Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1044

Hello!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Consulting_Group

I think this page could be more informative with inclusion of clients, such as the relationship to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman : ^[1]

and promoting a private college network liquidated for fraud: ^[2]

^[3]

or a Controversies section similar to the McKinsey page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company

Any thoughts on how to add or appropriateness? Thanks so much!

Jennifaohjenny (talk) 04:22, 14 January 2020 (UTC)Jennifer

Hello Jennifaohjenny, it looks like the material you have would be appropriate for a Controversies section. Be bold and add it to the article.--Quisqualis (talk) 06:01, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi. I created a page, Jean-Sim Ashman, and it was not accepted. I’m having a hard time creating the page so that it meets Wikipedia’s guidelines. Can someone help me? I was told that the sources were not independent but I believe they are. These are sources about the author and I didn’t get the information from the author’s personal website. These sources are publications.

Any help would be great! Thanks!

Here is the page

Draft:Jean-Sim_Ashman

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jl1121 (talk • contribs) 02:07, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the Teahouse, Jl1121. Reading the rationale for why your short article was declined, it's not so much about the quality of the sources, it's about a failure of any of those sources to demonstrate how that person meets Wikipedia's criteria for notability. None of the sources you have used show that the world at large (i.e. independent sources) has written about her in depth. They are mostly personal interviews, book cover notes and IMDB entries, which are not sufficient, and not independent. If they were, I would have a page here about myself as I, too, am a published author. You will need to find much better sources if you stand any hope of putting such a page on Wikipedia. See also this Wikipedia criteria for notability of creative people. I recommend you read this essay (shortcut: WP:TOOSOON) as it's something that gives people like me a glimmer of hope that one day, maybe one day we might be notable enough at some point in the future. But I'm not counting my chickens!) Sorry this isn't what you want to hear. (Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four keyboard tildes like this: ~~~~.) Nick Moyes (talk) 02:32, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Jl1121. You also need to note that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with articles, and not a directory or social media with "pages".--Quisqualis (talk) 06:40, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Ok let’s start over. Hi I’m trying to add to the mcu short film section that Peter’s to do list is a short film because it was said so in the dvd release of far from home but no one is adding that it’s a short film when it is. There should be a section for it on the short film page and the main mcu page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:1107:C401:74D2:7626:A9B8:977F (talk) 06:29, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Why doesn't the site provide the 'Match Results' and actual 'Scores' for each olympic and world championship match for each US wrestler similar to what was provided for Dan Gable? Thanks for your help and opportunity to improve the site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WJCRAWFORD12 (talk • contribs) 05:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

WJCRAWFORD12, Howdy hello, and welcome to the Teahouse. Ideally we would have match results and scores for every wrestler, but some articles just haven't had someone add them yet. Wikipedia is an all volunteer effort, and unless someone takes it upon themself to make that change, it won't happen. If you'd like to add those missing statistics to wrestler's pages, we can help you figure out how to do that. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 05:54, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

OTOH, Wikipedia is not a collection of unexplained statistics (WP:NOTSTATS). I don't know what the point is of duplicating scores and other statistical information that is available elsewhere. Such information is always stale to some extent, especially when whoever maintains it stops doing so for whatever reason. It's usually uncited and undated (i.e., not easily verified), and so is an easy target for vandals. It seems like an external link to a reliable site, like whatever the governing body is, is a much better solution. Now, if reliable sources provide insightful analysis about the stats that we can write about, and including some raw data relevant to that is useful, fine. Otherwise, all I think it does is reduce the overall quality of the encyclopedia. IMO. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:43, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Friends, i know it is a silly question i am asking but i am curious about adding Barnstar on someone's profile. I want to know how to add a barnstar? DMySon (talk) 06:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Just find one you like from somewhere else, copy/paste, edit the captions and sentences to your liking and you're done! Happy barnstarring! -- a lad insane (Channel 2) 06:46, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

DMySon, You may find a fairly complete catalogue of available barnstars at WP:BARN. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 07:31, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you User:CaptainEek, Now i understand clearly how to add barnstar. DMySon (talk) 08:17, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Is my account eligible for New Page Reviewer?DMySon (talk) 09:47, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the Teahouse, DMySon. If you are seeking the 'right' to participate as a New Page Patroller, you would need to make a request at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/New page reviewer. The team there will look at your experience thus far, but I should advise that this is a responsible area of our work that does require a lot of experience and understanding of our policies, and is not granted lightly. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

My Dear friend User:Nick Moyes, Thank you for your suggestion.DMySon (talk) 10:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I am a trying to make an wikipage but was wondering how I could make the info block on the right site of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RavianW (talk • contribs) 10:11, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the Teahouse, RavianW. The block is called an Infobox. You can read all about it at WP:INFOBOX. Different Infobox templates can be used to create Infoboxes on differing topics. Thus, the fields (parameters) offered in {{Infobox person}} will be very different from those in {{Infobox mountain}}. One trick is to find a very closely related page, open the article in WP:Source Editor and copy the template at the top of the page into your sandbox and work on changing all the elements before inserting it into your article. Be aware that there might be varying views on whether or not an Infobox is appropriate for a particular page, so a check of its Talk page is often not a bad idea to see if there has been any prior discussion. Hoping this helps, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:29, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what this "...working in mobile view or with our Visual Editor." means. Can someone explain this to me? Gracias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marion Woynar de Guillen Rafael (talk • contribs) 11:20, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

NB this question was originally posted as part of what appeared to be purely promotional content and section header. I am not sure if the question is genuine but, assuming it is, I have let the question stand while removing everything else. Hug^syrup 11:22, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Marion Woynar de Guillen Rafael: Please provide a link or url to the page where you saw that phrase. It is easy to explain, but I am not confident yours is a genuine question that I need to answer. Your replying with that link will show me it is. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:54, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Good day,

I have created this article Draft:Carbon monoxide antidote «Acyzol®», and as far as I understood I should have sent it for review to administrator/moderators.(maybe I got it in a wrong way). The article was deleted as a Blatant copyright violation as I do realy copy-paste some items from www.acyzol.com with links to it, as I administrate it (site belongs to our company) I did not mention about it in the article. The article is ONLY about Carbon monoxide acute poisoning antidote «Acyzol®». Antidote the only one in the world. We want people to know about it. I want to allow Wikipedia and its users to use the texts or imagse — which means allowing other people to use it for any reason to full extent. After deletion I requested restoration. It was restored but not in full. The question is how to restore it in full? To continue editing...

Best regards, Sergacy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sergacy (talk • contribs) 10:24, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sergacy: if content is missing from the draft then the best bet is to speak to the deleting and/or restoring administrators. However note that if it was deleted for copyright violation, it is very likely that some of the edits will have been deleted entirely as copyright violations and these will not be restored. That could explain why the restored draft is not complete. Given that you administer the website that the text was taken from, it is fairly clear that you have a WP:COI, and are likely a WP:PAID editor. You also seem to have more of an interest in promoting a product than building an encyclopedia. Could you confirm what your involvement with Acyzol is? Have you read our paid editing and conflict of interest policies? And are you aware of the basic standards for including any topic in Wikipedia? Hug^syrup 10:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

As you are editing on behalf of your company you need to read about conflict of interest and you must make the required declaration of paid editing. You say "We want people to know about it", but you misunderstand the purpose of Wikipedia; it is not for promotion but is an encyclopedia based on material which has already been published by independent reliable sources. Material which is a copyright violation cannot be restored for legal reasons. The copyright can be released by the copyright holder by the process of donating copyrighted material, but in general the wording on a company website is liable to be too promotional for use on Wikipedia, so it is better if someone without a conflict of interest writes about it using their own words, including appropriate citations to published sources. --David Biddulph (talk) 10:41, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Welcome to the Teahouse Sergacy. If the article was restored to draft with just the copied text deleted, you cannot have it back. It is irrelevant whether or not you or the drug company wrote the text on the company's website - it's not for cut/pasting anywhere else, and would need to be rewritten so as not to violate copyright ownership rules. I doubt any drug company would add a Creative Commons licence to their webpage to say, go on, do what you like with our information' so, until they do, you cannot use it on Wikipedia. There is nothing stopping you using a word processor to work on copyrighted content, but I'm afraid you cannot do it here - even in draft.

As you are clearly here to promote your company's product, you have a very clear Conflict of Interest and must declare your connection with the company per this policy, which is not optional. You should do this before attempting to edit the draft again. If you ever hope to have the article accepted, it must be non-promotional, not have the silly ® symbol in its title, and must follow the stringent references requirements of WP:MEDREF. Absolutely no factual content should be added to any medicine-related article without clear and reliable referencing.Ideally, it should be written by someone other than a company representative. I hope this helps a bit. 10:45, 14 January 2020 (UTC)Nick Moyes (talk)

@Nick Moyes: Thank for your reply, but what should I do if dont get a penny for that? what are the proofs should be provided, and yes text on the company's website is mine and - it's for cut/pasting for Wiki, and would need to be rewritten and will NOT violate any copyright. Should I place on the website a link to this that Wiki may copy and paste text and images anywhere?? I'm asking for help.Sergacy (talk) 11:30, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Sergacy, Wikipedia articles should be based on what independent sources say about the product - paraphrase what other people say, don't write your own content to copy onto here. And do review the COI guidance you've been linked to - even if you're not being paid, there are steps you need to take. GirthSummit _(blether) 11:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Sergacy: If you are an employee of the drug company, writing text for their website, you are clearly getting paid (presumably quite a lot!) for your work, even if nobody said specifically to go and edit Wikipedia. You still have a clear Conflict of Interest. (I made that mistake when I first edited here ten years ago- though nobody pointed it out to me at the time). It's a simple thing to resolve, and WP:PAID explains how to add the 'paid contributor' template to your userpage and/or to the article.

And, no, the text on your company's website may be written by you, but how do we know that? Show me the link to the website page with the CC-BY-SA release licence and it'll be OK. As far as I can see it says Copyright © 2020. Acyzol. Powered by comtb.ru Otherwise rewrite things again, completely differently in your own - but different words - this time, without close paraphrasing. But, better still, let somebody else unconnected with a drug write about it. Please remember, this encyclopaedia is to tell people about notable things, it's not here for WP:PROMOTION to help you advertise your drugs, and this is especially so for medical-related matters where we have much more stringent referencing requirements, as I pointed out above. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:45, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sergacy: I added some suggestions at Draft talk:Carbon monoxide antidote «Acyzol®»#Suggestions. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:10, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@AlanM1: Thank very much for your helpǃ

@Nick Moyes:, Please have a look at the site again as I have changed the copyright. Will it be ok should it be like this?Sergacy (talk) 13:15, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sergacy: I think it probably would be OK, though I'm no expert on copyright. Were you to change the licencing back, you might find yourself having to go through our WP:OTRS system to prove there was no current copyvio. But in a way this is worrying over something you could resolve by simple different wording. The key thing is that any topic you draft on a medical matter must be both a Notable topic and properly referenced from secondary sources which talk about that product in depth. The product website can be used to provide basic information, but will never itself prove notability. I hope this helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes:, I appologize, I'm sorry, but I cant correctly understand your sentenceː Were you to change the licencing back, you might find yourself having to go through our WP:OTRS system to prove there was no current copyvio. Can you please put it in other words?Sergacy (talk) 14:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sergacy: Sorry about that!. In other words: never change the licencing back to what it was. If you did that, someone might well challenge you later on, and require you to go through a complex process (which we call OTRS) of checking and proving that you are who you say you are with genuine ownership rights to release the text. This would purely be so you can demonstrate that a few dozen words you copied directly off your website without bothering to reword then anew for your 6-month old draft were actually written by you. That seems a lot of effort to go to. Please now address the issue raised below by Girth Summit before any further editing. That is the next step you need to take. Thanks Nick Moyes (talk) 15:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sergacy: You haven't yet addressed the nature of your conflict of interest and the question of whether you are being paid for writing this draft yet. I'd strongly advise you to read COI and PAID closely, and take the appropriate steps, before making any further edits to your draft. Editing for pay without the appropriate disclosure is a breach of the terms of this site - and 'editing' includes contributions to talk pages, drafts, even your sandbox - and even this conversation. You need to read those links and make the appropriate disclosures, before going further with this. Thanks GirthSummit _(blether) 14:11, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I'm new to Wikipedia and I've made some edit to football articles by I'm not enjoying it, can you pls suggest me some other things to edit? Antila333 (talk) 14:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Antila333, My personal suggestion is to use the Random Article button until you find an article that interests you. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Moonythedwarf, I was recently going through the list of Wikiprojects and I saw that there was a wikiproject short description, I went through the link and activated the helper script and have started using it, it's quite interesting. Antila333 (talk) 15:21, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I recently noticed that a user on Wikipedia copied a whole section of a Wikipedia article and created it into a new article with section name. E.g:

Hello,

First thanks for this page it's awesome :) I'm here because with one of my comrade, we have published our first article Browser fingerprint. The article was issued as "manual". I think I know why and tried to fix it but I'm not sure if it is really fixed. Can someone help me review it or give some advices/hints ?

Thanks in advance,Ergozat (talk) 08:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello Ergozat welcome to the Teahouse. It's an interesting, if slightly over-complicated article on a topic I wasn't aware of, so well done. There are a number of issues that concern me, not least of which is how, and indeed why, a new user in their very first edit manages to create a template of an icon so that they can unilaterally add it to their reference list before they've even started the article, and then writes the instructions for that template's use. I've never seen this done before, so assume you have edited here before under another username or as an IP? The pen icon and explanation:

( : document used for writing this article.)

is not an acceptable element to add to Wikipedia page, so please remove all occurrences of it and the pen icon from the article. Equally, the instructions you wrote as to its application are not OK as it appears to be recommending something for general use. It does not have community consensus for deployment, and should also go. We have a Manual of Style to ensure uniformity across the encyclopaedia; if we allowed fancy graphics to be deployed by anyone who wanted to (without community agreement), we would pretty soon get into a mess of different pages having a multitude of graphics with various hidden meanings. Each fancy graphic would be loved by their individual creators, but hated by everyone else. (That said, it is a nice idea, but it is really is going to have to go, and the instructions for use delete.). I do try to take a slightly more lenient approach when responding here at the Teahouse when I see unacceptable content, but I cannot guarantee that another editor will not put the template and its documentation up for deletion so that other users don't attempt to deploy it in articles.

