Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 November 9

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November 9

Why are the "what links here" pages wildly inaccurate?

I clicked the "what links here" feature on General relativity priority dispute, landing on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/General_relativity_priority_dispute&limit=500

91 entires a listed but very few of the pages listed actually have such links.

Is that expected? Common?

Thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 01:34, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there a {{History of physics}} nav box at the bottom of all (most) of those articles? That nav box links to General relativity priority dispute.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:40, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Of course, thanks! I looked for one at the top and didn't know about the one at the bottom. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:12, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Links from transcluded templates - navboxes in particular - are the most common culprit here, as Trappist the monk says. This is a very long-standing bug and unlikely ever to be fixed. Besides the technical side of things, a lot of things we do depend on its current behavior - if we link to a userpage with {{userlinks}} or an article with {{la}} or {{DRV links}} or whatever, we want that page to show the incoming link.

Another cause is that WhatLinksHere is abused by the devs to keep track of every page that would need to be updated if General relativity priority dispute were to be deleted, so the {{#ifexist}} parserfunction and everything similar causes a fake link to show up from the page they're used on, sometimes as a normal link, sometimes as a transclusion, depending on how the page is referenced. This is why, for example, whatlinkshere claims the article transcludes itself, and why it claims its talk page does (though the talk page, somewhat unusually, does contain a legitimate link to it, displayed on the {{copied}} template). This also is a longstanding bug, though there's at least some hope it'll someday be dealt with properly. —Cryptic 02:24, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

See User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js for a method to avoid links from transcluded templates. On General relativity priority dispute it produces Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:59, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Which is an excellent stopgap so far as it goes (and one that's been pointed out to me before, so I really should've remembered it), but it's still only a stopgap. There's just too many ways to link to an article in the sense that we'd want to find them - in particular, not from a navbox - that it can't find. That search, for example, doesn't find the link from Template:History of physics, since it links to the article as [[General_relativity_priority_dispute|General relativity]] - and sometimes using underscores in the link is correct, as with T_T. It's also not tolerant to whitespace at the start or end of links, or extra whitespace in the middle (which all create identical-looking links); it won't see links generated by genuine linking templates like {{section link|General relativity priority dispute|Did Einstein develop the field equations independently?}}; and it can't reliably search for pages not in the main namespace (since it only accounts for capitalization of the first letter of the namespace, not the page title). Some of that's fixable, sure, and much of it's rare enough that it's not worth bothering to fix. But it's only ever going to be able to find most inbound links, not all of them. —Cryptic 04:48, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

As someone who edits in a non technical manner, I often want to know that a page is linked to through transcluded templates in this manner. It would be unhelpful if WLH didn't include these links. Furius (talk) 06:24, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Martineau family

Could the recently added photo of Sir William Martineau be placed up further in the section devoted to him? Can it be trimmed so that there is no black line at the top please? Thanks. 115.70.23.77 (talk) 02:41, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

The reason the photo is so far down is because the article has three other images stacked on top of each other higher up, which is pushing all of the other files down. Before we get any farther, though--that image looks like it was directly taken from a commercial site, which gives me some serious concerns about whether Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons can actually host that image. (Copyright infringement is a very real and serious issue, and while the image description does claim it was taken in 1927 (and thus would be in the public domain if I'm understanding copyright law right--which I'm probably not, and I'm also not seeing anything on the original website actually affirming that date...), it's still their image that you directly copied and uploaded.) 2603:8001:4542:28FB:114C:5267:6A5A:C9D2 (talk) 03:19, 9 November 2023 (UTC) (Please send talk messages here instead)

When copyright expires on an image, which is on January 1 of the year following 95 years after publication, then it goes into the public domain. A commercial website may continue to host the image hoping that a gullible person will inadvertently pay them to use the image, but the image is truly no longer "theirs", and anybody can use the image for any purpose without asking for permission. That is what public domain means. Cullen328 (talk) 03:30, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

It seems that the website is selling a physical photo, not the rights to use a digital image. GoingBatty (talk) 06:51, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Please - could the image of Sir William Martineau at the bottom of the page be made smaller - it is too big. Also, ref number 90 is a "word press" citation and maybe not quite right. Also, both references number 89 and 91 are in red. Please fix. I get exhausted/confused but I really appreciate your assistance as always. Thank you 175.38.42.62 (talk) 06:36, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

1. See Help:Pictures#Thumbnail sizes for various options.
2. What's not right about the Wordpress citation?
3. Remove the © symbol from the |date= parameters.

Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 06:49, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Sadly, I could not reduce the size of the photo of Sir William Martineau. Please help if able. Appreciated 175.38.42.62 (talk) 07:16, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I've done it by adding |upright, as has been done on others.

