Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 May 3

Help desk
< May 2	<< Apr | May | Jun >>	May 4 >

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.

May 3

Eggplant multiple image (help needed)

Could a more experienced editor help me with a multiple image on the eggplant page? Because the pictures with various plant features in the ==description== on the right of the page are pushing the other pictures far down, in such a way that the other pictures are not on their relevant page sections, I am trying to move the 5 pictures with plant features into a composite image. But the resultant image is slightly wider than the width of the page and I don't know how to make the pictures smaller (I tried all the suggestions from Help:pictures). If I put the pictures in the gallery-packed mode instead, they would look perfect, except the taxobox is too long and messes up the gallery. So we should then stick with the multiple image, for visual esthetics, but how do I make the individual pictures smaller? Help! And thank you. P.S. I left both options on the page to make it easier for the kind soul who'll help, but if I get no help in 30 min, then I will delete the gallery (cannot leave the page in shambles like that) ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 00:14, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I did some tweaking on the multiple image version. What do you think? Btw. Template:Multiple images gives some helpful information that is not included in Help:pictures. The main drawback of using the multiple images template is that it forces a fixed size which is not encouraged. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:09, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Looks awesome. Thanks a bunch. I'll delete the other pictures and tweak a bit the caption. Thanks again! ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 01:12, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

You're welcome. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:14, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

What would be the proper category to include both Category:Years in India by state or union territory and Category:Years in the United States by state?

Hello, I just created Category:Years in India by state or union territory because I noticed there were several categories like Category:Years in Tamil Nadu within Category:Years in India that applied to specific states by year, but no overarching category to hold them.

So I created Category:Years in India by state or union territory, and I notice there's no larger "category for specific years by top-level administrative subdivision of the country" or whatever. Should I/we create a category to reflect that, being that (at minimum) both India and the USA now have such a category for themselves? Thanks for any suggestions on how to structure the cat-tree on this point. MatthewVanitas (talk) 01:17, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Probably could be a subcat of Category:Year lists by country. I don't see an already-existing one, but categories are not something I often edit/explore. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 02:06, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

No, a new category would be needed. Year lists by country consists of lists of years, not individual ones. BTW Canada has Category:Years in Canada by province or territory and Australia has Category:Years by state or territory in Australia, though that latter one is a bit underpopulated. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:52, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, if you're going to create a category, I'd suggest you use "division", not "subdivision", to align with Category:First-level administrative divisions by country. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:58, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

A search also finds Category:Years in Canada by province or territory and Category:Years in Spain by autonomous community but I'm not sure this is a good idea for a category. Who would look for Category:Years in India by state or union territory via an international category for national subdivisions and not Category:Years in India? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:37, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's an absolutely vital category, but in the interest of fleshing out the category tree I've created Category:Years by first-level administrative divisions by country. There's a clear structural commonality here, so I don't see the harm in recognizing it. MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:08, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Sunderland

On the "Sunderland" page, inside the first caption, the order that was followed is not indicated. JackkBrown (talk) 02:16, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

JackkBrown, "By row" is the indication, which presumably means left to right, row by row, from top to bottom. That seems to align with the images. Cullen328 (talk) 02:24, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Fixed. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:50, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Adding Information on Wikipedia

I am new on Wikipedia. I would like to get guidance on adding information on the page for public view

Thank you

DRAPIRI Adui DRAPIRI Adui (talk) 11:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello @DRAPIRI Adui:: The page Help:Introduction is a good place to get an overview of how to edit Wikipedia articles. If you want something a little more user-friendly Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia is also a nice place to start. --Jayron32 12:12, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@DRAPIRI Adui Make sure the topic you are writing about is "notable"; see WP:YFA for more info. I hope you are not trying to write about yourself. David10244 (talk) 01:51, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

What happens when you use the same named reference more than 26 times?

Hi, so when you use the same reference more than once, it shows up in the references section with letters as links, right? If there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, does that mean you can't use the same reference more than 26 times, or does something else happen? IdfbAn (talk) 12:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

It just starts using 2 letters, aa, ab, ac and so on through that sequence. So it's not a technical problem. The real question is, if you get an article using a single reference in 27 different locations, is "is there a better way to do this". But from a technical standpoint, it just goes to a "2-digit" format of letters. --Jayron32 12:26, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

It works like excel, in that you get doubled links. The only time you are likely to see this is on articles that cite a book, and have the pages named outside of the ref. It's almost always something that can be changed to be within 26 entries (you also see this in lists with a dedicated reference column too, I suppose). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@IdfbAn: Maybe you now wonder what happens when you run out of two-letter combinations. Or maybe you don't imagine that could happen. Think again. I looked for this at Wikipedia:Wikipedia records and wasn't disappointed. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:04, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

