Help desk
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March 5

Delete a page

I created User:MathDame/Sandbox back in 2011 for a new Wikipedian to use. She never used it and was never really active on Wikipedia. Could someone delete the page, or tell me how to do it? Lou Sander (talk) 02:30, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tag it with {{db-g7}} Ppp ery 03:36, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks. Lou Sander (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

dk.wikipedia.org

Why does dk: resolve to da:? Our DK disambiguation page lists "dk" as the country code top-level Internet domain for Denmark, but I'm unaware of other languages' Wikipedias with an alias for a different abbreviation for the home country; for example, "il.wikipedia.org" does not work as an alias for "he.wikipedia.org", and il:x is a link to a nonexistent en:wp page entitled "il:x", not an alternate way to write he:x. Nyttend (talk) 03:49, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That is because they are specifically defined as such in InitialiseSettings.php, variable 'wgLocalInterwikis'. Ruslik_Zero 08:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Nyttend From what I've seen, Wikipedia just uses the first 2 letters of the language name, which for Danish is DA. The language Wikipedias are for different languages rather than different countries, which is why they use language abbreviations rather than country abbreviations I guess. Joseph2302 (talk) 08:33, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You both answered sensible interpretations of my wording, but I was actually meaning something else :-) Do we know why it was decided to have an alias from the country code as well as using the ordinary language code, rather than merely having the language code? Nyttend (talk) 12:10, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably because no language name starts DK so they figured it was sensible? I don't know, maybe if no-one knows here they might know on Meta Wiki- that's where technical decisions like this are often made. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:22, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think the wgLocalInterwikis settting is actually a consequence and not the cause of the alias but you aren't interested in where the setting is made anyway. mw:Release notes/1.17#Language support changes in 1.17 says:

Removed deprecated language code "dk" (Danish), use "da" instead.

That's as far as I got. I guess dk was initially made inappropriately and later it was decided to keep it as an interwiki alias to not break old links. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:56, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Train diagram help

Hello -- there's an error on the Template:LACMTA Regional Connector template, which I've outlined on the template talk page. I've tried to edit it myself but the syntax for these rail diagrams is extremely opaque to me and I can't seem to get it to come out right. Don't know if this is the right place to reach someone who might be more skilled than me with this stuff -- there doesn't seem to be any help desk equivalent in Wikiproject Trains or the like. --Jfruh (talk) 05:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This has now been fixed, thanks! --Jfruh (talk) 21:25, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of applications of near field communication

Hi, the above article leads to Near field communication [nl], which is not the list but the Near field communication article in Dutch (and many other languages). Can this fixed? Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 06:33, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lotje, your question is unclear (at least to me). Could you be clearer please? Thanks (and please ping me when you reply, else I might miss your reply). Lourdes 02:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Lourdes: sorry for the confusion: List of applications of near field communication leads to the Near field communication article in many other languages and not to a list of applications of near field communication. I noticed, in the meantime some good soul (at Wikidata?) has removed the incorrect link to the Dutch article.

Lotje (talk) 05:12, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Usurpation

I have a friend who would like to contribute to Wikipedia, but does not because his preferred username has been taken. I looked into who has taken the name, and found that it was registered on nl:Wikipedia several years ago (I've forgotten how I checked the registration date), and has never made an edit. I posted here asking about how he might be able to usurp it. I was advised to ask at nl:WP. I did so here, over eight weeks ago. No-one has responded.

