xpander (talk) 15:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Xpander1, You're most welcome. Happy editing! Mathglot (talk) 18:38, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Inclusion/exclusion of an item in an article

Hello, What shall a user do when the inclusion of an item in an article is subject to debate, with 2 users on one side and a third on another?

I refer to this talk page discussion. Just deleting that item may start an edit war, although 2 users are in favor of that. So what shall I do? Please see the summary at the end of that discussion and clarify. Thanks. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the talk page or the article, Yesterday, all my dreams..., but most talk pages have templates for two or more WikiProjects. I'd look at the talk pages of these WikiProjects, and try to choose one that shows signs of life (many WikiProjects are moribund) and whose subject area is relevant to the dispute. If there is such a WikiProject talk page, post on it an invitation to join that talk page discussion. -- Hoary (talk) 08:44, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Yesterday, all my dreams.... Please read dispute resolution. ColinFine (talk) 15:32, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you both. I asked for help in those places. So I think you can close this section. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yesterday, all my dreams... (talkcontribs) 19:05, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Masking multiple authors

I'm working on the Sources section of the article on Holkham Hall. I want to mask the names of both Richard Wilson and Alan Mackley, for their second entry in the list. I have read Template:Cite journal but I cannot see how to mask multiple authors. Any advice would be much appreciated. KJP1 (talk) 10:02, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@KJP1: I believe my edit has accomplished what you wanted? You seemed to be calling author-mask=1 and author-mask=2; the correct values were author-mask1=1 and author-mask2=1. I'm actually not sure what the value of the part after the equals sign is supposed to be, but it's working, so this is probably good enough. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 10:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Skarmory - Exactly what I needed! Many thanks indeed. KJP1 (talk) 11:07, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Discussion if the name WP:NOTABILITY should change to something else. For the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:25, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Courtesy link to the discussion. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 15:10, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Checking journals for reliability or predation

Is there any efficient way for me to check the reliability of a journal like there being a list (on- or off-wiki) like RSP? Are there any other general tricks to use? ✶Quxyz 14:29, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

First, you should look at its publisher I think. Ruslik_Zero 18:37, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Are you asking as a Wikipedia author ("I found a ref, is it a good one to add?") or a reader/editor ("I'm looking at this article, I'd like to see the suspicious refs flagged.")? DMacks (talk) 21:30, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
First one, I am having general issues backing up claims and writing articles because I don't know if a given journal is reliable or not. My current strategy is googling it and seeing if some Redditor wrote an essay on the journal's reliability. ✶Quxyz 21:40, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:CITEWATCH is one starting-point for potentially problematic journals. It's not especially easy to read. DMacks (talk) 22:37, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. This is something I've wondered about too. Meters (talk) 22:58, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I added a quote to citation number 1 but it is all wrong. Please fix. Thank you Srbernadette (talk) 01:18, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I see a red warning message "horizontal tab character in |quote= at position 36". Maybe you cut'n'pasted that quote from some other site or app that uses 'tab' rather than simply spaces to do alignment? I adjusted it to use just a single regular space character at each location and the message went away. DMacks (talk) 02:55, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Edit count disparity between Wiki and X-tools?

On my contributions page it shows that as of now I've made 38,973 edits, but according to X-Tools it's 38,683 (live) and 353 (deleted) for a total of 39,036.

Why the 63 difference? It's not much in the grand scheme of things - 0.16%, but it's still a difference. Is there some kind of edit or action (revdel?) that doesn't count on Wiki totals, but is still visible to X-Tools? Chaheel Riens (talk) 06:52, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@Chaheel Riens: Wikipedia:Edit count#What is an edit count? lists some of the reasons for the discrepancies. You've made about 40 page moves, which would account for most of the difference. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:10, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
John of Reading - thanks! Chaheel Riens (talk) 08:17, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Why is "perplexity.ai /search" on wikipedias Black List?

I mean the URL.

and on which black list? -- Steue (talk) 21:20, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

m:Talk:Spam_blacklist/Archives/2023-05#perplexity.ai/search. * Pppery * it has begun... 21:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, * Pppery *
I tried some "Advanced search"ing for this black list. How would I have found this black list entry myself?
Billinghurst put "perplexity.ai\search" on this black list at 22 May 2023, this was almost two years ago. Meanwhile perplexity.ai is doing well (by my experiences).
Isn't it time to review this? -- Steue (talk) 22:22, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm confused. ;) - Roxy the dog 22:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
@Steue: MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist and meta:Talk:Spam blacklist have archive search boxes. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:58, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
FYI Billinghurst has been inactive since August, so you probably won't hear back from them. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:25, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Roxy the dog, if you want to be enlightened, it might help, if you explained *what* you don't understand.

Thank you * Pppery *, but couldn't *any* admin check this case and remove the URL from the black list?
Steue (talk) 03:02, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

It's on the global blacklist, so it would have to be a Meta admin to remove it, but a local admin could add entries to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist to override the rule. I might be willing to do that, but you'd have to explain to me why that specific URL should be linked to - right now I'm not seeing a clear reason. * Pppery * it has begun... 03:32, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Spam blacklist rules (on either the local or the global blacklist) are not removed just because they're old and things may have changed. They're removed (or whitelist entries are added) only if a clear reason is provided why the site should be linked to. * Pppery * it has begun... 03:33, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
You should note that the URL is a link to a search result. We do not consider a search result a reliable source. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:11, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
@* Pppery * and Orange Mike
I'm just a user of perplexity.ai, I have no connections to perplexity whatsoever, and my experinces (in the last few days) are only positive. I asked it technical problems re. my computer, and some language questions, and the answers were spot-on.
But yes, it did do some mistakes, which I recognized, but when I asked whether this is correct or I pointed them out and explained them, along with facts based on its references, it did find the rules and committed the mistake and gave a correct answer. In one case I checked all 9 references, and they all existed and contained what perplexity had said it contains.
So, Perplexity is usefull in finding, summarizing and delivering references (much better than standard (i.e. non-ai) google is), which then can be checked by humans i.e. wp-editors. And checking the original references is, what I would expect editors to do, before using what any ai has delivered for an article.
* Pppery *, actually I don't understand the reasons to put perplexity.ai on the list. I didn't come across the exact reasons why perplexity\.ai.search was blacklisted.
And actually it's not "perplexity.ai" which is on the black list but "perplexity\.ai/search/"; "perplexity.ai" is mentioned in its article.
I only wanted to use perplexity's answer for a disk, so that other editors could check these answers, if they wanted to, which is standard in wp and should be possible, no matter where the info is coming from.
I could copy the answers or part of them or summarize them, and state that they are from "perplexity.ai", with no problem from wp's filter. Only if I want to name the *exact* link (complete URL) to a specific question and answer of perplexity, does the black list block. For a disk I can just insert a space into the url or use a backslash instead of a slash, which already has been done by other editors, so that the url does not trigger the filter.
* Pppery *, if you would take the time and trouble to follow the first link (in this topic) (to the archive) you will probably understand the reasons better then I. And there 'Billinghurst' has written, that we should wait and see how things develope. My hope was, that an admin would check how things are today.
How can we find out if/whether things are better today than 2 years ago? I see only one way: un-block perplexity'ai/search and see what happens.
I think, the services which we, as editors, can get from perplexity (in terms of finding references) are worth a try.
Steue (talk) 17:42, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
We don't do "suck it and see" with links that were blacklisted, as they're blacklisted for good reason. You would need to provide a compelling case as to why we should even link to it. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 17:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Weasel

Hello. I'm doing some cleanup at The Tempest and in this edit summary a bot refers to "Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2025". My question is, how do I find these weasel words in the article so that I can fix them? Am I missing something obvious in the edit itself? AndyJones (talk) 09:16, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@AndyJones: (Short answer) This category is added by the {{Who?}} template, among others, and is placed after the text "Some critics" in the article. (Long answer) To find this answer, I visited Special:ExpandTemplates, typed {{:The Tempest}} into the "Input" box and The Tempest into the "Title" box, then clicked "OK". That displays the article wikitext with all the templates expanded, so that I could search for the category name and note where it occurred. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:25, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Got it, thank you. AndyJones (talk) 11:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
@AndyJones: I made a script to do it all with a click under Tools: User:PrimeHunter/ExpandTemplates.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:21, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
And as for the mention of the category in the edit summary, it simply means that someone prompted the bot to run on all articles in that category; the bot does not do anything with weasel words in particular. Janhrach (talk) 17:54, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

JuicyFields scam

Shouldn't we have an article about the JuicyFields scam?

People with close ties to the Russian government stole more than 645 million euros from more than 186.000 people and there is no article about that? Polygnotus (talk) 14:18, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like it passes GNG and has sustained coverage. I would say that it would be okay to make. ✶Quxyz 18:39, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
It crys (or shouts?) for one. -- Steue (talk) 17:50, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
@Steue, @Polygnotus, I have made a draft here. ✶Quxyz 18:09, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Subject/verb agreement question

Hello! I am currently working on the article for the Young Lords. One thing that's proving somewhat challenging is subject/verb agreement. I thiiiiink that because the Young Lords is the name of an organization, I should be using singular verbs? But this usually feels wrong. "The Young Lords was first established..." feels far less intuitive than "The Young Lords were first established...". Precedent from other similar articles seems to favor "were" for organizations with named like the Young Lords (ex. "The Bloods are a primarily African American street gang..."). What do folks think, though? Spookyaki (talk) 21:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Spookyaki, this should be covered by the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. MOS:PLURALS says that in US English singular verbs are usually used for organisations. TSventon (talk) 21:53, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
I recognize that, but that doesn't really conform to the way it's commonly used in this particular case. Of the academic sources I've seen, only one uses singular verbs exclusively. Six (all published in the United States) use plural verbs exclusively, and one uses both. Spookyaki (talk) 22:18, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Presumably that's because the name of the group is syntactically plural. So in this case, the rule that organizations take a singular verb conflicts with the rule that plural nouns take a plural verb. Thus, in US English, "The Velvet Underground were a rock band ..." is less likely than "The Doors were a rock band ..." because, while both are groups, the name of the former is syntactically singular and that of the latter is syntactically plural. In the first case, both rules argue for a singular verb, while in the second case, one rule argues for plural and one rule argues for singular. Personally, I would use a singular verb for any group regardless of its name; thus "The Young Lords was ...", but I wouldn't strongly object to using "were". CodeTalker (talk) 23:10, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

File music not working properly

I am working on the Vietnamese's DR. Congo page and the national anthem Debout Congolais and when adding the music file Democratic Republic of the Congo's national anthem.ogg, it shows an error, although other language pages like English and French works just fine. Can anyone help me? thanks. (this also appear on many other pages i'm working on) KolnSilver (talk) 02:26, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@KolnSilver: the file File:Democratic Republic of the Congo's national anthem.ogg is not on Wikimedia Commons (see English Wikipedia file page for reasons). So to use it on viwiki you would need to upload it locally. I am not sure of the viwiki policies about this. Commander Keane (talk) 03:05, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! May I upload a different version of the national anthem instead (if allowed)? Or I just have to reupload the original files? KolnSilver (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
@KolnSilver: I am not 100% sure about the DR Congo copyright laws. I don't think you can upload any version of the anthem to Wikimedia Commons as the tune is copyrighted. You can upload at vi:Special:Upload if vi:Wikipedia:Quy định sử dụng hình ảnh says it is ok. My guess is that you can upload the original file at Vietnamese Wikipedia. Commander Keane (talk) 09:17, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! KolnSilver (talk) 13:19, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
For Democratic Republic of the Congo, copyright of a non-photographic work with a known author is 50 years after their death. Per Democratic Republic of the Congo, the song dates to 1960 and was written by Joseph Lutumba and Simon-Pierre Boka di Mpasi Londi. None of the wikimedia sites have an indication whether Lutumba is still alive; frwiki says Londi died in 2006. That means the earliest the lyrics become free of copyright restriction (and therefore uploadable to commons) is 2057. DMacks (talk) 19:25, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
gosh ok... Thanks! KolnSilver (🗣🔥 | 📒) 02:46, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
You're welome! For the record, I didn't know any of those details, just a few efficient tools to find them and some lucky breaks along the way. DMacks (talk) 03:17, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Refs numbers 1 and 6 are the same - can you please double them up and leave the full quote in? Thank you Srbernadette (talk) 00:06, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Srbernadette, over the years, you have made the same request several times. Wikipedia editors have dutifully done this for you. Have you then never examined what they have done, in order that you might later perform the same simple series of edits yourself? -- Hoary (talk) 03:51, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Please put in the info box that it is “College Head” not just head and that Mr Mitchell is the head in 2025. Thanks Srbernadette (talk) 03:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Srbernadette, precisely which obstacle arises when you attempt to effect this very simple change yourself? -- Hoary (talk) 03:48, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
In the info box, I tried to replace the word "Head" with "College Head" and I failed. Perhaps it is impossible to do with this "template"? Please fix if you can, you are more capable. Thank you Srbernadette (talk) 04:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Srbernadette, the template is Template:Infobox residential college. It lacks the field "College head". So here's what you have to do -- while editing Farrer Hall (Monash University) (don't attempt to edit the template). First, in the infobox, leave | head = Steve Mitchell just as it is. Secondly, add the line | head_label = College head. In principle, you can add the new line anywhere, but putting it immediately before or immediately after the line naming the head would be a sensible choice. -- Hoary (talk) 05:28, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
I tried to do what you advised, but you can see that now the whole "head" line has vanished. I tried so hard. IF YOU CAN PUT THE HEAD BACK IN PLEASE STATE THAT Steve Wilson was the College Head in 2015 - NOT 2025. I cannot work out who the current head is - so state that Steve Wilson Was the head in 2015. Also college colours are GREEN and BLACK. Please add this in. Srbernadette (talk) 06:01, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
This is what an IP did. It's most definitely not what I prescribed. But perhaps no matter, because: While I generally pay little attention to infoboxes and so may well not be up to date on the relevant guidelines, I'm surprised that anyone would want to use one in order to specify the college head as of a decade previously. If the identity of the head in 2015 is non-trivial information and can be referenced, why not add it to the body text instead? -- Hoary (talk) 06:37, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Good point Hoary
I agree - can you add the college colours are green and black. Than you so much. Srbernadette (talk) 06:48, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
This has already been done, Srbernadette. -- Hoary (talk) 07:20, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Use of deprecated (unreliable) source Tag on new article.

