Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 May 11

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May 11

User page guidelines: Interwiki links

I have a question regarding if it would be appropriate to use Interwiki links on a user page to link to a user page on a wiki outside of the Wikimedia project that is owned and controlled by the same person. The purpose being would to be to establish a direct connection between those accounts to show a unified presence of the same person across multiple wiki projects and websites. Usage would be a simple link on the page under the heading "Other wiki's I've contributed to" or potentially as a userbox.
I've been reading over both WP:UPYES and WP:UP#NOT but haven't been able to find any specific mention of this. While my first thought is that there shouldn't be a problem with this especially when it is aligned with "the goal to help bring the different wiki's together" (according to what is written in Interwiki links), I wanted to ask and make sure that there wasn't something I was missing (such as it breaking self-promotion guidelines), as it does still count as content unrelated to Wikipedia. Dave247 (talk) 00:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Page still shows "official website" field in infobox even though it isn't explicitly on the page

The page for Source Interlink still has an Official Website entry in its infobox even though there's no explicit reference to this entry on the page. The URL itself now redirects to a suspicious site and should be removed, but I don't know where the page is retrieving this information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dglasser (talk • contribs) 01:09, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I just went into the article and added website = and added nothing after it for the time being so it doesn’t fetch the website from the database. The redirect on their website is the companies issue that they need to resolve. Galendalia _{CVU Member} \ ^{Chat Me Up} 01:18, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Dglasser: The URL was coming from the associated Wikidata item at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28225929 I removed the URL from there and added an archived version of the URL in the External links section of Source Interlink article. GoingBatty (talk) 01:22, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Hunger strikers in notable deaths article

A couple of members of the Turkish band Grup Yorum have recently died following a hunger strike as a protest against their harassment by the Turkish authorities. The current description in the Deaths in 2020 article is "suicide by starvation", which seems unfair to me as it ignores the political protest aspect of their deaths. These are not common garden OD on barbiturates type suicides. "Starvation following hunger strike" seems more neutral to me. Is there any wikipedia guideline covering the reporting deaths following hunger strikes? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:35, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@MaxBrowne2: For suggestions to improve the Deaths in 2020 article, I recommend you discuss them with the editors at the article talk page: Talk:Deaths in 2020. GoingBatty (talk) 02:43, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm thinking in terms of existing guidelines. Do we have any? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:45, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@MaxBrowne2: I hope the editors who frequently work with recent deaths could explain the guidelines at Talk:Deaths in 2020. GoingBatty (talk) 03:10, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

question re groups contact methods

I am looking into the steps for creating and disseminating a newsletter, i.e. to a group of subscribers who have signed up to receive it. I have not been able to find any instructions, information, or articles, that provide information on the steps to do so, or the technical resources that are used to send out a mass newsletter. could you please let me know how I would do this process, and get this set up? Please ping me when you reply. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 05:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Sm8900: See Wikipedia:Mass message senders. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:28, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Infobox after the lead paragraph on mobile

Hello! I was wondering how I can put the Infobox after the lead paragraph on mobile devices without changing the way it looks on the desktop version. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lara Vichnezka (talk • contribs) 06:18, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Lara Vichnezka: It should usually happen automatically for mainspace articles. I don't think there is any code for it. If it's about Draft:Liza Rachenko then just wait and see if it happens if the article is submitted and accepted. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:25, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

materialscientist (talk · contribs) Removed my corrections to the Komal Rao Article

materialscientist (talk · contribs) removed my corrections to the Komal Rao article. Additionally, I would like to draw attention to the articles for Komal Rao, Seema Rao, and Deepak Rao and request that they be deleted for lack of notability. As we saw with the Deepak Rao article, the vast majority of the claims made in these articles appear to be entirely fabricated and supported only by primary sources or unreliable links. You may also look at the talk pages for Seema Rao and Komal Rao for some more rationalle on why some of these claims are provably false. As living people, none of these articles should meet the notability requirement and should be removed. If they are kept, they need to be reduced and corrected leaving only verifiable information.

V/R BasicsOnly (talk) 07:40, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

• UPDATE: the Komal Rao page was deleted by materialscientist (talk · contribs), but the Seema Rao and Deepak Rao articles still need review. Thank you.

