Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 January 11

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January 11

Should I edit the Wikipedia article about my school to reflect changes due to COVID-19?

I do not have any conflicts of interest with my school (I am not paid, required, or otherwise rewarded) to edit the article regarding North Toronto Christian School. I removed some promotional content on the article, and I added current modifications to the school program due to COVID-19. Is the mentioning of these "current events" suitable for Wikipedia? Would I have to change them all back if and when the pandemic ends? Thanks! Félix An (talk) 01:06, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Félix An: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news source. Do not add a "current events" section. The information you add to the article should still be of interest 25 years from now. I believe that a school's response to Covid-19 will still be of interest, just as a school's response to the 1918 flu pandemic would be of interest today. So go ahead and add it, but write it as if for someone reading it in 2050. Don't use words like "currently" and "recently", don't talk about what will happen later in the year. If you do this correctly, the material will not need to be removed later, although it may need to be updated. You will still need to provide reliable sources, and the sources should (mostly) be independent of the school. -Arch dude (talk) 02:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

(Semi-)automated monitoring of links/references

To my understanding, edit filters (e.g. 657, 869, or 891) and the spam blacklist are the only fully-automated WP tools for monitoring references and external links; is that correct? Are there any semi-automated tools in that direction? — MarkH₂₁^talk 01:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@MarkH21: There are also bots that work in this area, for example AntiSpamBot. RudolfRed (talk) 05:42, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@RudolfRef: Is that it though? Are there no other tools like Wikipedia:ProveIt or WP:DABSOLVER for this type of thing? — MarkH₂₁^talk 20:08, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Yesterday

Hopefully, this is a simple question: I noticed an article on the main Wikipedia page a couple of days ago, but I didn't have a chance to read it. And today I'd like to find it again. This must be a common issue.

Thanks, John Horn

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hornjc (talk • contribs) 02:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC) 

@Hornjc: Each section of the main page has a "archive" link. click on that link to see past articles. -Arch dude (talk) 02:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Main Page history. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

adding some info to author stub for Resmaa Menakem

I do not have an account and don't want one, but this author is impressive and creative...has some new information, a good education and extensive experience to share. So I updated the brief bio on Wikipedia, adding credentials and footnote # 3 from his Amazon bio, as well as info on other books and a recent podcast. However cannot post it, probably because it's semi-protected. If anyone can, please do. [folllowing is the entire posting, including my changes as well as the original stub.]

proposed text
<copy and paste, apparent copyright violation removed--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)> signed, C. Hats, reader — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C5E:547F:F418:F0A1:D49B:561F:9E44 (talk) 02:20, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Resmaa Menakem Does not appear to have ever been protected. If you hare having difficulties editing it or prefer not to edit directly, then please make your suggestions on its talk page. You may add {{request edit}} to attract the attention of an interested editor. -Arch dude (talk) 02:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The majority of your proposed text is an apparent copyright violation, being directly copied and pasted from previously written, non-free material, without any attribution for that copying (e.g., through quote marks). Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. As we often tell people: you may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

How to find which article recieved most edits of all time?

How to find which article recieved most edits of all time? Rizosome (talk) 09:56, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Rizosome: These are listed at Special:MostRevisions -- John of Reading (talk) 10:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia records for other records. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:28, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I find it strange how many articles in the top 1000 list (I only browsed that far) are about professional wrestling. JIP | Talk 01:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Why is my archive link not working?

I manually created this Link by seeing old archive links. It is not working. What's the wrong in it? Rizosome (talk) 12:03, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Rizosome: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 January 11 has not been created yet. See Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives. Help desk arhcives are usually created around 3 days later. You are also missing an ending '?'. If you add that then the link should work when the archive is made. So should Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 January 11#How to find which article recieved most edits of all time? It's not possible to make a single link which both works after the original page is archived and displays posts made after the link was created. There is a rarely used workaround using mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##ifexist to a test whether a predicted archive name exists and make the link dependent on that. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:28, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Table goes below infobox; how can I make it adjacent?

Dear Wikipedia helpers,

First, let me wish you all a very happy 2021, with my thanks added for your constant encouragement and helpfulness: we need more of it in the world!

I have just uploaded a new article, South Australian Railways K class (narrow gauge) – a shortish article (necessarily) with a long infobox of technical specifications. The table, which I would like to have in the place it appears in Edit mode, appears below the infobox and after the reflist rather than up the page and adjacent.

I do vaguely remember seeing an infobox in which a section was collapsed, and that would suit the article, I think -- the "Specifications" section is detailed and probably not of primary interest to the general reader -- but I can't recall the article it was in.

If anyone can suggest a solution, it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 12:37, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@SCHolar44: I have removed float from the table.[1] It would be possible to float on the left with text in the middle but that works poorly on narrow screens. {{Infobox locomotive}} has no option to initially collapse the Specifications section. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:23, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@SCHolar44: I'm afraid you can't make them adjacent on my phone even with the smallest font available. :( --CiaPan (talk) 14:19, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks, PrimeHunter – again! Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 08:57, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Is there a way to change what the title says?

