Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 February 3

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February 3

Changing Belle Linksy to Belle Linsky

The page named Belle Linksy has misspelled the Belle’s last name which is Linsky. Could somebody please change, or “move” the name to Belle Linsky. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:904E:5900:96D:A30F:E443:E96A (talk) 00:13, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

 Done Certes (talk) 00:20, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Creating a new entry

I was trying to figure out how to request a new entry . I don't have the skills to do it myself . but I'm looking to get an entry made for Navy squadron VRM-30 Titans I tried to post a link to a page with info about this squadron but it wouldn't let me ..... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.98.247.156 (talk) 01:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

This aircraft is mentioned in List of United States Navy aircraft squadrons, so you could add brief information there, preferably with a reference to show where you got the information. If you think it merits a separate article, then the place to request one is this section in Wikipedia:Requested articles: Bhunacat10 (talk), 09:58, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Timeline with diagonal lines?

Can someone find out what's wrong with this timeline?

Foo Fighters#Timeline

It's got all these diagonal bars across the names. --Larshei (talk) 05:44, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in timelines, but those diagonal bars appeared (or re-appeared) after this edit. --David Biddulph (talk) 06:37, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Nor me, but I've made a small edit which made the diagonals disappear. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:03, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! --Larshei (talk) 11:58, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

Prevent switching to mobile view

Is there anything I can do to prevent my watchlist from switching to mobile view while working on my tablet? I typically open multiple tabs from my watch list to review and edit them. Problem is that when I get back to the watchlist tab, it now consistently auto-refreshes into mobile view. This has only become a noticeable problem in the past few days. Previously this would only happen rarely. It is extremely irritating as the mobile watchlist is nearly useless. older ≠ wiser 13:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Changing mdy to dmy format

I tried to changed the date format from mdy to dmy on the page Shimon Fritz Bodenheimer, but when I tried to type '6' in front of 'June' for the birth date, the '6' automatically moves itself in front of the Hebrew name. Can someone help to fix that? Thanks JACKINTHEBOX • ^TALK 14:41, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Dealing with a mixture of left-to-right and right-to-left languages is tricky. What I did here (which doesn't show up in the diff) was to change the date format, insert a space and a closing parenthesis before the opening parenthesis preceding the dates, and then close it up to the Hebrew text (deleting the closing parenthesis that was originally there). Deor (talk) 17:59, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

If you want to be all technically correct about it, you could insert a Left-to-right mark before the beginning of the date and a Right-to-left mark after it ends; these marks tell the computer to ignore the direction normally associated with specific characters and forces it to display text in a specific direction. Of course, there's nothing wrong with Deor's approach. Nyttend (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Nyttend: that worked. JACKINTHEBOX • ^TALK 08:03, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

When do I need to put citations?

Hello, I'm wondering about the extent of the citations rule. If a page states something that's in another linked Wikipedia article as well, is it needed? --Skim

Each article should be able to stand on its own. If a citation is available in another article, copy and paste it into the new article as well. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:45, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Overrule an edit

I took time to add information to an article about the correct terminology to use for an article that was very superficial and lacked any depth. I have been in the in the industry in question for almost 10 years, but it was reverted by a 19 year old that I'm sure has no information or experience in the field.

Can I appeal this or should I just not add information in my field of speciality as it can be removed by someone with no knowledge in the field?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_verification_service — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karirun (talk • contribs) 16:27, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Karirun. The editor in question is an experienced editor (20,000+ edits and over 3+1⁄2 years experience). He was using an automated tool to deal with the high levels of vandalism that some articles experience. I've looked at your edit and the first thing is that I am certain that it was not vandalism. I do think that it needs a bit more work though. What exactly are you meaning by "onboarding"? How does this differ from "The service may verify the authenticity of physical identity documents such as a drivers license or passport ... or may verify identity information against ... government data"? Finally, can you provide a citation for the phrase "entity-identity binding process" (and please use quotes, not bolding in this context). If you need help with the phrasing and citing please either contact me on my talk page, or use the talk page of the article. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:17, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Karirun: It should also be mentioned that personal knowledge has little if any import when it comes to editing Wikipedia. The encyclopedia reports on what has been written about a subject in independent reliable sources. Please see WP:OR in this respect. Also please be careful in what you say about other editors per WP:NPA. I note that no usual message has been left at your talk page and I have now provided one containing links which, hopefully, you will find useful. Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 18:11, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Karirun: When someone reverts you an edit, you should start by assuming good faith (WP:AGF), because the editor likely had a reason, and this is part of the typical bold-revert-discuss (WP:BRD) process. Your next step is to discuss the edit and revert on the article's talk page. Do this by creating a new section briefly defending your edit and asking the reverting editor to discuss. Add a "ping" to the reverting editor (i.e. {{ping|othereditorname}}) to your new section. -Arch dude (talk) 19:14, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Orange river, South Africa

One of the fish species listed endemic to this river is the brown bear, could someone please remove? [[1]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.255.159.83 (talk) 18:05, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

•  Done Eagleash (talk) 18:14, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Edits using Proxy Servers

Dear all,

Does anyone have an estimate or know where I could get one about the number of edits performed with Proxy Servers, hopefully broken down by registered and unregistered users?

Thank you, Tom

Tom, unfortunately nobody can help you with that precise request. Since the IP addresses of registered users aren't publicized, there's no way to determine who's using proxy servers — checkusers can see the IP address(es) being used by each individual, but policy strictly limits when they may do this, and anyway they can only check one person at a time. As far as unregistered users, I guess you'd just have to identify proxy servers; I don't know if that would be possible, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were. Nyttend (talk) 21:46, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Reference error didn't break anything

I created Henderson County Courthouse (Illinois) yesterday, and my first version needed cleanup due to a reference error; at one point, the text read:

Outside, the facade features a four-column [[portico]]; the columns' original brick exterior was covered with [[stucco]] in 1905.<ref> A door sits at the center of the facade, surrounded by windows.

Yet there was no reference-error warning, no missing text, etc.; it's as if I'd typed &lt;ref> instead of <ref> Any idea why it didn't break anything? Nyttend (talk) 22:03, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Nyttend: The ref tag is not followed by a matching closing tag. The MediaWiki parser does not find a closing tag, so just outputs the tag as text. The same works for unclosed templates e.g. {{example|. Danski454 (talk) 22:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Danski454: Can you explain how the situation which you describe is different from those which give the error flagged as described at Help:Cite errors/Cite error included ref? --David Biddulph (talk) 22:46, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

[edit conflict] But I thought that an unclosed <ref> tag would simply cause everything after it to disappear. Did I misunderstand, or has the software been changed? Nyttend (talk) 22:47, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@David Biddulph and Nyttend: From what I can tell, it seems as if the behaviour of not closing the last ref tag was changed following T17712 in early 2016. This made it so that the ref tag is displayed unparsed. The help page has not been updated to reflect that. Danski454 (talk) 17:04, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Interesting; thank you for discovering that. Nyttend (talk) 23:19, 4 February 2019 (UTC)