Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2017 August 31

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

August 31

When does a new day begin, for Wikipedia?

I am curious: When does a "new day" begin, for Wikipedia? Does it begin at 12:00 Greenwich Mean Time? Or is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) somehow involved? Or does the "new day" begin differently for each reader/editor, based on his/her specific time zone? For example, I was looking at the article on Richard Gere, stating that his birthday is August 31. At one point, the article stated that Gere is age 67. Then, a few minutes later, it stated that Gere is age 68. So, I was just curious as to when Wikipedia considers that the "new day" (in this case, August 31) begins. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:54, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses UTC for most things including age calculations. The birth date is based on sources and they nearly always use local time at the place of birth. Pages are cached for performance reasons so a given page may display content based on calculations from a former day. The cache is updated if the page is edited or purged, and in some other situations. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:14, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:08, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, so for any calculated date like an age, that you see in an article, the accuracy is within -12 to 36 hours. (-12 through +12 for timezone differences and 24 hours for caching). This comes up regularly. (maybe we should add a ~ before it around the days when it's someone's birthday ? ) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, readers may expect the age to be based on their local time or the time zone where the subject lives. I'm not fond of ~ here but maybe "Born August 31, 1949 (age 67)" could say "Born August 31, 1949 (age 67)", with a tooltip saying "age on August 30, 2017". PrimeHunter (talk) 12:00, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:20, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale

Please help in the section - Later life - my link on "Gledhow Hall" is not working. Please fix if able. Thankyou Srbernadette (talk) 01:56, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

 Fixed You put a '}' instead of a pipe. Eagleash (talk) 02:06, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Lowercase sigmabot III Not archiving?

I set this up on my talk page but it doesn’t appear to be achieving, have I done something wrong in the set up or has it just not reached a threshold to archive yet? NZ Footballs Conscience^(talk) 02:24, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@NZ Footballs Conscience: I've made an edit to the archiving instructions. With any luck, the bot should now archive something within 24 hours. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:38, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

References

I want to use the reference twice without having to write it twice (in other words [and for example], I don't want the same url to be reference 17 and 20.--Ramesty (talk) 05:37, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

You need to read Help:Referencing for beginners, and specifically WP:REFB#Same reference used more than once. --David Biddulph (talk) 05:45, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

User rapidly stalking new human rights post to delete

The user Dr.K. has attacked my post about the US government and the surfacing of one modern torture case. Is it possible this user is trying to hide something such as government sponsored torture? I am not aware, but the person is stalking the post for MK-ULTRA within seconds. The person is trying to control the topic like this person run's Wikipedia or similar. I think you should delete this user. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.113.24.130 (talk) 08:18, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but you should read the messages left at your talk page. You have added unsourced content on multiple occasions, edit warred and talked / made threats within the article. You have not provided any edit summaries to explain your actions. You cannot express you opinion within articles, or add unsourced content, particularly where that content is likely to be controversial and you can never make any sort of threat against another user. If you continue with this disruption to the encyclopedia you will almost certainly be blocked from editing. Eagleash (talk) 09:16, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

The OP has already been blocked. Maproom (talk) 09:39, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Just noticed that... blocked 5 mins after my comment above. Eagleash (talk) 09:41, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Images not displaying properly

Apologies if this is the wrong place. Does anyone know why in List of churches in South Cambridgeshire certain images are only displaying the file name and not the image? There seems to be no discernible difference in syntax between those that are successfully displaying and those that aren't. Mark J (talk) 12:02, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mark J: Can you give any example? I can see multiple images there, I can see multiple empty cells in the 'Image' column, too. However, I can see no single cell displaying the image file name instead of the image contents. --CiaPan (talk) 11:09, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Does the problem persist? A guess: possibly you were watching the page in some intermediate state when you added images already but before the wiki software generated the images' icons to display within the article...? --CiaPan (talk) 11:13, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see any filenames displayed, either in the current version of the list or in the version which was current at the time of the timetag on this message when you first posted it at Talk:List of churches in Cambridge. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:07, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

The page has a lot of images. I saw filenames for some of them while the page was loading but all images appeared in the end. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:34, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

