Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2022 June 11

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June 11

Aligning a table

Dear experts,

On my user page, I have created a "button" that when pressed takes the user to a subsidiary table of contents ("subsidiary" because the TOC relates to notes on copyright -- it isn't the main table of contents). I have formatted the button as a one-cell table, and I'm happy with that. My problem is that the table is on the left-hand side of the page; I want it to be on the right. I haven't been able to incorporate information from the Table:Help page; advice would be greatly appreciated. It's here. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 03:43, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@SCHolar44: Use can use class="floatright" after {| at the very start of the table. The table would become right-aligned. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 06:57, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: Many thanks! Amazing how simple it is when you know how!  ;-)  SCHolar44 (talk) 07:12, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA EBOOK

Hi is it illegal to create an ebook with all the references included and sell it? The ebook will contain everything that is on wikipedia and nothing at all will be altered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.80.112.42 (talk) 21:07, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Why would I purchase an ebook of Wikipedia when I can access the actual Wikipedia for free? 331dot (talk) 21:10, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

But the answer to your question is probably no, because not all of the images in Wikipedia are free to reuse (though many of them are). The intention of the project is that all material is free for reuse, and if we achieved that, then you could do what you're suggesting - see WP:REUSE. But because that would mean a lot of articles had no images, English Wikipedia relaxes that requirement to a degree (see NFCC - some other Wikipedias do not relax it). This means that if the material you want to copy contains any images, you need to check the copyright status of each image, and if any of them are not free, either omit them or ask their copyright holders for permission to reuse them. ColinFine (talk) 21:19, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

An ebook like that would be huge. 73.127.147.187 (talk) 05:22, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

An interesting point/question about "will contain everything that is on wikipedia and nothing at all will be altered" is: everything that is on Wikipedia--at what particular moment in time? Or more likely, unless someone can somehow capture the whole thing in a moment--at what vast collection of moments?? This person's proposed snapshot of Wikipedia (I guess one could describe it that way) would be frozen in that moment, or myriad moments, while the genuine article is being constantly altered. And we hope, of course that overall, at least, the constant alterations are improving the product. Uporządnicki (talk) 20:32, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

This is clearly a prank. It’s clear that ‘nothing will be altered’ is a spoof on perpetual edits. Printing some seven million articles (counting English only, and clearly still counting) is clearly absurd (and clearly impossible). Thou art clearly the poster child for why IP-only editing is so unclear, and should clearly be banned. Hope this clarifies your questionable question: it’s clearly not illegal but clearly should be — if only to prevent the clearcuts needed for the paper stock. Clear enough?? Left Central (talk) 07:22, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Oops! Gotta clear something up. You, #14.8.etc., said ‘e-book’ - which I clearly missed. I should’ve said ‘preventing the cyber clearcuts needed for the imaginary paper stock.’ I am clearly embarrassed.😱 Oh well: enjoy your project! Left Central (talk) 07:38, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Move advice?

I am planning to move a page (El Dorado Jane Doe) to "Kelly (murder victim)". This is my first move I plan on performing, and in light of that, I would like to ask two questions:

Q1. Is this page move a good idea? I am still not 100% familiar with page moves.

Q2. I do know that moving a page might cause problems with redirects, called "double redirects". Is there a place or page where I could check the redirects to an article so I could clean up after move?

Any advice and assistance with this question or move would be appreciated.

Thanks, L'Mainer (talk) 21:28, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@L'Mainer: Uncontroversial moves can be done by yourself. No need to worry about double redirects, they're handled by bots. But in this case, it doesn't look to be uncontroversial. The current title is in place ever since the article was created, and name was only recently reported. I'll suggest you to follow the steps at WP:RSPM. This will initiate a community discussion. When the discussion is over, a closer will move (or not move) the page as per the outcome of the discussion. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:43, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Also, all incoming links can be checked via Special:WhatLinksHere/El Dorado Jane Doe. You can switch between links, redirects & transclusions using the show/hide options. This feature can be found on all pages using left sidebar > "Tools" section > "What links here". —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:50, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

"it doesn't look to be uncontroversial.". Did you mean the move done by myself would be not controversial? The way you phrased your response looks to me as a double negative, and an unintended meaning to your response, may I have clarity? Also thank you very much for the response.

Thanks, L'Mainer (talk) 21:53, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom oh yeah, forgot to ping L'Mainer (talk) 22:05, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@L'Mainer: My guess is that CX Zoom meant the page move would likely be seen as controversial and thus should be discussed first. The "not" and "un" combination is a double negative, but they cancel each other out; so, the sentence reads (at least to me) "It does look to be controversial". -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:31, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Marchjuly I did not feel like the move would be seen as controversial, so I just did the move myself. I followed my natural instinct. L'Mainer (talk) 22:37, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@L'Mainer: It's OK to be WP:BOLD when editing, but bold page moves can be boldly reverted per WP:RMUM. If that happens, you'll be expected to establish a consensus for the move. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:44, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Marchjuly I will keep that in mind, and if my move is reverted, I will go to the proper and appropriate channels to seek consensus.

