Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 October 17

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October 17

Reverted Edit Question

In Finding Dory, there were two pending edits today (10/16) made at 12:59 that I reviewed (at 13:02) and did NOT accept. The history shows that I reverted these two pending edits. Then at 15:30, an IP editor made changes (which were also reverted at 16:15). The history shows that the 15:30 edit reverted my changes (and I received an email notification of the revert), but a comparison of the different versions does not show this - it shows the 15:30 edit left my change intact and made other changes. Can someone explain what accounts for this. MB 01:22, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

• The ip clicked on the undo button, which by default generates such a notification. At the same time, the undo button allows an editor to make editorial changes before saving the version, which is what the IP did (restoring some of your edits and making other changes). Lourdes 02:43, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

My edit was to just one line and it was still intact after the IP edit. So you are saying that the IP did an 'undo', then manually put back in the change they just undid, and then made all the other changes that show in the diff. That seems very strange. May they have been trying to 'hide' their changes for some reason. At the very least, it was a very misleading edit summary. MB 05:32, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Bot & an editor incorrectly "fix" my intentional cite before full stop.

See Smear campaign#Psychopaths and narcissists. Can I inhibit Yobot from this article ? Also how can I stop editors "fixing" it eg https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smear_campaign&diff=744658530&oldid=744653688 --Penbat (talk) 08:31, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@Penbat: I suspect that an HTML comment between the </ref> and the full stop would prevent bots and AWB users detecting this violation of WP:REFPUNC. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:43, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you.--Penbat (talk) 08:49, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

It isn't clear why you deliberately wish to contravene what the MOS says at MOS:PUNCTREF? --David Biddulph (talk) 11:38, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

It is if you read the sentence in question: "Smear campaigns have been identified as a common weapon of psychopaths^[2][3] and narcissists^[4][5][6]." I'm not saying Penbat is right to ignore the recommendations, just that it's clear why he wants to. Maproom (talk) 11:52, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I assume Penbat wants to make it clear that the references only apply to the last word. There was no support for this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 160#Full points and footnotes. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:23, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Appearance of a reference

Hi,

I was expanding the references on WOTV to add author, publisher, website, archiveurl. When I saved my edit, I noticed that the reference showed up as part of the article body and not in the standard in-line form. Can somebody help me out on this and tell me what I'm doing wrong? The body of the code I typed is as follows: WOTV's studios on West Dickman Road (M-96) in Battle Creek were donated to a city entity, Battle Creek Unlimited, and were later demolished in February, 2014. "Fort Custer HQ Razed". battlecreekenquirer.com. Gannett Company, Inc. February 20, 2014. Archived from the original on October 20, 2014.

This reference is reference 1. Thanks, Icebob99 (talk) 13:51, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Fixed with this edit. You had omitted the <ref>...</ref> tags around the reference. Maproom (talk) 14:19, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks-- I'm still learning the cite web tag and I had forgotten about that (out of all things!). Much appreciated. Icebob99 (talk) 18:31, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

The extended unicode

does the 𓋹 (0x132f9) character count as 1 character? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brynda1231 (talk • contribs) 13:56, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@Brynda1231: In which context? Some things like page size and allowed edit summary length are counted in bytes and not characters even though some documentation may inaccurately say characters. It uses several bytes. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:08, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

(e/c) 0x132f9 Is a 4 byte encoded form of a single glyph, which usually is considered to be a single character in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system that uses logograms to represent a word or phrase. Does that help ? :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:10, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

How can I remove a category from a page?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/UBLPs by region shows Category:WikiProject Ottawa on the bottom. I am using wp:Hotcat and would like to remove this category from this page, but don’t know how to do it because I get no "-"(minus) sign. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 17 October 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Udpate: I tried it again and this time there was a minus, but I got a 503 HTTP/2.0 503 when I clicked it? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:33, 17 October 2016 (UTC)please ping me I tried to add this commnet before but got an edit conflict. The instructions about how to handle such a conflict are too complicated for me to try and figure out right now

@Ottawahitech: It looks like it's caused by the inclusion of {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Ottawa/Unreferenced BLPs}} on that page -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 15:25, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: Fixed - I've stuck <noinclude>...</noinclude> around the category in Wikipedia:WikiProject Ottawa/Unreferenced BLPs and purged Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/UBLPs by region. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the 503 error, see WP:VPT#503 errors/possible Twinkle issues. clpo13_(talk) 18:19, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Major issue with article on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

