Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 March 18

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March 18

Enquiry

May I trace my contributions through my IP address only?I have created an account as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marcosoldo (talk • contribs) 11:35, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

@Marcosoldo: "Contributions" in the upper right corner shows your contributions. If you are logged out then it shows contributions by your current IP address by users who were not logged in at the time. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:40, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

And if you know what your IP address is (or was), Marcosoldo, you can search for "Special:Contributions/[IP address]". (Don't include the brackets!) --ColinFine (talk) 11:43, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Following comment transferred from "My contribution" below. Eagleash (talk) 13:05, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

No,I changed a sentence in a page but it can be displayed on the section "Contributions".Only these conversations are displayed.What is that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marcosoldo (talk • contribs) 12:03, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Your only contributions using this signed in account are your enquiries at this page (as you state). If you made edits from an IP address they will be displayed in a contributions page for that IP address. If you go to the page you edited, click on the view history tab at the top, find your edit which will show the IP address click "contribs" next to that entry and it will take you to the contributions made by that IP address. It is not possible to automatically link edits from an IP address to a logged-on contributor.

On a separate note, please don't start a new section relating to the same enquiry and please sign your posts on talk-pages using four tildes (~~~~) which will automatically produce a signature and time-stamp. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 13:05, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Inserting a link to an organisation

Hello, As I was looking for information about the Iranian Tobacco Company, I saw that they claim being involved in CORETSA, which is a misspelling which appears twice. The correct spelling is CORESTA, a scientific international organisation related to tobacco. I could edit the name of the organisation, and addedthat ITC has been a founding member in 1956. I also tried to create a link to the www.coresta.org website but could not make it in the text. Then I did it in the external links but received a warning. I understand the reasons for this warning, however I consider that since CORESTA has nothing to sell (it is a contributive not a trade organisation), and since it is named in the text, a link to the website is acceptable. So I did not go further and ask foryour understanding. Searching CORESTA within Wikipedia brings a few results, such as in ISO and various scientific papers used in references for wiki articles.

On the other hand, in the rolling tobacco article, CORESTA is named due to CORESTA unites. How could I describe how these units are measured?

With thanks and best regards

PM Guitton Secretary General — Preceding unsigned comment added by CORESTA (talk • contribs) 11:56, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

CORESTA, you are not allowed to use the name of an organisation as a user name. I'll block your account, but since you don't appear to have abused it by spamming, I'll allow you to create a new account. You should be very careful about editing any article where you have a conflict of interest. Post a request on the article talk page or see if anyone here is prepared to make the change. My own view is that linking to your company is likely to be seen as a spam link Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:05, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

My contribution

Comment removed from here and transferred to "enquiry" above. Eagleash (talk) 13:06, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

SPI case not appearing on case list

Last night, I opened a sockpuppet investigations case here. However, the case still isn't showing up on the list of cases, even though a bot is supposed to add it, and some other cases which were opened after mine have appeared there. Does anyone know why it won't show up? --A guy saved by Jesus (talk) 16:10, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

The bot thinks the page is malformed, but I can't see what is wrong with it. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:47, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Hmm...that's odd. I can't see what's wrong with it either, and I don't see how anything could be wrong with it in the first place, since I created the report using Twinkle. --A guy saved by Jesus (talk) 17:42, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Apparently the bot liked it after I tweaked the white space at the top of the case page. The bot operator, Fastily (ping!), might be able to confirm this. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:16, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

It's due to a caching issue with the WMF servers, which are providing the bot with bad information to work with. Fortunately, as you've described above, this is easily resolved by making a null edit to the page in question :) -FASTILY 21:25, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Non-linked images

I thought all images in Wikipedia articles linked to their source upload page where you could read about their licence and history.

