Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 November 21

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November 21

Carl Hewitt

I require assistance in understanding if the exchanges taking place around Carl Hewitt Talk:Carl Hewitt#Outrageous that Wikipedia continues to allow insinuation that Professor Hewitt is "Bozo the Clown" and throughout the page (and article) are appropriate and examples of best practice. It is very confusing for a normal editor to risk trying to improve something like Hewitt's article. Can an uninvolved and competent admin look over at what's happening? Azx2 11:05, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

outraged IPs disruptively editing on behalf of a topic banned user can be addressed in a number of ways. satire is one, although if it goes over the heads , it may not be particularly effective. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:02, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I am not an admin. But I have now looked at that talk page, and I think that attempting to "understand" it would be a mistake. It is largely a debate between Arthur Rubin, who appears to be a competent editor, and various IP contributors who show a remarkable lack of logic. Maproom (talk) 12:47, 21 November 2014 (UTC) accidentally deleted shortly after being made, and now restored 20:24, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with User:Maproom. I see no evidence of insults to the subject of the article within the past few months. There has been BLP editing of the article by User:TheRedPenOfDoom, and reasonable editing of the talk page by User:Arthur Rubin and User:Brycehughes, and unreasonable editing of the talk page by unregistered editors. If the unreasonable editing by unregistered editors continues, I will ask for semi-protection of the talk page, an unusual remedy, but which is probably appropriate here. If the unregistered editors have any real issues, they can go to the BLP noticeboard, being aware that any unreasonable posts there can result in the incoming boomerang. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:01, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Email notification for rapid succession edits

If a user makes multiple edits in a certain time period do I only get notified for the first one? I received an email about this edit [1] but not about these [2] [3] [4]. PolenCelestial (talk) 11:16, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

See the Notifications tab in your Preferences. Under "Email options", set "Send me" to "Individual notifications as they come in" if that's what you want. Remember to click "Save". If you never get a notification for those edits, individual or summary, then there could be a problem with delivery. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 11:29, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's the setting I've always been using. PolenCelestial (talk) 11:35, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

In that case you stumped me. I don't use email notifications myself, so I wouldn't be aware of a problem on Wikipedia's side if one existed. Maybe someone else can add something useful, such as a way to verify that the notifications were sent. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 11:40, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I guess the page is on your watchlist and that's why you got the email. That feature is enabled on the User profile tab in Preferences and is not the same as the feature on the Notifications tab. meta:Help:Watching pages#E-mail notification says: "From MediaWiki 1.5, you can get an e-mail after a watched page has been edited by somebody else. This will not be repeated until you view the page. Note that you have to be logged in when viewing the page, otherwise you will not be notified of further changes.". PrimeHunter (talk) 12:18, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

The edit I got notified about and the ones I didn't were all on the same article, which has been on my watchlist since I first edited it. PolenCelestial (talk) 12:24, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

What is your setting in the last checkbox on the "User profile" tab? PrimeHunter is saying that having that checked would produce the results you're seeing if you didn't view the page after the first edit and before the others. That doesn't, however, explain why you wouldn't get the other notifications as a result of the Notifications tab setting, unless the former setting overrides the latter one. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 12:41, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

"Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" is enabled, I set it when I first started editing the English wiki and I haven't changed it since. PolenCelestial (talk) 12:50, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm once again at a loss. There might be a conflict between the two options, forcing you to choose one or the other, but not both. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 12:58, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to solve the problem. The issue is the inconsistency, I get some notifications on a watched article but not all of them and I'm not changing any settings. PolenCelestial (talk) 13:13, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem is solved, as far as I can tell, but let me take another shot at clarifying it. You had edits A, B, C, and D, within a short time period. You received notification for edit A. If you had viewed the page before edit B, you would have also received notification for B. Apparently you did not. And so on. By the way, you have twice removed previous edits to this discussion because you don't know how to handle an edit conflict. If you get an EC, cancel and start over. Or, if you're not getting edit conflicts, you're being careless about adding comments here and removing previous comments. I'm not feeling inclined to reconstruct the discussion, so there will remain missing comments. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 13:24, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I understand now, I didn't get emails for B, C and D because I didn't see the email for A until after D. I wasn't aware that notification is only sent for the first edit since viewing the page. PolenCelestial (talk) 13:32, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

PrimeHunter stated this in his 12:18 UTC comment. Then I proceeded to confuse the question by talking about things that had nothing to do with it. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 13:33, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

My bad, I need to improve my reading comprehension. PolenCelestial (talk) 13:51, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Article to make live

I have completed my entry for a new wikipedia article but it is not coming up online when I search so I want to be sure that it's live. There was no option to publish my article once I was finished writing it, I just "moved" it and changed the redirect links: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_Human_Development_Program&redirect=no. Can you tell me if it is live and if not, how I go about publishing it?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gknoth (talk • contribs)

It is already "published" in that it is in the main article space at Global Human Development Program. However at the moment it needs a huge amount of work to be beaten into a form acceptable to Wikipedia as it reads more like an advertisement than a neutral Wikipedia article. I am going to move it into your user space so you can work on it further.--ukexpat (talk) 13:53, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Now moved to User:Gknoth/Global Human Development Program.--ukexpat (talk) 13:56, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the original question, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_Human_Development_Program&redirect=no was a live article at the time but there is a delay before external search engines like Google detect and index new articles. We do not control when this happens. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:34, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

My notifications are stuck

My notification shmingie (that square at the top of the page that goes blood red when you have notifications) is permanently stuck and will not go off (i.e. turn grey) no matter how many times I check my notifications. How can I smash it without smashing my computer screen? But tis an ill wind that blows no one no good: Maybe today is the day to see if that friggin counter really can get to 2 and above. Ping me. (But don't fuck with my talk page, ok?) (And if you have an idea as to how to fix the problem, please...) Contact Basemetal here 16:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

@Basemetal: I experienced the same problem yesterday. Pretty sure I fixed it by clicking the red box, clicking the "All notifications" link at the bottom, and then clicking on the show changes for the notifying edit. I'm not sure if a bug report has been filed or not, I'll check in a sec - or if anyone else has input, that'd be great. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 16:55, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

It's back to normal. After I checked your ping it went back to grey. I don't know if this is what did it, but thanks. I don't know if this matters but someone had pinged me three times from the same page/section and yet my notifications only showed two of those pings. I have the feeling this may have had something to do with it. In any case, thanks again, at least for taking the trouble. Contact Basemetal here 17:09, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

@Basemetal: I assume it was [5] which didn't cause a notification. There are some conditions to getting a notification and one of them is that the edit was signed in the same edit (mw:Help:Echo#Technical details has more). It sounds unlikely that this is related to trouble getting the red square go away. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:40, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

PrimeHunter: Whoa Sherlock! It was! How did you find out so quickly? Contact Basemetal here 20:57, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I guessed you had posted to the page with the pings so I just looked at a few pages you had recently edited. I already knew about the conditions which wouldn't cause a notification. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:59, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Delete inline citation warning

I have added inline citations to the page I manage. How can I delete the warning at the top of my page? It looks like this: This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2013)

MarcelloOBC (talk) 20:58, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

You just delete it CTF83! 21:22, 21 November 2014 (UTC)