Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 December 23

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.

December 23

Edit brief description of a Wikipedia page

How do you edit the brief description of a Wikipedia page (the brief description being when you type the name of what you want to search for, there's usually a few words describing the item you're trying to search)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by T Yorke (talk • contribs) 05:48, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

T Yorke, these are short descriptions (Wikipedia:Short description). They can be added or edited either by using the template {{Short description|''Write your short description here''}} , or by using the script, which can be found in Preferences -> gadgets -> editing -> Shortdesc helper.

Where a short description hasn't been set, the description is taken from Wikidata, although this will be turned off once sufficient articles have local descriptions. ~~ OxonAlex - talk 06:40, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

My peoples history being called fake

So there is a page that denys my peoples recorded history. Is this allowable? This the same as a Nazi denier page. It is a page of complete lies and taints my peoples REAL history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DontBeStupidStupid (talk • contribs) 06:05, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The article in question is Legend of the Rainbow Warriors which documents some completely false beliefs about Native American culture and mythology. Any edits to that article must comply with Wiikpedia's Policies and guidelines. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:17, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

DontBeStupidStupid, Wikipedia is based only on reliable sources. Unless you have reliable sources that support your claims, they can't be added. Its a matter of verifiability for us. If something isn't recorded, we have no way to verify that it is true. Our readers expect that of us too. Every claim in Wikipedia should be backed up by a reliable source, so that any reader can find it and verify it for themselves. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 06:59, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

DontBeStupidStupid, the 7th Fire Prophecy is not the white savior narrative that the Rainbow Warrior is. The 7th Fire Prophecy gives the New People a choice of two paths to in order to prevent furthering the destruction they brought with them. It's more cleaning up their act than it is becoming saviors and appropriators of indigenous spirituality. It also talks about false narratives coming into play. I don't feel comfortable discussing the particulars publicly, you can always email me via my talk page if you want to discuss the particulars further. If you are concerned about cultural misrepresentation on Wikipedia I can direct you to a whole lot of articles that need clean up. Indigenous girl (talk) 15:33, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Honourboard

Hi,

I was wondering how to easily set up a sports club honourboard, with the following headings.

Year, President, Secretary, Treasurer, Coach, Position, Best & Fairest, Goalkicker

It would be for the Wodonga Football Club page.

Thanks,

Justin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justin Kelly (talk • contribs) 23 December 2019 (06:39) (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and does not support honourboards. It should be easy to do what you propose on Facebook. Maproom (talk) 08:56, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Request to admin to change deceased user's page

I don't know if this is the right place to post this request. I was led to User:Markhurd's page via a link I was following up on, and discovered, sadly, that it says he's deceased. However, some kind of automated process seems to be adding things to his user page. I assume that the list will grow very long unless it's stopped, so is someone able to edit the page to stop this happening? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 09:49, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

• I assume you are talking about the user talk page (User talk:Markhurd) rather than the user page itself. At any rate, there has been no edit to either since mid-2018, when an admin fullprotected the userpage and placed the relevant templates on the talk page so that the automated messages stop coming. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 10:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi Tigraan and thanks for the reply. No, I did actually mean the user page, which seems to have some very recent article alerts. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:49, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Markhurd has not been edited since July 30. The alerts are transcluded templates on their userpage. Technically nothing is being added or removed from the page, it is simply displaying the transcluded templates if the page is viewed. 331dot (talk) 10:58, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

I see - thanks, 331dot. So does this just continue ad infinitum? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 11:38, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

As I said, technically nothing is "continuing". The most current version of the templates will be displayed when the userpage is viewed, but nothing on that page itself is being changed. If the templates were removed, there would be nothing to display. 331dot (talk) 11:45, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I get that... It's just a minor nuisance item, not serious - but it does mean that the user page continues to pop up on the "links to this page" lists on whichever pages occur in the current version of the template. No matter. Thanks. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:05, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@331dot: Maybe such transclusions should be change to subst them when the page is "memorialized", or do some templates have trouble if you subst them, and does the subst propagate down to additional layers of templates? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 06:04, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

