Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 February 13

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February 13

Citation needed

If a claim has a "citation needed" tag, it should be removed when there is no provided citation. I have observed examples such as, '"the army had 500 men (citation needed)" and others like, "the LDS church is a cult (citation needed)." Are these examples different? I feel that a claim about the LDS church being a cult should be removed if it is not cited, though it might not be as significant as an uncited claim about army size. LuxembourgLover (talk) 01:36, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

LuxembourgLover Well, obviously uncited material should be removed per WP:V. Just like how Template:More citations needed wasn't supposed to be spammed on hundreds of thousands of articles. But due to limited volunteer time, some maintenance categories just aren't paid attention to. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 02:28, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

LuxembourgLover, while the removal of uncited claims is desirable, this should preferable be done by an editor after that editor has made reasonable efforts to find a source to cite, and failed. {The poster formely known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.107.217 (talk) 04:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

If material can be likely be cited, it's better to either leave the tag or to add a citation than to remove the claim entirely. That's what the tag is for. Remsense诉 05:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

David Blackburn (Royal Navy officer)

Citations 7 and 8 are the same - can they be "doubled up" please? Thank you in advance 115.70.23.77 (talk) 01:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Done. In the future, you can do so yourself (see Wikipedia:Named references). Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 02:29, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

No one replied on Talk:Domain name

Why does no one reply my request on that page? It may seem the article is not a trending topic, thus people may have no mood in it. 2001:EE0:4BC4:48A0:A933:B9E2:B059:BDC (talk) 02:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

There is no need to discuss a change prior to making it unless you feel the change would be controversial. Go ahead and edit the article yourself, If someone later objects, they can revert you, and part of one of our normal editing and review processes. See WP:BRD. (BTW, this looks like a good change to me, so thanks!) -Arch dude (talk) 02:25, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a bit of a backlog at CAT:ESP. You just need to be patient. RudolfRed (talk) 04:20, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Editing

How do I find articles to edit? I can't seem to find any problems.  Fewsnake (talk) 02:20, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Fewsnake maybe you can look at Special:Homepage - it can recommend articles needing attention and give you an intro on how to fix problems in articles. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 02:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank You! Fewsnake (talk) 02:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Fewsnake WP:TASKS may be of help. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Using the TimesMachine as an archive link

I'm working on Draft:Banner in the Sky and found a source in The New York Times. You can read the full article on ProQuest, but there is an archive of the newspaper article on the NYT's TimesMachine. I used the ProQuest link for the live URL and the TimesMachine archive as the archive URL. Generally I would only use the Wayback Machine or Archive.Today, which brings me to a few questions. Should I be using both links like that? I figure more people will be able to access the ProQuest article because librarians, students, professors, and Wikipedia editors get free access to ProQuest, which is why I used the ProQuest link. Whereas you have to pay for a subscription to the TimesMachine and it is technically an archive. If I keep it this way what should I put in the archive date field? I put the year and month that the TimesMachine was established, but I have no idea if it was archived at that time or not let alone the day. If I leave out the day it creates a citation error because the date is not properly formatted. TipsyElephant (talk) 03:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Should I be using both links like that? No. Do not misuse citation template parameters.

|archive-url= and |archive-date= are a pair that hold a snapshot of |url= on a specific date. In your example, the TimesMachine url is not a snapshot of the ProQuest url; the TimesMachine date-of-establishment is wholly unrelated to when the article was archived.

You might rewrite that citation like this:

{{Cite news |last=Lent |first=Henry B. |date=September 12, 1954 |title=The Challenge; BANNER IN THE SKY. By James Ramsey Ullman. |id={{proquest|113057091}} |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |page=252 |language=en-US}} Also [https://www.nytimes.com/1954/09/12/archives/the-challenge-banner-in-the-sky-by-james-ramsey-ullman-252-pp.html available from] ''[[TimesMachine]]'' {{subscription required}}

Lent, Henry B. (September 12, 1954). "The Challenge; BANNER IN THE SKY. By James Ramsey Ullman". The New York Times. p. 252. ProQuest 113057091. Also available from TimesMachine (subscription required)

If the quotation is important to the article, put the quotation in the article body and cite it. Quotations require citations; citations do not require quotations.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:03, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Biased Reverting vs. #5Pillars

Dear Help Desk,

Subject: Biased Reverting vs. #5Pillars

I was attacked with a revert for a description being too long. As a WOC Wikpedian, I have intermittently faced this kind of "revert attack" (akin to "dislike attacks on YouTube") when editing articles about Black subjects or living persons and women. I've been an editor since 2007. Active since 2016. Run WikiEdu courses. I'm not perfect. Know I make mistakes. There is no doing without mistakes in my world. But in this case, I was making a video of my editing for my WikiEdu course. It's kind of great to get a revert in action on video. But it's also tiring to have to do this kind of labor to react to microaggressions.

