Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 March 10

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March 10

Cite error

Can someone please fix the references in My Way (Usher album)? Musicfan122 (talk) 00:26, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

While I've deleted a reference which was invoked but never defined (and some other fixes), can you please add a reliable source for the claim of the artist's album selling 6mn copies in the US? Thanks, Lourdes 00:44, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! doesn't the BBC source in the following sentence cite it? Musicfan122 (talk) 01:20, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I've not checked it myself. If you think the BBC source cites the material, then it's okay. If it doesn't, then please add a source for the material if possible. Thanks, Lourdes 05:03, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Animal lifespans

I’d like to suggest (I’m sure others have already) that the average lifespan of living creatures be included in their pages on Wikipedia, where possible.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:387:A:9A2:0:0:0:5 (talk) 01:34, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

How about adding average lifespan in the infobox(Speciesbox)?Eatcha (talk) 04:20, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Go on over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals and discuss this with the guys that are interested: they may be able to work with you on this. Also check out our sister project Wikispecies, where this sort of datum might be a better fit. I think the animal infoboxes and Wikispecies may be cross-connected, but I haven not looked on several years. -Arch dude (talk) 05:48, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

White space

The conversation at Talk:Broadway#White space would benefit from advice from an expert on why white space occurs in one browser but not another after the use of {{tocright}}. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:31, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done (but not by me) Nick Moyes (talk)

Homelessness in popular culture#Foods

Hi, I've added a new section, Foods, on this article, but not sure if that is relevant to the article. Can anyone check to be sure?--NeoBatfreak (talk) 09:36, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

IMO, an article like this should be weeded of everything that can't be cited to a reliable secondary source that says "yep, that's about homelessness." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:50, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks--NeoBatfreak (talk) 09:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Not just Gråbergs Gråa Sång's opinion, but a guideline. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 10:00, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I hope you're not implying that a WP-guideline has greater weight than my opinion? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:03, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Redundant article+disambiguation & the interlanguage links

As far as I can see, the disambiguation page Irish Republican Army (disambiguation) is fully redundant to the article Irish Republican Army, giving an overview over exactly the same historical groups listed in the disambiguation. I would suggest to delete the disambiguation, however... would it be 'legal' to link the overview article to disambiguation pages in other languages? Or is there a rule against that? --KnightMove (talk) 20:47, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@KnightMove: I understand your point, but an explicit disambiguation page serves an additional function. It acts as a flag when a user adds a link to an ambiguous subject. Unfortunately, that function doesn't work in this case, because the overview/history article is has the same name as the overall subject, so we lose that advantage of a dab. In an ideal world, we would rename that article and keep the dab. The other main problem is Wikidata. When we have a one-to-many or (worse) a many-to-many mapping among articles on different Wikipedias, the Wikidata entities are a mess. I'm sorry but all I have for you is these two complaints instead of helpful suggestions. -Arch dude (talk) 23:21, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@Arch dude: Thanky - but now I've gotten a hint to the guidelines, and it seems that this is a Special case where you could legally link disambiguation pages & overview articles in Wikidata, which works with including a __DISAMBIG__ in the articles. Do you agree? --KnightMove (talk) 13:18, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

@KnightMove: I do agree. I think it's the least-bad approach. To really finish this off, you should technically redirect the current dab page to the overview article and formally designate the overview article as a dab (which will add the "DISAMBIG"), and then slog through all the incoming links to the article to see which of them is really for the overview and which are for specific articles. Each inbound link should be modified to either point to the explicit dab redirect (if it's really for the overview) or to point to the correct subarticle: there should be no direct links to the new dab (i.e., the overview article). I did not check to see the size of the incoming links list. -Arch dude (talk) 18:43, 11 March 2019 (UTC)