You're right, unfortunately it seems to be a problem at my end. I use an extension called IE Tab so I can use, in Chrome, websites that use Java, which Chrome no longer supports, and when I turned on the extension the images displayed fine. My copy of Chrome is entirely up-to-date, but there's still obviously something wrong with it. Ho hum. Thanks for your answers. I can supply a screenshot if anyone's interested. Mark J (talk) 12:41, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It works for me in Google Chrome 60.0.3112.113 on Windows 10. I guess some images just fail to load in time on some occasions. There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Commons images. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:40, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

logo

How can i change the logo on a page as it is out of date? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rcox17 (talk • contribs) 09:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_St_Mark_%26_St_John — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rcox17 (talk • contribs) 09:23, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rcox17: I think you should fetch a current logo from the University web site (make sure it's in a colouring version appropriate for white/bright backgroung of Wikipedia articles), upload it to Commons, if its licensing allows free use, or to en-wiki (where the old logo was stored) in case of fair-use, and finally replace the file name in the {{Infobox university}} template at University of St Mark & St John. --CiaPan (talk) 11:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yearly or monthly Archives

Dear Professional Wikipedians,

Please let me know or guide me the Wikipedia reference page for the item below. How can I 'Archives' the old talk pages? (by yearly or monthly) Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia.

Goodtiming8871 (talk) 11:24, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Goodtiming8871: See Help:Archiving a talk page. If you still have problems then say which page it is and how you want to archive. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:30, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Multiple redirect confusion

Hi - there's a lot of confusion surrounding the Talk pages of the following templates, which I think needs to be ironed out, but I'm not sure how to go about it. They are thematically related but distinct templates:

• Template:Anglicanism
• Template:Anglican Communion
• Template:Anglicanism footer

The redirects are worth of a Möbius loop in their conplexity:

• Template talk:Anglicanism redirects to Template talk:AnglicanCommunion
• Template:AnglicanCommunion (no spaces) redirects to Template:Anglican Communion (with a space)
• Template talk:Anglican Communion it redirects to Template talk:Anglicanism footer

I can only guess this is a result of some sort of historical edit war and sloppy renaming. I don't to explain that this is very confusing for anyone trying to contribute. What's the best way to sort this out? I don't want to tread on any toes or get caught up in anything contentious — can any Admins step in and fix it? Cnbrb (talk) 12:37, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I think I have straightened everything out. ~ GB fan 12:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

thank you so much - it was doing my head in!! Cnbrb (talk) 13:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Template:Wide image

Hello, does anybody how to reduce the spacing after the image in this section? I already tried to fix this by editing Template:Wide image, but obviously that didn't help. Maybe somebody around here has a better idea... Best--Tuchiel (talk) 15:14, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello Tuchiel. The spacing looks alright. What is the issue you might be referring to exactly? Warmly. Lourdes 04:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Lourdes! Thanks for answering. I saw that you've simply removed the blank line between the two templates, but I've checked in other articles (e. g. Alberta), and there it is not necessary to do so to get the usual spacing. I still can't figure out why it was different here.--Tuchiel (talk) 15:16, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello again. Well, as long as it works, I guess it's fine. Lourdes 03:10, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Mortal Sin Definition

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin

Please swap perfect and imperfect contrition. They are backwards. Thank you.

Trevor — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.253.215.13 (talk) 16:59, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done, but please check: there are several occurrences of both kinds of contrition in the article. I just swapped the first two. Maproom (talk) 18:14, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

"Your user page" icon link

How do I set up my profile so that when I click on the "Your user page" icon, it takes me to the page I am monitoring/editing.

Thanks so much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cityofop (talk • contribs) 17:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello, Cityofop. I'm not sure quite what you mean, but I doubt that this can be done. First, "Your user age" (your user name, at the top of every page) is hard-coded into the interface. Second, what does "the page I am monitoring/editing" mean? How could the software determine this, except possibly in the case when you are currently editing exactly one page? What you can do is to put wikilinks on your user page, to give you shortcuts to the particular pages you're interested in; but you'd need to update these manually. --ColinFine (talk) 17:28, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Cityofop: You can also click Contributions at the top right of any page to see the latest pages you have edited. Users usually edit many pages but your only interest is apparently Overland Park, Kansas. Do you work for the city? The below code in your common JavaScript will add a link to it to the left of your username at the top of any page. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:59, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