Can anyone advise on what I should do next? Maproom (talk) 10:53, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maproom, have you seen WP:USURP? Rojomoke (talk) 12:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I hadn't. I have now followed its instructions. Maproom (talk) 15:47, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that WP:USURP is only for users who want to usurp usernames they already control. (I don't even know why anyone would ever want to do that.) I've been referred to m:Template:Usurpation requested/nl instead. I don't know any Dutch, but I'll see what I can make of it. Maproom (talk) 11:02, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Maproom: apologies for bumping into this, but you might wish to visit m:Template:Usurpation requested/en. That might solve your problem with the language. Lotje (talk) 11:26, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No apology needed! That's great advice. It'll save me from using Google to translate the Dutch. Maproom (talk) 11:34, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I see that that page doesn't actually tell me how to use the template; but that's something I can probably cope with after a bit more work. But more seriously, it's about a template informing the user that a request has been made, and says nothing about how to actually make the request. I'm beginning to wonder, is "usurp" the wrong term for what I'm trying to do? Is it right that someone who registers a username on one Wikipedia and never uses it, thereby permanently prevents its use, on all Wikipedias for ever? Maproom (talk) 11:47, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Maproom: Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations#Maproom → Pagat looks like a request to change your own username Maproom to Pagat. k6ka may have thought "I wish to pass control of the account to a friend who would like that username and refuses to use another" meant you wanted your friend to have the name Maproom, and that you already own Pagat and want to transfer Maproom's edit history to that name. WP:USURP is not only for users who want to usurp usernames they already control, but usurpation requests are supposed to be made by the user who wants a name. The normal procedure for a new user is to first create an account with another name and then request the name they want. You apparently want Pagat to be renamed with no other account being renamed to Pagat but an unregistered user creating Pagat after the rename. This would leave a period where the name is unused and anybody could create it. Note that nl:Gebruiker:Pagat is the user page. Posts belong on the user talk page nl:Overleg gebruiker:Pagat. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:59, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: My intention was to get control of the username "Pagat", give its login details to my friend, and recommend him to change its password. As he has no experience of using WP, I thought that I might be able to manage the bureaucracy better than him. It seems I was wrong. I'll give up on this, and ask him to do it himself. Maproom (talk) 12:30, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Maproom: If your friend would like to use the username "Pagat", they should create an account themselves and file a request at m:SRUC asking to have "Pagat" usurped. We strongly discourage users from exchanging passwords, since accounts are expected to belong to one person and one person only throughout their entire life. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 17:06, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

citations

Hello I am Wendy Morgan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Morgan_(actress) - and noticed on the page about me that it needed citations... I have tried to remedy this but not sure if I have succeeded. Can you be of assistance? Many thanks, Wendy Morgan12:32, 5 March 2017 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendy Morgan (talk • contribs)

Hello Wendy Morgan and welcome. That is certainly a start. An article should be based on what is said in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, and most of this article is still not supported by any sources, so some more work is needed. I should note that people are strongly discouraged from editing articles about themselves, because no matter how hard one tries it is impossible to be objective. --Gronk Oz (talk) 14:06, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Hello Wendy Morgan and welcome on Wikipedia. You made this edit which includes three links. There are multiple issues with your attempt, but do not be discouraged, it is still better than doing nothing. Do not worry too much about the technicalities at first - someone will eventually come up and clean afterwards if you missed something.

Technical issues

First of all, you placed the links into the external links section but formatted them as inline references (you should have picked either of the two, not both). From a technical point of view, <ref>...</ref> generates a footnote at the place it is inserted, and a link in the references section at the bottom of the page. As a consequence, your edit created footnotes in the "external links" section, where no prose would justify a footnote, and those footnotes pointing to the reference list just a couple of lines below. I moved the footnotes to relevant parts of the page; whenever possible references should be placed as inline citations, next to the claims they support, rather than as a general reference (which is what the external links section is for).

Also, you used some "citation keys" incorrectly. In <ref>{{cite web|...}}</ref>, it is mandatory to add a title=... key. You used website=... to indicate the URL, when it should go to the url=.... key (the URL is the full address of the page, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_Desk, while the website is the title of the website (not the particular page of that website), such as "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia").

Moreover, you also added a link to IMDB. In addition to similar formatting issues, you apparently failed to notice that the article already contained that link. It is generated by the Wiki-code {{IMDb name|id=0605088|name=Wendy Morgan}}, which gives: Wendy Morgan at IMDb.

While I did not remove it, one of your sources points to the National Theatre online store page for the poster for Martine. Well, that is better than nothing since (presumably) the NT does not sell fake posters; the real source is the poster, not the store, but the store is some guarantee that the poster is authentic. A newspaper review of the play would be better (it need not be available online, or available free of subscription, or easy to access). If you want to improve the article further, you can also find a reliable source for the Evening Standard award and add it next to what is currently footnote #2 (the source for the Olivier award).