I recently created a new article; (Timeline of Yoruba history), however, it was bot-tagged with a 'deprecated (unreliable) source' restriction upon creation. I have looked through all the sources and cross-checked with the currently deprecated sources list here on Wikipedia, but unfortunately haven't been able to identify the culprit reference responsible for the tag. How do I solve this issue and get the article into better standing without having to re-edit/reference from scratch? Oramfe (talk) 00:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I searched the article for "deprecated" and "unreliable" and I don't see either term mentioned anywhere in the article. Could you provide more detail as to where you're seeing this, or the precise name of the tag as it appears within the article? DonIago (talk) 01:12, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
DonIago see the tags on the first edit in the article's revision history. TSventon (talk) 01:16, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! DonIago (talk) 01:19, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for this! Now do I simply edit out the responsible reference or is there any other way to submit the article for a review process to get the tag removed (I created the article directly, not from a draft), because it seems to have precluded the article from search engine indexing parameters. Oramfe (talk) 01:39, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't think you can remove the tag, I may be wrong. Hopefully you can fix the Scribd reference as suggested at the perennial sources list. The article won't be indexed by search engines until it is approved by Wikipedia:New pages patrol or 90 days if sooner. NPP is heavily backlogged, but is due for a backlog drive in May. TSventon (talk) 01:58, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks once again. Oramfe (talk) 02:07, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Oramfe, hopefully someone has a general answer to this question, but I had a look at the references and I think that scribd may be the culprit. TSventon (talk) 01:14, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
(Almost certainly) Confirmed. Scribd is listed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. DonIago (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Hopefully there is a better answer than checking each of a hundred references against the list at WP:RS/P. Or checking the list and hoping you recognise one of them, which is what I did. TSventon (talk) 01:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the help, highly appreciated. I know simply editing out sribd will not get the tag out (back-end) How do I remove it? Oramfe (talk) 01:57, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. Just saying there's a concern without making it clear what the specific concern is isn't especially helpful. As far as removing the tag, I don't know whether the presence or absence of it makes any real difference as long as the underlying issue has been addressed, but tags aren't something I'm highly familiar with. DonIago (talk) 02:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
@Oramfe: An edit filter hit applies to the edit and not the article. The hit means the edit at the time matched a filter at the time and that will continue to be true no matter what later happens to the article or fitler. The tag cannot be removed. It was actually worldstatesmen.org which caused it but it's hard to work out. I clicked "view filter log" at the top of the page history to see it was tagged by Special:AbuseFilter/869. It has a long list of domains which would be very tedious to test one at a time. I don't know a shortcut for ordinary users. My account has access to Special:AbuseFilter/test which helps. I copied the filter code and entered "Timeline of Yoruba history" at "Changes made to page". Then I tried removing different lines of domains and click "Test" to see when the filter was triggered. It was the ORG line. Then I removed different domains from that line and found it was worldstatesmen. An edit filter can unfortunately not report which part of the filter caused the hit. We could make numerous different edit filters for different domains but that's impractical, and inefficient on the servers. Some edit filters prevent saving the edit. This one doesn't and you are not expected to track down and fix the cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:34, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
@Oramfe I have the very useful script User:Headbomb/unreliable installed and can instantly see in the current version of the article that it still uses a deprecated source, namely this one to www.worldstatesmen.org, currently #83 in the citations. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:45, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

How can I invite editors to help expand an incomplete article?

Hello and thank you in advance for your help.

I’ve recently started Draft:False humility on the English Wikipedia. However, due to limitations in my English skills and access to reliable sources in this language, I am unable to fully expand and improve it.

I was hoping to invite other editors to help develop and complete the article, but I couldn't find any currently accepted template or tag like {{Expand}} or similar that would signal this need to the community.

Could someone please guide me: 1. Is there a proper way to invite collaboration on a specific article? 2. Is it acceptable to leave a note on the article’s Talk page asking for help? 3. Is there any recommended template or place to post such a request (e.g. relevant WikiProjects)?

Your guidance would be greatly appreciated. Arbabi second (talk) 15:24, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@اربابی دوم I think that the most appropriate place to seek collaboration for this draft is at WT:WikiProject Psychology, which is active and where you can place a link to the draft. You could also add that Project's template onto the talkpage of your draft. That is less likely to attract collaborators but may help when you submit the draft for review, assuming you intend to do that. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:37, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
@Michael D. Turnbull Thank you for your helpful guidance.😊 Arbabi second (talk) 16:07, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

In the info box - which I cannot access on this device - the words for college colours - the word "black" should have a capital letter - B. Please fix and I'm sorry I cannot do this myself. Thank you again Srbernadette (talk) 01:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Srbernadette: Please go to "edit source" and edit the |colours= parameter in {{Infobox residential college}} as you desire, though I fail to see why the colours should be in title case. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:33, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
Srbernadette, if you cannot "access" (edit?) the infobox of Farrer Hall (Monash University) on your device, are this edit and this one not by you? -- Hoary (talk) 07:59, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

COI editing

I am the subject of the wikipedia article Djan Khoe. The article is asking for improvements and I believe to have material to do just that. To avoid COI, I would appreciate to have someone to do the editing for me. The edits will be minor, adding a citation, a link and simple text. Khoe0005 (talk) 20:03, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

The article Giok Djan Khoe survived a deletion discussion a few days ago, but it needs a lot of work. Ideally a biography should contain some background detail about a person and not simply be a list of their work. If you would like to help, please make an edit request at Talk:Giok Djan Khoe.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 20:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Khoe0005. Thank you for being open about your COI. I agree with what Ianmacm said, but I would add that everything in the article should be verifiable from a reliable published source - and, in most cases, from a source wholly unconnected with your or your associates. If you request something to be added without a source, the request is likely to be refused. ColinFine (talk) 08:59, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Label numbering in an infobox

This is a question about numbering labels in an infobox. Having made a request to add a parameter to Infobox train on the template Talk page (Template talk:Infobox train#Request for an extra parameter), to which there has been no objection, I want to add it as a free-form label. Label 51 in the template (Template:Infobox train) shows a British term, "formation", and I want to add the U.S. term "consist" (which has the same definition). My question is: given that the list of parameters continues beyond label 51, and there are two sequences of numbers, what label number should I use for entering the parameter?Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 09:20, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Jokūbas Jankauskas

Hello, I am the creator of a Lithuanian artist page, it contains a lot of information about the artist of which people are seeking about. It has over 13 references. Sadly there is a user homo ergaster who keeps deleting the page. The user deleted the page 5 years ago, which with full acceptance did not have enough references. But now the new wikipedia page is sufficient and complies with the requierments. Can you please help me? Imodab (talk) 11:17, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Do the draft then we could help you. How can we help you without a draft ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 11:34, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Jok%C5%ABbas_Jankauskas here it is. Thank you Imodab (talk) 11:51, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
The content isn't in English. Is this for Wikipedia in English ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 11:55, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
No, it is for lithuanian wikipedia, but the administrator keeps removing the page because he does not like the artist, and is even bullying people in his discussion page, which seek help just like us. We tried to ask for his help to add or remove information to comply with his requirements, and yet he calls the artist a low influence individual. Sadly there are a lot of pages which he approved which do not have no references. Imodab (talk) 11:58, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
"Wikipedia in English" and "Wikipedia in Lithuanian" are two projects independent of each others.
Therefore , people there are unable to help.

As I did never made any edit on "Wikipedia in Lithuanian" and don't read and write in this language.
I refuse to support a side or another. My position is to stay neutral because I did never contributed and I don't know Lithuanian language.

Anatole-berthe (talk) 12:13, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If you click on lt:Jokūbas Jankauskas you can see the reasons why the lt admin deleted the page. Using Google translate, in 2022 the reason was "Does not meet the relevance criteria" and in 2025 it was "Advertising, promotion". I am not familiar with the detail of lt Wikipedia policy, but articles on en Wikipedia could be deleted for the same reasons. TSventon (talk) 12:32, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
What should i do or contact if the administrator is abusing his power and making a mistake. The worst part keeping information from people that are searching for it quite active? Imodab (talk) 12:17, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
There was no advertising on the page, only biography and discography Imodab (talk) 12:37, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
You should post a message here: https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naudotojo_aptarimas:Homo_ergaster you can use the Pridėti temą link near the top of the page. Polygnotus (talk) 14:11, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Imodab. I know nothing of the policies of LT Wikipedia. But I know that often in EN Wikipedia, inexperienced users make the mistake of writing what the subject of the article wants the world to know about them. (English) Wikipedia is basically not interested in that - it is only interested in what independent reliable sources say about them. Writing what they say about themselves usually does look like advertising. ColinFine (talk) 14:34, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Student editor

I saw someone who is a Wikipedia student editor at a university and I'd like to join one. I found one for UBC, it's called BNH200 but it looks like it took place a while ago so I'm wondering where I can find one to join as a project. I'm off campus for a few months but is there an online program I can do because Wikipedia is on the internet? Kansas dude82 (talk) 05:44, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

The student-editing projects are typically coordinated by an individual professor for students in a particular class of theirs. If there was a previous one run for a class at your school, see if you can track down who the prof was. They may be running that class (or a similar one) in the future, or know of another prof who is, or might be willing to take you on for an independent study project. DMacks (talk) 13:50, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
OK I'll ask around, because I know UBC has its own Wiki site Kansas dude82 (talk) 16:09, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

How do you archive specific comments

I know how to auto-archive but how do you archive specific things? OrangeLolipopSnail (talk) 18:04, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

OrangeLolipopSnail, are you looking for Wikipedia:One click archiving? You would need to install a script, I haven't tried it myself. TSventon (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Like if I want to archive a specific comment or something like that how would I do it? OrangeLolipopSnail (talk) 21:10, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I think that normally whole talk page sections are archived as the section headers make discussions easier to find. TSventon (talk) 21:18, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Ok how would I archive a specific section OrangeLolipopSnail (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
I think the first question is why your automatic archiving hasn't started yet. As far as I can see it should have. TSventon (talk) 01:14, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
On what? My user page? OrangeLolipopSnail (talk) 09:21, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, I am talking about your user page. TSventon (talk) 12:26, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Ok I don’t know why either maybe it’s a bug or something else OrangeLolipopSnail (talk) 13:28, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
One thing that was preventing automatic archiving was a mistake in one of the configuration details. I fixed it. Let's see if archiving happens over the next day or two. DMacks (talk) 13:56, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Tysm OrangeLolipopSnail (talk) 17:23, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Edits reverted

Yesterday, a large number of my edits were reverted by User:FlightTime. He said that they were unsourced but all of them were sourced. I asked why, but my post on his talk page was also reverted and he told me I may be blocked from editing. I have waited 23 hours, but received no additional explanation, so I would like someone to restore my edits. Thanks. Player001eliminated (talk) 22:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Player001eliminated, in this pair of edits (to take one of the latest examples), you appear to have replaced five paragraphs, of which the first was explicitly sourced to the 2010 census (and the other four not explicitly sourced), with four paragraphs, of which the last was explicitly sourced to the 2020 census (and the other three not explicitly sourced). FlightTime thereupon reverted these edits, with the comment "How can you update a value without updating the year/current source?" Have I summarized this accurately? -- Hoary (talk) 23:37, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary I suppose someone could see it that way. All of the content is sourced to the two sources I added at the end. Would it be better to include the sources somewhere else? Player001eliminated (talk) 23:39, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
If you're providing two sources, it's probably because not everything that's stated in the one is also stated in the other. Therefore the reader won't immediately know which of the two to look into in order to confirm this or that assertion. And so it's better to reference each paragraph: tedious work, but thanks to named references not intolerably so. -- Hoary (talk) 23:48, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary Should I put them like this: Special:PermanentLink/1284665793? If so, I can do that easily. However, I would prefer someone to restore my edits before I do this so I don't get blocked. Player001eliminated (talk) 00:12, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Player001eliminated, your version at Special:PermanentLink/1284665793 seems good to me. (I'm assuming here that it accurately represents the sources that it references.) But in its FlightTime-approved state (for which I'm assuming ditto), it's not wrong, just unnecessarily dated. Thus I don't see any need to update the article before you've had time for an amicable discussion. FlightTime edits daily, and therefore should be aware very soon that they've been pinged. Better, though, to make your suggestion not here but either at User talk:FlightTime or at Talk:Calwa, California. -- Hoary (talk) 02:05, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
It appears that User:FlightTime is ignoring my messages, and if I posted at Talk:Calwa, California, likely nobody will reply for a year. I'm going to need to restore these edits, and to not be blocked. Player001eliminated (talk) 19:46, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
If you want to draw attention to your proposed edits, make an edit request. 331dot (talk) 20:02, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Where's my draft

I started a draft called Geotechnology. I wanted to continue to work on it but cannot find. Please help BHMI (talk) 22:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

It was deleted due to inactivity, so I restored it. Draft:Geotechnology. 331dot (talk) 23:26, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Request help to nominate a redirect for discussion

Hi! I tried to nominate the redirect Humblebrag for discussion at WP:RFD, since I believe the redirect to Harris Wittels is not appropriate. However, after adding the {{subst:rfd}} tag, I wasn’t redirected to a discussion page, and my attempt was reverted by another user with the note "not actually listed at RfD." I’m a bit confused—could someone kindly walk me through the proper steps to nominate a redirect for discussion? Thank you! Arbabi second (talk) 23:50, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I've repaired it. For the future, you've already found WP:RFDHOWTO, I trust? —Cryptic 00:02, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

wrong category (trail vs natural feature) - Bedfordshire Greensand Ridge

I notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedfordshire_Greensand_Ridge is under several catagories relating to footpaths / trails however the article describes an "escarpment", while it's assosciated footpath is under a separate article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensand_Ridge_Walk . Further, the article seems to have been re-puporposed from describing a "path" to the "escarpment" in 2008 here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bedfordshire_Greensand_Ridge&oldid=225146884 .

