Help desk
< September 26	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 28 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

September 27

Communication between contributors

00:17, 5 September 2019‎ 66.214.179.18

On this particular edition, the entire part of my edition was removed.

Before I simply undo the deletion, is there anyway that I could communicate with the person or in this page group to find out why the deletion is necessary? I mean: if it was because my message was inappropriate, I need to know in what sense, and how to revise it. If it is simply due to a geographically political differences perceived by the deletor, s/he can put a paragraph above or below mine to dispute, rather than simply delete other people's contribution. Thank you and best regards, jdeng793 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jdeng793 (talk • contribs) 20:15, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jdeng793: Start a discussion on the article's talk page. You can also leave a message on that user's talk page, but since it is an IP account, there is no knowing if the same person will see it or not. RudolfRed (talk) 20:17, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to find a way to make suggestions and influence policy.

How can I make suggestions and influence policies on Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trusam (talk • contribs) 00:47, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Trusam. The Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) is a good place to start. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:51, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why am I not seeing the "editing toolbar"?

Menu bar that purports to appear when I edit a page. Except that it doesn't.

I have been an editor for 10 years, averaging 1½ edits per day, but I have never created a table. I'd like to give it a try. According to Help:Introduction to tables with Wiki Markup/1, "The easiest way to insert a new table is to use the editing toolbar that appears when you edit a page." The reference is apparently to the toolbar at the left. Despite 5582 edits, I don't think that I have ever seen it before calling up the Help page today. As a novice table-creator, I'd like to follow "the easiest way" but I don't see how I can. Advice, please? Peter Brown (talk) 00:48, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter M. Brown: If you mean you see the first row of icons but not the second one, click "> Advanced" in the first row to make the second row appear. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 01:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have not seen either row before today. From my familiarity with other software, I can guess what some of the symbols mean, but I don't see them anywhere on the page that appears when I click [edit] at the top of an article or section. If I could gain access to these icons, would clicking on X_I let me create subscripts without the need to type <sub> and </sub>? That would be handy. Peter Brown (talk) 03:17, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter M. Brown: Please check in Preferences -> Editing that the checkbox next to "Enable the editing toolbar" is checked. If it isn't, check it and save your prefs.

@Peter M. Brown: forgot to sign. Victor Schmidt (talk) 06:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Victor Schmidt: OK, I can retrieve the "edit toolbar" following your instructions. I can see that it would be useful occasionally. For tables, I dunno — the do-it-yourself instructions seem clearer than those called up by the icon.

Thanks. You can "close" this inquiry, or whatever you do when the person requesting help is satisfied. Have a good day.

Peter Brown (talk) 16:55, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter M. Brown: Note there are some other useful things there, like the magnifying glass that brings up a search/replace dialog that knows how to do regex. Also, the pencil to the left of >Advanced turns on useful syntax coloring in the edit window. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 17:40, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I shall have to study the Regex article; it's rather long.

I assume that you meant to refer to "⌵ Advanced", not ">Advanced".

I do have a question relating to Special:Preferences § mw-prefsection-personal: it says that the answer to "How do you prefer to be described?" will be public. How, as a member of the public, can I obtain this information on an editor? In a talk page discussion involving two or more other editors, I regularly refer to one as "he" while addressing another, but I realize that "she" (or even "they") may be more appropriate. I gather that there is is a way of finding out without changing the subject by asking explicitly?

Peter Brown (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Emojis

Anne Marie Trevelyan Sinophobia Accusation

In this section I want to change to this and inclube emojis as they were part of the texting incident how do I add them as I have tried and it didn't allow me to do so

In May 2020 Labour MP and first British female MP of Chinese decent Sarah Owen crisited Trevelyan for a WhatApp message of a split fortune cookie that says: “You not have coronavirus.” captioned: “Just received my Covid-19 rapid test kit from China. Soooooo relieved!” with a follow up message of "Just for Bob 😉." refering to Conservative MP Bob Seely who repsoned by sending "❤️😊". Owen said “If Anne-Marie Trevelyan doesn’t understand why this sort of humour was left in the 1970s, I would be happy to explain it to her. In recent weeks we’ve seen East Asians spat at, beaten up, verbally attacked and had their businesses targeted. Seely responed to Owen by saying " “It was a well-meaning joke at my expense and I didn’t think anything of it.” refering to Seelys campaign against the Chinces tech company Huawei. Trevelyan has not repsoned to Owen — Preceding unsigned comment added by VictoriousDwarf (talk • contribs)

Place to discuss this would be the article talk page. However, emojis don't render well for some users e.g. those on screen readers, so probably the text is better for accessibility. Joseph2302 (talk) 08:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@VictoriousDwarf: Another alternative would be to replace the emoji with a bracketed description of it, like "[heart emoji] [smiley emoji]". There's probably a way to add the emojis with those descriptions in alt text properties, too (probably described at MOS:ACCESS). I'll note that there are multiple typos in the text you quoted above – it should be edited carefully before use, especially considering the topic area, in which people are likely to mis-construe. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 17:49, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Photo upload

I uploaded a photo but Wikipedia would not allow me to use it for some odd reason, though I am the owner of the photograph.