I also note you say you created the page with a comrade, yet only this one account has actually edited it. Are you aware that you may not permit another person to log in and edit under your account name? - we have a 'one account - one user' policy here. But perhaps they just assisted you whilst you did all the online work here? If so, that's fine.

The article itself is interesting, and maybe a little too technical, but I think it fails to address the social and privacy concerns (e.g. GDPR in Europe) of this technique, which I quickly found on a web search. You can read WP:NOTMANUAL to understand why we don't encourage instructional-style articles here, but do want to see what independent reliable sources have broadly said about a topic. A user ought to be able to find any such details from the citations of Further reading you include.

Finally, is the topic of the article the Browser fingerprint itself, or the technique and issue surrounding the activity of Browser fingerprinting? I note there is a already a redirect from that to an existing page (Device fingerprint) which uses the term 'browser fingerprint' as a synonym in its lead. So there might be some work to do to ensure there's not any duplication. Or you could even consider a merge if that would keep all related content together. A very minor issue is that there is a little bit of flowery wording and some places where the English could be improved, and gender stereotypes changed (not all browser users are male!), but this is a trivial issue that you or others could fix later. Personally, I would never have use the style of referencing you've chosen, preferring inline citations and a references section which is automatically populated and clearly numbered. I'm not hugely familiar with the formatting method you've chosen, and would recommend or use it myself for a new article. That said, I would certainly have expected the bibliography to be arranged in alphabetic order. Moving from your references into the bibliography section to find a title by author is quite a challenge because the publication list is so randomly jumbled up. I suggest this is fixed soon. But all in all, an interesting article, and one that has improved my awareness and understanding. And that's what this encyclopaedia is all about. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:43, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

For the template, it's the same as a french template. I understand your arguments and will delete it. For curiosity, can we submit a template to the community ? 

My comrade have her own account, we just have worked on a sandbox before publishing.

Even after reading WP:NOTMANUAL, I have difficulties to understand how to describe a technique without being instructive, could you perhaps give me an example ?

I take in account all you remarks and will work on it. Sorry for my english, I'm a french native but I will try to improve my redaction style. Thanks for your review. Ergozat (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I have read the lead several times, and I still have no idea what a "browser fingerprint" is, what "browser fingerprinting" is, or even whether they're the same thing. I suspect that the concepts aren't difficult, but the explanation in the lead does not start at the beginning. Maproom (talk) 10:07, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh yes - I'd missed commenting on the all-important lead paragraph. It is very confusing at the moment, and does need to summarise the article much more effectively. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:20, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the lead is not very clear, I will work on it. Ergozat (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Editing articles is an obvious way to improve Wikipedia. Are there other (non-financial) ways in which I can help improve the quality of Wikipedia? For the moment I'm very interested in exploring how Wikipedia works. My first stop would probably be to take a look at "WikiProjects", but I'm open to ideas! Roostnerve (talk) 15:54, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Roostnerve, If you're willing to spend a lot of time familiarizing yourself with a lot of the rules, you can assist in trimming down the workload for new page reviewers, by snipping/CSDing out the worst of the bunch (i.e. spam)

It's generally what I do, altho I also spend some time to answer teahouse and helpdesk questions when I can, as you can see. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 15:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Roostnerve: I spend most of my Wikipedia time fielding questions at the Teahouse and related desks, so my advice might seem a bit hypocritical, but editing articles is really the bulk of the job. The various back alleys of Wikipedia exist only to further that task.

I know of two basic ways to start. The first is if you want to specialize in a certain task. Judging by your contributions, you have improved wikilinks in articles; so you could scroll through Category:All articles with too few wikilinks and improve them. (This category contains all articles where someone put the template {{Underlinked}}, so you might want to remove the template after you have done the wikilinking. Conversely, if you find an article that is lacking in wikilinks, you might place that template yourself.)

The second way is if you want to edit in a certain topic. WikiProjects are basically that, a group of editors focusing on a certain topic. Again judging by your contributions so far, you might want to have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology; the wikiproject's page has multiple links, show you an overview of article quality/importance under that scope, etc.

The nice thing about Wikipedia is that although writing an encyclopedia is insanely hard, small parts of that task can be surprisingly easy, and you do not need to do them all. If something is too hard, just ask for help. The classical example is one editor who only corrects a particular grammar mistake (the editor in question has been doing other things since then, so the example is a bit out of date). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:28, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you to both! That gives me some pointers. It never occurred to me to look at categories. That's a good idea. Roostnerve (talk) 16:46, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Sirs, Is this a promotion or not  ? I want to write a article smaller that that.Sergacy (talk) 14:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Sergacy, I do not think that Sildenafil is currently a promotional article. It is not a question of size, but of tone, of stating opnions, particularly of stating opnions as facts, of making unsupported positive statements about a thing or person or topic, and generally of being an advocate for someone or something. It is a very general concept hewre on Wikipedia. See our guideline on promotion. And do read WP:COI and WP:PAID as others above have urged. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 15:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and Sergacy Wikipedia article and draft titles should never contain a trademark symbol, and normaly no such symbol should be used in any article or draft. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 15:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} Thank you very much for your helpǃ It seems that your statement with assistance of other participants helps, especially regarding trademark sign. And you are kindly requested to have a look at my page regarding WP:PAID. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sergacy (talk • contribs) 18:01, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

What are the newspapers from Tamilnadu, India, can be accepted as a reliable source? --Azarudeen Syed Bahurudeen 18:27, 14 January 2020 (UTC)Azarudeen S

If this is your lucky day there is a good, bad or ugly entry for your source on WP:RS/P. Otherwise you could ask on the WP:RS/N reliable sources noticeboard. For unclear sources I try an ordinary search, and if an article about the source exists and/or the source is used in references on some other articles I assume good enough. Value of "some" TBD, I'd put the number in the corresponding edit summary if it's "suspicious" (small). –84.46.53.221 (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your help --Azarudeen S

The two drop-down boxes of common edit summaries (chosen at Preferences - gadgets - editing) - how do I request two additions to them? Thanks. deisenbe (talk) 19:41, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello Deisenbe. I would guess that the best place to ask would be at one of the Village Pumps - probably WP:VPM. But are you aware you can create your own edit summary texts? I wasn't either, until I saw your question. But then I checked of the list of userscripts available to install and found User:Enterprisey/CustomSummaryPresets which might suit you. (I've not tried it, of course yet, but think I might give it a go). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I was reading this Grandmaster Shifuji Shaurya Bhardwaj wiki page. I saw many cited links and masterial were false. He is a controversial person accused of fraud using the name of indian army. Even using Grandmaster and Shifuji in his name seems not necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Classical Arun (talk • contribs) 07:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Classical Arun. Every article has its own Talk page. You can discuss your concerns there and provide links to reliable sources which support your concerns.--Quisqualis (talk) 07:25, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Comment. The title of an article on a person should not include an honorific. I tried to move Grandmaster Shifuji Shaurya Bhardwaj to Shifuji Shaurya Bhardwaj, but failed because the latter already exists as a redirect. My understanding is that moving over a redirect requires an admin. Maproom (talk) 10:00, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Strong support for what Quisqualis + Maproom wrote: It's confusing if you try multiple venues for the same issue simultaneously, for my thoughts see BLP/N. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 20:47, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Can I remove the tags with don't remove caution when the article is moved to draft? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Azarudeen S (talk • contribs) 20:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Azarudeen S: That is going to depend on what the tag is and why it should not be removed. Can you provide a link to the article/draft in question? RudolfRed (talk) 20:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

sure i can kalvithanthaiKalvithanthai Haji. S.M.S. Shaik Jalaludeen--Azarudeen S —Preceding undated comment added 20:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Do not move the article to a draft while the deletion discussion is going on. You can suggest in the deletion discussion that it should be moved to a draft – in that case, that will happen after the discussion has closed. But until it ends, please do not create a new draft, and it is important that you don't move the article. Thanks! --bonadea contributions talk 20:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank You for your help - Azarudeen S —Preceding undated comment added 20:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, please let me know if this is the wrong place to be asking a formatting question. I've pushed the content in the infobox to the right inadvertently:

• before (looking ok): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renaissance_Technologies&direction=next&oldid=935532864
• after (I've shifted things in the infobox right): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renaissance_Technologies&direction=next&oldid=935533131
• page diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renaissance_Technologies&diff=next&oldid=935533131&diffmode=source

I was wondering whether someone could please share with me what I did that is doing this please? Is it the number of spaces before the '=' or the how I've added bullets or the sequencing of the fields? Thank you WestportWiki (talk) 19:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, WestportWiki Welcome to the Teahouse. You deserve a prize for some brilliant links and diffs to show us the problem. How refreshing! You've managed to shift things leftwards with your use of this template: {{plainlist|style=text-indent:-1em; margin-left:1em;|...etc which you can see contains an indent command. Fiddle with that and remove the indenting and you should be sorted. There's documentation to help you at {{plainlist}} - I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with using it myself. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:52, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Nick Moyes Thank you for looking into this and pointing me in the right direction. I will fiddle away; I've checked out the documentation too (though didn't understand all of it). Will fiddle. thank you again WestportWiki (talk) 21:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@WestportWiki: I might suggest you make a copy of the infobox then paste in multiple copies into your sandbox and work on them there, making notes as you go as to what you've done to each - it's less 'embarrassing' than constant fliddling with a live article and less worrying if you think you might mess it up. It's what I do when I'm a bit stuck. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: 10000000000000000000000000% agree :) WestportWiki (talk) 21:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

List of winners of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize is displaying dates in the wrong chronological order. Is there a quick fix, some code that I can add the the first line or somewhere else?: {| class="wikitable" style="width: 98%;" thx MauraWen (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Good question, MauraWen, and welcome to our friendly Teahouse. You could make the table sortable (using "class="wikitable sortable"), but that wouldn't alter the original display order. See Help:Sorting for more details. If the table was too complex to work, my sledgehammer & nut approach would be to copy the text, paste it into Excel, then resort it and paste it back in. Because of the risk of messing things up, I'd trial it in my sandbox first, rather than live in the article. Does this make sense? Nick Moyes (talk) 21:43, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Nick Moyes I like your Excel idea! I will give that a try tomorrow in my sandbox. Thanks! MauraWen (talk) 21:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@MauraWen: Yep, I couldn't resist it, and have just tried it. It works perfectly. I've not altered the article as that'll take the fun and learning experience away from you. Note that the original has a couple of extra blank lines that'll need deleting. If you get stuck, the re-sorted version can be found at User:Nick Moyes/sandbox4. If you ever need to create complicated tables, you can also do so from scratch in Excel and then convert it into wikimarkup with this tool: https://tools.wmflabs.org/excel2wiki/ Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:24, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

The Cowboys defeated the Generals that afternoon and soon thereafter Washington and Lee de-emphasized competitive football. (This information can be easily verified and I suggest that it be included in the existing Wikipedia summary of Athletics at Washington and Lee.) It was quite an honor at that time to be invited to a college football bowl game because there were only five active bowl games in 1950, the Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Gator Bowls. If you happen to be interested in this information, please feel free to contact me at <phone number redacted>. The University of Wyoming Athletic Department, ATTN: Assistant Athletic Director Kevin McKinney, can verify all this information and would approve of the Washington and Lee section being amended to include this information. Sincerely, Robert Allen, Retired Wyoming Trial Judge. Or I suppose you could contact the Gator Bowl administrators in Jacksonville, Florida as well. The history of Washington and Lee is not complete without this information. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8800:6000:5FC0:296D:B209:4286:DBAA (talk) 22:18, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

If you wish to suggest a change to an article, the place for such a suggestion is the article's talk page, but you will need to provide a reference to a published independent reliable source to support the information you would wish to add. --David Biddulph (talk) 22:25, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I am actually active but only if you answer these questions because i'm a beginner wikipedian

You can answer these questions on my talk page or here

How do you add those charts that show peoples information? How do you make the table of contents? How do you not make your wiki a draft? How do you give badges or stars?

P.S If you don't answer these questions I will stop using wikipedia forever. I mean seriously, forever and i know that Wikipedia has all of the true answers my classmates don't think so. How rude.

P.S.S I'm not actually Combo Panda i'm a fan of Combo Panda — Preceding unsigned comment added by Combo Panda (talk • contribs) 12:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Oshwah please answer these questions or someone else — Preceding unsigned comment added by Combo Panda (talk • contribs) 12:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Those questions have been answered on the user's talk page except for the "chart that show people's information". I believe that describes an infobox (information at the link). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 14:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for answering

(edit conflict) Hello, Combo Panda and welcome to the Teahouse. Please use a less demanding tone in the future, and do not make threats. All editoirs her are volunteeers, and no one has to reapond to any question.

1. By those charts that show peoples information I think you mean infoboxes. There are many different varieties, all created by templates. Template:Infobox person is the basic one for an infobox about a person. Visit that page for detailed directions on how to use it, or how to select one of the more specialized variants.
2. A table of contents is automatically generated when a page has at least 4 sections. See WP:TOC for more details, including how to control the placement of the ToC. Usually one should just accept the default automatic ToC.
3. A draft page is one tht is in development to become an article, but is not yet ready. I am a rather experienced editor (and an admin), and I always start a new article as a draft, because I cannot create an article that is ready for public display to readers in a single edit. Once you think the draft is ready, you can submit it for review by an experienced editor, or you can simply move it into mainspace without review. But articles in mainspace are subject to stricter standards and may be deleted if they do not measure up, while this might not happen in draft. Moreover, it is not fair to our readers to present an article that does not meet at leas the basic standards. See Wikipeia's Golder Rule and Your First Article.
4. See Wikipedia:Barnstars for how to award barnstars. See also Wikipedia:WikiLove

I hope this helps. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:55, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Combo Panda, you've been here for a few days less than a year, and have yet to make an actual edit to the encyclopedia. That begs the question: why are you here? John from Idegon (talk) 02:32, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

The person's were taken into custody and jailed. My daughter (a staunch Democrat) went somewhere to fact check what I told her. It probably was to Google. Anyway, Eric Holder showed up in Philadelphia and got the men released. Her source said it never happened. I was trying to get her to at least have some faith in me and that I would never purposely tell her a lie about something this drastic. I am seeking someone who can directly show proof that this happened. Perhaps one of you there can provide some documentation of this story. I know at the time I saw the episode on TV, I just do not have the proof. Please respond at your leisure, as I understand your positions as volunteers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.117.104.162 (talk) 05:28, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi IP 74.117.104.162. The Wikipedia Teahouse is really a place for asking questions about Wikipedia editing or Wikipedia in general; it's not really a general reference desk. So, you might want to try asking about this at Wikipedia:Reference desk instead.