I am not familiar with how categories work here on wikipedia, nor do I know if you are strict about not having different concepts described across revisions. If there is a UK group responsible for maintaining footpath/trail categories could someone please let me know where I should ping them to inform them of this complication, or simply ping them here if that's standard practice.

PS I have never heard of the topic of these articles before so can not vouch for accuracy or notability. Tæppa (talk) 11:02, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

What do you want to say when you ask the next question "If there is a UK group responsible for maintaining footpath/trail categories" ?

In Wikipedia. There are not groups organised by localisation.
There are maybe groups outside of Wikipedia (Informal groups) organised by location but I don't think there are one specifically for this task.

The things to do on Wikipedia aren't organised in a classic way. This is not organised in a hierarchical way.
Editors (People like you and me) work on the things they want.

Do you need more explanations ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 11:22, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
While it's true "anyone is an editor, just go edit if you see something that should be changed", there are many "WikiProject" groups that sometimes help coordinate or organize details about sets of related articles. For example, you could ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography for help clarifying or structuring the categories related to UK geographic features or whether certain topics are different enough to merit separate articles (and if so, what details go where). DMacks (talk) 13:47, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
@Tæppa I think @DMacks explained you things in few words.
I think we brought what you need. Do you agree ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 14:02, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, thank you. I think there might be some more mis-categorisations / concept mix ups so I'll collect them all before presenting them to the UK Geography project. Tæppa (talk) 22:21, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
@Tæppa Excellent ! Anatole-berthe (talk) 01:50, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

A song writer

Need someone to create a new WP article about Giorgi Gerdaq a songwriter for Omm Kalthoum Abdul-Rahman Bahry (talk) 05:57, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

The onus is on the person who wants the article to do the research and write the article, not random noticeboard repliers. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 06:00, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

xkcd late april fools notifications

I hate to ruin the fun, but I wanted to draw attention to the readers of that the webcomic xkcd being directed to comment on some talk pages by a joke notification feature. One of the notifications directs readers to “leave your thoughts in the comments below”, and links to one of a number of Wikipedia talk pages.

A wiki devoted to the comic lists the talk pages:

- Talk:Mathematics
- Talk:Romance
- Talk:Language
- Talk:Sarcasm
- Talk:Boneless
- Talk:Sitting
- Category talk:Unix text editors
- Talk:Robot
- Talk:Jamming avoidance response
- Talk:Drafting linen

I was personally directed to Talk:Wedge (symbol) and Talk:Pop-up notification, so the wiki's list doesn't seem comprehensive, but I doubt the list will be updated. I just think it is likely the comic's wiki is incomplete.

The most I've seen on any page is people saying they've been sent there from xkcd…

Bhbuehler (talk) 08:03, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Request help to move

Hi, I accidentally moved my article to the Portal namespace instead of mainspace. The page is here: Portal:False humility

The intended article draft is at Draft:False humility. I would appreciate it if an editor or admin could help me move it to the main article namespace Added quick deletion tag to Portal:False humility. . Thank you! Arbabi second (talk) 10:02, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

اربابی دوم the original page should be moved, rather than cutting and pasting the contents, I have requested this at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests. TSventon (talk) 10:42, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@TSventon Thanks. But I published the False humility page in the main space and added a quick delete tag to the draft instead. Thanks again. The move request doesn't seem necessary at this time. Arbabi second (talk) 10:51, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
It is important to keep the history of the page. Wikipedia:Moving a page discourages cut and paste moves, so I removed your tag and added a RM/T request. TSventon (talk) 10:58, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
اربابی دوم the page is now in article space. It is easy to move a draft to portal space by mistake, but it is also easy to move the page a second time and select (Article) space. If that isn't possible you can ask at RM/T. TSventon (talk) 12:38, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@TSventonv Arbabi second (talk) 12:45, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Browser shortcut request

Wikipedia tips pages include one about Wiki shortcuts available for use with various browsers. I wish I could cite that page for you in regard to the question I'd like to ask, but at the time I was there I was on my iPhone and we don't get to use the Back Arrow key to return to where we were on Wikipedia. I'm here with my question because the article's Talk page said if we wanted to talk about something related to the page, it would be best to come here.

My question:

Shortcuts are given at that page for only the most popular browsers (Chrome, Safari, etc.). But probably many of us use other browsers. In fact, the very reason I switched to Vivaldi was because of highly favorable comments I saw from another Wiki editor in a discussion. Could shortcuts please be created for the rest of us browser users? Augnablik (talk) 06:23, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: Do you mean the part before access key at Help:Keyboard shortcuts#Using access keys? That part is a feature of the browser and not made by Wikipedia. We just say what it is for some common browsers. I don't have Vivaldi but https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/shortcuts/webpage-access-key-shortcuts/ says "Use the shortcut Alt Shift / Ctrl ⌥ and the listed key to run the shortcut on the webpage." Does that help? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:46, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, @PrimeHunter, that does indeed help! I guess I wasn't at the page long enough on my smartphone to realize that it didn't show any Wikipedia moves as such.
Thank you so much for first, finding the page I was referring to, and then also finding the Vivaldi information for me. I'm still somewhat new to Vivaldi, but so grateful to whichever Wiki editor recommended it. The way this browser makes it possible to organize tabs and topics is just amazing. Augnablik (talk) 13:24, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't know what you're talking about, Augnablik, but clearly Wikipedia:Shortcut index isn't it. Why don't you look for "that page", and then make your request a little more succinctly at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)? -- Hoary (talk) 09:43, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, Hoary, but mission now accomplished. Augnablik (talk) 13:27, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Major Error about the Roman Catholic Church

in all of your articles about Christianity, there is a major error. The Roman Catholic Church is not even CLOSE to being the world's oldest...continuously functioning international institution.

Judaism for one is much older.

My church (Eastern Orthodox) is also older, and is the 3rd oldest Christian denomination behind the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox churches.

It is incorrect in your articles as well as your pictoral diagrams of Christianity timelines.

The Roman Catholic Church branched off of MY church due to the filioqué, and as well as being incorrect, it is offensive to me and millions of other people.

It used to be correct on Wikipedia, but, along with the Roman Catholic Church's long history of problems, persecution, corruption, and the fact that it's the largest Christian denomination, I suspect that is the reason it was changed on here.

Once again, my church members are the most persecuted on Earth; and now on Wikipedia.

Please change this error immediately in all articles and diagrams.

Also please watch this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gKezOSBKnTA

On the hot air ballon tour lies the oldest Christian church in the world; in a cave with ancient Christian carvings and writings on the walls.

Thank you.


Sincerely, Just another persecuted Eastern Orthodox Christian ☦️ User112025 (talk) 10:00, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

  • The cited source (The New Shape of World Christianity by Mark Noll) directly supports the claim that the Catholic Church is the oldest continuously functioning international institution in the world. Noll is apparently a serious academic specialising in the history of Christianity; the publisher is the academic imprint of a well-established Christian publishing house. This is at least superficially a well-sourced claim. It's not clear to me that your counterexamples are in fact counterexamples: I wouldn't consider Judaism an "institution", for instance. At any rate, if you want to propose a change to an article, the best place to do so would be on its talkpage – in this instance, Talk:Christianity. Given that the current text of the article is apparently supported by a reliable source, your best chance of success would be to either be able to point to other reliable sources which dispute this, or to be able to justify why the current cited source is not reliable for this claim. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:46, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia Page

Hello,

I want to know if you guys have referrals or know the best referrals to start/create a Wikipedia page. If you have experts within Wikipedia I would like to gain that information first. This message is priority as I am in need of information for my boss ASAP to get a project started. Thank you. 66.196.230.10 (talk) 15:16, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

I would first suggest that you read WP:BOSS, and then show it to your boss and have them read it, too. You will need to declare as a paid editor per the Terms of Use, and also review conflict of interest. It's easier to disclose if you create an account, but even if you choose not to, you must disclose.
Wikipedia has no deadlines, and we are not concerned with deadlines imposed on editors by third parties.
Creating a new Wikipedia article(not just a "page") is the most difficult task to attempt on Wikipedia, and new users who dive right in quite often end up frustrated and angry as things happen to their work that they spent hours on that they don't understand. It is highly recommended that you first gain experience and knowledge by editing existing articles, to get a feel for how things work here. If you create an account, you can use the new user tutorial as well. 331dot (talk) 15:20, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Adding films

I'm working on the Wikipedia for L'Atelier Animation because it's missing some films they made, can I add every film they were involved in or only the ones that also have a Wikipedia page Kansas dude82 (talk) 16:08, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Are you talking about "L'Atelier Animation" ?

If you're an employee or a former employee.
You have a "conflit of interest" about articles tied to "L'Atelier Animation".

It's better if you disclose your "Conflict of Interest" before any edit on topics tied to this company.
The page "conflit of interest" explain what you need to know. Anatole-berthe (talk) 01:42, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I've never worked for L'Atelier Animation, I don't even make films, I just saw their page in the Wikipedia Project Canada alerts Kansas dude82 (talk) 02:11, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
The sentence "I'm working on the Wikipedia for L'Atelier Animation" was misinterpreted by me. Anatole-berthe (talk) 02:36, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Ah all good, but would you know the answer to my question? Kansas dude82 (talk) 03:20, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I think it's better if you list only films with its own article on Wikipedia.
It can be not easy to known if a film is "notable" to be added in a list if there are not an article.

I advise you to read "Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/List of films without article".
This is not a "policy or guideline" or an "essay" if I'm right.

You can read "Wikipedia:Notability (films)" about notability of movies.
This is a part of guidelines. Anatole-berthe (talk) 04:23, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@Kansas dude82: I'd say only add those that are wikinotable and have Wikipedia pages to be on the safe side. You may wish to start a discussion at Talk:L'Atelier Animation to get further input from interested editors. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 04:19, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
We do not generally limit a list of, say, books by an author in his/her article to only those with their own article: I see no reason why a studio's output should be treated differently, unless its output is vast and mostly trivial.
The WikiProject list linked above above is not, in my view, relevant to this situation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 17:23, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Conflict of interest - how do I get edits made?

Hi all,

I've noticed some errors on the Canadian Medical Association Journal page (Canadian Medical Association Journal - Wikipedia) but I cannot make any edits because of a conflict of interest. Is it possible for me to provide the required updates (with sources) and have someone else edit the page? Thanks. Izzy in Ottawa (talk) 19:26, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi Izzy in Ottawa, I appreciate your honesty! The best thing you can do is go to the talk page, and make a "requested edit" there. Make sure you provide what exactly you want changed, as well as the sources to back it up. Hope this helps! (Any other editor who wishes to correct me can do so here.) Yoshi24517 (Chat) (Very Busy) 19:31, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Yoshi gives good advice- you may wish to use the edit request wizard to facilitate making a formal edit request. 331dot (talk) 19:32, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Policy allowing reverting unexplained content removal

Is there a policy page stating one can undo unexplained content removal? I haven't found one stating the obvious. Editors will remove content without an edit summary and it is not readily obvious why. I will undo their edit and get a complaint that I should analyze their edit. I would like to reply with a link to a policy page. Thank you Adakiko (talk) 17:58, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Not policy, an essay Wikipedia:Content removal and the guide Help:Reverting talk about content removal. The fact that there are warning templates also means it is legitimate to revert unexplained removal. As you know, that's what edit summaries are there for. If someone chooses not to use an edit summary, the onus is on them to explain why. WP:BRD is also applicable...that's my interpretation. I could be wrong. I often am. Knitsey (talk) 18:10, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
If you are looking for a policy that says that a lack of explanation for content removal is always sufficient grounds to restore it, you won't find one. Certainly, the lack of an edit summary is suboptimal and should be discouraged, but you do need to make some effort to see whether the removal might otherwise be legitimate. Is the material sourced? Is it promotional? Is it on topic? Does it violate e.g. WP:BLP policy? Etc, etc. By restoring content, you are taking responsibility for it. Which requires analysis. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:19, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies. I do make an effort to determine the reason, but often (RCP), I have no idea where to start, sources are 404, subscription, etc. Adakiko (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
The closest thing would be WP:NOBLANK, which classifies removing encyclopedic content without any reason as a type of vandalism (which can be reverted). Of course, there may be a reason for the removal that the editor failed to communicate, so I would only revert removals that seem unjustified, and after reverting the removal I would leave them a warning asking them to explain future edits. Perception312 (talk) 21:30, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Error on a page

Hi, How do I suggest a correction to an apparent error that I discovered on a page? Thanks, Jason 69.123.161.181 (talk) 18:53, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Jason. It depends on what kind of page you are talking about. Assuming you mean an article, each article has a talk page where editors can suggest changes. If you cannot edit the article yourself because it is protected or you have a conflict of interest, you might consider submitting an edit request. Perception312 (talk) 22:05, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

IP edit

[Moving this into its own section. It was posted in the thread above, but seems entirely unrelated. Musiconeologist. ]

can't seem to get programs on this station all it says is audio program or vidio not supported, why so much troble with this station... 2600:1011:B302:E2F3:0:3A:36FC:1E01 (talk) 21:27, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

@2600:1011:B302:E2F3:0:3A:36FC:1E01 You've asked this at the Wikipedia Help Desk, which is for questions about editing Wikipedia. But I can at least tell you that we're not a radio station. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 22:53, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Pages blocked by arbitration

I am trying to propose edits to a page that is a "Contentious Topic". My understanding was that Edits to the talk page could be requested and discussions on the talk page could be made. When I proposed an edit, the proposal was removed citing the need for consensus. When I opened a talk discussion thread the thread was reverted citing that this was behind arbitration and thus not allowed.

