Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2018 January 1

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January 1

Talk page cleanup

I noticed an infobox and reflist on a talk page for the ISIS article. This clearly should be deleted, but I'm not sure if I should do it myself or request administrator attention, and how exactly to do the latter should that be the correct course of action. Any help would be appreciated. Tonystewart14 (talk) 02:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tonystewart14: I've added a couple of templates so that the copied infobox and its references stay within the section where it was posted. It will eventually disappear into the archives. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:20, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Vandalism of Page Description Line

I have noticed that the second line for gay.com reads 'the lair' which strikes me as possible vandalism. Ethylacetate2002 (talk) 03:12, 1 January 2018

The word "lair" appears nowhere on the page gay.com. You'll need to be more specific as to where you saw this. General Ization ^Talk 04:10, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

@Ethylacetate2002 and General Ization: This came from the topic's entry at Wikidata, reachable from the "Wikidata item" link under "Tools" in the left sidebar. I've changed the description to "Social networking website". -- John of Reading (talk) 08:15, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

URL–wikilink conflict when auto-generating a reference from a source

Hi guys, need some help. I was editing this article: Kaplinsky, and when I tried to generate a reference (don't worry, there's only 1 reference in the article) by using the in-built wikipedia generator the reference broke down. I visited the help page provided, but I just couldn't understand what was written there. Can someone check it or maybe tell me who should I contact to ask for help with this specific reference? Karl.i.biased (talk) 04:30, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done. It was how the name of the website was written that caused the error. I also fixed the title and how access date is written. NZFC^(talk) 04:50, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Karl.i.biased (talk) 05:18, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Notifications

Hi, am not receiving notifications for mentions or edit reverts since a couple of days ago, please advise Atlantic306 (talk) 17:15, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

@Atlantic306: Did you get this notification? Check notifications are enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. Please give examples of edits you think you should have been notified about. What is your browser, and your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:33, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

• • Hi, yes received your notification so hopefully its ok now. Browser is Safari, skin is vector, thanks for your help Atlantic306 (talk) 17:39, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Adding first "in Fiction" reference

I wrote a near-future sci-fi novella set in North Korea. The setting was chosen in large part to draw attention to the poverty facing North Koreans and is carefully researched such that the other-than-sci-fi elements relating to poverty and the life of non-elites are believed accurate.

Many articles include information about how a topic has been treated in fiction. Is it appropriate to add an "in fiction" mention of my novella in the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poverty_in_North_Korea ?

If so, what form would that take? I see that "in fiction" information now takes the form of a separate article at least in some cases

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_holes_in_fiction

Thank you for your guidance.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by EricJohannsen (talk • contribs) 18:45, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Is your novel notable? Ruslik_Zero 19:02, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

@Ruslik0: not yet, it's just been published. How do I measure notability and how do I determine whether the community would find it notable enough for inclusion? Is the threshold for inclusion different on a presumably less popular article "Poverty in North Korea" compared to inclusion on a highly popular article? Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by EricJohannsen (talk • contribs) 19:27, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

You might like to read Wikipedia:Notability (books) for guidance on the notability of a book. Dbfirs 19:31, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Notability is more about if the book merits an article of its own, this is more WP:DUE. Does it "deserve" being mentioned on the topic? If selfpublished almost certainly no. If it is written about in-depth in reliable sources (Publishers Weekly rather than Amazon and Goodreads) then maybe. But be aware of Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:40, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Inquiry of Information or Data in Wikipedia Being Credible and/or Factual

According to a multitude of people I have spoken with in high school and college education institutions, information in Wikipedia is not acceptable to be used as a reference for research. The goes especially for writing term papers, research papers, and articles for school newspaper publication. The reason they are stating this is that they believe anyone can edit the information in Wikipedia even if it is not true or factual or correct.

So, please tell me how often is information fact-checked for accuracy, and who is doing the fact-checking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CD00:F4D0:BC0C:644B:7B2C:573F (talk) 19:40, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is not systematically fact-checked. Volunteer editors (i.e., anybody) may choose to fact-check. This quasi-random activity is surprising effective, making Wikipedia at least as reliable as other sources in almost all studies of the result. However, this is not good enough for academic work because it is not traceable to reliable sources, therefore, you cannot and should not cite Wikipedia directly. However, you are free to use Wikipedia articles to find the reliable sources on which they are supposed to be based, and then read and cite those sources. -Arch dude (talk) 21:47, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

It's like this. Wikipedia is written/edited by volunteers who edit what they please when they please (plus some people who are paid to edit what they edit about). "They believe anyone can edit the information in Wikipedia even if it is not true or factual or correct." They are entirely correct, but WP can an do have plenty of good info anyway, you just have to use it with some caution. More at Reliability of Wikipedia. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:02, 1 January 2018 (UTC)