Anyways, please contact me as soon as possible. I do not want nor think my draft should be deleted either. I am making a historical documentation of the artist X-Calibur via this platform. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Urbanunityproductions (talk • contribs) 06:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: user has been indef blocked. Joseph2302 (talk) 08:09, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Module talk:Excerpt § Denglisch bug

You are invited to join the discussion at Module talk:Excerpt § Denglisch bug. Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 09:49, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

adding a note

I've searched the help sections, but am struggling. I want to add a note to some text I have written. This is subsidiary backup, but not a published reference, so it seems like a note would be a good way to include the data. But although I can see notes on pages, I can't find how to create one. Can anyone help please?

Simon — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stagememories (talk • contribs) 10:59, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This will tell you how to do what I think you want to do. -- Hoary (talk) 12:23, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Stagememories: information in a article that is not cited to reliable sources can be challenged or just deleted at any time by any editor, whether it is in the main text or in a note. -Arch dude (talk) 15:15, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I added the reference as a citation not a note, as the process to add a note was just too complex for me. I don't understand why Wikipedia has to make it so much harder than just adding a citation or link? For the record, I had stated that a designer (W. Heath Robinson) had created a range of illustrations for use on pottery "c.1928". To back this up, I gave a number found on the actual pots, which implies that the design was registered in 1928, and therefore that the range was designed in the same year. I considered that the general reader wouldn't need that level of detail, and that the citation didn't really fit into the same category as a published book or article, as pottery pieces can't be referenced in the same way. This is why a note would have been ideal. But I gave up, and referenced it as a citation anyway. Sure, if someone wants to challenge it that's up to them, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to understand that not all citations are straightforward. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stagememories (talk • contribs) 16:32, 27 September 2020 (UTC) --Stagememories (talk) 16:32, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Stagememories: we tend to accept photographs as being legitimate. If you still have access to these pieces, you can take photos of those marks. If the pieces are on display in a location that is accessible to the general public, It constitutes a "reliable source" even without such a photograph. It really is a citation, not a note. We do not require that citations use our templates. Templates are a convieninece, and when they get in your way, you should just fall back on our general principle of verifiability (i.e., give enough info for someone else to verify your information) which seems to me to be what you are doing here. Please note that my original hostile-sounding response was a generic response to your fairly generic statement that you were referencing a "non-published reference", which is basically a no-no: see WP:OR. I'll take a look at the article and see if I can help: a note attached to the ref may be the way handle this. -Arch dude (talk) 17:53, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I do have a photo of the backstamp on the piece, which could be uploaded, but think it would be a bit too much detail for the page. After all, while the jug I have pictured on the page is pretty, and relevant to the subject of the page, an image of a backstamp would be a littl dull for the general reader, I feel. Of course, if there was a way up uploading the image as a reference, not on the page... I quite understand that you were only sounding a little hostile for very good reasons. Not a problem. --Stagememories (talk) 18:02, 27 September 2020 (UTC)Simon[reply]

Someone I don't know tried logging into my MediaWiki account

I got an email this morning, saying that someone had requested a reset of my MediaWiki password. I never requested this password reset; in fact, I'm not sure that I even know what MediaWiki is. Can someone explain the difference between MediaWiki and WikiMedia? Of the two, I'm only familiar with WikiMedia. Apparently, I do have an account on MediaWiki, but according to the contributions page, I've never used it before. I am very active on Wikipedia though.

The email that I received specified the IP address of whoever requested the password reset, and WP:TRACEIP says that whois.arin.net can be used to determine the owner of an IP account, but I'm not very tech savvy and am not really sure how to use WHOIS. When I go to that website and enter the IP address of whoever requested my password reset, I'm shown five boxes. The first box is titled "Network", the second box is titled "Organization", and the next three boxes are all titled "Point of Contact". All of the boxes except for the one titled "Network" list a location. Not all of these locations are the same. The location listed under "Organization" is also listed under the last "Point of Contact" box, while a separate location is listed under the first and second "Point of Contact" boxes. These two different locations are in different states. Both of the locations for the IP address that I looked up are in the USA, as am I.