What is the process for establishing consensus in this situation so that I can propose the edit? Or am I correct that I can open a discussion on the talk discussion and therefore my change to the talk page should not have been reverted? Wikitekt (talk) 22:02, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Until you are extended-confirmed (account 30 days old and with 500 edits) you cannot take part in discussions to establish consensus in the Arab/Israel conflict topic area. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:19, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Wikitekt, please be aware that you are at very high risk of being blocked and you are simply not permitted at this time to make any substantive talk page comments about the Israel-Palestine conflict, broadly construed. You can make utterly uncontroversial formal edit requests, such as "Change the incorrect spelling Mayer to Meyer in the fourth paragraph" or "'were' is more gramatically correct than 'was' in the second sentence of the fifth paragraph". But you are not allowed to debate changing the content substantively until you are extended confirmed, which means an account at least 30 days old with at least 500 edits. So, please stop now for your own good. Cullen328 (talk) 08:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Doi-broken-date error

I found that this existing reference in an Wikipedia article was throwing up an "invisible" 'script warning' (See the top of this page). I narrowed the problem down to the 'doi-broken-date' field. When I remove this field from the 'inline citation' the 'script warning' disappears.

Content[1]

However, I do not want to do this as the doi is broken and therefore the 'doi-broken-date' 'script-warning' would seem to be appropriate. Would should I do? Thanks in advance for any effort put into answering this query.

References

  1. ^ Konieczny, Piotr (2019). "Golden age of tabletop gaming: Creation of the social capital and rise of third spaces for tabletop gaming in the 21st century". Polish Sociological Review (2): 199–215. doi:10.26412/psr206.05 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISSN 1231-1413.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)

SMargan (talk) 12:35, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any error with your copy of it here, just a properly displaying reference that includes (inactive 1 November 2024) after the DOI. Which article is it in? Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 14:12, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
With maintenance messages display enabled, there is a maintenance message:
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
Trappist the monk (talk) 14:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I thought I had that turned on. So, I went to check just now and can't find where the setting is, even by searching every section of Special:preferences for the word maintenance. Where is the setting? Is it a line of user CSS or something?
EDIT: Yes it is and I've found it. But had to re-create the CSS page (which I thought I'd previously done years ago and used it.) Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 14:42, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
At the end of the 'Script warning' is this:
messages may be hidden (help).
If you follow the help link, you will find instructions that will tell you how to show hidden maintenance messages. When maintenance messages are visible, they always end with a link to the associated maintenance category which collects all articles with the same issue. At the top of the category, there is descriptive text that explains the message and offers suggestions about how to 'fix' the cs1|2 template.
Trappist the monk (talk) 14:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk & Musiconeologist - So does that mean the problem was fixed? The error message, the one I was making enquiries about fixing has now vanished, so I am assuming I have one of you to thank for that, and that the coding was something to do with a part of the Wikipedia server that I never venture into. Therefore, I guess I should thank you, and assume that I will have no more trouble with this issue in future. Thank you for both of your efforts.SMargan (talk) 12:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
You never named the article that was throwing up an "invisible" 'script warning'. If the reference you found was indeed the one you provided in your OP, then the url in that reference exists in two places on en.wiki: here and Boardgame. Both show the same maintenance message. When describing something that you don't understand or think is wrong, always name the article or page where the issue exists. If you saw the problem someplace other than the Boardgame article, you should name it so that someone can answer the question of why the maintenance message has vanished.
Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

International taxation category in French

I am trying to link the French fr:Catégorie:Fiscalité internationale on wikipedia to the Category:International taxation, which has already 16 languages...but every time I try to link these categories I have an error message...How should I proceed? Thank you Adumoul (talk) 15:17, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Adumoul you can't link the categories as they have different Wikidata items. You need to merge the Wikidata items as explained at d:Help:Merge. TSventon (talk) 15:33, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
@Adumoul You wanted to do it. I let's you do it for this reason.
If you have again a problem to do it. Say it there. Anatole-berthe (talk) 06:59, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
@Adumoul hi, I saw you have not edited for a couple of days, so I have merged the Wikidata items. TSventon (talk) 19:44, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@Adumoul The problem was resolved by @TSventon.
I thanks him. Anatole-berthe (talk) 13:37, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Can the Content translation tool properly translate species articles including infoboxes?

Hi all

I'm not sure where is best to ask this question, hopefully someone here can help. I'm looking at translating some species articles, specifically the species articles for Tsetse fly eg Glossina longipennis into French and maybe Italian. However when I start to translate the article into French there are gaps where the infobox should be and I think also the authority control box at the bottom of the page that links out to external sources for the species. Does anyone know if these are missing because they are broken/not working, or are they just automagically converted including images so they don't need input from me?

I could just translate the article and then publish it, but I don't have enough of an understand of French Wikipedia to be able to fix any issues that come out the other end.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 15:22, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

If you haven't already, refer to Wikipedia:Translate us for detailed instructions. Be aware that different language Wikipedias may use different templates, etc., so ones that work here may not there, as that page's Handmade section, Point 6 mentions.
I am presuming you are fluent in (written) French – if you were not, you would not be able to spot and correct the mistakes that the Wikipedia:Content translation tool (or any other machine translator) will almost certainly make. Good luck! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 02:06, 11 April 2025 (UTC)?
The pedias of different languages do use different templates. fr:Modèle:Automatic taxobox (if this is how it's translated) simply doesn't exist; and even if it did exist, viewing it after automated translation of its content would probably be a hideous experience as the names for the attributes/fields (and probably not just their names) within the template would differ. The "automagic" isn't always so bright. -- Hoary (talk) 02:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I think it would be sensible to ask about this on French Wikipedia too—that's where the people will be who have experience of articles translated into French, what infoboxes they have and so on.
Maybe I should also note in passing that the standard practice among professional translators used to be that one should only translate into one's own language. I'm not sure if this is still the case, and of course Wikipedia is a different situation from being paid to produce professional-quality work, but it does hint at translation in the other direction being significantly more difficult. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 14:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Is it ok if i add things that are funny, still relevant, but funny?

I'm not sure if i should and i don't want to get banned. Erterer (talk) 14:01, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

If the only level of detail you're going to provide is this, then the simple answer is "No". Floquenbeam (talk) 14:02, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Without know the context. We can't help. Anatole-berthe (talk) 14:16, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User pages gives you considerable freedom in user pages like User:Ertererer. For articles, if you wouldn't have added it if you didn't find it funny then you probably shouldn't add it. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:18, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
As in on the demon core page, would be ok to add a joke like 'this is what is know known as a bruh moment' Erterer (talk) 14:51, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
You would definitely get reverted and warned for that, since this is an encyclopedia and articles are intended to be serious. Thanks for checking. Perception312 (talk) 15:11, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Ertererer: That would be very inappropriate unless reliable sources systematically refer to a specific incident as a bruh moment, and then there should be an inline reference. The demon core killed people and it would be bad taste for an encyclopedia to joke about it, apart from jokes in general not belonging here. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:14, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

How to add capitols in talk pages?

When I try to make a comment on a talk page, sometimes the shift key moves my cursor to the beginning of the text box. As a result, I can't always add capitol letters, quotation marks, or parentheses. This might be a "me" problem, but I've never seen this on any other website, which makes me think it's a bug on Wikipedia's end. —Arctic Gnome (talkcontribs) 14:49, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@Arctic.gnome I've never experienced this and I cannot immediately find any discussion of it elsewhere, but you might get better answers at WP:VPT. If you do ask there, though, it would be helpful for you to give more details about your environment: are you editing with the source editor, the visual editor, or using the reply tool? What browser and operating system do you use? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:08, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I have seen such reports where it may have been wikEd, maybe in certain circumstances. Is wikEd enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? If it's enabled there then you should have a pencil-on-paper icon at the top right of edit pages to quickly disable/enable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:22, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
@Arctic.gnome Also for future reference you might be interested in the difference between capitol and capital. Shantavira|feed me 16:48, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Archived archived archived archives

I'm not entirely sure if it's appropriate for me to be asking this since it's about another user's talk page, but I've recently be getting repeated notifications about a message I posted on User talk:ElijahPepe a long time ago being archived or removed. Upon clicking on the notifications I found that the message was archived from the original talk page, but then the archived message was again archived from the archives, and so on... I think there are currently four nested archives at the moment. Is this supposed to happen and, if not, how can I stop receiving notifications about this message being archived?

TypoEater (talk) 18:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@TypoEater: A named section had archiving instructions causing itself to repeatedly be archived to a new subpage. A user has removed the instructions [9] which should only be in the lead before the first section heading. Come back if it happens again. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:09, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

How do I add external links inline? I'm working on Draft:Tornadoes in Chicago and I want to add a link to the city's official tornado preparedness resource in a section explicitly about that, instead of having it be at the very bottom of the page where casual readers are less likely to look to find this resource. I know [example.com this markup], but I want to know if there was a template I could use for this type of situation. Departure– (talk) 14:37, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@Departure–: There is no template for this. It would encourage something we don't want except in rare circumstances like certain lists and tables with systematic linking. It's not a valid reason that the link is considered important. You can make an inline reference after suitable text like "The city has published a tornado preparedness guide.<ref>Full citation with link</ref>" PrimeHunter (talk) 15:02, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
In that case, should I have prose cited to the safety guide in the way you mentioned, or should I leave it as-is in the external link section at the bottom of the page? Departure– (talk) 15:05, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
@Departure–: The external links section is usually for pages which haven't been cited but we do sometimes allow both. I think that would be OK here if the article prose at the citation says more than merely that the page exists. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:31, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
You seem to me to be saying that it's relevant in the body of the article, and the fact that they've done this certainly sounds relavant to the subject, so I think you should mention it in the article body then link to it via a reference. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 22:03, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Article editing technical issue - moving between Visual editor and Source editor not possible

Hi. I normally flick back and forth between visual editor and source editor a lot while editing pages. Today the ability to do that has disappeared. I can get from visual editor to source editor fine, but at the top right of the source editing edit box, where there used to be a button to go back to visual editor, it now just says Preview (which shows - surprise- a preview of the page, but does not get you back to visual editing). What changed and how do I change it back, because this is a very annoying alteration! DrThneed (talk) 04:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@DrThneed: Is it on the current version of an article and not an old revision? Please link an example. On Example I see a pencil button to switch to the right of "Preview". Does it work here in safemode? Does it work if you log out? Try to bypass your cache in a source edit window where it fails. Use Ctrl+F5 in Windows browsers and not F5 or a reload button alone. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:52, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter thanks for the suggestions! Yes, it happens on current articles. This one for instance (but any article I try to edit): Larissa Bieler I use the pencil icon to switch from visual editor to source and then...no pencil icon to get back (just a 'preview' button where it should be). It happens on the Example you linked too. When I clicked your safemode link it showed me the source editor with the pencil icon....but if I use that to switch to visual editor and back, the pencil icon is gone again.
If I try logging out, and then edit, I can see the pencil in source mode if I go straight into source mode, but if I switch to visual editor and back, no pencil.
I'm on a Mac, so no ctrl+F5. I tried Cmd-R, which I think is the equivalent? That refreshed the page but still didn't show a pencil. I have tried editing in Firefox and Chrome, and on two different machines, and get the same problem. DrThneed (talk) 10:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
@DrThneed: It appears you have to use the "Show preview" button below the edit area before you can switch back to VisualEditor. Does that work for you? It may be intentional. It's easy to make invalid source code which messes with VisualEditor so maybe it wants you to at least check the source code with preview before switching back. The preview button to the top right of the source editor is a recent addition and works differently from the normal show preview. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:50, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Oh you're right - the preview button underneath does something different than the preview button on the right, and when you use it the pencil icon appears again.
If this was a deliberate change by someone, it really sucks. Hiding the method of switching back and forth made me have to publish my edits in order to get back to visual editor, which was frustrating and slow and made me *more* likely to publish the page with an error (e.g. I often go into source mode to change a website citation to a cite news template, because citoid messed up, but I don't always know all the field names for all the citation templates, so want to go back to the visual editor to complete the citation before I publish).
Anyway - thanks so much for figuring it out! DrThneed (talk) 20:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
@DrThneed: It appears to be an unintented effect of phab:T390801 which wanted to prevent switching in another situation. phab:T391498 has a proposed fix. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Oh excellent! I look forward to the fix. Thanks for explaining @PrimeHunter DrThneed (talk) 23:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Misplaced italicism?

The displayed title for the article on DeStorm Power is italicized. As DeStorm Power is a person rather than a boat, novel, or film, I believe this title should not be in italics. However, as I can‘t find any DISPLAYTITLE or italictitle in the lead section, I am unsure what is causing the italicism. Yyannako (talk) 00:17, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Yyannako: It can be anywhere. Fixed in infoboxes in later sections.[10] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:32, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Are video games, movies, TV shows citation themselves?

