Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2022 August 22

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

August 22

How can I disable automatic log in on other wikipedia language versions or is it possible to delete such accounts?

It is extremely annoying that wikipedia creates a new account when I click another language website and I do not want those attached to my account I have 0 relation to them except for looking for images to add a page, I can't find a button to disable this feature and there is no way to delete, is it possible to delete accounts that logged in on other language wikipedias that I have no contributions thanks. Qwea1 (talk) 00:24, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

This is a consequence of m:Single unified login and it is impossible to delete Wikipedia accounts for technical and legal reasons. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 00:40, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Is theres a setting to disable single unified login or only solution is logging out? I looked through my preferences but can't find any. Qwea1 (talk) 01:28, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Qwea1. You only have one account. Visiting another Wikimedia project does not create another account. Cullen328 (talk) 01:33, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

That's a matter of definition. It creates a local account in our own terminology and this has some consequences, e.g. the possibility of unwanted welcome posts and notifications. I have a proposal at meta:Welcoming policy to avoid this. It also reveals which Wikimedia wikis you have visited while logged in, and when you first did it: Special:CentralAuth/PrimeHunter. I can understand it annoys some users. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

@Qwea1 AFAIK I recommended someone with the same question of how to disable central login to block cookies for login.wikimedia.org some time ago and it worked, no clue if it still does. Victor Schmidt mobil (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Replace a citation

I noticed a citation that is used multiple times on an article refers to an outdated URL. Is there a way to just replace the citation with the new, working link or do I need to manually cite the new link everywhere the outdated citation is used? Crushedoreos (talk) 08:29, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

If a citation is reused it should be named, in which case the citation is defined in only in one place (starting with "<ref name=somename>" rather than simply "<ref>", followed by the actual citation). Additional uses of that ref just consist of "<ref name=somename/>" . It's a good idea to link to the article in question so we can what you are discussing. Meters (talk) 08:41, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

See WP:NAMEDREFS Meters (talk) 08:49, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I was able to successfully replace the citation. Crushedoreos (talk) 10:17, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Family of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

Ref number 37 is wrong. Please fix as I cannot. Thanks 49.198.41.28 (talk) 10:02, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Removed a stray pipe character ('|') ColinFine (talk) 10:06, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Changed definition

Congratulations. You changed the definition of recession and are now corrupt. Nothing on this site can be trusted and is now garbage. Good job. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:F1DF:CF40:43D:40E6:E587:F6F3 (talk) 10:18, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

At the risk of feeding a troll, I'll just say that Talk:Recession#ATTENTION_NEW_VISITORS_TO_THIS_PAGE is worth a read. Girth Summit _(blether) 10:28, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Here's an off-WP opinion: How a False Claim About Wikipedia Sparked a Right-Wing Media Frenzy Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:48, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Ivins-Conover House

I am trying to write a wiki page for an ancestral house that is on the New Jersey register of historic places. No one has written about it yet and I have collected a lot of info over the years. I am highly educated but not tech savvy. My question is: How do I edit my two References without highlighting them and having them completely erased when I backspace? All I want to do is to write the word “References”at the top to replace the floating #2 and then replace the letters in red in each reference and make sure each reference has a date.

I have tried everything to no avail. Visual editing only changes the format of the page completely and still causes a highlight. Source editing doesn’t work at all. You may also want to know that because I am disabled I only have access to an iPad. You may also want to know that I had to generate the web references manually because the automatic set up wouldn’t work. Which puzzles me because it seems to have worked for the listings for the other houses in the state register. Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. JillerMc (talk) 13:52, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

@JillerMc: Hi there! I presume you are referring to User:JillerMc/sandbox/Ivins-Conover House. I added a References section and added a title to your first reference. Your second reference is a link to a Wikipedia article, and we don't use Wikipedia articles as references per WP:CIRCULAR.

Creating a new article is one of the hardest things to do on Wikipedia. If you haven't done so already, I suggest you review the materials at Help:Introduction. For your new article, I suggest you gather multiple independent reliable sources that have provided significant coverage of the house, and then follow the instructions at Help:Your first article, and be prepared for a process that may include waiting for review, rejections, and rewrites, before an article is created. Hope this helps, and happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 14:10, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere/Ivins-Conover House shows that it has more than New Jersey historic status. It appears at National Register of Historic Places listings in Burlington County, New Jersey. You can ask for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places where they concentrate on American historic sites. 49.198.51.54 (talk) 22:06, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

thanks SOOO much for your help and for your suggestions. Especially the one about the wiki project National Register of Historic Places. I have one or two more references but it seems that almost nothing has been written about it anywhere except in one self published book. The owners have never welcomed visitors. My write up is based almost completely on the data pages from the 1970s that were completed by the park employees seeking to nominate the house. JillerMc (talk) 13:33, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Notifing members in a WikiProject

I'm trying to gather response at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vital Articles#Preparation and I want all of the Vital WikiProject's members to know about this. However, I don't really want to use MassMessage or ping for this as I think this is too intrusive and annoying. What should I do instead? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:58, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

CactiStaccingCrane Speaking as someone interested in various projects, I put the key talk pages on my watchlist and always check when something new is posted. I would assume that anyone interested in that "Vital Articles" project would already be alert to your posting and there is no need for you to do much more than wait a bit. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:27, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Article Suggests/Advices

Hi, I'm Tuna Kuşdemir who is student of METU. I was wondering that can I see article advices on my page or somewhere. For example, in many platforms, there are customized article advices depend on choices related to your interests. I want to see interesting articles, experiments, or articles which are customed depend on my choices. Is there a system like that? Thanks. Tunakusdemir (talk) 20:07, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

@Tunakusdemir: Not too sure (I've never used the Wikipedia app before), but I think the app has a "suggested article" feature. If you want it, here are the download links: Android, iOS. Weeklyd3 (talk) 23:29, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

@Tunakusdemir: that is an interesting question. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (see WP:NOT), we are not focused on topical stuff the way social media is, and since we do not do targeted advertising, we have no incentive to try to track your interests and are philosophically opposed to tracking. Therefore, the analogies are fairly weak. We do have at least two mechanisms that might work for you: categories and Wikiprojects. If an article attracts your interest, look at its categories (at the bottom of the article). go to interesting categories and browse some of the other articles in the category. Similarly, an article you like may be of interest to one or more wikiprojects: these are usually listed on the article's talk page. My own preference is primarily to click on links from interesting articles to find other interesting articles. -Arch dude (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

That's an interesting attitude, maybe the existing condition of Wikipedia is more professional from one side. However, the recommendation system of articles that is related to people's interests may make more attractive Wikipedia to people. Thus science and knowledge can widespread. With compliments, Tuna K. Tunakusdemir (talk) 11:38, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Tag for source using Wikipedia as a source

Is there a template to put with a source that uses Wikipedia as a source? I am looking at in Boat. The source clearly states that some information comes from Wikipedia.

Or should I just go ahead and delete the reference as it is not an RS? I reckon I can find a source that handles that part of the article better (may need the text to say something different), but it will take a little time to do. So the original intent of the tag is to indicate that fixing the problem is a work in progress. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:34, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Looking further, the source in question is not an RS for more than one reason. Additionally, it appears to be a blog created by one individual. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

References

ThoughtIdRetired, the iro.umontreal.ca source you point to smacks of work by an undergraduate (and not an intellectually scintillating undergraduate either). If you take out the content from Wikipedia, what you have left still isn't reliable. Just remove the reference (and anything like it). But for future application, please see Wikipedia:Template index/Sources_of_articles. -- Hoary (talk) 01:16, 23 August 2022 (UTC)