Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 December 11

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December 11

Asking for Donations

Where's the page for Wilton Manors Little League? I'll donate if you make the page accessible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:1F40:1680:D902:A65F:1C:4533 (talk) 04:42, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Provide the sources first. Don't try to blackmail us volunteers who don't see any of that donation money. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 04:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Jéské Couriano is of course entirely correct, but let's try to answer the question all the same. The article's deletion was proposed, with the rationale "Local Little League fails WP:NSPORT". Nobody objected, so it was deleted. A warning that it lacked any independent references had been placed on it in 2008; in the seven years thereafter, nobody added a single one. If you believe that you can make this (currently deleted) article satisfy either WP:NSPORT or WP:NORG, you're free to request its "undeletion". The place to ask is Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion. HTH. -- Hoary (talk) 08:32, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if the WMF's excessive and intrusive pleas for donations give the impression that we might be open to bribery? Maproom (talk) 09:34, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Cropped uploaded SVG file

It has got to be something simple, but how do I fix this file. And, what did I do wrong in the first place?

The file displays perfectly well for me locally. Aoziwe (talk) 11:05, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Aoziwe: I am not an expert at SVG, however, here are my notes:

• Your CSS width: and height: -declarations are invalid. In CSS, all widths, heights and other values of length need to have a unit such as px or em.
• The width and height-attributes of your <svg>-Element are absolute. This is generally not done, because you do not know how big the canvas is your image is rendered on. If the canvas (or the container) is larger than the values here, this leads to unexpected results. What rather is done is that this value is a unitless number that defines the width and height of the image in the same format the attributes x1="", x2="", y2="", y1="" etc do. Everything outside of this limit will not display, because the image technically is only so big as defined here.
• In addition, the W3 Validator as a few errors.

In general, asking these questions at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab is probbably better, because that is where the eperts are. I have uploaded a fixed version, which should at least display. If you don't like it, feel free to revert it. Victor Schmidt (talk) 16:52, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks Victor Schmidt. I have tweaked it a bit more. Aoziwe (talk) 10:47, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Updating less-frequented but outdated pages

Hello, I am very new to editing on this website but I frequently visit pages which appear to be more obscure and often have not been edited for many years.

I recently viewed the Africa portal and the summary for Libya in the 'selected country' section is very outdated, using the Gaddafi-era official title of the country, along with a more recently outdated national emblem, and outdated population statistics.

I have attempted to edit the official title, but Wikipedia notes that this is a less frequented page and so a response may take some time. Is it worthwhile attempting to draw more attention to this issue? If so, is this the correct place to do so in future?

Thank you

DanielMichaelPerry (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@DanielMichaelPerry: It seems you've gone ahead and been BOLD, which is fine. If someone has an issue with it and reverts you, continue what you did at the portal's talk page to discuss. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 16:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Donations for the Biased

You know, I see the need for donations to keep the site afloat but would like to know - without a central board to keep it neutral why would I want to contribute $$ to a site that is so biased in the political realm? Some really good information here on the site, but Wikipedia is part of the problem leading to the tribalization of the U.S. to that end, I could not see donating a nickel to the rag. Now, if you were to separate all politics to an area overseen by a composite board - that could be the difference. 2600:1700:1100:2190:D8D0:7A50:93FE:E720 (talk) 14:58, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The fundraising is handled by the Wikimedia foundation, not Wikipedia. It used (among other things) to maintain servers and those sorts of things. Items added to Wikipedia are not funded by donations, they are done by volenteer editors, such as yourself. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:07, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

In essence, all articles are overseen by a board- the body of editors. That can include you. If there is article content that does not conform to Wikipedia guidelines, please bring that up on the article talk page. Wikipedia does not claim to be free of bias, as everyone has biases. Sources are presented to readers so they can evaluate and judge them for themselves. Wikipedia strives to have a neutral point of view, which is different. Wikipedia does not give equal time to all sides, coverage gives due weight to how a topic is covered by independent sources. We want to hear about any problems, but articles will not be whitewashed to provide a WP:FALSEBALANCE that coverage does not provide. 331dot (talk) 15:50, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Any such board would quickly turn into a cadre of blocked/banned users which would annihilate any possibility of its usefulness. Discretionary sanctions don't get levied unless there's extreme and intractible behavioural problems amongst the body of editors working in a given topic area, and such topic areas also tend to see higher-than-usual amounts of sockpuppetry used to evade sanctions, blocks, and bans. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 22:20, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Please do not contribute money to a site if you disagree with the way the site is run. I suggest you try a few sites that operate differently to see if you can find one you like better. -Arch dude (talk) 15:33, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Donations

I recently made a donation to Wikipedia, as I have done for a number of years now. However, every so often, when launching Wikipedia I'm asked to make a donation. Is there anyway I can stop this happening? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:A0F:3C01:807B:C0AF:C7D7:A218 (talk) 17:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

If you create an account, you can turn off the donation requests in your account preferences. As you use an IP address, Wikipedia has no way to know if the person sitting at your computer has seen a donation request or donated. If this IP is fixed for you, allowing cookies should prevent the future display of donation requests. 331dot (talk) 17:13, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Images pushing table inwards

Hi, the images in the section above Strategic bombing during World War II#The British later in the war are pushing the table ("RAF estimates") inwards for me with two different browsers, causing a large amount of white space on the right hand side of the article. What's the best way to fix this? Cheers, Jr8825 • Talk 18:40, 11 December 2021 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