I looked at Hulk Hogan. Both Filmography and Video games tables do not use citations. Looking for the guideline about video games/movies/TV shows do not need to be sourced and they are citation themselves; e.g. linking to their WP article is enough. Thanks. --Mann Mann (talk) 03:00, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Unless they went uncredited or took an (unfamiliar) Alan Smithee credit, sources are not needed for appearances in video games, TV shows, or movies as the credits themselves would verify it, making it uncontroversial and pointless to cite the work. If they did Alan Smithee or go uncredited, you will need a source. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 05:32, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Citation error

In the article False humility, reference number 4 shows an error. I tried but could not fix the error. Please help. Arbabi second (talk) 10:53, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

اربابی دوم Wikipedia checks ISBN numbers and flagged the ISBN in reference 4 as invalid. I have fixed the error by taking the ISBN from the Hachette website. TSventon (talk) 11:04, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
@TSventon The source problem has been resolved. Thank you for your help. Arbabi second (talk) 11:11, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Is this article (Political aspects of Islam) too long?

197,941 bytes. Have been trying to improve it and adding to it. But now .... --Louis P. Boog (talk) 01:06, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

My personal impression only: it's long, well-written, and has a lot of interesting content. But it lacks an overall "theme". For instance, why does it have an image from the Sanaa manuscript, which is not mentioned in the text? My impression is that editors with something interesting (and balanced, and referenced) to say about Islam have added it without considering whether it's really a "political aspect". Maproom (talk) 07:22, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
Its part of the questioning of the traditional narrative of Islamic history. Very interesting subject, but like you say, what does it have to do with politics and Islam. (I didn't put it there but obviously haven't deleted it.) --Louis P. Boog (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
@Louis P. Boog: you could have a look at Wikipedia:Article size#Size guideline and use the Wikipedia:Prosesize gadget. The article is over 10,000 words, so according to the guideline it Probably should be divided or trimmed, though the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material. Also, the size does not include several block quotes, which should possibly be replaced replaced with summaries of their content. TSventon (talk) 11:18, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
@TSventon: thanks. I'll check these. -Louis P. Boog (talk) 13:23, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Make the Lists Collapsed

Hello, can someone please make the lists in this template collapsed? Each list should be collapsed by default. Then the user can click on a + icon or "Show" to see the full list. For example like this template. -Artanisen (talk) 05:53, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I took the liberty to apply the necessary tweaks for collapsed lists directly to your page. Use diff in the version history to see the changes. Hope this helps. Erukx (talk) 11:41, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
This is good, thanks Erukx. Artanisen (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Articles for deletion process

Hello, I am wondering where would be a good venue to have an open discussion on the suitability of the current AfD process. An editor has recently posted 52 AfDs on a tight subject, posting these in around an hour. [I actually think they have a point and many of them don't and likely won't ever meet the criteria for standalone articles, but that's neither here nor there, IMHO; a flawed system that chances upon the right result sometimes is still a flawed system.]

Considering the new article approvers do such a great job filtering out the bulk of pages that have zero notability at the point of creation it seems to me that the facility to delete pages that have existed for 20~ years needs to be a little more involved. Just being able to drop a quick template in with minor alterations and move onto the next nomination in 60-90 seconds seems like a very easy trigger to pull, one that can cause a much larger amount of work for anyone researching the article, and for closing admins who have to evaluate sources and come up with a decision. It seems very lopsided in favour of making it easy to delete and hard to save articles, especially as a flood of nominations like that result in voter fatigue.

Deletion is an extreme action for many pages, it feels like if someone wants an article actually scrapped outright they should be willing to put more than a minute into stating so. Is there not some sort of mechanism that could be used to make starting an AfD a little more involved? Even if it's just a series of checkboxes say "This article requires deletion as it has no suitable content to be merged to another page", "I have checked GNews for sources", "I have checked GBooks for sources", "I have checked the references already in the article"... Just something that puts a bit more onus on the nominator to do a little bit more of the legwork.

Again, if this is the wrong place for such a discussion I apologise, and would be grateful if someone could point me towards the right place. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 15:03, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for Deletion for AfD in particular would be the best bet, though I will point out WP:BEFORE to you since that seems to address the crux of your complaint. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 15:13, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! I didn't realise there was a talk page actually on there, not a shining moment for me. Ta =) BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 15:15, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Uploading British Blind Sport logo for article infobox

I'd like to upload the British Blind Sport logo so it can be added to the British Blind Sport article's infobox, but I'm unsure if I need to upload it here or commons. The logo is on their website which can be found here. [11] KaraLG84 (talk) 20:58, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello, @KaraLG84. The website says "© British Blind Sport 2025", so unless you can find a statement that the logo is licensed differently, you must assume that it is copyright, and so it may not be uploaded to Commons. It is probably appropriate to upload it to Wikipedia as non-free content and use it in that article - see WP:LOGOS for more information.
However, this is like painting the windows on a house which is about to fall down. Logos - and infoboxes - are not essential parts of an article: citations to reliable sources are. ColinFine (talk) 21:12, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
@KaraLG84 I uploaded it and added it to the article, hope you don't mind. Possibly this would be accepted on Commons, see "Licensing" at File:Enhanced Games logo.jpg for an example, but I'd ask there first. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:01, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
That's no problem. Thanks a lot for doing that. KaraLG84 (talk) 08:30, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Graph showing a user's past activity

I used to be able to find a graph showing my past activity on Wikipedia (I think on en:Wikipedia, but it would have been much the same across all Wikipedia projects). It was colourful, showing mainspace edits, talkpage edits, and a few other things in different colours. It went back for more than ten years. It was I think weekly or monthly. If it wasn't actually provided by Wikipedia, it was linked to from here.

And now I can't find it. Can anyone help? Maproom (talk) 22:07, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Maproom First, go to your ordinary contributions page. Scroll to the very bottom. There, there's a tiny link (just after User rights) that says Edit statistics. Click that, then scroll down to the colourful bit.
Edit: Here is where you should end up. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 22:18, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
That's it! Thank you. Maproom (talk) 22:56, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
The only reason I knew is that I spent ages trying to find it myself a few weeks ago! It's pretty well hidden, if you ask me. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 00:37, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
You can find these pages more easily if you enable the gadget "XTools: dynamically show statistics about a page's history under the page heading" in your Special:Preferences at the bottom of the Appearance section. There you'll see at the top of every page some statistics and links. -- Reconrabbit 14:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Photo

I know less than nothing about copyright law. Are we allowed to use (a low quality version of(?)) an image from https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp54756/michael-arabian for the article Michael Arabian? Polygnotus (talk) 09:37, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

There's no information about previous publication of this photograph, but we are told that it's the work of somebody who died in 1959. And we can assume that it was taken in Britain by somebody who was British. If we don't know for sure of any previous publication, then we have to assume that there was no previous publication. A skim-read of c:Commons:Copyright rules by territory/United Kingdom suggests to me that this photograph won't enter the public domain till 2030. If this is right (and you can peruse that Commons page as easily as I can), then it can't be uploaded to Commons. As for a "fair use" claim, please see Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline; ask here if anything in that page is not clear. -- Hoary (talk) 10:39, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
Hm, that sucks because I like his smug expression. Thank you! Polygnotus (talk) 11:08, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
@Polygnotus As Michael Arabian is long dead, then a fair-use image of him can be added locally and used to illustrate our article. See WP:NONFREE, especially WP:NFCI item 10. Make sure you include all the necessary justification when you upload the image. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:07, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
... and make sure you have the correct person. The only images of him I can find are the ones at the National Portrait Gallery, already linked at the foot of the article. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:16, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Racial language, possible slur on article

On the page Hellaby, near the bottom of the History section, the term “negroes” has been used. I am wondering if this is acceptable language on Wikipedia, and what might be suitable to replace it as it does not sit right with me - I cannot find a guideline for it. Osarius 20:20, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored. Hacked (Talk|Contribs) 20:22, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Okay, that answers the question. I was reading Wikipedia:No racists, but see that the spirit of the essay is aimed more at editors being racist towards other editors, rather than “racist language” in articles. Osarius 20:29, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
You may find quite a bit of unsettling antiquated language on historical topics. There is a balance on these topics between using modern language and using period language to accurately represent the topic. Sometimes being uncomfortable means that a historical subject has been accurately portrayed. GMGtalk 20:29, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I think you're right in this particular case. Wikipedia not censored, but this is a case of using a derogatory term in WP:WIKIVOICE, which we should not be doing. It would not detract from the article's accuracy or readability to use a more civil term. The alternative would be to attribute the term and describe it in context. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 22:07, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
This situation has been resolved via rev del, but I want to add support to TBUA's analysis here. Yes, our project is not censored, but that doesn't mean we should be using "negroes" in wikivoice. Accurate communication means using precise, neutral language wherever possible. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:57, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Strongly agree. -- Avocado (talk) 14:42, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't see it as a slur at all. It was the language used at the time. I do find it odd that the article, supposedly about a village in England, has so much content about what a native of that village did while in Barbados, including "allowing negroes to attend religious meetings in his house". Maproom (talk) 07:18, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Something about that section has my ears pricked for a copyvio; though given the use of a now-inappropriate term it's conceivable that it's a C&P from a source that's now PD. -- Avocado (talk) 16:01, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
The entire section is completely uncited, and needs to be (largely) removed or rewritten, with the biographical detail moved to a separate article if it can be cited and if the subject can be shown to be notable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:08, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, it's a copy-paste job. A giant block of uncited, unformatted text was dropped in without edit summary by TomWL (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), in his only Wikipedia edit, back in 2010.
The portion in question here appears to have been lifted from Growth of a Township: Maltby's Story. There's an online copy of the relevant chapter in the Wayback Machine. The entire 'History' section of the article should probably be wiped and rewritten without plagiarism. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Done, and flagged for revdel. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:25, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! For those of us watching at home, how did you go about digging up up the source? I tried googling snippets but only turned up Wikipedia mirrors and other derivatives. -- Avocado (talk) 20:09, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
In this particular instance:
  • I started with looking for phrases from our article - which usually works - but eventually cast a wider net.
  • Reasoning that there probably wasn't a lot of stuff online about a fairly obscure seventeenth-century justice in Barbados, I tried a Google search for "-Wikipedia Ralph Fretwell", just to find any mentions at all of the fellow. (When trying to find the original source in a Google search, it can help to add "-Wikipedia" ('minus' Wikipedia) to your query. It forces Google to only display results that don't include a mention of Wikipedia--which will cut out a lot of mirrors and copies during your searching.)
  • The fourth-or-so result in that search was a genealogy and family history page about the Fretwell family. It included the quote that set off this thread. It also provided a link to their source. (Well done, Fretwell family!)
  • The link was long since dead, but the Wayback Machine had a copy.
  • From the Wayback copy, I was able to identify the original source - I think - which is the narrowly-circulated 1989 Clifford Auckland book.
It may sound like a lot, but looking at my browser history the entire process took perhaps 10 minutes from top to bottom. It's a sort of scavenger hunt that we often get too much practice in, unfortunately. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:34, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, really appreciate the explanation! -- Avocado (talk) 22:50, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Resolved

.....Moxy🍁 04:52, 17 April 2025 (UTC)


Over at commons, I've just marked an image file as a probable copyright deletion - the source for the image has a clear copyright notice, and nothing to suggest that the image isn't copyright. [12] No problem there, I think.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia itself is hosting the same image, but with what appears to be an invalid 'permission' rationale added - a link to a statement concerning a website other than the one the image is hosted on. [13] Since citing a CPS webpage release for material hosted on the Merseyside Police website is clearly inappropriate, I think we need to delete that too, but I'm not sure how best to deal with this, not having dealt with Wikipedia-hosted file copyright issues before. Do we have to do it independently, or is it all handled by Commons? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:10, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

File:Axel Rudakubana.jpg.... Think I got the right tag. Copyright is clear https://www.merseyside.police.uk/hyg/terms-conditions/ Moxy🍁 01:37, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Just realized your blocked..... I'm not trying to edit for you to circumvent your block. Did this just happen? I'm taking this happen while I was doing all this. Moxy🍁 01:39, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
From ATG's talk page it seems the block was five minutes after they posted this. It is a short block so they will probably be back before this is archived. TSventon (talk) 03:18, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Extract still photo from video? Request.

I'm working on English WP article Silent Parade and I'm having a hard time finding a free-use image. However, there is a free-use newsreel (movie) at File:Negroes' Protest a Silent Parade 1917.webm. Is there a group of WP volunteers that do tasks such as extracting still pics from the movie? Or is there an (easy) tool I can run to do that? Noleander (talk) 18:21, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Noleander: Yes, see WP:Graphics lab. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:39, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing Excellent, thanks! Noleander (talk) 19:48, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Combining newspapers.com references that have two clippings

Is there a way to make one formatted reference while using two newspapers.com clippings? An example article is One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish which has a citation for each page. SL93 (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes! One good way is described at WP:NEWSPAPERS.COM#Citations across multiple pages/clippings. Essentially, each clipping gets its own external link within the pages= parameter. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:19, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Great. Thank you. SL93 (talk) 22:21, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Admin help please

The page Michael Grieves appears to have been deleted sometime after a Speedy Keep in 2022 and before a recreation in 2024, maybe a CSD. Can an admin please restore the full history; the lack of a complete history may have played a role in the recent creation of a second AfD because the first AfD info was not immediately available.

N.B., maybe the wrong place to post this, is so please tell me where to repost Ldm1954 (talk) 15:31, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Ldm1954: WP:AN is the place to ask for admin assistance. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, reposted there (I won't delete this) Ldm1954 (talk) 16:04, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Notability for commissioners/secretaries of US state agencies ?

