Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 November 24

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November 24

Please remind me—how should I deal with an anonymous reversion of an edit of mine?

Greetings and felicitations. An edit of mine was reverted by a MAC-address user. How do I deal with this, please? —DocWatson42 (talk) 05:02, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

I see that you posted about this on the article talk page on 1 November to look for consensus, which would have been my first suggestion. It would be helpful to explain the reason for the edit on the talk page, was your edit a manual of style correction? TSventon (talk) 05:33, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

On the talk page, you should cite Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Dashes, which explicitly recommens "An em dash is unspaced on both sides". Maproom (talk) 09:06, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, please be aware that it was reverted by an IPv6 user, not a MAC address, they look similar but are indeed different things. TiggerJay (talk) 20:35, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

TSventon; Maproom: I included that in my edit summary, with the link. Is that not enough? Tiggerjay: Thank you. ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 08:39, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Edit: Apparently I forgot to subscribe to this section. Also: Corrected Tiggerjay's username. —DocWatson42 (talk) 08:41, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I would be happy to donate by check, but do not use electronic methods of payment. Please let me know how to donate. My email address is <redacted>. Thank you.

I would be happy to donate by check, but do not use electronic methods of payment. Please let me know how to donate. My email address is <redacted>. Thank you. 208.254.116.194 (talk) 06:04, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

See donate:Donate by mail. But do note that the Wikimedia Foundation generally has more than enough money. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 06:12, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Template:Antisemitism sidebar

Can we get a few eyes over at Template talk:Antisemitism sidebar#People section (Nov 2024) Moxy🍁 07:18, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Appears to be well at hand. Does it need EC protection? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 17:47, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Citation template

It seems that the preferred way of referencing has changed over time. For instance, I started up earlier this year the WP article titled, "American Junior Red Cross." I used the old referencing method. What is the purpose of inserting retrieval dates? They serve no purpose when links go to depositories like HathiTrust. The content in printed newspapers and magazines can't be updated. Is the current citation template now preferred in all instances? Should my references at "American Junior Red Cross" be rewritten? (The only reference there using the standard template is not mine.) Thanks. JimPercy (talk) 14:14, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

JimPercy, |access-date= is entirely unnecessary cruft when applied to print sources. Not only are you not required to add it, but you can remove it or comment it out from citations to print sources if you prefer. It tends to get added to everything by scripts that don't know any better. Folly Mox (talk) 17:08, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Relevant discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 91 § Do we need |access-date ? (November 2023). Folly Mox (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

There is guidance on changing citation styles at WP:CITEVAR, which starts by saying Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style, merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles, without first seeking consensus for the change. TSventon (talk) 17:26, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for both replies. I know that an article's citation style should not be altered. But some people might still think that modernization is in order. That discussion page was interesting. I will have to go over the different thoughts again later. Someone said something about how there should be a template that automatically deletes access dates for magazines and newspapers. JimPercy (talk) 21:45, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Struggling with merging and moving articles in relation to the Emily Prentiss article.

I have been struggling with merging and moving the Emily Prentiss article. I have a draft for Emily Prentiss (a Criminal Minds character) that I'd like to move to mainspace, but the only way I know how to do that would be to copy and paste the content onto the current page for Emily Prentiss, which serves as a redirect to the List of Criminal Minds characters. However, I think I might have accidentally messed that up, and now I'm confused on what to do.

Here are the links to the articles in question if someone can help:

List of Criminal Minds characters

Emily Prentiss

Emily Prentiss (Criminal Minds)

Draft:Emily Prentiss DocZach (talk) 17:20, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @DocZach. I'm not seeing why this character meets Wikipedia's criteria for notability; but if you think she does, the way to proceed to move a draft over a redirect is to post a request at WP:RM/T. ColinFine (talk) 17:37, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Retain or remove citation indicators in quoted text?

Example article text:

There are "two ways to go about this¹ that deserve consideration",¹ one of them "far more preferable for enlightenment purposes (Gergen, 1990) than the other low-information approach."²

The direct quotes from two cited sources each use different citation indicator styles, one with superscripts the other with parentheses.

My question is, for readability, can I remove one or both of the citation indicators, ie: ¹, (Gergen, 1990)?

Thanks! Tsavage (talk) 19:54, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

@Tsavage, it looks like the the parenthetical reference is part of the quoted material rather than a citation in Wikipedia, while the numbers are for Wikipedia citations. It might help to know what article this is from to see the context. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:34, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. There's no particular context, it's a general question, with a made-up example. I'm referring to citations as they appear in quoted material, not citations created in Wikipedia.

My understanding right now (which could be wrong), is that superscript and parentheses are equivalent citation styles, both intended for exactly the same purpose of pointing to a footnoted source; although the parenthetical style provides extra information (eg: author, year), that is not intentional, it's not meant to add to the text. Tsavage (talk) 22:08, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

This wouldn't be the correct place to ask a question for things that are outside of Wikipedia. But if you were thinking about bringing a quotation into Wikipedia, then inline citations that are part of the quote itself, such as Gergen above, could be kept as they are the quoted source materials reference. However the superscript reference would be replaced with a natural wikipedia based reference tag. TiggerJay (talk) 22:36, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

|| the superscript reference would be replaced with a natural wikipedia based reference tag

If the source text uses citations in the superscript number style, are you suggesting that I recreate those citations in the quoted material in Wikipedia?

All I'm asking is whether it is accepted practice to remove the citation indicators, regardless of what style they're in, when quoting material in the text of a Wikipedia article? Tsavage (talk) 01:26, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@Tsavage, I think the answer is likely to depend on the details of a particular article, so it would be better to come back with a real example if you find one. Wikipedia only uses Brief quotations of copyrighted text, see Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text, so putting the content into your own words may be preferable. TSventon (talk) 04:46, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. There's no "real example", I'm trying to find out if there's a Wikipedia convention for this situation. I think the general, or at least safest, answer is to preserve citation indicators in quoted text, in order to fully represent the source. Which is what I'll do! Tsavage (talk) 11:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@Tsavage, I agree that preserving citation indicators is safest. The question is somewhat obscure, so you could try the WP:MOS talk page when you have a real example. TSventon (talk) 11:25, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Searching Wikipedia with Regex with Capture?

I have a more complicated use case, but I'm wondering whether any of the message of searching Wikipedia would allow for searching *with* capture, so for example if I'd like to find pages where AAA Pan BBB Pan CCC would be found because it is Pan in both places, but *not* AAA Pan BBB Pot CCC because Pan and Pot are different.

(Actual use case, looking for pages with entries like [[Omega Psi Phi|Omega Psi Phi fraternity]] so regex would be /\[\[[A-Z][a-z]* [A-Z][a-z]* [A-Z][a-z]*\|\1 / ) Is Cirrus my only option (or would even *that* allow it)

Naraht (talk) 22:56, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Cirrus doesn't support it, no - its regex engine is frustratingly impractical for anything even a little more complex than toy examples. And I'm not aware of any other way to search wikitext without expending a huge amount of effort, namely, downloading a dump of mainspace, either importing it into a sql engine or parsing it yourself or with WP:AWB, and searching that. —Cryptic 23:25, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Request a query. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:25, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Would tell you to come back here or WP:VPT. "Quarry does not have access to page content, so queries which require checking wikitext cannot be answered with Quarry." We'd be able to see pages with links to Omega Psi Phi, but not the text it's piped to, or even that it's piped. —Cryptic 07:58, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@Naraht: See Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#AutoWikiBrowser_and_searching_for_pages_with_capture_regex. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:21, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

HelpedNaraht (talk) 13:52, 25 November 2024 (UTC)