@Jr8825: this could be fixed by adding {{Clear}} before the table, but then it might show an empty section next to the images. The article currently has many images sprinkled around; a better way might be to organize some of the images into galleries at certain points of the article to keep them more compact. MKFI (talk) 12:08, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Technical problem with math formulas in table of contents: for example, $E=mc^{2}$

Since a few weeks/months ago, math formulas are incorrectly displayed in tables of contents. For example the $E=mc^{2}$ of this section's title is displayed as '"`UNIQ--postMath-00000001-QINU`"' in the table of contents (as I see it on Firefox). This is was a problem for example in this article. What happened? Sylvain Ribault (talk) 20:33, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Ssection heathings should not contain <math> markup, I suppose for this sort of reason. See MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS. Thincat (talk) 22:12, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

It's reported in phab:T295091. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:23, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for these references! To summarize, using math in section titles is not recommended but it used to be technically possible, until suddenly it wasn't. Now math in section titles has to be scrubbed case by case... Sylvain Ribault (talk) 10:07, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

donations redux

I have given two donations in the last year Please quit hounding me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:40E0:4CA0:F09A:B14A:E33:9433 (talk) 21:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

You could be a supermodel or Norman Mailer and Wikipedia would never be able to know the difference because MediaWiki - the software it runs on - is configured to not compromise your privacy in that manner. If you have or register an account, you can turn off the fundraising banners in your account preferences under the "Banners" tab. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 21:42, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Donation yet again

Why do you keep tell me you are asking for money a d this is the 4th time we interrupted you I ALREADY DONATED AND WOULD LIKE YOU TO STOP THE HARASSMENT OR I'LL NEVER DONATE AGAIN AND YOU CAN GO OUT OF BUSINESS — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.69.227.228 (talk) 21:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

You could be a supermodel or Norman Mailer and Wikipedia would never be able to know the difference because MediaWiki - the software it runs on - is configured to not compromise your privacy in that manner. If you have or register an account, you can turn off the fundraising banners in your account preferences under the "Banners" tab. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 21:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Welcome and thank you for your question about donations! To hide the fundraising banners, you can create an account, go into your preferences, navigate to the Banners tab, and uncheck Fundraising. Wikimedia Foundation does not track the identity of IP addresses, so it doesn't know your age, income level or whether you donated in the past.

 ― Qwerfjkltalk 23:37, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia Redirect-Class vital articles in Geography

What's going on with the template on this category? ― Qwerfjkltalk 23:40, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: I can't see the exact issue immediatley, but it looks like the kind of error you get when you over escape pipe characters (so the output of {{Vital article by topic by class}} is something like {{Vital article by topic by class/core {{!}}class=Redirect |topic=Geography}} instead of {{Vital article by topic by class/core |class=Redirect |topic=Geography}}. 192.76.8.80 (talk) 00:23, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I haven't deciphered all the code but I think you are trying to only assign a parameter in certain circumstances with code like this:

{{Vital article by topic by class/core
{{#ifeq:1|1|{{!}}class=Redirect}}
}}

That doesn't work:

{{Vital article by topic by class/core |class=Redirect }}

The pipe must be an actual pipe in the template's own code. The only workaround I know if you really want to do this:

{{Vital article by topic by class/core
|{{#ifeq:1|1|class|dummyparameter}}=Redirect
}}

If the condition is not met then you get |dummyparameter=Redirect which will presumably be ignored by the called template. dummyparameter is an example name I picked. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:44, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks, I think this should have fixed it. ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:48, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I've encountered another strange problem: on Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Biology by class: It should categorise under Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Science by class, but it doesn't work (I've added × to show this). However, it did work (in the preview) when the relevant code (under Matches "Wikipedia vital articles in TOPIC by class in {{Vital articles by topic by class}}) is substituted. ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:36, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: The problem is unclear to me. Are you saying that if you preview {{Vital article by topic by class}} alone on Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Biology by class then you expect it to automatically add Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Science by class? PrimeHunter (talk) 04:02, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Yes, this part of the template should do it:

{{Vital article by topic by class/core
|topic={{#invoke:string|replace|source={{PAGENAME}}|plain=false|pattern=^Wikipedia vital articles in ([%a ]+) by class$|replace=%1}}
|<!-- Check if "Physics" or "Biology"
-->{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:string|match|s={{PAGENAME}}|plain=true|pattern=Biology|match=1|start=1|nomatch=%%nomatch%%}}|%%nomatch%%|<!--
-->{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:string|match|s={{PAGENAME}}|plain=true|pattern=Physics|match=1|start=1|nomatch=%%nomatch%%}}|%%nomatch%%|dummyparam=yes<!-- Return nothing -->|
sciencesubcat=yes}}|
sciencesubcat=yes}}
}}

 ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:05, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: If the whole of sciencesubcat=yes is the value of an expression then no parameter assignment is made. In an assignment a=b, the parameter name a and the value b can be the result of expressions but the equality sign cannot. It must be directly in the code. You have unnecessary complications. There is no need for the parameter name to be an expression if it's allowed to pass an empty |sciencesubcat=. Module:String#find is simpler than match for testing for a substring. I suggest the below. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

{{Vital article by topic by class/core
|topic={{#invoke:string|replace|source={{PAGENAME}}|plain=false|pattern=^Wikipedia vital articles in ([%a ]+) by class$|replace=%1}}
|sciencesubcat={{#ifexpr:{{#invoke:string|find|{{PAGENAME}}|Biology}} or {{#invoke:string|find|{{PAGENAME}}|Physics}}|yes}}
}}