Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 November 10

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November 10

Sources for topicn

I have been working on editing a bunch of topics that simply do not cite sources, and some of those run into issues with notability.

is it possible to get an article approved that simply doesn’t cite sources, or how did those articles end up on this platform

—— Mangoflies (talk) 04:11, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Mangoflies, no it isn't possible; but not all articles have needed to be approved. There is indeed a great amount of junk on Wikipedia (unreferenced articles, promotional articles, etc). How crappy articles have come to be varies a lot; you might look in the histories of those articles. -- Hoary (talk) 04:38, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi User:Hoary

can you elaborate more on not all articles needing to be approved?

—— Mangoflies (talk) 04:40, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

There haven't always been systems for checking candidate articles or new articles. -- Hoary (talk) 05:32, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

So you are saying back in the long ago articles didn’t need to be approved. Mangoflies (talk) 05:33, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Editors have always been, in principle, able to create articles without submitting them for review, and many articles have been added to Wikipedia in this manner over the years. Certain things like Wikipedia:Articles for creation have been set up over the years to help make things easier and try to maintain a certain standard, but they are more options than required. Less experienced editors and editors with a conflict of interest are encouraged to work on drafts first and then submit them for review, but such a thing isn't mandatory per se (except perhaps in the case of editors being paid to create articles). All articles are, however, subject to Wikipedia:Notability, and those that don't meet this standard can be tagged, proposed or nominated for Wikipedia:Deletion if their issues can't be fixed. There are over six million Wikipedia articles and more keep getting added; so, finding the bad ones can be hard, and a bad article can fly under the radar for years until something happens that makes it get noticed. It's highly unlikely that any reviewer would approve an article that has zero citations, but it is possible that the version you're currently seeing is not the same one that ended up being approved. Figuring this out often means you've got to be willing to dig through the page's history to see how the article developed over time. If it has been without citations since it was created, then perhaps see if you can find some yourself or add a maintenance template to it to let others know about it. If it seemed fine early on but got worse over time, then perhaps see if you can figure out how to get it back to the version that was OK. If you think the situation can't be fixed and you've done your due diligence, then perhaps deletion is warranted or at least a community discussion to determine as much is needed. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

What Marchjuly says, Mangoflies, pretty much. But as for "If [an article] seemed fine early on but got worse over time, then perhaps see if you can figure out how to get it back to the version that was OK": Figuring this out is not likely to be difficult. You can then revert to the latest version not to have been debased, simply by choosing to edit that version, ignoring the warning you get about editing an old version, and saving, with an informative edit summary. But this is not usually a good way to do it. It's likely that the added junk isn't so obviously junk, and it's also possible that benevolent editors have been tinkering with the poor versions while unaware of how much better the article had earlier been: these editors (and others) may notice your reduction of 10 kiB or whatever and misinterpret this as vandalism. Better, then, to announce and explain your plan on the article's talk page, and wait a couple of weeks for agreement (or lack of disagreement). Then make your edit, with a summary such as "Reverting to Apr 2018 version; see talk page for reasoning and discussion". -- Hoary (talk) 07:55, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Mangoflies If you want to work on articles that are entirely uncited, you could use WP:PETSCAN to find articles in categories of interest to you and that have the template {{Unreferenced}} at the top (which places an article in the hidden category Category:Articles lacking sources or one of its sub-categories). There are currently about 125,000 totally unreferenced articles marked as such. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:55, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

How can i found my home screen

How can i found my home screen 160.119.47.95 (talk) 09:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

That depends on which browser you're using. If you mean in/of Wikipedia, I don't know what you mean by "home screen". (If you mean your user page, you won't have one unless/until you're logged in.) -- Hoary (talk) 11:43, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

IP OP, to tag onto Hoary's reply: you need to log in to view Special:Homepage also. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 07:53, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

The home acreen is the screen you see upon starting up your device or browser, so you just start up your device or browser to see it. See home screen for more information. Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:56, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Looking to get discussion/approval on planned updates to a list