I also suggest that you take a look at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is in the real world for reference as well because anything you post on any Wikipedia page can basically be seen by anyone anywhere in the world you can access Wikipedia; so, you might want to be careful about how much personal information you post about yourself or other persons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:38, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

hello there, I need an assistance on editing Wikipedia, I am a new member but I don't know how to editing Wikipedia, can you help me? --the special girl is me (talk) 01:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I've tested {{WelcomeMenu}} on your user talk page, just add specific questions here by clicking edit to the right of need an assistance, clearly you have already figured out how to get a nicer signature ;-) –84.46.53.221 (talk) 01:59, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

to be specific, I need an assistance on how to add my contribution for existing article, and thanks for complimenting my signature, that's very sweet --the special girl is me (talk) 03:13, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, PutriAmalia1991, and welcome to the Teahouse. To add to an existing article, simply navigate to that article, and click either 'edit" (the visual editor) or "edit source" (the wikitext editor). Make whatever changes you think proper. Include source citations if possible and if significant new statements were added (as opposed to improving wording, grammar, or the like). See referencing for beginners to learn how to add and edit citations. Click "publish changes". Be sure to provide an edit summary to describe what you did. That is all there is to it. Now deciding what changes to make and how to word them can be more complex. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 03:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

By the way, PutriAmalia1991, in future please try to provide a more meaningful and distinctive name for a Teahouise question thread than need an assistance. Thank you. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 03:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Something tells me this person has an agenda which may not conform to Wikipedia goals. They are canvassing for friendly guys' online company, forgetting that they have English literacy when the questions start.--Quisqualis (talk) 05:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Recently I have been working on a not-yet-published article creator page in my sandbox you will be able to find at this link. It was made so experienced users can create new articles in a search box without the help of red links. I see there is already a similar search box at Wikipedia:Your first article, but I think this page will help because experienced users would be able to simply go to the page instead of having to scroll down through the beginner's article introduction. I can also link the page if look ckkfof Ofhcto mine. The page doesn't have any references but I don't think it really needs any since its merely helping with link navigation; however I don't know if this will cause bots to suspect it as suspicious behavior. Perhaps one of the village pumps would be a better place to ask this. -Prana1111 (talk) 21:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Prana1111: I don't really think there is much purpose or need for this on WP, though if you think that such an idea has merit, a proper discussion at WP:VP would be better suited to handle this. Mgasparin (talk) 05:48, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Is there a way to link directly to a Talk page section when adding the {{Debate}} cleanup tag to an article? I reviewed Template:Debate but I did not see anything on this topic there. ¶ Example: National Association of Scholars. Thanks!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 11:18, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I read about the reason parameter (see also Help:Template#Parameters), but I don't know if it can contain a wikilink. (I tried to add a wikilink to a talk page section, but I did not succeed).   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 12:27, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Markworthen: Maybe suggest this missing feature on Template talk:Debate, it's perfectly normal that a cleanup for complete sections or articles can be related to a section on the talk page. And that talk page could be a mess, where finding a section about the "debate" issue without a link is hard. Plan B, find a better cleanup tag allowing a reason with a wikilink, e.g., {{cleanup}}, and link to it in Template:Debate/doc#See also. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 18:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you so much. ♦Resolved♦   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 06:21, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello...My name is John Mathew Smith I have link to my page...below....

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photographs_by_John_Mathew_Smith

I have contributed many many images to wikipedia... and very happy to do so.. recently I lost contact with my administrator there... I have more images to send in... and trying to do them on my own ... I ended in trouble with my new ISP since I had moved... I need someone to take my block off... and may need a new Administrator...to help me... I would rather they help me post. I would need someone very in tune with the gravity of my historical work ( if you will ) someone who would take same interest in helping me as last administrator...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles?limit=20&user=Surtsicna&ilshowall=1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Mathew Smith (talk • contribs) 21:27, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

John Mathew Smith You will have to address any issues with or on Commons there; that is a separate website. 331dot (talk) 21:29, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the Teahouse, John Mathew Smith. Goodness, what amazing photographs of famous people you have taken! I can't add much to what 331dot has said. But we are often so short of good images of famous personalities that I am sure if you feel unconfident about uploading your own images, the quality and importance of those portraits will undoubtedly encourage someone to give you a bit of support or guidance. Over at Wikimedia Commons they don't have a Teahouse, like this, but there is a help forum where you should probably ask the same question. You can find it at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Help_desk I am imagining that you might have in mind a number of images of people which you are willing to release, potentially for commercial reuse, and others that you would wish to retain full control of. It might be a good idea to list either the names of those people, or link to a Flickr set where you've collated those images you wish to donate. That would, I am sure, get someone's juices flowing over at Wikimedia Commons. Thanks for posting here, and good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

The Commons help desk is unavailable to the OP, who has been blocked on Commons since December per this block log, with talk page access revoked, as an LTA. I did not find why the block was levied; the only clue was a non-existent category indicating sockpuppetry with commons:User:James Earl (Jimmy) Carter as the master, but I found no sockpuppet investigations nor do I think it credible both accounts are the same person (not really the same kind of uploads at all).

This is either a case of me being bad at searching or a misunderstanding somewhere. Pinging the Commons admin who performed the block: Elcobbola in case they can help. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 08:55, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Sirs,

I started drafting an article yesterday - as draft. Today I wanted to edit it further, adding cross-references etc. but I cannot find my draft. What may have gone wrong? Cheers, Knutda Retriving my draft? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Knutda (talk • contribs) 09:47, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Knutda, and welcome to the Teahouse. You can find any edits you have made from the "Contributions" link at the top of the page. However, I'm afraid your account has no recorded contributions apart from this question, so unless you were not logged in and editing anonymously, I fear you must have failed to save your edit. For legal reasons (because everything everywhere in Wikipedia is visible to the world) the save button was renamed "Publish changes" - I don't think you can have picked the button. I'm afraid that, unless you work happens to have been saved in your browser, it is gone: sorry. --ColinFine (talk) 10:17, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Can anyone explain to me regarding WP:MMS in short and criteria required for applying?  :) S A H A  09:38, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello Arnabsaha2212, and welcome to the Teahouse. I don't mean to come across as rude, but I don't see that the Wikipedia:Mass message senders page is either very long or very complicated. What don't you understand about it? If you don't think you need to mass-message large numbers of people regularly (say because you're administering a WP:WikiProject Newsletter), then you can request that someone else mass-posts one message for you. You and I are allowed to ping multiple editors (up to 50) at a time, but care is always needed that such messages are relevant to the purposes of good Wikipedia communication, or they soon would become an irritant. All the instructions you need are on the WP:MMS page, and if you can't follow them then, to be honest, I doubt you really need that permission. There are only 58 non-administrators who have been given it. Sorry if this sounds a bit blunt - its not intended. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:49, 15 January 2020 (UTC)  

@Nick Moyes: Thank you very much.  :) S A H A  11:01, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Am I forbidden from creating an article when there is already a draft of the same thing in existence? Syphenix (talk) 10:01, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Syphenix, and welcome to the Teahouse. No you are not forbiden from creating an article because a draft exists on the same topic. However, it might be a good idea to reach out to the editor or editors working on the draft, work in collaboration on the draft, an then get the result approved and moved to the main article space. Failing that, if you do create an article, it would be courteous to notify the editors working on the draft, perhaps on the talk page of the draft, that you have doe so, so that time and effort is not wasted on further developing the draft, but instead could be put into working on the new article, or on other articles or drafts.

In general, there should not be multiple Wikipedia articles on the same topic, althoguh if the topic is large enoguh, there may be separate articles on different aspects or parts of it.

You may copy content from the draft into any article, but you must properly attribute the source. See Copying within Wikipedia for information on how to do this.

I hope that is helpful. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 11:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

My article Draft:Fon Gorji Dinka has been redone, can I get help getting it published? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flalf (talk • contribs) 18:43, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Your draft has been resubmitted for re-review. As it says on the draft: "Review waiting, please be patient. This may take 4 months or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 3,785 pending submissions waiting for review." --David Biddulph (talk) 19:07, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to make the process faster or make it more likely to be accepted? Flalf (talk) 14:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Flalf There isn't much you can do to 'jump the line' so to speak or otherwise speed things up. You will have to be patient. You can continue to work on your draft while it is awaiting review. The better it is, the more likely it will be seen and accepted. 331dot (talk) 14:46, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much and have a wonderful day — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flalf (talk • contribs) 14:58, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Editors and reviewers. I have many confussion about reliable sources. But i understood that news published can be a source. I have provided a magazine published by a No.1 Newspaper publisher of Tamil Nadu, India for my article titled Kalvithandhai Haji S.M.S. Shaik Jalaudeen. Still discussion is going on for deletion of the article. I have a doubt will be a google article or book accepted as a reliable source? Azarudeen S 14:00, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Azarudeen S: Please sign your posts simply by adding a space and four tildes ( ~~~~) to the end of the last line of your post. Nothing else should come after that. (I've corrected your signature above). Please provide a link to any articles you reference, like this: Kalvithanthai Haji. S.M.S. Shaik Jalaludeen —[AlanM1(talk)]— 14:35, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@AlanM1: That was a mistake I left to link. I have learned to use signature by you thank you. Can you answer my question on reliable source? Azarudeen Syed Bahurudeen 15:17, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Azarudeen S and welcome to the Teahouse. Books are generally considered reliable sources if they are published by major mainstream publishers (or recognized academic publishers) with a reputation for fact checking, or are written by recognized authorities in the field, particularly if they are reviewed positively by other noted experts in the field. Self-published books by people who are not recognized authorities in the field are usually not considered to be reliable sources. Both reliable and unreliable publications appear in Google Books. Being in GB neither adds to nor subtracts from reliability. The book, the author, the publisher and their reputaitons are what count.

News stories from recognized news sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy (whether online or print) are usually considered reliable. The same is true for magazine stores. Exceptions are storeis that are largely interviews with the subject of the article -- those are considered not independent and so do not help with notability, and can only be used to support non-controversial facts, and statements about the views of the subject -- they are considered effectively self-published sources. (If the story includes a significant section in the reporter's voice, that section may be treated as independent in some cases.) Stories that are based directly on press releases and largely repat the PR content are also considered not independent. I hope that clarifies our policies on reliable sources somewhat. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 15:28, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the information.Azarudeen Syed Bahurudeen 15:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Azarudeen S (talk • contribs)

I don't understand how the location maps work in the infobox. In particular for Engerdal. It is now in Innlandet county. If I change the county name to Innlandet, it correctly shows Innlandet within Norway but incorrectly still shows Engerdal within Hedmark. When I changed the county name from Hedmark to Innlandet for Eidskog it worked correctly for both Innlandet within Norway and Eidskog within Innlandet. The change should be from map NO 0434 Engerdal.svg to NO 3425 Engerdal.svg, but I can't find where to change it. What can I do to change the location map to Engerdal within Innlandet instead of Innlandet within Hedmark when I change the county name?Redriv (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Please wikilink what you are talking about, here a non-existing Template:Infobox Location map maybe related to Template:Infobox settlement or, checking Engerdal, a Template:Infobox kommune. Wild guess, Infobox Settlement mumbles something about Wikidata, maybe you have to do something on d:Q48909. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

It is Template:Infobox kommune but I have the same question for how it works in Template:Infobox settlement. I'll check the link you sent me. ThanksRedriv (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I you figured it out please add the info to Template:Infobox kommune/doc, if "uses Infobox Settlement" involves "and therefore Wikidata" the manual can mention it per WP:POLA. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 18:03, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I really thought the d:Q48909 link was going to work, but it didn't. I changed the file from NO 0434 Engerdal.svg to NO 3425 Engerdal.svg on that link, but it still shows Hedmark. Thanks for your help and I'll keep searchingRedriv (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Were these changes what you wanted? --David Biddulph (talk) 23:19, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes they were and thank you very much. I now see that I had neglected to change the idnumber to the new correct one and that led to the old map. I did ask a new question here with a similar issue. Thanks again.Redriv (talk) 16:20, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, for the page Yasmeen A Maimani, I initially added an image, which was pulled down by one of the admins citing copyright issues. I wrote to the concerned publication seeking permission to use the image, and wrote to other publications too, but haven't received a reply from any of them ever since. What should I do next? An image would definitely add to the aura of the page, and there are hundreds of her images on the Internet. However, they are all on some publication or the other, leaving me confused as to what I should do to use them. Considering that I have no connection with the subject, I really cannot acquire an image from the lady herself. Please help, thanks in advance, regards, Tycheana (talk) 10:09, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Courtesy link; Yasmeen Al Maimani.

Hello, Tycheana, and welcome to the Teahouse. While a link might well enhance the article, it is in no sense required, nor would it significantly aid a reader in understanding the content of the article. Under our policy on fair use images, an image of a currently living person would almost never qualify for inclusion under fair use because it is possible (if perhaps not easy) for a new, freely licensed, photograph of the person to be taken. Photos of specific historically significant events may be exceptions, but that does not seem to apply here.

Therefore, any image would need to be released under a compatible free license. Note that a copyright holder is under no obligation to respond at all, let alone favorably, to a request for such a release of an image.

You could write to Maimani, requesting an image that has been released under a compatible free license, such as the CC-BY-SA license. Or you could ask any Wikipedia editors who live near places where she might appear publicly to take and release such a photo. Failing that, or some other source for a freely licensed image, no photo can be used in the article. You may not use an image that has not been suitably released, and is still under copyright, on Wikipedia, even if such images are widely found on the internet. See Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Image use policy. Those policies are not likely to be changed, in my view. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 11:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi DESiegel, thanks for clarifying - in fact today I posted a comment through FB asking one of the publications - About Her - if I could use one of her images from their page. Since it is through FB, I wonder if chances of receiving a reply might be higher...??? To get in touch with the lady herself seems like an uphill task to me. The only way I can try getting in touch would be through the airlines website which granted her the chance to fly as a commercial pilot. So let me try that too. Suppose I do manage to acquire an image from either source. how do I incorporate it here? I would have to learn how to go about it on this platform. Thanks for all the valuable inputs, regards, Tycheana (talk) 12:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Note, Tycheana,, that any such publication would need to give permission not just to Wikipedia, but to anyone in the world to use for any purpose at all, including commercial use without fee or royalty. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for details of the required release language, and information about the process. Once the content has been released, it should be uploaded to Wikimedia commons with a note referencing the permission, which should be sent to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) as described in the linked page (addressed to permissions-en@wikimedia.org).