🤯. Impressive. --Jayron32 18:04, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Surprisingly, the markers are defined individually by editors in MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels. The linked article is near the current limit azz. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

missing info

I just update the new Mayor for the City of Bartow, Florida but now the right rail is missing. How do I get it back? Jackipoole (talk) 12:30, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@Jackipoole: Sorry no one got back to you in a timely manner. It looks like you played around with the article and managed to work it out yourself? Is there anything else we can help you with? --Jayron32 18:01, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Losing login

I have been experiencing spontaneous logouts this morning repeatedly. It gives me bizarre error messages saying something like I'm no longer logged in as Bbb23 and should refresh the page. Sometimes refreshing the page re-establishes the login, and sometimes it doesn't, and I have to click on Login, which doesn't even ask for my password but re-establishes the login. Sometimes this can happen repeatedly over several minutes. I tried logging out and logging back in, but that didn't seem to fix it. It's driving me crazy because it interrupts various kinds of actions, e.g., warning users of vandalism with Twinkle, clicking on Rollback, and others. It doesn't do the action, but I worry it will do something that an IP can do and then reveal my IP.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:25, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh good I'm not going crazy cause I'm having the same thing happening to me. It seems to have stopped for now but every few minutes it would suddenly log me out of my account. Thankfully I was just going to my watchlist so it yelled at me to log in anyway, but its still really weird. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 13:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I haven't had this issue yet and I jump across a few networks every once in a while. Maybe it's a cookie issue? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 13:39, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Upper or lowercase? Vice President of the United States

Why on the page "Vice President of the United States", inside the text, "Vice President of the United States" is written in lowercase? Is it correct to indicate it in upper or lowercase? JackkBrown (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@JackkBrown: Please see MOS:PEOPLETITLES. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 13:40, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Help requested

(added header)

Can someone edit my Wikipedia page 2603:7080:4206:D7E2:CC1A:6281:636B:3103 (talk) 14:25, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

IP editor: There are no other logged edits from your IP address, so you are going to have to link the "page" you mean. If this is an article and you are its subject, we can help you make an {{edit request}} as you should not edit directly owing to your conflict of interest. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:32, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Translating tool

The WP:CXT states:

 The English Wikipedia community has restricted article creation by the WMF's semi-automatic content translation tool to extended confirmed users. This access is automatically applied to extended confirmed users (editors who have been registered for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 edits to the English Wikipedia). In addition, integration with machine translation has been disabled for all users.

I am an extended confirmed user and yet I cannot use the semi-automatic content translation tool (is that the same as "integration with machine translation"? I'm confused). Where can I apply for such rights, if they exist at all? FYI, I don't need to translate whole pages, but, as any editor knows, writing paragraphs with references after each sentence is a tedious yet necessary task, so for uncontroversial things I'd like to be able to have the references automatically translated from, say, French to English (option that exists from English to other languages, by the way), so I don't have to manually write and reformat them one by one. It's a nightmare. It took me 25 min for 3 properly done, translated, and linked refs. No wonder there are so many poorly sourced articles. Thanks in advance for any suggestions! ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 14:53, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@WikiUser70176, I assume you've enabled the tool in your preferences. What happens when you try to use it? Does the option not appear at all? 199.208.172.35 (talk) 17:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I am trying to translate the Iron Myth from the Spinach page from French into English (the French page Épinard). It looks normal in the beginning (I use the tool to translate, quite successfully, from English to Romanian). Then I click a paragraph on the left (French) page and is copy-pasted identically onto the right (English) page. And for a brief moment on top of the issues section, on the right hand side, it appears: Translation services not available for the selected languages (Why?). The 'Why?' is blue (meaning a link) but as soon as I move the cursor to click, it disappears. By the way, the tool works in Ro-Fr-It-German, basically any language to any language except into English. ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 17:44, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@WikiUser70176, this Wikipedia has not enabled machine translation with the translation tool. It was available for a brief time, but the results were terrible. Editors using it did not correct the many errors in produced with machine translation. This is explained at Wikipedia:Content translation tool#Why machine translation is disabled in content translation. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:48, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

