Wikipedia talk:Teahouse/Archive 27

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Account temporarily compromised but control restored

Hi all. My son has recently been dipping his hand into editing and accidentally made an edit using a device I was logged in with (unbeknownst to me, they'd been asking questions at the Teahouse). I'm really sorry about this but the device is back under my control. I've reverted the edit but is there anything else I should do? I will obviously recluse myself from answering his questions! Cordless Larry (talk) 17:24, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

The edit has now been suppressed by request, which reduces my embarrassment somewhat, though I still feel pretty silly that I allowed this to happen. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:52, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
I suppose I'm biased, but of all the things which could be done with a compromised admin account, asking a (good faith) question at the Teahouse is the best possible one. 😉 199.208.172.35 (talk) 16:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree, this is probably the best outcome that one could hope for in a situation like this. — Mugtheboss (talk) 16:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

INDEX

Why is the Teahouse not indexed by default? Toadette (chat)/(logs) 18:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

@ToadetteEdit It's not something I've really thought about, but, because completed Teahouse discussions get archived after just a few days, I imagine there'd be little point in search engines indexing them. Any links to discussions would soon be redundant. In addition, individual discussion threads appearing outside of the Wikipedia space would probably attract unwanted and irrelevant attention from non-Wikipedia users and end up being disruptive to our work in supporting the needs of active editors. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:14, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
The Teahouse, and the Help desk, are not "part of the encyclopedia". They exist to help with the construction of the encyclopedia. This is also true of user pages, and article talk pages, and drafts, and policy guides. Only actual articles, and disambiguation pages and suchlike, constitute the encyclopedia itself. Maproom (talk) 21:59, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Edit requests

Help at User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable and User:AnomieBOT/EPERTable is appreciated. The amount of unresponded requests is increasing, and these can be nice for new users (autoconfirmed) as well, since most are just minor typo fixes. NotAGenious (talk) 05:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@NotAGenious: I reviewed each request and responded to a few. There are no more minor typo fix requests. GoingBatty (talk) 14:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
There were ~10, but I did most of them last night. My point was that typo fix requests are indeed common. NotAGenious (talk) 14:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Hosts changing their usernames

Just a gentle reminder to all hosts who might in the future change their Usernames to ensure that they also change their entry in our list of hosts, please. New users following links from the 'Meet your hosts' page are liable to be confused if they arrive at a page with a different name. I've just fixed four that needed changing, and it'd be great if editors would think about making this update themselves, as I only ever check the list in detail every 6 months or so. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:07, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Request: Editors Interested in Wikipedia Research Ethics

Hi All. I was directed to this space to find 3-5 editors are interested in joining us and other editors in a remote online workshop to talk about Wikipedia community values and how they interplay with research that is conducted on/with Wikipedia. We're in a bit of a bind with scheduling a synchronous workshop and would really appreciate any help! If this is not the space for this kind of request, I apologize in advance and will promptly remove this post. If you're interested, you can learn more at our Meta Research Page. Leave a comment here or on our talk page and I can reach out with more information. Zentavious (talk) 16:00, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Zentavious. As this page is for the management of the Teahouse help forum, and is likely to be watched by experienced editors who act as 'Hosts' to assist newcomers in issues around editing Wikipedia, I think some of them may well be interested in having an input into your research. So, I suggest your post remains.
However, I think there are other fora where you could more effectively seek input from us.
One of those is to repeat your post at WP:Village pump (miscellaneous) - a place to raise matters that don't neatly fit into our many other specific fora. (It has 2,600 people 'watching' it.)
The other forum, when you want to reach administrators and a suite of very active (and often quite opinionated!) editors, is to post at WP:Administrators' noticeboard. (5,260 watchers).
If you haven't yet seen them, you might wish to read and and follow relevant links at these pages on English Wikipedia:
I hope you might find some of this helpful. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:03, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Nick Moyes, thank you so much for your guidance. I'm familiar with a few of those pages! I will definitely raise this on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous). Cheers, Zentavious (talk) 14:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Recurring questions about "profile"

Both here and at WP:Help Desk there are frequently questions about about a "profile" (or, worse, "my profile") meaning an article about that person (or, worse, themselves). The mere presence of the word "profile" in this context triggers the thought that the enquirer subconsciously thinks that Wikipedia is in the same category as social media services such as Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, etc. and about the person in question promoting themselves and having controls over their "profile" there.