I cannot say what would make a publication more likely to respond to such a request. Good luck. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 12:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi DESiegel to be honest, even I seriously doubt if anyone would grant such permission. Let them first respond, then I will ask them to provide permission in the requisite format and lingo. Thanks for your help and guidance, and will keep you updated if any of the two sources that I have tried today respond. Regards & best wishes, Tycheana (talk) 16:30, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to contact Wiki moderator "Gaeanautes" about a useful diagram that was added to the Article about "Limits To Growth"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.140.101.140 (talk) 09:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

User:Gaeanautes is not an administrator (we don't call them moderators). To contact any Wikipedia editor, you can start a new section on the editor's user talk page. --David Biddulph (talk) 09:37, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello, IP editor, and welcome to the Teahouse. you could contact Gaeanautes at User talk:Gaeanautes, but I note that Gaeanautes has not saved any edits since last October.

The better place to make comments on how that article might be improved would be at Talk:The Limits to Growth, which is the page for discussing how to improve that article, open to all interested editors.

By the way, Gaeanautes is not an admin, which is the closest Wikipedia has to a "moderator" although it is not really the same thing. For most editing, all editors are equal and an admin has no special authority. Admins delete pages when there is community consensus to do so, block users who are violating policy in a way that has harmed and is likely to continue to harm the project, and try to clean up messes. That is why the official nickname for an admin is a "Janitor", and the symbol of an admin is a mop. See WP:ADMIN for more info. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 09:41, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Note: Hello, this is User Gaeanautes. Yes, I've been away from WP for a while; but now I'll back online on a regular basis. I take it that the query from the unregistered user is about the flow diagram presently integrated in the template on Ecological economics, which is nested in The Limits to Growth article and elsewhere. I was the editor who uploaded the diagram originally (in 2015). If the query is about this diagram, the unregistered user is better advised to leave a post on the template talk page, and ping me in the same post. Then we can discuss the query on that talk page. Regards, --Gaeanautes (talk) 16:58, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I am looking at the locator maps in the infobox of Åsnes and Åmot. 44 of the 46 municipalities use the Åsnes type of map and I would like to change Åmot to this type of map. Both pages use the Infobox kommune which looks similar. Another user showed me how to go to the Wikidata pages for each page which also look similar. Can someone tell me how to change the locator maps or direct me to a tutorial on how these pages are connected to Wikidata (or something else)? Thanks.Redriv (talk) 16:09, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

The file File:NO 3422 Åmot.svg exists and that is what the template should be using, must be some kind of mismatch that is making it default to the other kind of map - X201 (talk) 16:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Redriv: Check the id number for Åmot, the article says 3442 but the file name is 3422. one of them is wrong. - X201 (talk) 16:50, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

That was it. I corrected the id number and all is fine now. Thank you very much.Redriv (talk) 17:21, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

What can I do if an editor does not keep the wikipedia rules? First and foremost, this one:

"The goal of a Wikipedia article is to create a comprehensive and neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge about a topic."

For specifics, I address the user on the lack of his neutrality here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Zen#Do_the_moderators_of_this_page_even_study_zen%3F

2A02:A210:2901:C300:AD47:B3D:4079:7B4C (talk) 12:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

That someone is not saying what you think they should say does not mean they are biased, it means they have a different viewpoint. Instead of lobbing accusations, please collaborate with others to arrive at a consensus as to what the article should say. 331dot (talk) 12:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Is it biased when the user uses biased primary sources to convey his point of view when I am not allowed to use any primary sources?

2A02:A210:2901:C300:15C6:16B3:691C:B8E7 (talk) 18:12, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

It's a zen article that leaves out the six founders of zen and a ton of other zen masters, including their teachings.

The editor in question uses primary sources, when I am not allowed to.

The article also has it's main focus on meditation. Something that the six founders consider to be heretical.

How is this not biased editing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A210:2901:C300:AD47:B3D:4079:7B4C (talk) 12:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

You have addressed this -- at rather excessive length, in my view -- on Talk:Zen which is the proper place for this discussion. Note that Wikipedia is not limited to "official" or "authoritative" sources. Any and all reliable sources on a topic may be used, and if they disagree, all relevant points of view should be included, with the mainstream scholarly view getting the most weight, when there is a clear mainstream view. It is not bias not to accept the sources or the interpretation that you favor, provided that statements in the article are properly supported by reliable sources. Note also that Wikipedia works by collaboration, with decisions made by consensus among the editors. Editors need not be experts in a topic, provided that they can read and understand the relevant sources. Please do not engage in Personal Attacks on other editors. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:36, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

"It is not bias not to accept the sources or the interpretation that you favor"

It's not about what I favor, it's about facts. There were six patriarchs who all denounced seated meditation as a means of enlightenment. They do so very clearly. To omit what they have to say on the topic does not seem like an objective decision to me. This has nothing to do with personal insults.

I just think that, when anyone writes about a topic and forgets to include the people who not only build the tradition up, but also kept shaping it, he is either not being honest or not learned enough on the topic to write about it. For example, you wouldn't consider someone capable of writing an article about christianity if they leave out all accounts of jesus and the twelve apostles.

I also noticed you did not address the fact that I'm not allowed to use primary sources when there are primary sources being used in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A210:2901:C300:AD47:B3D:4079:7B4C (talk) 15:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• IP editor, I believe you could be of real help to that article, but you need to communicate more effectively. The talk page thread you linked to is a horrible wall of text that requires lots of time and effort to read.

Regarding primary sources: they can only be used for what some person or organization says about themselves and small bits of uncontroversial information (such as a company's postal address), as per WP:PRIMARY. If you think the article makes controversial factual assertions based on primary sources, please list them on the talk page; by that I mean you give the exact quote from the article, what it is sourced to, and why you think the source is primary.

Regarding more general changes to the article: somewhere in the thread someone advised you of the proper procedure, but I will repeat. Saying "sentence X is wrong, someone do something" is unlikely to bring immediate change. It is more productive to say "change X to [your proposed wording]" (see nirvana fallacy: it is easy to say some general improvement could be made, but it is better to evaluate a proposal between two concrete options). And of course, "sentence X was written by an idiot, will you morons not correct it" is even less likely to get you the change that you want, even if you are entirely correct.

If someone disagrees with your proposed changes, IP editor, or your evaluation of sources as primary, see the guide to dispute resolution. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Primary sources can be used in a Wikipedia article, but only for limited purposes, and only with care. In particular they cannot be used for purposes of interpretation. See WP:PRIMARY. Secondary sources, which interpret primary sources, are generally the most favored here. See WP:SECONDARY. For some purposes tertiary sources can also be used. Sometimes there can be debate as to what is or is not a primary source, and what is or is not a reliable source.

Do note that even if the founder(s) of a religion or a philosophical movement had a very specific set of ideas, later adherents and followers may have quite different ideas, and if current practice is different from the original ideas, Wikipedia should describe that current practice, in accord with current sources, even if those who follow the original versions more closely hold changes to be wrong. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:15, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Comments such as:

• think it's safe to say that the people moderating the page have not actually studied the topics they have been posting in, which I think should be the first and foremost requirement for adding information to a wiki page.
• Calling you seemingly incapable is not an insult at this point as it is much more of an observation.

are not acceptable on Wikipedia talk pages. Nor is there a subject-matter k nowledge test for editing any article. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:29, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Right, but omitting those original accounts is a different thing altogether.

I have provided a lot of quotes to point out why the things on the page are "wrong" though.

I still stand by it. They are in my view objective observations. If someone writes wrong math formula's on the math wiki he is not capable of editing the page and probably hasn't studied the topic he is writing in extensively.

Concerning the "wall of text"; I was asked to provide sources and quotes, so I did.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A210:2901:C300:AD47:B3D:4079:7B4C (talk) 16:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Again, I think you can help, but you need to communicate properly. Compare the following fictional example:

"The tomato is a fruit". "Tomatoes are green." Which bunch of monkeys have written this article? You must be really braindead. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Fine, here are some sources: Eliza Smith says the tomato is a vegetable, and calls tomatoes a red fruit.

with

"The tomato is a fruit" is incorrect: see The Compleat Housewife, Eliza Smith, 1727, page 157 "among vegetables are the potato, the radish, the tomato (...)". Proposed wording: "the tomato is a vegetable".

"Tomatoes are green" is incorrect too: see The Compleat Housewife, Eliza Smith, 1727, page 159 "take the red vegetable between your thumb and your middle finger...". Proposed wording: "Tomatoes are red".

Which do you think is more likely to be read and attract either a quick change to the article or an argumented objection to the changes (such as, in that example, "The tomato is a fruit according to biological terminology: see (some source)")? Obviously the second, because (1) I grouped current text, refutation, source, proposed change by item and not many lines apart; (2) sources contain full bibliographic information (author, date, title, page), not just an excerpt from somewhere that would have to be hunted back to be put in the article; (3) I cut out irrelevant crap that drowns out useful information; (4) I applied some formatting to make the text easier to read; (5) I refrained from attacking editors (again: even if we are indeed a bunch of incapables, calling us out will make us less receptive to what you propose, so just don't do it).

It would help if you could give a read to WP:SIGN and WP:INDENT, too, because that is part of what makes it harder to read what you write. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 17:00, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm using a phone, so editing is currently a nightmare. I have made a new header on the talk page. (The page is now somewhat cleaned up too. (15-jan-2020))

Also, there is a lot wrong with the article, not just one thing. To put it all up on the talk page would not only be very time consuming, but we would end up with the wall of text again.

The quotes under the "Do the mods even study zen?" header convey the points I'm trying to make.

2A02:A210:2901:C300:AD47:B3D:4079:7B4C (talk) 17:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, i hope everyone is going well.

Let me introduce myself a little. I am a french from Montreal in Canada area and i pretty like Wikipedia as i use it on a daily basic most of the time, to make multiple search but mostly about my boxing preferred fighter. Short story, i did read how Wikipedia is working and we are not allowed to give personal opinion when editing a page. I had hard time reading everything here and starting to Edith some page and i feel like i was going to do something bad so i try to avoid as much as possible.

The hole point is here, i made a Edith from a source called Discogs, and seems like this was taken as a personal opinion or am not sure to clearly understand since my English is not perfect unfortunately.

What i was saying to be clear, was how really was Discogs in general after i myself, put more let's say more than 500 hours Editing the Web Site and all the Data inside.

The review or Editing can be found since it's public, and if someone could clarify what ive done wrong about it, i would really appreciate. I am looking for the right answer and why.

Thanks to give me a reply and it will greatly help me to understand. Have a very good day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by SirlupinwatsonIII (talk • contribs) 07:49, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, SirlupinwatsonIII, and welcome to the Teahosue.

You edited Discogs here and after the edit was reverted you reinstated it here and it was reverted again by a different experienced editor. You added a section "Controversy" describing how Discogs is crowdsourced and saying that it is the biggest references with invalid data or wrong informations. and that The system have multiple failure and Website is not updated and support is almost non-existing. These edits were (in my view correctly) reverted for failing to cite any source, and for being a violation of our neutrality policy known as "NPOV".

Some of the statements in the paragraph you added were opinions, and as such must be cited to a source. Others are claimed as facts, but are the sort of facts that must be cited to a reliable source as per WP:BURDEN. Your edit did not cite any sources. I don't argue with the accuracy of your suggested paragraph (although I don't endorse it either), but for use on Wikipedia it must be supported by reliable sources, and cannot go beyond what the sources say.

Please do not re-add the content, or anything similar, without supporting sources. In future, when reverted, do not simply undo the revert, rather discuss on the article talk page (here Talk: Discogs as per the Bold, revert, discuss cycle. Often it is a good idea to use a ping to alert the other editor(s) involved when yiou start such a talk page discussion. You could start such a discussion in this case. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 12:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this complete and friendly answer. That help me to understand. I understand, i just find that, i can't be a reliable source, other than this, i should create a website, or a post or a blog, listing what i said before, and then this would be consider as a reliable source? I did an Edith , my first one actually on Wikipedia, reading the hole post of the source (here on Wikipedia) this is way subject to personal opinion. Why those are not cleared them? Not to argue, but to understand. I just did have a look at the article and it have been edited since that. Thanks you for your help, much appreciated. Have a great evening. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SirlupinwatsonIII (talk • contribs) 17:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

No, a blog or similar from you would not be a reliable source. If what you want to say has not been said by an already published reliable source (click the link for details of what that means), then it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. --David Biddulph (talk) 18:28, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Had recently read the book and wanted to see what was on wiki. Page has a big flag asking for improvement since entry is just plot summary (I agree).

I have drafted something which possibly meets need but I am not sure how to proceed (I am prepared to be bold but this is not really my field). My piece is nearly as long as the plot bit. Can I put it somewhere for critique? Can I just replace existing? Any other way forward? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Catchsinger (talk • contribs) 17:19, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello Catchsinger and welcome to the Teahouse. You could simply be bold and add your content to the article. You could post it to Talk:Eugenie Grandet and ask for feedback. You could, particularly if it is rather long, post to a userspace page, such as User:Catchsinger/Eugenie Grandet suggestions and then post a link to that page on Talk:Eugenie Grandet with a request for comments. You could, in either case, also post a link here with a request for comments. But you must be prepared for what to do if no one comments positively or negatively.