However, I've also enforced MOS:SANDWICH further up the article which has made worse the misplacement of images you referred to above. There are too many pages for the amount of text, and you may need to consider which might be removed. Bazza (talk) 10:13, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello 175.38.42.62. Along with the image that's been reduced by Bazza, I've done my best to rearrange other nearby images.

In the section, "Sir Thomas Martineau and family", I've kept the portrait in the right corner. However, I've moved the news and the artwork image into a center gallery located at the bottom of the section. As the WP:MOS rule states to avoid MOS:SANDWICH, this is the best I can do. Without doing this, the portraits of Sir William Martineau and Francis Martineau Lupton would be in an awkward location. I've also added spaces between each section with the images.

As I do not want to remove the images without your consensus, I've done this rearrange just to make the article look better. Regards. 🛧Midori No Sora♪🛪 ( ☁＝☁＝✈) 10:52, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Tapas

I am undecided whether to italicise "tapas", have you main heard of this food? To me, the article seems quite long, so if I guess it is a common food. JackkBrown (talk) 12:57, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Tapas is fairly well known, so I wouldn't italicize it. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Just put "tapas bar London" (or any other big city, I'd guess) into a search engine and you will get plenty of the best 10,20 or 30 come up. See as an example this. I think that tapas have got their passports and joined the international jet-set. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

The rule of thumb is not to italicize a word if it appears (in roman) in a standard English dictionary. Incidentally, tapas is not "a food" but virtually any appetizer or snack the restaurant decides to call tapas. Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:06, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

No words...

I don't like to complain, but I would like to point out that there are several pages (many corrected by me in countless hours of hard work) containing a term in italics and the same term not in italics. Honestly, it's horrible to see this, it's very confusing. Either we decide not to create italics any more or we keep the homogeneity. It's not possible that there are people who don't know how to edit correctly (luckily there's me). JackkBrown (talk) 16:57, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I think you have overfixating on a specific style point, while I think it is worthwhile, there are many dimensions to improving the wiki and enforcing a simpler homogeneity is not the best solution. Remsense聊 17:04, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Among these many dimensions, JackkBrown, is the improvement of non-trivial aspects of articles (and drafts) on Italian matters. I've just spent some time on Draft:Church of Santa Filomena of Ugento, rather obviously a translation of it:Chiesa di Santa Filomena (Ugento), which is about a promising subject (a lot better than hundreds of borderline-vanity drafts on minor personages) but grievously underreferenced. I was unable to help it much. The sources that are mentioned are in Italian, which I can't read but you can. Whether this should be "Church of Santa Filomena of Ugento", "Church of Santa Filomena (Ugento)", "Church of St Philomena (Ugento)", "Church of St. Filomena (Ugento)" or something else again is of minor importance compared to its other problems. And it points me to the article Ugento, which is dreadful, nowhere near as good as it:Ugento would be if only the latter were decently referenced. -- Hoary (talk) 00:55, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@Hoary: this afternoon I will read all the sources in Italian. JackkBrown (talk) 01:03, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Hoary likes this. 01:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Lots of times people will add new text without carefully reading the existing article. Making style consistent within an article is an admirable goal and positive change. I'm often guilty of oversights like this, adding wikilinks to redirects where the article has a link to the redirect target (or vice versa), and similar incautions.

There's nothing wrong with contributing positively by making styles consistent within an article, and I also believe it's not something to become upset about. Anytime I find myself getting upset with previous editors in the course of my chosen gnoming work (citation repair), I remind myself it's a task I've chosen to perform, and take a break if I need to. Volunteer work is ever thus. Folly Mox (talk) 17:12, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I would like to complain that there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of articles in Wikipedia which are so bad that they they should be deleted or rewritten from scratch. I care about this, but (like many of us) not so much that I'm prepared to spend much time fixing them.

If you care about what is to me an utterly trivial inconsistency in Wikipedia articles, fine. But I wish you'd stop coming here and asking us what you should do about them. You care about it: you fix it. If somebody disagrees, they'll let you know soon enough. ColinFine (talk) 17:14, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

JackkBrown, to enlarge on ColinFine's last sentence, one of Wikipedia's standard editing procedures is WP:BRD – Bold, Revert, Discuss.

This means that if you think something should be changed, you Boldly edit it (with a clear Edit summary); if someone else disagrees with your edit, they Revert it (with an Edit summmary explaining why); and if you disagree with their reason, the two of you Discuss it on the Article's Talk page, or either of your personal Talk pages, whichever you both prefer, and come to a consensus.

