Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 October 10

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October 10

Compiling in-line citations from the same source.

Hello all - I'm wondering if someone can help me with a rather frustrating problem I'm having cleaning up references on Togo (dog) . A user some time ago added page numbers for references to Salisbury's The Cruelest Miles but did not give the full reference, only individual page numbers cited for that section of the article. I cited the book in full during an edit I made some months ago. Today I attempted to combine all the in-line citations to the book with their respective page numbers cited at each in-line. However, every time I try to do this, both the listing on the reference list, and each individual citation on mouse-over and upon inspecting the information in edits, ONLY cites the pages from the FIRST citation of the book, not any of the others that I specifically edited in. I know I have seen articles in the past use the same source with different page ranges, and each citation showing its own respective pages, not attached only to the first one on the page. However, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do this myself. I have edited them several times now with everything looking the way I desire in editing mode, and when I publish it, it reverts to only listing pages for the first instance of the book being cited. I am a bit frustrated and embarrassed at the mess I've made of the edit history in my attempt to cleanup something that seems so simple - some help would be greatly appreciated! Mcfuggins (talk) 02:01, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Mcfuggins, I think you might want to use Template:Sfn. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:04, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

This does look like it might be helpful, but I typically edit in visual mode and am very clunky with editing source. I may recruit someone else to help me clean this up. Thanks Mcfuggins (talk) 02:08, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

No link to add photo

I have valuable historical photos that I have taken to add to a website about a Navy base in Sicily, NAF sigonella. I have done many edits but cannot find a way to insert a photo taken by myself into an article. Where do I find the link. I have uploaded a photo to the Commons but that still doesn't work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry T Stanley (talk • contribs) 03:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

H:IUI will guide you through the requirements (including licensing and fair use) and process for uploading and adding images.

Note that if you are currently stationed at this base, you probably have a Conflict of interest and should not edit the article directly. ClaudineChionh (talk) 03:48, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Henry T Stanley: Please persevere. We need those photos. I put a note on your talk page. -Arch dude (talk) 04:07, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Henry T Stanley: you have successfully uploaded File:FRONT GATE SIGONELLA 1962.jpg. Help:Introduction to images with Wiki Markup/3 will give instructions on how to include it in an article. MKFI (talk) 12:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I can't edit External links

Sir please enable the "Edit" option. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ascentemirates (talk • contribs) 06:03, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ascentemirates: Hi there! Some articles are protected from editing by new editors - see Wikipedia:Protection policy for more information. It also helps if you give the exact title or URL of any page you want help with. Happy editing! (Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four keyboard tildes like this: ~~~~. Or, you can use the [ reply ] button, which automatically signs posts.) GoingBatty (talk) 06:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

How do you decide what to put in "First Last (What goes here)"?

I'm specifically looking at the article David Mack (police officer) and am wondering why he is referred to with (police officer) rather than something like (runner)? From my perspective, being one of the US's best runners ever, he is more notable for his running career. How are you supposed to determine what someone is most noted for? Karsonkevin2 (talk) 13:22, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Just reading the article he seems to be far better known for being a corrupt police officer than for his running. (The section on his running career contains the word "fail" or "failed" three times.) If the information on his running was considerably expanded then your suggestion might have some weight. The better place to discuss this is on the article talk page.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:38, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Representing the United States at the world championships is a big deal, but clearly in this case being involved with the bank robbery is much more central to our article. I would suggest opening a discussion at the talk page, but "runner" being the disambiguation is probably not going to be right. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:52, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Shantavira: I used the word fail in the context of failing to make it to finals. Ex. he finished 10th place in the world, but failed to be top 8. I could add this terminology to pretty much every athlete's page in the world, since they probably failed to be top 8 in the world in a given year. Karsonkevin2 (talk) 00:03, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Autohighlighting specific characters.

I'd like to know if there is a tool (js, I guess) that if turned on, will highlight specific characters in an article. At this point I'm looking at articles that my search has said have a latin alphabet character next to a greek one, and I'd like to easily see in the article where that is. So for example, if both ΦΒΚ and ΦBK are in an article, I'd like to have all of the first one highlighted and only the Phi highlighted in the second (the first has Beta and Kappa, the second has B and K). I'd like it to be a little flexible, since I'd like to be able to add the accented greek letters as well as the Lunate Sigma (the version of Sigma that looks like a C. This is as much a "How can it be done?" as "What other page should I ask on?"Naraht (talk) 15:00, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Naraht: I would use AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) and populate the "Find" field with [ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ][ABEZHIKMNOP] with the a Regex box checked. If I wanted to, I would then create find and replace rules to replace the Latin characters with the Greek letters (e.g. ([ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ])B → $1Β). If I wanted to find all such articles, a search for insource:/[ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ][ABEZHIKMNOP]/ times out, so I would search a database dump using AWB. If I was happy with all that, I would then do the same thing where the Latin character preceded the Greek character. Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 16:22, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

GoingBatty I've actually done most of these, unfortunately, of the remaining entries where this occurs, the most common scenario is no changes (for example, MΩ meaning Mega-Ohm), the second most is the Phi B K to Phi Beta Kappa and there are only a few that are latin to greek. I do use Autowikibrowser, but for something like this, I don't think it is a fine enough tool (in the chainsaw to scalpel measurement) By far the most common changes are things that look like IOΦAΔI where the A, O, A & I need to be changed to greek, which would mean that if I automated them, I'd need to both loop *and* have the rules for both directions (Greek-Latin to Greek-Greek and Latin-Greek to Greek-Greek. I'll take a look at AutoWikiBrowser to see if simply having the edit screen up at the same times as the search helps.Naraht (talk) 17:23, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Naraht: The Find and replace Advanced settings allow you to "Apply No. of times" for automated looping. Or you could use the Find and replace Normal settings, and manually reparse the article if it's one you want to edit. GoingBatty (talk) 20:23, 10 October 2021 (UTC)