Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 January 31

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January 31

Creating Corporate Page

Dear Wikipedia,

Please let me know if there any reputable third-party services that create quality Wikipedia page 150-year-old footwear manufacture bio and history.

Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8802:5505:CE00:ACE2:AF7:2C1B:62B8 (talk) 03:03, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

We cannot offer you any advice on whom you can hire to write an article; and you should be wary of any person or company claiming they can write the perfect article; don't just hand over your money. . No one can guarantee any particular result for you(such as an article not being deleted). They must also comply with the paid editing policy and disclose that you hired them.

If your company is 150 years old, there are likely independent editors who will take note of it and write about it on their own, which is what should happen. Wikipedia does not have 'corporate pages', it has articles about corporations that meet the notability guidelines written at WP:ORG. 331dot (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Adding to what 331dot has said, if you can find either online or properly published in-print sources that talk about that company in depth, you can visit Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies and supply details in the hope that another editor may be interested enough to create an article. Anything they wrote would still have to meet out notability of companies criteria. Clearly, not every company will meet them, nor is age of establishment any relevance. Hope this might help a bit. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:35, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

citation analysis of wikipedia

I want to clarify whether there's a way to analyse citations of given key words in wikipedia? eg: If key words are given as below

Acropolis, Parthenon, Aristotle, socrates 

1) Can we summarize and categorize the cited book list, web sites,journals and soon?

2) Can we calculate the frequency of books cited?( eg- Book AAA has been cited 3 times in above 4 keywords)

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.245.161.102 (talk) 08:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Best I can do for you: Results of a search for a given book title over all articles assigned to a given category or its subcategories: Bhunacat10 (talk), 15:08, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Centring table data in columns

1. When coding a table that contains one or more columns containing data to be centred, is it possible to specify in the column heading that all the cells below it are to be centred, without having to specify align="center" in every cell for that column, to spare the editor coding tedium? It is possible to centre the column heading itself, but I cannot find a way of specifying in the column heading that data throughout that column is all to be centred.

2. While I am at it, I may as well ask if it is possible to specify, in the first row cell, a particular data alignment to be used throughout a whole row? — O'Dea (talk) 10:02, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@O'Dea: Cell centering is specified with style="text-align: center;". Like many other table commands it can only be specified for a whole table (by writing in the initial {| line), a whole row (by writing in the |- line), or a single cell. If there are more centered than uncentered columns then it may be easiest to center the whole table and then write style="text-align: left;" in each uncentered cell. Some tables are made with Help:Table#Row template. In such cases the row template can add centering code without users having to copy it. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thank you, PrimeHunter. That's what I feared. Since I am only centring two columns out of six, I will have to code all cells in those two columns with align="center". — O'Dea (talk) 11:31, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@O'Dea: align="center" is obsolete per Wikipedia:HTML 5#Scope. Use style="text-align: center;". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:47, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I have adjusted my code, accordingly. Thank you. — O'Dea (talk) 14:55, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Re-direct query

I have just created this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Island,_Anglesey but it doesn't seem to re-direct. Any idea why? Cls14 (talk) 10:09, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

It does after this edit. The syntax wanted a space, not a non-breaking space. --David Biddulph (talk) 10:20, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I have no idea what that means but thanks for fixing! Cls14 (talk) 10:24, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

You had used a non-breaking space character, rather than a normal space. MOS:NBSP gives some advice. --David Biddulph (talk) 10:36, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

This may happen if you copy-paste a page name from certain places. Just delete the space and write a normal space. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:06, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks both! Cls14 (talk) 15:09, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

New updates have disappeared

I edited the Sol Plaatje University page with new updates and they seem to have disappeared from the page. Why did this happen? — Preceding unsigned comment added by LihleEQ (talk • contribs) 13:08, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

They were reverted as linkspam and promotional. Please read WP:PROMO, WP:EXTLINK, WP:COI, and WP:PAID.331dot (talk) 13:14, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Deleting photos

I've uploaded two photos but they are of totally the wrong thing. How do I delete them? Thanks. Cls14 (talk) 15:06, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@Cls14: Since they were uploaded to the English Wikipedia, and not to Wikimedia Commons, the answer is to tag them with {{db-author}}. Your upload log seems to show that you've already worked this out. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Please remove full birth date from Wikipedia Laura Otis article

Dear Wikipedia editors,

I am the subject of this article, Laura Otis, Professor of English at Emory University:

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

I am very concerned that my full birth date is appearing in the information panel that my IT advisor has told me is using Wikipedia information:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&q=Laura+Otis

Please remove this full birth date as soon as possible, because it is extremely dangerous for it to be available on the internet. I have never given consent for this full birth date to appear.