Can someone help me better understand what's going on? Why are there two different locations listed across four different boxes for that IP address on WHOIS? And should I be concerned that someone tried to access my MediaWiki account? No one that I know would have had a reason to log into any of my Wiki accounts. --Jpcase (talk) 14:22, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. You've probably opened a help page there regarding wiki-syntax or something, and all the Wikimedia-run sites share the same log-in session. You can safely disregard these emails, they usually appear after you've had a run-in with some long-term abuser who is trying to annoy you, but there is no danger of them gaining access to your account. – Thjarkur (talk) 14:51, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you are worried, you can request two-factor authentication to further protect your account. Ed talk! 14:56, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ed6767: Two-factor authentication is only vaguely familiar to me as a concept, but it seems like lots of other websites are encouraging everyone to use it, so do you know why Wikipedia only grants it on a case-by-case basis? -Jpcase (talk) 00:08, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jpcase: your WHOIS data is simply the response of a WHOIS server. See WHOIS to help decipher the response. -Arch dude (talk) 15:12, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not very good with computers, and there's a lot of technical information in the WHOIS article that would take a long time for me to grasp.

Is someone able to either explain very quickly the difference between the two different locations listed by WHOIS for the IP account or point me to the specific section of the WHOIS article that explains this? I can't think of any nefarious reason for why someone would have tried to hack me, but I'm still curious whether or not the password-change request came from an area where I actually know people or if it simply originated with some random stranger. Thanks! --Jpcase (talk) 16:19, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jpcase:Please provide the IP address. Otherwise, this is just too abstract. You have no moral obligation to that IP user to keep it private. -Arch dude (talk) 16:23, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need to share the IP address with us (since it might be yourself!). But you can go to https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup, it will give you the city. I think you've been looking at the information of the ISP company who owns the IP, rather than geolocation. – Thjarkur (talk) 16:44, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Pjarkur: Ah, thanks! I just double-checked the results on WHOIS and realized that I made a mistake - at first, I thought that there were two different locations listed across the four boxes, but now I'm realizing that there are actually four different locations listed. The first box doesn't list any location, but each of the subsequent four boxes lists its own unique city.

The reason I got confused is because the four cities are evenly divided between two different states. The city listed on whatismyipaddress.com is a completely different fifth city but appears to be very close to the city that WHOIS lists under the "Organization" box. Two of the cities listed on WHOIS are close-ish to me, but the city listed on whatismyipaddress.com is in a completely different part of the country from me. So if the whatismyipaddress.com IP address is the location of the person who tried accessing my account, then there's essentially zero chance that it's anyone I've ever met. Would there still be any benefit to providing the IP address here, or should I just ignore all of this going forward? --Jpcase (talk) 17:18, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just ignore, there's very little one can do about this. – Thjarkur (talk) 17:37, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Pjarkur: @Arch dude: I just noticed a notification from two hours ago showing that someone thanked me for creating this conversation. Which wouldn't be particularly strange, except that when I click on the profile name for the person who thanked me, I'm shown that the profile doesn't actually exist. So as far as I can tell, it seems like someone created a Wikipedia account specifically to "thank" me for my edit and then immediately deleted their account. Is there anything I can do about this? I have to wonder whether the person who clicked the "thank" button for my edit is the same person who tried accessing my account this morning. --Jpcase (talk) 19:30, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(The account in question in Willy Nice, the account still exists but hasn't made any edits). Yes it's just someone trolling you, nothing to do but ignore. – Thjarkur (talk) 21:21, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Þjarkur: Yes, that's the account name. How did you know? I didn't realize it was possible to see another person's notifications on Wikipedia. I realize that I should probably just ignore this, but I'm very confused about who this person is. I don't know anyone who would have any reason to troll me. --Jpcase (talk) 22:34, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see your notifications, but thanking someone appears in the logs, see here – Thjarkur (talk) 22:35, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How can I add about myself

How can I add about myself and about my whole family. For Example like : Birla Family (Already exist in Wiki). I wanna add similar contents for my Family i.e Sharma Family — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mohitsharma143 (talk • contribs) 15:37, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's not possible to do here on Wikipedia (unless entire books have been written about the Sharma family). You could instead create your own website (tools such as Wix.com are popular) and post content there. – Thjarkur (talk) 15:50, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Searching

How do you search a video by uploading it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by KESHA69 (talk • contribs) 19:36, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, KESHA69, your question doesn't make any sense to me (and I suspect that others have had difficulty too, or somebody would have answered). Please explain what you are trying to do in Wikipedia that you need help with. --ColinFine (talk) 09:05, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How do I create my own website?

How do I create my own website? — Preceding unsigned comment added by KESHA69 (talk • contribs) 19:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

KESHA69 This is not a general help desk. 331dot (talk) 19:47, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean a Wikipedia user page? I see you haven't created one of those yet. If you want to do so, start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_pages It's quite easy - and fun! Regards, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]