Hello, I am wondering if someone could confirm whether or not individual state secretaries or commissioners (such as New Jersey Commissioner of Human Services, Minnesota Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts Secretary of Department of Youth Services, etc.) are inherently notable subjects if they don't otherwise meet WP:GNG? Zzz plant (talk) 19:58, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I suspect holders of that office are not inherently notable. WP:POLITICIAN, part of Wikipedia:Notability (people), is the most relevant guideline. DMacks (talk) 02:55, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Zzz plant, although certain categories of people enjoy a strong presumption of notability, no person is inherently notable. In the end, a person is notable only if they are the subject of significant coverage in several reliable sources that are fully independent of that person. No more and no less. Cullen328 (talk) 05:12, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Okay that makes sense, thanks very much! Zzz plant (talk) 05:22, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Help for Norwegian topic

Hi all, I have a query about the Order of St. Olav which was awarded to the polar explorer Tryggve Gran in 1915, which he apparently returned in 1925, possibly concerning Svalbard and the Svalbard Act of that year. I'm not sure that the Ref Desks would be the best place to ask. Not being hugely familiar with the language, I wondered whether Norwegian WP might be able to help: where should I direct my question? Best wishes to all as usual on the Help Desk for your tireless efforts, >MinorProphet (talk) 16:55, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

MinorProphet, I suggest trying the reference desk as that operates every day. I looked for the main contributor to no:Tryggve Gran and found no:Bruker:Hermann Gran, i.e. User:Hermann Gran, so you could ask him. His user page says that he is Tryggve Gran's son. He last edited in April. TSventon (talk) 17:11, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Wow, so swift. Thank you very much, I'll investigate further. MinorProphet (talk) 17:30, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
There is also a no equivalent of WP:RD, no:Wikipedia:Orakelet, if you wanted a third option. TSventon (talk) 17:38, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

How to temp vanish

i can’t take much more and i want to hide because this person is harassing me and writing weird stories about me. I don’t know what to do. I’m sad anxious angry. I need to vanish for a bit as they will find a way to harass me more and link to my profile in more articles i am losing my mind i am barred from taking this to an/I I’ve been told to leave it be. I have no defense much here. I don’t feel safe I’m disgusted and miserable •Cyberwolf•. talk? 18:01, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Just log out, or close the tab you have WP in. Or register a new account. You can start a new account for privacy reasons. There's no prohibition on making a new account as long as you're not using it to evade sanctions or scrutiny. GMGtalk 18:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
ok •Cyberwolf•. talk? 18:32, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
More information: Wikipedia:Clean start
Unless you are under actual policy-based scrutiny you're under no obligation to keep using your current account to edit, especially in a case like this. Departure– (talk) 18:33, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
But i have a block on my account? It says I can’t clean start cuz i have sanctions •Cyberwolf•. talk? 18:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
To my knowledge you're just locked out of ANI for three months - any clean start must reflect this. Anyway, from my understanding, the harassment you're facing is just petty trolling. The user is already banned so Wikipedia is already doing their thing, now just on the hunt for sockpuppets. Your talk page is protected so you won't get notified there. At Special:Preferences, you can turn off notifications at Special:Preferences, perhaps change your signature to ask anyone who needs to get through to you to see your talk page.
From there, don't feed the trolls. Don't acknowledge them any more than you would a spider in your house; if you see it, you kill it (or, in this case, report it to SPI if one exists), clean up any damage they've done, and go on with your day. Either way, there's nothing stopping you from just taking a WikiBreak for an unspecified amount of time and coming back when the heat dies down.
I've been harassed before, and not feeding their trolling by giving them attention is a very useful tool in getting them to stop. Departure– (talk) 19:05, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah… •Cyberwolf•. talk? 19:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Also, don't linger on any specific things someone says about you like this. They're just words coming out of an account recognized by Wikipedia's higher-ups as a disruptive editor. Letting disruptors disrupt is... well, not in Wikipedia's best interests. Any form of acknowledgement beyond a simple revert if you see it is feeding the troll, so don't go out of your way to find any instances of trolling. Disruption from an SPI is usually dealt with by the community within minutes, meaning it might as well not be happening at all from your point of view, as long as you don't go out of your way to find it, especially given your talk page protection. Departure– (talk) 19:11, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Well I certainly wouldn't recommend using an alternate account to circumvent active sanctions. But in all honestly, you should sod off from ANI anyway. Forgetting that ANI exists is probably the best advice on the whole project. GMGtalk 19:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Ani
Don't forget Ani which still exists - sort of...
Latest summer blockbuster: Predator 9: ANI vs ARBCOM MinorProphet (talk) 16:43, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
A Wikibreak can be most enjoyable. I'm sure you have other interests: forgetting that WP even exists is probably the best advice on the whole project. :) MinorProphet (talk) 17:57, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Discrepancies between assessments on article page vs talk page

Is there a method or a tool for identifying pages for which there is a discrepancy between stub template on an article page and the assessment on the corresponding talk page? For example, I've encountered plenty of articles that have {{Pharma-stub}} on the article, but are assessed as Start (or higher) through the {{WikiProject Pharmacology}} template on the talk page; or the opposite where someone removed a stub template from an article but didn't upgrade the Wikiproject assessment. Marbletan (talk) 19:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Ratings are a fickle thing in that an article can be expanded significantly beyond a stub and be rated as such on their talk page but a stub template may remain. If you see this, feel free to, in good faith, assess; which is wrong? The higher rating or the stub template? Whichever one is right, make sure they don't co-exist in direct contrast with each other. Again, keep in mind the project-specific rating guidelines when doing this. Departure– (talk) 19:15, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
That's actually what I've been doing lately, when I come across articles with such discrepancies. I was just wondering if there was a simple way of identifying articles that have this issue so I could address it systematically. Marbletan (talk) 19:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Departure–, keeping in mind project-specific rating guidelines sounds like a sensible idea. But consider the article on Jindřich Marco, photographer and numismatist. Without even glancing at those guidelines, it's obvious to me that (i) as an account of JM the photographer it's not a mere "stub", but (ii) as an account of JM the numismatist it definitely is a mere "stub". However ... see the compact discussion in User talk:Grahamec#Not_so_classy. For reasons such as this, I've lost interest in ratings (other than Good and Featured). When I "accept" a draft, I normally don't rate it. -- Hoary (talk) 23:50, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Question about deleting a version of a file

I have been an editor for a while, but I am not very experienced at uploading images, so I did not notice until yesterday that it was possible to have multiple different versions of a file under the same filename. I uploaded non-free poster art in a low-resolution as required: File:Endangered Species film poster.png. Another user uploaded a high resolution version that I suspect would not be seen as fair use (and also did not change the rationale, so the entered info still falsely stated that it was low res). I reverted so that the high-res version is no longer in use in the mainspace, but my questions:

  • Is this, as I suspect, a copyright violation, even though it is not in the mainspace?
  • If so, how can I remove a single version of the file without nominating the whole file page (all versions) for deletion?

Thanks, --MattMauler (talk) 02:45, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Admins can selectively delete individual revisions at a filename. But there's a bot that can down-scale oversized non-free images. The editorial question is which image is actually better? Then we can decide if something needs to be down-scaled and also which revisions need to be deleted.
I tweaked your comment to link to the file. Using a leading colon makes it linked text rather than embedded/displayed actual image. DMacks (talk) 04:12, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Keep getting "☢" symbol when attempting to copy/cut/paste from a text box

Every time I attempt to copy text from a text box and paste it into an article, for example, it comes up as a small text box with the words I selected inside. If I hit paste again, the text boxes seem to "nest" within each other. (Using a Mac) if I then hit Command + x, and then command + v, the output is the "☢" symbol.

I've tried this on multiple pages and can't seem to figure out the cause for this output. If anyone knows why that combination would produce this "☢" symbol, please let me know! Nyhistoryscholar4 (talk) 18:36, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

We probably need to know what type of device (Windows, Android, etc) and what browser you are using, and whether you are using source code editor or the visual editor. Also an example of what you are trying to copy, and from where. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:37, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt reply, Andy!
I'm using a MacBook Pro, Google Chrome, and editing in visual editor.
For an example, that you can try to see if you get the same result, let's say you're editing the Wikipedia page of James A. Roe. For this example, let us assume that the "Death and burial" section does not indicate that he was interred at "Mount Saint Mary Cemetery in Flushing," however, this information is mentioned in the biography box on the right-hand side of the page (not sure if this has a specific name). Prior to clicking [edit] beside the "Death and burial" section header, copy the words "Mount Saint Mary Cemetery in Flushing" where "Resting place" is indicated in that biography box. Then paste it in the "Death and burial" section using command + v. The words "Mount Saint Mary Cemetery in Flushing" should appear in a small box. Press command + v again. Another text box with the words "Mount Saint Mary Cemetery in Flushing" should appear inside the original box. Now press command + x. Now press command + v, and that "☢" symbol should appear.
Testing this just now seems to indicate that the "command + x" sequence (following the steps before) saves the "☢" symbol to your clipboard. Wondering if anyone knows why that happens.
Thanks! Nyhistoryscholar4 (talk) 20:15, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Nyhistoryscholar4: Google Chrome can remember the context you copied from, e.g. that text was inside a table/box. If you paste into something which allows copying with context such as VisualEditor then you may get the box too. Use Ctrl+⇧ Shift+v (or something similar in a MacBook like ⇧ Shift+⌘ Command+v) to paste as plain text without the context. It may also be an option if you right-click at the location and choose from a menu. (that's a wikilink) is a radioactive sign and can be used to indicate that something is wrong. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:20, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Tool bar at the top of an article

I used to see "Modifications" "Rename" and "Follow" tabs at the top of any article I was consulting. Today, I notices they all disappeared in the tab "Page". How can I come back to the original display???

Pierre cb (talk) 22:44, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I just found that I need to unclick MoreMenu option in Gadgets. Sorry for the inconvenience. Pierre cb (talk) 22:52, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Pierre cb: I don't see any of "Modifications", "Rename" and "Follow" but they sound like Edit, Move and Watch. What is your language at Special:Preferences#mw-htmlform-i18n? Are you literally seeing those words or are you making your own translation from another language, or maybe using machine translation in your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:07, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, that is my translation. Pierre cb (talk) 03:30, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Can a article that got merged due to not meeting GNG be reinstated after meeting GNG?

Urutau (3D Printable Firearm) was merged into List of 3D-printed weapons and parts for not meeting GNG and lack of sufficient evidence of notability. Well, Urutau recently received press reports from a security research outfit(GNET and The Jamestown Foundation). At the Australian Federal Police forensics headquarters in Canberra, the ballistics team manufactured their own Urutau. It was also seized by the Auckland City CIB. It got mainstream media coverage 1 ,2,3,4,5. Urutau (3D Printable Firearm) now certainly meets GNG and has sufficient evidence of notability. Can it be reinstated?

Superlincoln (talk) 05:03, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I will provide some links:
I have no opinion on recreating the article. WP:BOLD exists. There has been a brief discussion at Talk:List of 3D-printed weapons and parts#Urutau, explaining the lack of merge edit summary. A bit of a messy one. Commander Keane (talk) 08:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
There is (and has long been) an entry for Urutau on the list-of page, in the style and level of detail of other entries in that list. Given that this was the page as the consensus target in the AFD, the merger appears to have largely been handled. Editors can adjust specific details in that list entry based on cited refs without needing any pre-approval or discussion. If you think it now meets GNG for an article, it might a better process would be to work on it in draft-space or as an article-talk subpage. That will let others help with making sure what you are proposing actually does overcome the AFD concerns. An admin can easily move that draft (wherever it is) into the article itself and maintain proper attribution. DMacks (talk) 13:14, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

CCI revdel

At CCI, at what point to I need to request a revdel? For example, this diff is a copyvio, but fairly small. Does it qualify for revdel or should is it not worth the bother? Thanks. Cremastra talk 20:11, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Original research in graphics

If I make a graphic that uses sources that are inside of an article and perhaps also cite them inside of the media description itself, does that count as original research for the compilation of data not done in other sources? I'm specifically talking about map images and graphs, charts, etc. I'm guessing the answer is "no" but I want a better source than my own analysis for this. Departure– (talk) 13:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

As long as you cite your sources I don't think that counts as original research, but I'm not an expert on this sort of thing. User:Chorchapu (talk|edits|commons|wiktionary|simple english) 17:33, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Departure–. It seems to me that if you're presenting information from a single source in a new way, that's fine, but if you're collecting information from more than one source, that would be synthesis. ColinFine (talk) 21:32, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
I think if you gave a specific example it would help. The synthesis policy says you can't state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. If you combined population data in a chart from an 1880-1927 source and a different 1928-2024 source I am not sure that would imply a conclusion. Or a map with 1980s shipping routes and 2010s shipping routes. You should cite your sources regardless. Commander Keane (talk) 11:58, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm specifically thinking of making a map of cities within the Chicago metropolitan area and neighborhoods of Chicago that have been struck by a tornado (Draft:Tornadoes in Chicago). Such media doesn't exist currently anywhere but can be sourced to official records in the body of the article which is what I was planning on doing. Departure– (talk) 12:32, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
@Departure–: I am rather liberal with these things, so I don't see a huge problem. If it gets rejected from the article, it can still live on Wikimedia Commons. If you are just showing the F4s and F5 clearly labelled it may better than dotting a map with every occurrence recorded. I am not sure if you have exact coordinates of stikes or you are going to shade neighbourhoods. It may get into the realm of original research if you are making too many decisions for the viewer, so a second opinion would be good if you are going to lose a lot of time doing it. Windy city hey? Who knew. Commander Keane (talk) 07:32, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Touchdown points, termination coordinates, and places explicitly sourced in the article, that's what I plan. Making the map itself might be a bit harder. Departure– (talk) 12:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
@Departure–, I always include the sources for data similar to that of your context in the image file itself -- often in a box below. That way, the sources are unambiguously external and secondary (i.e. I'm just gathering them together in a visual form, fully citing them). They won't be amended or deleted in error by others, and I don't need to divert the reader's attention in the body text by writing narrative intended only to hang the citation footnotes on. See here, for example, used in this article. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 12:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
@SCHolar44 Your example is contrary to the manual of style for images, which says that textual information should always be transmitted as text, rather than in an image. True text can be easily searched, selected, copied, and manipulated by readers...: see MOS:TEXTASIMAGES. Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your comment. I should have mentioned that caveat. In the example I gave, the textual information related only to the sources of data that informed the preparation of the diagram. As such, they will not change, nor should they be changed; and they do not need to be searched. I suspect that when editors decided on the wording of MOS:TEXTASIMAGES they may not have envisaged this particular narrow context. But "Rules are for the guidance of the wise ...", no? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 10:05, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Killing of Austin Metcalf

The name of the minor accused of the Killing of Austin Metcalf keeps getting added to multiple locations on Wikpedia. It has been reported at WP:BLPN, but keeps getting added. Is there a way in which we can escalate this? --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:33, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jax 0677: Ask for page protection at WP:RfPP. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:24, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Tropes

A Trope (literature) is a narrative event that happens in several works of fiction, in similar ways. For example, the happy ending, the damsel in distress, the team-up, etc. There are also political tropes, basic ideas that politicians usually make mention to.

