Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2018 October 26

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October 26

DAY:001

Hello, I have a question. Can I add my own stories? If so, how? Thank you for your help-Elf Queen íŔĬŚĤ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eflqueenknife (talk • contribs) 00:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking here, lass. Do you mean using us as a webhost for stories you have written? If so: no. If you mean creating an article about stories you've had published, or worse yet have self-published: again, no and hell no. If you mean creating new articles about topics where you have no conflict of interest: quite possibly. See Your First Article. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:34, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Changing 24 hr. clock to 12 hr.?

Hi,

Is it possible to change the 24 hour clock in the history section of an article (in addition to my watchlist) to a 12 hour format?

Thanks. David O. Johnson (talk) 04:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

No I think there is no possible way to do that. Ram nareshji (talk) 06:36, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, David O. Johnson, you can customise it in your Javascript. See WP: Comments in Local Time#Custom settings. --ColinFine (talk) 09:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! David O. Johnson (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Category:Australian source templates

Hi I wanted to add the APNI template and the florabase template to [[Category:Australian source templates]] and failed miserably. I did however manage to cause a zillion plant names to be added to that page, despite undoing my errors in template:APNI, and template:FloraBase. Hoping that someone will help fix this.... MargaretRDonald (talk) 06:26, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Please mention your problem clearly. Ram nareshji (talk) 06:38, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello, MargaretRDonald. I haven't looked closely at what you were trying to do, but I think what you need is to put the category link inside <noinclude> ... </noinclude> tags. See Help:Template#Categorization. --ColinFine (talk) 09:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@MargaretRDonald: Template categories should either be inside <noinclude>...</noinclude> or on a documentation subpage which is transcluded inside <noinclude>...</noinclude> on the template page. You correctly reverted your error [1] but it takes time for the job queue to propagate template edits to all pages using the template. Category:Australian source templates looks fine now. Your edits to the /doc subpages were correct and you didn't have to revert them. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this, @PrimeHunter: & @ColinFine:. Exceedingly helpful. (Now all done) MargaretRDonald (talk) 19:05, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@MargaretRDonald: If the categories are on /doc subpages then they should not be in <noinclude>...</noinclude> (but they should be in <includeonly>...</includeonly> to avoid categorizing the doc page itself). Your original /doc edits were correct but not the new ones so I have reverted to the original which categorizes the main template page and not the doc page. When I said "or on a documentation subpage which is transcluded inside <noinclude>...</noinclude> on the template page", I meant that {{APNI}} should transclude the documentation like this (as it already does): <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

No one is caring my words at "Internet censorship at India".

I contribute Wikipedia articles through talk feature. I contributed some important information here Till now users of that page didn't respond to my words. I can edit it but I cant take the risk of it. Ram nareshji (talk) 06:32, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Ram nareshji. I see that you are concerned that something should be said about this, and are nervous about editing it yourself. But simply saying "Something should be added about this" on the talk page doesn't usually get much response, because this is a volunteer project, and people work on what interests them.

I have two suggestions for how to proceed. One is for you to do the work yourself: put on the talk page exactly what change you suggest to the article (something like "Add the following text to the end of paragraph ... " or "Replace section ... with the following text") and cite your sources just as you would in the article. If you do this, it is much easier for another editor to see what you suggest, and either agree, or disagree, or suggest changes. And if nobody replies in a week or so, you can just go ahead and make the change to the article. (Somebody might still disagree, and revert your change, but you would have opened the discussion: see BOLD.)

If you don't feel confident even to do that, then I suggest you try to find a collaborator at a WikiProject, perhaps WP:WikiProject India or WP:WikiProject Censorship. --ColinFine (talk) 09:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Abinash Kumar pandit

Know for an art director in India film industry (Bollywood) since 2002. Film hidi medium, overtime, jhhoota hi Sahi, Boygiri (web series) and many more movie , TV series, tvc is done by abinash Kumar pandit as an art director . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:2000:ffc8:8526:6eeb:eba9:906f (talk • contribs) 2018-10-26T08:12:00 (UTC)

What is your question about editing Wikipedia? --ColinFine (talk) 09:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

How many categories are there?

How many categories are there? Special:Statistics tells us that there are 46,190,854 total pages in Wikipedia as of 24 October 2018, however it doesn't break that number down by the various namespaces (except for articles). Note: I erroneously asked this at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Categorization [2] so I hope I am now in the right place. --Jameboy (talk) 13:46, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Jameboy: At least 195,000 - unfortunately my database scanner crashed at that point! -- John of Reading (talk) 14:26, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Jameboy,​ the magic word {{PAGESINNAMESPACE:14}} would have given you the number of pages in the Category space. Unfortunately, it is disabled due to expensive resource usage. While you can surf through Special:Categories to view all current categories, you can always use the Special:Search's Advanced>Category option to reach the listed number of all categories, which, when I calculate, is shown at 1,748,799. Thanks, Lourdes 15:29, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Lourdes: Great, that's good info, thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 15:57, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error references no text

I need assitance with the reference section of Stenocarpella maydis wikipedia page. I have built it, and it indicates errors that I want to fix, but I dont know how to! Please help.

