Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 July 15

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July 15

Science: referencing a review (2* source) VS an article mentioned in the review (1* source)

For example, say I’m writing a section about how mitochondria mediate the cell-death response. My main citation is a review article, a secondary source. One relevant fact is that mtDNA lacks CpG methylation. Should I cite this result from the review, or from the original article, a primary source, referenced in the review that I have also read? I’ve seen examples of the latter, but I wonder what the Wikipedia guidelines prescribe. Amayorov (talk) 04:48, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Amayorov, WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT and WP:SCHOLARSHIP should answer your question. Commander Keane (talk) 09:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Susan Spaw-folksinger

also my ex-wife. 70.119.26.190 (talk) 04:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

You have asked the same question at the Teahouse; please see the answers you received there. It is unclear what you are trying to do. '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 05:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

At a glance, Susan Spaw appears the ex-wife of someone called Guy Clark who died in 2016. Are you trying to make an edit request from beyond the grave? -- D'n'B-t -- 13:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Guy Clark#Personal life says they had a son in 1966 and he remarried in 1972. If she is still alive then she would have 52+ years to get married and divorced again. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:MFD busted?

Hi - WP:MFD looks busted - error at top, table showing a Lua error. Might be to do with a recent IP address change on that page? The broken table is also showing on WP:RFD. I would attempt to fix it but it's above my paygrade BugGhost🦗👻 16:11, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Yup. Module:XfD old/AfD and MfD breaks if the "Old business" header is removed. —Cryptic 16:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Cool ok - assumed it would be that, I just didn't want to complicate things in case I was wrong. Thanks for taking a look! BugGhost🦗👻 16:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Vandalism check in re: Special:Contributions/207.135.255.203

The Rock Springs, Wyoming page was vandalized by Special:Contributions/207.135.255.203. In their edit to the page on 4 July 2024, the user added "also known as Rock Bottom or Crack Springs" sentence to the opening of the page — neither of which are official nicknames and are essentially just denigrating statements toward the character of the town. An edit was conducted by another IP-user at a later date, but said user must've missed the clear and obvious vandalism.
While I think it'd be easy enough for me to simply remove the offending text, I'd like to ask whether or not any of the IP-user's other contributions to Wikipedia constitute vandalism or not in the eyes of the rest of the Wikipedia community, and whether or not if I were to simply remove the offending text before the mods could get to it themselves, if the mod team would be able to do something in particular about the Rock Springs thing after the fact. — D._A.S.C. ^{Talk to me!} 20:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi DASC. Whenever you come across obvious vandalism such as the one you pointed out, feel free to revert it without needing to check with the rest of the community. Not only that, it's good practice to check the recent contributions of vandals to see if they vandalized other articles, which was the case here. All of the IP's recent edits have already been reverted, so there is nothing else to do. Please read WP:RVAN for more information. Isabelle Belato ^🏳‍🌈 21:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Advertisement of paid editing

User:Rakibhasanactor is advertising that they are a paid editor for a visual effects studio and has written the entirely promotional Raisul Islam Ador article. I think it's enough to say that this would be preventative for further misuse and general NOTHERE sentiment but I'm not sure how to report it - is ANI the place to go? Someone brought the article to AfD and it's since been CSD'd so that shone a spotlight on it but I think the consequences need to be on the editor rather than just the page. I haven't seen this often but it would be good to know how to address this should it be necessary in the future. Cheers, Kazamzam (talk) 20:28, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Kazamzam, thank you for bringing this to the attention of other editors (myself included). The article I have just now deleted was rather incompetent -- it started Raisul Islam Ador is a Film-Maker. Everyone knows him by different names. His various names include Rai and Ador. The editor needs some practice. However, they do not seem to be soliciting business. The first half of I'm a paid editor of Raid Studio vfx company and I can edit another wiki page for free. is the kind of thing that paid editors (who, you should remember, are not outlawed) are expected to say; and it's good that the editor is also offering to help without payment. -- Hoary (talk) 21:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

How to add images to a Wikipedia article

I have done some slight editing tweaking several Wikipedia articles, but found major mistakes identifying a building in a Wikipedia article about a railroad depot in my area. I have correct pictures of the depot I would like to add to this article but I am not enough of a tech to figure out the code. Can someone tell me, how to add a photograph (downloaded in my PC) to the article? All I can find is how to use Wikipedia photos. THANK YOU in advance !! Timestreasures (talk) 21:24, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@Timestreasures: Did you take the photo yourself? If so, the process is quite easy. Just go to the Commons Upload Wizard and follow the directions to upload the photo. Then you can use the Commons file name to add the image to the article. If it's a photo you found somewhwere on the Internet, though, it's probably copyrighted and can't be used here. Deor (talk) 23:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much. The photo is of an antique postcard that I have. I really appreciate this. Kind regards ! Timestreasures (talk) 01:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Etiquette for user home pages/sandboxen

Greetings, keepers of the eternal flame!