There is no need to continually come to the Help desk (or Teahouse) to canvass the opinions of all of us here. If you are so frequently unsure whether what you want to do is correct or not, it suggests that you are not yet competent to do it. That is quite understandable, as (a) these are technical matters (which I myself had to be professionally trained in when I worked in Publishing), and (b) you are doing this in a second language whose rules and customs differ markedly from your own, and has more complicated rules because of its complicated evolution. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.5.208 (talk) 18:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Geographic Location Dot Does Not Appear When Clicking On Map

This is a long term issue. I feel I saw a discussion about this many years ago, but can't find it. It would seem like a very easy fix to Wikipedia code to allow the location dot to persist when we click a location map on all places in Wikipedia. Tallard (talk) 18:44, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Tallard: The infobox in London places a red dot on top of File:United Kingdom relief location map.jpg. The latter is the file page for a file which is displayed in 339 pages at the English Wikipedia and thousands in other languages. A file page always just displays the uploaded file regardless how you got there. It would be difficult to change and the potential implementations I can think of would also have disadvantages like confusing users who expect to see the real file when they click it. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Users won't be "confused". When a reader clicks on a map, we expect a zoom action, not an unrelated different file. If Wikipedia coding causes clicking that item to lead us to a different file, then that is a thoroughly mis-thought-out code. If I want a map of England, I won't go to the London article. If I want to be able to better see where London is in England, I click on the map for a zoom. Surely this discussion has been had before, possibly ad nauseam?Tallard (talk) 16:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@Tallard: This isn't Google Maps. It's literally an image with a pushpin added on top. Most images on articles take readers to the file page, as intended. If you're having trouble looking at it, might I suggest using your browser's innate zoom feature? There might be a problem once you pass the image's resolution, but that's what implementing a change in function would do either way.

You are, of course, welcome to propose this over at a venue like Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 16:34, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

IP Blocked

I get the message "This IP has been blocked from editing Wikipedia" with an IPv6 /31 that I am not a part of. This occurs only on my phone and not on any of my other devices behind the same IP, and occurs despite me being logged into a named account. Is there a fix for this so I can edit from my phone? Celjski Grad (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

You could try applying for an IP block exemption. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 19:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I will try there. Celjski Grad (talk) 19:55, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Factual update edit removed?

Thank you for your help ahead. I edited the Cultural section on my home town of Lompoc, California and the next day the edit was removed and reverted back to misleading, incorrect information. I expect I did something wrong, but no idea what? The edit was made November 8, and was removed by Nov 9. I am Brian Cole and was the owner of Howlin’ Byroon’s Music Exchange 2009-2014. Perhaps my edit was too lengthy? Blue1125Seal (talk) 20:31, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

The edit summary on the revert was "Unsourced advertisement" and I agree. Your lengthy addition [1] was completely unsourced, and served as little but a promo for your former store. Meters (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

[Edit Conflict and Courtesy link: Lompoc, California].

Hi Blue1125Seal! The reverter, Adflatuss, correctly left an edit summary (see in the article's View history tab) saying in part "unsourced advertisement".

This means there were two major problems with your text, each alone requiring (by Wikipedia's rules) its removal:

(i) The text was unsourced. How does anyone know you weren't making it all up? (People do do this, or try to.) Everything in Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable by readers, and that means every factual passage has to be cited to a reference from a published Reliable source.

(ii) The text read like an advertisement for the activities of Brian Cole (yourself) and for the Calvert Theater you were/are associated with, so was promotional, which is not allowed in Wikipedia. An encyclopaedia is not at all the same thing as a guidebook.

Sorry to disappoint you, but if we do not maintain strict standards for what we allow, which means citing everything and maintaining strict Neutrality, Wikipedia would degenerate into an untrustworthy free-for-all. Everything you wrote was probably 'true', but it needed to show that it was true (via references) and it needed to be expressed in neutral, encyclopaedic style. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.5.208 (talk) 20:55, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Blue1125Seal: However, if there is incorrect info in the article, and that info is unsourced, you can remove it. -Arch dude (talk) 21:28, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Arch dude Blue1125Seal (talk) 01:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Talk Page

Where is the talk page on an article for me to suggest edits? Will.Monroe FMDefense (talk) 21:29, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Will.Monroe FMDefense: There should be a button that says "Talk" directly underneath the title of the article that will open the talk page. If you're looking to make an edit request, you might instead want to use the edit request wizard, which will help you to do so. Tollens (talk) 21:33, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this, I wasn't aware that was a thing. 331dot (talk) 21:34, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Will.Monroe FMDefense (edit conflict) The exact location of the link can vary depending on which "skin" you are using to view Wikipedia and if you are in mobile or desktop mode; if you are in desktop mode, there is a "talk" link at the top left of the article next to the words "project page". If you tell which article you are interested in, we can provide a link for you. 331dot (talk) 21:33, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

What should I do?