Thanks very much,

Laura Otis — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:8C70:58F0:600A:F00:46F4:C9B3 (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Your birth date is not in said article, and is from another source. You can try contacting google's legal team to ask for the info to be taken down. Good luck!WelpThatWorked (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Where is your date of birth on the article? Cls14 (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Cls14, It does not appear to be there, I believe her IT adviser made a mistake WelpThatWorked (talk) 15:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Also, note that Google offers you to "Claim this knowledge panel" which should be useful if you want to control the information in it. Regards SoWhy 16:03, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Are you by any chance referring to a photo or text shown to the right of a Google search? Google's Knowledge Graph uses a wide variety of sources. There may be a text paragraph ending with "Wikipedia" to indicate that particular text was copied from Wikipedia. An image and other text before or after the Wikipedia excerpt may be from sources completely unrelated to Wikipedia. We have no control over how Google presents our information, but Google's Knowledge Graph has a "Feedback" link where anyone can mark a field as wrong. The same feedback facility is also provided on Bing and some other search engines. shoy (reactions) 16:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I wondered whether Google might be picking this up from Wikidata, but that only gives her birth date as "20th century". https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6499287 --Gronk Oz (talk) 22:55, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Laura Otis - if you go to that Google search and click on the word "Born" (or click on this link "Born"), it opens a box "Laura Otis/Born" on the left hand side. At the bottom of that box is a "feedback" link where you can request Google to remove this information. I hope this helps. --Gronk Oz (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

It seems that the info is coming from her Library of Congress authority file ([1]/[2]) Connormah (talk) 23:19, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Fixing Lint Errors

I am trying to figure out how to run our new lint program, find the lint errors on a page, and fix them.

I am looking at the following help pages:

Help:Page information#Lint errors

Wikipedia:Linter#How to check a page

mw:Help:Extension:Linter

mw:Extension:Linter

Am I missing any important help or info pages?

Question #1:

Looking at the following URLs, the first one shows a section titled "lint errors" and the second doesn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Guy_Macon&action=info

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Example&action=info

May I assume that this is Wikipedia's way of telling me that the second page has no lint errors?

Question #2:

Wikipedia:Linter#How to check a page says:

"You can compare the old and new systems side by side. Navigate to the page and add ?action=parsermigration-edit to the end of the URL."

So I tried https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon?action=parsermigration-edit

and got this error message:

No such action

Wikipedia does not recognize the action specified by the URL.

What am I doing wrong? Or is that help page wrong/obsolete?

Question #3:

Wikipedia:Linter#How to check a page says:

"You can add an easy link to this in the sidebar. Go to the "Editing" section in Special:Preferences and choose "⧼parsermigration-pref-label⧽" from the list. Save your changes. Then, when you read a page, there will be a link in the sidebar that says "⧼parsermigration-toolbox-label⧽". When you click that link, the side-by-side comparison will appear above a wikitext editing window."

but I have no such list on my preferences --> editing page, just a bunch of checkboxes.

Question #4:

I have always been reluctant to run any sort of tool that someone else wrote, preferring to cut and paste the page source to a local text file, fix it using tools I write myself, pasting it back, and carefully going through the preview and changes before saving. Is there a way I can run the exact same lint program that Wikipedia runs but run it locally? I usually use Windows 10 to browse the web, but I also have a Linux box on my desk if the linter is linux-only.

Question #5:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia mentions Wikipedia:WPCleaner, Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, Wikipedia:AutoEd, and meta:User:TMg/autoFormatter. would any of these be appropriate for dealing with lint errors?