But, but... but that was 7 years ago! It's like that idiot with the failed shoe bomb who is the reason why all of us in the US have to take our shoes off for airport security. But the rest of the world moved on and no more shoe bombs and no taking off shoes for security either. Case in point: the tool works just fine for other languages and there are no massive translation-related vandalisms in those languages. One incident does not a trend make. Deeeep sigh.... Thank you User: StarryGrandma for the info and User:199.208.172.35 for trying to help. Perhaps it is time this rule is submitted for revision. After all, consensus can change. If truly aspiring to be the sum of all human knowledge, Wikipedia needs greater coverage of people and topics beyond the English-speaking world. To that end, the tool is invaluable for enriching Wikipedia with content outside the native English speaking community. Case in point: the story behind Popeye and iron in spinach is hilarious, but no Wiki has it better sourced than the French wiki. Alas... it shall remain there for I loathe to translate and format all those refs at the moment. ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 18:10, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Consensus can certainly change, @WikiUser70176 - if you're interested enough, you could start the ball rolling at one of the village pumps. Not sure if it would fit best at Policy or Proposals (or maybe the idea lab to start out with). 199.208.172.35 (talk) 18:24, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@WikiUser70176, if you enable User:Equazcion/SidebarTranslate, the list of languages for Wikipedia articles will display a "G" next to the languages when you hover your mouse over the language name. On the Spinach page clicking that for the French language will open a translation of the article into English. Unfortunately that doesn't handle reformatting sources for the "Legend of iron" section. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:54, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I have that Gadget enabled. No G though... Hm.. Perhaps because the languages are not displayed like they used to, in alphabetical order, but in that mind-boggling ultra-annoying format with suggested languages, followed by languages by continent (God Almighty, whoever came up with that deserves a special place in hell, for translators like me that use 4 or 5 languages simultaneously from different continents find that "Classification" of languages a very inventive hell indeed. But that's another pet peeve for some other time). The google sidebar works to translate stuff from English to any other language, but not the other way around, pretty much like the regular translation tool. The french wiki doesn't have this gadget, so I can't enable it there and use it to translate Fr-->En. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I suspect the powers that be do not want the other wikis translated in English because of that 7 years ago debacle, and that's that. At least for now. Anyway, thanks for the help! I am translating that French story into other European languages, with a sneak peak to the Polish version which has a good page mark. Sorry en.wiki! ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 21:55, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@WikiUser70176, while it works fine for me in the Vector legacy skin it doesn't seem to be available in the new Vector 2022, where that weird new sorting of languages lives. Sorry about that. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:39, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Conflict

I was trying to solve the mistake i made on the article Peter Acland but someone reverted my edit. Well, because my edits didn't seem constructive and they were considered as vandalism. SAAeh (talk) 16:33, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, SAAeh. Your first edit was to change "Smith" to "neS mith". I see that that was just a mistake for "née Smith", but the effect was to introduce nonsense, so it is not surprising that the editor who reverted your edit (Nagol0929) marked it as vandalism: petty vandalism often looks like that.

If you had given an edit summary explaining what change you were making, it is possible that the other editor would have realised it was just a mistake, and not marked it as vandalism.

In any case, I see you have reapplied the change correctly, so there is no problem. ColinFine (talk) 17:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Infobox picture

can anyone please help me and provide me the link of policy of Wikipedia for putting picture in infobox templates. Ku423winz1 (talk) 18:24, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Which infobox? There are many, each with their own format: Wikipedia:List of infoboxes ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 19:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I think this is about a dispute - and slow motion edit war - at Kolkata Gate. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 19:50, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

that was not an edit war, it was just a disagreement to be honest. That's why I am looking for the policies. Ku423winz1 (talk) 03:03, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Disagreements are best resolved by discussion. Start a thread at Talk:Kolkata Gate, explaining your reasoning. And give edit summaries when you make edits. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:10, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Pop-up notification

Is there any way I can stop the "Would you like to make this link more specific" pop-up appearing if I inadvertantly type a disambiguation link while I'm editing? It usually appears over the text I'm typing, seems to have no obvious way of being dismissed, and is quite distracting. Thanks in advance. This is Paul (talk) 20:08, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I may be totally off, but it may be a gadget selected in your preferences. Worth a check. ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 20:17, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I've had a look but couldn't find anything obvious. I thought perhaps it could be banners, but not sure. This is Paul (talk) 22:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Could this be of help:Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups? ♦ WikiUser70176 ♦^{(My talk page)} 01:21, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't have navigation pop-ups ticked so I don't think it can be that. I've just spent some time looking through all my preferences and nothing stands out as being related to the thing I've mentioned. I'm starting to think that perhaps it's a default thing that cannot be removed, but there's always a chance I could be wrong. This is Paul (talk) 17:30, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Publish my draft

Have a draft completed and cannot figure out how to publish it. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated Dalelynn L Sims (talk) 21:59, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Draft:Lake Phoenix Virginia History. The referencing is a mess. Please read Help:Referencing for beginners before you consider submitting it. Maproom (talk) 22:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

No, Dalelynn L Sims, Draft:Lake Phoenix Virginia History is not "completed". Let's look at the very first sentence: For over 50 years, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel has captured worldwide attention as a modern engineering wonder and an important East Coast travel convenience.

• A "wonder"? Please, no.
• "Captured worldwide attention"? I for one had never heard of it, though others here are free to point out that I'm exceptionally ignorant.
• The "East Coast"? That's where I happen to live -- oh, you mean that east coast....