Do remember that literary analysis requires a secondary source. It is not ok to include one's own theories of the meaning or interpretation of awork of fiction (whether novel, story, film, or TV episode) however obvious they may seem. Many Wikipedia articles get this wrong -- please do not imitate them. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh in future, please sign comments here and on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~). The wiki software will convert this to a signature and a timestamp. Also, when discussing an article or draft, please provide a link in comments here or on any talk page -- it makes things easier for people checking things out, and provides a useful backlink from the article to the discussion. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Will think about advice - and yes sources needed. Apologies re signing - surgery on right hand and get confused typing entirely with LH Catchsinger (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Catchsinger There is also a button in the editing toolbar which inserts a signature. it displays an icon with an x followed by a looped line, the whole being underlined. I tend to forget about it because I developed the habit of using the tildes before that button was added to the interface. Good luck with your hand. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:52, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I've found what I think is a spelling error in the page Ninkasi:

"borne of "sparkling fresh water""

On this side of the Atlantic, you would either be 'born of' (ie. made from), or 'borne on' (ie. carried by), so I want to change it. But wondered if it's ok if you're speaking US English? Grateful for advice Maryanne Cunningham (talk) 19:05, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Maryanne Cunningham and welcome to the Teahouse. That is the same in US English to the best of my knowledge. I think that was just an error for "born" (the sentence structure would have to change for "borne on" to work, IMO). However, the sentence including those words is not cited, and is in the lead section, but the information does not appear in the body of the article. One might remove it as uncited, or ad a {{cn}} tag when doing the correction. DES ^(talk)

Thanks DESiegel. " Born of "sparkling fresh water" is too good a line to delete, so did as you suggested and added ^{[citation needed]} (from the Preview). Then I went into edit mode to thank you, and I see the code is actually {{cn}}, but the short form seems to do the job, so cheers. Maryanne Cunningham (talk) 19:47, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

_{DESiegel Contribs} 19:30, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Worth looking at the external links in the article, and the references. First external link uses that spelling, but elsewhere the meaning of given birth is used. --David Biddulph (talk) 19:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you David Biddulph Maryanne Cunningham (talk) 19:47, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I accidentally created "Category:Lakes of Innandet". Before I realized my mistake I created "Category:Lakes of Innlandet" and started using it. Can I delete the "Category:Lakes of Innandet" page? If so, please tell me how. If not, could someone with those user rights delete it? Thanks.Redriv (talk) 23:02, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

As the author you can tag it with the template {{Db-author}}. --David Biddulph (talk) 23:06, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I put the {{Db-author}} tag on it and apparently it is marked for speedy deletion. ThanksRedriv (talk) 23:15, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I have some suggestions for Wikipedia - see this page for my proposal.

Thanks for noting my work. tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message; contribs) 14:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@The Lord of Math: these sorts of changes need to be proposed at Wikipedia:Village_pump. However, for what it's worth, I don't think the changes to the warning levels are likely to get much support. I think both of your proposals are based on a slight misconception around the idea of the levels: the levels are not primarily based on how serious the vandalism was, they are simply there to ensure that a user has been warned enough times before being blocked. Thus your uncertainty about whether to issue a level 2 or a level 3 warning when the user has had a level 1 warning before and the vandalism is 'moderately damaging' is easily resolved: revert the vandalism, issue the level 2 warning and don't spend too much time worrying about assessing the relative seriousness of the vandalism. If the account is a vandalism-only account, or the vandalism is so egregious that an escalating warning will not suffice, then you can report directly to an admin or use an immediate level 4 template. For the same reason, I also think that your addition of new levels for new categories of vandalism ('terrible', 'egregious' and 'intolerable') is also barking up the wrong tree. Vandalism is either so serious, in the opinion of the vandal-figher, as to justify an immediate block, in which case report it directly to AIV... or it isn't, in which case use an escalating warning. Expecting vandalism patrollers to decide whether vandalism is 'egregious' or merely 'terrible', and then check what level was previously applied, and then apply the correct level based on a new matrix of warnings is an exercise in frustration and futility, in my personal opinion.

The idea about subadmins is not a terrible concept in principle but I think it is highly unlikely to get much traction. The main objection will be, I suspect, that most experienced users will gradually obtain the majority of these rights in any case - if they want them and are likely to use them. All editors can already close XFD discussions with a result other than delete, and even this new category of admin could not close a discussion as delete since they would lack the ability to implement it - unless we allowed them to delete pages, in which case you are giving this subadmin one of the most privileged abilities of an admin, and that is highly unlikely to be a popular idea. Some non-admins do patrol the various noticeboards and chip in with thoughts, but a specific power to flag editors as blockable or not blockable is problematic. If I flag an editor as blockable and the blocking admin does the same checks and due diligence that I did, then I have saved them no time at all so my action was pointless. If they do not do that due diligence then the blocking decision has essentially been made by me (regardless of who implemented it) and so I have, at least partially, taken on the other most powerful ability of admins.

Anyway, just my two cents. I am sure other editors will have other views. Hug^syrup 15:27, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

​Some users create their own versions of warning templates (and store in userspace) for this purpose. I agree the templates are often not descriptive enough, but in those cases I usually just write a personal message to the user. Regarding subadmin, it probably wouldn't change much of the backlog since these rights are given out fairly freely as it is. The Spanish Wikipedia has tested the waters with having "subadmins" that are only capable of blocking non-autoconfirmed users short-term, which in my opinion makes perfect sense to give to those active in antivandalism but it hasn't gained traction here (it's on WP:PERENNIAL). – Thjarkur (talk) 15:46, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@The Lord of Math: I really like the fact that you're thinking about ways to improve how Wikipedia operates - thank you. Unfortunately, I also have to agree that adding subtle in-between leve's is only likely to make the task of fighting bad faith edits somewhat harder. Is use Twinkle to add templated warnings, but frequently use the option to include an extra comment which puts my notice into context. I might choose to issue a level 1 or 2 notice, but say "This is the third time you've made silly edits this week, please think of ways to improve Wikipedia, rather than damage it" This kind of extra note is especially relevant where an IPv6 user has made similar vandalistic edits from different addresses in the /64 range. By pointing this out, it lets another editor know that this isn't the only IP address that that user has accessed. This isn't sock-puppetry, but the changing IPv6 addresses can tend to hide such edits. Like you, I often think of things that I'd like to see improved here. I rarely take them forward (sometimes discovering later that there are already ways to solve the problem I'm moaning about. But I do keep a list. Regards,  Nick Moyes (talk) 00:08, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Based on the fact that each additional level uses wastes the time of more editors, I suggest we not add another abuse level. Abuse is abuse, and I can't imagine how any editor would be unjustly inconvenienced by the current system.--Quisqualis (talk) 00:40, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi - I am trying to add Dan Pickett's photo to his Wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Pickett Each time I add it, it gets deleted. We have the rights to use a photo from the photographer that we purchased it fromAbharlow (talk) 18:27, 15 January 2020 (UTC) (I have an email from him). How do I add it? Thank you.

@Abharlow: The rights must be for reuse for any purpose. If you have those rights, then you can use WP:FFU to upload the file and the permissions. RudolfRed (talk) 19:12, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

RudolfRed, They were previously trying to upload the image to commons. As far as I can tell, it was deleted because they did not have permission (or failed to fill something out in the commons upload process). --MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 19:14, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Abharlow. The file which was deleted from one that was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; so, there's not really a lot that anyone here at Wikipedia can do about. It does appear, however, that you've already asked about this (or at least a related image) at c:Commons:Undeletion requests/Archive/2019-03#Headshot - Dan_Pickett_CEO_nfrastructure.jpg, but your request was denied. Please take a look at c:Commons:OTRS for more information as to why that happened and on what kind of things you can do to get the file restored. If you check c:User talk:Abharlow, you also find notifications about the files you uploaded and possible ways to resolve any issues associated with them.

Now for something completely different. I've already posted some information about this on your user talk page, but it you're connected to Dan Pickett in some personal or professional way and are adding content to Wikipedia on his behalf, as you state in this post made to Wikimedia Commons, then Wikimedia is going to consider you to have a conflict of interest with respect to anything written about him on Wikipedia. Although the Wikipedia Community doesn't expressly forbid COI editing, it does highly discourage it because it can lead to some serious problems. You need to be particularly careful if you being paid or otherwise compensated for any edits you make about Pickett (see meta:Terms of use/FAQ on paid contributions without disclosure for more about this) because undeclared paid/compensated editing is a violation of the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use and can lead to your account being blocked by a Wikipedia administrator. The information I added to your user talk page contains links to relevant pages regarding all of this; so, please take a look at them and see what kind of editing that Wikipedia thinks are acceptable for COI editors to make. If you have any questions about this you can ask them here at the Teahouse or at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:49, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello,

I submitted an objective article, and it was rejected. Here is the feedback I got.

The reason left by Robert McClenon was: This topic is not sufficiently notable for inclusion in Wikipedia. The comment the reviewer left was: This page appears to have been written to praise its subject rather than to describe the subject neutrally. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.

If this draft is resubmitted without being reworked, it may be nominated for deletion. You may ask for advice about the tone of articles at the Teahouse.

This draft contains marketing buzzspeak.

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bunmi Akinyemiju. It does not appear that the subject has accomplished enough in the past 8 years to overcome the conclusion that he is not notable.

This draft appears to be an autobiography, the submission of which is strongly discouraged.

I will appreciate any assistance to make this less an autobiography, and making it a notable inclusion in Wkikpedia.

Thank you.

Bunmi Akinyemiju (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Remove the references where the author of the source is the subject, or interviews with the subject, and remove the text which relies on those sources. If you can find sufficient independent published reliable sources to demonstrate the notability of the subject then you could try again, but hopefully you will understand why autobiography is discouraged. --David Biddulph (talk) 13:21, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Bunmi Akinyemiju You can't make it "less of an autobiography" because you are the one writing it, and that's what an autobiography is- a biography written by the subject. Though not forbidden, autobiographical articles strongly discouraged on Wikipedia, in part because people naturally write favorably about themselves. Wikipedia tries to have a neutral point of view. You might be confused about the purpose of Wikipedia; it isn't like social media where people tell the world about themselves or publish their resumes. This is an encyclopedia, and as an encyclopedia Wikipedia summarizes what independent reliable sources state about people who meet Wikipedia's special definition of a notable person. In order for you to successfully write about yourself here, you essentially need to forget everything you know about yourself and only write based on the content of independent sources- what others say about you. While this is technically possible, I have yet to see it happen in my many years here. 331dot (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In the current draft it seems that most of the sourest are written by the subject (presumably you, Bunmi Akinyemiju, and most of the rest are interviews. As David Biddulph wrote above, these should all be removed. The remaining currently cited sources have only passing mention of Bunmi Akinyemiju, or do not mention him at all. I curently see no source which discusses him in detail and is also independent Unless there are at least three such sourcews, don't waste ytour timne, no article will be created, and no amount of editing for tone or format will help. Notabliliy is essential to any Wikipedia article, and i don't see it here. Back in 2012, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bunmi Akinyemiju the conclusion was that Akinyemiju was not notable, and nothing in the draft now convinces me otherwise. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 13:59, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback.

To clarify this, I am not the subject in the article. This was written by a 3rd party and not the name published. This account was only opened in his name for the purpose of submitting an article. It seems that kind of set the tone for it to sound like an autobiography or self-praising. It is totally independent.

If this current position is corrected, does it make a less an autobiography?

The article was written in respect of the contributions made to the development on an industry and humanity. However, all feedback are noted, and better sources will be cited and shared for review.

Thank you.

Bunmi Akinyemiju (talk) 14:19, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Bunmi Akinyemiju If you are not Bunmi Akinyemiju, you cannot use their name as your username, and you must change your username immediately. Please visit Special:GlobalRenameRequest or WP:CHUS to request a username change. While it wouldn't be an autobiography, you do have what we call a conflict of interest and are likely a paid editor. You will also need to read and formally comply with those policies as soon as possible(the latter is a Terms of Use requirement and mandatory). 331dot (talk) 14:23, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I will reply within 24 hours, but I see that several experienced editors have commented already. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I see that the author has changed their username, and had made the mistake of confusing a username with an article title. However, they still appear to have a conflict of interest. To reply to the original post, I did not think that it was an objective article. I rejected it, which is more drastic than declining it, because there had already been an old deletion discussion, and it does not appear that there is a lot of new coverage. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:35, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Do I need a citation when I correct something slightly that already has a "need citation tag" (i changed Mr to Rabbi on this page)? Thank you so much for your help. Csar00 (talk) 02:45, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

​Hello, Csar00, and welcome to the Teahouse. For simplicity's sake, I'll address the specific edits in question. Two Wikipedia policies are relevant here. The first is Wikipedia:No original research. Since you attempted to change information in an article, no matter how minor the information may seem, you need to include a reference. This is true despite the fact that the original information did not have a reference. (You may also be interested in reading WP:V, and WP:RS.) The second is MOS:HON; as per the accepted manual of style, Wikipedia does not include honorifics in articles. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers :) --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 02:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

​ Thank you for answering my question! :) Csar00 (talk) 03:05, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Csar00, another resource you may find useful is the Wikipedia Adventure, available here: WP:TWA. Welcome to Wikipedia! William2001^(talk) 04:07, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The article LaMont Boilers should be La Mont Boilers. How do I edit that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Southsidesquare (talk • contribs) 05:00, January 16, 2020 (UTC)

The article LaMont boiler can be moved, but can you justify that should be? I'm seeing references to this boiler as "La Mont", "Lamont", "LaMont" and "La-mont". Even the spelling of the surname of its inventor is not always given as "La Mont". Note that the common name of something is not necessarily going to use the same spelling as its inventor. I think this change will have to be discussed. Meters (talk) 05:18, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I suggest that you make a case for renaming the article at talk:LaMont boiler Meters (talk) 05:22, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

Many thanks for having this opportunity to ask questions here guys! I would like to write a biography about my grandfather, without him, Leni Riefenstahl's film Tiefland (Tiefland (film)) would have not happened. I know little about my grandfather Josef Plesner, and I am in touch with the Austrian film institution to find out more. My article draft has been rejected as I could not prove the significance of the person. He has done outstanding and groundbreaking work in nature documentaries as well as producing and filming the 2 important pieces of German/Austrian post-war (filmed during war partly) films Tiefland and Bergkristall (mountain crystal). At a time where it was nearly impossible to pay for film rolls and production, he spent all his money on making movies.