Question #6:

meta:User:SMcCandlish/lint.css suggests loading the new CSS to [ Special:MyPage/common.css ] or [ meta:Special:MyPage/global.css ]. Is there any reason to prefer one over the other?

Why do I get the feeling that there is something simple and obvious that I am just missing? :( --Guy Macon (talk) 18:31, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I think you'd be better off posting this entire thread on the Linter talk page. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:19, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: Forgot to reply by pinging. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:25, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon,

Q1 - yes

Q2 and Q3 - the old program used to fix HTML errors, HTML Tidy is no longer run, so parsermigration does not work

Q4 - I would say the easiest way to see and fix lint errors would be to use the tool in Wikipedia:Linter#User Javascript tool: lintHint

Q5 - These tools would be helpful for fixing the same/similar error across multiple pages; I know Jonesey95 uses AutoEd for fixing lint errors.

Q6 - Global.css applies to all wikis while your common.css only applies to the particular wiki. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:45, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! I created User:Guy Macon/global.css and cut and pasted the code from User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint#Usage

Then I went to Wikipedia:Sandbox, entered the following wikimarkup and saved the page:

 <tt>TEST

The page information showed the expected two lint errors (1 missing end tag and 1 obsolete HTML tag).

Alas, the edit window did not have the expected "If problems were detected a large yellow box is inserted in top region of the page" (User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint#Default_behaviour). It looked normal, as did the page itself.

I tested my browser at https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/is-javascript-enabled and Javascript is enabled.

Any idea what I am doing wrong? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:53, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint#Default_behaviour begins "In wiki mainspace..." so it probably won't do anything in the sandbox. Try viewing Challenger Point or follow the other suggestions at User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint/Test#Article. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Mainspace only? Missed that. That makes it useless to me. I want to start be fixing the lint errors on my user page. Is there a tool that can do that? Like I said, I would really like to run the same linter Wikipedia uses on my own PC. I use tools I write myself (or free and open source tools where I understand and can modify the code) so I don't have to deal with someone deciding for me that I can only fix lint errors in mainspace, not in my own userspace. "Get off my lawn, you punk kids! HTML5? if HTML 4.01 was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me." --Guy Macon (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: meta:User:Guy Macon/global.css is loaded in all Wikimedia wikis where you are logged in. User:Guy Macon/common.css is only loaded in the local wiki, in this case the English Wikipedia. Which one to use depends on whether you also want to flag bad code at other wikis. User:Guy Macon/global.css is not loaded anywhere. A global.css page only has effect when it's saved at meta. The code currently in meta:User:Guy Macon/global.css is not CSS but JavaScript. It belongs in meta:User:Guy Macon/global.js to load in all wikis, or in User:Guy Macon/global.js User:Guy Macon/common.js to only load locally. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:10, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Now i get the yellow box. I knew I was making some simple error and just not seeing it! --Guy Macon (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Minor weirdness: When I go to [3] and click the edit button for Challenger Point the section that uses center is highlighted. But if I just go to Challenger Point and try to edit it isn't. Not a big problem; I can still finf=d the error, but I like to undersand the tools I use. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

URL that highlights: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Challenger_Point&action=edit&lintid=2798335

URL that doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Challenger_Point&action=edit

What does the "lintid=" do? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: lintid=2798335 looks up the error in a precomputed database of lint errors used by Special:LintErrors. I don't know a way to get relevant lintid numbers if you start at the page Challenger Point instead of finding the page at Special:LintErrors. The same page can have many lint errors with different numbers. Each number gives a specific position with a specific error. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Glendamarie&action=edit&lintid=2686238 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Glendamarie&action=edit&lintid=2686239 are different font tags (with one nested inside the other). There are two other obsolete HTML tag lint errors on the page but I don't know how to find their numbers without clicking "Next page" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:LintErrors/obsolete-tag?namespace=3 until the page name appears, maybe after thousands of clicks. It is mw:Extension:Linter which reads the lintid in the url and uses it to highlight the text. Special:Version shows Linter is installed at the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:51, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint can highlight lint errors on a given page one at a time without knowing lintid numbers. Edit the page, click Show preview, click the yellow box, and click the arrow next to the lint error. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:04, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