There was one edit among the 6-7 made in one. I have been on a campaign with my students to change "female" to "woman" particularly in hip-hop articles. Had a citation for it from the New Yorker, too. I think this was the trigger for the revert. #therearenorules #bebold

Is there anyway to call attention to this unruly and uncivil behavior? I intend to reach out to the editor on the article's talk page to avoid an edit war. I encountered something similar about 3 weeks ago when editing Leave the World Behind (film) page. Any advice is welcome!

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Latto&diff=1206206628&oldid=1206203689

Kindly, sheridanford (talk) 06:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't look like you were reverted. They didn't remove the word 'women' either. What was done was fixing a broken wikilink, removing the source for the usage of the word 'women' (because it doesn't need one, it's just word choice), removing the provided examples of women rappers, and removing the description of what a black bar over the eyes means. I don't really have an opinion on those last two changes, but I can certainly see how they could be interpreted as unnecessary detail. I am not sure how the edit could be interpreted as any of attacking, microaggressions, or unruly and uncivil, though. Tollens (talk) 07:03, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Tollens. You're right. I overreacted when I noticed the negative bytes and assumed it was reverted. I also thought so because it happened 30 secs after I hit publish and I wasn't finished with my editing. The citation is educational on the woman thing. It's an editorial piece for readers to become more conscious of gender bias in both writing and editing (which I will not in the talk page). Men are not referred to as "males" in encyclopedia contexts unless the subject is biology.

This kind of subtle policing of context, esp. when nuance is being added to reflect the aesthetics of feminist issues for a new hip-hop single and the interpretation of the cover art signifying meaningful content is what I constantly confront around gendered or racialized topics and subjects. People are using rules to lord over people's important contributions to the sum of ALL human knowledge, not some firm notion of rules. What's the point of crowdsourcing if we put process over people in every case?

There description that the "description seems too long" is arbitrary at best or poorly worded. Wish there was more intent to collaborate vs compete with editing.

So given the fact that I, too, am begging for adherance to the pillar "there are no firm rules" about editing, and hoping to feel like my edits are viewed with positive intent, I'll go to the talk page to work this out. Or simply start a page with my WikiEdu course for "Sunday Service" for a deep dive. The upside here: a new story to share with my students. Thanks. sheridanford (talk) 12:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

SheridanFord, when someone reverts (or amends) an edit you've made, it's (usually) because they don't agree with that particular edit, not because they are part of some secret cabal with an agenda.

Reversion is part of the normal Wikipedia editing process called the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. You Boldly made an edit, someone else disagreed with some aspect of it and Reverted it, the next step is for the two of you (and anyone else who cares to join in) to Discuss the matter on their, your or preferably the Article's Talk page and come to a mutually agreed consensus. Wikipedia is a collaborative project.

Please assume other editors' good faith unless you have firm evidence to the contrary. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.107.217 (talk) 08:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Userbox formatting

Hi. I added a lot of userboxes to my user page but they won't format properly with the sub-headings, which end up getting squished into the infobox. Could anyone please look into this issue and fix it? (anyone is free to edit my user page). Thanks! CanonNi (talk) 08:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@CanonNi:  Fixed with a bit of CSS trickery. Tollens (talk) 09:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much! CanonNi (talk) 09:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Yasser Arafat Wikipedia Page

Yasser Arafat Wikipedia Page has a small, but critical typo, that it says he was President of the PLO from the year 1969-2004 instead of 1996-2004. I am currently writing a joint research paper on Palestinian and Israeli History and it was very confusing before I went through rabbit hole after rabbit hole to determine whether or not it was accurate. As you can imagine this distinction sets the time period of his leading the Palestinian nationalist movement as starting years too early. In an era of misinformation (especially around the topics of the Israel-Palestine general region) I am confident that Wikipedia will be able reamin accountable for any misinformation it has few and far between the wealth of factual knowledge it has to offer. I cannot do it myself as I am on a school account and they don't approve of that type of behavior (it's complicated). Thank you very much for reading, I hope to *od you aren't a robot, grateful wikipedia user. 98.210.207.85 (talk) 09:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

You are editing via an IP address- IP addresses are not accounts. Please raise concerns about the Yasser Arafat article on its associated talk page, Talk:Yasser Arafat. 331dot (talk) 09:44, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

