Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2022 December 6

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December 6

Where can I request someone upload a file for me?

As an IP user I cannot upload files. Is there a place I can request someone do it for me? 108.168.93.43 (talk) 00:16, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, Files For Upload. 331dot (talk) 00:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi 108.168.93.43. You can make such a request at WP:FFU for files to be uploaded locally to Wikipedia. Some general advice before making such a request. Try and determinine the copyright status of the file you want to upload before asking someone to upload it for you. This can sometimes be a tricky thing to do, which means you may need to figure out the provenance of the file. If you're unable to determine the file's copyirght status on your own, you should assume it's protected by copyright (at least for the time being) and seek assistance at either WP:MCQ or c:COM:VPC. Once you figure out the copyright status of the file, you should then figure out whether it should be uploaded to English Wikipedia or Commons. Commons only accepts freely-licensed and public domain content per c:COM:FAIR; it won't accept any copyrighted content without the copyright holder's c:COM:CONSENT. Wikipedia does, on the other hand, accept copyrighted content as non-free content for use on English Wikipedia only, but only when its use satisfies Wikipedia's non-free content use policy. So, if you're request that someone upload a non-free file for you, make sure you clearly state in which article the file is intended to be used and how it's intended use satisfies relevant Wikipedia policy. It would even be helpful if you could provided an example non-free use rationale explaining how the file's use is policy compliant. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:31, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Would you mind having a look at my post on FFU and see if you feel it meets the requiremements? The guide text is not terribly useful. 108.168.93.43 (talk) 01:11, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Your request seems OK to me as such requests go, except you should realize that you need to meet all ten of the non-free content use criterion and not just some for future reference. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Ty Erickson

On the page for steer wrestler in the Section 2019 season, first paragraph it states he won a rodeo in Lewiston, Montana. The rodeo is in Lewistown, Montana. It is my mother’s hometown and my grandfather graduated from high school there in 1919. I visit Lewistown on a regular basis. 63.142.210.91 (talk) 05:57, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

thank you for that anecdote, but this is a place for people to ask questions about editing wikipedia. do you have a question? lettherebedarklight晚安 06:34, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy Link: Ty Erickson. To be fair to the OP, they are pointing out a perceived error (Lewiston v Lewistown) in an article, which should perhaps be checked by someone with access to appropriate sources.

We have an article for Lewistown, Montana (which does not mention a rodeo), but none for any Lewiston, Montana, though there are numerous other Lewistons. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.249.29.80 (talk) 07:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

ooh, didn't see that. the statement is cited to two websites, source 4 and 20. putting aside the questionable reliability, source 4 says lewiston but source 20 says lewistown. great. both sources disagree. lettherebedarklight晚安 07:19, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@Lettherebedarklight, adding it all up, and given that there isn't a Lewiston, Montana, source 20 it is.-- Quisqualis (talk) 02:50, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

well! @quisqualis, i've made the change necessary. lettherebedarklight晚安 06:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Searching for links used within reference

Is there a way to find external links used within references, as opposed to elsewhere within an an article, e.g. the external links section. I'm looking for external links contained within <ref> .... </ref>

I am familiar with Special:LinkSearch but can't see any option to achieve what I want to do. I'm not able to access toolforge:linksearch as I just get a 505 gateway timeout.

Any suggestions? 10mmsocket (talk) 12:00, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@10mmsocket, it appears that your question has been overlooked. I myself found it somewhat ambiguous. Would you mind sharing on here a prime example of the problem? Quisqualis (talk) 02:39, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure thing. Thanks. Take flickr, for example. Photos on flickr uploaded by individuals are by definition WP:UGC / WP:SPS and therefore fail WP:SPS. There's a bunch of railway articles that I have already cleaned up where someone has used a photo of some random rusty locomotive in a goods yard, or a train in a station, as a reference using the aforementioned <ref> .... </ref> either as a bare URL or with {{cite web}}. My modus operandi on Wikipedia is a balance of adding content and cleaning things up. Sometimes I do one more than the other and right now I'm enjoying cleaning things up. I mention railway articles because they're often where you see frequent issues of referencing to flickr, youtube and other self published sources. So that's what I'm trying to find - specific websites used as references. Does that clarify things? 10mmsocket (talk) 06:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

@10mmsocket: using a method stolen from wikipedia:reliable sources/Perennial, search in the search bar insource:"<website url>". for example, insource:"flickr.com". (wow. 21186 results.) lettherebedarklight晚安 07:10, 7 December 2022 (UTC) (edited 07:13, 7 December 2022 (UTC))

That's exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you. 10mmsocket (talk) 07:18, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

How much time should I spend on Wikipedia?

I want to contribute more on Wikipedia but I have my job and other family responsibility and I also know there are many people just like me who are in same situation, can u explain me how should I manage my time to get most out of it. Bace word (talk) 16:44, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

This may not directly answer your question, however I say you should focus on life first and Wikipedia second. Wikipedia has no deadline so not editing it is perfectly fine. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 16:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Until Wikipedia is perfect in every way AND absolutely complete, we will all some day be called to answer for every moment we did NOT devote to Wikipedia! Uporządnicki (talk) 17:31, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

What the heck is that supposed to mean? Also it sounds like you're encouraging them to focus on Wikipedia more than life, which is not only mean to those who care about them irl, but it's also extremely unhealthy. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 17:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Pretty sure it was a joke. Perhaps ^[Humor] should be more liberally applied. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 17:41, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Ah. Ya it probably should. Either that or which I use if I'm making a joke, unless it's heavy sarcasm which I almost never do here. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 17:43, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