You don't have to click Show preview but if you do then it shows lint errors in the previewed version. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:08, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I am late to this party, but if it helps, here is my workflow:

1. Enable the Syntax Highlighter gadget in Preferences -> Gadgets (I have this permanently enabled).
2. Pick an error and a namespace that you want to work on.
3. Go to Special:LintErrors and click through to that error and namespace.
4. Click on a page that you want to look at. Click Edit, then click the LintHint yellow button to get a list of errors.
5. Each error has a "down arrow" that will take you to that error (unless it's in a big block of interpreted code that LintHint can't see inside, in which case it will highlight the whole block).
6. If you can see and fix the error, fix it. The help text linked from the question mark at the upper right of the Special:LintErrors page may help. I say may help, because it's not very good. If the explanation doesn't help, post at Wikipedia talk:Linter, and I'll explain and improve the help text.
7. Use Special:ExpandTemplates to expand those pesky big blocks of code that LintHint can't see inside. Copy the block and expand it, then run LintHint and arrow down to each error.
8. If you fix the Lint error, click on the next down arrow to fix the next error. Note that if you have added or removed text, the down arrow's target will shift by that number of characters. That means that it may be easiest to fix from the bottom up. You can also Preview and click the LintHint button again to reset the list of errors.

You can look at my Contributions for sample fixes. Note that the Syntax Highlighter chokes on unclosed br tags, so I have a script that adds closing slashes to all of them before I start looking at a page. Post at the Linter talk page with questions. Welcome to the party! I also recommend https://tools.wmflabs.org/fireflytools/linter/enwiki as a useful page for "keeping score" and getting a sense of the size of each group of errors in each namespace. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:11, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

OK, the above works perfectly. I can easily highlight the errors on any page that the Yellow LintHint box appears on. Now I can check every mainspace page as I view it and fix any lint errors I see. That alone makes the tool super useful. And I apologize for wasting anybody's time with that sill error. Sometimes you simply cannot see your own errors, then when they are pointed out you marvel at what an idiot you were.

So now I have one remaining problem: how do I get the Yellow LintHint box to appear on a page such as User:Guy Macon/Wikipedia has Cancer or on User:Guy Macon/sandbox? I use my sandbox a lot to test pages I create or make major edits to before going live with them. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:58, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

The LintHint box appears on every page for me. If you trust me, you can copy my LintHint settings from User:Jonesey95/vector.js (the section called "Live linting:"). I think the setting in question is the "rooms" setting. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:13, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Now (after clearing cache) it works on every page. Before we close this, should this be explained on a help page somewhere? --Guy Macon (talk)

From a post by Pipetricker on User talk:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint#How do I identify and fix lint errors in my own userspace?:

"Alternatively, you can go to the Quick interactive customization page and input a space-separated list of your desired namespace numbers (push the "+" button to save). Or you can enter a full page name into the second input field of Special:BlankPage/lintHint.

Note: The Quick interactive customization page may need to be reloaded if the browser tab wasn't visible when the page loaded."

I just fixed all of the lint errors on my userpage and user talk page. Again, I really appreciate all of the help. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:54, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Trouble updating External Links

Hello! I have been trying to update website links on the page for Dana Dajani, as the URLs/usernames have changed. However I keep receiving an error when I attempt to save. I would appreciate your help resolving this matter!

The new websites are as follows: Facebook.com/Danadajani.poetry

Youtube.com/DanaDajanipoetry

Instagram.com/danadajani.poetry

Twitter.com/DanaDpoetry

Please note: Website , Soundcloud, IMDB - NO CHANGE NEEDED

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.99.106.222 (talk) 23:47, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

What error are you getting when you try to save your edits? RudolfRed (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Before you make any changes, please see Point 10 of WP:ELNO. †dismas†|^(talk) 01:00, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I have removed these redundant links in Dana Dajani (they are prominently linked on her main website anyway), and fixed a few layout issues as well. See WP:EL, especially WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, for more information about the limited usage of external links on Wikipedia. GermanJoe (talk) 10:19, 1 February 2019 (UTC)