Hi, I'm looking to get community discussion and approval for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mountains#Updating Colorado 14ers per new measurements. I posted to the relevant wikiproject a few weeks ago, but it doesn't look to be too active. I could just edit the page in question myself, but there's a specific ask on the list page not to update elevations without alignment from editors; I'm looking to get that alignment. Any way I could advertise this discussion/flag for review? Thanks! KilimAnnejaro (talk) 14:37, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@KilimAnnejaro You have already highlighted your plan on the relevant project's Talk Page 8 days ago. After two weeks of WP:SILENCE, I think you should be WP:BOLD and start to make the changes to the list. Your proposed source looks reliable to me. Of course, if anyone reverts your additions, then further discussion on the Talk Page of the list itself will be needed. Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:46, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

article writing

I really want to write a article on never quit by Jimmy Seattle about his time as a PJ or pararescue in the air force. I loved the book but I do not believe I have the skill yet to write this article. Hardwork 234 (talk) 17:41, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Hardwork 234 You are wise to develop your skills by adding to existing articles first but you can begin a draft at Draft:Jimmy Settle (author) as soon as you like. There is no hurry in submitting it for review. Note that you appear to have the wrong author name, judging by what I found on Amazon books. Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @Hardwork 234. Thank you for recognising the limitations in your skills at this point. My earnest advice to new editors is to not even think about trying to create an article until you have spent several weeks - at least - learning about how Wikipedia works by making improvements to existing articles. Once you have understood core policies such as verifiability, neutral point of view, reliable, independent sources, and notability, and experienced how we handle disagreements with other editors (the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle), then you might be ready to read your first article carefully, and try creating a draft. ColinFine (talk) 22:23, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Could someone who knows WP:MEDRS, please look at these changes?

Someone did these changes at Child psychopathology, I'm pretty sure it's just promotional editing and not actually a good contribution, but I also don't know anything about this topic or MEDRS and don't feel confident enough to revert it. – user usually at 2804:F14::/32, currently 143.208.239.58 (talk) 19:35, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Checked it. As far as I'm aware, it was a good faith edit. If there are any issues you have with the article, you may put it up for discussion at the article's talk page, and perhaps members of WikiProject Medicine so that they're aware. If you think it really was vandalism, fine. 2601AC47 (talk|contribs) Isn't a IP anon 19:47, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's vandalism, it's just all sourced to acespsychiatry.com (the other reference was already in the article, it's just that the link changed). Granted the acespsychiatry article does cite sources.

I'll just let it be, thanks for looking into it. *edit: Apparently I'm not going to let it be, I'm pretty sure the sources cited in the website aren't findable, if they exist at all, they are incredibly vague. – user usually at 2804:F14::/32, currently 143.208.239.58 (talk) 20:02, 10 November 2024 (UTC) *edited: 20:09, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I have asked at WikiProject Medicine. – user usually at 2804:F14::/32, currently 143.208.239.58 (talk) 20:39, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

IP editor. I see that the edit has been reverted. The source is little more than a WP:BLOG and is a long way from being WP:MEDRS-compliant. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:38, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

How do you make it so the Contributions page doesn't automatically default to hiding good edits?

This is only helpful when looking at the contributions of vandals, but usually the people I look at will not be vandals (such as myself) and it's annoying to constantly have to uncheck that box. interstatefive  21:00, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

It's not clear what you mean by "Contributions page", but if you're talking about your Watchlist this is a setting at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. If that's not it, please provide a link. Regards, Dan Bloch (talk) 22:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Special:Contributions interstatefive  03:36, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, right. I see now that it uses the same preference I sent you for the Watchlist. Dan Bloch (talk) 04:17, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Oustanding edit requests on archived pages

Hey! Sometimes when looking over edit requests (e.g. Category:Wikipedia_extended-confirmed-protected_edit_requests), I notice that the original request was never answered, and the Talk page section has since been archived. What is the best course of action here? OXYLYPSE (talk) 23:33, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

This just came up on WT:ER. What I said there was When I patrolled I would either move out back to the talk page if I thought it would benefit from more attention, or just flip the switch on answered since there was clearly no consensus to implement. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:37, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@ScottishFinnishRadish I only searched the Edit Requests project page; didn't think to check the talk haha. Seems reasonable enough, just wanted to check it wasn't frowned upon - thank you! OXYLYPSE (talk) 23:40, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussions about edit requests are always all over the place, unfortunately. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:42, 10 November 2024 (UTC)