Finally, the message complaning about the lack of sources presumably refers to the biographical information containing the date and place of birth. Information relative to living or recently deceased persons is treated with extra care on Wikipedia because of privacy and libel issues (in addition to standard issues such as verifiability). I removed it from the article; please add a non-imdb source mentioning them if you want them re-added (before you ask, we cannot take your word for it, because we have no proof you are indeed Wendy Morgan; see On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 14:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Underwood International College

In the article Underwood International College, there has been arbitrary modifications of the text under the subheading "Controversy" by an anonymous user. Last year, the same part was modified by the college's office's wikipedia account and the account was banned.

It seems like these recent modifications are also made by a Conflict of Interest user as the negative information about the school was removed.

To stop this continuous vandalism in the article, is it possible to allow modifications only for registered users?

Kailliak (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Kailliak. You can request semiprotection at WP:RFPP. --ColinFine (talk) 17:51, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is an infobox mandatory for a page about a person?

Hello, I found a page and it is about a person and does not have one. Is it a mandatory requirement for a page about a person to have one?

No. See WP:INFOBOXUSE. Thincat (talk) 17:43, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Phabricator

Hello! Would somebody like to help me submit a proposal to Phabricator? What I would like to suggest is adding the option "upright" to the editor surface function "embedded file" (for all Wikipedia versions, of course!). I'd be grateful for any help since I'm not familiar to how Phabricator actually works and I admittedly find it a bit confusing for somebody not on the inside – though I do think that the community could in fact benefit from my idea... Hoping for your cooperation, best greetings--Hubon (talk) 17:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Hubon, this link contains the exact steps you need to follow to report at phab. Diy and report back if you face any issue. Thanks. Lourdes 02:37, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

problem with page.

There is a Wikipedia page [stub] about myself that was created by someone no longer a member how do I take over the page? How do I set up verifications to justify the page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmIthen? (talk • contribs) 18:40, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What is the page? --Orange Mike | Talk 22:32, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No-one can "take over" any page on Wikipedia, but if you see some errors on a page, please correct them, as anyone can do. In the case of pages about yourself, you have a WP:Conflict of interest, so it is better to suggest corrections and additions on the talk page of the article, and mention the article here so that an independent editor can make the corrections. Please note that for WP:biographies of living persons, the rules about referencing from reliable sources are particularly strict. I was puzzled by your phrase "no longer a member". Did you mean "no longer an active editor of Wikipedia"? Dbfirs 08:36, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When will ArchiveBot archive my talk page?

A little bit (at 73k bytes) ago I inserted this code onto my TP: {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis | age=2160 | archiveprefix=User talk:L3X1/Archive | numberstart=1 | maxarchsize=72000 | header={{Automatic archive navigator}} | minkeepthreads=4 | minarchthreads=3 | format= %%i }} as my page was nearing maximum usable length. I know have 6 threads past 72k bytes, which should fulfil the | minkeepthreads=4 requirement. When will Archivebot archive the page? Is my code bunk? Or am I too impatient? ThanksL3X1 My Complaint Desk 19:26, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) @L3X1: The bot will never archive your page, as your code is slightly broken. In order for the bot to satisfy minarchthreads=3, it would have to remove three threads from the page. Then, there would be only three, failing minkeepthreads=4. Thus, the bot will not archive until there are seven threads, three of which are old enough. Ppp ery 19:34, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Pppery for your time. I know see why it wasn't working.L3X1 My Complaint Desk 20:07, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually L3X1, I made a second mistake in the above. |maxarchsize=72000 means do not create archive pages greater than 72,000 bytes big, not that it should only count threads past that size. Ppp ery 20:14, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pppery I am confused, what line tells the Bot at what size to archive my talk page? I thought maxarchive meant to wait until my TP was 72K bytes larger, then wait for 7 more thread, and archive the 72k bytes + 3 threads. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 21:53, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The documentation is at User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis. maxarchivesize is the max size of archive pages and not of the page being archived. That is maxkeepbytes but rarely used. Archiving is usually controlled by age or thread number and not size in bytes. Archiving to the same archive page can happen many times until it reaches maxarchivesize. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:04, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@L3X1: Note that I did not get the above ping, as pings only work if you add a now post and do nothing else. Ppp ery 00:06, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Pppery and PrimeHunter for helping me. Sorry about the ping, I never catch the error till it is too late.L3X1 My Complaint Desk 01:08, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the ArchiveTjis page I realised another issues. | age=2160 means that anything that hasn't been replied to in 90 days will be archived, so I had to change that down to a more useful number. I don't see why you can't just tell the bot to archive the page after a certain size.

