Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 July 26

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July 26

Interwikis question

Placing the mouse over the interwiki links of an article, say Taxation in Canada, hover-boxes appear with the messages: "Kanadanın vergi sistemi – Azerbaijani", "Fiscalité canadienne – French", "Налоговая система Канады – Russian". Where can I find the source code of what provides the language names "Azerbaijani", "French" and "Russian"? --Theurgist (talk) 00:30, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Theurgist:, those come from the Site Matrix. Is that what you are looking for? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: It seems that's what I'm looking for. But that special page doesn't seem to have a revision history. How can I see who and when wrote the language names? If, hypothetically, someone wishes to change "Azerbaijani" to "Azeri", what edit do they have to make? --Theurgist (talk) 14:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

No, I think the special page extracts the information from langlist, which appears to be hard-coded into the mediawiki core in file Names.php. You need a dev to get it changed. You can report any problems at Bugzilla. SpinningSpark 16:19, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

URGENT - Error in "In the News" on Main Page

Sorry for posting here if this is the incorrect place - The Main Page's "In the News" says all 116 people aboard Flight 5017 were killed, while the article says all 118 were. Can an editor please urgently change this highly visible page? Upjav (talk) 05:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, how do you know this? Britmax (talk) 06:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I have amended the front page. It should not be disagreeing with the article. There does seem to be some disagreement in the sources but the article editors appear to have decided that 118 is the correct figure. SpinningSpark 09:22, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Having looked at that a bit more closely the article was recently updated to 118 and I'm no longer confident enough in that to update the front page so I've self-reverted my edit. I've opened a discussion at Talk:Air Algérie Flight 5017#Souls on board instead. SpinningSpark 10:00, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate it, Spinningspark. The odds of me catching a main page discrepancy are pretty slim, but how should I report this in future? Is there a way I can immediately contact an admin? Upjav (talk) 17:47, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Report main page errors in the appropriate section of Talk:Main Page, which has sections for errors on various parts of the main page. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Wow...I can't believe I didn't think of that. I feel very stupid. Upjav (talk) 06:14, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE Justin Parrish Wikipedia

Hello my name is Justin Parrish. I am emailing you for second time in regards to the Wikipedia article about JUSTIN PARRISH myself. It is not accurate an is missing things about me. First there isn't any info about my college career at Kent State from 2002 to 2005. There isn't anything about my free agent signing with new  york jets in 2007. Also in 2007 after released from jets I.signed with Colorado Crush in AFL. 2008 2009 I played in wilkes Barre pa with Wilkes-Scranton Pioneers. Making All AF2 both years with 30.5 sacks. I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE AN.UPDATE ON THIS MATTER thanks Justin Parrish — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.112.21.216 (talk) 07:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Justin, this is not an e-mail. If you have previously e-mailed someone you will need to contact them by the same method for an update; e-mails are private and not available to us online. I can find nothing in the archives of any previous discussion of "Justin Parrish" on any of our online noticeboards. To answer your question, you will need to provide reliable sources for the information before anyone will put it in the article. I know this may sound strange, but you saying so is not considered a reliable source on Wikipedia. The information needs to be published somewhere first. SpinningSpark 11:17, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

The American football teams for which Justin Parrish played probably have on-line rosters for each year, and this is probably a case where what might be argued to be a primary source is nonetheless a reliable source. There may also be newspaper articles or sports magazines referring to his association with each team. Justin should post his comments, with any reliable sources such as team rosters, to Talk: Justin Parrish. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:07, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Apparent page hijacking only on Wikipedia, and related troubles

I have one very strange problem, and two probably-related ones:

(1) When I click on a Wikilink I often land on a page that appears to belong to Shopify, saying "Sorry, this shop is currently unavailable". Firefox's URL field nevertheless says I should be seeing (e.g.) Elizabeth II This Shopify page thing doesn't occur for me anywhere besides Wikipedia.

