Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 August 22

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August 22

Referencing errors on Atlantic Coast Conference

Reference help requested. I'm requesting that an editor please help fix the unnamed parameter errors in Atlantic Coast Conference. Any help is appreciated. Thanks. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2015 (UTC) Nvm, I fixed the error. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 04:46, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

greenfield village

Greenfield village has 2 exit/entrances. It has a minimal crime rate. Many of the residents are retired professionals. Several residents are retired and present employees of the Aldine and nearby Klein school district. It has a balanced racial composition which includes many Asians, Hispanics and Blacks. Some areas of Greenfield Village contain rental property. The neighborhood is a part of the Aldine Independent School District. Conley Elementary is within walking distance. The assigned middle school is Shotwell located off Antoine and Beltway 8.Greenfield Village is located between Beltway 8 and Cypress Parkway. It is a midway point for Willowbrook Mall and Greenspoint Mall. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C7:3:12C0:E9C3:CC36:AED0:8430 (talk) 01:07, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

This page is to ask for help on how to edit or use Wikipedia. Do you have such a question? ( And note that nowhere on Wikipedia is is appropriate to WP:ADVERTise.) -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:14, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Page layout

I've been having a bit of a disagreement with User:Lugnuts over the layout of a page. There are several pages in question, but a good example is Gloria (2014 film). I used AWB to put a couple of lines below the external links section, to separate the stub templates from it. Yes, I used AWB but I DID check. He reverted me, on this and other articles. I cannot find what the Manual of Style has to say (if anything); is there any general rule or consensus on this?

From my point of view: if we have stub templates bunched up under the External links, with no line separating them, it (a) looks cluttered, and (b) — worse, makes the templates appear to be a part of the external links section, which they are not. Can somebody with experience please weight in on this, one way or the other. If there is a rule or guideline, I will follow it. David Cannon (talk) 01:24, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, David Cannon, according to WP:STUBSPACING, "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it." As I recall, one of my first times being chidden on WP was for routinely deleting that extra space (when I was editing the articles for other reasons). Deor (talk) 02:04, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The key word being usually. Not that you must. If you can find where it says you must do this, then please let me know. Until then, these AWB abuse edits have been reverted. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:56, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

You call it abuse? Okay, let's see what others have to say about that. I'll answer to the community, not to you. David Cannon (talk) 09:02, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Can you find where it says you must not do that?David Cannon (talk) 10:12, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Per AWB rules of use, #4. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:03, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, let's see how other users interpret rule #4. Let's wait until some neutral users with no strong feelings about my or your edits have had their say. If a policy is recommended, it should be followed UNLESS there is a VERY good reason not to. My AWB edits — which I have checked — ALL bring each given article closer to the Manual of Style. David Cannon (talk) 10:10, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

And another thing is this: If I've made an edit bringing a particular article closer to the manual of style, and you then revert that edit, how do other users feel about that? To be specific: I've two blank lines above the stub template on the Gloria (2014 film) article. You reverted me. There are other examples, but that one will suffice. What do other users feel about that? Reverting an edit (whether I made it by AWB or manually is not the issue, the edit itself is) which brings the article closer to the manual of style is, in my opinion, very close to vandalism. If the community does not agree with me, I will accept that. But for now I'll argue for that position. What do you all think? David Cannon (talk) 10:10, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

AWB is quite clear: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser#Rules_of_use - "Do not make insignificant or inconsequential edits. An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page is generally considered an insignificant edit. If in doubt, or if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making further edits." So, two points. One, these are insignificant edits and are clearly against the rules of use. And two, another editor objects to it, so you must not make further edits of this nature (per these rules of use). I'm amazed that you, as an admin, do not know these rules. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:23, 22 August 2015 (UTC) (fix sign)

As I've said, it's not insignificant or inconsequential. The addition or not of a couple of lines above the templates is noticeable and makes a difference to what the page looks like. But I'll let the community have their say and go with that. I'm not going to waste time arguing.David Cannon (talk) 10:19, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