Should Category:Political tropes be a subcategory of Category:Tropes by type, or are they unrelated concepts despite the similar names? I'm asking here and not the articles' talk pages because they are both obscure articles that very few view or edit, and the question would surely go unnoticed. Cambalachero (talk) 04:40, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Cambalachero: Try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Newby

Writing an article on The Comic Book Makers. TCBMs is an eyewitness account of the Golden and Silver Age of comics by one of its creators. It's in Draft waiting to be reviewed. Is there anything I can do to speed up the review so it can go into mainspace? I think it needs a category under books about comics. Interested in hearing advice. Thanks. HarvResearch (talk) 22:01, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

For Draft:The Comic Book Makers, cite actual reviews of the work, or perhaps articles about it that treat it in some depth and aren't based on interviews. As for categorization, Category:Books about comics is already specified for it; why would the book need a category under this? -- Hoary (talk) 00:17, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. HarvResearch (talk) 00:40, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
RE your comment: "For Draft:The Comic Book Makers, cite actual reviews of the work, or perhaps articles about it that treat it in some depth and aren't based on interviews." In fact, I have been sourcing for "articles that treat it in some depth." What I have found, and suspected in my research on comic writers and espec writers on the history of comics, is there is little "depth" coverage of this subject, esp regarding books or writings on history of comics. Further, I've found this book is one of the first and few books on the subject as an eyewitness account of the history of comics. It was published quite a bit of time ago which makes it harder to research. But it is an important book on the subject of someone who lived and worked in the gold and silver age of comics so it is important to comic history. HarvResearch (talk) 18:33, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
"little "depth" coverage of this subject" is a clear indication that the topic is not notable in Wikipedia terms, we need to see significant coverage of the topic in reliable independent sources. Theroadislong (talk) 18:53, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
HarvResearch, I'm pretty much a comics ignoramus, but a bit of web-searching shows me rather a lot of books about "comics" (which usually seems to mean comics from the US). I notice that Rutgers UP has even put out Comics Studies: A Guidebook; perhaps other publishers too have put out guides to studying comics. I imagine that there are academic journals about comics, and certainly there's The (non-academic) Comics Journal. No good coverage, or pointers to good coverage, in any of these? -- Hoary (talk) 11:49, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your follow up and I will check out the resource you noted. HarvResearch (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
I found references to the book in a thesis paper published by MSU Libraries Digital Collections. Is something like this an acceptable source? HarvResearch (talk) 17:41, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
If you mean a dissertation made available via Michigan/Montana/Moscow State U's "Digital Collections", please see "Dissertations", under Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Scholarship. -- Hoary (talk) 22:31, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Defunct work groups on WikiProject talk page templates

Back in January 2025, Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga/Dragon Ball was marked as defunct. However, the note about an article being supported by said work group still appears in the {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} banners on relevant Dragon Ball-related talk pages such as Talk:Dragon Ball Z and Talk:List of Dragon Ball Z Kai episodes.

Given that, where can I discuss the matter on obtaining a consensus to remove any defunct task force/work group pages on talk page banners, including the work group I mentioned above? Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:25, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga..... As it seems to be recently active. Moxy🍁 02:33, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
I've started up a discussion there at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga#What to do with defunct anime projects?. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Random Book Cite Errors for ISBN Date Incompatibility

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


The following "ISBN / Date incompatibility" editor error messages just appeared in the article I was planning to make edits to (see top of this article). From my knowledge, this part of the article was not touched. Previously, a similar problem arose from an unrelated page related to server-side coding with the tag itself. Can someone look through these two book references and see what went wrong? I do not know enough about ISBNs to know why an ISBN date incompatibility would arise. Alternatively, let me know if this is another server-side problem. The references were as follows:


ERRONEOUS CODE REMOVED


I am keen to resolve this problem, as I am just to make a major change to the article, and it would be nice to have this current problem remedied as well in the same edit. Thank in advance for the time taken to look at this problem.SMargan (talk) 11:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The publication dates given, 1961 and 1913, are before the first version of the ISBN standard. However, it is possible to obtain an ISBN for an older work if the publisher wishes to do so. Maybe the editors who added these read books that were printed and sold near the publication dates, and didn't have ISBNs; some later editor added them. If so, I would remove the ISBNs.
It's also possible that the editor who added the citations read later printings of the books, that did have ISBNs. Since reprintings have the same contents and same page numbering as the first printing, the publication dates would be correct, as would including the ISBNs. If this is what happened, just ignore the messages, they are false alarms.

You may be able to figure out which scenario is true by looking at the edit history, and perhaps asking the editor who originally added the citations.

This message is being discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:03, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h (talk) - So what should I do to make the "ISBN - Date Incompatability" error message go away? ... Should I remove the ISBN for those works, or just leave the error messages in the article? They were no there last week, and no one has altered those particular references since last week, so it cannot be due to the original editor that added those book references. Thanks in advance for the time taken to give further advice on the way forward.SMargan (talk) 03:38, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I'd just leave the error message. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:53, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
If you can find the date of the printing that has the ISBN, then use that in |date= and put the original date/year in |orig-date=. -- Verbarson  talkedits 22:52, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
That's wrong, and that's polluting the citation with false information. In the case of the citation to Falkener, the publication date is 1961 and the original date is 1892. The orig-date is for more substantial differences than just reprinting by the same publisher. For example, if the original was written 1000 years ago and has been copied by a succession of scribes until a modern printed version was produced. The parameter could have been used in our article "The Reckoning of Time", but that article does not use citation templates. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:44, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
-- Verbarson  (talk) & Jc3s5h (talk) - Thanks for the assistance I was given. That, combined with my own research, means that I know much more about ISBN, ISBN-10, and ISBN-13, than I did before. By way of closure, by fixing an error in the date in one (original date was erroneously used instead of the reprint), and exchanging the editions for more current editions, I eventually did get the editor's error warnings removed, whilst still retaining the ISBN numbers. Thanks once again for you time in helping find a solution to this problem! You guys have been a great help.SMargan (talk) 08:18, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Here was this finished product. [Note: I have removed the prior version so that you can see that this new version does not produce the prior editor's wanring error.]


— Preceding unsigned comment added by SMargan (talkcontribs) 08:18, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The Falkner citation appears wrong because copies in reliable archives such as Google Books and Internet Archive are cited the same way the original would be cited. Optionally, the |via parameter may be used to indicate an electronic source. SMargan, please state what version you read to add information to a Wikipedia article; that is the version you should be citing.

The accuracy of the second citation, for Murray, can't be assessed without knowing what version the editor who added the citation read, and whether the reissue by Oxford University Press changed anything or not. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:58, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h (talk) - Thanks also for these words of caution. I will examine these references again and fine tune them before readding them into the article. These references were in the general reference section, not correlated to any specific content. I believe that the article itself had previously received a prior warning of too many general references. Since that time a large number of specific 'inline citations' were added to evidence the content. Indeed, the edits I am soon to publish will increase this Wikipedia article's reliance on specific 'inline citation' references to evidence each fact. Due to this article's current, and future, heavy reliance of specific 'inline citations', the exact editions of these generic texts on the topic might have less import. I will make sure that I get your advice on the resultant Wikipedia article once my edits are published, which should be quite soon.SMargan (talk) 14:03, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Suppress red cite error message "Help:CS1_errors#invalid_isbn_date

Some citation bot is adding error messages into the Featured article Margaret Sanger . The two cite error messages are: cite book: ISBN / Date incompatibility The help link for that error is: Help:CS1_errors#invalid_isbn_date.

The existing cites that produce that error are are actually pretty accurate: the book was published in 1917, but it was reprinted around 1980 (with an ISBN). The 1980 reprint is NOT a new edition. So there is no way to "fix" the cite and make the error go away. Is there a way to disable that red error message for the entire article? or for a single citation? Noleander (talk) 15:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

See the section above this one. It isn't a bot. It's some sort of change to the citation template apparatus, although I don't know exactly which change is causing this. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Edit did not appear constructive

Hi, I wanted to ask question about one of my edits being reverted due to not being constructive. The question I wanted to ask is why specifically was it reverted, and what should be changed for it to be constructive edit. Thanks :) Xrup69 (talk) 15:19, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

You could ask the person who reverted it, [14]? I am sure they wouldn't mind you asking on their talk page, Catalyzzt (talk · contribs). Knitsey (talk) 15:33, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I asked on my talk page where they left me a message, but then I saw that they mentioned this page. Gonna need to wait a bit I guess. Xrup69 (talk) 16:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I would guess that it was reverted because you changed chronological order to an unexplained and unsourced "most influential" ranking; that is pretty definitive as an example of non-constructive editing. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:14, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
well the reverted change was a different one so idk Xrup69 (talk) 18:21, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
But yes, I agree that the change in chronological order was unsourced and not constructive, so I have no problem with it being reverted. My problem is other edits that are sourced were reverted. Xrup69 (talk) 09:38, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
If a single edit contains a set of several different changes, some of which are problematic, it might be too difficult for someone else to undo just one part of the change. If a single edit makes a total change of formatting or organization, it might be too difficult to even recognize that there are also small content-changes that might be ok. It's easy to look at a major problem and say "there is a major problem, go back and try again", which gives you the opportunity to focus on one type of change at a time. DMacks (talk) 09:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
The edit that changed chronological order changed just that, they reverted changes before that that had nothing to do with the order. Xrup69 (talk) 09:56, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Ah, looking at every part of the history of the edits here, I suspect the other editor saw an edit with which they disagreed (for whatever reason) and possibly used the tool that undoes the whole set of recent edits by the editor who made that one (rather than just the most recent edit). Or they looked at the whole set of those recent edits together (in case each one was a confusing step towards an overall result they liked) and did not realize that only the last step was a problem. Or they really disagreed with all the edits. There's no way to know until they respond. DMacks (talk) 16:55, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
They still did not revert it or write the reason. I assume they made a mistake and I would like to work on the page a bit so I wanted to ask if someone could revert it to the state it was before I changed the chronological order. Xrup69 (talk) 09:01, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
@Xrup69: I have restored your version. Catalyzzt is certainly welcome to use edit summaries and discuss on talk pages etc about this. Commander Keane (talk) 00:18, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you very much :) Xrup69 (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, apologies for the late response. I do not remember reverting this edit specifically, so it was in all likelihood a misclick. I apologize for the inconvenience. It seems that the edit has been restored by another editor already, so no action is needed. Thank you for your contributions, and I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. Catalyzzt (talk) 04:58, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Its alright, mistakes happen. Thank you for your contributions too :) Xrup69 (talk) 13:55, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Pie chart percentages

How do we change the pie charts values on Religion in the United Kingdom to only show the percentages? Currently the same values are stated twice unnecessarily, which I'm afraid may confuse readers. On Template:Pie chart it shows an example for "Religion in the Czech Republic in 2001." in the section "More examples". I'm looking for the pie charts in Religion in the United Kingdom to replicate that pie chart, showing only the percentages but I can't work out the difference between that one and the ones on Religion in the United Kingdom. Any help would be very much appreciated. Helper201 (talk) 08:13, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Helper201: The numbers in Religion in the United Kingdom add up to 100.1. It's common to miss 100.0 if the source just rounds each number individually and doesn't make a final adjustment to hit 100.0. ValueN at Template:Pie chart#Enumerated values says: "Values that add up to more than 100 will be scaled down automatically." This can apparently not be disabled. Notice how some numbers are slightly different like "Not stated 6 (5.99%)". The scaling still misses 100.0 as sum so it also lacks a final adjustment. I suggest to quietly reduce one of the numbers by 0.1, e.g. "No religion" which is a large number where it makes little difference, and it doesn't mess with actual religions which may be more controversial. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:56, 20 April 2025 (UTC) .
@PrimeHunter: thank you for the response and the explanation. I think changing the statistics, even if it’s in a very minor way would still be a violation of WP:SYNTH, so I'll leave it alone. It’s better that the information looks messy but be factually correct than any editor changing information to something the source does not say and is factually inaccurate. Helper201 (talk) 10:05, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
@Helper201: I see you point but think "6 (5.99%)" is worse. It doesn't even say that 6 is a percentage. It could have been a count like 6 people from a survey or 6 million from a whole census. I have posted a suggestion at Template talk:Pie chart#Allow percentage sum slightly above 100. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:34, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

What's up with Section level 4 text formatting?