It says he was chairman NOT president for that period? Theroadislong (talk) 09:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Help with reversing a REDIRECT

I created a page for Irving Capers Lord this morning. Apparently, I mis-spelled his name in the lede when I first posted it, but as I attempted to correct it, another editor had already created a redirect to "Irvin Capers Lord." I attempted to delete the redirect, but I may have just made more of a mess. COMMONNAME is not in doubt here, but I am not competent with all of the ins and outs of REDIRECT. Help, please! Oldsanfelipe2 (talk) 15:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I now see that I created the article with the wrong spelling. I don't know how I missed this, since the red link read correctly with the mouseover.Oldsanfelipe2 (talk) 15:12, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I am not having a good morning. TSHA gives "Irvin Capers Lord." Platt, a professional historian, gives "Irwin C. Lord." Glenwood Cemetery gives "Irvin Capers Lord." The City of Houston list of mayors gives "I.C. Lord."Oldsanfelipe2 (talk) 15:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I deleted Irving Capers Lord. DMacks (talk) 15:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

WHAT IS A PRODUCER  : PEOPLE WHO MAKE OR GROW GOODS AND PROVIDE SERVICES

peple who grow crops and provide services 41.116.123.145 (talk) 15:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Have you a question about editing Wikipedia? That is what this page is for. ColinFine (talk) 17:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

WHO IS THE OWNER OF MOBICEL

Ridwan Khan 41.116.123.145 (talk) 15:25, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

This page is for help in editing Wikipedia. Somebody may be able to answer your question at the reference desk. ColinFine (talk) 17:14, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

How do I prove that a movie is a documentary?

I added the category of documentary to a movie which we'll say has a controversial topic. It's not incredibly well-known so there's not tons of media coverage on it, just mostly websites scraping data from IMDB which categorizes it as documentary. Someone has said that under WP:BURDEN I need to prove via reliable source that the movie is a documentary. I feel like now I'm cornered because since all known sources have been declared unreliable anything at this point anything would be original research.

For comparison the article for Loose Change, a well known conspiracy film is categorized as a documentary film even though the article's opening paragraph does not call it a documentary. skarz (talk) 16:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Skarz: If there are no reliable sources, then the movie is not notable and should not have an article. -Arch dude (talk) 16:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

There is ongoing discussion at Talk:Hellstorm (film). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Referencing errors on Dev Khanal

Reference help requested. T20 refers to twenty twenty cricket format. How to fix the error?

Thanks, Mkarki12 (talk) 18:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The error is (as it says) that you haven't provided a title (in the title= parameter) for the citations. I don't know why you mentioned T20 : it doesn't appear in the article.

By the way, I know you didn't create the article, but it is seriously lacking in citations which are independent and contain significant coverage of Khanal, and it contains peacock words like "brilliant". If you're working on it, you could look at fixing those problems. ColinFine (talk) 22:22, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Translation of a page from Italian

Hi! I would like to translate into English a page that I created in Italian. i tried with the en:Special:ContentTranslation but I see the message "On the English Wikipedia this tool is limited to extended confirmed editors, and the machine translation component is disabled for all users (see WP:CXT)." Could you please help with that? How can one get the translation component granted? Thank you very much in advance. Miriam Oliodisemini (talk) 19:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Oliodisemini. You can translate the article manually, but please be aware that the translation must comply with English Wikipedia's Policies and guidelines, which are stricter than some other language versions. Please read WP:TRANSLATE, paying attention to the requirements for attribution of the source article. Cullen328 (talk) 20:14, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Using declined drafts elsewhere

If I write a draft article but it is either declined or becomes expired, am I allowed to use wikitext from that draft elsewhere as along as it is my own writing? SuperWikiBrother (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

SuperWikiBrother, the situation is the same as reusing text you have written which has not been deleted, see WP:CRANDO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TSventon (talk • contribs) 20:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Two URLs in a "cite news" template?

The page "Muntz Jet" has two "cite news" templates that each link to two URLs, one in the "url" parameter, and one in the "quote" parameter. I rashly deleted the "quote" links as they were displaying errors, without realising that they were linking to different pages of the referenced newspapers. Is there a neater way to link to two URL parameters in a "cite news" template? Thanks, Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 20:11, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Newspapers.com#Citations across multiple pages/clippings has some good advice on citing multiple pages and linking them. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you! Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 20:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

How to edit (correct) the spelling of the title of an article?

Hi,

I would like to correct the spelling of the title of the article about Khalil Gibran. Now it is spelled as: Kahlil Gibran when it should be: Khalil Gibran.