I want to have my sandbox title say "Gameking1happy's Sandbox" but still be User:Gameking1happy/sandbox, how could I do this? Gameking1happy (talk) 14:52, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Gameking1happy: While it is technically possible to move the page, I realy want to warn you against doing so: Gameking1happy's Sandbox is in article namespace, where is doesn't belong (since its a sandbox). Victor Schmidt (talk) 15:01, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

You cannot. You can change the formatting - ie you can have the title displayed in bold or italics, etc., but you cannot change the actual name that is displayed. See Template:DISPLAYTITLE.‡ Єl Cid of Valencia ^talk 15:06, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Gameking1happy: Pages that are not meaningful to the encyclopedia or the editing community belong in your "userspace", which means they must be named User:Gameking1happy/something . —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 05:05, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

External Links

Hi,

Is it accepted to add a photo taken by me to Wikimedia Commons, include that photo in a Wikipedia article and give a link to my webpage where it is already published?

Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exploreslk (talk • contribs) 15:23, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Well you can upload a photo you took onto Commons, as long as you own the rights to the photo and are willing to release the rights to the photo into the public domain. As for the second issue.. inserting a link to your personal page into the Wikipedia article is likely to be seen as self-promotion, and WP is not meant for promotional purposes. Really, if your purpose here is to promote yourself or your website, I would advise finding a different site - and there are a lot of great sites out there for that purpose. Best ‡ Єl Cid of Valencia ^talk 15:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Exploreslk: A visible link in the article to your web site is almost certainly inappropriate. However, you can and should add a link to your web site on the file's description page at Commons. This is for purposes of attribution (in this case, to yourself), not advertisement or any of those other bad things. It's also a good idea to ad the CC-BY-SA license terms for that image to your web site, just to make sure someone who is checking does not think the Commons copy is violating the web site's copyright. -Arch dude (talk) 16:13, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Note that this user has been indefinitely blocked for promotion. ‡ Єl Cid of Valencia ^talk 16:29, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Kalmar Union as a symbol for Scandinavia

Some articles, such as Fredrik Lindgren (speedway rider), use the flag of the Kalmar Union to represent Scandinavia as a whole. I think this usage in regards to modern events is an anachronism, because the Kalmar Union was disestablished almost half a millennium ago. Can the flag of the Kalmar Union be used, and if not, what should be used instead? JIP | Talk 18:57, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@JIP: It can be used in Wikipedia in any context where a cited reliable source uses it. I do not think it should be used in any other context. -Arch dude (talk) 19:09, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I mean, is it meaningful to have the flag in a table such as this:

2006 Speedway Grand Prix Final Championship standings
(Riding No 16) (17)

Race no.	Grand Prix	Pos.	Pts.	Heats	Draw No
3 /10	Swedish SGP	9	7	(1,2,1,2,1)	1
7 /10	Scandinavian SGP	17	-	-	17

when the whole 2006 Speedway Grand Prix happened almost half a millennium after the dissolution of the Kalmar Union and isn't even really related to the Kalmar Union in the first place? JIP | Talk 19:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

No. I would certainly remove these misuses of the Kalmar Union flag. Unlike the EU, Scandinavia is not a united political unit and does not have any sort of official flag or seal. The inclusion of the Kalmar flag, while maybe clever, is improper. Also, just for practical purposes, Scandinavia =/= Kalmar Union. Add - to make more clear, there is no official Scandinavian flag, to my knowledge, and therefore, nothing should be used. As Arch said, if there is a flag used in the context of that race, that could be used, but otherwise, it's just attempting to fit a square peg into a round hole. ‡ Єl Cid of Valencia ^talk 19:48, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

It seems there is a problem though. It appears that the template Template:SGP Career/event uses Template:Flagicon to generate the flag icon, and that template is used on quite a lot of articles, some of which have legitimate reasons to use the flag of the Kalmar Union. Fixing this would require adding custom rules. JIP | Talk 20:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If official or reliable sources don't use the flag then we shouldn't. The official site uses the flag of the host country Sweden in 2019. We can do the same. Speedway Grand Prix of Scandinavia shows it's always Sweden. {{SGP Career/event}} can just change {{flagicon|{{{4}}}}} to {{flagicon|{{#ifeq:{{{4}}}|SCA|SWE|{{{4}}}}}}}. I don't know whether the flag is displayed by other speedway templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The template already had a switch statement to replace the country code PL2 with {{flagicon|POL}} because for some reason, Poland has two different races. I added another branch to the clause to replace SCA with {{flagicon|SWE}}. Now it shows the Swedish flag instead of the Kalmar Union flag which was wrong because (1) there hasn't been a Kalmar Union in half a millennium, and (2) even if there were, it would be a different entity from Scandinavia. JIP | Talk 01:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@JIP: Poland actually has three. I have added PL3.[2] I see you first tried my code [3]. For the record, my code was correct but your attempt failed because you didn't keep an ending }} which was in the template. You replaced {{flagicon|{{{4}}}}}}} instead of replacing {{flagicon|{{{4}}}}}. The switch code also works. The number and placement of { and } in template code can be difficult to get right. I often have to do a lot of previewing. In case you don't know, the bottom of template edit windows has a box "Preview page with this template". I also often insert test calls inside <noinclude>...</noinclude> during preview and remove them before saving. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:28, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