Please reread what you have written, remembering that it's for an encyclopedia. -- Hoary (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, Dalelynn. You have inserted the submission code with "<nowiki> ... </nowiki>" around it, so that it appears in your draft as {{subst:submit}}. When it is ready to be submitted (it is nowhere near that at present, as Hoary says), you need to remove the "<nowiki>" from round it: I suspect you'll need to use the source editor for that, but I'm not sure (I don't use the visual editor). ColinFine (talk) 22:25, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

And here, Dalelynn L Sims, is the last sentence: Divers can bring your family, your church or youth group, come for a vacation or just for the day. A great place for family reunions or just a moral day for you and your co-workers. Come and enjoy the cooling waters and calming nature that the lake has to offer. We know you will enjoy your visit. Shall we delete this draft as mere advertising now, or is there some reason why we should instead delete it later? -- Hoary (talk) 22:26, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

it's facts not an ad Dalelynn L Sims (talk) 22:28, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Dalelynn L Sims. Almost no one has had any experience writing an encyclopedia article before they come to Wikipedia. We all had to learn how to do it. What you have written would make a nice local magazine article, but is nothing like a neutral description that we need here. Leave all the wonderfulness and talking directly to the audience out. There is a nice educational brochure here that will explain how writing for an encyclopedia is different. See page 5 in particular where it says

You may be used to persuasive styles of writing. On Wikipedia, you don’t want to persuade. Articles don’t take sides, but describe significant viewpoints published in reliable sources. You want to share facts. Wikipedia lets people interpret those facts for themselves.

StarryGrandma (talk) 00:26, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@Dalelynn L Sims It's a fact that I'll enjoy my visit? No, that's an assertion. And what is a "moral" day? My morals might not match yours.  :-) As described, encyclopedia articles don't talk to the reader directly, so using "you" and "your" is not appropriate. It does take some getting used to. David10244 (talk) 01:58, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@Dalelynn L Sims "Come and enjoy the cooling waters ..." doesn't even pretend to be a fact. It's an exhortation--an imperative sentence. Its purpose is to urge people to do something, not to provide information. Uporządnicki (talk) 10:43, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@Dalelynn L Sims "We know you will enjoy ..." Who's "we"? Uporządnicki (talk) 10:43, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Referencing errors on Marjorie Yates

Reference help requested. I used this site as a reference. I then got notified of a CS1 error on my talk page: A "missing periodical" error. References show this error when the name of the magazine or journal is not given. Please edit the article to add the name of the magazine/journal to the reference, or use a different citation template. The issue seems to occur because I used the Visual Editor, I select "Add a citation", "Automatic", put the URL in, and then choose "Generate". If I do this, the source gets added as the reference type "Journal", when it does not appear to be that type. Instead, I added it manually as a website reference. Thanks, TrottieTrue (talk) 22:10, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@TrottieTrue The URL you quote has a digital object identifier within it but, unusually, does not point to a book or a journal article. Instead, it is a dataset. Hence I'd be inclined to "cheat" and use |journal=Dataset, giving as the full citation this:

Umit, Resul (2022). "UK House of Commons Election Results at Constituency Level". Dataset. Harvard Dataverse. doi:10.7910/DVN/S83HOA.

The alternative would be to use the {{cite web}} template. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:00, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I’ll bear that in mind. TrottieTrue (talk) 11:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

No. Don't cheat. A doi does not a journal make. 'Dataset' is not the name of a journal. {{cite web}} is the better choice here:

{{cite web |last1=Umit |first1=Resul |date=2022 |title=UK House of Commons Election Results at Constituency Level |website=Harvard Dataverse |version=v6.0 |url=https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/S83HOA |doi=10.7910/DVN/S83HOA |doi-access=free}}

Umit, Resul (2022). "UK House of Commons Election Results at Constituency Level". Harvard Dataverse. v6.0. doi:10.7910/DVN/S83HOA.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, okay, but the problem is that Visual Editor automatically chooses the Journal reference type. Can this be fixed? TrottieTrue (talk) 14:20, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Never trust any of the automated citation tools. VE and citoid are far from perfect. Additionally, the quality of the data scraped from the various online source is highly variable – sometimes it's quite good, sometimes it's awful, usually it's mediocre at best. The tools can get you in the ballpark, but you must manually verify and refine what they give you. Alas, far too many editors blindly accept what the tools produce. Never trust any of the automated citation tools.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:00, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

The trouble is that not everyone has time to double-check everything. These tools are meant to make editing easier. TrottieTrue (talk) 20:29, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't find that to be a very persuasive argument. If an editor doesn't have time to do it right, the editor should find something else to do within their personal time constraints. Yes, the tools are intended to make it easier for editors to create citations, and, for many, I suspect that they do. But the tools are far from perfect so what they produce is suspect until verified and refined by a human.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia Help IRC

How do I get unbanned from #wikipedia-en-help?Pablothepenguin (talk) 22:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)