( UPDATE: The preceding does happens very occasionally when I just click the "Wikipedia" main-page button I've placed on my Firefox "bookmarks toolbar". )

(2) Article pages frequently "render" strangely, in what appears to be a more primitive mode: Fonts are very simple, images don't load, the formatting and page layout is obviously incomplete or garbled.

(3) Around 20% of the time I click on an wiki link I end up at a 404-page-not-found-on-this-server page, accompanied by a Google logo. This happens too often off-wiki, too, though.

I've looked around the web, but no joy so far. Does anyone have a clear idea as to what might be going on, and how I can fix it?

PS - I'm running Firefox 31.0 on Ubuntu Linux "Trusty Tahr"; both the browser and operating system are fully up-to-date. Any help greatly appreciated! 184.78.179.21 (talk) 09:03, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

There's probably a Shopify toolbar or add-on installed in Firefox. If you remove it, it should help. This article describes its removal on Windows PCs and you might be able to get something useful out of it for your Linux system. Dismas|^(talk) 09:12, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Dismas. That seems likely. I may need to get some help in Linux forums to "translate" the very helpful page you reference, though. Will mark this "closed" in a day or so if no Linux geeks show up to add anything. Best regards, 184.78.179.21 (talk) 10:02, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome. Since this isn't strictly Wikipedia related, the Computing Reference Desk is the better choice for followup help. Dismas|^(talk) 10:20, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

The above problem describes my situation exactly. I emailed Wikipedia Help, to be told that my computer had been compromised. After wiping the hard drive, the problem was gone, only to appear in 2-3 days. No idea what I could have clicked on in that short period.

Currently, I am tolerating it, while wondering whether perhaps my ISP here in Portland could be trying to pester heavy users of their service (in time, not in volume in my case) with these (20 or so at last count) various bogus pages. My software (Windows 7 and latest Firefox) is up to date as well. Using Avast antivirus. Why these pages are targeting Wikipedia and Google (in my case), but not Bing or Yahoo, I have no idea. They are low resource using sites.

FYI, I am in Portland, OR. If anyone in Portland is also having this situation, please post here. I have notified the FCC about this, but they are apparently having the ISP investigate its own case, so I don't expect much.

Big red warning

There is a big red warning message at the top of this article that I don't know how to fix → cf.   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 10:09, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

There were two templates that were conflicting with each other trying to modify how the title looks, {{italic title}} and {{lowercase title}}. I replaced the two of them and used {{DISPLAYTITLE:''cf.''}} The title now displays as lowercase and italic. GB fan 10:23, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. ^{Thank you}
 _{—71.20.250.51 (talk) 10:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)}

FA nomination closed before anyone commented about whether it gets approved or declined ?

Will some people look at this issue because it seems v random to me, how do any articles become FA status under this system?

• [1]

92.40.94.150 (talk) 10:20, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, that's just the way it is at FA. No article is ever promoted to FA unless several people (usually at least three) review it and support promotion. If nothing happens the review is just archived, but it can be submitted again later. I think the FA director explained this to you quite clearly and being rude to him with language like "WTF" isn't likely to improve your chances of getting it through next time. I sympathise with you, I have had a hard time at FA myself in the past and I understand that it can be really dispiriting when the article you put so much effort into is just ignored.

What you need to do is actively encourage people to review your article. You can ask at related WikiProjects for instance. There are several reasons people choose not to review your particular article. One is that they don't really understand it and don't feel confident they are capable of reviewing it properly. I write technical articles and constantly come up against this. Take a hard look at your article. Would it be understandable to, say, a fishmonger, or a manicurist? I find that the more general reviewers are much more willing to review once one or two editors with technical expertise have already commented.

