Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 November 20

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November 20

Why is a particular article protected?

My question refers to the article entitled “Doner kebab.”

I went to read it after ordering Middle Eastern takeout food today and finding  doner on the menu but little explanation of what it was. As I read the article, I noticed a minor grammatical error and so I decided to correct it because I was already signed in to Wikipedia.

To my surprise, I was notified that I wasn’t allowed to make edits in the article because it was protected. A food article? Even if of Turkish derivation?

I’d really appreciate understanding this.

Augnablik (talk) 09:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello. Looking at the article's protection log, that article has an extensive history of disruptive editing, necessitating it be protected to prevent that disruption. From what I can tell most of that disruption is related to how to identify the nation the dish is associated with, there was much edit warring over it. It may sound silly, but such disputes happen. There was even a dispute about whether a single letter should be capitalized- which was so significant it merits an article- Wikipedia Star Trek Into Darkness debate. 331dot (talk) 09:20, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Augnablik, the truth of the matter is that there have been many deeply entrenched ethnonationalist disputes about the histories and origins of countless culinary dishes that can be broadly described as Middle Eastern cuisine. The hostility and bitterness is related to the conflicts between Israel, Palestine and other Arab countries, extending outward to include Turkey, Greece and Iran. When these arguments get out of control, as they all too often do, then administrators must apply protection to the affected pages. Cullen328 (talk) 09:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Good grief! Augnablik (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

We never know where our day will lead, do we? An innocent lunch and thought to do a minor grammar fix morphs into a most unexpected Wikipedia discovery. Wow, the drama! Augnablik (talk) 12:57, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@331dot

There was an exchange of such magnitude over capitalization of into used as a preposition? How could there have been any question in the first place, as it’s standard editing practice to lower-case in such situations? Augnablik (talk) 13:08, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

It was a little more complicated as a title of a film.....beyond that I'll defer to the article about the controversy. :) 331dot (talk) 13:11, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes … I should have picked up on that point. The problem could have been started off in Hollywood, not Wikipedia … but in that case, the Wiki issue probably was whether to correct an incorrectly-worded title! Augnablik (talk) 13:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@Augnablik: you say there is a minor gramattical error in the article. Go to talk:Doner kebab and use {{Edit semi-protected}} to request your desired change. Mjroots (talk) 10:36, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Could you be a little more specific about this, @Mjroots — I go to that page and exactly where do I find, or type, {{Edit semi-protected}}? Augnablik (talk) 12:48, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@Augnablik Easiest if you copy from here to your clipboard the template: everything from the first { to the final } and then navigate to that talk page and click the "Add topic" tab. Give it a simple title, then in its main section, paste the template. It expects your change to be expressed as "change X to Y". The purpose of the template is to populate a category that other editors monitor for such simple change requests. Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:07, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

That's odd, though; Augnablik's account has been around for over 2 years and she's made more than 10 300 edits, which should have given her extended confirmed rights. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:15, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

They are extended confirmed as of 18 May 2024. Likely this has to do with the protection notice in the source editor - this appears even when one has the user rights to edit the page. There are no WP:CT/A-I sanctions in place, though.Departure– (talk) 14:27, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm replying here to both Tenryuu 🐲 and Departure– ... partly because what I'll say is related to the last message each of you sent and partly because something weird is going on technologically so my replies to messages no longer immediately follow the one to which I'm replying.

I need to post a short sequel to my "Doner kebab" article dilemma. I went back to the article to try what Mike Turnbull and Mjroots suggested I do in order to edit. Of course I again saw the protection notice for the article. But this time I saw something that had escaped my notice the first time: that autoconfirmed and extended confirmed editors were allowed to edit. Earlier, I'd been so stunned to see the protection notice saying something that at first glance seemed to say I couldn't edit that I hadn't read the notice further.

This meant I could just go ahead and make the edit as usual. A happy ending, but I can't help wondering how many other editors have been fooled by a protection notice when they, like me, came to one for the first time. Why wouldn't this notice appear only to editors who don't yet have at least autoconfirmed status (which is what we get after just 10 edits)? Augnablik (talk) 17:33, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd guess the notices appear for everyone to remind people to stay within policy. Pages are usually protected for a reason, so it won't hurt anyone to tell people why. Although, perhaps instead of a red box the same as a warning it'd be better off as a yellow informative box for users who can edit the page. Departure– (talk) 17:35, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, a yellow caution light instead of a red stop light! 😂 Augnablik (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

All's well that ends well. Glad you got this sorted in the end. Mjroots (talk) 18:24, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Template for a pile of references

While editing, I came across the episode section of Karen_(1964_TV_series)#Episodes. It has a pile of references dumped at the top of the section, I'm guessing they're there because they relate to the episodes and need moving to specific episodes. I've tried looking for a maintenance template that does the job of "This pile of references need moving to the appropriate piece of text" but can't find anything suitable. What would be the appropriate template for this occurrence? - X201 (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@X201 is {{no footnotes}} what you're looking for? '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 10:38, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Not really. The rest of the article has footnotes and references that are properly done. The problem is this pile of inline references that are at the top of the Episodes section. Some of them are obviously about single episodes and so need to be moved to the correct positions, whereas it's unclear what some of the other references in that pile are actually referencing. I'm sure that there's some kind of cleanup template to cover this, but can't find the correct one. - X201 (talk) 08:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

{{Text-source}}? DMacks (talk) 12:59, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Restore or Draftify a deleted page

I am seeking assistance to restore a page that was deleted via AfD back in 2016 per the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kingsley's Chicken. I have attempted to contact the admin who closed the AfD (MBisanz) directly but received no response. I note the AfD occurred after a WP:REFUND which I understand to be a once only option.