A Critique of Pure Tolerance

You Should not have taken this article down. Where did it go?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.185.1.119 (talk) 19:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The article is currently being investigated for potential copyright violations. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 19:13, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

How to cite multiple quotations from the same source

I frequently have multiple references to the same source. I know how to use {{sfn|loc=|pp=}} to refer to, e.g., a {{cite book|ref=}}, when only the section and pages differ, but i don't know how to handle multiple quotations from the same source. I don't want to duplicate everything in the {{cite book}} and add a different |quote= to each, but there is no |quote= for {{sfn}}. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:16, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If quotations are sufficiently important to a reader's understanding of an en.wiki article, include the quotations in the body of the article or in a footnotes section of the article and then cite the quotations. Don't hide the quotations in the reference or bibliography sections as part of a citation. None of the {{sfn}} or {{harv}} templates support |quote= because the renderings created by those templates are intended to be short and concise.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:16, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Copying content across multiple articles

Hi, is there any policy against copying material across multiple articles? I have added the following paragraph to the article on Pope Francis, and I wanted to know if I could just copy it to the appropriate sections of Theology of Pope Francis and Women in Christianity:

On 11 January 2021, Francis formally allowed women to act as Bible readers, altar servers and distribute communion during Mass. While these roles were until then formally reserved to men, Catholic women were already carrying out these duties in many parts of the world. Nevertheless, Francis noted that these ministries were 'fundamentally distinct' from those reserved to ordained priests.

Thank you!--JBchrch (talk) 20:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

References

JBchrch, as far as I'm aware there is not, though if you're taking something from another article you must attribute it (say where you got it from—usually a link to the article in an edit summary is sufficient). You may be interested in using the {{excerpt}} template to reduce maintenance across pages. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:59, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Tenryuu!--JBchrch (talk) 22:17, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Unless they contain different information which contributes to the paragraph, I would say that four sources is OVERKILL, JBchrch. --ColinFine (talk) 22:37, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks ColinFine I thought about that. In any case, another editor completely replaced my sources with specialised sources later on. Cheers.--JBchrch (talk) 22:40, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Disruptive overseas-based editor: verifying earlier other-Wiki blocks

Where do I look to find out whether another editor is blocked or banned on other Wikipedias?--Quisqualis (talk) 20:12, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Special:CentralAuth. Ruslik_Zero 20:34, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Citations in Incorporated Text

Hello,

What if the original text, which comes from a source licensed under Public Domain rights, has very few or no citation and, therefore, doesn't meet the standard on Wikipedia for inline citations? I have recently received an notice that my article should be improved with inline citations. The article is almost unavailable in online search - it exists in one old book which is now in Public Domain. What can I do?

Thank you, Marino 21:22, 11 January 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marino108LFS (talk • contribs)

@Marino108LFS: Cite the book you got it from. It doesn't matter if it is offline and/or in the public domain. Also, you should not be copying from the book, so it doesn't matter if the text in the book itself uses inline citations. RudolfRed (talk) 21:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@RudolfRed and Marino108LFS: since the book is PD, you are allowed to copy to if you attribute it (see WP:PLAGIARISM), but often the language on these older publication should be updated. The approach we have taken with a great many articles from the DNB (Dictionary of National Biography) and EB1911 (Encyclopedia Britannica) is to copy the entire article with attributions, and then improve it incrementally. If the book itself is a reliable source, then you do not need to find and cite the book's sources. If the book is not a reliable source (e.g., if it was self-published) then you will need to find its sources and cite them. -Arch dude (talk) 02:05, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@Arch dude: Thank you very much. Marino — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marino108LFS (talk • contribs) 02:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Feb 14 1970The USS POINT DEFIANCE We Had a COLLISON With the REFULING SHIP

I Was a MARINE OnBOARD The USS PT.DEFIANCE , We HAD A COLLISION At Sea With A REFUELLING SHIP, ? WHY IS THERE NOTHING ABOUT THAT. OUR SHIP AFTER SENDING THE FUEL LINES BACK , OUR MAN AT THE WHEEL TURNED HARD TO PORT RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER SHIP . WHY IS THERE NOTHING IN THERE ABOUT THAT DAY ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.87.99.138 (talk) 23:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

You can suggest improvements to an article at that article's talk page, but any information must come from reliable, published, sources and not just your recollection. RudolfRed (talk) 23:37, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

This paper states there were 799 accidents involving US Navy ships between 1945 and 1988. It also notes that Point Defiance and Ponchatoula were "slightly damaged", with three injured. It doesn't seem like it's that noteworthy. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:55, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The nuclear submarine USS Daniel Boone (SSBN-629) had a more serious collision (minor damage to it, but extensive damage to the merchant ship President Quezon) the same year. That also is not mentioned. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:59, 11 January 2021 (UTC)