And yet you continue to stalk my edits and change them against the rules of AWB AFTER you've posted this! Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:23, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The double spacing is nice to have and the guideline prefers it but it is not mandatory. Davidcannon is changing it in good faith as he believes that it looks better per the guideline. I cant tell if Lugnuts doesnt like the double spacing or the use of AWB but in any case they have a right to challenge it. I would say that editing to comform with a guideline is not really abuse and it is not insignificant as it changes the rendered page. Rule 4 says that you need to discuss the AWB changes if somebody objects, and as Lugnuts objects perhaps you both need to take it to the Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser as at sometime another AWB user will just make the change again. In the big scheme of things it is not really that important most readers and users would not notice the double space and I suspect most editors will think it is wrong when they look at the code. MilborneOne (talk) 10:38, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you MilborneOne. Note that Cannon now continues to edit-war over this and is stalking my edits. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:20, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

This is not true, however much you may believe it is. I have not "stalked" any of your edits. I have reverted about 5 of your edits in total! I cannot see what your problem is. As for the pages I've edited, I have no idea whether they're of any interest to you or not — I don't know what you've got on your watchlist! LOL. Anyway, I most utterly deny your inaccurate claim that I have stalked your edits. I have not. Edit war —I don't think you know the meaning of that word either. I have not reverted any of your edits more than twice, have I? If I revert something 3 times in 24 hours, you can accuse me of edit warring, but if I revert 5 edits once, or at the most twice, you can cannot accuse me of edit warring. David Cannon (talk) 12:55, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The pages look better with the blank lines, and Wikipedia guidelines recommend them. David Cannon is trying to improve Wikipedia. Lugnuts' motivation is harder to understand. Maproom (talk) 12:50, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Cannon is doing anything but improving WP. The rules of AWB are crystal clear. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:52, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The rule I think you are citing says "An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page is generally considered an insignificant edit." These edits have an easily noticeable effect, at least for me (I am using Chrome/Windows). Maproom (talk) 13:00, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

It is all too easy to use automated or semi-automated tools, such as AWB, to effectively overwhelm manual editing. It is also very easy to overfill change histories and recent changes lists with trivial edits. Therefore there are restrictions on the use of AWB that do not apply to manual editing, and some people tend to look suspiciously on AWB edits and want to confirm that they fully comply with such restrictions. The full rule #4 on WP:AWB reads: "Do not make insignificant or inconsequential edits. An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page is generally considered an insignificant edit. If in doubt, or if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making further edits.". I agree that these edits do have a noticeable effect on the rendered page, but IMO a very minor one. I think it is at least arguable that they are therefore "insignificant or inconsequential edits". In any case, once an editor has been asked to stop a particular sort of edits on these grounds, I think that it would be best to STOP making such edits at once, and seek consensus for them before continuing. I think the best place to do that would be WT:AWB, but there are other possible places. I don't think the helpdesk is the best place for doing so. Note that repeated reversions, even if short of 3RR violations, are often considered edit warring. I have no opinion on the value of the edits themselves, one way or another. @Davidcannon, Lugnuts, and Maproom: DES ^(talk) 15:12, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Des. Cannon seems only to exist to boost his edit count with automated tools. There's no quality or care with these edits. Other users are now questioning his use of automated edits. What I'm finding more disturbing is the edits to BLP articles (with automation) that go against BLP polices. Example 1, Example 2. Both reverted for not being sourced in the article. I don't use HotCat (and never will), but I'm assuming there's some sort of automation with this and/or AWB too. Between 13:33 and 13:45 today, Cannon made approx 240 edits with AWB. That's approx 20 edits per minute, or one every three seconds. There's NO WAY all of those are "checked", which not only goes against AWB rule #4 (pointless edits) but rule #1 "You are responsible for every edit made. Do not sacrifice quality for speed and make sure you understand the changes." That's the issue - automation of edits, some of which go across BLP articles, with no quality checking being done, just "good faith" that the editor is an admin. I've already shown this editor knows little or nothing about BLP policy. I thought that was a core value of WP? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 17:53, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:LAME anyone?--ukexpat (talk) 12:21, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Policy/Guideline on interlanguage interwiki links in article text?

Kantai Collection is a Japan-only video game that has received considerable coverage and popularity in Japan but less so in English-language media; as a result it has tons of interwiki links to Japanese Wikipedia articles sprinkled in its article text. For example, from the "Manga" subsection

Famitsu Comic Clear has introduced an additional manga adaptation by Shōtarō Harada under the title Issued! Naval Base Communications (発令！鎮守府通信, Hatsurei! Chinjufu tsūshin) beginning from July 9, 2013.

where "Shotaro Harada" is an interlanguage link. MOS:LINKS reads "Inline interlanguage linking within an article's body text is generally discouraged because it leads to user confusion" but fails to elaborate further. H:ILL outlines the method but neither discourages nor endorses the practice of linking to other Wikipedias.