Thanks for your help, Alexandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlexandraSarcletti (talk • contribs) 10:38, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• You need to find reliable sources that reported on him as a person. Although I would recommend against trying to create an article on him without help from another editor, as is not usually a good idea to write an article about someone you know, since you may not be able to remain neutral. ^{[Username Needed]} 10:47, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• @AlexandraSarcletti: Please also note that words like "outstanding", "groundbreaking", and even "important", are indicative of the NPOV problem that often appears when writing about a subject with whom you have a relationship (see WP:COI). Unless multiple sources characterize the work in this way, the article shouldn't use such terms. Even if multiple sources do use such flowery language, it should only be used sparingly here, and attributed to those sources. This is part of maintaining a neutral, encyclopedic tone. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:51, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
• @AlanM1: that is very helpful thank you. I am a story teller so writing in neutral language will be quite a challenge. Personal relationship or not. I will learn as I go along. I am currently trying to piece together the biography. The contribution to the film industry and culture are undeniable. But I do lack references as post war has made it difficult to find reliable sources in digital. What if I find written or printed evidence? For example, I do have a handwritten note by Leni Riefenstahl, where she thanks my grandfather. But how would that work to digitalise it - upload on Wikimedia Commons? --AlexandraSarcletti (talk) 16:29, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
• You can find some sources on the German wikipedia articles w:de:Tiefland (Film) and w:de:Josef Plesner. You can ask English questions on the relevant talk pages, w:de:Talk:Tiefland (Film) + w:de:Talk:Josef Plesner, it's "Diskussion" instead of "Talk" on dewiki, but otherwise the same idea. @Others, I'm not up to date with the current procedures for a "transwiki" or Special:Import of w:de:Josef Plesner, but the German article is short enough to try a translation. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 14:01, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

  Just my 2 cents here: one needs to keep in mind here that different Wikipedias have different ways of doing things and judging if an article can be written and kept or not. The fact that an article exists in one Wikipedia does not guarantee there can be an article in different Wikipedia. Looking at the sources in the de:Josef Plesner article: citing imdb, e.g., is covered here. And passing mentions alone will not confer notability. Lectonar (talk) 14:18, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

(ec) I'm afraid it's not enough information in the dewiki article to reach the WP:N threshold and make even a stub at enwiki. Here's a Google's translation:

Josef Plesner (born January 13, 1911 in Ernstbrunn, Lower Austria, † October 30, 1993 in Kufstein, Tyrol) was an Austrian film producer and cameraman.

He has made a name for himself in the genres: cultural film and nature film, local film and mountain film. He was also the founder and head of the Plesner Film production company.

plus a filmography. Just dates and places of birth and death, his profession and names of movie art streams do not warrant an article, IMVHO. --CiaPan (talk) 14:21, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, I'm always excited if I see a possible technical adventure, here Help:Transwiki ending up on m:Help:Transwiki, but Plesner and w:de:Bergkristall (1949) aren't very helpful. OTOH w:de:Tiefland (Film) has some references and could be notable here, and that would allow AlexandraSarcletti to create a redirect for her grandfather to the film. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 14:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

See Tiefland (film). Lectonar (talk) 14:47, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

And Mountain Crystal. Lectonar (talk) 14:48, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Problem solved, next TEAHOUSE adventure stop for the OP is WP:AFC/Redirects to request a redirect. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 14:58, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• Google translate for once is surprisingly correct :). Lectonar (talk) 14:31, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lectonar: Google translate these days is pretty good. Thank you I did not know that articles on one Wiki page are not autmatically ok to go out on all languages. I know his work is notable - especially Tiefland, but how can I reference that correctly, given that there are hardly any digital sources but the IMDB entry: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0687205/bio --AlexandraSarcletti (talk) 16:29, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@AlexandraSarcletti: WP:FILMMAKER isn't obvious for your grandfather, but you are of course free to start a draft anyway. IMDb would go to an "external links" section of the biography and doesn't count towards WP:THREE (not a policy, only a rule of thumb.) –84.46.53.221 (talk) 17:48, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

AlexandraSarcletti There is no requirement that sources be digital or findable online. However (at least on this Wikipedia) there is a requirement that they be published. A printed book, magazine or newspaper article is fine. Give the title of the book or article, and the name of any publication in which it is included (for an article). Give the publication date. Give the page number or numbers. Give the author if known. Possibly include a short quote (use |quote= if using a citation template such as {{cite book}}, {{cite news}} or {{cite magazine}}). Such a quote can include the key sentence(s) from the source on which the Wikipedia entry is relying.A handwritten note would not be acceptable, unless it had previously been published elsewhere. Cite only reliable sources. I hope that is helpful. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:54, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

DESiegel thanks so much that is a great help! I will do my research over the next weeks. Exciting! --AlexandraSarcletti (talk) 10:13, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

When I had the hard drive replaced on my PC, I lost all my Bookmarks/Favourites. This included my Wikipedia folder which contained useful bookmarks (manual of style, citing sources, help pictures, free use etc). I have now replaced many of these, but I did find finding them a slow job. Using the 'Search Wikipedia' facility leads to ambiguous results when you put in things like 'Teahouse' or 'Village Pump'. Is there particular way of searching for the 'user' pages? For instance, I would like to learn more about 'Signatures' (there seems to be an array of styles, and I am puzzled why mine repeats the BFP1 with one in a different colour. Is it true that once a discussion on Teahouse has started I do not need to continue to finish with BFP1 and 4 ~ ? Is this information anywhere on Wikipedia?BFP1BFP1 (talk) 11:17, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Help on searching is available at Help:Searching. You probably want to limit your searches to the Wikipedia namespace. When you have found useful pages, it is worth keeping the links in a user subpage, rather than in a folder on your PC. As far as your signature is concerned, you just need the 4 tildes (or the signature link in the edit toolbar); you don't need to type the BFP1 beforehand because your signature already includes your user name with a link to your userpage. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:29, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks David BFP1 (talk) 11:48, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Is it true that Wikipedia turned 19 yesterday? Wikipedia was founded in 15 January 2001. Will there be any changes on its twentieth birthday? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.152.145.95 (talk) 12:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia indeed had its first edit on 15 January 2001 - more information can be found at History of Wikipedia. I'm not sure what you mean by 'changes' on the 20th anniversary of that first edit - Wikipedia changes all the time as numerous editors seek to improve it! Neiltonks (talk) 12:45, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The wiki software itself changes most every Thursday. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 13:10, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I would like to do some editing of an existing published article (inserting some images). So that I can experiment without damaging the existing article, I would like to transfer a copy to my sandbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BFP1/sandbox). However, this is titled 'Draft William Oliver' (a previous article I worked on). Where can I transfer a copy of the article I wish to edit? Previously copying articles into the 'wrong' sandbox has resulted in a confusing history of multiple articles.BFP1BFP1 (talk) 09:12, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

User:BFP1/sandbox is not "titled" Draft:William Oliver; it merely contains a link to that draft (replacing a redirect when the sandbox contents were moved to draft space. The draft in turn redirects to the article produced when the draft was accepted for publication. If you wish to use your sandbox for something else you can just remove that existing link and overwrite it with whatever you wish the new contents to be. --David Biddulph (talk) 09:28, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

One further point to bear in mind is that you talked of "inserting some images". You need to remember that in your user space the only images which could be used (whether in the existing article content or added subsequently) are those which are free of copyright. Non-free images under a non-free use rationale are permitted only in articles in mainspace. --David Biddulph (talk) 09:39, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@BFP1: I re-use some of my sandbox pages over and over again for a multitude of different purposes. Treat it a bit like a scratch pad. Wipe the old contents and start afresh with something completely different. The history of that page is of no real importance, and would simply show you different things you worked on at different times. There are however two key things to advise you about, not mentioned above.

• Firstly, if you decide to paste a copy of any article into your sandbox, please make a note in the edit summary for that sandbox edit so as to attribute the contents to the various authors at the original article (even if they were mostly you). e.g. "Copying text from article William Oliver to experiment on. For editor attribution, see that page's history."
• Secondly, if you decide to do a major rewrite and restructuring of any article, and then overwrite the original article, you will loss a lot of the individual edit histories. You could highlight your proposed sandbox revision on the article's talk page and see whether other editors think you've done a good job and are happy for you to overwrite it. Or - perhaps more simply - I might just tweak one paragraph at a time, leaving a clear edit summary and a nice gap between each edit. The last thing you want is someone doing a rollback of absolutely everything you've done, when all they object to is one particular flawed element.

Hope this is of some use. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you David and Nick. I will proceed with care. BFP1BFP1 (talk) 10:45, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear David Biddulph, How do I remove the existing link mentioned above. Is there a delete option and is the overwriting process straight forward?BFP1 (talk) 13:09, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

13:17, 16 January 2020 (UTC)It's OK David. I've worked it out. Sorry to bother youBFP1 (talk) 13:17, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello. I am a still relatively green Wikipedia editor. I have a question about edit warring and reverting. The articles are Malabar Farm State Park and Louis Bromfield. I have a number of pages on my watchlist and today reverted bold citationless edits from a single-purpose account. The account name possibly suggests a COI, but probably more the single-purpose of the account. The edits done are screwing up the footnoted reference links in one article -- some of them aren't linked; they're just numbered. And the edits to the biographical article of the Pulitzer Prize winner aren't overly relevant (and they're unsourced). I don't want to edit war, but I don't know how to escalate this to the proper people who can explain edit etiquette to this editor and see to it that the pages are monitored and, if need be, protected. Where do I take this? Thank you. --DiamondRemley39 (talk) 21:34, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

You can call attention to such edits on the talk page of the article involved, DiamondRemley39, usually pinging the editor who made them. See also Wikipedia:Edit warring#What to do if you see edit-warring behavior Persistent edit warring, or any breach of the three-reveert-ule, can be reported at WP:AN/EW. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 22:06, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I have sent an additional warning to User:Malabar Facts, and we will see what effect it has, DiamondRemley39. If warring persists, a block may be needed, but blocking should not usually be the first resort. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 22:08, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining what I should do and addressing this on the user's talk page. Have a great day! DiamondRemley39 (talk) 14:28, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I have just been told there is an entry for me - Andrew Whiten - and it appeared in December. I have no idea who wrote it. Is there a way I can find out? And can I edit to correct errors in it? AW. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.151.245 (talk) 13:50, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello and welcome to the Teahouse. You can find out which editors have written the article about you by examining its edit history. As Wikipedia summarizes what independent reliable sources state about potential article subjects, someone likely took note of you in a reliable source and decided to write about you- possibly a student of yours. Please review the policy on autobiographical edits. While you should avoid making edits to the article about you(Andrew Whiten as a courtesy link) in most cases(though you can remove unambiguous vandalism from the article yourself), you are encouraged to make formal edit requests(click for instructions) on the article talk page(Talk:Andrew Whiten), detailing any changes you feel are needed and any sources you have to support them.

I would suggest that you create an account and then verify your identity with Wikipedia by following the instructions at WP:REALNAME, to ensure that others do not impersonate you. 331dot (talk) 13:57, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

If you talk about the Andrew Whiten article mentioned above by User:331dot, it did not appear in December. The entry was first created in February 2014 as a redirect, and the first version we can call 'an article' is dated 8 April 2017‎. --CiaPan (talk) 14:11, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Most of the content was added by User:Putzsymbiose in May 2018. That editor has chosen to not put any content on User page, so it appears in red, and nothing can be gleaned about who the person is. You could leave a query on P's Talk page, but the editor appears to have not been active since July 2018, so unlikely you would get a reply. David notMD (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@David notMD: The user's home wiki is the German one, and they were contributing there since January 2014 till June 2018. The user revealed at de:User:Putzsymbiose they wanted a name of Putzerfisch alas it was used already (de:Putzerfisch redirects to de:Putzsymbiose, which correspond to Cleaner fish and Cleaning symbiosis, respectively). They were also a starter and the main contributor of de:Andrew Whiten.
But I doubt all of that will reveal the person's identity; at most it weakly points towards Germany. :) --CiaPan (talk) 14:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Prof. Whiten, just a comment, maybe you can help – the article says, twice, that you were born in "Grimsby, Scotland". I can find no evidence that there is a Grimsby in Scotland. The source cited for the claim appears from its name to refer to the Grimsby in Lincolnshire. Maproom (talk) 00:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

What do you think who Sikarwar Rajputs are? Why are you removing my links? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shashank Shubham (talk • contribs) 09:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Shashank Shubham Please explain in more detail what your question is , and what article(s) you are asking about. Please provide a wiki-link to the article or articles you want help with. Also, please sign your comments on talk pages and discussion pages like this one (although never in articles) with four tildes (~~~~) or with the signature button on the editing toolbar. Thank you. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:36, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

^[1] Fatehpur_Sikri mentioned Sikarwars as rulers for a short period. I just linked it to the Sikarwars page. ^[2]. This guy Aliwardi is removing my link and threatening me to block. ^[3] Fatehpur_Sikri mentioned Sikarwars as rulers for a short period. I just linked it to the Sikarwars page. ^[4]. This guy Aliwardi is removing my link and threatening me to block.

That's why asked the following questions: What do you think about who Sikarwar Rajputs are? Why are you removing my links? Shashank Shubham (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Apart from anything else, you need to read about overlinking and about misplaced external links. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:55, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. The issue at Sakarwar is not about who the Sikarwar Rajputs are, it's about whether direct external links are appropriate in Wikipedia articles. They aren't. Maproom (talk) 15:00, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Shashank Shubham Please do not edit or remove other people's comments on a discussion page such as this, and do do not remove or change your own comments after someone else has replied. See WP:TPO DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 15:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I read the following interesting article; George Earl (painter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Earl_(painter). I then added, what I thought was, a useful source that corrected some information (see reference 2). This, however, caused a problem. When you press 'Edit source' and then 'Show preview' a red warning notice is displayed. What is causing this problem? BFP1BFP1 (talk) 08:33, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

When I look at the preview, I see the text (in red) : "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox artist with unknown parameter "influenced" (this message is shown only in preview)". Is that the one you mean? It is nothing to be concerned about, and not due to anything you did – if you preview earlier versions of the article, it is still there. Somebody has added a line in the infobox template which won't show in the article, is all. --bonadea contributions talk 08:40, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Was just about to write the same. I've removed the non-existent infobox fields. - X201 (talk) 08:43, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you both. BFPBFP1 (talk) 09:14, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@BFP1: As a complete aside, did you mean to recently alter your signature so that it is repeated, but only partly linked? It seems a bit confusing to me. Just thought I'd mention it. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:06, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I've tried to correct that now Nick BFP1 (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I am the new coordinator for WikiProject History. we need people there!! right now the project seems to be semi-inactive. I am going to various WikiProjects whose topics overlap with ours, to request volunteers.

• If you have any experience at all with standard WikiProject processes such as quality assessment, article help, asking questions, feel free to come by and get involved.

• and if you have NO Experience, but just want to come by and get involved, feel free to do so!!!

• For anyone who wants to get involved, please come by and add your name at our talk page, at our talk page section: WikiProject History needs you!!!!