$( document ).ready( function() {
  mw.util.addPortletLink(
    'p-personal',
    mw.util.wikiGetlink( 'Overland Park, Kansas' ),
    'Overland Park',
    'pt-OP',
    'Go to Overland Park, Kansas',
    null,
    '#pt-userpage'
  );
});

LINGUISTIC MYSTERY

Nothing to do with the site

My question is regarding one specific sentence : To confirm your miles balance, just purchase and fly with Alitalia or the Partner Airlines to any destination and for any fare, between 25 May and 24 June 2017. What is confusing is that it seems to be an ambiguous phrase tree. Purchase and fly with .. it is two different verbs. Flying is the one tagged to the dates and purchase is the requirement.. Or am I wrong? Would you feel that means that the purchase also has to happen between 25 May and 24 June? I read it to mean purchase, and the dates relate to the travel and not the purchase. My thoughts are it was erroneously translated from Italian (we would say May 24th in USA) as this is alitalia. Below is the entire context: According to the terms and conditions, when no new miles have been earned under the Program over a period of 24 months, the miles in the account expire and are cancelled. But you are still in time to save them! To confirm your miles balance, just purchase and fly with Alitalia or the Partner Airlines to any destination and for any fare, between 25 May and 24 June 2017. Please help me !! I know it has something to do with linked or unlinked verbs (conjunctive verb, verb branch? ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThePinkCats (talk • contribs) 19:54, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@ThePinkCats: This help desk is for help using Wikipedia, not general knowledge questions. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@ThePinkCats:, hello and welcome to Wikipedia. What Ian writes is absolutely right. The Help Desk is for resolving editing issues on Wikipedia. Your question probably belongs to the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language, where I personally know a few editors, whose pleasure it will be, to adjudicate on your inconveniently vexing dilemma :) Come back here if you need any editing help. Warmly. Lourdes 03:59, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

sandeep mehta

 Hi looking for information  about  Hindi television and movie actor sandeep mehtas personal life wife and children etc 

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.7.29.135 (talk) 20:38, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, we have an article on an individual named Sandeep Mehta. That might be a good start. Warmly. Lourdes 03:54, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

[NB: this query was also placed on the Entertainments Reference Desk. OP - please do not post the same query in multiple locations. It results in our all-volunteer editors unnecessarily duplicating their efforts. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 16:52, 1 September 2017 (UTC)]

How do I report copyvio?

The article Zebulon B. Vance Birthplace is almost a word-for-word copy of Vance Birthplace by the North Carolina Historic Site. I have looked everywhere on Wikipedia but can't figure out how to report it. I don't understand the directions. Thanks, Kalbbes (talk) 22:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• The normal place is at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. I've got this one though. Thanks for the report! Crow^Caw 22:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Request for clarification of OR rule

I find the OR page confusing, especially the section on synthesis. I may have read it simplistically, but I would be grateful for advice from a guru.

The OR page starts: "Research that consists of collecting and organizing material from existing sources within the provisions of this and other content policies is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia." Fine so far. But no, not fine -- the next sentence says "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research." So Wiki editors can't collect facts themselves; they can only re-write articles that others have written from the facts that they (the others) have collected? It obviously can't mean that, but if not that, then what?

The Synthesis section states (several times, in different ways): "If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources." It then gives a number of examples that I have no problem with; they are obviously not allowable. But none of the examples are examples of "research", they are examples of inference, or mere supposition, by the editor.