Might it be useful to have a guideline or essay, perhaps WP:Article not Profile, to which such enquirers could be immediately directed, as the first port of call, to learn the background and context of how WP articles and social media profiles are very different?

Feline Hymnic (talk) 21:41, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Feline Hymnic: WP:NOTCV could be a good start in such cases, but I agree a separate guideline may be helpful, too. --CiaPan (talk) 22:38, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
@CiaPan: Oh, I'd overlooked WP:NOTCV. Thanks for the pointer/reminder to it! Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:43, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
@Feline Hymnic @CiaPan: As a point of interest, it probably didn't help that, until mid-2019, Teahouse hosts were still telling people "We don't have profiles here!" whilst our own Teahouse page continued to present "Host Profiles" (diff). We even encouraged 'Guest Profiles' in the early years of the Teahouse, too! (see here). Nick Moyes (talk) 23:52, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
@Nick Moyes: And we also say (correctly) "articles, not pages", implicitly referring to article space. Yet we often use "page" when referring to the (very different) "User:" space! Feline Hymnic (talk) 00:18, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
That is very true! Nick Moyes (talk) 15:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I added "profile" to WP:NOTCV. Cullen328 (talk) 00:22, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd say articles are a subset of pages rather than mutually exclusive. For the sake of avoiding redundant essays, improving NOTCV to address the queries here seems a good solution. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
+1
All Wikipedia articles are pages, but not all Wikipedia pages are articles. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:14, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Indeed. Telling new users "we don't have pages, we have articles" is totally unhelpful. -- asilvering (talk) 16:51, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I hope it would be helpful to emphasize that Wikipedia has encyclopedia articles that are independent of their subjects, not social media profiles. Hopefully people are familiar enough with traditional encyclopedias and social media to understand the difference in such a comparison. GoingBatty (talk) 17:13, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I added shortcut WP:NOTPROFILE. Mathglot (talk) 18:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd thought about that. But thanks for actually doing it! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:52, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I see that @ColinFine: seems to have some useful standard text. Might this be useful to include or abstract?

Hello, <user-name>, and welcome to the Teahouse. I'm afraid you are in the same position as thousands of other people who ask questions here, who register an account, and immediately plunge into one of the most challenging tasks there is: creating a new article. This is like buying a musical instrument you have never played before, and immediately going out busking: you are going to have a frustrating and miserable time. I always advise new editors to spend a few weeks or months learning how Wikipedia works by making improvements to some of our six million articles before they try to create a new article. (They will probably over those months add far more value to Wikipedia than they would by trying to make an article before they are ready). When you think you might be ready to try creating an article, read WP:YFA and especially NCORP (if it is a company). For most companies in the world you will quickly discover that there are not sufficient quality sources to establish notability, and there is no point in trying to create an article about them.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 13:53, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Feline Hymnic. A few years ago I did distil something I often wrote into a template, {{HD/WINI}}, which I still often use. But I haven't distilled the above - so far. Anybody else is welcome to do so.
On the main subject, I see that back in 2012 I started writing an essay User:ColinFine/Wikipedia doesn't have profiles, but I didn't get very far. ColinFine (talk) 14:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
@Feline Hymnic @ColinFine: Hi there! I like your template, but wonder if "busking" is a common enough word for people to understand. Maybe replace it with "performing"? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:06, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Not my template; ColinFine's! Feline Hymnic (talk) 16:25, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
@Feline Hymnic: Apologies for that. Fixed the ping. GoingBatty (talk) 16:29, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I haven't made this into a template so far, GoingBatty. I used to talk about "playing a recital", but I thought that would be too far from many people's experience: everybody knows buskers, but perhaps not the word. ColinFine (talk) 22:45, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I find it useful to say something like this, though as a personal rule I don't use canned responses aside from {{welcometea}} here at the Teahouse. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 18:00, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Me too. I maintain a long page of 'useful' answers that I've written which I feel I might want to use again - but I rarely do, preferring to write a bespoke answer each time to make life more interesting. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:13, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
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