Thanks in advance for your help. Lagatino (talk) 20:12, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Lagatino and welcome to Wikipedia! In general, Wikipedians refer to that as "moving" a page, to help you find more information about it. I am assuming you're referring to Kahlil Gibran and not Kahlil Gibran (sculptor), so everything forward will be about him. Help:How to move a page has basic information and Wikipedia:Moving a page has more detailed information about how and when to do it. There have been a number of previous WP:Requested moves for that page, so please read Talk:Kahlil Gibran/Archive 1#Requested move 25_June 2016, Talk:Kahlil Gibran/Archive 1#Requested move, and Talk:Kahlil Gibran/Archive 1#Requested move 26 September 2019 before moving forward with any unilateral moves. There's has been a consensus amongst editors that Kahlil is his common name English name and his preferred English spelling of his name, so a new requested move will be unlikely to succeed unless you have new information or argument. Hope this helps and feel free to ask any followup questions. Skynxnex (talk) 20:23, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Lagatino: Do you mean the article Kahlil Gibran, whose firsts paragraph includes the text "usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello Lagatino. On the English Wikipedia, we use the spelling most common in English language reliable sources. All of his books published in English use the "Kahlil" spelling, as does a major book length biography. Please see WP:COMMONNAME. Cullen328 (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Also quite relevant is that when Gibran signed his name in English, he used the "Kahlil" spelling, as can be seen at the bottom of the infobox at the top of the article. Cullen328 (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Why is there no article about the diverse natives of North America?

There are no articles for natives of ohio, california, or others. It's just all of them but without any of the other natives having their own article. I think that wikipedia should add these articles. 98.174.128.75 (talk) 21:44, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

If an article does not exist, it may be just that no one has written it yet. 331dot (talk) 22:00, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Could you be more clear about the scope of the articles you're looking for? Indigenous peoples of California is its own article, as well as many individual groups like the Miwok, Quechan, and Yurok of California, and the Hopewell tradition, Shawnee, and so on from Ohio and surrounding areas. Remsense诉 22:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

IP editor. This is a good example of where a category search can help. If you navigate to an article for something you know exists, like apache, you'll see a list of related categories at the foot of the article. There are also list categories like Category:Lists of indigenous peoples of the Americas from which you should be able to find relevant articles. Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:28, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Trinity Church/Mason Tennessee

I don't know how to send you a picture of the church, but the picture on the Wikipedia page is of the Mason Methodist Church, not Trinity Episcopal Church. JNMT1963 (talk) 21:45, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

If you took the picture yourself, (so that you own the copyright), you may in principle upload it to Wikimedia Commons, and then replace the picture in the Wikipedia article by the new picture. However, your account is to new to upload images: you can either wait until you are autoconfirmed - which will happen in four days, provided you have made ten edits to Wikipedia (so far you've made just this one) and then upload it yourself; or else you can use Files for upload, and waid for somebody else to upload it before you replace it in the article.

However, if the picture is not your own work, then you probably can't use it. See Uploading images. ColinFine (talk) 22:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@JNMT1963: I've removed the image from that article (and other articles which misidentified it), and requested renaming of the file to match the correct name of the church in the image. I'm not able to find a picture of the correct church on Wikimedia Commons to replace it with, though. Assuming you have taken a picture of the building yourself, you can upload it there so that it can be added to the article. Tollens (talk) 22:36, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

How can I cite a book multiple times in one article?

I own a book that I'd like to cite on a page I've been working on, and I'd like to use it multiple times in the article with a different page each time I cite it. Is there a way to make the book only appear once in the references list (which has the {{reflist}} template), while still being able to cite specific pages? so far I just have this in the references section:

{{reflist}}
* {{cite book | ... }}

Theooolone (talk) 23:25, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

You might want to consider using Shortened footnotes. Umimmak (talk) 23:36, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Using shortened footnotes as described in the linked help page would move all the other references in the article (Which are virtually all {{cite web}} templates) into the 'Notes' section rather than the 'References' section which would contain the book source. Is it normal to have the sources split into two different sections like this? Theooolone (talk) 23:45, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Theooolone: You can use a named reference to cite the book multiple times in the article (with nothing in the "page" parameter) and add the template {{rp}} after each instance to give the relevant page number(s). Deor (talk) 00:23, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, will do this! Theooolone (talk) 00:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

You can use {{sfn}} without moving the citations to a separate section. Just cite the book in the established way, then use sfn for successive references. See, for example, Samuel Hole where there are multiple references to pages in Hesketh (2013) all of which link back to the main citation which is in the unfortunately usual Wiki random mish-mash. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)