A concern raised in the AfD was that it did not meet WP:CORPDEPTH and at the time, it was hard to locate published versions of existing RS. Since 2016, there has been renewed interest in this chain, including a YouTube documentary highlighting its links to a number of Australian Hip Hop artists as well as featuring in a movie. Additionally, news archives like Trove now make it easier to locate historical media coverage and I believe the article now meet notability criteria and I would like to access the previous version and work on it as a draft to update it. Who do I talk to to have it restored to the draft space please? Dfadden (talk) 09:24, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

MBisanz is no longer active on Wikipedia, and is no longer an admin. Per WP:DRVPURPOSE Deletion review should not be used: #9, just post your request at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion. Meters (talk) 09:43, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Dfadden, you're probably better staring from scratch. The last version created said only Kingsley's Chicken is a Canberra based fast food chain offering chicken based burgers, wraps, torps, chips & gray, BBQ chickens and salads and the version prior to that had much the same plus a description of a "A controversial advertising campaign in 2000". Neither gave any evidence of notability nor real facts such as financials, number of employees etc. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I seem to remember a version existing with a bit more information than that, although I may be mistaken as it has been many years. I'm also interested in reviewing the references it was based on, however I am happy to recreate from scratch if that is not possible. Dfadden (talk) 05:06, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Edit, revert, ghost—How to proceed?

I'm in a somewhat frustrating situation. On 3 November, Szelma W (talk · contribs) reverted (Special:Diff/1255250737) an edit of mine (Special:Diff/1255197206). On 5 November, I created Talk:List of Mersenne primes and perfect numbers#Recent reversion - is anything salvageable? to discuss the matter, as the revert's edit summary "It was better" didn't really give me a lot to go on.

And there, the discussion has stalled, as @Szelma W hasn't been on WP since 4 November. It appears they tend to contribute in small bursts about once a week (although I haven't noticed an obvious day-of-the-week pattern) and it's been two weeks with no edit activity. It's not like they're specifically ignoring me, they just haven't been around in a while. So there's no bad faith, but it's still frustrating for me as the memory of the various number theory pages I was working on at the time fades.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to how to proceed? My only real complaint is the lack of specificity in the original revert (I try to be a lot more encouraging when reverting a good-faith edit), but that wouldn't be a problem if there were subsequent discussion. 97.102.205.224 (talk) 15:25, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

My recommendation would be to ask for additional opinions at one or more of the Project pages listed at the top of the Talk page. Please phrase the request as neutrally as possible (e.g. "Additional options at X would be greatly appreciated."). That way you can form a consensus, and if Szelma is unable or unwilling to chime in, you will at least have the opinions of multiple other editors to work with. Hope this is helpful! DonIago (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

97, I don't think that was an appropriate edit summary for a revert of such magnitude. I see there have been edits at the article since then, which I'm unqualified to assess. There has also been no pointer to the discussion dropped at any of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, Talk:Mersenne prime, nor Talk:Perfect number.

As general advice, it might be an idea to try to make more, smaller edits if you're able: this will make it easier for reviewing editors to figure out what all you're tryna do. In this case maybe one edit to format the tables, one edit to alter the template transclusions, one to copyedit the prose, and one to reogranise the paragraph structure.

This piecemeal approach can also be used as a gradual method for manual reversion of a revert: changes can be incrementally reinstated, taking care to heed any advice for suggested alterations or guidance compliance left by the reverting editor (here none). As above, this will allow reviewing editors to assess each bit of the full contribution on individual merits, and avoids edit warring. Folly Mox (talk) 12:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Searching through redirects

The page Sigma Phi Beta contains #REDIRECT [[Sigma Sigma Omicron]] {{R with possibilities}}

Can someone please explain to me why a search for insource:/Sigma Sigma Omicron/ does not find it?

(My ultimate goal here is to find all Redirects with Possibilities that are Greek Letter Organizations, yes, I know there will be false positives. Still seems better than walking my way through all 24 of he links like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Redirects_with_possibilities?from=Delta Naraht (talk) 16:55, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I think this is an instance of phab:T204089. That has a comment:

As @stjn noticed the behaviour is even inconsistent. An insource search should find a redirect if this contains the search string, but it does not.

An example: There is a redirect Scil in dewiki. None of these searches does find it:

• search for : insource:scil – https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Suche&search=%3A+insource%3Ascil
• search for : insource:"Liste lateinischer Abkürzungen#scil" – https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Suche&search=%3A+insource%3A%22Liste+lateinischer+Abk%C3%BCrzungen%23scil%22

ColinFine (talk) 18:19, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

ColinFine Anytime a question gets a link to an existing phab entry, it means I may have been doing it as well as I can. I'll follow the renewed activity on phab.Naraht (talk) 14:23, 21 November 2024 (UTC)