However the top image in Kerch Strait Bridge doesn't link. Why? How do I discover its provenance? -- SGBailey (talk) 20:59, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Interesting! I've not seen that before. Here is a link to the image though. Dismas|^(talk) 21:08, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Take a look at the code for the template (Superimpose2) you'll notice that in the example when you click on the image, it links to a page instead of the image location. So my guess is that it has to do with the coding of superimpose2 because the regular Superimpose doesn't do that, it goes to the image location instead. Book-Portal & Talk 16:28, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi @SGBailey, I fixed this for the Kerch Strait Bridge page by adding the parameter |base_link=File: to each of the {{superimpose2}} transclusions. As BookPortal says, adding base_link explicitly shouldn't be necessary, because File: was the default base_link value in the original {{superimpose}}, with which {{superimpose2}} aims to be compatible. I suppose this is an edge case that you are the first person to notice. I'm not a template (or anything else) expert myself, but as the main developer of superimpose2 (@Sameboat) is still active on enwiki perhaps he could help? - Pointillist (talk) 21:47, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

This can be easily fixed by changing {{{base_link|}}} in the template to {{#if:{{{base_link|}}}|{{{base_link}}}|File:}}. But this template is being heavily used by Wikipedia:Route diagram template, I am not sure the consequence of this change to the rest of the diagram templates. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 03:58, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for replying, @Sameboat:. I will copy this entire section to Template talk:Superimpose2 so that others can decide whether to make that change. - Pointillist (talk) 13:27, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

How exactly do I alter or manipulate a sorting result?

The article is this one: Ansonia, Connecticut#Mayors of Ansonia. In that chart, the fifth column is entitled "Term Length". When I sort it, I want the numbers to sort correctly. Which it does now. However, there are a few instances in which the mayor served for less than one year. Right now, I have it labeled as "0 years". (Which sorts just fine.) However, I really don't want the chart to read "0 years" for those mayors. I want it to say "< 1 year" (i.e., less than a year). But, when I use that as the entry, the sorting gets all screwed up. And the "less than one year" ( or < 1 year ) mayors get sorted in an odd fashion. Which defeats the purpose of the sort. What would be the exact command I would use to fix this? I am not all that great with HTML code (or whatever this is called). So, please use basic instructions. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:26, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I went into the chart just now. And I made one mayor listed as "0 years". And I made another mayor listed as "< 1 year". With both of these in there, you can notice the correct (and incorrect) results of the sorting. Obviously, I want the "< 1 year" to sort as being smaller/less than a mayor who is listed as "1 year" or "2 years", etc. As it now stands, the "< 1 year" mayor gets sorted as if he has more time than the "14 years" mayor. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

You can use data-sort-value for this. |data-sort-value="0"|< 1 year would sort it based on "0", not "< 1 year". The first value is what gets sorted, and the second value is what gets displayed. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:32, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, that worked perfectly. Thanks. Except that someone keeps reverting it. What should I do? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:16, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd try discussing it on the talk page. You don't want to get blocked for edit warring. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:46, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 06:46, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

How did I get Talk Pages on a foreign Wikipedia site?

How did I get Talk Pages on a foreign Wikipedia site? I just looked at my "alert notices" at the top right of the screen. See here: [[]]. And here: [[]]. How did this happen? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:45, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Huh? Now they have disappeared? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:46, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: Perhaps someone was testing the deployment of the "cross-wiki notifications" feature, which is due to be rolled out soon. See this VPT archive. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:56, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

No idea. Perhaps? But -- still -- my question remains. Why do I have Talk Pages on those foreign Wikipedia sites? I think one was German? One was French? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:01, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: If you view any page at a Wikimedia wiki then your account is automatically created there. Special:CentralAuth/Joseph A. Spadaro shows where you have accounts. In some wikis you can get welcome messages or something else posted to your talk page even if you have no edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:09, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Wow, that's crazy. Never knew that. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:01, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

That's true, Joseph A. Spadaro, but what you have on your German talk page de:Benutzer Diskussion:Joseph A. Spadaro is a notice from 2014 that the German article de:2009 Taconic State Parkway crash, which you had made substantial contributions to, had been nominated for deletion (and since it's a redlink, I presume that it was deleted). Since you have made substantion contributions to the en article by that name, I presume that somebody had translated it and somehow copied the history over. --ColinFine (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

@ColinFine: Thanks. So when I make an edit to an English Wikipedia article, that automatically transfers over to the German Wikipedia? And I am considered to have made edits to that German article? Really? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:17, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: Other language Wikipedias have a import via translation option that can be used to machine translate enwiki articles into their native language and import all the text. This method also imports the edit history for attribution purposes. In the past you probably edited 2009 Taconic State Parkway crash which at one point was imported over to dewiki. Since the edit history was also imported you, technically, edited that article as well. New edits to the enwiki version made after the import would not be transferred over as the translation is only a one time thing. --Majora (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Very odd. I never knew this. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2016 (UTC)