V/R BasicsOnly (talk) 07:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@BasicsOnly: You can initiate the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion for these articles, or post on the article talk pages: Talk:Seema Rao and Talk:Deepak Rao. GoingBatty (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Hella Brock

For some reason I can't create this page in the main, I'm always redirected to the draft. Can someone pease help me out ? LouisAlain (talk) 08:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@LouisAlain: Hella Brock redirects to Draft:Hella Brock after you moved it. You can move it the other way (only possible for non-admins when the only edit in the page history is the redirect). You can also click "(Redirected from Hella Brock)" at the top of Hella Brock and replace the redirect with an article. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:15, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Well it worked! thanks. LouisAlain (talk) 09:23, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Deletion of my draft Draft:City of Mist

I would like to request the deletion of my draft for the page Draft:City of Mist. Unfortunately, no matter how much I tried to address the issues presented by reviewers, they simply won't look past my involvement with the subject matter and judge what I've written objectively, which would show my draft is comparable to any other Tabletop RPG entry in Wikipedia.

Rather than waste time in further discussions, I'd like to clear the path for other Wikipedia users who may want to write about the game in the future. So, I want to ask to have the draft deleted. How can I do that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by McDaire (talk • contribs) 09:42, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

McDaire I have deleted it as an author request. In the future, you can tag a page you created and would like deleted with {{db-g7}} 331dot (talk) 09:48, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error references no text

These two references were cited with the following: "Cite error: The named reference Sets was invoked but never defined" and "Cite error: The named reference Abodes was invoked but never defined". Here are the references. Can anyone please help me correct this. I'm learning!:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dandemocrat (talk • contribs) 2020-05-11T13:09:08 (UTC)

Hello, Dandemocrat. You had those references defined after the {{reflist}} template: that's too late. I've moved it down below them. --ColinFine (talk) 12:57, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

References

How to deal with an SPA

Hello, I recently encountered an SPA. I warned them regarding promotional edits using Twinkle, but I'm not sure if that was appropriate. What would be the best message to use? Also, should we report SPAs to admins as we do with Sockpuppets? If yes, where to report such users? Lightbluerain (talk) 12:17, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Lightbluerain: There's some info at the page you linked Wikipedia:Single-purpose account#Handling and advice. SPAs are not automatically bad - it's what they do with their edits that may be problematic. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:52, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. Lightbluerain (talk) 08:00, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia

How can I write a Wikipedia page about a person or new up and coming musical talent? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teenaserious (talk • contribs) 12:54, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Teenaserious "Up and coming musical talent" rarely, if ever, merits a Wikipedia article. A person must have 'already arrived', so to speak. This is because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and as an encyclopedia Wikipedia summarizes what independent reliable sources with significant coverage say about a musician, showing how they meet Wikipedia's special definition of a notable musician(please review). A musician must generally already be established in their careers to meet any of the criteria.

Succeeding at writing a new article is the absolute hardest thing to do on Wikipedia. New users are more successful when they first spend much time editing existing articles in areas that interest them, to get a feel for how Wikipedia operates and what is expected of article content. It's also good to use the new user tutorial and review Your First Article. When you feel you are ready, or even if you want to attempt to write an article despite this cautioning, you should use Articles for Creation to create and submit a draft for review by another editor, before it is formally placed in the encyclopedia. This way you find out any problems first. 331dot (talk) 13:01, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

We even have an entire essay on this specific topic: WP:UPANDCOMING. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:32, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Teenaserious: Please read WP:AMOUNT. First, you must establish notability. To do this, work with the new talent until the new talent has been noticed by multiple independent reliable sources. After that has happened, come back here and we can provide further guidance. -Arch dude (talk) 15:40, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Souness#Rangers_2

To whom it may concern,

The article cited in the Subject/headline is inaccurate, in particular the part referring to the signing policy of Rangers FC in the years before the signing of Mo Johnston. There was no policy preventing Rangers signing players of Catholic upbringing and there is a list of known Catholic players to have signed for Rangers FC prior to either Mo Johnston signing or Graeme Souness becoming mananger of Rangers FC. The following is just a snippet of the list:

Catholics who signed for Rangers before Johnston include, before the end of World War I: Pat Lafferty (1886), Tom Dunbar (1891–1892), J Tutty (1899–1900), Archie Kyle (1904–1908), Willie Kivlichan (1906–1907), Colin Mainds (1906–1907), Tom Murray (1907–1908), William Brown (1912), Joe Donnachie (circa.1914–1918) and John Jackson (1917). Thereafter, Catholic players before Mo Johnston's signing include: Laurie Blyth (1951–1952), Don Kitchenbrand (1955–1956), Hugh O'Neill (1976), John Spencer (1985–1992) (Bill Murray, The Old Firm – Sectarianism, Sport and Society in Scotland (John Donald Publishers, 1984) pp 64–5

Just a tertiary Google search and 30-60 minutes of research would have shown this to the original author of this article and any that tell the same story.