More people should use ^[Humour] casualdejekyll 13:18, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

@Bace word This may or may not be a helpful response, but the answer to "How much time should (you) spend on Wikipedia?" is more or less, "However much time you want and can afford to spend on Wikipedia." Don't let Wikipedia cost you your job, your relationship, your health, or your sanity. You can't afford that. However, if you get joy from spending 1-2 hours a day/week/month/whatever doing research, writing articles, verifying citations, copy editing, etc., then do that. If you occasionally spot a typo while reading an article and it scratches an itch to correct it, but you don't have big blocks of time to contribute, then fix the typos. If you think it's a fun scavenger hunt to make a list of places near you missing photos and spend all weekend driving around taking photos and adding them to the articles as appropriate, then feel free to dedicate a weekend a month, or every two months, or every year to doing that. If you are recovering from major surgery and suddenly find yourself with nothing to do for a few weeks but edit, then use that time. If you find yourself doing research for school or something and can improve articles based on research you are already doing anyway, then do that. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:53, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

See the essay Wikipedia is a volunteer service.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:11, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Ianmacm,

It was very helpful, I will try follow what you have mentioned. Bace word (talk) 09:13, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Do you change a words english spelling depending on which country you live in?

Would I change the a spelling of a English word based on how that word is spelled in my country? For example, realise, and realize, or colour and color. CaIvinCoolidge (talk) 18:25, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

No. It's based on what English the article was written in or what English the article has strongest ties to. See WP:ENGVAR. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:27, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

And, more often WP:RETAIN. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:42, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Weird artifact in syntax highlighting

I noticed that when I write the word "magnet" followed by a colon (magnet:) in the source editor with syntax highlighting, the word turns blue and is written in bold text. This is similar to the way that ref tags get written in green text, wikilinks in blue text, templates in purple text. I didn't observe this with any words other than "magnet". Does this mean anything? —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 20:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Lights and freedom it is probably highlighted because of the Magnet URI scheme (commonly used with BitTorrent)), so magnet: is a prefix similar to https: or ftp: Skynxnex (talk) 20:58, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 21:00, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

So, if I say the following about a magnet: blah, blah, it won't be blue in the final rendering. David10244 (talk) 11:50, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

See mw:Manual:$wgUrlProtocols for this and many others. It's similar to how https://example.org automatically produces a link. magnet:something will also do it except in certain circumstances like having a space after the colon. Your browser may not have a way to process a magnet link. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:08, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Ah, yes, the space after the colon. Thanks. David10244 (talk) 05:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Why my contribution was denied

Hi,

I would like to know why my contribution was denied. I added a citation on the Charter school wiki page. However, this citation on the word "ASVAB Test" leading to https://www.todaysmilitary.com/joining-eligibility/asvab-test was denied. A representative from Wikipedia sent a message saying "Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, you may be blocked from editing. It is considered spamming and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion."

Please offer any additional information for why this happened. I am not advertising.

Thank you. Balib1011 (talk) 20:21, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Your only purpose here seems to be to insert spamlinks to a certain non-notable commercial website. We have no interest in increasing that website's SEO results. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:23, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi,

These are not spamlinks, nor is this a non-notable commercial website. This website, https://www.todaysmilitary.com/, is produced by the United States Department of Defense. We are adding our citation links in effort to be helpful on Wikipedia, not to promote spam or advertise. Balib1011 (talk) 20:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

If it is a government website, as opposed to one run by an ad agency or something, why is it a .com domain rather than a .gov one? --Orange Mike | Talk 16:13, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

An argument by bizarre definition, to be sure. You shouldn't be adding links from agencies you work for in the first place due to the obvious conflict of interest that entails; the best practice here is to discuss whether or not the link should be added on the relevant article's talk page. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 20:32, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@Balib1011 The purpose of citations in Wikipedia is to let readers know where we got our information; not just to "be helpful". It appears that you are adding that link in an effort to drive traffic to todaysmilitary.com. This is the definition of spam. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

• Balib1011 Please see your user talk page; you must declare as a paid editor. I've provided instructions there. 331dot (talk) 20:36, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• I just want to note that the website is produced by the US Department of Defense, despite the .com suffix, see here and the copyright statement at the bottom. There may be many reasons why it would use the .com suffix, primarily because of the marketing value, but that is irrelevant here. It is also irrelevant that it is a government website. Adding links to Wikipedia is not done willy-nilly. The site is basically a recruitment tool for the US Department of Defense, basically a job advertisement site, and as such is of limited utility towards any page at Wikipedia. Given its purpose, it's not really useful, regardless of who produced it. --Jayron32 16:40, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Payment.

Is there any way I can set up an annual payment to Wicki? Won't be much as I am a Pensioner but even though I use it seldomly I feel that it is a free speech platform where information is given without bias (except that of the author which is normally unconscious) and seriously feel sorry that Wicki has to keep asking each year.

Alan D. 92.40.49.192 (talk) 23:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a free speech platform, nor is it without bias(nothing is), though we strive for a neutral point of view. We don't handle donations, please go to donate.wikimedia.org for more information about how you can donate. 331dot (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@92.40.49.192 Please be aware that the Wikimedia Foundation is a separate entity from Wikipedia. With that in mind, Ways to Give has the information you need. casualdejekyll 23:48, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Alan D, please be aware that the sponsoring Wikimedia Foundation currently has assets of US $239,351,532 and that dollar figure has been skyrocketing in recent years. If you are short on money, it is not at all necessary for you to donate money. Improving articles would be very helpful, and you can do that for free. 02:18, 7 December 2022 (UTC)