My name is Jerry Oppenheimer and I'm the author of the biography RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream, published by St. Martin's Press in 2015 to wide acclaim. However, it's clear from looking at the Wiki article on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that any and all mentions of my book, THE only biography of Mr. Kennedy, have been scrubbed. The evidence is that just one dangling reference, reference #5, remains, only with my name and the page number from my book. This suggests to me that other references were deleted, and this one survived by error. I suspect that Mr. Kennedy or one of his minions deleted the references to my book because he did not like the book, which was critical of him. I demand to know who and why the references to my book about him were deleted, and the references, whatever they were, should be back in place. How can we proceed? Many thanks, Jerry Oppenheimer — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerry Opp (talk • contribs) 18:07, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

• Hello Jerry Oppenheimer and welcome to Wikipedia. Discussions about any article and its contents should be undertaken on the talk page of the said article, in your case, at Talk:Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. At the same time, please do read our conflict of interest guideline, which may apply to you. Our COI guideline strongly discourages COI editing. You are of course welcome to discuss your suggestion with respect to the article at the said talk page. Might I also suggest to you to give a quick read to Wikipedia's editing policy and talk page guidelines, which will make you familiar with how Wikipedia's voluntary editors discuss content issues on the talk pages of articles? Thanks. Lourdes 18:15, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

• Nobody has removed mention of your book—a single reference to it was added to it in 2014, but other than that it's never been used as a source on that article. ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Probably ought to put "your book" in scare quotes; I'd be willing to bet $25 this isn't actually Jerry Oppenheimer. Also, interestingly enough, that cite was added to the article in January 2014, but the OP above (and Amazon) show it as published in 2015. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:33, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

It may just be me, but I'm having a bit of difficulty in the belief department regarding this complaint. First, for a newcomer to WP, I find it incredible that they would know terms such as: scrubbed. A term I didn't know for quite some time. Furthermore, for a New York best-selling author, who should have a command of the English language, his first edit: Jerry Oppenheimer is the New York Times best-selling author of at least thirteen biographies of major American icons is highly questionable: "of at least"? You either have or you haven't. In addition, if I were the real Jerry Oppenheimer, I would take more issue with my own page, which seems to have non-updated data: His biography of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., RFK Jr. is forthcoming in 2015 and hardly covers any accomplishments in his own field of writing. I sincerely doubt Mr. Oppenheimer has the time or reasoning to make demands on WP regarding RFK when he has at least thirteen other books he should be worried about. Maineartists (talk) 22:12, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

"Scrubbed" is a term that has been around far longer than you've probably been alive. In this sense, it's been around since at least the early 1950s, so long before the internet was even fully imagined. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:19, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Trouble utilizing sources in bibliography

I'm attempting to sort out the book sources utilized on List of Alien characters, starting with Roz Kaveney's book, but I must be doing something incorrectly, as clicking the reference does not direct me to the mention of her in the bibliography. Could someone point out where I made the error in the referencing of her book? If I have this figured out, I should be able to set straight the other book references in the article. DARTHBOTTO _talk•cont 21:48, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello @DarthBotto:, I have fixed it (see history). I have explicitly activated harvard referencing with "ref=harv" to allow linking between short references and the full bibliographic entry, and also tweaked the author information (see Template:cite book for more information). Also, page information in the full entry is redundant (as various different page ranges are specified via short footnotes). GermanJoe (talk) 22:39, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: Thank you so much for your assistance- it will prove pivotal, I am sure. May I ask you one more question? There's at least one piece to be added to the bibliography, Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley, which has more than one author. How would I attribute multiple authors to a Harvard citation? DARTHBOTTO _talk•cont 03:05, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

@DarthBotto:, for multiple authors add multiple pairs of first1/last1, first2/last2, ..., firstN/lastN parameters to the citation. In Template:sfn usages, you then list the authors' lastnames, separated by "|", in the same sequence (like: {{sfn|last1|last2|...|lastN|year|page(s)}}). You can find some examples of common use cases and more details in the 2 linked template documentations. GermanJoe (talk) 13:27, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Inappropriate message added to talk page

I am not sure if I should even dignify this with a response, but I got a bizarre message on my talk page the other day and I am not sure what to make of it

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Bellerophon5685&diff=744678459&oldid=740749959

Should I move to have this user blocked?--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 22:51, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@Bellerophon5685: I gave the editor a stern warning and reverted the edit. If they do it again (this is their only edit), they can be blocked for WP:NOTHERE. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:17, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Looks to me more likely to be a spammer than an intentional disrupter. Time will tell.

Bellerophon5685, in the future, you can remove others' comments from your talk page. See WP:OWNTALK for details. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:15, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I knew I could remove it on my own, I just thought it would be best to bring it up here to have a proper block warning from the admins.--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 16:50, 18 October 2016 (UTC)