• Alternately, if you have any interest at all, feel free to reply right here, on this talk page. please ping me when you do so, by typing {{ping|sm8900}} in your reply.

we welcome your input. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 20:46, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sm8900: What topic are you most in need of for your project? Eclipsefc (talk) 23:09, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

hi. Good question. However I’m just a facilitator. I found this wikiproject and saw it was basically inactive. It seems like something people might need, given its basic topicality. I’m leaving it up to the community to let me know what people might feel is most needed, if anything. Thanks!!! —Sm8900 (talk) 23:29, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Aside from the semi-active label in that Project, how were you able to determine that it is inactive? I myself have been expanding articles listed in the History stubs. Having a facilitator for this project is a good thing so I am supporting you all the way :). If you can, you can update the page with changes made and even feature interesting articles. If you want to know people who can help you with this or those who are doing actual work, you can start communicating with the users listed in the Members list. Darwin Naz (talk) 12:50, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Darwin Naz:. that is great to hear. I'm so glad you wrote back, to let us know of your efforts!!

yes, let's absolutely work together on this. I have been looking for any editor, just one, who still wants to make the core tasks of a WikiProject remain active and in progress. so yes, let's work together, and help set up any resources features, you may want to see in place.

for one thing, just as a start, you can go to our talk page and simply let us know of your efforts. that's just a start.. but yes, in the future, we can set up forum pages, or project pages, or articles lists pages, or what-have-you, simply to create a genuine project that will be a resource. we will be glad to work with whatever you may wish. feel free to be in touch. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 19:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Respected Sir/Mam

I have started creating a page of our university 7 months back but page is getting declined after publishing twice. This is my first page creation and i am new to it. please help — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajatmendiratta (talk • contribs) 13:46, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Draft:Apex_University. Hug^syrup 13:53, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Rajatmendiratta, Hello! I am sorry, but it appears that your page will not be accepted no matter how much advice we give, as the reviewer has rejected it. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 13:54, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The feedback at Draft:Apex University is very clear as to why the submissions were first declined then rejected. What is there about the feedback that you don't understand? --David Biddulph (talk) 13:56, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Rajatmendiratta, I just looked at the draft and it seems to copy a significant quantity of text from (https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/apex-university). This is against Wikipedia policy, and I have tagged the page for speedy deletion under G12 Copyright infringement. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:28, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello , Rajatmendiratta. One way to look at this is to realise that, in an article about Apex University, Wikipedia has little interest in what Apex or its staff or associates say about it, and no interest at all in how it wishes to be represented. Wikipedia is only interested in what people who have no connection with the university have chosen to publish about it, and any article should be almost entirely based upon such sources.

I note that you refer to "our university": what is the nature of your connection? You probably need to be aware of the recommendations about editing with a conflict of interest before you do any more work on it; and if you are employed by the university, you need also to make the declarations required for paid editing. --ColinFine (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi all,

Does anyone know how to get a Wiki listing for your company on the right? When you search "Apple" for example the Wiki listing "Apple" comes up on the right.

Right now the company I want to come up doesn't, only the Google listing does.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by USAEURO1994 (talk • contribs) 18:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@USAEURO1994: If you are talking about the Google Knowledge Graph, that is controlled by Google and not Wikipedia. If the article is new, then it can take quite some time before search engines are allowed to index it. Also, remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a business directory or avenue for promotion. RudolfRed (talk) 18:43, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, definitely no advertising on Wikipedia. RudolfRed (talk) 19:43, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I called Google and she mentioned that Wikipedia is in charge of that — Preceding unsigned comment added by USAEURO1994 (talk • contribs) 19:47, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

You received bad information, USAEURO1994. Google and its software make all the decisions about the Knowledge Graph, and whether or not to display one for a given Google search. Wikipedia has no direct influence. Yes, Google usually extracts text from Wikipedia but they often use images from elsewhere. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:55, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@USAEURO1994: Wikipedia is in charge of whether or not there is an article about your company, but Wikipedia is not concerned with enhancing Google search results for your company. This is an encyclopedia. Your company cannot get a Wikipedia article just because it exists- it must meet Wikipedia's special definition of a notable company, as shown with significant coverage in independent reliable sources. As you have a conflict of interest and are a paid editor(you must comply with that policy as it is a Terms of Use requirement), you shouldn't be the one to write any article about your company, if it indeed merits one. 331dot (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

On c:File:I Wrote a Full Song in 24_Hours-K7r58jQqK8I00227.png and on 18 other images derived from one video the other versions gallery works as expected, four "Blackery with guitar" in one row for a total of five related images in this subset, with a perrow=4 gallery parameter. On enwiki the perrow=4 fails for File:I Wrote a Full Song in 24_Hours-K7r58jQqK8I00227.png and for me, what is the problem, is it only me, does it work for you?
If that question is too simple try To be checked on commons, just kidding. –84.46.53.255 (talk) 21:41, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

Please I recently created a number of articles and they have not been approved. These are the articles: Rufus Akinyele O. A. Akinyeye MBM Avoseh Abosede George

I will appreciate any help with regards to what I may do to get the articles accepted please.

Thank you.

~~WS — Preceding unsigned comment added by WheelHelms WS (talk • contribs) 20:50, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

WheelHelms WS Hello and welcome to the Teahouse. I'm not sure what you mean- your articles are in the main encyclopedia and visible to the public. Which approval are you waiting for? 331dot (talk) 20:55, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

331dot Really? But I can't find them when I do a Google search. What could be wrong? I am only able to find this one: Olufunke Adeboye when I do a Google search. Please help. --WS 21:06, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

WheelHelms WS, nothing is wrong. Articles only show up on google after either they have been reviewed by a page reviewer, or have existed in mainspace for 90 days. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 21:07, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) Alright. Thank you. Now I get it. So I was lucky to get a reviewer to review my very first article (Olufunke Adeboye) very fast then. How may I ask a reviewer to kindly consider reviewing any of my new articles then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by WheelHelms WS (talk • contribs) 21:10, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure, I'm pretty sure you just have to be patient, as there is a queue. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 21:13, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you will need to be patient. Is there a particular reason you are eager for them to be found in Google? 331dot (talk) 22:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to edit the "part of a series on Stoicism" box that appears on pages such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism. The little V T E links at the bottom of that template don't go to the Stoicism template, they go to a template on Palamism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Palamism&action=edit ) I can't figure out how to fix that error so that I can edit the template.Teishin (talk) 22:22, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Teishin, welcome to the Teahouse. The lead of Stoicism says {{Stoicism sidebar}}. This means Template:Stoicism sidebar is used. It was created three hours ago with a wrong name parameter. I have fixed it so the V T E links go to the right place. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter! Teishin (talk) 23:02, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@331dot: I found out a little bit about Twinkle and wanted to learn more, especially since I want to use it. How does it work? Does it run amok and work fully autonomously, or do you still have to do things manually? Any info helps! Thanks,The Evil Sith Kitten 21:49, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Evil Sith Kitten, I'm not 331, but hopefully I can shed some light. Twinkle is used to make semi-automated edits. It is still a manual tool, where you have to click buttons, but it does some of the complex stuff for you. Its really just an interface that allows you to easily add templates, warnings, and other Wiki-Bureaucracy. It takes a lot of the guesswork and paperwork out of nominating things for deletion, reporting problem users, etc. It is best used for more of the behind the scenes/maintenance stuff, and isn't super useful for actual editing. Still, its a valuable tool, and can come in handy in a lot of different ways. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:16, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, CaptainEek! I've used it some, and found that for me, it's most helpful for adding tags and reverting problematic edits/vandalism. Is that what it's meant for?The Evil Sith Kitten 00:20, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Evil Sith Kitten, Yep, that is definitely what its intended uses are. It can also be used to start deletion discussions, request speedy deletion, request page protection, report users for vandalism, among other abilities. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:24, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello everyone,

I'd like to make this page User:True hero 14/Milan Friedrich accordingly to the wikipedia rules, so it can get published. Could you please let me know what should I change in order for the article to be accepted?

Any help is immensely appreciated.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by True hero 14 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, True hero 14 and welcome to the Teahouse. There are several things you should do:

1. Read Ypur First Article, Referencing for Beginners, and our guideline on the notability of biographies.
2. Provide proper citation data, such as the title, name of publication, author (where known), publication date (where know), publisher (wher relevant and not redundant), and access date (for online sources) for all citaitons.
3. Combine duplicate references
4. Avoid unreliable sources. In particular, do not cite the IMDB, as it is not considerd reliable for most content.
5. Limit the use of non-independent sources.
6. references at the end of a sentence come after the period.
7. In English, use "Filmography" not "Filmographie".
8. "Philanthropy" should probably be its own section, not under "opinions".

I hope that helps. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

How to remove redirect link form my sandbox to an Article. Rocky 734 (talk) 18:20, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Rocky 734. The steps are:

1. Go to your sandbox.
2. It will redirect to the article, but at the top you will see "Redirected from Rocky 734/sandbox". Pick that link, and it will take you to the sandbox itself.
3. Edit it, and remove the line that starts "#REDIRECT".

--ColinFine (talk) 19:28, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks,@ColinFine:. Rocky 734 (talk) 01:33, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello. How can one be friendlier to a fellow editor in a talk page when he/she is not picking up that I am trying to be amiable and open to criticism in conversation, leading to misunderstanding? LionFosset (talk) 13:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@LionFosset: it will really help if you just tell us which discussion you are referring to, as you seem to have a couple of potentially contentious conversations going right now. It's honestly pretty difficult to give generic advice for how to be friendlier, without knowing some context. All I would say is try to assume in all interactions that the editor is genuinely trying their best, sincerely believes they are right, and wants to do the right thing. Remember everyone on the internet are also people, and try to speak to them the way you'd want to be spoken to. Finally, if someone is really annoying you, a lot of the time there is nothing stopping you stepping away from the discussion for an hour, a day, or even forever. Very few discussions on Wikipedia absolutely require your involvement. Hug^syrup 14:53, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

My guess is this is about User talk:Sk8erPrince. But as Hugsyrup says, without knowing, it's very hard to help. Maproom (talk) 14:55, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

User talk:Sk8erPrince has been blocked for more than two months. More recent arguments have been with User:Hotwiki. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:59, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was referring to my interactions with Hotwiki (Sk8terprince simply didn't reply). He seems to be more belligerent than other users I've had the chance to talk with. LionFosset (talk) 15:20, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I mistakenly thought you said I went incognito. But then I realized Ignocito is part of the username of an editor that you were replying. I just didn't bother anymore to reply, as I'm not obligated to reply to you. As for this, being brought up into Teahouse, don't expect editors to treatly you so lightly after you've removed mdy tags for absolutely no reason, so many times. I'm not a robot not to be annoyed with disruptive edits.TheHotwiki (talk) 22:00, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@Hotwiki: I understand. Maybe an advice I myself could give as well is to tone the language down, simply make it direct and constructive, like how User:Coolcaesar advised me not to add Fantasia 2000 to the Disney Renaissance back in 2014, as there were no literary sources to back it up. LionFosset (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello,

I am curious why I can find a page on Audrey Doering on Wiki Bio but not on Wikipedia? The article references Wikipedia. Maybe you can educate.

This is the page listed below.

This article "Audrey Doering" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Audrey Doering. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nationalnewsorg (talk • contribs) 02:20, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what "Wiki Bio" is, but there is no page entitled Audrey Doering on the English Wikipedia. 331dot (talk) 02:24, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Nationalnewsorg. I found two junk websites, one in India and the other in the United States, that call themselves "Wiki Bio". These seem to be highly promotional "trending celebrity" type websites, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with Wikipedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nationalnewsorg, welcome to the Teahouse. I don't know "Wiki Bio" either but many websites copy Wikipedia articles. There was an article for four days at Audrey Doering. It was deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Audrey Doering per Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Subjects notable only for one event. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:53, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I am very new to Wikipedia article creation though I read through different articles everyday. I tried to create an article for an actress with a few notable newspaper reports and online movie news references. But it was rejected saying -

'This draft does not appear to indicate that one of the notability criteria for entertainers or notability criteria in creative arts is satisfied. If one of the criteria is satisfied, please revise this draft appropriately, with a reliable source, if necessary stating on the talk page which criterion is met, and resubmit. ' From the comments I understand that IMBD is not a reliable source, but I have added some other references also. This actress has relatively average fan base and has acted in a very socially relevant movie. I would like to get advice on how to resubmit this article and get approved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rickey.murrey (talk • contribs) 01:59, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

• Courtesy, it's about Draft:Veena Nandakumar Nair David notMD (talk) 02:02, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Rickey.murrey, and welcome to the Teahouse. I am afraid that, as the reviewer said, this draft does not currently establish the notability of the subject. It seems that she has had only one significant role, which is not enough to establish notability. That leaves the general notability guideline and assessing coverage. Let's look at the coverage in the draft.

• The Times of India article is an interview, and so does not help establish notability, becauae it si not independent.
• The "My Words in thoguhts" source is a blog, and so is not considered reliable here. It should be removed mfrom the draft.
• The article from The Hindu has some value, although it is partly an interview.
• The article from newsbugz seems to ahve some value, but it is rather brief and superficial, not really in-depth coverage. I also do not know if this publication has a reputation for accuracy. Also, some phrases were copied directly from this into the draft. Those should be changed or removed. They are not enough to jsut delete the draft, but such copying is not acceptable.
• The article from New Indian Express says a greet deal about the move Kadam Kadha. But it only devotes one short sentence to Veena Nandakumar Nair, saying only that she had a role in this movie.
• The article from Cinestan has a good deal to say about the writing and direction of Thodra, but only one sentence about Nair. This does nothign for notability.
• the remaining four citaitosn are to teh IMDB, and should be removed.

If, say three additional stories like the one in The Hindu were cited, I think this could be approved. That is stories with comparable depth of coverage, from equally reliable sources. There are a few other problem. Thye tone is too chatty, not formal enough. There are some grammar and format errors. But those could be fixed easily enough, if the sources were there to establish notability.

It may well be WP:TOOSOON for this actress. Perhaps in a year or three there will be additional coverage and additional major roles to report on. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 05:23, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi I posted a draft page and it is not still reviewed. Any help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Avisoftonic (talk • contribs) 07:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Avisoftonic: are you referring to Draft:Sameera Aziz? If so, that was reviewed and declined on the 3rd of November. You can see the reasons for it being declined at the top of the article, or in the notice placed on your talk page. It’s well worth reading the pages that are linked to in those notices, as the provide a lot of useful guidance on how to get your article accepted next time. Hug^syrup 07:34, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I want to know how can I improve the article that was declined — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christine Kimmy (talk • contribs) 01:17, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Draft:Screen Sharing- LetsView

Hello, Christine Kimmy and welcome to the Teahouse.