Usually when I find these I just remove them as 1) They are confusing and look too similar to "normal" links and 2) They are useless as we cannot assume our readers can read languages other than English. However since Kantai Collection is a high-traffic page I wanted to post here first for clarification. Thanks, Satellizer (´ ･ ω ･ `) 03:19, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

One way of handling these is by using the template {{ill}}, which creates a link to the other-language article as long as there isn't an article of that name in English Wikipedia; and marks the link with the language. --ColinFine (talk) 19:52, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

We have been doing this more than we used to, and I suggest the language there is out of date. . I think it's very acceptable when either there's material in the other language WP that could be used to make a WP article, and one wants to call attention to it, or when there's material in the other langugage that extensively supplementsthe material in enWP, even though it's unlikely that anyone will translate it. DGG ( talk ) 22:30, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Curious about a edit suppression in the section "Why are the time stamps not in synch?" above

I really am not too worried about it one way or another, but I was curious why an edit I made to the section "Why are the time stamps not in synch?" above, was suppressed/oversighted. The edit was made 22:13, 20 August 2015. I'd try to ask whoever did it, but I have no idea how even to do that, other than perhaps sending an email to the Oversight team). Again, I'm not intending to argue the point, I'm just curious as to why. Rwessel (talk) 07:09, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

It is curious. Here is the deletion log entry. My guess is that @Fuhghettaboutit: was oversighting personal details, and that can't be done without also oversighting adjacent postings. Maproom (talk) 07:25, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the reference. At least now I know where to look. I don't see anything that might count as personal details or a legal dispute (I usually edit in a word processor before posing, so I have all that saved), nor do I see anything else in that section that was suppressed, but I shall ask Fuhghettaboutit. Rwessel (talk) 07:49, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Something unrelated in another section was removed in an edit, and later all page revisions where the content was visible were revision deleted. Your posted content was not removed or changed and is still there. The revision deletion only means that non-admins cannot see the specific revisions and diffs in that period, because it would also reveal the oversighted material elsewhere on the page. In theory a software feature could be made to allow certain harmless diffs to still be visible without displaying the rendered page below the diff, but that would be complicated and risky. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:17, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Hey Rwessel. Yes, Maproom and PrimeHunter have described it exactly. There are two sections higher on this page here and here that contained very specific personal information and specific allegations regarding an apparent ongoing lawsuit. Your edit was an intervening revision that was simply roped in because to leave it would have not allowed this other information on the page to be hidden.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:13, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. I was thinking 'adjacent' only in a spatial sense, not temporal. It also explains (to me, at least) how suppression actually works - it's a much simpler process than I had imagined, merely the disallowal of the viewing of certain *revisions* (hence "revdel"), the actual removal of then offending material is an otherwise ordinary edit that is (also) suppressed. Thanks. Rwessel (talk) 15:21, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Great. Just so you know, what I did here is called revision deletion and it's not the same as true suppression. That is done by oversighters, which hides material in a way admins also cannot access.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:30, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Template for Wiktionary redlink-equivalent?

At Yes and no#English grammar classification, there is a link to Wiktionary's page "Wortsätze". Following this link brings what is basically Wiktionary's redlink page; the word doesn't exist there. Which template, category, or other tagging method should be used to mark that the link leads nowhere? I'm only asking since keeping the link at "Yes and no" would be useful and relevant once "Wortsätze" gets a page, and thus I don't want to simply delete it. —烏Γ ^(kaw), 07:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I wanted to move this section down to avoid it being archived, since there has not been a response. —烏Γ ^(kaw), 08:50, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

"Wortsätze" won't be getting a Wikipedia article, though it might get a German wiktionary page. It's the plural of "Wortsatz", which is itself a contraction of "Ein-Wort-Satz", meaning "one-word phrase". So "Wortsätze" will probably never be a sensible thing to link to. Maproom (talk) 09:22, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Flag Represented

The Flag that represents South Africa and hence Wally Hayward is derogatory. This is the old apartheid flag which was replaced by the existing South African flag. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.104.150.130 (talk) 13:21, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Wally Hayward (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This flag seems correct to me, since he was competing in the 1930s. Compare, for example, Hans Woellke, which displays the German flag appropriate for his era. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:28, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Template or other best method to mark discrepancies between multiple articles?