I made an account here because I thought there would be ways I could improve Wikipedia. However, I realized too late that there is a lot of stuff here that I have no clue about what it is, and the stuff I do know about, I can't find any way to improve it. I feel kind of stuck here, in this phase of not being able to do anything. Honestly, I feel like all I can ever be here is just someone who reverts vandalism because I can't edit the things I know about. I really don't know what I should do here, as reverting vandalism is good, but I want to do more helpful things here. ThatOneWolf ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:31, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

ThatOneWolf You could try going to the Community Portal which has some tasks available that can be done. 331dot (talk) 21:35, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

ThatOneWolf, random Canadian guys who play Minecraft a lot are not condemned to a life of Minecraft and Wikipedia and their likely long-term effects. Go to a museum or three, find a new interest, cultivate it, read a book about it, explore it some more, read more about it, consider editing Wikipedia articles about it. -- Hoary (talk) 23:11, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the suggestions. Also, don't worry Hoary, I do things outside as well, lol. ThatOneWolf ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:34, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

ThatOneWolf, I highly recommend the "go to a museum" option, taking along a good smartphone or digital camera. Many of my contributions over 14 years resulted from museum visits where I photographed the most interesting and unique objects and their imformative labels. In many cases, you have probably taken the best freely licensed photo of the object, and learned enough to make substantive improvements to the relevant Wikipedia article, after a bit of work with your favorite search engine. Cullen328 (talk) 09:29, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@ThatOneWolf, Wikipedia:Requested articles has a huge list of things someone thinks should be a WP-article. Some of them may actually be good ideas. Perhaps you can find an idea there that interests you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale

Reference number 18 is a bit odd - the quote comes up on a general google search but once I go to the citation (number 18) itself - I cannot find the quote that is relevant. What's going on? Thanks for any advice 115.70.23.77 (talk) 22:38, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Click on citation number 18, and you don't see the quote in the visible text. However, view the HTML source and you'll see the quote in line 557 in a blog comment text. GoingBatty (talk) 22:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Here's what you want to reference:

The Kitson's [sic] London home, 3 Cadogan Square, was damaged by a bomb during the Second World War and they moved to Stansted in Essex.

Here's what you say you want to source that with:

"Having been bombed out their home in Cardigan Square, London in 1940, Lord and Lady Airedale had lived at Stansted, Essex where they both died; Baroness ..."

That's your ellipsis, not mine. Why not cut "; Baroness ..."? And in my idiolect, "bombed out their home" is odd; I'd have "bombed out of their home".

This doesn't appear in the cited source as I read it, either. But GoingBatty has deftly located it. Here it is, at greater length:

Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale of Gledhow (1863-1944) was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a BA. Royal author and journalist Claudia Joseph wrote in 2021 that Lord Airedale and his wife Florence "lived in 17th Century Gledhow Hall – famously painted by William Turner – and attended the Coronation of George V. Their daughters Doris and Evelyn were debutantes who did the society season and were presented at Court. In her post-war memoirs, Doris’s sister Evelyn recalled a ‘memorable time’ when evenings were filled with many balls where everybody knew each other ‘partly because so many guests were relatives’. Roedean-educated Olive Middleton was close to her Airedale cousins, attending society balls at Gledhow. Later, during the First World War, the house was converted into a Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital run by the Red Cross and the newly married Olive worked there as a nurse with her second cousin Doris, a fellow old Roedeanian". The Duchess of Cambridge (née Catherine Middleton) visited London's Imperial War Museum in 2018 to read records stating that her great-grandmother Olive Middleton was "in residence" - on and off - as a VAD nurse at Gledhow Hall from May 1915 to April 1917. By 1928, the Gledhow Hall estate was being sub-divided. By 1929, the old hall itself had been reportedly divided into two flats. Having been bombed out their home in Cardigan Square, London in 1940, Lord and Lady Airedale had lived at Stansted, Essex where they both died; Baroness Airedale in 1942 and Lord Airedale in 1944. As Lord Airedale had no male heirs, the barony succeeded to his half-brother Roland. The National Portrait Gallery also holds three portraits by Bassano Ltd of Hon. Angela Estelle Goff (née Kitson), one of Lord Airedale's seven daughters.

Certain mannerisms, as well as a curious degree of interest in people surnamed Middleton, seem uncannily familiar. -- Hoary (talk) 23:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Yup. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)