When I try to edit them, I can only see References Reflist

Instead of the actual list... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jrodrigomendoza (talk • contribs) 14:33, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

The references are defined in the article text where they are used, see Help:Referencing for beginners. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:38, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Picture rejected

I tried to upload a picture which I had taken myself and I declared it as such. However, I got the error message that it could not be determined whether the picture was suitable. It was not described why this would be the case. The lack of explanation does not seem good practice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjmjds (talk • contribs) 15:12, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

@Kjmjds: Where in the process did you get this error message? I can't see where you've ever uploaded any pictures either here, to Wikipedia, or to Commons. I also don't see any notification on your talk pages here or on Commons about pictures being deleted. I also checked your deleted contributions here, and nothing. Did the message come during the upload process? What steps did you take to produce it and what exactly did it say? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn: As I wrote, the error occurred during the upload. Indeed this was the first picture I ever tried to upload. It is not encouraging that things immediately go wrong for unspecified reasons. At the end of upload process, after specifying the file and all information about the file, and finally clicking Save, the following vague error message appeared: "Something went wrong We could not determine whether this file is suitable for Wikimedia Commons. Please only upload photos that you took yourself with your camera, or see what else is acceptable. See the guide to make sure the file is acceptable and learn how to upload it on Wikimedia Commons." Well I took the photo myself and I clearly ticked this off. Kjmjds (talk) 19:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Kjmjds: I'm not sure what happened. If you were trying to upload it to Commons, perhaps try asking the Commons:Help desk. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:52, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds like it might be a technical glitch? GMG^talk 19:54, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hey, Kjmjds. It appears that you tripped a filter called "Cross-wiki upload filter" on Commons ([3]), which is set to warn you with that message you got and disallow you from uploading at the same time. Make sure that it's the raw file you're uploading (directly taken from the camera) and not just some downscaled/cropped file from it. But as other users said, try asking at Commons:Help desk, or maybe try it again using the c:Special:UploadWizard directly; it might be a false positive. theinstantmatrix (talk) 20:08, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Kjmjds: Definitely try c:Special:UploadWizard. The filter is designed to disallow a large part of cross-wiki uploads by users with new Commons accounts. Your Wikipedia account is from 2006 but it was registered at Commons today. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:39, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Weird references rendering (II)

After early filing, I would like to once again call your attention to this unresolved matter. Could that be something worth reporting to the programmers in charge? Thanks in advance for any support! Best wishes--Neufund (talk) 15:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Neufund. If it only occurs in certain browsers, with certain column widths, it is possibly a bug in those browsers; but it is more likely an inconsistency built into the somewhat ramshackle specification of CSS. Either way, the way to raise a bug in the software is to use the phabricator; but if you don't feel confident going straight there (I don't!), WP:VPT is the place to bring it up. --ColinFine (talk) 20:16, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Neufund Given the decentralized way that Wikipedia works, most of the programmers are volunteers as well, but the programmers who actually program the underpinnings of Wikipedia including CSS scripting are either on WP:VPT (stands for Village Pump Technical) or will read the bug reports generated by the experienced programmers who are there. Make sure to include every scrap of information you can there, Article name, browser, browser version, pixel width, etc. To be honest, even most experienced Wikipedia editors would have more clue on how to build a rocket than fix an issue like this.Naraht (talk) 20:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Naraht: Thank you for posting! However, in this case, unfortunately, I have to capitulate for the time being ...--Neufund (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Neufund It isn't that the people here on the help desk don't *want* to help you, it is just that they don't know how. The people that know, hang out at WP:VPT...Naraht (talk) 21:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Naraht: Thanks once again. Apparently, the issue seems to have been taken care of both here as well as here by now ... Best wishes--Neufund (talk) 16:07, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Fort Worth Missing Trio article page

First, I am needing to make sure the article I just drafted titled "Fort Worth Missing Trio" is pending review. This is an active missing persons case so we need the exposure that wikipedia can provide.

Also, I need to know how to add the picture and basic info table (that appears on the right-hand side of most wikipedia pages). I've read up on as much as I can for new users but I can't find that info.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjo1976 (talk • contribs)

@Tjo1976: Yes, your draft is pending review. As there are thousands of drafts waiting for volunteers to review them, it may take some time until someone reviews it. Please be patient. Please understand that the primary purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia, and it is not intended to promote or advocate for any cause, or increase its exposure, no matter how good or necessary it might be. Social media exists for that purpose, as does other websites. 331dot (talk) 22:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tjo1976: Please read What Wikipedia is not. Yes, your cause is worthy, but it's not encyclopedic. We are not, in general, set up to do quick-response stuff. That's why 331dot suggested that you look for other outlets to get the word out. We actually have a sister project called Wikinews: take a look over there. Important headlines from Wikinews show up on the Wikipedia main page, and this is a much quicker process than putting and article up here -Arch dude (talk) 00:44, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tjo1976: Oops, both 331dot and I mis-read your "active" to mean "urgent". Your article may (or may not) be about a subject that meets our notability requirements (see WP:N) but time is quite clearly not of the essence. Those folks went missing in 1974. If it's notable enough, waiting a few weeks will not affect its notability. -Arch dude (talk) 00:54, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@Arch dude: Yes I am fully aware and no it's not time sensitive. This is a case that is just as informative as any other case like it on wikipedia and we are hoping to just have the information out there. Thank you for your reply. Tjo1976 (talk) 03:44, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia science reference desk

Currently, an abovesaid page is for extended users only so does this mean I can't ask a question about mathematics on Wikipedia science reference desk if not then how would i be able to ask a question?

You will need to create an account, and then post an edit request on the Reference Desk's talk page, using {{edit extended-protected}} RudolfRed (talk) 22:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Your account will also need to become autoconfirmed (4 days old and 10 edits). These restrictions are in place due to the high level of disruptive posts recently. RudolfRed (talk) 23:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)