Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 October 31

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October 31

Wikipedia search results come up in ICELANDIC (?) resetting my prefs doesn't help.

I've been using Wikipeddia for years, and am a minor editor and retired tech writer. I cannot find out why Wikipedia comes up in English when I enter "www.wikipedia.org" but as soon as I enter a search query, I get Wikipedia response in a FOREIGN LANGUAGE (I'm pretty sure it's Icelandic but I don't read Icelandic!)

I have attempted to update my Wikipedia display settings, and went so far as to reset to default, but I'm getting the SAME DAMN THING. HELP????

Deporodh (talk) 02:38, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Deporodh: I notice the search box at [1] includes a drop down selection for language. Check that yours is set to EN. Or, instead of www.wikipedia.org, start at en.wikipedia.org and search from there. RudolfRed (talk) 03:03, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Trying to move a page over a redirect

Hi there, I'm trying to figure out how I'm supposed to go about moving Ero guro to Ero guro nansensu when the latter page already exists as a redirect. I'm planning on separating the article into two so that readers don't conflate the artistic movement with the pornographic genre (which has little to do with it). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Konomu (talk • contribs) 06:03, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Konomu: If the move might be controversial, it's best to start a requested move discussion. If the move is uncontroversial, you can ask at WP:RMTR for an admin or page mover to help. Please mention that the redirect has history which may need to be preserved. Certes (talk) 10:48, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Only an administrator can do this. Ruslik_Zero 10:46, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

You can file a renaming request on Wikipedia:Requested_moves. Ruslik_Zero 10:48, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

'Zero width space character' in a citation

I've checked the section and tried fixing the citation... but can't find this, "zero width space character" anywhere in the source, would love to understand this better and be able to fix and/or have it fixed. The citation in question is in the 'Former rides' section on Enchanted Forest Water Safari. (Direct link here) Magitroopa (talk) 06:06, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Magitroopa: This is hard to spot directly, but the error message also mentioned "position 166", so I copied the title into Notepad++ and used it to find the 166th character. Stepping through the text there with the right arrow key, I found an invisible character lurking after the word "thrilling". You can try this if you peek at the old version. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:06, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Magitroopa: Did you click the help link in the error message? Would [2] have helped? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:00, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Thank you very much with the help, great to know any time this happens in the future. @PrimeHunter: Yes, I checked the help link but couldn't find any info on it. Seeing that CS1 errors help page now, that would've helped greatly. I was just doing a little backspace everywhere to try and find the error (so I would see if the position of the error changed from 166 to 167 or anything similar to that). Going through with the arrow key, I definitely do see the error now. Magitroopa (talk) 13:17, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Count Nouns as Article Titles

I would like to verify that what I have inferred about count nouns as article titles is correct. First, it appears that the usual form of the primary title is the singular form of the noun. For example, the article on cats is cat, the article on African elephants is African elephant, and the article on frammistats isn't frammistat because we don't have an article. Second, I infer that there is no automatic recognition of the usual English plural rule of adding "s", so that cats and African elephants are recognized by redirects. Third, if an editor enters the plural form of a count noun and it comes up in red, an editor may be bold and create the redirect from the plural to the singular. Is this correct? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:18, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I believe that your understanding is entirely correct. (For an exception, see spaghetto.) Maproom (talk) 07:32, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

See more at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals). PrimeHunter (talk) 11:18, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Maproom and User:PrimeHunter. I would say that Spaghetti and Confetti, like data, are already mass nouns in English, and the fact that we provide the Italian singular, which does not exist in English, is just because we do. Another example is agenda, which is singular in English and has a plural, agendas. The Latin singular agendum is an item on a list. In English, the noun refers to a list of items, and multiple lists of items take an English plural. So it appears that plurals of normally behaved nouns and singular forms of weirdly behaved nouns are added as redirects (even if they are not English words). Another odd example is paparazzi, where the singular paparazzo is rarely used in English, but is rare, and we use the plural. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Exceptionally poor thumbnail quality

I uploaded a new version of a book cover. However, while the quality of this image is good enough, the thumbnail in the infobox of the actual article exhibits pretty terrible JPEG artifacts in the upper part of the image (blue text on a red background).

Is this some kind of a bug in Mediawiki's thumbnail generation or just some kind of JPEG quirk, and is there a way to fix it? I've identified a workaround, which is avoiding thumbnail generation entirely by re-uploading the image in the size used by the infobox (which is 220px width by default AFAIK), but I'd rather not do that if there's a less hacky and more sustainable way of doing it. --Veikk0.ma 12:00, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

In desktop view, by browser fetches the full resolution image. It's only in mobile view that I get this blotchy overcompressed thumbnail. It doesn't appear that it's possible to bypass the mobile compression. – Thjarkur (talk) 15:23, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

For me the bad thumbnail appears on Firefox and Chrome desktop browser in both the normal and mobile site. I'll probably end up re-uploading the image in 220px. --Veikk0.ma 16:26, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

JPEG is designed for photos (the P in JPEG). Consider png for drawings and text, including photos of drawings and text. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:12, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Cannot access my account anymore

I cannot access my Wikipedia account anymore, for two concomitant reasons:

- I do not remember my password

- My old email address, which was recorded in my Wikipedia personal data, is no longer valid.

I was a moderately active editor many years ago (starting in 2006) and I do not want to lose all the "credit" of my past contributions. Is there a solution to my problem?

Dessources — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB15:303:7F00:5485:3F73:C851:BD89 (talk) 17:33, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, the only way to recover an account's password is to request a password reset, which will send an email to the address associated with the account, which as you've said you no longer have access to. You'll have to create a new account. If you recall your old account name there are various ways you can declare a connection between the two accounts (see {{Former account}} for example) but you won't be able to have those contributions "credited" to your new account. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:39, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

What I suspected. Thanks for the promptitude of the answer! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB15:303:7F00:5485:3F73:C851:BD89 (talk) 17:50, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Image Keeps Reverting Back After Changing

Hi there,

I keep changing the image on this page: To Live to Sing to the actual movie poster (like the one on IMDB), instead of the blue image shown but it keeps reverting back to the blue image and I can't figure out why. Can someone help me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:7a3a:9b00:599:d1ec:de6d:fbce (talk)

It doesn't look like you've edited that article, or at all except for your question here. Do you have an account? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:01, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Two accounts have tried to upload posters to Wikimedia Commons and show them in the article. A copyrighted poster has to be shown as fair use but Commons does not allow fair use images so they were deleted. I have instead uploaded a new version File:To Live to Sing.jpg#filehistory to the English Wikipedia. It may take some time before it's displayed in the article. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:22, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Help with identical nesting footnotes

I just added a pair of nesting footnotes to South University. The two footnotes are identical - the same information is in the infobox and the lede sentence - so it would be great if they could be consolidated into one footnote that is referenced twice. Is there a way to do this? ElKevbo (talk) 20:35, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it: is this what was intended? Certes (talk) 20:50, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was hoping we could do. Thanks so much for your help! ElKevbo (talk) 00:39, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Martineau family

Ref number 50 is in red - Please fix as I cannot on my device here. Thanks 22:40, 31 October 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:D864:E102:4988:768A:7D27:AB54 (talk)

It looks like the problem is "accessdate=1 November 20009", note the extra zero. If you put the error in, you can fix it. RudolfRed (talk) 22:49, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I've tried to fix it but keep getting an edit conflict because of the IP editing. Please fix the error like RudolfRed suggests. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:52, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

It's fixed now. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:01, 31 October 2019 (UTC)