I would edit this article and indeed any article that makes this accusation but this is a lie that has been propagated by supporters of a certain other football club for as long as I've been alive (38 years) and it would be pointless to do so because said supporters would re-edit them to include these lies, so it seems like a waste of time for a user to do this.

Please amend these articles or send this information to someone who can or will.

Your Sincerely — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sshteve (talk • contribs) 13:18, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

If you wish to suggest changes to the article Graeme Souness, the place to do it is at Talk:Graeme Souness, supporting your proposal with references to published reliable sources. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:33, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there a tool to rename references?

Usually with news events, there is a lot of people that edit frequently adding new references and restating old ones. So when one edits, you see a lot of reference names that are just <ref name=":1"/>, <ref name=":2"/> and so on in the code. Furthermore copying paragraphs from related articles brings conflicting ":#" for several different sources. I wanted to ask if there is a tool or feature of Wikipedia that helps to quickly rename all those ref names.--ReyHahn (talk) 13:30, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@ReyHahn: Have a look at User:Kaniivel/Reference_Organizer and see if that is what you had in mind. - X201 (talk) 15:27, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error references no text

Receiving:The named reference $1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page). How do I define the reference. I've included the website address and name of contributor, plus IDs of gravesite and contributor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GregoriusL (talk • contribs) 14:33, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Are you referring to some edit which you did not save? If there was an error message, were the words "help page" in blue? If so, they would have been a wikilink to a page to give more details of the specific type of error which you included. --David Biddulph (talk) 15:02, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@GregoriusL: "help page" should link to Help:Cite errors/Cite error references no text but it may be difficult for new users. If you save the edit then we can see the code and fix it. If saving leaves an article in a bad state then you can revert the edit before posting here. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:44, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Preview appearance

Hi, a few days ago the look of the page changed when I click on "prev" in the page history. The side-by-side panels used to be in a more condensed and easy to read font; now they are in Courier and very light. How do I change it back? Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Yoninah: please see Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 May 6#Change the typeface when viewing different revisions of an article Victor Schmidt (talk) 17:45, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

That worked! Thank you! Yoninah (talk) 19:18, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

History of Parliamentary Select Committees

The system of Parliamentary Select Committees was set up in its modern form by Norman St.John Stevas MP, then Leader of the Commons in Margaret Thatcher's first Cabinet. The idea had originally been mooted nine years earlier by members of the Heath Government who regarded the old Estimates Committee structure as too weak and wanted a new generation of strong committees with powers to question policy in its place. Tis was seen as a necessary part of the New Style of Government which Heath's aides sought to introduce. The idea was at first resisted and instead Parliament agreed to a system of Expenditure Committees which would at least have to power to challenge departmental budgets. But by the mid-1970s that, too, was seen as insufficient and the full new Select Committee system was agreed. With the change of Government in 1979 it was duly introduced and has grown from that point. The case for still stronger power for these committees, as the truly effective instruments of scrutiny and holding Ministers to account in modern conditions , is now being increasingly advanced in the age of digital communication and public empowerment . David Howell (Lord Howell of Guildford),Member of the original Heath team, author of 'A New Style of Government' 1970 and former chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 1987-97 and the Lords International Relations Committee 2016-2019. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:99BE:2D00:283E:3C53:EB07:2EED (talk) 17:51, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

If you have a suggestion for improving an article (maybe the Select committee (United Kingdom) article?), the place to do that is the article's talk page (e.g. Talk:Select committee (United Kingdom)). Please describe your suggestion in a clear way (e.g. change x to y), and you provide a reliable source to support your suggestion. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 18:06, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Artist webpages

Hi, I'm asking for authorization as a writer to use and change the websites on the good article webpages. Att. Dr. David Ferreira — Preceding unsigned comment added by FerreiradeBoyz (talk • contribs) 19:25, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@FerreiradeBoyz: If you're asking for permission to read and edit Wikipedia articles, you don't need "authorization". Some articles may be protected to prevent vandalism - see Wikipedia:Protection policy for more information. If that doesn't address your post, could you please restate it? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 19:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@FerreiradeBoyz: I added a basic "welcome" note to your talk page. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit: you do not in general need anyone's permission. We operate by consensus, so learning a little about our policies and guidelines will allow you to quickly become a productive editor. -Arch dude (talk) 22:47, 11 May 2020 (UTC)