1. Read Your First Article, Referencing for beginners, and our guideline on notability.
2. Drop comments addressed directly to a reader ("You can do this", "You need not do that"). Tone should be formal and factual.
3. Wikipedia articles may not be used as sources for other articles. Drop all from references. Proper links may be used in a "See also" section, but only where they would provide value to the reader.
4. Avoid a promotional tone.
5. Include facts derived from Independent published reliable sources that discuss the topic in some depth and cite those sources properly.
6. Detailed lists of features are appropriate only if independent sources have written about them, and not always then.

That should be a start. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 01:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

First, you need to decide what the article is to be about. Your draft is called "Screen Sharing- LetsView". Its first sentence gives a definition of "Screen Mirroring" (which disagrees with the article Screen Mirroring by saying that it applies only to mobile phone screens). The contents of the draft is a comparative review of several software products. Maproom (talk) 09:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

To follow up on the problems discussed here (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Teahouse&diff=935668315&&oldid=935666072):

--

Hi All...

I keep making edits to reflect the necessary changes, yet no progress is made. (Also, somehow, something was deleted before approval, but I added it back.) I am more than a little confused about why something so basic (and so short) is causing such a problem. It woould be great to get some insight into this, and I appreciate those who might be able to help me.

Link: Draft:Lee_Olesky

(Wpearce1983 (talk) 22:59, 13 January 2020 (UTC))

Hello, Wpearce1983, and welcome to the Teahouyse. Actually, it is my impression that things are making progress with Draft:Lee_Olesky, and in fact it is getting close to the approval level. I just made a few edits, one to improve how a wiki-link recently added was used, and a couple to improv how citations are being done. Take a look at what I did, please, and try similar changes mon the other refs. While I wouldn't agree with one reviewer that basic early biographical data must be sourced -- that isn't what our verifiability policy says, it is often easy to source and it is good to do so if possible. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:28, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

--

I'm a little confused. How can I get this closer to being accepted? I've made changes but it was declined again. Then someone made additional changes, but there was no movement. What else needs to be done?

Wpearce1983 (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

hello again, Wpearce1983. I have edited your post above to make the link to the past Teahouse post mode specific, and to restore the link to the draft. After the last reveiw, i made three edits to the draft, amd another editor made one. Together they had this efect. I suggested above that you take a look at my edits in particular. I mad soem improvements to the citations, and changed the wording to clarify the content about BrokerTec.

I said this was, in my view, closer to approval because the promotional content has been largely removed or rewritten, and the remaining sources are mostly good ones. The remaining issue is solely one of notability, and a couple of additional high-quality sources should fix that, if such sources are available.

The draft has been re-submitted for review, in this edit But there are currently over 3,800 drafts waiting for reveiw, and there is no fixed order in which they will be checked. It is time to work on the draft be foire it is next reveiwed. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 20:27, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@Wpearce1983: DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 20:45, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

--

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Teahouse&oldid=936123002

OK, so, I made some additional edits. I included a line about how he's on the advisory committee for the CFTC, a major government organization, and linked to it, as well as a line about him being on the board of directors, supported by two major news sources. This helps establish "notability" as well.

Please let me know how this can advance to being accepted. Seems like it was occurring faster the other day.

Draft:Lee Olesky

Wpearce1983 (talk) 21:26, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Each time a draft is declined it goes back into the pile of thousands of drafts. It's not a queue. Reviewers look at the pile and decide what they want to review. Can take months. There is no "faster." David notMD (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

In theory there is a "faster", get the small number of edits and days required for "Special:MovePage" rights (draft to article), do this, and expect PROD (proposed deletion) or AFD (articles for discussion, basically for deletion) or various SPEEDY deletion requests "soon" (example). AFC + NORUSH works even for IPs, YMMV. –84.46.53.255 (talk) 00:00, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

In case it wasn't clear, don't do that. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 09:56, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Team,

I am trying to create page about myself. Last attempt was unsuccessful. The pages was deleted. Please help me to understand the guidelines to adhere to your policies. I wish to become a permanent information adder/editor of Wikipedia.

Regards, Sachin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sachinharyan (talk • contribs) 03:45, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Sachinharyan. I am sorry but Wikipedia is not a place to promote yourself. It is an encyclopedia. Please read and study Your first article and WP: AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

There are countless social media sites where your efforts to promote yourself are welcomed. Not here. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sachinharyan: Also see WP:NOTPROMO(4) and WP:OUT. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 10:42, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, my dear teatdrinkers in the teahouse, I have seen that some people archive their talk page. I have now prepared to archive my talk page, but I do not know where to transfer the page correctly. And how to archive the talk page automatically I also don't know. I'd appreciate some help. Thank you. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Check out Help:Archiving a talk page, for your user talk page I recommend the "manual" procedure, i.e., create User talk:Paradise Chronicle/Archive 1 with a {{Talk archive}}, wikilink to it on your talk page, e.g. use {{archive banner}}, and copy + paste complete sections from your talk page to the archive manually when you feel like it, and remove the archived sections with edit summary "moved to /Archive 1" (as wikilink [[/Archive 1]]). –84.46.53.255 (talk) 02:44, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I think you are awesome. Result is here. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 11:54, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Looks good, but better leave fresh sections such as #Sorry until the original poster had a chance to read your reply without digging in your archive. –84.46.53.255 (talk) 12:22, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

You are correct. :) Paradise Chronicle (talk) 12:24, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I have been trying to discuss the right way of posting paid contributions, to fight the biases of overzealous editors on Wikipedia for some days now. Just an hour or so ago, I wrote a message on the Help Desk because it claims to be the place where one should go when all else fails. Guess what? This user named Maproom bothered himself with a stupid response, the same kind I had written about in my message, and deleted my message before I could even check it or respond.

Wikipedia's community is only full of biases and lies about transparency, reliability, and honesty, right? Because I have seen none of it from its esteemed editors and administrators so far. Ashley.Bell (talk) 10:21, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

This is AshleyBell208's post: Special:Diff/936199561. Maproom's "stupid response" was Special:Diff/936202404, According to your own user page, your only paid cobtribution here is the (now deleted) article Ibrahim S. Quraishi.. The whole of it was removed, correctly IMO for being out of scope, by Teratix at Special:Diff/936203972 with the edit summary Rmv. If you want to pursue sanctions against the "utterly biased" editors, go to WP:ANI and substantiate your claims. The help desk is not for polemics. I suggest you follow their recommendations, though I don't think you'll be happy with the outcome. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 10:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@AshleyBell208: both the helpdesk and the tearoom are for asking questions. Neither your post at the helpdesk, nor your post above, actually asks a question. Most editors at both boards will go a long way to assist users, explain things they don't understand, point them to policies, and sometimes even take up their cause if a page has been incorrectly deleted or they've been unfairly dealt with in some way. However, you do have to actually ask a question - if all you want to do is complain that you have been unfairly treated then neither of these boards are the appropriate place. You can object to a deletion at WP:DRV and you can make complaints about user behaviour at WP:ANI but I caution you to be very sure of your case as you may not get the outcome you want at either of those places. Hug^syrup 10:49, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Hugsyrup: Oh, I did ask actual questions, contested deletion as politely as possible, asked for guidance, and got no real responses. So, don't tell me to do that now. And, of course, I know that no matter how sure I am of my case, I will not get any outcome because most of the editors here have double standards and biases. Ashley.Bell (talk) 11:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@AshleyBell208: ok then, well it doesn't seem as if there's anything more I can do. If you do have any specific questions, please just let me know. Hug^syrup 11:08, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Context: closed + archived discussion Paid Contributions at Wikipedia three days ago here. –84.46.53.255 (talk) 11:22, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Some advice:

• Volunteers have a remarkable capacity to help others with queries. However, this capacity is rapidly sapped when the questioner a) does not explain their query or goal and b) is dismissive of good-faith responses and groundlessly accuses others of "bias".
• If multiple experienced independent editors decline your drafts as promotional and undersourced, the likely cause is not, in fact, "bias" but that the drafts actually have these problems.
• Paid editors' work will come under greater scrutiny than volunteers', simply because they are more likely to write promotional, undersourced content.
• If you're going to attack an editor for their actions, at least make sure they actually did what you accuse them of. I removed your help desk post, not Maproom. – Teratix ₵ 11:58, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
• @AshleyBell208: I think you should carefully consider the likelihood of the competing explanations here. On the one hand that you, as a person who has contributed to Wikipedia for all of two weeks, have truly mastered the hundreds of pages of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and have truly written the perfect draft, only to be thwarted by a bunch of nasty people who obviously don't appreciate your natural talent. Conversely, you, as a new editor, still have a great deal to learn, you may have misjudged the difficulty of making paid contributions to Wikipedia, you have written a draft with numerous problems in sourcing and tone, and just because a dozen or more veteran editors (representing decades of experience and hundreds if not thousands of articles written) have given you an answer you don't like, doesn't mean that they're giving you an answer that's wrong.

You can make what you will of that, but I would advise you that while there are very few things required of the members of this community, it is a non-negotiable requirement that contributors have the ability to listen. GMG^talk 12:47, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I posted a Request for Rollback rights 82 hours ago. Now it seems as if everyone overlooked my request. Is it that my case is so complicated that it's taking admins thirty times as much time to handle? Why? Upset user tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message; contribs) 11:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@The Lord of Math: 82 hours is not a very long time, and I assume you say 'everyone overlooked my request' simply because Amorymeltzer has actioned two requests after yours? If so, that is really nothing to worry about. It may be that they have already seen the other users at work and was able to very quickly confirm that they are suitable, it may indeed be that your case is more complex and takes more time to look at, it may simply be that they picked a couple of cases and happened to miss yours - admins are volunteers and they are not obliged to work to your timescales or to go through requests in a particular order. There is no rush, the project will not be harmed by you waiting a bit longer for rollback rights, and someone will get round to your request eventually. Hug^syrup 11:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Hugsyrup. LoM: I'm sorry you had to wait a while. These reviews can take a long while, looking over dozens and dozens of edits and contributions for a month or two isn't always easy and, for my part, life popped up. I've left a brief reply at WP:PERM/R. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:57, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

For others, the rollback right is a simplified undo for vandalism and speeds up recent change patrol, any user (including IPs) can emulate the effect.
For tLoM, it was seriously embarrassing when I abused rollback once for something that was no vandalism, fortunately the affected user didn't take it as a personal attack. Obviously (in your contributions) you like recent change patrol, but you also use a tool good enough for most RCP purposes. Your account is (relatively) new, folks can't tell if you will be interested in RCP for years, don't take it personally, some "rights" including autopatrol and rollback can be also a "curse". –84.46.53.221 (talk) 17:01, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll add that I rarely need to use rollback to revert more than one revision at a time, and I do a reasonable amount of reversion. If, for example, there are edits by two editors that need reversion, it is better to revert them separately so you can provide an accurate edit summary and notification/warning for each. If you find a chain of edits by one user needing reversion, perhaps there's a noticeboard where you can request someone with permission to perform the rollback. Anybody know? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:59, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

No special "rollback request noticeboard" on {{Noticeboard links}}, and if it would exist that would be the ideal place to spamtell about it. And the next step would be geeky insider "shortcuts" WP:RB/N + WP:RBN + more, because the number of shortcuts indicates the status, above 10 means "essay on MFD" (miscellany for deletiondiscussion).
WP:ANI would waste precious admin time for a {{sofixit}}, and can backfire as a "self-report", if an admin in a foul mood picks the fastest solution, because reading the presented evidence would take days. –84.46.53.255 (talk) 13:44, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I am planning to make a new account for some userboxes and other humor boxes called User:BoxHT, much like User:UBX. May I know if it is acceptable, and if so, what are the precautions I have to make? tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message; contribs) 13:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The Lord of Math, Is there any particular reason you can't use User:UBX? You can certainly do this as long as you make no edits from User:BoxHT as far as I'm aware. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 13:46, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Moonythedwarf For the first part, I'd rather not associate my own edits with userbox making. Because of this, I'm actually thinking about starting this alternate account and edit its subpages using that account, not User:The Lord of Math. So is it still okay? tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message; contribs) 13:56, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The Lord of Math, There is a fairly clear list of accepted uses at WP:VALIDALT, and that does not appear to be one of them, sorry. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 14:02, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Moonythedwarf But what if I don't create the account and use User:The Lord of Math to edit, for example, User:BoxHT/abcd template without registering User:BoxHT? Is it okay then? tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message; contribs) 14:11, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

That would be deleted under criterion WP:U2. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:15, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@David Biddulph and Moonythedwarf: Although DESiegel disagrees, I think it's safest not to take risks. But is there a way to try to get around the CSD U2 and WP:SOCK problem? For example, does registering the alternate account, not making any edits with it and editing instead from this main account solve both problems? Thanks. tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message; contribs) 14:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The Lord of Math, I'd go with DES's advice. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 15:20, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Moonythedwarf and The Lord of Math: I must disagree with Moonythedwarf just above. The list of valid uses at WP:VALIDALT is not exclusive, it says that Valid reasons for an alternative account include ... (Emphasis added) While the above reason does not exactly fit any of the designated reasons, it is somewhat similar to the 'Privacy" reason, as long as it is not being used to evade scrutiny. LoM, as long as you include a link to the new account on User:The Lord of Math, and include such a link on the user page of the new account to User:The Lord of Math, and do not use the new account to edit policy pages or discussions of policy or any RfCs or AfDs/XfDs or similar discussions (indeed keep it out of the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces altogether) I think you should be ok. But if you want a more authoritative answer, post to WP:AN and ask the same question there, with a link to this thread. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:17, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@The Lord of Math: You wrote: I'd rather not associate my own edits with userbox making. Why? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:06, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Wild guess, it's childish, there are lots of user boxes in or below Category:Wikipedia-related user templates alone, there are also lots of similar and bigger categories. My unused (outside of archives) contribution Template:User Monobook was a challenge, beacuse it worked on c: d: de: en: m: mw: wikia:, each project requiring adaptions to fit in their "babel"-style.
@TLoM, most elevated rights affect all namespaces, and practical experience in almost all namespaces is a good thing, non-trivial user boxes can get seriously technical (CSS, maintenance category, template data, /sandbox, /doc, etc.) –84.46.53.255 (talk) 14:33, 17 January 2020 (UTC)