That all makes sense, but that area is beyond my expertise. :) 331dot (talk) 08:51, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Substituting them might not be a good idea as that would leave a large wikitext (because there are many templates involved). If the update should be disabled, for whatever reason (it would not stop of course, as long as Article alerts is maintained), an admin can just remove or comment-out the Article Alerts transclusions with <!--Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Article alerts}} -->. – Ammarpad (talk) 11:08, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Forgot password, no e-mail

Greetings. I reinstalled my Windows on my laptop (writing this from phone), and now it asks me to log in again. But...I completely forgot my password, and I didn't sign in with any e-mail. Help please... Transylvania1916 (talk) 13:12, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Transylvania1916 on your phone immediately go to your preferences and add an email address (let's hope you won't need to login for that if you want to specify it initially). Whatever happens, remain logged in on your phone, because otherwise you will never be able to recover your account. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:16, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't work, it asks me to log in again... Transylvania1916 (talk) 13:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

If you really want to attempt to keep the account then start by using {{Committed identity}} while you are logged in. Later you can request at phab: that a system administrator sets an email address for the account. They usually only consider it for users with a high edit count or advanced user rights. I doubt you qualify but I don't know the precise practice. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:25, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Thankyou, but never mind, I finally remembered it, after three dozen attempts... Transylvania1916 (talk) 06:52, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Sandbox to Published

After completing my sandbox, the more tab where the move option should be is not there. I need to publish this for a class and I'm not sure how to get it out of the sandbox — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100B:B123:6E1F:E4AA:5C8E:8783:A2B1 (talk) 17:29, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

You can add {{subst:submit}} to have your draft put into list of drafts to be reviewed. You and your teacher should also read Wikipedia:Student_assignments regarding using Wikipedia as a homework assignment. RudolfRed (talk) 17:38, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

How to cite this reference

I want to site this paper. I'm not sure how to cite it. Should I use "Cite journal"? What should I put for each of the parameters? The title says "Analogies of Religious Violence in Minecraft", although the title page says "Analogies & Manifestations of Religious Violence in Minecraft: A Case Study of 2b2t". What should I put for |publisher=? If someone could just reply with a code block of the reference which I could copy and paste into an article, that would be highly appreciated. Thanks! —  Melofors  TC  19:57, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can tell it's not been published. It's very possible it isn't a reliable source though. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:15, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Melofors: If this is about 2b2t, note that the paper is already cited there (twice). Just use <ref name="analogies" /> for additional cites. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 06:12, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

CheckUser/Oversight

How does one become a CheckUser and an Oversighter? I'm not asking this because I want to become one, I'm just curious. I looked at WP:CHECK and WP:OS, but I couldn't find anything on the page that says how to become one. Can anyone answer this? Please ping me in your reply. Interstellarity (talk) 21:27, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight goes into it. It's pretty much for arbcom members (or at least OS is). Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:33, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski: Thank you for your answer. Interstellarity (talk) 22:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Photo Insertion

How do I insert my photo into my page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bwilliams2537 (talk • contribs) 22:19, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Bwilliams2537: I'm afraid you may have a misunderstanding about what Wikipedia is. You wrote a draft about yourself Draft:Bill Williams, which is frowned upon. Please read Wikipedia:Autobiography. (Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four keyboard tildes like this: ~~~~. Or, you can use the [ reply ] button, which automatically signs posts.) TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:18, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Bwilliams2537: Quite a few people are not clear on what Wikipedia is: see WP:NOT. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and we want an article on every subject that meets our notability requirements, but not on other subjects. It's unlikely that you will meet our notability requirements: see WP:N. There are other venues on the Internet that may match your needs: see WP:OUT. -Arch dude (talk) 01:47, 24 December 2019 (UTC)