Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 October 14

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October 14

Login persistence

When I login using Firefox, something has changed. Despite specifying to keep me logged in for a year, it stopped doing that recently. However, Chrome doesn't give me trouble. This is on Windows 10. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:40, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Do you have Firefox set to “Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed”? My understanding is that the login duration must use some locally stored data to keep the login. Since this is a browser specific setting, it would explain why you have not had the same issue with other browsers. You may also want to see the first sentence of Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#Why was I automatically logged out? for other settings which could be causing the issue (“This could be a result of your cookie, browser cache, or firewall/Internet security settings.”). Bhbuehler (talk) 03:30, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

That was the problem. Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:31, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad that was helpful. I believe you can also add exceptions to that setting for Wikipedia if you would prefer to leave it enabled for privacy reasons. Bhbuehler (talk) 17:25, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism help request from Bhbuehler

I have noticed some vandalism at Alexander Stepanov. Namely, User:Icandostuffnow added a couple of obvious jokes to the biography of a living person and deleted the jokes about 11 hours later. The vandalism was done the same day the user created their account, and it appears to be either inactive or deleted. But Special:CentralAuth/Icandostuffnow does not show it as blocked. These are the user's only visible edits (at 2022-09-13T12:04:52, 2022-09-13T12:04:52, and 2022-09-13T21:05:10‎)Special:Contributions/Icandostuffnow). I just wanted to bring attention to it in case removing the vandalism from the page history is the standard practice for a living person. Would an editor please assist me with fixing it? Thank you, Bhbuehler (talk) 03:01, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

@Bhbuehler: Thanks for the report but we don't worry about old edits (those were in September 2022) and the user account was obviously created as a test and has not edited since. That is described as "stale" and no action is required. Johnuniq (talk) 03:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for getting to this so quickly. I figured it wasn't urgent. Thanks for confirming. Bhbuehler (talk) 03:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Archive Date

how can I find archive date of my url? Rubina12 (talk) 05:09, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

@Rubina12: The archive-date corresponds to the archive-url. To find the archive-url, you can copy the URL and paste it into one of the popular archiving websites, such as the Wayback Machine or archive.today. If you would like to provide the URL, we can demonstrate it for you. If you would like to let us know the article you're working on as well, we can help you format the citation template properly. GoingBatty (talk) 05:24, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Increasing importance level of a page

I have just joined and added some information to a page. (Wisbech to Upwell Tram Line) I noticed that it was described as inactive and standard or low importance. It appeared the section to raise the issue and get it elevated was the 'talk' section but red rose sent me a link to the requirements for content which suggests the note I posted is not compliant. If so I apologise. However how does a page get elevated to be considered more important by Wikipedia. If my talk post is non compliant obviously no problem with deleting it. Help would be appreciated. (Cameron Spade (talk) 13:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC))

Cameron Spade. @Redrose64: is perfectly correct, Wikipedia is to present facts, not for advocacy or canvassing support. Your comments should only be for discussing improvements to the article. On a global, or even national scale, the page is of low importance Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:18, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Importance is a fairly objective assessment of a topic's significance within the context of a global encyclopedia, but quality is independent of significance. A tram line is almost never going to be of greater than low importance, while London Underground will be of high or top importance, depending on the project assessment. However, quality can be improved all the way up to featured articles status, and I encourage you to work on improvements. Acroterion (talk) 13:36, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Article title/disambiguation/potential move?

With the intention of filling in some red links at National Register of Historic Places listings in Roanoke, Virginia, I planned to create an article on a building most commonly known as Villa Heights. However, as the building lent its name to the surrounding neighborhood, there is already a Villa Heights, Roanoke, Virginia article. The building is also known as the Compton-Bateman House, and in doing a Google search to see how commonly that name was used, I discovered an existing article at Villa Heights Plantation. That article is a bit of a mess (with an overlong quote that is probably a copyvio), and I plan on rewriting it, but I'm unsure how to title it and what kind of redirects need to be created. The article is about the building, and while it was likely a plantation home in its past, none of the literature on the subject mentions a plantation. I don't want to appear as trying to whitewash the site's history, I simply would like as accurate of a title as possible, and would appreciate any advice on how to proceed. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 15:40, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

DrOrinScrivello, I would suggest improving Villa Heights Plantation first, possibly using a draft at Draft:Villa Heights Plantation. Villa Heights house should be mentioned and linked in the history and lead sections of Villa Heights district. Redirects and page moves can be done later. If you don't get advice on names here, you could ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. TSventon (talk) 16:37, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Sage advice, TSventon. Thanks for your help. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 16:58, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Archive deletion

There are three archives of Talk:The Law of Success which has 5 or 6 total discussions. I think they should be merged in main talk page and archives should be deleted. Sarangem (talk) 16:20, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

@Sarangem: Go ahead. You can just redirect the archives and revert to before the archive edits since there are no intervening edits in the page history [1]. Remove {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} to stop future archiving. Somebody chose a poor archive format for a low-activity page. There hasn't been a talk page post since 2016 so I don't think anyone would object, or even notice your change. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Speeding up simple tedious merges

I want to do a set of simple merges like those that can be seen in this history page. I extract one or more bulleted points from a stub, move them to a corresponding subheading in the new article, and then convert the old article to a redirect. Repeat until all of the stubs are covered in the larger article and all of the old articles redirect to the appropriate subheading. Is there any way to do this more efficiently? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien: It's limited what it saves but my workflow in Firefox would have been:

1. Make 11 browser tabs with full page edits, no section edits. Ctrl-click on a link makes a new tab.
2. Copy-paste from the 10 years to 1890s in Bulgaria.
3. Copy the text #REDIRECT [[1890s in Bulgaria#189]] {{R to section}}.
4. Blank each year page with Ctrl+a and Del, paste the copied text and manually add the last digit in the year. Move between tabs with Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down.
5. Copy-paste the same edit summary to the 10 year pages and save them.

PrimeHunter (talk) 19:55, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

This is essentially what I did, though I didn't think to use tab switching shortcuts. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:57, 15 October 2023 (UTC)