What about cases where C is an obvious and inescapable consequence of A and B? Let me give an exaggerated example, but it illustrates the sort of thing that I have for real. Suppose that there are articles on John Horsefeather, a writer, and James Horsefeather, a painter. And suppose that the article on John states, citing the statutory record of his birth, that he "was born in 1850 at Tumbleweed Manor, the son of Sir Puddlemud Horsefeather and his wife Morticia Horsefeather née Drakestein," and that the article on James states, with a like citation, that he "was born in 1852 at [ditto ditto ditto]." If the editor did not know of a source that stated explicitly that they were brothers, would it be OR to mention in each article, with a link, that the subject was the brother of [[the other]]? Wyresider (talk) 23:17, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes!...is the response to your last question. Your inference of brotherhood, which you may be certain about, holds no relevance to verifiability. This does not include facts of the "Earth is not flat" or "a week has seven days" variety. Yes!...is the response to your first question. Your mentioning facts in an article, claiming you collected them yourself (e.g. "I was there at the accident site and the guy was already dead. I know it. I checked it from the doc."), again holds no relevance to verifiability. You, are not a reliable source. We need a reliable source to confirm the fact. Further to that, even reliable sources are subject to a level of OR covered in WP:PRIMARY. Sometimes, I think this is almost like writing a Ph.D dissertation, which I just recently submitted. For most part of the thesis, you have to source your statements to reliable scholastic sources. You simply can't write a statement, saying it is a fact; the examiner trusts neither your intelligence or your knowledge in making a "factual statement", unless it is supported by someone's research, someone who has already proved his credentials. Your statement: "Can Wikipedia editors only re-write articles that others have written from the facts that they (the others) have collected" should be read as, "Wikipedia editors can only include material in articles that other reliable sources (preferably non-primary sources) have already documented." In other words, whether you are creating a new article (see WP:YFA) or contributing to an existing article, just quote material that is covered by reliable sources and don't synthesize interpretations. Write back if you need more clarification. But mark your questions clearly. Warmly. Lourdes 03:38, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Lourdes. I still find the matter slightly unclear and confusing, and I didn't express my question very well.

The root of the problem seems to be the phrase "Original Research". When I saw an apparent contradiction in the first two sentences of the OR page, "Research that consists of collecting and organizing material ... is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia" vs "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research," I read that as saying that Wiki editors could not collect facts themselves, even from sound sources, but only re-use other authors' collections of facts (sources) -- in other words, only re-write other author's articles. I think you misunderstood my question when you said "Yes is the answer," because you illustrated the reason with an example of the editor being a primary source. You went on to say "Wikipedia editors can only include material in articles that other reliable sources (preferably non-primary sources) have already documented." I'm happy with that, because it does allow an original collection of (properly citable) information. I would call that original research, in the sense of looking for and collecting (properly sourced) information, as distinct from writing up ones own experience (which is quite rightly disallowed).

I found your answer to the brothers example surprising, interesting and enlightening. Surprising, because when you said "Your inference of brotherhood ... does not include facts of ... 'a week has seven days' variety," I was thinking of "have same parents == are siblings" as being of exactly that variety. Then I spotted that you perhaps meant that it was "have same parents" that was the problem. (Going back to the first question, I would call that "inference", not "research".) I quite see that to assume that two people born in London with parents John and Jane Smith are siblings would be gross supposition. I exaggerated my example to avoid precisely that, but I think you are saying that, in general, the danger is there and should, quite simply, be avoided? It would nevertheless be strange to write in an article about X that "Y was born at the same address to parents of the same names" to avoid OR.

I didn't see the relevance of the reference to Primary until I realised that it impacts on the first question (I am not talking about the editor him/herself being a primary, which I would not dispute or question). It's a tricky one. Even "official" primaries can be wrong; ages on census returns are an excellent example if this, and it was twenty years before anyone noticed that my father-in-law's name was wrong on my own marriage certificate! On the other hand, apparently authoritative secondaries are full of errors copied blindly from primaries, and secondaries sometimes repeat erroneous hearsay. Where possible, I try to cross-check info with independent sources (even inferential ones -- synthesis, but within the rules because I don't offer the synthesis in the article, merely use it to satisfy myself the the cited source, primary or secondary, is likely to be correct). The guidelines say that Primary sources should be approached with "common sense." That does make sense!

I'm not completely clear yet, but if my understanding of what you said is correct, then I'm a lot clearer than I was. Many thanks.

Wyresider (talk) 12:45, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello Wyresider, I get your confusion. Quoting reliable sources is not considered original research. Original research is a scholastic term[1] that refers to conducting a study oneself. For example, in the article on Consumer behavior, if I were to quote a TIME magazine reference[2] and write, "As per Euromonitor, it is a challenge to modify consumer behavior," this would be an example of reliable sourcing. Consider the alternative example of original research. If I were to go to a few respondents myself, and if I were to ask them how easy or difficult it is to modify consumer behavior, and if they responded that it is a challenging exercise. And then if I were to include this research into the said article in the following words: "As per the research I conducted recently, it is a challenge to modify consumer behavior", well, that would be original research. Thanks. Lourdes 13:04, 3 September 2017 (UTC)