Why does ====Section title==== completely reformat the following section's font, font size, background color and add a surrounding box? Causing people to manually format such fourth level sections to overcome that (bizarre IMHO) mandatory formatting. - Dough34 (talk) 16:31, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

My hypothesis is that the folks designing the interface don't approve of formatting which is that deeply nested, like ({[(this many nested parentheses)}]). --Orange Mike | Talk 16:50, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm not seeing that. I just created a fourth level heading in my sandbox, and the formatting is normal. ColinFine (talk) 19:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
Oops! As Primehunter suggested a leading space was the problem. It never entered my mind that a single space would make such a major formatting change. - Dough34 (talk) 20:21, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Why does a leading space do this? I frequently see it causing problems in articles by new editors, and almost never see it serving a useful function. Cremastra talk 20:57, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
@Cremastra: A leading space is an alternative syntax in MediaWiki for the HTML <pre> tag. Considering how easily it can be made by mistake and how rarely you actually want it, I think it's a poor syntax choice. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:19, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
@Dough34: I don't see it. Please always give a link or example when you report something. I guess you looked at a specific page where the special formatting is caused by something unrelated, maybe a leading space like my reply here. PrimeHunter (talk)

Fourth-level header

just so we can see an example. Maproom (talk) 06:48, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Level 5 header

Maproom's level 4 header looks just as it should to me. This text is under a level 5 header. Note that at some point, the font stops getting smaller or less bold the deeper you go, because you wouldn't be able to see it anymore. Mathglot (talk) 07:55, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Naming conventions for television?

See for example

Which do you prefer for naming? WP:NCTV has been cited but it doesn't say directly. RanDom 404 (talk) 17:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello, @RanDom 404
I suggest the best place to reach consensus on this is WT:NCTV, perhaps putting a note in WT:TV pointing to the discussion. ColinFine (talk) 19:02, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Disable suggest bot

Hello all! It's been a while since most of you have last seen me do any editing, however I am pretty much fully retired from Wikipedia at this point (not 100% retired as I will occasionally still do editing here and there). Since I do still use Wikipedia like most people would (just browsing) it gets annoying when I get this banner and notification that someone has said something on my talk page and it's simply just suggest bot or The Signpost. I've already taken myself off the mailing list for The Signpost, but I don't quite know how to get suggestbot to stop posting to my talk page. Could someone please help me in doing so? ― Blaze WolfTalkblaze__wolf 02:51, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Remove the User:SuggestBot/config block from your user-talkpage. DMacks (talk) 02:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Done. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Resolved

Please fix the "date" issue in reference number 13 - I cannot. Sorry and thanks Srbernadette (talk) 05:19, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

 Done by IP editor here. —Sparkle and Fade (talkcontributions) 06:08, 21 April 2025 (UTC) Sparkle and Fade (talkcontributions) 06:08, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Cropping borders out of images?

Hi all,
Something I've noticed with old photos is that they usually have some sort of border around them, and I was curious if it's permitted to crop them out and only have the main image. The MOS page for images says that cropping is allowed, but only "to focus on the relevant portion". Could I get some insight here?
Thanks, PhoenixCaelestis (Talk · Contributions) 19:29, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

You can enable the crop tool under preferences on Commons, which makes this really easy. But yes, I've cropped old-timey borders out of a lot of images. GMGtalk 19:31, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the speedy reply! PhoenixCaelestis (Talk · Contributions) 19:40, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Are there any specific images you would like cropped? If you can not access the tool, I can assist. GGOTCC 21:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

How can I tag The Voice Squad as 'no newcomer tasks'?

The Voice Squad is just a short article, but it's receiving a disproportionate amount of 'newcomer task' tinkering, and I'd like it to get a rest for a while by tagging it as 'no newcomer tasks', but I don't know how to do that. I'd be grateful if someone could point me to where to learn how to do that, or simply do it themselves if they were in agreement with the idea. Thanks. Iaineditor (talk) 22:45, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

You can use {{no newcomer task}}. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:56, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Many thanks! Done. Iaineditor (talk) 23:17, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
@Iaineditor The newcomer tasks were being driven by the tags still at the top of the article, which have been in place for 12 years. If you are familiar with the topic, perhaps you could review whether the article still needs them. Mike Turnbull (talk) 10:30, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you Mike, I will take a look. Iaineditor (talk) 23:17, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Locked out of newspapers.com

In February of 2024 I lost access to newspapers.com when they made a change. I reported it on Phabricator last April and was told it might not ever get fixed. In November I realized it was, applied, and was given access that should have extended to this November 17. However, I've lost access right around the anniversary of when I reported on Phabricator. This page shows my application to renew access. I've heard NOTHING in the interim and I don't know what to do or where to go. I'm trying to translate an article from a foreign language into English and I need access to newspapers.com to find sources in English. Half a million articles here are flagged as lacking sources, and I RELY on newspapers.com for sources. I'd be so grateful for help... Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 08:31, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

@Oona Wikiwalker: you could ask at meta:Talk:The Wikipedia Library, like you did in November. TSventon (talk) 08:43, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Subsection compliant with sources?

Hey everyone, I recently restored a subsection which I deemed compliant with WP:PRIMARY and NPOV by using in-text attribution, but I am still unsure regarding several aspects. My first concern is the aforementioned concern about compliance with the policy on primary sources and neutral point of view, but I am also concerned the name subsection disproportionately big against the Musical style and lyrics subsection. Any advice would be highly appreciated, thanks! —Sparkle and Fade (talkcontributions) 04:39, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

De facto criteria for adminship

The only formal requirement to become an administrator is to be extended-confirmed. However, what do most reasonable candidates usually have (edit count, years of experience, article creation, blocks/sanctions, etc.)? Mast303 (talk) 01:22, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Advice for RfA candidates has some information, including some commentary on the three specific topics you mention. DMacks (talk) 02:34, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
@Mast303: You can use the tools in {{RfA toolbox}} to get current stats and plug in the user name of recent candidates to get an idea. The block log you will have to look up separately. Usernames Goldsztajn, Giraffer and Sennecaster will get you started. I imagine DMacks' link will be more helpful than stats though. Commander Keane (talk) 05:50, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Suggestions on good article status

Any suggestions on how I could bring this article to good article status? I want to try and bump this article to a furtherer level. Thanks! Bollardant (talk) 13:11, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Just from a spotcheck, I'll point to MOS:LEDE - remove citations to the body and make sure claims are verified there, changing a few odd sentences such as This event marked Saudi Arabia's first civil aviation history - and adding citations to the section on units stationed at the airport. Departure– (talk) 13:14, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
@Bollardant Assessment as a good article is a formal process which you have not yet started for Jiddah International Airport (1981), so you need to follow the instructions at WP:GAN and be aware that success can take considerable effort. Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:21, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
Understood. I will finalize the article by fixing oddities, and follow the instructions. Thanks for helping out! Bollardant (talk) 05:47, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Help

Which template can I use to add [

  • Where did this image come from?
  • Who created it?
  • Who holds the copyright to this image?]

for File:Nitish Chandra Debnath.jpg? Somajyoti 18:35, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

@Somajyoti: Those questions are added by the {{no copyright holder}} template because there is no source or licensing information about the file. It is automatically added by a bot to files that are uploaded and lack this information. You can add information about the file using the {{information}} template. cyberdog958Talk 19:20, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Josephine Baker

Burials at the Panthéon, Paris, and Josephine Baker pages make no reference to the fact that a casket honoring Josephine Baker was laid to rest at the Panthéon in Paris (one of only 85 people so honored, including Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and other greatest French citizens in history. Please see this 2021 article in The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/world/europe/josephine-baker-buried-pantheon.html

For some reason, I cannot make article edits or post comments to Talk pages, and was sent here.

Please make the appropriate additions to the article for Josephine Baker and the list page: Burials at the Panthéon, Paris.

Thank you. Charvex Charvex (talk) 00:44, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Charvex, you are not blocked (and never have been), and neither Josephine Baker nor Talk:Josephine Baker is "protected" in any way. Precisely what error message do you get, or what else happens, when you attempt to edit Josephine Baker? -- Hoary (talk) 01:18, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Charvex, worth noting is that Josephine Baker is not buried in the Panthéon. Her burial site is in Monaco. The casket dedicated to her in the Panthéon is filled with soil collected at various places important to her life. Cullen328 (talk) 02:35, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
This is already described in great detail in the biography of Josephine Baker. Cullen328 (talk) 02:38, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Panthéon#People interred or commemorated already covers Josephine Baker. Cullen328 (talk) 02:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

GA Review box behaviour

New topics are being added to GA Review box on Talk:Wordle (see this and this). What's missing? Thank you, Cl3phact0 (talk) 13:58, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
 Fixed Resolved at GAN template level. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:41, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Numbering of equations

In Latex it is easy to number equations. Is that possible here on WP? Sigmundg (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes! See WP:DISPLAYTAG. DMacks (talk) 16:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Works fine, although it is not as easy to use as Latex. Thanks. Sigmundg (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sigmundg (talkcontribs) 20:20, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Sandra Jayat - source for reported death useable or not?

I have been alerted by an editor on French Wikipedia @Pa2chant.bis: of the reported death at age 94 of the French artist and writer Sandra Jayat (apparently born Lucienne Jayat), citing this source: https://www.deces-en-france.fr/resultats/28373655-jayat-lucienne . This comes from a site which says about itself (translated to English), from https://www.deces-en-france.fr/contact : "# Where does the data come from? - Town halls transmit the deaths recorded every month to INSEE, which compiles them and makes them public in a royalty-free file available on its platform. INSEE's statement about this file: INSEE cannot guarantee that the file of deceased persons is free from omissions or errors; it cannot incur any liability for the use made of the information contained in these files. In particular, the information contained in these files may under no circumstances be used for the purpose of certifying the vital status of individuals ." So I am wondering whether this qualifies as a sufficiently reliable source for use on English Wikipedia. Of course it might be better to wait for a published obituary somewhere, but advice would be appreciated. Regards - Tony Rees, Australia Tony 1212 (talk) 20:20, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello, @Tony 1212. I suggest asking at WP:RSN. ColinFine (talk) 20:34, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks Colin, will do so shortly. Tony 1212 (talk) 22:11, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Now done. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Sandra_Jayat_-_source_for_reported_death_useable_or_not? for any further updates... Tony 1212 (talk) 02:57, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Garcia -

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Rule number one here is 'assume good faith.' This is Wikipedia organized by the Wiki Foundation. I have participated and donated in years past. Though that is nice, let's not lose track of the topic: wikipedia is open source information that shoud remain unpartisan, we are not lawyers.

I have edited one word from the leading sentences in this page and have kindly requested other powers to redact this word. We cannot morally side legal or illegal in this case, just that deportation occurred by a person who was in the United States illegally. Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia as it states, it's about the 'Deportation of ...' not the 'Illegal Deportation of ...'

We can do better, in many regards. John Aronetics (talk) 02:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Can I upload a photo from an unreliable source if it is purely a better quality version of one from a reliable source

I posted this on WT:MILHIST before, but I think it is more appropriate to ask here.

So the current situation is:

I want to upload the badge of the PLAGF Aviation. However, the main problem is, all of the reliable sources which I can upload it from(Xinhua, People's Daily) have a background, are slightly tilted and have lighting issues. Good news is, Baidu Baike has the exact same badge, so may I ask if I can upload the Baidu Baike version(and add that it is backed up by reliable sources) or must I screenshot the Xinhua/People's Daily version instead? Thehistorianisaac (talk) 13:09, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

@Thehistorianisaac: If you have some sort of drawing software you could probably trace it and upload it, with a copyright caption similar to "own work by Thehistorianisaac, traced/based on the work at [URL]". I've seen this sort of format before, and I'd imagine something similar was done for the PLAN, PLAGF, and PLARF (to cite other Chinese examples). I might be wrong, so someone please correct me if I am. PhoenixCaelestis (Talk · Contributions) 19:07, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Not the best at drawing it lol Thehistorianisaac (talk) 23:40, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Thehistorianisaac. "Reliability" is a property of sources for citations (i.e. to verify information in an article). It does not relate to the origins of images.
If you are confident that the image you are using is an accurate representation of its subject, and is not itself a copyright violation, then there is no reason why you shouldn't upload it from there. ColinFine (talk) 21:06, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Ok thank you! Will put both links when I upload it.
Similar thing also applies to the PLANAF, though this is slightly harder thanks to the reliable source being a CCTV-7 video. Will also upload it later when I find it. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 23:42, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

How to apply CSS styling for dark mode users only?

I am writing Wikipedia scripts, and I’m struggling to find a clean, simple way to apply specific CSS rules only for users viewing the page in dark mode—whether as a result of their Wikipedia appearance preference being explicitly set to "Dark", or because their OS is in dark mode while their appearance preference is set to "Automatic".

The only working "solution" I’ve managed to implement so far is this:

@media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    html.skin-theme-clientpref-os {
        /* Styles defined here will apply only to dark mode users. */
    }
}

html.skin-theme-clientpref-night {
    /* Styles defined here will also apply only to dark mode users. */
    /* These must be EXACTLY the same styles as above, leading to messy duplication! */
}

As you can see, this is not a practical solution, as it forces me to duplicate every single dark-mode-only CSS rule for two distinct scenarios:

  1. The user’s OS is set to dark mode, and their Wikipedia appearance preference is set to "Automatic";
  2. The user’s Wikipedia appearance preference is explicitly set to "Dark".

Since the same CSS rules should apply in both cases, manually duplicating them across separate selectors is highly inefficient, especially given the large number of dark-mode-only rules.

I couldn’t find a simple solution, such as a common "dark-mode" class that applies to the <html> or <body> element for all dark mode users (and only for them).

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :) Guycn2 (talk) 17:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Not a direct answer to your question sadly, but the folks at WP:Village pump (technical) will probably be your best shot at answering it. – Sparkle and Fade (talkcontributions) 13:56, 21 April 2025 (UTC)