Thanks, L'Mainer (talk) 22:56, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Hey @L'Mainer: I'm sorry for whatever confusion my reply had caused and that I wasn't around to reply. It appears Marchjuly has cleared any confusion I caused. Thanks Marchjuly! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 08:57, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Linking to wiki pages in other languages

I couldn't figure out how to add a link to the same page in another language while editing Lacinato_kale. I tried both the source editor and the visual editor, but couldn't find out how to do it. I've done this in the past, so I guess something changed in the interface? bernie (talk) 21:34, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

If you mean how to link the entire article to other languages, this can be done via wikidata. The article is already linked, wikidata:Q2048275 in this case. The links to non-English Wikipedias can be found in the top right in the WP:New Vector (rather than in the left menu).

If you want you to add a normal wikilink, use the {{ill}} template (interlanguage link). That displays the non-English language link if no English Wikipedia article exists. Femke (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi Bernie74. If you're using the source editor, you should see a section called "Languages" in the left sidebar. If you then click on "Edit links", another window should open for the Wikidata page for that subject matter. On that page, you see a box called "Wikipedia" near the upper right which contains nine entries (one for English and eight for other languages) for the various language Wikipedia articles about the subject. Make sure you're logged into Wikidata (it should automatically do this for you but refresh the page if you're not), and then click on "edit" for that box. You should see some information about licensing as well as a way to edit the links. At the very bottom (below the last link entry) of the box, you'll see the word "wiki": click on it and enter the language code for the other language Wikipedia. Once you've done that, click on "page" (in the same line) and enter the name of the other language Wikipedia article. For things to work correctly, you're going to need to make sure the name and the language code for the other article is correct. Once everything is done, go back to the top of the box and click "Publish". I believe that should take care of things. You may need to refresh the English Wikipedia article once or twice for the new link to appear, but that should do it. If you make a mistake, you can always repeat the process, but only delete the link you created. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:03, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Femkemilene and Marchjuly. Now I found the editor to link pages between languages.

I still couldn't link the English page to it:Brassica_oleracea_gruppo_acephala because it's already been used in wikidata:Q4673093. It seems the English and Italian Wikipedia disagree on the taxonomy of Tuscan Kale aka Cavolo Nero, and I have no idea which one is correct. I asked in the talk page of the Italian article: it:Discussione/Brassica_oleracea_gruppo_acephala. bernie (talk) 04:28, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Can I use sfn to cite webpages?

Hi people, I have been helping to cite books on the Nazi racial theories article and in the References section there are still plenty of websites. Could I add 'online' as a sub-section in the Bibliography section to cite online articles? I've tried looking at Manual of Style for citations, but I couldn't find any information about it.--FriendlyFerret9854 (talk) 21:47, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

That's certainly allowed, and is even done in some WP:featured articles, for instance climate change.

The sfn template is really great for sources you want to reuse with different page numbers. There isn't much of an advantage for citing newspapers that way though (imo). The standard use of sfn is to use authors, but some newspaper articles or other websites do not have a byline. You can choose to cite by publication instead, but it may want to consider to just leave it be. Femke (talk) 21:56, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

You can, though I don't know that it is necessary to segregate online sources from books and journals. Before you do that, perhaps you should fix: Hitler 2000, sfn & Read 2014, Hitler 2000, and Mazower 2008. Also, there are 17 sources under §Bibliography that aren't linked from §References (delete or move to §Further reading) and Connelly 1999 is missing |journal=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:13, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Is there a tool I can use to check that all of the situations are correct? Or, do I have to do it manually?--FriendlyFerret9854 (talk) 22:31, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: I want to keep all of the references as sfns. Is there a Wikipedia article about it? How can I go about it? I can add a few more references, but they are websites and not books.--FriendlyFerret9854 (talk) 22:32, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Which 17 sources?--FriendlyFerret9854 (talk) 22:36, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js emits a warning message when a long-form citation does not have a matching short-form citation; I don't know about User:Svick/HarvErrors.js or User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:58, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

See Help:Citation Style 1 § Tools > Error checking and Category:Harv and Sfn template errors § Displaying error messages.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:58, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@FriendlyFerret9854: You should keep WP:CITEVAR in mind when making any changes to the citation style of an article, unless you're doing something that has little chance of being seen as contentious. While it might technically be possible to convert everything to sfns per WP:SRF, it might not be the consensus style established over the years. So, you might want to propose such a thing on the article talk page first to see what others think first. If you're bold and just go ahead and do this, you'll need to discuss things if reverted. As for a tool to look for fixing bad citations, try Help:Cite errors#Tools. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:51, 11 June 2022 (UTC)