What's the best way to flag 2+ articles as having discrepancies and needing investigation/verification/cross-referencing/correction? For instance there's some serious mismatches between Grand-Bassam, Bingerville, and Abidjan on (eg) Bingerville's dates as capital -- did it start in 1896, 1900, or 1909?! And did it end in 1933 or 1934?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hydronium Hydroxide (talk • contribs) 17:10, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

I think this is too complex for a tempalte. I would write it out on the talk page of the most edited article or the one where it is most central to the article, and link to it on the other two talk pages. DES ^(talk) 17:52, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref no input

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ripperthe (talk • contribs) 17:35, 22 August 2015‎ (UTC)

I assume that you are referring to these edits, where the diff makes it pretty clear what your problem was. The error messages have the words "help page" in blue, indicating that they are a wikilink to specific help. Another editor has reverted your edits. --David Biddulph (talk) 19:01, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

<Subject Redacted>

I cannot believe your Organization is so silent on challenging <soapboxing redacted>

Please reply and let me know what you intend to do.

Sincerely,

Roy Stanley — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.167.84 (talk) 18:48, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to attempt to argue for or against political figures or rally people to political action. See WP:SOAP. Please do not make such posts again. DES ^(talk) 19:33, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and presents a neutral point of view of the subjects of its articles, including controversial politicians, reflecting how the subjects are reported in reliable sources. Wikipedia does not argue for or against politicians, but does attempt to present a neutral view of any controversies with which the politicians are associated. You asked what we intend to do. What we intend to do is to present neutral coverage of subjects that are covered in reliable sources, including but not limited to politicians in the United States. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:23, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Is there a template for 3D diagrams that should be replaced with 2D?

Which is higher, the blue bar or the green bar?

Certain diagrams have only two dimensions of data, but are rendered using 3D graphics. The 3D effect tends to distract from and sometimes distort the information presented in the diagram. For instance, adding 3D perspective to 2-dimensional charts (such as the image on the right) is widely held to be an ineffective way to display data. Is there a cleanup template similar to Template:ShouldBeText for requesting a 3D diagram be converted to a 2D representation? 2601:644:101:9616:2C58:94E0:2395:8B0B (talk) 19:20, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Not that I know of, but perhaps there should be. DES ^(talk) 19:57, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Biographical page update

David Helpling (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Greetings! I'm still somewhat of a newbie at editing pages. But I have been personally asked to update a biography of a recording artist by the artist himself. This musician is not a household name but followers of his genre may be familiar with his work. The information of the page is quite scant and so I would be glad and honored to oblige him and update his page for him with more relevant and timely information. Upon first viewing of his page I noticed in the box at the top of the page it states "This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it." This is not correct. There is at least one link to it if not others from a related page. The notices in this heading are dated 2010 and 2011. How are these removed?

Utnijlj (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Utnijlj, Maintenance tags such as this may be removed by any editor who thinks in good faith that the problem has been fixed or does not apply. If they have been recently applied and no relevant change has been made, then it is well to discuss with the editor who posted the tag, or to explain the reasons for removal on the article talk page. But for a tag years old, if it is clearly no correct now, one can just remove it. (this is done be removing the {{orphan}} template, or whatever template is involved in a given case.) Please do explain in your edit summary, perhaps something like "removing orphan tag that no longer applies". DES ^(talk) 20:02, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

But the article is an orphan. No other articles link to it, just user pages and suchlike. Anyway, a more serious issue is that it has no acceptable references to reliable independent sources. The only citations in the article are to its subject's own web sites. Addressing this omission should be the priority (though, as an connected person, it shouldn't really be you doing it). Maproom (talk) 21:12, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Assuming that we are discussing David Helpling, it is linked to from List of ambient music artists, which is at least technically an article. You are correct that this article needs reliable independent sources. Indeed if it were put up for AfD as it now stands it would be deleted unless more sources were added. But that is not what the OP asked about. DES ^(talk) 21:25, 22 August 2015 (UTC)