How to edit hidden category

I am wanting to update some links on a page, but when I click {edit} I see just a page with the topic title (References), followed by a reflist|30em bounded by brackets. Nothing else.

At the bottom of page is a comment that this is a hidden category. Some links in topic are wrong and I have more to add, but I cannot find any way to 'see' the content. I did update my profile to 'show hidden categories', but that doesn't seem to be the solution. Any help is welcome. Thank you. Dskirk (talk) 21:27, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dskirk: Always say which page you want help with. You are forcing us to guess. I guess you are not trying to edit a hidden category or any category but the references in an article. Reference text is usually edited in the article section where the reference is used and not in the references section where it's displayed. You can also click the "Edit" tab at top of the page to edit the whole page. See more at Help:Referencing for beginners. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies for omitting the page in question. It is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bat! Even when I click Edit at top of page the references to not appear. Thank you for the link on referencing, but it doesn't explain how to change or remove existing references. I have done minor edits on Wikipedia for several years, but this is new to me and any guidance on where to locate/change the listed references will be greatly appreciated. Dskirk (talk) 14:38, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The article is The Bat!, the way that the (help) page figures out what is in a link doesn't include the punctuation mark at the end. I see that your comment about Hidden Categories was simply what you had tried. Are you trying to update references in the article or external links?Naraht (talk) 17:32, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My desire is to update References in the article. I can edit the other sections by clicking Edit, but doing that for References just displays the Reflist statement. Any advice on how to locate the reference links themselves for changing will be greatly appreciated. Dskirk (talk) 17:57, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dskirk: The actual citations are in the body of the article text, following the passages they reference (i.e., where the bracketed superscript numerals appear in the article). (The {{reflist}} tag just indicates to the software the place where they should be displayed.) If you want to edit them you have to edit the relevant portions of the article. Deor (talk) 01:49, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you click the "Edit" tab at top of the page then the references do appear. As mentioned, they appear where they are used and not where they are displayed in the rendered article. Your browser may be able to search a string on the current page with Ctrl+F. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:14, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Deor and PrimeHunter. It finally clicked. You're right; I kept looking in the wrong place. Thank you so much for your patience. I learned a lot in this encounter, thanks to you both. Kind Regards. Dskirk (talk) 12:01, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lupton family

I have incorrectly added a periodical to the "Further reading" section of this page. Please fix Thanks so much Srbernadette (talk) 22:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So click edit and delete it yourself. You added it, you can remove it. --Majora (talk) 22:47, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Eagleash (talk) 22:54, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Majora This is a help desk. If you care not to help, feel free to do so. But please refrain from such responses. It helps no one; and sends the wrong message to those who are coming to this desk for the first time seeking help. Thank you, BTW, Eagleash Maineartists (talk) 00:27, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Maineartists: Please don't interpret something that you have no idea about. Especially if you don't know the history. --Majora (talk) 00:29, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, Majora, I know full well; and have plenty of knowledge regarding this editor, alternative IPs, his/her students and the "history". Do not presume. What's more important is how editors respond here at the "Help Desk" for others who may not know - especially newcomers and first-time editors. Other editors have taken heed as of late with their replies and responses (choosing to help rather than leave snide comments), while others have chosen to simply ignore and move along. I would kindly suggest the same for you. Maineartists (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]