Another reason people stay away is that they do not feel the article is ready for FA but do not wish to give some really harsh comments so they just stay away. Are you sure your article is ready for FA? I'm not saying it isn't, I haven't reviewed it, but you need to read it and read it again checking for English, verification, understandability and everything in the FA criteria. Get it looked at by as many other people as you possibly can before taking to FA. Did you take it to Peer review? Or have it reviewed for A class by Wikiprojects? Or anyone? If others review it and buy into it they may well support you at FA also. Hope this has been of some help. SpinningSpark 11:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

References from a previous section showing up in my posting

Dear editors: I posted a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey, and several references from another posting further up the page are showing up in my section (or I suppose at the bottom of the page once someone else posts. There is no "reflist" there. What is causing this? Should I just add a reflist to the section where the references are intended to be displayed? —Anne Delong (talk) 10:35, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: It is a new feature. (It used to be that refs didn't show up at all, now they do automatically, but refs added to talk pages with ta standard reflist drop toth e bottom by design) Use {{reflist-talk}} which is designed for talk pages.--S Philbrick(Talk) 10:39, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I did it for you.--S Philbrick(Talk) 10:41, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh, joy... Thanks, Sphilbrick. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:50, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I started a help section at Help:AGRL. --  Gadget850 ^talk 11:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

ad to list of north texas museums

We need to ad our museum to the list of North Texas Museums.

Vern Raven Mansfield Historical Museum and Heritage Center 102 North NMain Street Manfield, Texas 76063 817-473-4250 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.11.189.2 (talk) 14:58, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done (list link: List of museums in North Texas)  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 17:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Editing a book created in Book creator

Hi

When creating a book in Book creator how do you edit what sections, writings etc you do and dont want, how do you cut and paste into chapters etc Help:Books does not answer my questions. For example after having opened Book creator, added pages the going into Show book/manage book then opening the chapters you can not edit any thing, how do you edit within manage your book or any where else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gurjit Singh Sahota (talk • contribs) 16:28, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Book creator does not have the ability to edit the articles. You can choose what articles go into the book and how they are organised into chapters, but that's about as far as it goes. SpinningSpark 16:47, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Content reliability

how is wikipedia improving its content reliability? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.62.34 (talk) 17:51, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

You might like to read Reliability of Wikipedia. SpinningSpark 03:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

mobile view

How do I keep Wikipedia on mobile view? Mine keeps going back to desktop and I'm trying to use it on my phone.

Dave Newport — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.157.223.58 (talk) 17:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

You will need to give us some more information (operating system/phone, app you are using, how you accessed Wikipedia etc) and this is probably a question more suitable for WP:RDC. If you are accessing via a bookmark your bookmark is probably in desktop view. Fix by resaving the bookmark while you are in mobile view. SpinningSpark 03:01, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Rogue editor?

I accidentally stumbled across a longtime very occasional editor who has started adding in frankly racist/sexist/offensive material into WP:BLP articles, then self-reverting them a few minutes later. The editor doesn't always clean up after him/herself; some edits were reverted by others, and some persist in articles apparently unnoticed. It seems possible that somebody has taken over an account that was clearly used only intermittently for what looked like good faith edits, and is now using it abusively or to cause trouble for the original editor. Is there a place to report this odd, destructive behavior short of building a full case on WP:ANI? I feel a bit intimidated by the process there, and am too busy to spend a lot of time documenting a rogue editor who is damaging articles that are far afield from most of my work. On the other hand, I don't want to completely shrug off and ignore this chance discovery, and let it continue unabated. Is there anything like a "Tip Line" for Wikipedia, where this can be reported? Or should I figure that eventually somebody else will also notice it and take action? Reify-tech (talk) 19:05, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, if the edits are clear-cut vandalism, you can try WP:AIV. If the account is indeed compromised as you think, it should be blocked ASAP. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 19:21, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

This article of a actress named Maria_Vacratsis

Since I put in the article she voiced the Queen_Metallia in the English dub of Sailor Moon; though many people don't know her for anime role very well. Should there a be reference to that statement? Is it a policy of Wikipedia to have a Citation_needed? Venustar84 (talk) 19:18, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done @Venustar84:, thanks for the edit, I managed to find a (somewhat weaker) reference and updated the page. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:17, 26 July 2014 (UTC)