Glancing through someone's talk page earlier today, I was reminded that editing people's user pages etc. without warning can be considered a discourtesy, even down to fixing minor Lint formatting errors as reported in various WP:Gnome-type bot pages. I am aware of what WP:Linter allows you to do. This all set me wondering, Are user pages considered semi-private, and if so, why? I consulted my fave guideline WP:Etiquette, and came here for further guidance.

As I see it in very basic and simplistic terms, almost everything that appears on WP is essentially public property under the various Creative Commons licenses, and you press 'Publish' at your peril. I may be horribly wrong. But if I am vaguely right, it seems that some editors skirt around this lack of privilege, maybe unaware even of it, and feel that their user home pages are entirely personal and somehow sacrosanct. How has this feeling come about? Is My Sandbox somehow specially protected because it's called *MY* Sandbox? Genuine questions: If everything on WP is public, why are people so protective about 'their' scribblings? Are they merely misinformed? WP:OWN seems to concentrate on live articles rather than drafts, sandboxes etc. WP:Ownership and editing of user pages sets out some guidelines, but could someone please point me to where this consensus came to be agreed on? This may have occurred many moons ago. MinorProphet (talk) 21:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello, MinorProphet. User pages are not sacrosanct and administrators routinely remove inappropriate content from userpages. The purpose of a userpage is for an editor to describe their interests, accomplishment and plans as a Wikipedia editor. As such, it is a means of communicating with other editors, and not private in any way. Any editor can remove grossly inappropriate content, but it is a good idea to get an administrator involved to revision delete the content and block the offender as appropriate. As for sandboxes, there is little reason to rummage around in them, but their pupose is for improving the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a free web host, so material unrelated to improving the encyclopedia can be removed. Cullen328 (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@MinorProphet A Lint error was removed from my userpage a couple of days ago and I thanked the editor who did that. Apart from anything else, it taught me not to make that sort of mistake (wikilinking within external links) in future. Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:30, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I consider userspace drafts mostly hands-off unless necessary. If I feel like editing them, I ask first. If I see something "wrong" on a userpage I tend to tell the user about it. I remember a new editor making a good-faith change to my userpage once, which wasn't how I wanted it. I asked them not to do that and said there was generally no good reason to edit other people's userpages. I think the spirit of It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to copy edit others' posts. Doing so can be irritating. The basic rule, with exceptions outlined below, is to not edit or delete others' posts without their permission. reasonably applies to userpages. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:38, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@Michael D. Turnbull: I had a similar edit on my talk page.[1] I also thanked the editor because his edits were fine, but reading the complaints on their own talk page when other's talk pages get broken sparked my original questions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång's quote above from wp:talk seems to provide the answer about User Talk pages. But it seems that User Home pages are subject to different constraints: "Bots and other users may edit pages in your user space or leave messages for you, though by convention others will not usually edit your user page itself, other than (rarely) to address significant concerns or place project-related tags." These sentiments may need further refinement.
Thanks all for your helpful and useful contribs. So, to sum up: Is it the case that people are right to complain when their own pages/drafts etc. get edited, even for relatively inconsequential edits, such as with Linter? I note that WP:LINTER#How you can help gives guidance on User Talk pages, but none at all on User Home pages. I left a message at Talk:Linter. MinorProphet (talk) 11:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Answer, I think. WP:OWN#User pages states: "Usually others will not edit your primary user page, other than to address significant concerns (rarely); or to do routine housekeeping, such as handling project-related tags, disambiguating links to pages that have been moved, removing the page from categories meant for articles, replacing non-free content by linking to it, or removing obvious vandalism or BLP violations.""
Jonesey95 at Talk:Linter explained: "Fixing Linter errors fits in with "routine housekeeping". All pages are fair game for fixing errors, replacing deleted templates, adjusting wikitext to conform to MediaWiki code changes, and other maintenance that keeps Wikipedia pages rendering correctly." Thanks all. MinorProphet (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

Renaming Article and Redirect Help

I attempted to rename the article "Tri County Journal" to "Tri-County Journal" since it needs a hyphen (as per written in the Library of Congress). However, I had some technical issues renaming the page. There are now two redirects, and the original page is now misspelled as "Tr-County Journal". How should we fix this? WafflesBaconAndPuppies (talk) 21:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

WafflesBaconAndPuppies you could ask at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests. Or an admin may see this question. TSventon (talk) 21:46, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I have moved Tr-County Journal to Tri-County Journal. I left a redirect so bots can clean up double redirects. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

The double redirects are fixed so I have deleted Tr-County Journal and its talk page. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:46, 16 July 2024 (UTC)